comment #1

Noah Cross says ...

I do appreciate "The Untouchables", cheifly for Connery's hammy, hilarious performance. But that's the last movie he made I really loved.

comment #2

berg says ...

FEMME FATALE ... one of the best films of the new millennium ... believe it

comment #3

MrTribeca says ...

Agree with Scarface, Untouchables and Femme Fatale being post-Carrie standouts...I'd also throw in Carlito's Way.

In past years, I'd have added Dressed To Kill to the list but that is one film that's dated horribly.

comment #4

BurmaShave says ...

CARLITO'S is something of a messy masterpiece. The more I watch it the more I prefer it to SCARFACE, which is also great. Pacino is electric, the set pieces are top notch, and Penn is unreal. The street is watching.

comment #5

Gordon27 says ...

'Blow Out' is the one that convinced me that he's a mad genius; the ending sacrifices so much for the big twist, and it kind of works. Also, the black-and-white 8mm play that they put on in 'Hi, Mom'.

I don't think 'The Untouchables' has aged well, other than Connery's performance. As movies like that have gotten longer and more nuanced, TU has kind of revealed itself to be a series of setpieces without any real character stuff. On the other hand, some of those setpieces are pretty amazing.

comment #6

LexG says ...

SCARFACE is of course the Lexian bible, but how about some love for BODY DOUBLE? Every bit as stylish and awesome as BLOW OUT and DRESSED TO KILL, but not as gloomy, dreary and hopeless... Great "dumb ass" performance by professional Bill Maher clone Craig Wasson, and the first great smarmball villian from Gregg Henry... The following sequence in the mall is superior to the museum setpiece in DTK.

And FEMME FATALE is AWESOME.

But Black Dahlia and Redacted have been so terrible as to nearly negate 20-30 years of brilliant filmmaking.

comment #7

lazarus says ...

Like the one he ripped off from Potempkin?

Always found The Untouchables overrated.

I can definitely get behind the Femme Fatale love, though.

comment #8

lazarus says ...

Sorry, that first line was in response to the last sentence in Gordon27's post.

Thanks for posting RIGHT before me, Lex.

comment #9

scooterzz says ...

actually, there isn't one depalma movie that hasn't given me, at least, a moment of pleasure....yeah, he's nuts but he always comes up with 'something'...even in his crappy movies.....

comment #10

arturobandini2 says ...

Mr. Tribeca, what's dated about Dressed to Kill besides the stereotypical LGBT killer? I admit I haven't watched it in a while, but the 20-minute wordless sequence lasting from the museum through the elevator murder is filmmaking at its finest, IIRC.

comment #11

Gordon27 says ...

De Palma repeatedly proves to be at his best when working without dialogue.

my main problem with 'Dressed to Kill' is that the twist is telegraphed; I think that even if I hadn't seen 'Psycho', and didn't know De Palma frequently rips off Hitchcock, I'd still recognize Michael Caine in drag the first time they showed him.

comment #12

markj says ...

Carlito's Way is a fabulous film. And The Untouchables, Raising Cain ("It was mommy!!!!") and Femme Fatale are all pretty interesting pieces of work. I have a soft spot for Casualties of War too.

comment #13

arturobandini2 says ...

Gordon27, you may not have recognized Caine after all, b/c it wasn't him in drag -- most of the time, it was the actress who played the undercover cop. (A cheat, yes, but not as audacious as when Friedkin had the victims take turns playing the killer in Cruising.) Also ... the first time you see 'Bobbi' in Dressed to Kill is not at the elevator, but outside the museum. The camera whips past her in close-up, and she's staring right into the lens.

comment #14

LexG says ...

CASUALTIES OF WAR IS GOD.

"Yeah, YOU got a weapon. We ALLLL got weapons. ANYBODY can blow ANYBODY away, Which is the way it oughta be... AWWWAYZH."

Weirdest Penn performance ever, histrionic Morricone score, but Fox is BRILLIANT in that, and God I wish John C Reilly still did SERIOUS ACTING instead of just stupid Ferrell comedies.

