Something I think about a lot is how Martin Scorsese made The Last Temptation of Christ, a meditation on Catholic faith that recast Jesus as a doubting figure that Scorsese could, blasphemously, identify with as opposed to perfect archetype to aspire to, in which he could present his naked and raw struggles with belief despite unimaginable suffering and cathartically work through this suffering in hope of developing better as a person. Then he immediately made Goodfellas, one of the coolest fucking movies ever made.
This is not to say that Goodfellas is better than TLToC (though I think it is), nor that Goodfellas is more important than TLToC (though I think it is), nor that TLToC shouldn’t have been made (it absolutely needed to be made); this is just my personal observation that Scorsese has gone through the same arc every artist I have ever known has gone through, regardless of level of skill, fame, or budget: the stuff you put your heart and soul into doesn’t get nearly the reaction as the stuff you blasted through out of low ambition.
The single most important aspect of coolness is that you absolutely, positively, must not be trying. Coolness is effortless action; the only thing less cool than trying is trying to hide the fact that you’re trying. Unfortunately, though, trying is also the only way one can learn; to throw yourself into situations and use your head to work out solutions in real time; to keep aspiring to a higher peak in a scary situation and learn new information. The flipside of this is that, once this process is done, you can now move effortlessly in that situation.
This is relevant to Goodfellas in that, by this point in his career, Scorsese was an old hand at Mafia films; indeed, Goodfellas can be seen as a remake of Scorsese’s Mean Streets. Now, that film itself can be seen as equally as cool, Scorsese’s attempt to make something effortlessly personal (in response to John Cassavetes roasting of his previous film), but Goodfellas brings Scorsese’s greater wisdom to it. The plot is more exciting and more carefully chosen for effect; the filmmaking moves smoothly from one cut to another, occasionally risking incoherence for effect.
The film is two and a half hours long and simply flies by, because Scorsese knows how to make a film and how to make the entire film feel necessary; being a gangster seems exciting and terrifying and horrifying and degrading and uplifting, but never boring, because Scorsese knows what’s fun to watch and what isn’t fun to watch. If I ask myself ‘why is this moment in the film?’, it’s because I’m an insane man who does that at all times as opposed to a flaw in the process.
My argument here is that Scorsese had successfully lowered his ambition to something he knew he could do and then delivering to the absolute best of his ability; using his whole ass to do something relatively easy. One can feel the sweat coming off The Last Temptation of Christ, and indeed this is some of the appeal, but in Goodfellas, he’s showing both the sexy, intoxicating, masculine appeal of the mob lifestyle and the horrible, soul-destroying consequences, both of which leave Scorsese with very obvious filmmaking choices to make.
My headline for this article draws on a line David Lynch once said; the connection to here is that one with expertise is forced to take action that isn’t obvious to the untrained observer (with Lynch, in that moment, expressing the professional shock and frustration that it’s not obvious to everyone else). Indeed, the definition of a professional is someone who does the obviously correct thing, and the definition of a student is someone seeking to learn what it is. The Scorsese who made The Last Temptation of Christ was a student; the Scorsese who made Goodfellas was the professional. Life is a matter of recognizing which of these states you’re currently in.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Weapons – Excellent horror images – the children running, with their arms flapping out like wings, has really stuck with me – marred by a structure that doesn’t quite support the story or find coherent meaning. I still dunno what Cregger wants to say about these characters or the event that has impacted all of them, even when we get so much of their motivation and background (that have absolutely nothing to do with the story). Plus there are THREE dream-jump scares. Fuck that shit, what are you, a 2000’s Platinum Dunes remake? Disappointing. Going for a horror version of Magnolia but Cregger doesn’t grasp the euphoria or collective need for love that movie intuitively understood.
Society – Wrote about it for a cool horror site, Cul de Sac of Blood, so I popped out my Arrow Blu-Ray. Reserved my thoughts for the flash essay they commissioned but this is a slow burn that largely works, sticking to the pov of the main character and immersing you further in dreamlike paranoia until the insane, fleshy climax.
