Taxi Driver Week: Five best New York films of the new century

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is the definitive portrait of New York City at its lowest point.

Welcome to Taxi Driver Week at Last Cinema Standing, a week-long celebration of Martin Scorsese's bruising, beautiful modern classic in honor of the film's 40th anniversary and a special screening as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Two films defined the highs and lows of New York City in the 20th century. Woody Allen’s Manhattan is the black-and-white postcard image of the city. It is a gorgeous love letter filled with romantic overtures and nostalgic glimpses at a past long since gone but still informing our feelings about the world it depicts. Its upper-crust characters stroll through Central Park at night, visit soda fountains, and go to museums. The wealthy and their romantic foibles are the film’s chief concerns, but the city always buzzes with life and energy in the background.

Taxi Driver resides on the other side of the street – the dream that became a nightmare. It is the dirt and grime and hate and ugliness of a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Martin Scorsese films on the same streets Allen did, but Scorsese litters his sidewalks with trash, shows steam pouring out of every sewer grate, and envisions a city slowly circling the drain. It is an angry mess, overflowing with blood and bile. It is barely habitable. It is hell, as Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) says.

For better or worse, Manhattan and Taxi Driver are the definitive portraits of that era in New York’s history, but as with all such things, time marches on, and the city has moved beyond both depictions. The city is now high finance and culture war, gentrification and class divide, Disneyland and cemetery. As such, it seems only right to look to the new century for films to define what it is to live in New York City today. In 100 years, audiences could look back on any of these five films and understand what it once meant to be in New York.

25th Hour (directed by Spike Lee; 2002)

Barry Pepper and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in 25th Hour

The only one of these films to deal directly with 9/11 (though The Visitor could only be set in a post-9/11 world), 25th Hour bravely explores the stain left on an entire city’s soul. Like Scorsese and Allen, Lee is a quintessential New York filmmaker, and it is fitting he has made perhaps the best film about living in New York City in the aftermath of one of the greatest tragedies in American history.

Adapted by Game of Thrones creator David Benioff from his own novel, the screenplay digs deep below the surface of a city in mourning and unearths the kind of pain that flags and bumper stickers and slogans cannot mask. The story revolves around Monty (the excellent Edward Norton) on his last day of freedom before a long prison sentence. To view the city through the eyes of someone who will not see it again until he is an old man is to see it anew. The sights, sounds, and emotions blend together, and the city becomes one magnificent blur.

Even now, nearly 15 years since 9/11, the city still carries those wounds right there on the surface, and the sensory overload Monty experiences has only become more pronounced. The film argues there is no one you can really trust, but if you are going to make it in this life in this city, you have to rely on someone, otherwise you will be swallowed whole.

Chop Shop (directed by Ramin Bahrani; 2007)

Alejandro Polanco in Chop Shop

By the late Roger Ebert’s favorite young director, this was Ebert’s favorite film by Bahrani, and it is easy to see why. All of Bahrani’s films are stories of American lives and what it means to exist on the fringes of the American Dream. No city represents the American Dream more than New York, whose fringes are overflowing with the forgotten, the discarded, and the disillusioned.

Ale is an orphan living with his older sister above an auto-repair shop. They both scrape together any money they can any way they can, mostly through petty crimes. They scrimp and save, get knocked down and get back up, and their only goal is to buy a van they can turn into a food truck. Like everybody else who comes to this city, they just want to make their own way, but fortunes are fickle, and there is no prize for hard work but more work. The city is tough, and so must they be, no matter what stands in their way.

The Visitor (directed by Tom McCarthy; 2008)

Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass in The Visitor

Multicultural is a mostly meaningless word now. Where once homogeny was the rule, it is now the exception, and multicultural life is a given. That does not make it any easier for those unwilling to accept the new paradigm. However, for those willing to explore the worlds of others and embrace the melting pot, life becomes a rich tapestry of new experiences and joys. That is the truth at the heart of New York City and the core of Oscar-winning writer-director McCarthy’s superb film.

