Review: Raging Bull

       Raging Bull is not a film about boxing but about a man with paralyzing jealousy and sexual insecurity, for whom being punished in the ring serves as confession, penance and absolution. It is no accident that the screenplay never concerns itself with fight strategy. For Jake LaMotta, what happens during a fight is controlled not by tactics but by his fears and drives. Martin Scorsese's 1980 film was voted in three polls as the greatest film of the decade, but when he was making it, he seriously wondered if it would ever be released. Scorsese and De Niro had been reading the autobiography of Jake LaMotta, the middleweight champion whose duels with Sugar Ray Robinson were a legend in the 1940s and '50s. The movie won Oscars for De Niro and also was nominated for best picture, director, sound, and supporting actor (Joe Pesci), actress (Cathy Moriarty). It lost for best picture to Ordinary People, but time has rendered a different verdict.

Review: Taxi Driver

       Martin Scorsese is one of the most accomplished directors in the history of Hollywood, and Taxi Driver is his masterpiece. It was robbed of the Academy Award by Rocky in 1976 because the Academy is more likely to award feel-good movies rather than the dark introspective nightmare that is Taxi Driver. The movie takes place in New York, but it's not a movie about the city, it's about the way the a man views the city and how it damages him. Like many of Scorsese's films, there really isn't any cohesive plot, it just sort of wanders from one idea to another giving us an idea of who Travis Bickle is and why he does the things he does, how the city transforms him from a just a taxi driver who writes letters to his parents on their anniversary to a killer on a rampage.