Always Sunny, “The Gang Gets Ready for Primetime” – An all-timer 17 seasons in? Howerton’s monologue here is terrifying and pathetic, one of his finest hours, and I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the biggest laughs. (“Why is the gay guy yelling at his partner so much?”)
“Ya know, we’re watching Society here! We’re supposed to act in a civilized way!”
Dammit, I love Society so much. Will have to check out your essay.
I stand by the idea that the structure of Weapons is perfect for a mystery/crime story and does nothing at all for this particular movie: I love exploring a complex truth from multiple angles, through multiple POVs, but it absolutely doesn’t work here, especially since several of the “chapters” seem to exist only to get characters in the right place for a bloodier climax. There should be a human sense of all this adding up to something, and everyone contributing, but no, all they’re contributing is more bodies.
Me and my friend were thinking after that the story requires either greater complexity or the fairy tale structure the twist seems to demand.
Hell yeah, Society, I am way overdue for a rewatch. The slow burn angle is a great point, because the movie largely conceals this — it is weird and paranoid and uncanny but this is a familiar mode, the classic body snatcher scenario, so it feels like regular movements to a known climax. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE.
It’s best approached with dream logic, especially with the tilted angles and the sheer paranoia, which I tried to write about.
There was at least a little foreshadowing…(the shower scene for sure, I feel like there were one or two others)
9 to 5 – great fun, I’ve long heard that this a very entertaining movie but I didn’t know much about it beyond “workplace comedy”, Dolly Parton and the theme song. Turns out it has a stranger sense of humour than I anticipated, in a very good way. Takes a little while to get going but the dialogue is sharp and the characters are great.
The Hudsucker Proxy – workplace comedy double-bill! Another one I’ve rewatched recently but Blank Check made me want to revisit and it was a Coens blind spot for my girlfriend, so. Good fun as always and it’s interesting how different it feels from basically every other Coens film while still being recognisably their work. The “double stitching” gag really is a gem and I love the hula-hoop montage so much.
Live Music – Arab Strap! Saw them as a duo a couple of years ago but this was the first time I’d seen them with a full band in about 20 years. A band I’ve loved for a long time although I enjoy some albums a lot more than others – the set was a good mix of the old and new and the sound was great, really clear and crisp and loud.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Our Cook’s a Treasure” – a little straightforward and predictable but well acted and with plenty of character. Will see if I can be more insightful on this week’s write-up!
Woo, live music! Ya know – for kids!
Haha this live music is very much NOT for kids.
Woooooooo live music with a full band!!
Woooo live music! Wooo movie theme song music! Is “9 to 5” the best pop song theme, especially in the subcategory of “shares the movie’s title,” ever made? Very strong case for yes, I think.
I know just seeing it mentioned here means it’s going to be stuck in my head all day, which contributes to the strong case.
It’ll be going through my head all day at my job, which is the surprisingly intense work of ensuring everyone at the morgue is actually dead and not just the victim of shenanigans.
I definitely did not expect this movie to contain so much corpse-theft.
Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorites, but I’m a sucker for its kind of screwball energy.
I haven’t seen 9 to 5 in ages, but my parents used to put it on all the time when we were little, especially if we were being babysat by the TV, which feels like a truly bizarre choice both for little kids and for them in particular.
The Stepfather
This is interesting, in that Donald Westlake’s script complements and clashes with the cheesy-assed 80’s style and the slasher movie conceit in fascinating ways. The fundamental aspect is that his clear dramatic thriller structure ends up making many cliche elements of the genre more ornate rather than stripping them down (perhaps an inevitable result of a genre already incredibly stripped down); Terry O’Quinn’s title character has motivations blurrier than most dramatic characters but far clearer than even the more elaborate psychology that this genre indulges in. His motivation is actually incredibly obvious: he wants the picture-perfect White Suburban Family, and he flies into completely hysterical rage when he doesn’t get it. One thing about repression that would be trite if it weren’t always true is that it leads to complete irrational expression whenever it can get away with it – it’s either complete control or none, and O’Quinn sells that.
