Almost everyone has observed that David O. Russell‘s American Hustle is Martin Scorsese– or Goodfellas-influenced. The general reaction to The Wolf of Wall Street is that it’s Scorsese on rocket fuel — an epic blowout and a wildly satirical takedown of ludicrous 1% greed. Yesterday Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone suggested that “people seem to be dividing up between Wolf people and American Hustle people. To me one (i.e., Hustle) is good fun but a pretender — a screwball comedy that leaves you with nothing more than a smile on your face briefly but takes you nowhere ultimately. The other? A totally unforgettable experience.” For me The Wolf of Wall Street is the Best Picture of the Year — the only superbly made, dynamic-metaphor, earthquake-level movie out there. It’s insanely alive and knocks you flat on your ass and slams the ball into the upper bleachers. American Hustle is a tasty, well-seasoned, first-rate film by one of my favorite hombres, but it’s a ground-rule double or, at best, a triple because the outfielder fumbled and the runner went for the extra base.

Little White Lies‘ Calum Marsh has absorbed the madhouse saliva insanity of Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street and turned right around and injected almost the same kind of energy (on Scorsese’s part as well as DiCaprio/Belfort’s) into his review — the best way to respond to a film one really likes, no? Your review becomes the film and vice versa.

Marsh begins talking about the somewhat staid late-period films that acknowledged masters in their 70s or older have made.

“But there is another, less common variety of late period film, those which in their vitality and esprit defy the ageing of their maker — films whose history is either digested or divested, purged of its unwieldy weight, preferring instead to sprint lightly toward the new. The Wolf of Wall Street is one such film — perhaps even the such film: a nimble, impossibly jocund thing, it throbs and pulsates with life, eager to sop up the world’s generous excess. This is a film of extraordinary jejunity; its manner is raucous, sprightly, unhinged. It barrels through its 179-minute running time, spending scarcely a moment in repose, sprinting there and back without any need for breath or pause.

I saw Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 12.25) for the second time last night, and it felt just as wild and manic as it did the first time. (And without an ounce of fat — it’s very tightly constructed.) And yet it’s a highly moral film…mostly. Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and all the rest are never really “in the room” with these depraved Stratton Oakmont brokers. They’re obviously juiced with the spirit of play-acting and pumping the film up and revving their engines, but each and every scene has an invisible subtitle that says “do you see get what kind of sick diseased fucks these guys were?…do you understand that Jordan Belfort‘s exploits redefined the term ‘asshole’ for all time?”

Why, then, did I say that Wolf is “mostly” moral? Because there’s a subcurrent that revels in the bacchanalian exploits of Belfort and his homies. It broadly satirizes Roman-orgy behavior while winking at it. (Or half-winking.) Unlike the Queens-residing goombahs in Goodfellas, whom he obviously feels a mixed affection for, Scorsese clearly doesn’t like or relate to the Stratton Oakmont guys. But the 71 year-old director also knows first-hand how enjoyable drug-abuse can be for cocky Type-A personalities in groups, and he conveys this in spades. Wolf is clearly “personal” for Scorsese. Like everyone else who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, he is believed to have “indulged” to some extent. (Whatever the truth of it, 1977’s New York, New York has long been regarded as a huge cocaine movie.) One presumes that Scorsese is living a sensible and relatively healthy life these days, but boy, does he remember!

And it hit me last night that The Wolf of Wall Street is going to be enjoyed by audiences as a rollicking memory-lane drug party. Anyone who lived any kind of Caligula-type life in their late teens and 20s is going to get off on it. Because as deplorable and outrageous as the film’s party behavior seems, it’s also oddly infectious.

Yesterday In Contention‘s Kris Tapley wrote that “a release-date bump” for Martin Scorsese‘s Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 11.15) “is looking very likely.” Paramount execs saw the first cut last weekend “but almost no one has seen it yet as [Scorsese] has been hard at work whittling down a typically massive first cut (with elements that would easily yield an NC-17 rating, by the way). But does it go to 2014 or to December?”

