Just watched "Raging Bull" for the 3rd time in 10 years...
 

I bought the DvD last year because I remember renting it a while back on VHS and liking it. I remember watching the movie with my then girlfriend and all she kept saying was "This movie's in black and white? Why?" Grrr -ohbfrank-

Once I got rid of her I had the chance to watch it again with some friends but the talking and the beer got in the way :beer:

Now FINALLY I watched it alone tonight, with no distractions and I must say it's one of Scorsese's best movies (and De Niro's).

La Motta's paranoia, his masochist thirst to get pain inflicted on him, how he cried after throwing a fight...

And I still CANNOT believe Scorsese doesn't have an Oscar as best director yet :hscratch:

I still haven't seen this yet, it has always been a movie to watch on my list but i end up forgetting about it. Think i might pick it up as a blind buy whenever i see it again.

Isn't MGM gearing up for an SE of this?

The fight scenes in this are extraodinary.

TCM has been showing this uncut lately, for anybody who hasn't seen it yet.

DeNiro got what he deserved for this movie, an Oscar. Pesci was wonderful. A brilliant movie that I've owned and watched over and over again through the years on both tape and DVD. This is my favorite DeNiro movie and considering his body of work, thats saying alot.

I've held off buying the R2/PAL SE hoping it comes out in R1 .... GREAT movie!

Post by me from an old thread:

I was just thinking about this to myself the other day.

While Raging Bull is among Scorsese's best films it is not his very best film.

My feelings have always been that Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas are his top 3 films, but the question begged: In which order?

I came to Raging Bull late. I had already seen Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. After seeing Raging Bull for the first time in 1996 it emediately shot to the top of my list, but over the course of 5 or 6 subsequent viewings my enthusiasm for it has slacked off while Goodfellas and Taxi Driver continue to hold their top spots each time I watch them.

So while I don't feel Raging Bull is in any way "over rated" I don't feel it should be counted as his very best work or his one and only masterpiece.

The film's biggest plus is its makers' skill in creating the boxing sequences of the film. Not only are the techniques employed in them extraordinary, but so is the restraint showed by the filmmakers to not go overboard with the technique. The film's boxing sequences are the thing it is most remembered and celebrated for, yet they amount to less than 15 minutes of screen time. Seldom have a collection of such short moments had such an impact on the overall film. I applaud Scorsese for not only creating such virtuoso moments, but for using so little of them and having the restraint to leave the audience wanting more.

The film's weaknesses lie in its inherent inferiority on two levels, both of which are addressed much better in Taxi Driver and Goodfellas.

1. Taxi Driver accomplishes something very difficult. It tells the story of a man by using the camera's subjective gaze so that we understand his state of mind on an implicit and almost subconscious level.

2. Goodfellas tells the multi-decade spaning rise and fall of a character, Henry Hill. The film employs limited subjective gaze and instead principly uses the objective gaze of documentary (all be it a fictionalized one).

Both these films (Taxi Driver and Goodfellas) have a stylistic approach to their narative that they deliver on 100%.

While still an excellent film, Raging Bull delivers about 85%

One of the biggest things going agains Raging Bull is the existence of the other two movies (Taxi Driver and Goodfellas).

Raging Bull uses Goodfella's sprawling, era spanning, narrative and combines it with Taxi Driver's subjective point of view of one character. While it does this admirably well, it doesn't do it as well as the other two films do it on their own.

So while Raging Bull does an amazing job of trying to put us into the mind of Jake LaMotta through subjective camera it doesn't do it as well as Taxi Driver. And while Raging Bull tries to tell us the sprawling story of a man in a unique way, ten years later Goodfellas did it better.