Meanwhile, the plot deliberately has no mystery whatsoever; we know from the first scene that O’Quinn’s character is brutally murderous and the story is upfront about who knows exactly what, and it ends up more surprising as a result – I didn’t at all expect murders halfway through, let alone that it would be the well-meaning therapist (who, himself, believably shifts from helpful to not depending on his immediate goal – he likes the idea of being helpful, which makes his actual helpfulness inconsistent. This also leads to interesting things, like how the crusading brother of O’Quinn’s first victim dies pathetically but also definitely contributed to the girl’s ability to survive what was coming for her.
Glad you managed to get hold of this one after all! Love O’Quinn’s performance here–your write-up makes me feel like his rage and sincerity are two sides of the same coin, as if he’s thinking, “I’ve been completely up-front about what I want (if not what I’ve done when I haven’t gotten it), so why won’t you people just help me out?”
A lot of ’80s slashers are weakened by a detective plot that drags, and this is one of the few where it sort of works, because, as you said, it’s not a mystery but a bit of cat-and-mouse, which works better with the horror movie tension. (Also, O’Quinn passing by that blood-soaked opening tableau is such a great beat.)
In turn, you make me see the one connection this character has to John Locke.
The brother, unfortunately, had a bit of a mixture of weak acting and soft writing to make his sections a bit of a chore in the way the typical crusading good guy can be – though in general Westlake has a creative eye for human behaviour. I found myself wondering if characters like the brother work better when they’re played like supervillains; I had this whole image in my head of the brother acting like a Disney villain and it was much more interesting. (Compare him to the therapist, who was doing so much more interesting stuff, especially in his final scene).
Fuck yeah The Stepfather. I like this distinction between mystery and suspense, the latter is what the viewer experiences because of the clash between their knowledge and the characters’ knowledge — shit, when will they find out? is often a much more frustrating/rewarding dynamic than shit, when will I find out?
I totally stole my division between the two from Hitchcock, who would a) know this shit and b) recognise that suspense is way cooler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xs111uH9ss
Raw Deal
Technically, I watched this on Thursday, but I forgot to write it up on Friday, so here we are. This was fun watch-over-a-phone-call-with-a-friend viewing. A lot of it surprisingly turned into either cooing over or criticizing set design: we are pro-built-in-bookshelves, anti-hotel-art-the-set-designer-mistook-for-high-art. Anyway, this is wild, and it’s hilarious how quickly and thoroughly Schwarzenegger’s character dives into outright criminality–it almost feels like it could be a commentary on cops, but I’m not sure this a commentary on anything except exuberance and the pleasures of squibs and explosions (my friend said, correctly, that this feels like a Cannon flick). Amazing final beat when we find out at the end that Arnold’s cake-hurling wife who obviously loathes him is now pregnant: that’ll fix everything!
Nobody
This has some strong casting–Bob Odenkirk and Aleksei Serebryakov, essentially–and a fair amount of good, gripping, and fun-to-watch action choreography. I always like when action movies aren’t too gun-heavy and instead stick to hand-to-hand combat or weird improvised weapons, because I find that more varied to look at, and this mostly lives up to that. This is more emotionally complex than, say, Taken, as far as “older guy action movies” go, but there are a couple times when it bogs down because it wants to avoid a cliché but doesn’t want to spend the time replacing it. Clichés are shorthand, which means they can be as effective as they are lazy and reductive, and if you want to do something else, you have to put more time and thought into it; Nobody recognizes the existence of the cliché but doesn’t put enough care into what it’s doing instead, and the end result is that the wife character is completely and bafflingly incoherent.
Paris, Texas
For Movie Club, and then I actually couldn’t make Movie Club, but that meant I typed up some thoughts to send in my stead, so I have them at hand!
It’s always impressive to me what a huge impact Nastassja Kinski makes when it’s so far into the movie before she even gets her first line. (Before that, she’s also strikingly vivid on the Super 8 video: Kinski feels like she would’ve done great in the silent era.) I love how you can watch her face during her conversation with Travis and see how much she’s feeling as she starts to recognize his story as part of her own–and with that in mind, I also love how it takes later than you might expect for her to know that for sure, like maybe Travis’s version of the events doesn’t quite match her own internal experience of them until he starts getting deep into particular, specific details. (I don’t think the story of a man doing all this out of love resonated with her, the person these things were done to, and Kinski and Wenders seem to both acknowledge that.)