I'm really surprised Wells, of all people, isn't a huge BLOW OUT fan-- it's a smart, brilliantly directed '70s style conspiracy flick and maybe one of the official last "'70s movies" before the Reaganizing of cinema in the '80s.

My faves:
Scarface, Body Double, Blow Out, Carrie, Casualites of War, Obsession, Femme Fatale, Dressed to Kill, Untouchables... too many other good ones to mention, so it's a shame the handful of duds are SO DEADLY (Wise Guys, Get to Know Your Rabbit, Home Movies, Mission to Mars, Snake Eyes, Redacted, Dahlia) they make you doubt his better instincts.

And I've always kinda hated THE FURY. Generic, overlong, grey, wan and murky, doesn't even have his tongue in cheek humor and crazy stylistics... it plays like a 1978 TVM on the CBS LATE MOVIE replacing a McGarrett rerun.

comment #15

lawnorder says ...

How about some love for CASUALTIES OF WAR? I still think it's one of his best. His most underrated is probably CARLITO'S WAY. But I hate the framing device which gives away the ending. De Palma gains nothing by foreshadowing Pacino's fate (even though it's a classic film noir technique). The Grand Central chase is probably the best De Palma action-tension choreography of his career - way superior to the train station scene from UNTOUCHABLES (which is still pretty damn fantastic). I think CARLITO is the last truly excellent film that De Palma directed. I agree with Lex that BLACK DAHLIA (despite an amazing Mark Isham score) and REDACTED are so bad they have the potential to sink an entire career. De Palma is one director that really needs to redeem himself with a great film before he retires or accepts retirement (as he appears to be in movie jail right now). It's sad that you're only as good as your last film in this business, given that De Palma has directed some incredible films in his career, but it has been at least 17 years since he even made a good film. I'm not a fan of FEMME FATALE or any of his work post CARLITO, although there have been some audacious scenes in most of those films. I love BODY DOUBLE for it's stylized cheesiness - definitely a film of the 80s, where sex and violence was promoted as being a plus in the movie going experience. DRESSED TO KILL will always be a winner to me. BLOW OUT - the best of his 80s work, and the last great thriller he made. He needs to make a serious return to the crime genre - but this time with a solid script and a great cast. Nothing could have saved DAHLIA from it's terrible screenplay - but he did himself no favors by stunt casting Scarlett Johansson, Josh Hartnet and Hilary Swank (so not sexy in the film's sexiest role).

comment #16

lawnorder says ...

That's funny, Lex. We both wrote more or less the same thing at the same time - except I don't share your love for FEMME FATALE.

comment #17

LexG says ...

SHE LOOKS LIKE THAT DEAD GIRL!!!!

Um, no, Scar, she really doesn't.

comment #18

Gordon27 says ...

arturo - I have heard that, and either they're lying, or they made her look like him, because the first time I saw that movie, had 'Austin Powers' existed yet, I surely would've said "She's a man, baby!" It just looked really obvious.

comment #19

lawnorder says ...

One of the problems with DAHLIA is that De Palma dialed back the classic De Palma sleaze - which the film needed more than anything. He should have made the NC-17 version and slipped it past the MPAA as an R. That film should have been so sex soaked that nobody noticed and gave a shit about the ridiculous storyline, which seems to only work in the book. Changing the third act of the novel was death to DAHLIA - and Scarjo was so miscast that it'll go down in history as one of the most egregious casting fuck ups of all time. Shit, he had Vilmos, Ferretiti and Isham, as well as a decent budget (which he would never get today), but he fucked up on casting - or let himself get talked into casting flavors of the month. Even Aaron Eckhardt was wrong for it. Probably my biggest movie going disappointment of the decade.

comment #20

LexG says ...

Dude, Eckhart in Dahlia is one of the WORST PERFORMANCES OF ALLLLL TIME. And, yeah, didn't help to cast a bunch of PG-13 prima donnas who wouldn't bring the hardcore.

comment #21

Discman says ...

Well, I *liked*, even loved, "The Black Dahlia," but it's just me and Matt Zoller Seitz on that one.

