Martin Scorsese Collection

Few contemporary American filmmakers have as distinctive an oeuvre as Martin Scorsese, the native New Yorker whose movies reflect not only his cosmopolitan tastes in cinema, but also his constant and irrepressible urge to experiment with the medium to which he's devoted his life. This new set from Warner Home Video collects five of Scorsese's most remarkable films, beginning with his semi-autobiographical debut feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1968), which features Harvey Keitel (making his bow as well) as a jobless Italian youth who falls for a sophisticated college graduate. Mean Streets (1973), the first of Scorsese's classic urban-based melodramas, stars Keitel as an aspiring mobster and Robert De Niro--an actor with whom Scorsese forged an artistically rewarding alliance--as a small-time gambler. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) unfolds in the semi-rural Southwest, far away from “Scorsese country,” but the director does a masterful job on this touching slice-of-life drama featuring Ellen Burstyn's Oscar-winning portrayal of a plucky single mom working as a waitress while trying to raise a young son. Scorsese turned New York City into a bizarre, Reagan-era wonderland in After Hours (1985), a darkly comic fairytale starring Griffin Dunne as a buttoned-down corporate drone exposed to a variety of eccentric characters during a fateful late-night excursion downtown. GoodFellas (1990), habitually listed among the director's finest films, is a mob movie that crackles with energy, featuring bravura performances from De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci as veteran wiseguys plying their trade during the ‘70s. Newly remastered and accompanied by a myriad of supplemental features, these five movies aren't just good samples of one director's output, they are must-have titles for any serious American cinema collection. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (E. Hulse)