This movie also looks incredible, from the cinematography to the production design to the costuming (that fuzzy pink sweater dress!). Even the cars are perfectly chosen. But it’s also just a terrific, sprawling landscape that Wenders is working with, and it’s like the huge, stark spaces of it match the huge, stark emotions of Travis and Jane’s history. It’d be easy for the more suburban spaces to feel cheap in comparison, but Wenders gives them their own loving observation: that scene of Travis and Hunter playfully walking home together on opposite sidewalks is so beautiful.
I always feel bad for Walt and Anne, who love Hunter and don’t know exactly how to deal with the idea of one or both of his birth parents coming back into his life but who are doing their best, despite some hiccups and internal disagreements, to work out a compromise that’s fair to everybody. It makes it painful that they get sidelined for the second half of the film, especially since Travis taking Hunter with him effectively does prioritize his relationship with Hunter over theirs: doesn’t feel as much like a “two dads”/”just lucky” situation then where relationships are getting added but not taken away or diminished. Walt and Anne feel like they lose (and may not last together, sadly), and that shot of Anne lying in the bed seems to acknowledge that, and it hurts. I’ve seen arguments that Walt is meant to represent a kind of shallower worldview, with his billboard-centric career and him actually having the French wife his father only (destructively) pretended to have, and I can see the basic idea there, but Stockwell plays him as a real, warm person who wants to do what’s right, so I feel like he can’t be reduced to a couple of signifiers.
Love the scene of Travis learning to dress like a father (and a “rich father” in particular). It’s unusual for a film to emphasize the performance of a role that’s “supposed to” be natural, and it’s especially cool in this context, where there’s an implicit comparison between Travis, the biological father who’s been absent, and Walt, the uncle who’s become a father by acting like one.
Incredible Harry Dean Stanton performance, unsurprisingly. This made me miss him all over again.
Game Night
Watched at a movie night with some friends (after all playing a game together, too, so that was fun synchronicity). I’ve always liked this one–lots of good jokes, inventive visual touches, and an all-star comedic performance from Jesse Plemons–and it was especially fun to watch it with a group.
84 Charing Cross Road
I understand why some people find this too dry, genteel, or sleepy, but I am not one of those people. This has charming central performances–Bancroft is so damn likable, and Hopkins is one of the best to ever do it when it comes to projecting quiet pleasure and yearning–and a deep bench of good supporting performances too. Bittersweet and a bit melancholy, but quietly so: these are characters who know how to live with disappointments and even painful losses without letting it cut them off from humanity or from enjoyment. And for such a resolutely uncinematic premise, there’s actually a very cool, if very obvious, bit of movie-making here, where the final letter exchange between Helene and Frank is finally delivered more like a conversation between Bancroft and Hopkins, both of their characters speaking directly to each other across the miles, their dialogue finally inter-cut even as they stay firmly in their separate worlds.
I’ve read the epistolary memoir this is based on, and while it’s definitely a bit awkward that the movie (and possibly the stage show as well?) implies some adulterous romantic longing between two real people, eh, whatever, I’m happy to take the movie as fiction doing its own thing.
“Can’t say I care for that nomenclature.”
“I’ve always enjoyed the camaraderie of good friends competing in games of chance and skill.”
Man, fucking Nobody. It is not a movie that earns or deserves hate, but I sort of hate it anyway — I think it tries to avoid grim cliche like Taken (or honest blithe bloody Cannon cliche like Raw Deal) and falls headlong into what Tristan talks about above, the specific sweaty flailing of trying to be cool. Oh, Odenkirk is actually a badass! Oh, he has cool records and rad friends! Oh, he’s part of a secret John Wickian world! Fuuuuuuuuuuuck that. And aside from the bus, the action is poorly staged and executed because it is trying to be cool first. It’s such a waste of a great conceit (angry Bob Odenkirk murders people) that it pisses me off much more than actively bad movies.
I also feel like all the dramatic “Odenkirk is secretly cool!” stuff falls apart a little when I don’t get to see any well-developed scenes of anyone finding that out and reacting to it. So … what was all this for?
