After a well-deserved summer break, we’re back, back, BACK with more podcast goodness. I imagine the question you’re thinking is “Did Lewis and Ian watch loads of great films for the podcast while they were on their summer break?”, and of course the answer is… er, no. Although we did talk about Prometheus a lot – say what you like about the quality of that film, it’s provided endless avenues for conversation. And just how did those two guys manage to get lost anyway?
Still, between us we did manage to watch one film while we were away – Martin Scorsese’s wonderful Taxi Driver. Amazingly, Ian has somehow managed to go his entire life without seeing this seventies classic, although he’s actually built up rather a good idea of the film simply through references to it on The Simpsons and Spaced. One thing we both had a lot to say about was the ending – we generally try not to give away too many surprises in our podcasts, but we just had to make room on this one to vent our thoughts on THAT denouement. Hopefully we’ve sufficiently signposted the spoilers though, so you’ll know when to switch off if you don’t want to hear how it all ends.
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed watching Taxi Driver again – if anything it gets better with age, and the further away we get in time from that crime-riddled, dirty, run-down New York of the 1970s, the more fascinating it becomes. Robert De Niro’s performance is completely riveting throughout, and at times genuinely scary – his Travis Bickle is a man stretched so tight he could snap into violence at any second, and there’s a palpable tension in the air every time he converses with another character. It turns out Ian hasn’t seen Raging Bull either, so there’s every chance we’ll be doing that for the podcast sometime soon as well – any excuse to watch De Niro at the height of his powers.
Anyway, without further ado, let us present this week’s feature presentation:
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101 Films Podcast 030 – Taxi Driver
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We’d love to hear your own film recommendations – please get in touch at 101filmsyoushouldhaveseen@gmail.com or leave a comment on the blog.
Director: Martin Scorsese Year of release: 1976 Studio/Distributor: Columbia Pictures Country: USA
101 Films You Should Have Seen 