2014? Who’s saying that? A eunuch? If Paramount distribution execs are actually pondering a bump into next year (and I’m not presuming anything at this stage), they need to grim up and conduct themselves like persons of character and conviction. Having read and really enjoyed Terence Winter‘s Wolf script, I know what this film more or less is — Goodfellas/Casino meets Wall Street. Or, if you will, the conclusion of Scorsese’s Rise and Fall Of A Flamboyant American Criminal trilogy. Any talk about concerns over a possible NC-17 rating is totally candy-ass, in my view. From what little I know of editing an R rating is certainly achievable.

Three or four days ago N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott posted a piece called “What I Learned About Democracy From the Movies,” and subtitled “Seven films that paint a portrait of America in all its contradictions, inconsistencies and outright delusions.”

Scott singles out Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street for sending the kind of conflicting message that Hollywood has long excelled at.

“There are those who insist that Wolf is a ferocious indictment of the money culture, or at least of the shallow scammers who treat the serious business of capitalism like a casino. And there are others who can’t stop ogling the drugs, the cars, the boats and Margot Robbie, even if the spectacle makes us feel a little squeamish.

“Everyone is right! Disapproval of excessive wealth and unchecked avarice is Hollywood gospel. See Citizen Kane, It’s A Wonderful Life, Wall Street and the Godfather movies. But see the same movies for contrary evidence. Wealth onscreen is beautiful, exciting, erotic.”

I’ve never forgotten LexG saying at the time that he liked The Wolf of Wall Street “for the wrong reasons.”

On 12.13.13 I said the same thing that Scott wrote. The piece was called “Druggy Wolf of Wall Street is New Scarface”:

“I saw Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 12.25) for the second time last night, and it felt just as wild and manic as it did the first time. (And without an ounce of fat — it’s very tightly constructed.)

“And yet it’s a highly moral film…mostly. Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and all the rest are never really ‘in the room’ with these depraved Stratton Oakmont brokers. They’re obviously juiced with the spirit of play-acting and pumping the film up and revving their engines, but each and every scene has an invisible subtitle that says ‘do you see get what kind of sick diseased fucks these guys were?…do you understand that Jordan Belfort‘s exploits redefined the term ‘asshole’ for all time?’

“Why, then, did I say that Wolf is ‘mostly’ moral? Because it also revels in the bacchanalian exploits of Belfort and his crew. It broadly satirizes Roman-orgy behavior while winking at it. (Or half-winking.) Unlike the Queens-residing goombahs in Goodfellas, whom he obviously feels a mixed affection for, Scorsese clearly doesn’t like or relate to the Stratton Oakmont guys. But the 71 year-old director also knows first-hand how enjoyable drug-abuse can be for cocky Type-A personalities in groups, and he conveys this in spades.

From Richard Brody‘s “The Best Movie Performances of the Century So Far” (3.6.21), a perfectly written explanation of his #1 pick — Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Brody: “DiCaprio is the most paradoxical of actors. A star since he was a teenager, he built his career around his charisma and his gift for mimicry; in most of his early performances, he seemed to be impersonating a movie star, and slipped frictionlessly into his roles as if they were costumes, regardless of the physical difficulty they involved. With The Wolf of Wall Street, he finally achieved his cinematic apotheosis. In the role of Jordan Belfort, a super-salesman and super-con-man whose hedonistic will to power is one with his consuming fury, DiCaprio seemed to tap deep into himself, even if in the way of mere fantasy and exuberant disinhibition. He so heatedly embraced the role’s excesses that they stuck to him; he flung himself so hard at its artifices that he shattered them and came through as more himself than he had ever been onscreen; he and his art finally met.”

Jordan Ruimy: “Richard Brody is the Armond White of ultra-progressive cinematic Bernie Bros.”

From “Druggy Wolf of Wall Street Is New Scarface,” posted on 12.13.13:

I saw Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 12.25) for the second time last night, and it felt just as wild and manic as it did the first time. (And without an ounce of fat — it’s very tightly constructed.) And yet it’s a highly moral film…mostly. Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and all the rest are never really “in the room” with these depraved Stratton Oakmont brokers. They’re obviously juiced with the spirit of play-acting and pumping the film up and revving their engines, but each and every scene has an invisible subtitle that says “do you see get what kind of sick diseased fucks these guys were?…do you understand that Jordan Belfort‘s exploits redefined the term ‘asshole’ for all time?”