Walter (Richard Jenkins) is a lonely college professor who returns to his Manhattan apartment to find a pair of illegal immigrants squatting there, though they believed they were renting it legitimately. Of course, Walter has every right to call the authorities or throw them to the curb, but he does not. Instead, he invites them to stay, and in so doing, he drives the loneliness out of his own life and enriches his view of the world.

McCarthy’s script smartly focuses on the small indignities visited upon immigrants trying to eke out a meager existence and the post-9/11 suspicions used to divide people into categories of us and them. The Visitor points the way forward for all of us. We can either push people away based on race, religion, or whatever factor we choose and live out our miserable, lonely lives, or we can embrace change and accept the vibrancy of this world as a wonderful reality.

Shame (directed by Steve McQueen; 2011)

Michael Fassbender in Shame

For those unable or unwilling to reach out, loneliness, isolation, and alienation are facts of life. All the money, power, and beauty in the world cannot make you happy if unhappiness is at the core of your being. Featuring knockout performances by Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan and gorgeous direction by McQueen, Shame is a dark, despairing journey through the life of a man whose dissatisfaction and disaffection spring from wells running deep inside him. He spends every second of the day numbing the pain, but all that leaves him is numb.

Brandon (Fassbender) works in high finance, he lives in an impossibly opulent loft, and he is a sex addict. His sister, Sissy (Mulligan), has her own set of vaguely defined but deeply felt sexual issues. Together, they spiral into desperation and heartache. They are broken people, but as Sissy says to Brandon, that does not make them bad people. The city acts as an amplifier for their vices and allows them to indulge in all manner of self-destruction, but it also creates more noise, drowning out their cries for help.

It is a bleak but accurate depiction of life on this island. It is all too easy to push away those who love us and choose those who do not know us. If we refuse to let people get close, they cannot touch us, but that distance, that space between, leaves its own marks. The hardest part of living in New York City is letting yourself care, letting people in, and letting yourself be open to others. It is a lesson we all must learn at some point, whether or not we are willing to listen.

Frances Ha (directed by Noah Baumbach; 2013)

Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha

Every film on this list features a fairly low-concept premise. They are not overly clever or precious stories. They are not needlessly labyrinthine, nor do they seek to wow you with flash or grandeur. They are stories of real people from across the spectrum of human experience. Perhaps Baumbach and co-writer-star Greta Gerwig’s film speaks to me most because it most closely resembles my experience, if not in the details, then in the feeling.

During the events of the film, Frances (Gerwig) is the age I am now. She has the following conversation with her friend, Benji:

Frances: Do I look old to you?

Benji: No … Yes.

Frances: How old?

Benji: Older than I am.

Frances: Older than 27?

Benji: No. Twenty-seven is old though.

That brief exchange is possibly the best summation of how I feel every day. I do not feel very old – nor very accomplished – but my perception of where I am in life changes with every passing minute. Frances struggles for everything she gets, but at the beginning of the film, she sets her sights so low, the struggle is not worth it. New York City is a beautiful place for exploring who you are and who you want to be, but as Frances learns, it is not enough to figure out who you are. You have to want to be something more. That makes the struggle worth it. That makes New York City worth it.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directs Leonardo DiCaprio in Best Picture frontrunner The Revenant.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

A quick programming note: Yesterday, I said we would cover Best Foreign Language Film today. However, instead, we will look at Best Director. Best Foreign Language Film will follow Wednesday with Best Animated Feature on Thursday and finally Best Picture on Friday.

Best Director

The nominees are:

Lenny Abrahamson for Room

Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant

Thomas McCarthy for Spotlight

George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road

Adam McKay for The Big Short

Four of these directors have never been nominated for Best Director before. The last time that happened in this category was 2007. In that year, interestingly enough, there were six nominated directors, and five had never been nominated. Joel Coen was the only previous nominee, and he shared the award win with his brother, Ethan Coen, for No Country for Old Men. This year, Iñárritu is the only previous nominee, having won just last year for Birdman.