Does any other filmmmaker provide the same KIND of thrills that De Palma does? No. No one does.

De Palma is our greatest living filmmaker. That he gets dismissed repeatedly is shocking. There is no one else like him, no one approaches his use of the visual field. Yes, he repeats the same tricks across several films, but heck, he's just about the only person doing those tricks, so why quibble?

comment #22

moveable hype says ...

Caught 'Carrie' on cable recently and couldn't believe the amount of nudity in the credit sequence. The slow motion pan through the girls locker room. They couldn't get away with that now.

comment #23

York "Budd" Durden says ...

Blow Out remains one of my favorite movies.

comment #24

Josh Massey says ...

Well, since it hasn't been mentioned once, I'll do it. Mission: Impossible is underrated and, like The Untouchables, has some excellent individual scenes and performances.

comment #25

LexG says ...

Massey, yep, sorry, forgot MI:1; Strong movie and way more of DePalma's Body Double/Sisters style in there than it gets credit for; Far from a for fire job, Brian's style is ALL OVER that film. Very underrated. VERY.

comment #26

Rich S. says ...

The original SNL did a parody commercial of a DePalma film called "Clams." Most of it was pretty silly, with stop-motion clams filling in for birds. But it had a line I've never forgotten. It went something like, "Watch, as the director surfaces once every couple of years to rip off Hitchcock and give his wife [Nancy Allen] a job."

Nasty in ways later SNL's have never even attempted.

comment #27

markj says ...

The break-in scene in Mission: Impossible is genius. Forgot about the opening 5 minutes of Snake Eyes too, made me laugh out loud in the cinema at its audaciousness.

comment #28

Floyd Thursby says ...

I much prefer the Brian D. who made Greetings and Hi, Mom. Not mentioned above is Home Movies, also in the low-budget-comedy vein of his earlier efforts. It's a modest movie with occasional good moments, most supplied by a wonderfully hammy Kirk Douglas.

My favorite moment in any of his films is the news footage of LBJ in Greetings: "I'm not saying you never had it so good, but that is the truth, isn't it?"

comment #29

LexG says ...

CAGE IS GOD in the opening 10-20 minutes of Snake Eyes.

The fact that it takes place at a BOXING MATCH is so cheesy and low-rent, then the way BDP just SINKS IT into that typical goofy fake disguise shit and clunky devices... 1/3 of that movie genius, the other 2/3 is so terrible, but CAGE POWER.

WHAT is with DePalma's obsession with BIG SUNGLASSES and STUPID FEDORAS and those AWFUL, MELANCHOLY SCORES? His scores are always SO DEPRESSING. I'll give it that they make an impression, but even his best movies have that cold, DREARY vibe, and I think it's that HORRIBLE MUSIC he always uses.

But give SNAKE EYES the fact that it has RICH COLORS. God the colors in that movie pop like BREAKFAST CLUB-era Hughes or EIGER SANCTION-era Clint... All BOLD, clear, crisp PRIMARY COLORS, compared to the septicvision and gauzevision that most post 90s films are shot thru.

comment #30

paulavery says ...

I just have to add here that I loved Blow Out too. One of my favorite movies. I think it has to be one of the Travolta's best performances.

comment #31

lawnorder says ...

LexG - do not fucking be dissing on De Palma's music scores - especially those by maestro Donaggio. Every Donaggio score done for a De Palma movie (including RAISING CAIN) is amazing, and cinematic and sadly missed in his movies today. Highest marks to BLOW OUT and DRESSED TO KILL. Then, let's talk about the two great Ennio scores: UNTOUCHABLES and CASUALTIES - both exquisite in their own right. Patrick Doyle kills in CARLITO'S WAY, especially the Grand Central chase scene. And who can deny Herrmann's fantastic OBSESSION and SISTERS. I'm so-so with Sakamoto's FEMME FATALE and Elfman's MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - but Isham delivers a career best with BLACK DAHLIA. A De Palma film is a gift to film composers lucky enough to get the gig and unlike many of today's directors, De Palma actually shows the composer some respect - no cutting and pasting in his flicks. Fuck, I forgot how good Donaggio's score to CARRIE was. I'm not sure there's another film director who's consistently gotten the most out of his composer relationships.

comment #32

HarveyLime says ...

