Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

xtian_durden Coming from the success of his previous films, Scorsese went back to the 40s and made a tribute to his home town and the classic Hollywood genre – although he refused to call it a musical, mentioning Billy Wilder's statement that you can't call a film a musical unless characters sing in situations where you don't expect them to.With almost a three-hour running time, this highly stylized film filled with music and a rambling plot was a box-office failure and only a few critics giving a positive review, including Roger Ebert who said that if we forgive the movie its confusions we're left with a good time. Robert De Niro, collaborating for the third time with Scorsese for his least memorable character with the director, was not charming in this film and almost coming off as an annoying selfish character (and maybe that's the point), but Liza Minelli was great when performing the songs, especially in the highest point of the film when she sang its theme song, which is more memorable than the film itself – an indication that it was one of Scorsese's rare miscarriage as a director.The failure of the film led his cocaine addiction into rock bottom, which obviously he will recover from with flying colors – bouncing back in the next decade for a brand new chapter of his life and career.

disinterested_spectator At the beginning of the movie, when Jimmy is trying to pick up Francine, the first thirteen words out of her mouth are the words "No." That would have been more than enough for most men, but Jimmy is so pushy that he keeps at it, getting nowhere. However, through a bizarre coincidence, Francine ends up with Jimmy the next day at his audition as a saxophone player. He flops. She tries to give him some advice, and he gets angry. Being a professional singer, she encourages Jimmy to accompany her in a song, and the manager is so impressed that he hires them as a boy-girl team. She agrees to meet Jimmy the next day, but when she gets back to her hotel, she finds out that her agent has a good singing job lined up for her, which means going on the road. But she has to leave early in the morning if she wants the job. As she has no way of breaking her date with Jimmy before she leaves, she simply takes off, giving her agent a letter to give to Jimmy explaining what happened.This first sequence of events is a harbinger of all that is to come, and so it is worth pausing here to see what this represents. First of all, Jimmy is a snob about the kind of music he plays, and thinks he is too good to take advice from anyone. Francine, on the other hand, is casually great, a natural, someone who sings the kind of songs people want to hear, and does so with a lot of personality and polish. This reminds me of "The Way We Were" (1973), when Katie works really hard, desperately trying to write the best essay in the course she is taking. Instead, the professor reads aloud the essay written by Hubbell, who probably just dashed it off the night before. And just to rub it in, the essay is about a man for whom everything came too easily. Katie is devastated. But at least she has the strength of character needed to it that his essay was better, and to tell him so with a smile. Not so with Jimmy in "New York, New York." He can't stand the fact that Francine has more talent than he does. He resents her for it, and he begrudges every concession he has to make to her.Second, Jimmy is obnoxious, arrogant, and pushy, and Francine is submissive and ive, to the point that a lot of people see her as a victim. But Danny Peary, in his "Cult Movies 3," argues that "it is Francine who constantly victimizes Jimmy and who ultimately destroys (their professional and personal) relationships. He may do bad things, but she is the villain." (p. 152).Regarding the sequence of events already discussed, Peary argues that she promised Jimmy to perform with him, and that she knew that without her, he would lose the job. Well, the fact that Jimmy is not good enough to hold down the job on his own is not her problem. She was willing to help him out as long as she had nothing else going on in her life right then, but when something came along that was really important to her, she was not about to sacrifice her own career for someone she just met the day before. In other words, what people like Jimmy do not understand is that people like Francine only appear to be submissive and ive because they are good natured and easy going. And so it comes as a great shock to Jimmy that Francine really is not under his thumb after all, but is capable of bending that thumb back when it comes to the things she cares about. Call her a "villain" if you want, but let this movie be a cautionary tale to those like Jimmy who think they can dominate women like Francine.Danny Peary is my favorite critic, which is why I have given his Francine-as-villain analysis so much attention. He gives several more examples of what a villain she is, but this one really floors me: "Francine became pregnant without discussing it with Jimmy." In other words, I guess Francine should have discussed it with Jimmy before she decided not to use a condom.Jimmy's pushiness arises from an egocentric delusion. He thinks that what he wants, what will make him happy, will therefore make Francine happy. If she is reluctant to do what he wants, it is only because she just does not understand what is best for her. And so he just cannot believe that she stubbornly keeps wanting to do things her way, when he just knows that her true happiness lies in her doing exactly what he says she should do.She goes on to be a big movie star, while he manages to have some minor success owning his own night club, finally giving him almost enough self-confidence to tell her that he is proud of her in her dressing room where there is a party going on celebrating her successful return to New York. I say "almost," because in his inimitable, small-minded way, he immediately qualifies the compliment by saying, "in a way."He goes down to a payphone and calls her, asking her to meet him, because there is something he wants to talk to her about. Impulsively, she agrees. But then she gets to thinking about the important thing he wants to talk to her about, which obviously is about their getting back together. Not wanting to go through another scene of telling him "No," she goes home instead. When she does not show up, he realizes that she does not need him and just wants him to go away, which is what she tried to tell him at the beginning of the movie. At long last, he finally learns to accept this brute fact.