Another bit of trivia: It has been 65 years since a director has won this award in back-to-back years. In fact, it has happened only twice. Joseph L. Mankiewicz won in 1949 for A Letter to Three Wives and in 1950 for All About Eve, while John Ford won in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath and in 1941 for How Green Was My Valley. Iñárritu has a very real shot this year of becoming the third name on that list.

How about this? Though Best Picture and Best Director are strongly correlated – both awards have gone to the same film 63 of 87 times – no director has ever directed back-to-back Best Picture winners. Even when Ford and Mankiewicz won Best Director twice in a row, only in the second years did their films win Best Picture. Well, Iñárritu directed last year’s Best Picture winner and helmed one of this year’s frontrunners. The feat would be unprecedented.

Finally, since 1990, only four times has the winner of the Directors Guild Award not gone on to win the Oscar for Best Director. Iñárritu has already made history by becoming the first back-to-back winner of the Directors Guild Award. In that same span, the Directors Guild winner has directed the Best Picture winner all but five times. All of this means we could be set up for a historic night at the Academy Awards, but the other four nominees might have something to say about that.

Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant – If it were up to me, this would not even be a question. The Revenant is not only the most beautiful film this year, but it is among the most beautiful films ever made. In scope, ambition, and execution, there is no film that comes close in this lineup, and I say that with all due respect to the other nominees. The magic that Iñárritu captured is unparalleled.

Working from a fairly bare-bones script, Iñárritu turns the film into a meditation on god, nature, and man’s place in the universe. By allowing the narrative to drift freely through memory and dreams, then back to the harshness of life, Iñárritu crafts a wholly sensory experience that engulfs viewers in its mélange of sights, sounds, and emotions. This is to say nothing of the hardships the production faced in even filming such an epic tale of survival.

When taking this all into account, Iñárritu’s achievement is just stunning. So much so it boggles the mind. It is high art depicting a brutal reality on the largest canvas imaginable. There is nothing to which it compares, and if Iñárritu makes history, it will be a hard-earned, richly deserved distinction, coming on the back of the most majestic film of the year and a true masterpiece.

George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road – Perhaps I have dipped into hyperbole, making the case too strongly for my preferred winner. The truth is Miller’s work is awe-inspiring in a completely different way. Mad Max: Fury Road is a big, bold statement, a referendum on the action genre while being an almost perfect exemplar of the genre. For a film that feels so wild, so out of control, like it might fly off the rails at any time, Miller’s precision in the writing, choreographing, shooting, and editing is what makes everything click into place.

Miller is a living legend with a small but beloved body of work. Since 1979, he has directed just nine feature films, four of them in the Mad Max series. Somehow, the same man responsible for Max Rockatansky, Imperator Furiosa, and Immortan Joe is also largely responsible for giving us Babe the pig and Happy Feet.

He is a six-time nominee across four different categories and won his only Oscar for Best Animated Feature as the director of Happy Feet – when you watch Mad Max: Fury Road, try to wrap your mind around that. However, this is his first nomination for directing, and with Iñárritu already a winner, there could be a push to award Miller for his distinguished career and his remarkable achievement this year.

Adam McKay for The Big Short – Now, if it seems odd Miller would have directed multiple animated children’s hits and the decidedly not-for-children Mad Max films, try on this bit of cognitive dissonance: The director of Anchorman and Step Brothers is now a multiple Oscar nominee. Here is the thing about that, though, you do not get to where McKay has gotten in his career without being a bright, savvy, talented filmmaker.

McKay had already proven all those things throughout his career, but with The Big Short, he has proved he is engaged, engaging, and passionate about the state of the nation. That is a lot more than can be said for many other artists. McKay’s stamp is all over The Big Short with its smart editing, unfussy camera setups, and snot-nosed attitude. Not everything works all the time in this film, but McKay’s willingness to step outside the box and look at the financial crisis and world banking collapse from a skewed view is always an asset.

