Raging Bull

Raging Bull - A Knockout Filmnulldiv id="Blog1" style="margin-bottom: 12px; padding-bottom: 12px;"null
<div style="margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px;">I have to preface this review with the awareness that I couldn't give this movie my full attention. I was doing laundry / doing push-ups. That said I think I was paying enough attention to write an accurate review. The movie of the week is none other than 'Raging Bull.'

I was introduced to this movie by my wife. Believe it or not I had never heard of it, I've never seen a preview, and I didn't know anything about the plot. What I did know was that it was directed by Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro won an Oscar for it... and that's about it. I love going into movies blind.

It's because of movies like 'Raging Bull' that we respect Scorsese so much. It is a beautifully filmed piece of theatre. The editing is brilliant and the black and white stylization is superb. The small splash of color right in the middle of the film is refreshing and excellent.Let's just talk about the acting for a minute shall we? I want to use a word like succulent, or divine, or astonishing, but really 'great' is just the word I need. Everyone was great. De Niro was genius. And the rest of the cast was right up there with him. Excellent job all around.The story was solid. Triumphant and tragic all in one swoop. The story of the great boxer Jake LaMotta. We love him we hate him. We cheer for him and we curse him. A complex character to say the least. My only complaint is that it runs a bit long. Other than that it was a really fantastic film. I definitely recommend it.One of these days I'm gonna watch a movie I don't like... until then I give 'Raging Bull' an 8/10.-TravLCox_
www.lifeisthatrandom.blogspot.com 

Raging Bull - A Knockout Filmnulldiv id="Blog1" style="margin-bottom: 12px; padding-bottom: 12px;"null
<div style="margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px;">I have to preface this review with the awareness that I couldn't give this movie my full attention. I was doing laundry / doing push-ups. That said I think I was paying enough attention to write an accurate review. The movie of the week is none other than 'Raging Bull.'

I was introduced to this movie by my wife. Believe it or not I had never heard of it, I've never seen a preview, and I didn't know anything about the plot. What I did know was that it was directed by Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro won an Oscar for it... and that's about it. I love going into movies blind.

It's because of movies like 'Raging Bull' that we respect Scorsese so much. It is a beautifully filmed piece of theatre. The editing is brilliant and the black and white stylization is superb. The small splash of color right in the middle of the film is refreshing and excellent.Let's just talk about the acting for a minute shall we? I want to use a word like succulent, or divine, or astonishing, but really 'great' is just the word I need. Everyone was great. De Niro was genius. And the rest of the cast was right up there with him. Excellent job all around.The story was solid. Triumphant and tragic all in one swoop. The story of the great boxer Jake LaMotta. We love him we hate him. We cheer for him and we curse him. A complex character to say the least. My only complaint is that it runs a bit long. Other than that it was a really fantastic film. I definitely recommend it.One of these days I'm gonna watch a movie I don't like... until then I give 'Raging Bull' an 8/10.-TravLCox_
www.lifeisthatrandom.blogspot.com 
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Raging Bull - A Knockout Filmnulldiv id="Blog1" style="margin-bottom: 12px; padding-bottom: 12px;"null
<div style="margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I have to preface this review with the awareness that I couldn't give this movie my full attention. I was doing laundry / doing push-ups. That said I think I was paying enough attention to write an accurate review. The movie of the week is none other than </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">'Raging Bull.'
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">
I was introduced to this movie by my wife. Believe it or not I had never heard of it, I've never seen a preview, and I didn't know anything about the plot. What I did know was that it was directed by </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Martin Scorsese</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Robert De Niro</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> won an Oscar for it... and that's about it. I love going into movies blind.

</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">It's because of movies like 'Raging Bull' that we respect Scorsese so much. It is a beautifully filmed piece of theatre. The editing is brilliant and the black and white stylization is superb. The small splash of color right in the middle of the film is refreshing and excellent.
 </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Let's just talk about the acting for a minute shall we? I want to use a word like succulent, or divine, or astonishing, but really 'great' is just the word I need. Everyone was great. De Niro was genius. And the rest of the cast was right up there with him. Excellent job all around.
 </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">The story was solid. Triumphant and tragic all in one swoop. The story of the great boxer Jake LaMotta. We love him we hate him. We cheer for him and we curse him. A complex character to say the least. My only complaint is that it runs a bit long. Other than that it was a really fantastic film. I definitely recommend it.
 </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">One of these days I'm gonna watch a movie I don't like... until then I give 'Raging Bull' an 8/10.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">-TravLCox_
www.lifeisthatrandom.blogspot.com </span>
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****½
USA
Probably the most hosannaed of Scorsese's pictures, his biography of prizefighter Jake La Motta is an indictment of male values founded on aggression from a man who has made a career of gawking at such values with the awe of a schoolboy. A tension persists throughout the movie between the raw tragedy of La Motta's self-destruction and Scorsese's infatuation with the movie gangster. It's that much more uncomfortable to witness the patently despicable acts that define La Motta's persona, filtered as they are through the cinematic codes of on-screen machismo which for decades have sneakily rendered such behaviour acceptable. The committed rawness of the performances and dialogue and the slow-mo extreme-close-up brutality of the violence play off the glamourising movie-ness of Scorsese's orchestration, charging La Motta's tale of damage and devolution into the realm of the operatic. It's a shame therefore that in the crucial moments Scorsese hurtles it into the realm of the redundant: he taints the final, visceral impact of his movie with some undergrad-level solemn posturing, capping things off as he does with no less than a quote from the Bible.