Why, then, did I say that Wolf is “mostly” moral? Because there’s a subcurrent that revels in the bacchanalian exploits of Belfort and his homies. It broadly satirizes Roman-orgy behavior while winking at it. (Or half-winking.) Unlike the Queens-residing goombahs in Goodfellas, whom he obviously feels a mixed affection for, Scorsese clearly doesn’t like or relate to the Stratton Oakmont guys. But the 71 year-old director also knows first-hand how enjoyable drug-abuse can be for cocky Type-A personalities in groups, and he conveys this in spades. Wolf is clearly “personal” for Scorsese. Like everyone else who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, he is believed to have “indulged” to some extent. (Whatever the truth of it, 1977’s New York, New York has long been regarded as a huge cocaine movie.) One presumes that Scorsese is living a sensible and relatively healthy life these days, but boy, does he remember!

Originally posted on 9.30.06: “It’s amazing what can happen when the right song is laid onto the soundtrack of the right scene in the right film.

“This special chemistry happens for reasons I don’t yet fully understand when Martin Scorsese uses John Lennon‘s ‘Well, Well, Well’ in a scene in The Departed — a scene between Leonardo DiCaprio‘s frazzled cop-mole character and Jack Nicholson‘s grizzled mob boss.

“I haven’t listened to this song in a long time, but it popped through in some live-wire way the other night when I was watching The Departed for a second time. A couple of lines of dialogue about Lennon are heard around the same time. Nicholson asks DiCaprio, ‘Do you know who John Lennon was?’ and DiCaprio answers, ‘Yeah…he was the president right before Lincoln.’

“The musical ride that Scorsese takes you on in this film is great — a series of late ’60s/early ’70s rock tracks that fortify the scenes (or portions of scenes) they play under, but not in any literal ‘oh, the lyrics are commenting on what we’re seeing’ way. It’s more of a visceral-emotional thing, and it feels dead perfect.

“Scorsese achieved a similar connection when he used Mott the Hoople‘s ‘All The Way to Memphis’ at the very beginning of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I had never given much of a shit about Mott the Hoople before seeing that film, but I always felt a measure of respect for those guys (and certainly their song) after they were processed through the Scorsese grinder.”

Click here to jump past HE Sink-In

If you know anything about Martin Scorsese, you know that guilty Catholicism and anxious conversations with God are always embedded somewhere in the fabric of his films, going all the way back to Mean Streets and up through Silence and The Irishman. You also know that The Irishman is basically a 209-minute church service in a cavernous cathedral, and that it’s basically about Marty considering the mortal coil and looking to come to terms with who he is and where he came from, and particularly his decades of immersion in the gangster realm.

For The Irishman is the great, grand finale in the serial Scorsese crime saga that began 47 or 48 years ago — Mean Streets (young Little Italy hustlers), Goodfellas (Queens mob guys in their 30s and 40s), Casino (middle-aged Vegas guys funded by Kansas City mob), The Departed (Boston bad guys) and The Wolf of Wall Street (flamboyant white-collar sharks).** And now the last testament.

The Irishman is about karma and regret and dubiously going through life with your head down and not letting any airy-fairy or side-door considerations get in the way. It’s also about “the hour is nigh” as well as “good God, what have I done?” Who out there (and I’m talking to you, Academy members) hasn’t considered that question while lying in bed at 3:30 am and staring at the ceiling?

SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:

Can we just blurt it out? The Irishman is Marty’s acknowledgment-of-death film. An acceptance of the inevitable mixed with currents of regret and trepidation. The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane said it several weeks ago — it’s “Wild Strawberries with handguns.”

Which is why some Millennials and GenZ types don’t feel as reverential toward The Irishman as 40-and-up viewers. Because many of them have this notion that the cloaked visitor is so far away that they might as well be immortal. Why not, right? I remember that attitude.

Scorsese is surely our greatest and most nominated director, yet he’s only won a single Oscar and ironically for a film he made with dexterity and efficiency but which he regarded at the time as a generic exercise — The Departed. The Irishman, by contrast, is Marty through and through…DNA, fingerprints, history, obsessions, personality.

