Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) - tattooed head to toe with Bible quotations - crunches pushups in an eight by nine cell. Released from prison, Cady shows up in the North Carolina town of “New Essex.” Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is a prosecutor here. His chain smoking wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) is a graphic designer. Their 15-year-old daughter Dani (Juliette Lewis) is in summer school.

Sam enjoys a racquetball game with a law clerk named Lori (Illeana Douglas) who has a crush on him. Afterwards, the attorney has his car keys grabbed by Cady, who gets around to reminding Sam that he was his lawyer 14 years ago. “Have you been following me?” “It’s a small town, everywhere you turn we’re gonna run into each other.” As Sam drives away, he hears Cady mumble something that sounds like, “You’re gonna learn about loss.”

Sam tells his boss (Fred Dalton Thompson) that Cady was charged with rape and aggravated sexual battery, but that when Sam came across a report that the victim was promiscuous, he buried it. When Cady confronts Sam again, he reveals, “I learned to read during my stretch. First, Spot Goes To The Farm, then Runaway Bunny, then law books mostly.” Sam offers him cash to go away, but Cady calculates that even $50,000 wouldn’t cover minimum wage for 14 years.

Leigh wakes in the night to find Cady on the wall that separates their property. When Sam runs outside, Cady has vanished. Leigh’s dog is then poisoned. The sheriff (Robert Mitchum in a great cameo) has Cady leaned on, but can’t find anything to hold him for. Cady picks up Lori in a bar and brutally attacks and rapes her, knowing she would never appear in court to press charges. Sam hires a private investigator played by Joe Don Baker to follow Cady.

Leigh has reason to suspect her husband had an affair with the victimized law clerk. They fight, and Dani hides in her room, overwhelmed with teenage angst. In the best scene in the film, Dani is lured to an empty auditorium in her school by Cady, who impersonates a drama teacher and connects with the teenager, when he tells her that her parents are punishing her for their sins.

Sam pays some men to “do a little job” on Cady, but the ex-con lays them out. “I ain’t no white trash piece of shit. I’m better than you all! I can outlearn you, I can outread you, I can outthink you, and I can out-philosophize you! And I’m gonna outlast you!” Cady retains the best attorney in the state (Gregory Peck), who seeks to have Sam disbarred. Sam pretends to leave town and stays up all night with the private investigator, using his family as bait and hoping Cady will appear, so they can gun him down.

Steven Spielberg hired Wesley Strick to pen a remake of the 1962 Robert Mitchum-Gregory Peck thriller Cape Fear for Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg contacted Robert DeNiro about playing Max Cady, then decided he wasn’t in the mood to direct a film about a family being terrorized by a maniac. Stephen Frears was attached briefly. Spielberg and DeNiro then thought of Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese was a fan of J. Lee Thompson’s original, and after making several films about Italians, was ready for a new challenge; a thriller in the old studio style of Val Lewton’s Cat People or Isle of the Dead. Spielberg asked whether the family would still be alive at the end. Scorsese said yes, and was given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted up to that point.

Scorsese rewrote the script, throwing out everything he felt was conventional. He introduced marital infidelity and teenage rebellion into what had been a good old-fashioned American family in Strick’s draft. Max Cady was transformed into a tattooed, Bible thumping, “walking vengeance machine” in Scorsese’s words. Cady came to personify divine retribution, that the Bowdens had to purge.

After GoodFellas, Scorsese was enshrined in the media as America’s greatest working filmmaker. Cape Fear became the biggest box office hit of his career. Some accused this project of being a commercial sell-out, or self-consciously arty, or inferior to the original film, which was based on the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald.

DeNiro essentially plays evil incarnate, and appears to possess magical powers, but Scorsese never asks the movie be taken very seriously. From a superior opening title sequence designed by Saul & Elaine Bass, a thunderous rendition of the killer score Bernard Herrmann composed for the original (conducted by Elmer Bernstein here) and a stark, Gothic look by cinematographer Freddie Francis, Scorsese crafted a hugely entertaining popcorn thriller unlike any other.

The picture was exceedingly well cast, and has a creative energy most big budget thrillers lack. DeNiro and Douglas’ bar scene in particular feels spontaneous. The movie is loaded with eye-popping camera set ups, framed in anamorphic widescreen. DeNiro is beautifully over the top as the Pentecostal cracker from hell, and the movie features good scares. DeNiro and Juliette Lewis were both nominated for Academy Awards, but Cape Fear never assumes a self-important tone. This is just grand filmmaking, drunk on classic Hollywood style.

Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) take a drive through the country. Henry wakes Jimmy and Tommy when he hears a knock in the car. He’s told to pull over, and popping the trunk, reveals a bloodied corpse still alive and kicking. Tommy stabs it with a meat cleaver and Jimmy shoots it. Henry slams the trunk and in voice-over says, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

In 1955 Brooklyn, young Henry is enamored by the men who congregate in a cab stand across the street. It’s operated by Tuddy, whose brother Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) provides protection for the neighborhood. Henry is so devoted to running errands for the cab stand that he stops going to school. His father beats him, but instead of letting him quit, Tuddy threatens the mail carrier with time in an oven if he delivers another letter from the kid’s school.

Henry meets Tommy when they’re put to work selling stolen cigarettes. He’s introduced to Jimmy - already one of the most feared criminals in the city - when he tips Henry $20 for bringing him a drink. As adults, Henry, Jimmy and Tommy frequently rip off cargo moving through their territory, which includes Idlewild Airport. Henry agrees to go along on a double date with Tommy, and meets Karen (Lorraine Bracco). When Henry ditches her on the group’s next date, she has Tommy drive her to the cab stand, where she yells at Henry on the street.

Henry is Irish/Sicilian, Karen is Jewish, but they’re soon married. Highlights of their relationship include Henry pistol whipping a guy who assaults her, and Karen waking Henry up with a gun in his face when she finds out he’s cheating on her. Jimmy puts together what was - up to that time - the biggest heist in American history, assembling a crew that steals millions in untraceable bills from Lufthansa Airlines.

Tommy’s psychopathic behavior - beating and even killing indiscriminately - culminates when he beats a gangster (Frank Vincent) from another family. Henry and Jimmy help dispose of the body. The men also start trafficking cocaine, despite Paulie’s order that they’re not allowed to. Henry and Karen’s drug habit gets so bad they start seeing helicopters following them. The law closes in, and Henry’s only alternative is to turn informer on everything he knows.

While shooting The Color of Money in 1986, director Martin Scorsese read a review in the New York Times for a book called Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi, a contributing editor for New York Magazine. Pileggi, who’d been covering law and order since the late ’60s, based his book on the life of Henry Hill, a gangster who turned gang informant after being arrested in 1980.

There had been books done about mobsters before, many of them full of boasts about their exploits, but when he interviewed Hill, Pileggi wasn’t interested in that. He wanted to know how it worked inside, the details. That turned out to be exactly what Scorsese was looking for, and he adapted the screenplay with Pileggi.

I go back and forth between which Scorsese picture is the greatest - Taxi Driver or this one - but GoodFellas is about as perfect a movie as can be humanly made. Script, casting, direction, editing, music, everything works together in perfect sync. Unlike a lot of gang related movies and TV shows, Scorsese and Pileggi had little interest in crime (the Lufthansa heist takes place entirely off-camera). Instead, it’s language, the seductiveness in which these guys tell their stories, that pulls you in.

Ray Liotta’s voice-over narration may be the best ever heard in a film. Recorded after filming had wrapped and his throat was hoarse from smoking, Liotta patiently guides us through the scams, the nightlife, the court proceedings and his own downfall with a wry detachment that sounds better every time I listen to this.

The cast is one of the greatest ever assembled, and there are too many classic scenes to list. Pesci’s “Do you think I’m funny?” bit - improvised by Pesci in rehearsal, written into the script by Scorsese - is a brilliantly timed piece of stagecraft. My favorite scene is a simple dialogue in a backyard between Liotta and Paul Sorvino, where the boss tells the man he thinks of as a son why it’s important to him personally that he stay away from trafficking junk. It dawns on us that Henry isn’t going to listen.

Visually, the movie has no peer. A tracking shot that follows Liotta & Bracco through the bowels of the Copacabana lasts three spectacular minutes without a cut. The climax follows a coked out Liotta as he tools around on what becomes his last day as a wiseguy, with George Harrison’s “What Is Life,” Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” The Who’s “Magic Bus” and The Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man” on the soundtrack. The creativity and energy level here is often cited by other filmmakers, but I’ve never seen it duplicated.

GoodFellas was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Pesci won Best Supporting Actor, and gave one of the shortest acceptance speeches ever (he later said he didn’t think he was going to win). At decade’s end, the AFI ranked it #97 on their list of “100 Years, 100 Movies”, but the cultural impact the film made goes way beyond that. My favorite reference is probably in Swingers, where the guys agree that the Copacabana tracking shot is the greatest shot in a movie ever.