Thomas McCarthy for Spotlight – McCarthy has been rightly lauded for his and Josh Singer’s work in piecing together the screenplay for Spotlight; however, some have also taken the opportunity to deride McCarthy’s direction of the film as flat or uninspired. Such charges could not be further off base. These commenters seem to believe if a film is not flashy or does not call attention to itself, the direction must not be that special. This belief is so obviously wrong it is laughable, but here we are, having to defend one of the best films of the year as well directed.

Anyone watching closely will see the care and thought that has gone into every frame of Spotlight, from the strategic positioning of the camera when the reporters are going through the archives – wide enough to show us the enormity of the undertaking – to the scattering of churches throughout the background, a subtle reminder of the church’s influence over everyday life in Boston.

The film’s bravura closing passage, set to a children’s choir performing “Silent Night,” is among the most memorable and effective sequences of the year, thrilling, cathartic, and utterly haunting. If voters cannot see the artistry in McCarthy’s accomplishment, they probably should not have a vote. McCarthy may not win this award against his flashier competition, but his inclusion is without a doubt merited.

Lenny Abrahamson for Room – Most pundits, yours truly included, had predicted the other four nominees in this field, being as they directed the four frontrunners for Best Picture. The fifth slot we had chalked up for Ridley Scott for The Martian or maybe Todd Haynes for Carol or Steven Spielberg for Bridge of Spies. However, when Room showed up in four major categories – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay – it was clear the Academy had fallen hard for this brutal, beautiful little movie.

Abrahamson deftly blends an impressionistic art-house film with a pulpy thriller to deliver one of the truly unique viewing experiences of the year. With the story confined for the first hour to a single room, Abrahamson opens up the characters’ world with an array of carefully employed camera angles and selective edits. He shows us a tragic situation through the eyes of a child who does not yet know enough about life to understand the tragedy, and in doing so, Abrahamson turns a difficult viewing experience into one of the must-see films of the year.

The final analysis

Abrahamson’s is the only name on this list it would be an out-and-out shock to hear called out on Oscar night. Any of the other four could win, and each would tell us something different about where the night is headed. If either McKay or McCarthy wins, that would be the clincher for their respective films. The Academy showing its love in that way would be the ultimate indication one of those films will win Best Picture.

If Miller wins, we would have to question the love for The Revenant, and because Mad Max: Fury Road at this point is a highly unlikely winner, the door would be open for either Spotlight or The Big Short to claim the top prize. If Iñárritu wins – and all signs are pointing that way – anything could still happen. A split has not been uncommon in recent years between Best Picture and Best Director, but Iñárritu clutching his second directing Oscar in a row would invite the possibility that history is about to unfold.

Will win: Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant

Should win: Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant

Should have been here: Miroslav Slaboshpitsky for The Tribe

Tomorrow: Best Foreign Language Film

New movie review: Spotlight

The team comes together in writer-director Tom McCarthy's masterful Spotlight.

Spotlight is an American masterpiece. As a journalist, the true story of the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting team uncovering the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal fills me with pride. As a human, however, it fills me with shame and disgust. This is among the darkest chapters in our shared cultural history, and it is ongoing. Every day in every part of the world, new victims come forward, and we are confronted with the painful reality of a system and a society that has allowed this to continue.

The concerted effort to protect pedophile priests in the Catholic Church has been described as a conspiracy of silence, but few can agree on the members of the conspiracy. The church wants the public to believe this is the work of “a few bad apples,” a phrase repeated throughout the film. The evidence suggests the entire church is corrupt all the way to the top. Common sense, however, tells us systems take their power from people – in this case, the parishioners.

“If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one,” says Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), the lawyer for the victims. Like that, we are all implicated. Even the venerable Globe is not without blood on its hands as we learn the paper had the all the pieces needed to break the story years before the Spotlight team but refused to put them together. No one wants to acknowledge the abuse because to do so is to recognize a fundamental flaw in ourselves. Knowing everything, we still did nothing.