This is not a film about boxing; this is a film about the fractured life of Jake LaMotta, a one-time world champion boxer. If you understand the difference then you can truly appreciate the film.

Scorsese’s beautiful black and white photography and subtle sound mix make us feel as if we’re watching a great vintage film from the 1940s…except for the graphic language and brutal violence. This film is like a punch in the face because Jake is not an empathetic character and we are allowed access to his most violent and demented delusions. The characteristics that made LaMotta a great boxer are those that made him a sad and terrible human being; this is the living contradiction that Scorsese examines.

The camerawork is fantastic as Scorsese artfully frames every punch and doesn’t resort to gimmicky quick-cut editing. Robert DeNiro’s performance is now legendary as he is able to bring a modicum of humanity to a punch-drunk washed-up sex-offending criminal. LaMotta was never knocked down in the ring but his life was mostly spent face down on the mat. Final Grade: (A)

All reviews copyright Korova, Ltd. Visit Alex at his Home Theatre Blog, http://korovatheatrepresents.blogspot.com/

What was it like to be Martin Scorsese on Oscar night in 1981? Think on it: you’re Marty; you’ve just made Raging Bull; you and everyone else know it’s a masterpiece – but Ordinary People wins Best Picture. Do you: a) Rip Bob Redford’s lousy throat out? b) Gouge his eyes a little first? or c) Clap along with all the other saps? Bear in mind your movie is, definitely, a masterpiece. And you’re probably coked to the gills tonight. You may or may not be sleeping with Liza Minnelli (I can’t remember who you were sleeping with in ’81). Whatever’s goin’ on, the Sundance Kid deserves a slap. Oh Marty. And to think: you lose to Kevin Costner in ten years.

Try to picture Scorsese and Paul Schrader trying to write Raging Bull. Scorsese, as I say, by this time a full-on fun-house coke fiend. Schrader: just about the worst man a coke fiend could hang out with. They’re both nuts. Talented, yes, but nuts. A guy could count the number of girlfriends Marty and Paulie had in high-school on one thumb. And here they are writing a screenplay about a man who would’ve wedgie’d them both growing up. It’s a boxing picture, a true-life story about Jake LaMotta, Middleweight Champion of the World in the 50s. Bear in mind Rocky has made the boxing picture hot. But Marty and Paulie don’t want to make Rocky; they wanna make On the Waterfront, a King Lear for the common man. This’ll be Rocky if Rockyhad been played by De Niro. And there ain’t gonna be no Adrian.

Right from the first shot, you know Raging Bull is a masterpiece: the sheer opera of it; the black and white photography that’s as seductive as cigarette smoke; De Niro, sexy as hell, prowling the ring; the ropes, in thick silhouette, like bars on a cage. In effect you have what the whole movie is about: both the poetry and the savagery of boxing, the dancing bear aspect and the f—in’ majesty of the thing. That Academy voters could even think of comparing Raging Bull and Ordinary People is bewildering, let alone that they could think Ordinary People superior (were they smoking crack?!). On the one hand you had Bob Redford’s paean to white people (it had a character called Bucky in it, for Christ’s sake); on the other: Art. Not art like Ordinary People’s art, all flat-packed and “I love you, pop”, but real art, the kind that isn’t easy to explain, the kind that director’s have to f— themselves up to make.

I’ve said some bad things about Robert De Niro on these web-pages, but it’s only because I have to watch him now; to come across De Niro in the 70s… when he made Mean Streets, when he made Taxi Driver, when he made The Godfather and The Deer Hunter and Raging Bull… who he was back then; that’s the reason I’m mad at him now. InRaging Bull he’s a cinderblock; concrete and emptiness. To see him weep when he throws a fight, such manly crying he moves his trainer to tears… He’s the kind of guy who only makes sense because he’s Italian American. Great swells of emotion move him and the country around him stands aghast. Jake should have been born in Italy, somewhere round the Renaissance, when Caravaggio would have painted him and all his violence would have been ok.

How Italian was Scorsese back then? The looks his camera gives to women: both awed and horny (just watch Cathy Moriarty wet her legs in the municipal pool). Whenever Jake isn’t punching people, he’s eating. You learn a lot about a man’s priorities when he gets into a fight over how to cook steak. Then there’s family… the kind of family you have to be Italian (surely) to equal, that older brother/younger brother thing that Michael Corleone would recognise. The way all the men look like they hit each other to stop them from kissing. Ok, so most of that is grossly insulting to Italians. But hey, I’m Welsh – you learn to live with a little ribbing.

Could they make Raging Bull today? Could Martin Scorsese? I doubt it.Raging Bull is as much a product of the 70s as Saturday Night Fever, and it’s about the same guy, give or take a punch. Ordinary People they could make; a Hallmark Channel production, most likely. But Raging Bullcomes from a different place. It’s there in De Niro’s weight gain in the later scenes; in the semi-improvised arguments with Joe Pesci; in the casting of Joe Pesci (about as obvious a Scorsese-substitute as I can think of) as Jake LaMotta’s brother, and in the idolisation of a blond girl (Cathy Moriarty)… Marty did well not to kill anyone on Oscar night. Do you even remember Ordinary People?