I flatter myself I know something about movies, but...

Rating: 4/10 (23 May 2002)

Okay, let me explain where I'm coming from. I'm a movie fan. I mean a really big movie buff. My favorite directors are Chaplin, Keaton, Kubrick, Fellini, Tarkovksy, Malick, Wilder, Kurosawa, Welles, Reed, Lean, Bergman, Gilliam, Coen, Vidor, Ford, Benigni, and Cocteau, to name a few. But I had never gotten around to even seeing a movie by Scorsese, although I'd heard great things about him. You can imagine how excited I was to see that Raging Bull was number 2 on the Sight and Sound director's poll, and ranked the best movie of the 80s. I was gung ho. I was hoping to add Scorsese to my list of favorites. But then, I actually saw Raging Bull. I cannot for the life of me understand the glowing praise about this movie. Is it a bad movie? No. It's just nothing special. Scorsese's technique is, if anything, showy. De Niro and Pesci are wonderful actors, there's no denying that. But the movie as a whole just isn't particularly good. I can find nothing about this movie that would bring it even close to the accolades it has been given. Believe me, I wanted to like this movie. I thought it would be great and then some; equal to the Searchers or 2001, from the praise it got; but it was uninteresting. It was like the type of movie arthouse theaters show that is competently made but lifeless and boring, like Shine. I'm sorry. Call me an idiot. I did not like this movie.