91% (3)  My Voyage to Italy  246 min,  PG-13,  [Documentary]  [Martin Scorsese]  [16 May 2002]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 83%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   Metacritic: 90%,   External Reviews
Awards:  3 wins & 2 nominations.
Actors:  Martin Scorsese
Writer:  Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Raffaele Donato, Kent Jones, Martin Scorsese
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, Italian, French, German    Country:  Italy, USA
Plot:  "I saw these movies. They had a powerful effect on me. You should see them." That's Martin Scorsese's message for this documentary. We meet his family on Elizabeth Street in New York; he's a third generation Italian with Sicilian roots. Starting in 1949, they watched movies on TV as well as in theaters, lots of Italian imports. Scorsese, with his narration giving a personal as well as a public context, shows extended clips of these movies. Films of Rossellini and De Sica fill part one; those of Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni comprise part two. Scorsese takes time with emotion, style, staging, technique, political context, and cinematic influence. It's his movie family.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Martin Scorsese talks about the movies and directors that most influenced his career in this survey of Italian cinema. Included: Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
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87% (3)  Life Itself  121 min,  R,  [Documentary, Biography]  [Steve James]  [04 Jul 2014]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 78%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 97%,   Metacritic: 87%,   External Reviews
Awards:  25 wins & 31 nominations.
Actors:  Ava DuVernay, Chaz Ebert, Errol Morris, Gene Siskel, Martin Scorsese, Roger Ebert, Werner Herzog
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  'Life Itself' recounts the surprising and entertaining life of world-renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert - a story that's by turns personal, wistful, funny, painful, and transcendent. The film explores the impact and legacy of Roger Ebert's life: from his Pulitzer Prize-winning film criticism and his nearly quarter-century run with Gene Siskel on their review show, to becoming one of the country's most influential cultural voices, and finally to Roger's inspiring battles with cancer and the resulting physical disability - how he literally and symbolically put a new face on the disease and continued to be a cultural force despite it.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Acclaimed director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) and executive producers Martin Scorsese (The Departed) and Steven Zaillian (Moneyball) present LIFE ITSELF, a documentary film that recounts the inspiring and entertaining life of world-renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert - a story that is by turns personal, funny, painful, and transcendent. Based on his bestselling memoir of the same name, LIFE ITSELF, explores the legacy of Roger Ebert's life, from his Pulitzer Prize-winning film criticism at the Chicago Sun-Times to becoming one of the most influential cultural voices in America. (C) Magnolia
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81% (3)  Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff  86 min,  [Documentary, Biography]  [Craig McCall]  [13 May 2011]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 78%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 96%,   Metacritic: 71%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Jack Cardiff, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Martin Scorsese
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  English    Country:  UK
Plot:  In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Jack Cardiff's career spanned an incredible nine of moving picture's first ten decades and his work behind the camera altered the look of films forever through his use of Technicolor photography. Craig McCall's passionate film about the legendary cinematographer reveals a unique figure in British and international cinema. -- (C) Strand
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93% (2)  A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies  225 min,  [Documentary]  [Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson]  [21 May 1995]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 86%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Allison Anders, Francis Ford Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, Martin Scorsese
Writer:  Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA, UK, France
Plot:  Despite its nearly four-hour running time, this is a uniquely personal look at movies from one of the late 20th century's great directors and film historians. The film consists of head & shoulder shots of Scorsese speaking into the camera for a minute or two, followed by 10-15 minutes of film clips with Scorsese voice-over. Scorsese approaches the films in terms of how they affected him as a director foremost and as a storyteller/film fan second. Segments include "The Director as Smuggler," "The Director as Iconoclast", and so on. The Journey begins with silent masters like D.W. Griffith and ends in 1969 - when Scorsese began to make films; as he says in closing, "I wouldn't feel right commenting on myself or my contemporaries."
Rotten Tomatoes:   In 1994, the British Film Institute commissioned a set of films to mark the centenary of the movies. They would trace the history of several national cinemas, and the BFI's choice for interpreting the history of American film fell to director Martin Scorsese, a longtime champion of film history and preservation. Scorsese's approach to his subject is director-centered, as he examines the tension inherent in the struggle of an artist wishing to make a personal statement against the collaborative nature of films and the commercial pressures of the Hollywood moviemaking factory. Segments of this series are devoted to the director as storyteller (examining narrative devices in the Western, gangster film, and musical), illusionist (technical tricks), smuggler (imbedding personal messages), and iconoclast (bucking the system to make films his own way). The series is replete with telling clips, not just snippets or shots, but entire scenes which illustrate Scorsese and co-director Michael Henry Wilson's points. Other filmmakers, including John Ford, Francis Ford Coppola, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles, are seen in archival footage or interviews created for the series, offering their own take on the art of filmmaking. Scorsese doesn't discriminate between filmmakers with glossy reputations and those who always worked on the fringe of public awareness. If anything, he goes out of his way to champion mavericks like Samuel Fuller whose "visceral cinema" never enjoyed box-office success or awards. Personal Journey was first shown on British TV, released in limited fashion to theaters in the United States, and shown here on TV as well. A tie-in book was published in 1997 by Miramax Books; it contains the entire script for the series, excellent black-and-white stills, and dialogue from some of the clips.