Plus The Irishman contains 11 or 12 master-class performances. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Stephen Graham, Marin Ireland and the nearly wordless Anna Paquin are the stuff of instant relish and extra-level pulverizing. Not to mention Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Kathrine Narducci, Domenick Lombardozzi as “Fat Tony” Salerno, Sebastian Maniscalco as “Crazy Joe” Gallo, etc. Everyone in this film is perfect. The awareness that you’re watching actors giving performances goes right out the window almost immediately. You’re just there and so are they. And then it’s all one thing.

Movie Godz to Academy members: We understand that no one is perfect and that you all have a lot on your minds, and that many of you observe the age-old habit of raising your damp finger to the wind before voting for Best Picture. You’d like to vote for what you sincerely regard as 2019’s Best Film, but at the same time you don’t want to stand alone. We get it. We’ve been there.

But of course, you won’t be standing alone if you vote for The Irishman. You’ll be with us, the fathers of the realm. Along with the ghost of Howard Hawks, who knew a thing or two about what made good mustard and what didn’t.

“Hurt people hurt people….the whole world is a strip club…sleep is where and when it happens.”

I knew that Lorene Scafaria‘s Hustlers (STX, 9.13) was a cut above immediately. I mean within five or ten seconds. I could tell that the focus was honest, intimate, up close, and that Scafaria and the actresses were keeping it real as the material allowed. And so I relaxed and settled in.

The first act of Hustlers isn’t so much about the bods and the flash and the cash (although it is) as what the dancer characters — played by Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo and Cardi B — are feeling and grappling with, about the move-it-or-lose-it grind of working at a top-tier Manhattan strip club and how the dancers are all coping with insufficient pay and the constant company of Wall Street “assholes.”

I’ve put quotes around that word because it’s an oft-supplied description from the dancers who were interviewed by Jessica Pressler for her 2015 article (“The Hustlers at Scores“), which inspired Scafaria’s script.

Julia Stiles plays the Pressler character (“Elizabeth”).

I read Pressler’s 2015 article when I got home, and so I know the ins and outs and most of the particulars. Some sharp women decided to turn the tables on the stock traders and Wall Street patrons by getting them drunk and taking them for as much dough as they could, running their credit cards behind their inebriated backs while doing lap dances and flashing their boobs and (I gather) offering private-room blowjobs. Until the scam reached the ears and eyes of the fuzz, and then it all fell apart, charges were filed and the girls had to pay the price.

The fact that this is Scafaria’s most likable and engaging film thus far may be interpreted in some corners as damnation with faint praise. I don’t mean it that way. I simply didn’t care for the premise or the vibe of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which Scafaria directed and wrote. I half-liked her follow-up effort, The Meddler, a mother-daughter drama with Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne, but not enough to write anything about it. But for what it is, Hustlers hits the spot.

Hustlers enjoyed a wowser reception a few days ago at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was applauded for its humanity, spirit, efficiency and general enjoyment factor. Tribune News Service’s Katie Walsh called it “girlie Goodfellas“. On top of which Lopez was talked up as a possible Best Actress contender. In my opinion Constance Wu gives the best performance but the hype machine wants what it wants.

This morning a colleague said that he respected Hustlers “but the film is half music video.” Yeah, I said, but it’s nonetheless focused on the interior lives of the principal dancer characters. And the embezzlement stuff was offered as just and fair could because the marks were assholes — wealthy Wall Street greedheads (indistinguishable from the Wolf of Wall Street guys). Oh, and by the way I blinked and missed poor Frank Whaley.”

The heat that Hustlers got out of Toronto was, I believe, partly if not significantly driven by p.c. factors. It’s a kind of “you go, girl” revenge flick…get those assholes, take their fucking money, fuck those guys, they hurt others to we’re going to hurt them (“Hurt people hurt people”)…yes, yes, yes! Mainly because there’s no cultural group more loathed and despised in this Trumpian age than greedy, swaggering, entitled white guys in pricey suits…three of them are murdered in a subway in Joker and here they’re being fleeced and scamboozled and that’s fine because they FUCKING DESERVE IT!

