Taxi Driver

⭐ 9.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

While the world is busy working through the layers and complexity of Minions: Rise of Gru, I decided on something a little lighter and easier to process.

This is an old movie that many consider one of cinema's best. For some reason when I hear that, I always suspect some high-octane, big budget movie. Of course this is nothing like that, but is rather a slow-moving story about essentially one oddball character as he gets more and more detached from society.

I feel like this movie is a perfect watch right now with all the conversations about gun violence and what makes up the psychology of the school shooter types. I think this is an amazing portrayal by De Niro as the progression to that point feels very realistic. He's not a straight up evil villain, but makes your stomach churn as you start to understand how his brain works.

There are lots of other great characters and acting performances across the board, including a nice cameo by Scorsese himself. The music is great, the writing is great, the cinematography is great. This movie succeeds in every way, and feels a lot more like a modern movie than other 70s movies I've seen.

So yeah, I totally get the hype around this one. It's certainly not a nice movie to watch and I started to wonder if it's almost too dark and pessimistic for the times we are living in. But nonetheless this is a masterpiece of a movie and felt, in a way, like an important one to watch right now.