It is a common trick in movies like this to use one or two people to represent large numbers of victims – the old adage, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic,” comes to mind. Writer-director Tom McCarthy thankfully avoids this trap, and we watch the team interview survivor after survivor after survivor, establishing both the pattern and scope of the abuse. They are not just numbers. They are real people with families and friends and lives. They feel regret and shame and anger, and we in the audience feel anger for them as we come to know each and every one of them personally.

In an early sequence, expertly assembled by editor Tom McArdle, the film cuts back and forth between interviews with two victims. Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) speaks with a middle-aged gay man about his abuse at the hands of a priest who earned his trust little by little before exploiting it. At the same time, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) hears the story of a younger, married working-class man and the priest who abused him in the wake of his father’s death.

These two men could not be more different, but their stories are distressingly similar, to the point where one wonders if a priest’s copy of the catechism comes with a handbook for abuse. We meet more survivors, whose experiences differ in the details but the cumulative effect of which leads us to only one conclusion. The church’s abuse robbed these people of their innocence, their trust, and their faith in god, and the hypocrisy at the center of it all is a legal and moral wrong that went willfully unchecked for too long.

If this all sounds like a tragically bleak tale, it is, but under the masterful direction of McCarthy, working from a script he co-wrote with Josh Singer, it never feels like a slog. Quite the contrary. Spotlight is a riveting legal thriller and excellent journalistic drama on par with the classic All the President’s Men. The film plays off the audience’s own sense of right and wrong, and though we know the abuse will be brought to light, we sit glued to our seats, breathlessly anticipating the moment when the Globe fires the first shot to bring down this system.

Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, and Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight.

So few films understand the mechanics of journalism, and even fewer seem to try. Spotlight, for which McCarthy collaborated closely with the staff of the Globe, gets it. This film knows what it is like to pore over the stacks in search of one piece of information. This film knows what it is like to go door to door with a pad and pencil in your hands, seeking answers from people who do not want to talk to you. This film also knows an editor will get annoyed if you use “golf” as a verb. The Globe in this movie has the feel of a real newsroom, and it is refreshing to see that feeling accurately depicted on screen.

Moreover, the cast, which also worked closely with those being portrayed, feels like a news team. In these people, I recognize the personalities and professionals I have worked with throughout my career. Ruffalo nails the style of a hard-nosed reporter who puts the story above all else. Michael Keaton is perfect as Spotlight Editor Robby Robinson, who must at all times keep the bigger picture in focus. John Slattery is great as Globe Editor Ben Bradlee Jr., who knows how important it is to check every fact and cover every base. McAdams, Tucci, Liev Schrieber, and Brian D’Arcy James are all excellent, as well. This cast is perhaps the best evidence yet for the need of an ensemble award at the Oscars.

They are helped by a tremendous screenplay that seems to understand how each of these characters would speak. McCarthy and Singer shift seamlessly from the heightened, condescending manner of the clergy to the workingman vernacular of many of the victims, hitting every other level in between. Compare that to something like an Aaron Sorkin script, in which every character sounds as witty and didactic as Sorkin, and you understand how rare it is to see real people interact how they might in life.

The film’s facility with language and understanding of human connection should be no surprise, though, coming as it does from McCarthy, whose filmography is full of compassionate, lonely people trying to find their way in life. McCarthy is the same writer-director who brought us the excellent trio of independent films The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win. Even his most recent effort, the critically derided The Cobbler, displays the same care for building character and motivation McCarthy has always shown.

McCarthy is perhaps best recognized as an actor in films such as Meet the Parents, Syriana, and Good Night and Good Luck or television shows such as The Wire and Boston Public. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing Pixar’s magnificent Up. His directorial efforts, however, have rarely garnered much attention, despite being generally well liked. Spotlight could change all that. McCarthy has deserved larger recognition for his work behind the camera for years, and this should be movie that brings it to him.