So many of our complaints with movies seem to come down to either “you’re trying too hard to say something” or “I have no idea what you’re trying to say here!”. We gotta get more of that Shield focus.
I need that last sentence printed onto a sign that I can point at whenever I need to.
“Don’t make me tap the sign.”
I’m an outlier on being increasingly disappointed in the John Wick films and their plunge into lore, but at least it is their lore and they’re getting weird with it. And what the first movie does is the whole Wick-as-boogeyman angle — he is attacked and unleashed out of stupidity but immediately recognized as extremely bad news (and Reeves plays this very well). Nobody wants the fantasy of a nerd being secretly cool and badass, essentially what Breaking Bad spent five seasons developing and ruthlessly deconstructing — like you say, this winds up raising a lot of questions it doesn’t answer. Perhaps because to honestly answer them you have to make A History Of Violence.
On Nobody: Nath and I had a conversation about cliche on his Discord, and I was think that there are situations where a cliche would stick out for a viewer and where not doing the cliche would stick out. It’s the difference between an angry chewing out from Da Chief and an angry chewing out from Claudette.
Yeah, the Super 8 video in Paris, Texas has a haunting effect. It’s not a flashback, so the film keeps moving forward. And we see everyone watching it (except, of course, Jane) and, in particular, Travis. His reaction, already understated, is further obscured by his looking down, with his hand on his face. Is it a shielding gesture? A moment where he is starting to become unblocked? Which, like throughout the film, are questions that don’t have answers, but hang in the air, as missing connections.
PARIS, TEXAS perfectly moment when the mundane flatness of the American West, and the cultural ephemera that quietly encroached upon it (most notably, car culture as a deliniator of nature and individualism), was being memorialized and then re-articulated into different narratives and expressions of American’s evasion of communicative intimacy. I think it really hit home for the few who saw it in 1984 because of the new level of awareness brought about by the attention paid outside of the Hollywood system to artists like Sam Shepard (who literary sketches inspired the film) Robert Frank, Ed Kienholz and Ed Ruche for whom the Western road narrative became a renewed source for rethinking male solitude and the fragility heteronormative interaction. Wenders’ ability to sustain the visual presence of the vastness of Western land and cityscapes while his characters struggle to speak within hives (cars, hotels, and peep shows) on a liminal periphery to that space is simply breathtaking.
“Yes! …Oh no, he died…!”
We were talking after the movie about which line from it we quote the most, and that was #1 with me and my wife.
Babylon 5 — every so often this show says “time for a comedy episode!” and it’s immediately obvious this is the case, lots of goofery here in a classic “there are HOW many episodes in a season?!” filler mode. Except there is also a slide into the genocidal politics that have been driving a good chunk of the show, through the lens of Vir, and this builds to a choice that is not shown but also not even made? As in there is a binary as we cut to commercial and then it is just ignored later on? Very fucked up and weird, I assume this will come back later but blipping over it for yet another fucking joke leaves a really bad taste and is a disservice to Vir and Stephen Furst.
The Dark Knight Rises — movies and the circumstances in which we watch them change over time, this was a theatrical experience that generated many a thumbsucker over its use of Occupy political imagery but watching it now on HBO, which these days is jamming it full of commercials for Charmin toilet paper that has a new ripping edge and Adobe software that relies on AI image generation, makes it clear that Bane was right the whole time. Decadent and depraved society, how dare Batman not let us be blown to hell. This is a very dopey movie, both purposefully and maybe not purposefully (the shot of the cops grimly trudging into the sewers is so fucking funny and I am not sure it is supposed to be) and certainly politically — institutions are corrupt beyond repair by the people running them, so get some different people, apparently? — but it is still an odd comfort food for me. If only for Bane’s voice, which I unleashed on the nephews to much merriment, god bless Tom Hardy for being such a weirdo.
I remember watching the movie last year, hearing the Bane voice for the first time, and thinking that people had if anything been underselling it all these years. His famous “You merely adopted the darkness!” speech has him speaking completely cheerfully! And best of all, my mad genius trans witch friend ended up explaining why it makes sense to me really well, with it being an accent he picked up from a ragged childhood spent in many different places.