ComedyFan2010 Martin Scorsese, who just got the amazing success with Taxi Driver just a year before this movie came out, goes a bit different direction than we are used from him. Here he wants to reenact a musical from a golden era. Now that I know that he wants to also direct a movie on Sinatra it was interesting to watch.This movie doesn't really look like a usual musical from the old times. It is much darker than that. But this is actually what makes it better than it could be as it adds Scorsese's style and also makes Robert De Niro more fitting into it. Liza Minnelli was also a curious part as the movie was strongly based on A Star is born that stars her mother and her father was also a musical director.Both actors do a great job. Liza Minnelli has a wonderful voice and fits so great into the musical era, watching it made me think she would be even more successful if she was born 30 years earlier. Robert De Niro also has a great screen presence and is definitely one of the most amazing actors. I had some problems with the characters. They didn't seem to have much depth. It was hard to understand why Francine was into Jimmy. But the charisma of both of them made the problem less important. They had some great fights and scenes. And the ending was amazing. One could feel it so well with the characters and they said so much just with facial expressions.And to add to wonderful acting it was also beautiful. Scorsese filmed it inn Hollywood and yet one always feels New York in it. Also a great replication of the times. I wasn't there but this is how I imagine it, be it the clothes the decorations and the ambiance. Also some beautiful scenes such as saxophone played at the moonlight.I guess what makes this movie not perfect is the fact that it feels dull at times. This could be erased completely by the fact that this is a movie about a deep relationship of two people but as I said before the characters lacked enough depth. Still a pretty good movie that is worth watching.

rooprect "New York, New York" is a musical brought to us by the director (and leading actor) of "Taxi Driver" just a matter of months after that hard-hitting, violent classic shocked us. What Scorsese sought to do here was use the style of those candy-coated technicolor song & dance films our grandparents grew up on ("Singin in the Rain" and such) but give it a more realistic edge. Visually he succeeded impressively. The sets, lighting, camera work and costumes are exactly as you'd expect from a classic toe tapper. As for the realistic edge, he also succeeded--perhaps too well.Like a few other reviewers, I have a problem with the casting of Di Nero, especially when contrasted against the sweet, ive charm of Liza Minnelli (whose amazing performance I'll get to later). From the outset, Di Nero comes across as a borderline psycho just waiting to smack a few women around, and I found that to be very distracting from an otherwise personal story.In Scorsese's prologue to the 35th Anniversary DVD he talks about how he wanted to tell a story of 2 people in love who just can't seem to mesh due to personality & artistic differences. But instead what we get is the story of an abusive man and a submissive woman. This is not, as Scorsese implies, simply a personality difference. It's a very polarized tale of a creep & a sweet girl. Honestly, it was Scorsese's deceptive prologue that made me feel like the film failed. If he hadn't said anything, or if he had more accurately said that this is a disturbing story of domination set as a cute musical, I would have said it was a triumph. But in that it fails to do what the director says it's designed to do, it fails artistically.Does that mean it's a bad movie? Absolutely not! Just like "Rollerball" (1976) was supposed to be Norm Jewison's anti-violence film but ended up thrilling us with its heart-pounding action & violence, "New York, New York" is a very well made, entertaining and masterful piece of film. The contrast between its charming visuals and its unsettling dysfunctional love story is very effective. I just wish it had featured a different leading male--someone better suited to play an imposing figure with a heart (Christopher Walken, anyone?) rather than Di Nero who, at least in this film, comes across as a villain.Liza Minnelli is stunningly good. She is what raises this film from "good" to "great". Her character is submissive to Di Nero's tyrannical presence; yet we never get the feeling that she's a pitiable victim. Instead, she seems smart, bold, and while she doesn't fight back at times we wish she would, she always deals with the problem instead of lying down and taking it. Her emotional scenes are very genuine (not sappy). And of course that voice! This is one of the rare musicals where a song number *adds* to the drama rather than serving as a sideshow.In all, this is a unique and powerful film which you should watch if you get the opportunity (note: although it's quite long, be sure to see the uncut 2 1/2 hour version). While it seems to have failed at delivering the director's original intent, it does give us something else worth sinking our teeth into.