I can’t believe it’s almost October and I haven’t reviewed Scorsese yet. My blog feels a little empty so now I’m going to attempt to fill that void with a quality review.
The first time I watched this movie it was so boring that I only watched half of it because I quite literally had no idea what was happening. Now that I’m thinking about it hating a movie at first and then giving it another chance seems to be an ongoing trend for me. What actually brought me back to this film was the song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.” It plays during the title and recurs throughout the film. Now, if I heard this song out of the context of the film, I would’ve hated it because it’s not my style (it’s basically a weird mix of traditional Irish instruments with heavy… rock(?). But Scorsese, the master of editing, just placed it so perfectly in this film and it made both the song and film ten times cooler. Now I occasionally unironically listen to it in my free time. One film opinion of mine that has never changed is that I generally have zero (0) interest in gangster/mob movies. I hated, like realllllly hated, The Godfather. I thought I couldn’t hate a movie more until I grudgingly watched The Irishman just because it was a Scorsese movie and it turns out it’s actually possible for me to despise a movie. I’ve yet to watch Goodfellas but I likely will have to for my midterm so that should be interesting. Now you may be asking why I watched this film. When I saw that it starred Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leo DiCaprio, and Vera Farminga (who I adore from Bates Motel) I thought there was no way this movie could be bad. It ultimately turned out that I was right; it’s not a bad movie. However, one of my issues with this film actually turned out to be its A list cast. I was struggling to actually believe Nicholson was a Boston mob guy and DiCaprio was a scruffy police academy dropout. I believe a more unknown cast would have served the film better. Arguably the most famous actor ever and Hollywood’s golden boy just weren’t fitting in this movie. What I liked about this movie was the change in venue for Scorsese. The New York setting was getting a bit redundant and I feel he recognized that. I’ve always enjoyed Irish/Irish-American culture and wanted to visit Boston, so it was cool to see it here (though the actors were noticeably struggling with the Boston accent to the point where it gets legitimately cringe worthy at some points). We also get classic Scorsese cinematography, editing, and carefully curated soundtrack. If I had to change something in this movie, I’d go for a little less action and a little more character building, as the two main characters were relatively static; something unusual for Scorsese. But overall, this is a Scorsese classic and is comfortably in my top 20 films list. And for fun and because I’m bored, I’m going to list my favorite to least favorite Scorsese films: Like: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, Hugo Dislike: Shutter Island, The Irishman Havent Seen: Mean Streets, Casino, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator
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May Featured Movie QuoteBarry B. Benson: Yellow-black, yellow-black, yellow-black, yellow-black... Oh, black and yellow. Yeah, let's shake it up a little.
Yeah, I have letterboxd now
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