Machete

When first announced, Machete , the full-length adaptation of the fake trailer Robert Rodriguez placed before his Grindhouse entry, it seem...

GoodFellas

If the Godfather films used organized crime as a personification of the corruption of the American society and dream, Martin Scorsese's...

Brian De Palma: Hi, Mom!

"You're participating in a play, and this is your part." "But you're the actors; we're the audience." Hi, Mo...

Brian De Palma: Greetings

Though it shares only the most minimal of stylistic traits with his previous two features, Greetings marks the spot where Brian De Palma be...

Raging Bull

Raging Bull is one of the great character studies of the cinema. I have seen it derided as an inaccurate depiction of boxing technique by t...

Brian De Palma: The Wedding Party

If Steven Spielberg was destined to become a director, Brian De Palma stands at the other end of the spectrum of artistic self-realization. ...

The Godfather Part II

If The Godfather served as a haunting eulogy for the American nuclear family, its sequel charted the death of the American Dream, ironicall...

Taxi Driver

Though I've traveled abroad several times, I've only ever been to New York City once, and only for a three day high school band trip...

Righteous Kill

In 1995, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, who are tied for second in my book on the list of all-time greatest cinematic actors behind Marlon Bra...

Once Upon a Time in America

In 1969 Sergio Leone released the epic Once Upon a Time in the West , a commentary on his own bloody spaghetti Westerns that examined what b...

The King of Comedy

There may be no pre- Office comedy as uncomfortable as Martin Scorsese's 1983 flop The King of Comedy , nor perhaps one as pitch-black,...