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87% (2)  Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows  77 min,  TV-PG,  [Documentary]  [Kent Jones]  [02 Sep 2007]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 74%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   External Reviews
Awards:  2 nominations.
Actors:  Elias Koteas, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, Val E. Lewton
Writer:  Kent Jones
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, French, Japanese    Country:  USA
Plot:  Martin Scorsese narrates this tribute to Val Lewton, the producer of a series of memorable low-budget horror films for RKO Studios. Raised by his mother and his aunt, his films often included strong female characters who find themselves in difficult situations and who have to grow up quickly. He is best remembered for the horror films he made at RKO starting in 1940. Starting with only a title - his first was The Cat People - he would meticulously oversee every aspect of the film's completion. Although categorized as horror films, his films never showed a monster, leaving it all to the viewers imagination, assisted by music, mood and lighting.
Rotten Tomatoes:   While his name was known to only the most obsessive film fans during the course of his career, Val Lewton produced a handful of low-budget horror movies in the 1940's that had a revolutionary impact on the genre. Working within a special production unit at RKO Pictures, Lewton's films were mood pieces that created an atmosphere of anxiety rather than aiming for blunt shocks, and used shadowy camerawork and careful pacing to infer more than the audience actually saw. Several of Lewton's productions became minor hits, most notably Cat People, and a number of others (including Isle Of The Dead, I Walked With A Zombie, Curse Of The Cat People, The Seventh Victim and The Body Snatchers) are cult favorites to this day. Lewton also discovered a number of directors who would become major players later on, including Robert Wise, Mark Robson and Jacques Tourneur, but Lewton's efforts to move on to bigger budget projects fared poorly, and poor health claimed his life in 1951, six years after his last picture for RKO. Film critic and archivist Kent Jones traces the story of Val Lewton's life and career while paying homage to the films that made his name in the documentary Val Lewton: Man In The Shadows, which features highlights from Lewton's best films while sharing the memories of those who knew and worked with him. Originally produced for the Turner Classic Movies cable network, Val Lewton: Man In the Shadows is narrated by filmmaker and lifelong film fan Martin Scorsese.
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63% (2)  American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince  55 min,  [Documentary]  [Martin Scorsese]  [01 Oct 1978]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 76%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 50%,   External Reviews
Actors:  George Memmoli, Julia Cameron, Mardik Martin, Martin Scorsese, Steven Prince
Writer:  Julia Cameron (treatment), Mardik Martin (treatment)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Director Martin Scorsese talks to actor Steven Prince about his past. As the night goes on, Prince reveals some very amusing and moving stories of his experiences with drugs and violence.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Martin Scorsese's American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is both a documentary and a tragicomedy, in which the personal experiences of one twentysomething Jewish gay man are rendered universal. Surrounded by friends in a cozy living room, the sensitive and humorous Prince (Taxi Driver's gun salesman, Handy Andy) recounts his personal history, from his run-in with a gorilla, to his relationship with his parents, his childhood bagel delivery business, his coming out, his addiction to drugs, his job as Neil Diamond's road manager, and his father's falling ill. One of Prince's most exciting tales, an account of his reviving a friend's overdosing girlfriend by injecting stimulant into her heart, was re-created almost to a tee by director Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. As wild and theatrical as the young man's accounts are, Scorsese intersperses them with childhood pictures of Prince that could be of any American, quickly reminding the entire audience of their common humanity.
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91% (1)  Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown  61 min,  [Documentary, Biography, Comedy, History]  [Gregory Monro]  [18 Jun 2017]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 87%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Jerry Lewis, Martin Scorsese, Pierre Étaix, Sean Hayes
Writer:  Gregory Monro
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, French    Country:  France, USA
Plot:  Since the early days, Jerry Lewis - in the line of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel - had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches and signature slapstick humor. Yet Lewis was far more than just a clown. He was also a groundbreaking filmmaker whose unquenchable curiosity led him to write, produce, stage and direct many of the films he appeared in, resulting in such adored classics as The Bellboy, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and The Nutty Professor. By becoming a "total filmmaker," Lewis surpassed expectations as a comic performer and emerged as a driving force in Hollywood. He broke boundaries with his technical innovations, unique voice and keen visual eye, even garnering respect and praise overseas. However, American critics and the cultural elite tended to reject his abrasive art. While they viewed Lewis as nothing more than just a clown, others like the French recognized him as a true auteur, giving rise to questions that have perplexed American pop culture for over 50 years: Why do Europeans love Jerry Lewis? What is this inexplicable aversion Americans have towards him? Is he just a brash, anything-for-yuk buffoon? Or is he a creative genius? Who is the man behind the clown?
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