With the highly anticipated release of Killers of the Flower Moon, Guardian writers look back at their top Scorsese films
Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.I’ll let others argue over Scorsese’s gender politics. His lack of female characters has long been a point of contention for feminist film-lovers, and when he does include them, it’s often as wives or adornment. Not so in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, his sparkling rom-com starring Ellen Burstyn as a middle-aged woman remaking herself in a man’s world.
Think you “need to get out more”? After Hours is here to disabuse you of that notion. Martin Scorsese’s wonderfully frantic and apocalyptic 1985 feature, about a professional word processor , spans an entire night in pre-Sweetgreen-ed, menace-tinged Soho. Our protagonist is DTW, until it becomes apparent the world is a terrible place and he should just go home and tuck under the covers.
There is a clip of Fran Lebowitz talking about the demise of cultural connoisseurship that I can’t help but watch every time it crosses my timeline. Midway through Scorsese’s 2010 documentary Public Speaking, the critic, cynic and sometime Law & Order judge devastatingly argues that Aids led to a loss of a discerning audience for the arts. “Everything has to be broader,” she concludes.