For some shadowy reason The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield is flirting with a cynical, pissy mood about Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman. Or, you know, trying it on for size. What follows are portions of the riff (“Luck of The Irishman“) intercut with HE commentary:

Rushfield #1: “This fall, The App That Ate Hollywood will release what in any other company could be either its greatest triumph or the catastrophe that pushes them off the edge. In the storied history of the Netflix’s Drunken Sailor Era (NDSE), the company hasn’t stepped to the table with a bet like this before, the most expensive production in its history. For all we know, it could be the most expensive production in Hollywood history.”

HE response #1: The Irishman is believed to have cost in the vicinity of $159 million. Other films have cost more, but The Irishman‘s tab is arguably the highest ever for a moralistic, character-driven, dialogue-heavy film aimed at the 35-plus, inside-the-beltway “subset of a subset,” as Rushfield puts it.

And yet if there’s any seasoned director in the film realm who has repeatedly proved beyond a whisper of a shadow of a doubt that he’s craftily, creatively, spiritually and physiologically incapable of making a “catastrophe”, it’s Martin Scorsese. Has Rushfield heard something or what? If he had wouldn’t he be obliged to post a (blind) item to that effect?

Rushfield #2: “After the near-miss of the Roma Oscar campaign, the Scorsese bet represents a go-for-broke, everything-for-the-gold, desperate lunge for the trophy hunters…perhaps its last chance in the NDSE. So you would think with [all this] on the line, it would be some sort of major cliffhanger to see how this turns out? But we know exactly how this will go.”

HE response #2: I realize that many people believe that the Best Picture Oscar is Once Upon A Time in Hollywood‘s to lose, but all kinds of tectonic opinion-shiftings are about to kick in. The next three months will be quite the show.

Rushfield #3: “The Irishman will be released on its handful of screens in two cities, where the crowds will flock and sitting through three-plus hours will become a momentary happening for a certain subset of a subset. We’ll have no clue of box office or what that adds up to. The critics will give Marty his de rigueur 98% RT score. Two weeks later, it will play on The App and the following Monday, the App will duly announce it has smashed every record in existence. The parade will march on down to nightly q & a’s at the Egyptian, while neither shareholders nor the Academy nor the entertainment community will have any clue whether this is a ‘success’ by anything recognizable in the catalog of earthbound benchmarks.”

HE response #3 (and originally posted on 8.25.19): “The Irishman will be processed as some kind of ultimate statement about the criminal ethos or community by the undisputed king of gangster flicks…a world-renowned maestro who’s made four great ones (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street) and will soon deliver what I have reason to suspect** could be (and perhaps will be…who knows?) his crowning, crashing, balls-to-the-wall crescendo, albeit in a somewhat sadder or more forlorn emotional key.”

** having read an early draft of Steve Zallian‘s screenplay.

In the eyes of Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson, Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is the frontrunner to win the Best Picture Oscar next February.

Partly because it’s a better than pretty good film in many respects, partly because it raises a glass to the “old” Hollywood of a half-century ago, partly because it delivers one of the kindest and most welcome happy endings in a dog’s age, and partly because in this era of dominating Disney-owned tentpoles it’s a stand-alone, non-franchise flick that has made a very decent pile of change so far ($123 domestic, $239M worldwide).

Maybe, but I’m of the vague suspicion that at the end of the day Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (and I recognize, of course, that it’s the height of recklessness to spitball about a film that I’ve only “seen” in terms of having read an early draft of the script) will out-point the Tarantino.

I have six reasons for thinking so.

One, because, given the skills and vision of a director who’s been at this racket since the late ’60s, it’ll probably be “better” and classier than the Tarantino (i.e., more upmarket, more assured, less Van Nuys drive-in-ish) in terms of your basic award-friendly attributes — texture, focus, story tension, dynamic performances, great scenes, technical prowess, color and pizazz.

Two, because it’s a gangster film that isn’t necessarily out to be a visceral funhouse thing a la Scarface or Goodfellas, and is instead a kind of meditative morality play. And is therefore “serious.”