While Spotlight is a quintessentially American film, its story is global as we are reminded at the end by a series of title cards listing the cities all over the world in which major sex abuse scandals have been uncovered. One is too many. That the final list names too many cities to count is disgraceful. Against this international backdrop, the Globe’s victory in highlighting abuse in Boston parishes may seem small, but its larger triumph is to force us to see what we would rather not. Knowing what we know now, we can never look away again, and it is incumbent upon us to pick up a torch, shine a light, and guide the way to providence.

See it? Yes.

Film festivals, Coen brothers, and Scorsese talks

The 15th anniversary screening of O Brother, Where Art Thou? at the New York Film Festival (photo credit: Sean DiSerio).

With the end of the New York Film Festival today, fall festival season is mostly at a close. The big ones – Telluride, Toronto, Venice, New York – have had their say and launched a great majority of the films that will compete for the top Oscars come January and February. For the most part, the movies that were meant to play like gangbusters did, and a little below, we will take a look at some of the reactions as the first phase of the run-up to the Academy Awards wraps up.

I have lived in New York nearly two years now, but this was the first year I was able to attend any of the New York Film Festival. As you might imagine, it was quite the experience, one I hope to expand on in the coming years. No, I did not get to attend any of the big premieres or see any of the new films. I will catch up with those in theaters like most of you will. Instead, my 2015 New York Film Festival experience was focused on the past.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

On Sept. 29, I was invited to the 15th anniversary screening of Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the brothers’ adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey transposed to Dust Bowl America. In attendance for the post-screening question-and-answer session, moderated by festival director Kent Jones, were the Coens, stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins.

Tim Blake Nelson, Geroge Clooney, and John Turturro in O Brother.

The Coens are as rye as their films suggest, and at any mention of their genius – which came up a lot from the audience – they demurred. As far as they are concerned, they are just two humble guys who like to make movies. In their introduction, Joel Coen said they rarely re-watch their films, and the last time they had was at a similar event for their debut feature, Blood Simple. He joked they came away with 15 or 20 minutes of edits to make and added the next time we see O Brother not to be surprised if it is about 15 minutes shorter.

For the most part, they seemed reluctant to discuss any deeper meaning or intent behind their film – a trait that can be seen in almost all their interviews, as well – but that did not stop the rest of those assembled on stage from gushing about their work. Nelson in particular was complimentary and also offered that the Coens and this film essentially launched his career.

Deakins, who was Oscar-nominated for the film and has worked with the Coen brothers 12 times, spoke about the digital intermediate process used to capture the faded-postcard look of the film. The technique involves digitizing a film to alter the color and other characteristics of the image in post-production. It was the first time the process had been used in a major motion picture in the U.S., and its success is further proof of Deakins’ brilliance behind the camera.

Ethan Coen, Kent Jones, and Nelson at the afterparty.

Clooney, whose third collaboration with the Coens you may have seen a new trailer for this week, is every bit the star you imagine him to be, and his reputation as a charming, impish troublemaker seems well deserved if you believe Clooney himself. He told tales of playing the Coens off each other, trying to trip up the famously simpatico siblings, and just generally being a puckish presence on set. He was similarly puckish on stage, much to the audience’s delight.

The evening concluded with an afterparty at the Landmarc restaurant in Columbus Circle and drinks with the Coens, Deakins, Nelson, and a number of festival luminaries. Clooney did not attend the afterparty, which is probably for the best. Stars like that have a tendency to suck all the air out of a room just by showing up. As it was, it was a loose affair full of good conversation, tasty food, and free-flowing wine.

I told Deakins what he must already know – that he is a master of what he does and his work on this year’s Sicario is breathtaking. I listened to Nelson, Jones, and Ethan Coen chat it up on one side of the room as Joel Coen held court on the other. At the end of it all, I stood on the sidewalk and joked with Ethan Coen about the rain, which had started sometime during the party. He chuckled, but the joke was clearly on me as he made his way to the car he arrived in, while I, dressed for the occasion but not the weather, walked to my train.

Heaven Can Wait

If you are a film nerd – and if you are here, you are either a film nerd or related to me somehow – there is no more rewarding experience than listening to Martin Scorsese speak. Hearing Scorsese talk about film and film history is like hearing Hank Aaron talk about baseball or Ernest Hemingway about writing. There is nothing you can say that will add to the conversation, so just shut up, sit back, and listen.

