Martin Scorsese has largely built his reputation and ravenous following as a filmmaker on contemporary stories of misfits seeking redemption and Italian American gangsters. Frequently, though, he’s stepped away from that milieu to explore historical subjects and biopics in films like The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York and The Aviator. He hasn’t ventured into the western genre but
Read moreAcross eight films (if we call Kill Bill one film) Quentin Tarantino has cultivated a reputation as a modern movie savant and a ravenous cinephile who has been handed the greatest toy imaginable, a Hollywood movie budget. With this he’s conjured lurid comic book crime dramas and off-kilter genres movies all filtered through his universe of pop cultural obsessions. After
Read moreWith the exception of Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese hasn’t made a completely convincing film since Casino; The Departed was miscast and Hugo was only half great. For the first hour of the Wolf of Wall Street, an adaptation of the biography of disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort, though, it seems as if Marty has returned to peak form. His intense and
Read moreF. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby captured America amid the hedonism and chaos of the “jazz age” a time when the nation was giddy with power from its First World War economic boom. The book focused on an American upper class of wealthy white folks who, in addition to their sedate garden parties and boating regattas, regularly gathered for
Read moreIn the mid 1990’s Quentin Tarantino grabbed the movie world by the dangly bits and announced himself as cinema’s new enfant terrible, agent provocateur and other French clichés. He is one of a select few directors who compel critics when reviewing his films to discuss him as much as the film itself, such is his impact and distinctive voice. Tarantino’s
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