Three, because the three-hour length automatically qualifies it as epic- or Godfather-scaled — i.e., the standard calling card of an “important”, weighty-ass film. On top of the fact that it took years to assemble and cost a tankload of money to produce.

Four, because it’ll be processed by every digital Tom, Dick and Harry as some kind of ultimate statement about the criminal ethos or community by the undisputed king of gangster flicks…a world-renowned maestro who’s made four great ones (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street) and will soon deliver what I have reason to suspect could be (and perhaps will be…who knows?) his crowning, crashing, balls-to-the-wall crescendo, albeit in a somewhat sadder or more forlorn emotional key.

Five, because it’ll set new standards for the invisible blending of unvarnished realism and CG wizardry as well as deliver the most visually convincing rendering of the fountain of youth in the history of motion pictures (and tell me that isn’t going to hit every SAG member where they live).

And six…well, this is a bit complicated but I’ll try to explain. The sixth reason is that even the stubborn old Academy farts are starting to realize that there’s no stopping the streaming way of things, and that save for a sprinkling of award-season films released between October and December the theatrical realm has pretty much been overrun by the mongrel hordes, and that other big streamers besides Netflix and Amazon are about to jump into the arena (Apple, Disney) and thereby make things even more exotic and challenging, and that despite whatever perceived threat element Netflix may psychologically present it deserves at this point a Movie Godz gimmee owesie because it’s the only big player (as of right now) that is standing belly to the bar and funding ars gratia artis films for their own merits (like Roma), and because long, ambitious movies Like The Irishman are at a premium right now.

There’s also a seventh factor, and a crucial one at that: Netflix has to cut some kind of deal with major exhibitors (AMC, Cineplex, Arclight, Landmark) in order to book The Irishman into theatres for at least…well, that’s the issue, isn’t it? Potential engagements of 42, 56 or 70 days (or six, eight or ten-week runs)….who knows?

AMC wants something close to a 90-day exclusive theatrical window, even though it was recently asserted by a distribution veteran that “95% of movies stop earning their keep after the 42-day mark.”

The other four Best Picture contenders of note, probably, will be Sam Mendes‘ 1917, Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women. And maybe Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell. But The Irishman will take it. That’s how I see it right now.

Over the last 40-plus years scores of filmmakers have used rock tunes to deliver undercurrents in their films, but no one has ever done this as masterfully as Martin Scorsese, the cinema’s ultimate rock-music maestro. No, this is not an original observation.

But here’s a semi-original one: What makes Scorsese’s rock-scoring so memorable is that once you watch a Scorsese passage that’s been perfectly blended with a well-known track (like that Goodfellas montage of Jimmy Conway murders underlaid with Eric Clapton‘s “Layla” or Harry Nilsson‘s “Jump Into The Fire” augmenting that classic cocaine-frenzy scene with Ray Liotta running around), the song always acquires an extra dimension of some kind — it becomes a stronger song for the association. As in forever.

Example #1: I’d always enjoyed Jimmy Castor‘s “Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Calling You,” but it acquired a mythic element when Scorsese used it in that cranked-up Stratton Oakmont scene in The Wolf of Wall Street. It retains that association to this day.

Example #2: That Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore scene in which Scorsese takes us from a Gone With The Wind-ish yesteryear sequence with young Alice singing that Alice Faye song (“You’ll Never Know”) to Socorro, New Mexico circa 1974, and this is achieved with the playing of Mott The Hoople‘s “All The Way to Memphis.” It was this scene that sold me on Mott The Hoople — this plus “All The Young Dudes,” I mean.

Example #3, #4, #5 and “#6: The “Mean Streets” quartet — the “Be My Baby” opening credits, the Rolling Stones’ “Tell Me” scene in which Harvey Keitel enters the bar and says hello to everyone, the scene in which Robert DeNiro enters the same bar to the sounds of “Jumpin Jack Flash” and the “Please Mr, Postman” fight scene in that basement-level pool hall.

Example #7: The Mickey & Sylvia “Love Is Strange” moment in Casino when Robert De Niro decides that he’s gotta have Sharon Stone‘s hellcat hustler.

Big question: What non-Scorsese films have delivered phenomenal rock-tune scorings? List your top two or three.