I do believe the voice has since been boosted from that theatrical experience and Nolan’s infamous dialogue mixing, from what I remember a lot of people came away wondering what the fuck Bane was saying, not just why he was talking like that. So in subsequent versions it’s extra loud and cheerful I think? But yeah, he’s so droll and peppy a lot of the time, almost Hank Scorpio-ish.
“You ever see a guy say goodbye to a prison pit before?”
“Yes once. Apparently I boned her.”
Ads on HBO?
You better believe it! At least the basic version my mom has.
HBO or HBO Max?
Uhhhhhhhhh Max? I can’t keep track of their bullshit.
Then it’s the streamer. Got worried for a minute that they had ads on an actual HBO channel.
Back from the con, which is not one that has screenings of movies (outside of a film festival that I think was by local sci fi fans). So can’t say I watched much, but when in Seattle, watch at least one Frasier: “Three Valentines” – Three vignettes related to that overrated day, directed by Kelsey Grammer. The second vignette has Frasier never entirely sure if the new ad rep wants to have a business dinner or a date, even after they end up in bed together. Cute, and for one Frasier didn’t do anything stupid. The third vignette has dateless Daphne and Martin at dinner, and is forgettable. But oh, the first vignette! Niles, getting ready for a date and borrowing his brother’s apartment, finds a crease in his pants and naturally has to get out the ironing board. But things of course go awry. A total and utter tour de force of physical humor by David Hyde-Pierce that is Keatonesque start to finish.
Live music – My Morning Jacket at Red Rocks – Friday night, night 1 of their stay here. The one I really wanted to go to because they played Z all the way through. Anyway, kind of an ideal band to see at a venue like this. Is Red Rocks the best venue in America? I don’t have the experience to say, but it is pretty magical, even if getting there is a huge pain in the ass.
The Naked Gun – Second time. My buddies hadn’t seen it, and we had such a good time the first time that we joined them. Had to make sure we didn’t miss any jokes! It’s still loads of fun the second time around. And of course, you gotta stick around through the credits.
And some TV, but we’ll save that for Thursday.
What Did We Play?
Keep trying various Game Pass games and not really getting hooked into them at the moment, this week I had a go at Robocop – Rogue City which didn’t really grab me, I guess it captures the feeling of lumbering into gunfire fairly well but I can’t see it being as much of a fun movie-to-game experience as the others I’ve played recently. Spent a bit more time with Ori and the Blind Forest, I’m always up for some Metroidvania action but the combat feels a bit repetitive and tedious compared to some of the other genre standouts, I guess I can’t be too harsh on this for not feeling as well balanced as (e.g.) Hollow Knight when it pre-dates it by two years but it does pale in comparison a little. Might spend a bit more time with it though, the general vibe is quite nice.
Burnout Paradise Remastered on Nintendo Switch
Not much time to play this week, but I did win some events. Also, I tried the first-person view for several minutes and it was much smoother than I expected, gave me a real adrenaline kick a few times there.
GOODFELLAS feels like the film where Scorsese fully transitioned from being a 70s auteur, bringing an independent sensibility to a wobbly studio system, to a 90s “prestige” artist able to reconcile the more marketing driven Hollywood culture to his personal style and more expansive thematic interests. Much of this comes from the films ability to accelerate the director’s photographic and editing flair into a consistantly executed style that propels the sociological details of the gangster subculture into a reflection on materialism, class, and Cold War consumer culture. His films, from WHOSE THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? through THE KING OF COMEDY felt like chain reactions emenating from his fascination with European art house cinema (particularly Italian cinema from the mid 1940s through the mid 1960s) and the revolution in performance technique displayed in American theater and film in Elia Kazan’s and John Cassavettes’ films. Those films feel sporadically energized by the fusion of those elements while in GOODFELLAS all of that previous skill aquired in filmmaking is streamlined and hyperbolic, fueling every scene in a proletarian crime epic. Scorsese’s films from GOODFELLAS on seems more on the level of directors like Oliver Stone and Spike Lee (just to cite American examples) who were influenced by the director’s early work.