Jesus of Nazareth (Willem Dafoe) is introduced napping on a hillside, where he’s plagued by a terrible migraine and wakes. He continues work on crosses he builds for the Romans to use in their crucifixions. Judas Iscariot (Harvey Keitel) pays a visit, calling Jesus a disgrace, “Jew killing Jews.” Jesus tells Judas that he’s struggling. “I struggle. You collaborate,” Judas replies.

Self-flagellating himself before carrying the wood to the crucifixion site, Jesus is cursed and hit with rocks by the people of Nazareth. The prostitute Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey) spits in his face, despite attempts by his mother Mary (Verna Bloom) to protect her son. The condemned - Lazarus - is nailed to the cross by the Romans on charges of sedition. Jesus is tortured over this, and tells his mother he has to go to the desert, to find out whether it’s God or the devil plaguing him.

Jesus feels compelled to seek out Mary Magdalene in the brothel. He asks her to forgive him. Mary is still bitter over Jesus’ rejection of her in their youth, angry with him and God. “Just because you need forgiveness, don’t ask me to do it.” On the edge of the desert, Jesus comes across a monastery. He unburdens his soul to a monk (Barry Miller), “I’m a liar, a hypocrite. I’m afraid of everything. I don’t even tell the truth. I don’t have the courage.”

Jesus is visited by Judas, who’s been sent by the zealots. He tells Judas to go ahead and kill him, that he’s been purified. Judas asks what the secret is. “Pity for man. I feel pity for everything.” Judas goes with Jesus, to understand this. They come across Mary as she’s about to be stoned to death, for laying with Romans on the Sabbath. Jesus picks up two stones and asks the mob, “Which of you has never sinned?” They listen as he gives the sermon on the mount, in which Jesus tells them that justice is what they’re hungry for.

Jesus comes across John the Baptist, a wild haired preacher baptizing Jews in the River Jordan. He seems convinced that Jesus is the prophet, but tells Jesus that love is not enough. If the tree is poisonous, you have to take an ax and cut it down. Judas is not willing to turn the other cheek either, and after returning from the desert, Jesus agrees. He leads his followers to Jerusalem for war. But Jesus struggles with this, and decides that he must sacrifice himself willingly on the cross.

Barbara Hershey had been struck by the Catholic themes in a student film directed by Martin Scorsese, and when they worked together in 1972 on Boxcar Bertha, she gave him a book to read by Nikos Kazantzakis called The Last Temptation of Christ. Mounting a film version became Scorsese’s dream project. Paul Schrader adapted the book and in 1983, Scorsese was ready to shoot the picture with Aidan Quinn playing Jesus.

The “moral majority” heard about the film and flooded Paramount with protest letters. Theater chain United Artists told the studio they would not exhibit the picture because they were worried about the audience response. Scorsese had elaborate sets being constructed in Israel and Morocco, and the budget climbed to $16 million, a substantial sum for the time. Paramount pulled the plug.

Scorsese continued to work on the script with Jay Cocks, and in 1987, Mike Ovitz, head of Creative Artists Agency, set the project up at Universal. Scorsese reconfigured the film as an intimate character study, cutting the budget to $7 million. Instead of filming on expensive sets, the production utilized ruins and other inexpensive locations in Morocco. Most of the original cast was retained, with Dafoe now in the title role, and David Bowie replacing Sting as Pontius Pilate.

Before the film was finished, groups affiliated with the Christian right started attacking it. Universal arranged an advanced private screening for the aggrieved, including Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association, and Bill Bright’s Campus Crusade For Christ. The audience was outraged by the closing sequence, Jesus being tempted by Satan with a normal life of sex, marriage and children with Mary Magdalene. Bright offered to buy all the prints from Universal so he could destroy them.

The protests against The Last Temptation of Christ were relatively small, but vicious, and succeeded in scaring moviegoers away from the theater. Scorsese received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and after the controversy died down, many in the Christian community were able to accept the film as a plausible interpretation of what it might have been like for Christ to be a man.

Scorsese’s vision of Jesus as plagued by weakness contrasted with the divine image many people believed in. But Scorsese felt “it should be Jesus like on 8th Avenue and 43rd Street.” The Gospels had condemned Jesus for consorting with prostitutes and the lowlifes of the day, and considering this was a director who knew street corners and lowlifes, The Last Temptation of Christ had the potential to resonate with immediacy and power.

