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Journey With Me Through the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films. A movie a day. Experience for a lifetime. At least that's what we're aiming for.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Raging Bull...Among Others


As you can see, it's been 2 days since the last post, not the promised daily updates. And it wasn't that I didn't watch movies: I did. In fact, I watched several; it's just that none of them were in the top 100. But that's OK because seeing that we have no Blog followers as of yet, I don't really have anyone to apologize to, so I'm saying sorry to myself until someone steps up and complains.

Clash of the Titans
, Pineapple Express and Parenthood later, we settle in on AFI's Number 4, Raging Bull.

Seeing that all of my submissions thus far have been blatantly honest, and whole-hearted, I'm not going to stop this pattern. So let me start by saying something nice: the imagery was good, the black and white was captivating, Martin Scorsese is great and Robert Di Nero is a legend. And we pause there.

Raging Bull, is by far, my least favorite movie in the top 10 at this point. I mean, I understand the different qualities of the movie to have it noted, but I don't see how it's in the top 10. So let's make this clear, the movie was good, but it was definitely not great, at least not for me.

Continuing with the good bad good pattern, I have to note that the score was incredibly amazing. That tune that plays, especially during the DVD menu, is so serene and had the story been more captivating, I could have maybe cried. But with such beautiful music, it was hard matching it with the scenes where Robert Di Nero is beaten to a pulp with tomato juice squirting from his eye.

One noteworthy piece is Joe Pesci. I like Joe Pesci, I think he's great in every movie, and in this one, he made me laugh several times. But I noticed that the reason I like Joe Pesci so much is that he plays the same role in every movie. Based on the movies I've seen, My Cousin Vinny, Goodfellas, Lethal Weapon 4, and now Raging Bull all have the same character played by Joe Pesci. No fault to Joe, he gets paid for what he does best. And though I can't put my finger on what it is exactly, I like it.

The story of a boxer who ultimately I feel bad for, his struggles, his tribulations, would make sense as a movie. It worked. Actually, the Wikipedia article on Jake LaMotta seemed to me to be more compelling, enough to maybe watch a History channel documentary one day, just not today.

So I'm glad I saw 3 enjoyable movies before this one. I'm now comfortable with the fact that I may run into more disconcerting installments in the AFI list of 100. So until tomorrow...*Insert memorable quote from recent movie which at this time, there are none..eh*