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The Insider

While we're talking about the best films from a specific director, let's talk about Michael Mann, who's got another true-story movie on the way with this summer's Public Enemies, a crime drama about famed gangster John Dillinger. I'd say that his best remains the 1999 political/journalism thriller The Insider. The Insider is based on the true story of how a few dedicated people tried to get a major news and television corporation to broadcast the obvious truth of tobacco and how it kills people every day. This is a movie that could easily have been a moralistic diatribe against the evils of smoking and a lengthy lecture on the hypocrisy of the mainstream media. And, yes, The Insider is about those things, but it's not a chore to sit through. Bolstered by an amazing performance from Russell Crowe as the whistleblower who wanted to go on 60 Minutes to tell all and another of the great, fire-breathing roles for Al Pacino, this film is one of the more slickly entertaining dramas of the past 15 years.

Unlike most of these movies, there's more than enough firepower in the rest of the ensemble; Christopher Plummer is fantastic as famed anchor Mike Wallace, Gina Gershon is appropriately slimy as a corporate lawyer and Bruce McGill, in a cameo role, manages to rant and rave while voicing accurate hatred of tobacco companies. In a movie that's meant to be specifically about bringing down Big Tobacco, Mann fills the screen with camera tricks, great music, and everything necessary to keep the most impatient audience member's attention. Even though it was a Best Picture nominee in 1999, not that many people have seen The Insider, so if you're one of the uninitiated, see it now.

Raging Bull

And if you haven't seen this film, often touted as the best film of the 1980s (quite a thing to say about a movie that was released in 1980), read the rest of this column and then rent it. Raging Bull is one of director Martin Scorsese's classic films (along with Taxi Driver and GoodFellas), a look at the up-and-down career of boxer Jake LaMotta. Raging Bull is well-known for its virtuoso black-and-white cinematography, the gritty boxing sequences and, most of all, its lead performance. As LaMotta, Robert De Niro gives a performance that's so good I'd almost wager he's never hit these highs ever since. De Niro's La Motta is a brutal force, even to himself. I, for instance, have a very hard time watching his cathartic prison scene, as he smacks his own head against cement for nearly a minute; you can't tell me that's not his head against real cement.

De Niro gained extra weight to more fully embody La Motta; his dedication to the role is admirable, even more so since it actually pays off. I'm not trying to ignore anyone else here, though; in two breakthrough roles, Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci play, respectively, La Motta's lover and brother, and are marvelous. Pesci, specifically, is magnetic, especially in his many argumentative scenes with De Niro. Only an actor as fiery and forceful as Pesci could hold his own against the bulky and intimidating leading man. Raging Bull is arguably one of the best films ever made so if you're, for some wild reason, a Scorsese virgin or just someone who's missed this film...what are you waiting for? This is the end of the column, so go rent it!

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