While I will readily admit that Raising Cain is completely ridiculous, it's also fun as hell, occasionally hilarious (intentionally or otherwise), and has a climax that actually works surprisingly well. It also has one of the great wacko Lithgow performances (in drag nonetheless).

Dressed to Kill hasn't dated nearly as horribly as Carrie or Scarface. I always found it to be an entertaining Hitchcock rip, and the museum sequence ranks among the best work he's ever done.

comment #33

btwnproductions says ...

Every film becomes dated, in one way or another. It's a moot criticism.

comment #34

HarveyLime says ...

Okay, dated probably isn't the term I'm looking for. In the cases of Scarface and Carrie- tacky, overblown, and silly.

comment #35

twicks says ...

I remember reading a George Lucas interview where he said the ending of Carrie was brilliant, because the crowd waiting in line for the next screening would hear a huge scream from the audience already in the theater, then watch them stream out in shocked delight.

Not to sound like a Comcast shill, but they always, ALWAYS have DePalma stuff available for free viewing. I discovered Dressed To Kill, Body Double, and Blow Out this way.

comment #36

drbob says ...

I hate, hate, hate Brian DePalma and every movie he has ever made. The popularity of Scarface completely astounds me. Pure rubbish.

I can only barely tolerate The Untouchables, mainly for Mamet's script and Morricone's score.

I have spoken.

comment #37

Sean says ...

I think CARLITO'S WAY is a pretty big step up from SCARFACE, frankly.

I'm in the "pro" camp for FEMME FATALE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and half of SNAKE EYES; and I also agree that THE UNTOUCHABLES hasn't aged well -- lots of signifiers, not a lot of significance. (Is "Here endeth the lesson" a bon mot or a line masquerading as a bon mot?)

While I think MISSION TO MARS and THE BLACK DAHLIA are underrated, neither is great -- I think MISSION TO MARS is as good as that was going to get, which is good but not good enough, and I agree that a sleazier (and better cast) BLACK DAHLIA is a real coulda shoulda fantasy. (I'm OK with the script.)

THE FURY is a tough one for me. I don't like it very much, but I think like a lot of my peers I was first introduced to it via Pauline Kael's unmitigated rave. I've gone on to love Kael and De Palma, but I've had a hard time respecting THE FURY as the cornerstone of that.

comment #38

Sean says ...

Oh, and I'd rewatch BLOW OUT over BLOW-UP seven days a week.

De Palma is a mad genius. It's just that when a person is truly that, it can't always be harnessed the way we might want.

comment #39

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

So 38 posts and still no love for Bonfire of the Vanities? I keed.

Interesting to see people's reactions to De Palma's films, they're usually pretty much all over the map.

After showing up on a ton of worst of 2000 lists here stateside, Mission to Mars was named the best film of the year by the Cahiers du Cinema. It's not often you get that kind of crossover on such disparate lists (although we could certainly have a contender this year in Antichrist).

Blow Out's my fave De Palma, Dressed to Kill's a lotta fun, and M:I is much better (and smarter) than an American summer tentpole has any right being. Phantom of the Paradise always seems criminally underrated to my mind (has barely been mentioned here once!), very stylish. Hard to believe it was released before both Rocky Horror AND Young Frankenstein. Pretty influential, in retrospect.

The rest are sort of all over the map, esp. Snake Eyes which is inexpicably about 1/2 of a great movie and 1/2 of the dumbest shit ever made. And boy, does that fucker turn on a dime.

comment #40

Sean says ...

So I'm addicted to Flickchart. Here's what they have on De Palma. The RANK is among all movies in their database; of course the lesser-seen stuff will be lesser-voted-upon.

RANK | TITLE
137 The Untouchables
151 Scarface
181 Mission: Impossible
507 Carrie
808 Carlito's Way
965 Mission to Mars
1056 Snake Eyes
1312 The Black Dahlia
1955 Casualties of War
2071 Femme Fatale
2126 Blow Out
2377 Dressed to Kill
2387 Body Double
2607 The Bonfire of the Vanities
2676 Raising Cain
2950 Sisters
3117 Phantom of the Paradise
3646 The Fury
3990 Wise Guys
4591 Obsession

comment #41

lipranzer says ...

Anyone remember King's interview in American Film back when he was promoting MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE? He mentioned seeing a preview of CARRIE with a mostly African-American audience, and wondering how they'd related to a white girl with menstrual problems, and while it started out that way, the audience soon got caught up in it, and screamed at the end, which is when King knew the movie would be a hit.

DePalma - I'm neither in the cult or among the haters. Love CARRIE, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, and BLOW OUT; like SISTERS (except for Jennifer Salt's one-note performance), BODY DOUBLE (even though I guess you could argue it's DePalma parodying himself), CARLITO'S WAY (ditto), the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie, and despite their faults, BLACK DAHLIA and REDACTED. Never understood the appeal of SCARFACE or THE UNTOUCHABLES, feel very divided about CASUALTIES OF WAR (the rape and murder scenes were brutal without being exploitative, and Penn is brilliant, but I found Fox one-note and the dialogue overwritten, and I HATED the framing device), thought SNAKE EYES and FEMME FATALE went awry after promising starts, and loathed WISEGUYS, BONFIRE, and MISSION TO MARS.

comment #42

mtgilchrist says ...

discman, de palma made some great movies a few decades ago, but calling him our contemporary greatest living filmmaker is just batshit. redacted is unwatchable - there's not one redeeming thing in that film.

btwn - it isn't true that every movie is or becomes dated. recognizing that a movie was made in a different era isn't the same thing - if a film has ideas, themes, performances, aesthetic elements that audiences can relate to generations later, then that means it's not dated, even if they're wearing bellbottoms or whatever.

comment #43

Gordon27 says ...

Kaned - I would've mentioned 'Phantom', but I wanted to be the first to bring up 'Blow Out'... 'Phantom' is a strange movie, but it's pretty amazing.

But, re: Mission to Mars, boy did I think that movie was terrible. The entire preview audience I saw it with was openly laughing at the movie. But it was pretty funny, I'll give it that.

This thread is awesome. We don't get enough of this sort of conversation on HE; there's a real pure love of film shining through here.

comment #44

Sean says ...

Is people's problem with MISSION TO MARS just that it's corny? I didn't think it was poorly shot, framed, cast, acted, edited, etc.; in fact, it's pretty good at all of those things. Suppose it's the year 2000 and you want Disney to finance an in-theme-only take on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY; you're not going to get "the ultimate trip" version, you're going to get the blockbusterized version. But even notwithstanding that, I didn't think the screenplay was particularly insipid. It's a creation myth story where handsome actors do and discover that the face on Mars is actually an IMAX theatre -- sounds like De Palma to me.

comment #45

Gordon27 says ...

It's been a while, but I remember Gary Sinise playing his minimalist style in the wake of insane, incredible revelations about the history of humanity, Don Cheadle being "unkempt" and movie-crazy for about a scene and a half after four years abandoned in space and then reverting completely back, and Tim Robbins... well, his final scene made everybody laugh pretty hard. It's pretty silly.

As for the script, as far as I remember, it's just a series of arbitrary scenes that have already been done in better movies. It's a perfect example of what (I think it was McKee, but maybe Field) says about first drafts, that the first time you write a script, you're mostly appropriating scenes you've already seen, that you have to get rid of those things in subsequent drafts or make them unique.

Also, I remember the last fifteen minutes being a shitty CGI puppet show about "Here is exactly how humanity was created". It's not dramatic, it's not emotional, it's certainly not scientific, so what is it? (A: It's hilarious!)

comment #46

Gordon27 says ...

