My list of Martin Scorsese movies that I've seen so far is composed of the his recent ones: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006) and Shutter Island (2010) (What a shame! I know...) I finally took the first step to see his previous movies and watched Taxi Driver. And, the performance of Robert de Niro blowed my mind. I'm not a Robert de Niro fun tho. But he plays the social outcast, an obsessed taxi driver tremendously good!
Taxi Driver is a character study of a lonely man, Travis (Robert de Niro), who struggles to fit in the society.
Travis is a Vietnam war veteran trying to realign himself back into society and develops a paranoid way of understanding and reacting to the outside world.
The dialogues of the movie are rich. Especially, the parts where Travis writes to his diary telling about what has been happening and how he sees things around him give us an understanding of his perspective.
There is also Jodie Foster in the movie. Her parts 'literally' amazed me. At that time, she was just 13 years old and acting as a 12 year-old prostitude in the movie. Apparently, she's been subjected to psychological tests in order to see if she can carry this role without being traumatized. She is another Natalie Portman issue of film industry, I suppose.
The movie takes us to the back streets of New York with a story of an isolated taxi driver, Travis, who works during night shifts in New York. The camera is stucked with him and makes us to see his 24 hours: we see him driving during the night shifts; we see him writing to his diary when he gets home; we see him crashing into a woman and initiates to ask her out; we see how badly broken he is when things do not go as he expects and turning into a violent, obsessed personality.
If you want to see guns, prostitudes, drug dealers, violence, politics, assassins in one movie and Robert de Niro with a mohawk, Jodie Foster as a prostitude, that should be Taxi Driver.
Travis: The days go on and on... they don't end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.
The Wrestler is a Darren Aronofsky movie, one of the fascinating directors with movies like Requiem for a Dream (2000), Pi (1998) and Black Swan (2010).
If you've seen some of his movies, you might know that he likes to follow the character from the behind with a handheld camera (I love it! it's like you're in the scene). It is still the case in The Wrestler too.
During the movie, we witness to the life of a wrestler, what he does in his daily life, (as in Black Swan): daily trainings, regular visits to hairdressers and tanning salons...
Mickey Rourke is performing the leading character in the film, 
However, Aronofsky points his camera to the inner side of this character and takes off his 'tough-guy' mask. Under his huge physique, we see a lonely, old boy living isolated from others.. wife is gone.. daughter hates him.. no friends around.. noone really touches him.. Maybe he didn't notice it when he was the hero of the wrestling rings 20 years ago. Maybe he didn't notice that it happened this way. But however hard it is, he questions it, even attempts to change it...
Apart from the story of the movie, what was really touching for me was the performance of Mickey Rourke. It was truly fascinating !!! sublime !! perfect person for the role!
The Wrestler is a very serious, sentimental, sad movie, it's not a secret... It's obvious from its first scene where the main character (Mickey Rourke) sits alone in the dressing room after his match.
And it is also my favorite Aronofsky so far !
Family Plot is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies alongside Rear Window (1954) and The Birds (1963). It is the last and the 56th movie of the director. It includes all the Hitchcockian themes in it as well as different cinematographic touches.
Hitchcock movies are famous for their suspense, murder, thriller and humor themes; mystical characters, wrongful accusations; chic women, handsome and rich guys.... Even though there are mystical characters and storyline, it is generally obvious who is the bad or the good character in the story from its beginning. Stories are generally simple and the scripts are really well thought out and wittily written. Criminals are generally rich and clever. Innocents are accused and they try to prove their innocence. Suspense keeps its rhythm throughout the movie and some secrets are given to the audience by showing something that the character didn’t see. Hitchcock movies always keep their excitement and never bore you (at least me :)).
The different approach in Family Plot is the major surprise of the good/bad character predictions at the beginning of the movie. Strangely, it draws two unrelated couple stories by switching from one couple to the other at the beginning. You know that these two stories are going to merge somehow, but you can’t guess how. The surprise is that it makes an opening with the bad couple (that’s what you think) and it starts to tell a totally unrelated story of the other couple who also seems to be doing bad things. That little twist in the story makes it unguessable who is going to do bad things to the other and you don’t know which couple represents the bad side of the story.
One of the scenes that I like most in Hitchcock movies is the car scenes (in almost all his movies, you might see one). The shots from the front window f the cars are so common. At that time of cinema techniques, the car scenes were shot in the studios. After shooting the background scene, the characters were pretending to drive a car in the studio and turning the steering wheel accordingly. In Family Plot, there is one car scene which I really like and a long one. It’s pretty good synchronized with its background; you enjoy very much of the cinema techniques of the time (very funny sometimes and obviously spent some time to shoot) and it's one of the masterful Hitchcock scenes!