Martin Scorsese talks to Jones (photo credit: David Godlis).

For about 25 minutes Oct. 1 at Alice Tully Hall, I had the chance to do just that. Scorsese was at the Lincoln Center for a screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s classic Heaven Can Wait (no relation to the 1978 Warren Beatty movie of the same name), but mostly, he was in town to talk about The Film Foundation and its ongoing mission to rescue and preserve classic films for future generations.

Heaven Can Wait is a beautiful showcase for the foundation’s work. For a movie from 1943, the print we saw looked absolutely gorgeous, featuring a depth of color and brilliance of sound we would be lucky to get for a new film, let alone one produced more than seven decades ago. The set design truly pops, and Gene Tierney is as luminous as you are ever likely to see her. If you have the opportunity to see a roadshow screening at a theater or museum of one of The Film Foundation’s restored prints, I urge you to go. Whether or not you have seen the films, these restored prints are like seeing them anew.

Jones was back, ostensibly to moderate the conversation, but in the end, he was just like the rest of us in the audience, an engaged student humbly taking in lessons from the master. Jones opened the talk by asking Scorsese to describe how he got involved in the preservation and restoration of old films, and that was it. Scorsese was off.

It would be an injustice to the experience to pull out of context a few choice quotes or funny anecdotes. It was not that kind of evening. When you listen to Scorsese lecture, it is about feeling the cumulative effect of one man’s life in film washing over you. If you are lucky, you will grasp just some of it. This man, a giant of the film industry, has dedicated most of the second half of his life so far to giving back to that industry. He is an inspiration, through and through, and just given the chance to sit in awe of him, well, yeah, heaven can wait.

Festival season

The fall festival season is an embarrassment of riches for film fans. It is the time when movies we have all been anticipating get their first public screenings, and when movies we have never even heard of prove worthy of anticipation. Moreover, the festival circuit is now the prime breeding ground for Best Picture contenders at the Oscars and, more often than not, Best Picture winners.

Going back to the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, each of the last eight Best Picture winners has debuted at a festival, and just to prove everything is connected in some way or another, the last film to win without a festival premiere was Scorsese’s The Departed in 2006. Unsurprisingly, that was also the last Best Picture winner that was a significantly commercial proposition from the get-go, although The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, and Argo were all box-office hits.

However, over the last few years, an interesting shift has taken place with regard to the line between independent, festival hit and big-budget blockbuster – namely, it has disappeared. In fact, some of the best reviewed films of this festival season have been commercially minded movies from marquee directors such as Ridley Scott (The Martian), Steven Spielberg (Bridge of Spies), Robert Zemeckis (The Walk), and Danny Boyle (Steve Jobs). There is no saying exactly whether these films will have the legs to make it to Oscar season, but with those names, those reviews, and likely big numbers at the box office, they have a good shot.

Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa is scheduled for a December release.

As far as the movies I was less familiar with coming into the fall, a few have certainly cropped up that I will be putting at the top of my personal must-see list. Foremost among them, writer-director Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa, a stop-motion animated feature that won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival. I am a big fan of Kaufman’s writing (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and an even bigger fan of his lone feature directing credit, Synecdoche, N.Y., so consider me in the bag for his latest venture.

Another director I have always loved is Tom McCarthy, whose first three features are unimpeachable – The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win. He took an odd turn off course with last year’s simultaneously dour and oddly whimsical The Cobbler, but he appears to be back in form with Spotlight, which has gotten some of the best notices of any film at any festival this year. The film tracks the true story of the Boston Globe’s attempts to break open the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. It sounds like topical, important work from one of our finest, most underappreciated directors, and I cannot wait.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The festival season is over, which means it is movie-going season for the rest of us. It is nearly impossible in any year to keep up with all the great films being released, and this year looks better than most, so as my idol used to say, I’ll see you at the movies.