"Suppose it's the year 2000 and you want Disney to finance an in-theme-only take on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY"

Wait, hold on... are you saying that De Palma pitched this movie around? This was some kind of passion project? I always gave him the benefit of the doubt and figured it was a for-hire gig that he took on, possibly to do a CGI movie, or figuring he could riff off of '2001'.

comment #47

Alexander says ...

Gordon27, I agree with you. There have been few threads like this at HE in the last year or so. Between Oscar and Obama, it's changed quite a bit around here.

Anyway, De Palma to me is like an exotic dish. It's rich, delicious, sumptuous and fascinating. But you can easily OD on it. I've found that he's one of those filmmakers you should probably not go through in some marathon tear, because you'll get completely worn out. (I did this back in a two-week span or so in September and by the time I got to Mission to Mars even I had grown weary of beautiful melancholy scores, camera whips, endless point-of-view shots and tracking shots, Hitchcockian motifs and plot twists, widescreen deep focus... etceteras.)

I understand that many hardcore DePalma aficianados tend to favor the personal projects like Femme Fatale and Black Dahlia over Scarface and The Untouchables. I personally don't care for any of those--well, I admire Femme Fatale more than I actually like it, but it remains livelier for me than the others--but I suppose I like to sample each branch. For instance, I remain quite a fan of Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise and Body Double--all rather underrated, even if Body Double's self-referential, nudge-nudge flourishes become less inspired the more you see the film, but I still cherish the picture--but also Carrie, certain sequences of The Untouchables, Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible. Mission: Impossible is a film that is, I predict, going to continue to "age," if that's the word, very gracefully. It's beautiful, it's smart but highly entertaining, it has an integument of paranoid, European mystique and has numerous crackling scenes, such as the brilliant, sensationally-edited confrontation between Cruise and his superior about half an hour into it.

In any event, he's a polarizing, amazingly fascinating figure in American cinema, too readily dismissed and perhaps too easily revered, and I enjoy so much of his work even if the past decade has been less than what came before.

comment #48

DeafEars says ...

Great thread. Although he's certainly stumbled - I couldn't even finish REDACTED - he's got a damn impressive body of work. And he's really embedded himself in popular culture in a lasting way - I think if I had to pick a movie that encapsulates the 80s, I'd pick SCARFACE in a second, it fucking predicted the whole gestalt of the decade - unbridled greed and aggression and braggadocio. And it's influenced so many different parts of the culture - for better or worse, I don't think we'd have NWA and all their imitators without SCARFACE. It's a US narcocorrido. But the last movie he did that I thought really worked completely was MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

comment #49

kamichojin says ...

39 posts for someone besides Wells to give some love to Phantom of the Paradise (thanx Kaned)?!? Such a brilliantly fucked movie. Plays like a cocaine induced Faust hallucination in a puke-filled Studio 54 toilet. Grat stuff.

comment #50

kamichojin says ...

"Great"
no edit option having bastich!

comment #51

orler says ...

I gotta give The Fury some love - a great opening sequence shootout with style and sleazy gratuitus lingering butt shots of Amy Irving..........
I'm only interested in DePalma when he's bringing on the style and the sleaze - when he tries to be important (Casualties of War, Mission to Mars, Redacted), he loses his unique stylishness. Also, he definitely should not be doing comedy at all. Last I heard he was working on some sort of prequel to The Untouchables, which I would normally be against, but maybe that will bring him back to what he is good at.........

comment #52

Rich S. says ...

Mission to Mars is notable primarily for the scene where Tim Robbins shows up to the pre-flight party in a vintage Corvette and spouts the immortal line, "Internal combustion, accept no substitutes."

At the time the movie came out, I worked with a woman so fundamentalist that she wouldn't take her kids to see Mission to Mars because the final sequence portrayed evolution as "the truth." Actually, I think she had the right idea, but for obviously the wrong reason. At least she saved $5.

comment #53

Rich S. says ...

Oh, and for those of you complaining that there aren't enough good movie-based discussions on this site any more, there's an item a couple of posts up about a video essay discussing revenge themes in Clint Eastwood movies. It currently has 4 comments. There's plenty of room for more.

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