Scorsese a better director, but Spielberg tastes like marzipan.

Scorsese easily. He's done 2 of my top 10 favorite films in Casino & King of Comedy.

Scorsese -- he has proven to be the more consistent director over the past 4 decades then Spielberg (imo).

Since the question is asking which I prefer, when choosing a movie, I'd probably throw in one of Steven's movies first.

I can see the logic in that.

This, plus Spielberg crafted perhaps my favorite film, Jaws, so gets my vote despite many clunkers in his library.

I love both, but Spielberg is my choice. His resume pretty much has a winner in every genre. I'll take the wider range of work.

Right there's my answer.

Spielberg has never made a work as penetrating as Scorsese's best work (MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, GOODFELLAS), nor as cinematically compelling, either. When Spielberg tackles grand themes, he has a way of cheapening them. MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, and GOODFELLAS are the works of a man who knows these streets and these characters and is able to peer into their psyches and make their erratic, criminal behavior of compelling interest to the audience, while also employing an original cinematic style. I don't see that basic grasp of human nature in any of Spielberg's "important" films, not even SCHINDLER'S LIST or MUNICH. He's very talented and skilled and knows how to marshal resources, but he's just a lonely, ambitious suburban kid/movie buff who has virtually nothing to say or report. He doesn't see anything but his own obsession with movies. Scorsese may have been a sickly, lonely kid also drawn to the movies, but he also had a great observational eye trained on the people and life around him. It's the difference between an entertainer and an artist.

Scorsese knows how to modulate. Spielberg doesn't. Everything Spielberg does is overstuffed. He doesn't know how to tone down his style to fit the subject, to make things leaner when required. This especially troubled me in HOOK, AI, and MINORITY REPORT.

Of course, nothing I say about Scorsese applies to the last 12 years. His hard-on for DiCaprio has ruined a once-great director.

Tough one. Spielberg has made some really great and memorable films, but lately I've been liking Scorsese's work more.

I'm a huge Scorsese fan, and with the exception of Catch Me if You Can, he's made much better films then Spielberg in the last 8 years, but overall Spielberg has had a much bigger impact on cinema. I'm going with Spielberg, but it's extremely close.

While I may be more relaxed to enjoy Spielberg films more...Scorsese's are enjoyable and great for the most part. I might see Raiders more than any Scorsese film but...I prefer to watch Scorsese films more. I love SS but Marty's the winner for me.

The wider range of work? Wider than the guy who did Mean Streets, Goodfellas, New York New York, Kundun, Cape Fear, The Last Waltz, After Hours? Right there you have realism, crime, musical, historical drama, thriller, documentary, comedy.

easily Scorsese

PS: How come nobody mentions "Saving Private Ryan" I thought that was one of Spielberg's better movies if not the best

Run a search for that movie and you'll find at least one entire thread where the consensus was that Saving Private Ryan has a great opening and an alright ending, but is boring/weak/uninteresting/lacking everywhere in between. I still haven't seen the movie (despite planning to watch it for the Academy Awards challenge and the Historical challenge this year alone) so I can't comment on it. In any event, it's not the beloved, revered movie around here you'd think it would be.

IMHO, SPR wasn't even the best WWII movie to come out that year...

Scorsese.

Absolutely, for me, SS has the wider range. He's given us 2 great war related films, several mega blockbusters, with Jaws and Jurassic Park having a huge impact on the genre. Jaws started the "Summer blockbuster". Indiana Jones another huge influence on the action/adventure genre. Munich was a terrific political thriller. A.I. and Minority Report very good sci-fi films. Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal are both entertaining, light-hearted fare. And for me, War of the Worlds was also very entertaining.

Not to mention the little tv movie Duel offered some solid suspense. And it's been hinted at heavily that he played a large role in the final product of Poltergeist. He's had a wider range of work and a bigger impact on the industry.

Oh no I do love that movie

Munich is better than anything Scorsese did in the 2000s. On the flip side, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is worse than ANYTHING Scorsese has ever dreamed of fucking up.

Scorsese wins this one. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Goodfellas are absolute masterpieces. Spielberg has his masterpieces as well (the aforementioned Munich, Schindler's List, Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark are perfect movies period) and a bunch of good to really good ones, but he has a streak of mediocre-to-total-POS movies that bring him down (1941, Hook, Always, and The Lost World all immediately spring to mind).

Spielberg's movies are considerably more entertaining to me than Scorsese's films. -kd5-

Goes to Scorsese, I can watch his movies anytime and was a big fan of Casino. Munich is such a great movie and it's a break from the too cute by half formulaic stuff that creeps into his films when there's no such damn need, War of the Worlds for example.

The definition of "entertaining" is quite subjective. -hboy-

I mean that Raiders out of the two directors films...is the film I'd watch over and over..but if you take as a filmography as a whole. I'd go w/ Scorsese.

Spielberg for his pure entertainment over Scorsese's character studies. Scorsese i only like taxi Driver and Casino because it's so hilariously over the top, and for Spielberg don't care for his post-80s stuff, but solely for Duel/Jaws/Raiders he's the winner!