In spite of the long, strange trip it took to getting made, the film has too many problems for me to recommend. It’s over-extended - clocking in at 164 minutes - while at the same time, is a minimal picture, almost like a student film. Due to fear of the production getting shut down, Scorsese couldn’t afford decent looking locations, and the film has a sketchy feel to it, like if Mean Streets or Taxi Driver had been shot in Toronto to save money.

The material fails to live up to Scorsese and Cocks’ unique vision of Jesus down the block, a real man with dilemmas that we could relate to. The material is too abstract, too “arty” to feel much of anything for. Due to production limitations, this was turned into a talking head picture. There are long, long, long theological debates between Jesus and Judas, and while the acting is fine, there’s not a lot of feeling behind the words. It’s just academic.

There were at least three strong camera setups that recall Scorsese at his most imaginative, including the opening shot, and the shot of a crucified Jesus being raised on the cross. Instead an indigenous score, Peter Gabriel was brought in to compose the music. Pretty much every instrument under the stars can be heard, including percussion and electric guitar. While inventive, this just doesn’t seem to fit.

The biblical parables are probably the strongest parts of the film. Scorsese does strip these moments (Jesus turns water into wine) of their pomp and circumstance and makes them feel spontaneous. But from the moment a talking cobra is introduced, the film ceased to be anything I could possibly relate to.

Whiskey salesman Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) takes a break from talking malt with a bartender in order to stake a sleazebag (John Turturro) $20 in a pool game. The sleaze keeps losing, and keeps borrowing until Eddie takes interest in his opponent. Played by Tom Cruise, he’s a kid named Vincent, with high energy - swinging his cue around like a ninja - and a pompadour hair style.

Vincent’ girlfriend/manager Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) asks Eddie if he wants to play him for $20 a rack. Eddie tells her $500 a rack. She doesn’t know how to react. “You should say no. You know why? It’s too much money. And I’m an unknown. He should be the unknown. I mean, that would be nice. That would be beautiful. You could play around with that. You could control that.”

Eddie takes the couple to dinner. Vincent says his areas of excellence are the arcade game Stocker, and 9-ball pool. Eddie remarks that Vincent is a natural character, but “you couldn’t find big time if you had a road map. Pool excellence is not about excellent pool. It’s about becoming someone. A student. You’ve got to be a student of human moves. That’s my area of excellence.”

Carmen reveals herself to be more business than her buffoonish boyfriend, who has a job at Baby World. Working together with Eddie, she gets Vincent to quit his job and go on the road with them for six weeks, leaving Chicago and heading toward a 9-ball tournament in Atlantic City. Along the way, Eddie tries to school his protege in human moves, and begins to regain his passion for pool as a player.

Vincent proves insecure when it comes to his girlfriend, and refuses to throw games when Eddie tells him to, scaring away big money players. Eddie is not beyond the reaches of pride himself, getting too cocky and allowing himself to be gutted by a hustler played by Forest Whitaker. Eddie quits the couple, but ends up in Atlantic City on his own, where he faces Vincent in the semi-finals.

The Color of Money was written by Walter Tevis as a sequel to The Hustler, which was made into a classic film with Newman in 1961. The new book followed Fast Eddie as he picked up a cue against his rival Minnesota Fats once again. Newman sent it to director Martin Scorsese, but neither one were thrilled about it. Scorsese brought in Richard Price to write an entirely new screenplay. Scorsese agreed to direct the Touchstone property, hoping the cache would enable him to make his dream project, The Last Temptation of Christ.

Knocking this movie has become an almost knee-jerk reaction, due to the fact Disney produced it, Tom Cruise starred in it, and Scorsese was calling “action” as a director for hire. But it’s still a good movie. Richard Price wrote a script infused with excellent tension, tension between young and old, men and women, hustler and mark. There’s a lot of good dialogue, and the characters have some depth to them.

In contrast to The Hustler, the atmosphere in The Color of Money feels like a playground. Bars have video games now, and instead of being bastions of masculinity, the stakes feel greatly reduced in them. The tournament is more Disneyland than Atlantic City; I couldn’t have cared less what happened there. But working with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and art designer Boris Leven, Scorsese made the picture an embarrassment of riches visually.

Cruise’s showboat sequence set to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” is as beautiful a piece of camera movement and film editing as I’ve seen. The scene where Forest Whitaker hustles Newman is brilliant, two great actors going at each other. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was nominated for an Academy Award for her strong work, as was Paul Newman, who after seven nominations finally won an Oscar, more so for his distinguished career than this film in particular.