See this post for details on what this is all about and this post for Round 1 results.

Film vs. Film Challenge: Round 2, Match 5

Taxi Driver vs. Seven Samurai

Scorsese's disturbing treatise on violence and obsession will features a twisted lead, a legendary director, a landmark performance, and chilling violence. Akira Kurosawa’s epic masterpiece influenced scores of directors to come and is considered one of the greatest foreign language films of all time, innovating and influencing even to this day.

VS.

VOTE!

Jaws


But since that film was somehow overlooked, I'll go again for The (Eastern)Magnificent Seven.

Seven samurai my #1 all time movie. Jaws does beat Taxi Driver tho.

T

I never saw either. Most people never heard of Seven Samarai in this country, even if it is influential to film makers, so I'll go with Taxi Driver, since at the very least the performance is memorable.

Well in that case let me remove it from the running.

Kikuchiyo would slice Travis Bickle in half and go back to picking his teeth.

End of story.

He's right though, outside of film buffs, not a lot of people have heard of it here. That doesn't make it any less of a film, considering how many movies are pretty much based on it. I've only heard of it because of its influence, and never have seen it.

I voted Taxi Driver because I've seen it.

Your asking me to judge great films. Part of that is their impact. For me, that's not just impact on critics, or on filmmakers, but the public. Most people never saw it here. Most people never heard of it. Most that have are probabky film majors or Star Wars fans. Since I've seen neither, that weighed on me heavily.

I never said you should remove it. I gave the reason, as you said when you started this we should do, for me not voting for it. I did so.

Weren't you just arguing the other day that the sole thing we should base out decisions on is what we see on screen, and not outside factors, or was that someone else? Because a flm's impact is most certainly an outside factor.

Of course you didn't. I was being snarky, because "Most people never heard of Seven Samarai in this country" is amazingly <UNWAN comment here> reasoning.

"Most people" have never seen Citizen Kane, either.

You could just say "Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven". Everyone has seen the Magnificent Seven.

That would be a good porn name, but I bet it's been done.

Mind you, Rob, I'm not knocking your opinion or saying you suck because you haven't seen the movie. Not at all.

(1) I am a complex person.

(2) It is?

(3) I don't remember, but didn't I vote against Citizen Kane?

If you did, it was probably just to annoy me.

(1) yes you are as you know. Seems to be happening a lot lately

(2) I do suck for not having seen it. But there it is.

Probably was 50% of it. you or others.

Kurosawa's Seven Samurai trumps DeNiro, hands down.

No, he means those aren't the reasons he knocks your opinions and you suck!

Oh, and incidentally, Seven Samurai for me. Watched it again this weekend and loved it all over again. Black and white? Subtitles? Doesn't matter even to my son, who is always enthralled in the story when I have it on. Kurosawa was such a masterfully visual storyteller that you can ignore the subtitles and still get every nuance of the story. He paints a huge cast of characters with short, deft strokes, and lets this story build and build to its rousing climax with steady, deliberate, purposeful steps. When it comes to action, it's amazing the stuff he was doing in the mid 1950s, long before such techniques were common. Spielberg owes a lot to Kurosawa.

Taxi Driver is awesome, featuring one of the best DeNiro performances of an outstanding career, and some of Scorsese's most chilling direction. It's a grim, filthy portrait of 1970s New York's seedy underbelly.

But Seven Samurai is Seven Samurai, damnit.

At the moment, I chose Taxi Driver.

But it's an incredibly close one.

One thing I liked about The Magnificent Seven is that when director John Sturges made the remake of Seven Samurai, he didn't look at how much he could throw away, he looked at how much he could keep.

I went with Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai.