Popular reviews

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  Review by Karsten ★★★★½ 8

  The darkest I’ve seen Scorsese go. The way at which the edit goes about capturing exhaustion is pretty genius, staying chaotic and loud for brief periods of time but allowing for that come down to feel just as strong. The trip sequence is unreal. While it’s undoubtedly unfortunate this is as under-appreciated as it is, it’s not the most accessible of Scorsese’s work so I completely understand. Everything about this is hopeless and I’m sad. Imagine going from this to Gangs of New York LOL

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★★ 1

  “No one asked you to suffer. That was your idea.”

  Our lady of perpetual existential misery. Another one of Paul Schrader’s lonely, suffering, guilty men seeking spiritual redemption on the grimy, bloody Catholic streets of Scorsese’s New York and given a jolt of anxious, manic energy by the specificity of Joe Connelly's autobiographical experiences within the milieu of the nocturnal paramedics of Hell's Kitchen addicted to the high of saving life but struggling to bear witness to all the ugly misery and death. Cage is practically a human-sized bag under an eye, perpetually strung out and driving himself into an expressively paranoid, purgatorial madness alongside a collection of hilarious character actor turns (by Goodman, Rhames, and Sizemore who are all…

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe 15

  The way this movie looks- wow!! The camera movement is so delightfully energetic. I think that whip/dolly combo Scorsese and PTA love so much is one of my favorite types of shots. And the use of light here!!!! Phenomenal!!! Every scene is somewhere between a surgical examination and a fantasy. So glimmering, like everyone is either stepping into or out of heaven. Guarantee every alt-rock music video pitch through the early 2000s had at least four shots from this movie in it.

  Couldn’t have cast a better lead than Nic Cage. His face is perfectly haunted, and the entire time you’re waiting for him to go nuts, it only feels miserable when he finally does. Love the depiction of medical…

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  Review by 9VOLT ★★★★ 3

  i’ve never seen a man look so tired

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus] ★★★★★ 13

  Everybody and everything in the early 1990's New York City of 'Bringing Out The Dead' is dying, dead, or lost somewhere between or beyond. The city is purgatorial, an antechamber to the afterlife or overrun with it. There are so many dead the ghosts have backed up onto the streets and the apartments and the hospitals and diners where they hang out indefinitely until they get the call to someplace else. Martin Scorsese perfectly captures the liminal areas between sleep and waking, between life and death, where overadrenalized burnout and overtired exhaustion promote an aimless, frantic drift whose urgency seems arbitrary because when everything is urgent, all of the time, the signals mount until they fade into the overall texture…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 7

  "Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth - everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there - why deny that for a moment there, God was you?"

  Anything but lesser Scorsese. A brilliant film about communities, and the City, and the space between life and death. Nicolas Cage delivers in one of the finest…

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  Review by Jamelle Bouie ★★★★ 5

  Underrated Scorsese anchored by a wonderful and (relatively) understated performance from Cage. Basically, "what if New York were purgatory? And what if the angel tasked with shepherding lost souls found his job intolerable?" I found it incredibly compelling.

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  Review by liam f ★★★★½ 2

  the most surreal thing about this by far has to be the fact that I just watched a Scorsese film on Disney+

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  Review by sarah squirm 3

  still banging my pots and pans for nic cage

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  Review by Sophy ★★★★½ 1

  Truly an astonishing film about the burden of empathy. Nicholas Cage delivers a performance of equal parts introversion and extroversion as Frank, a paramedic struggling with the emotional weight of his work. Part way through the film, Frank realizes that his job is less about saving lives, and more about bearing witness to death, a theme that is explored throughout. The narrative is mostly derived from the juxtaposition between Frank and his partners varying coping mechanisms. Each paramedic is captured from a different set of angles from within the ambulance, Frank often being shot through mirrors and reflections. The ambulance serves as a literal and figurative vehicle, representing the blood soaked, impoverished, panic filled streets of New York in the…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★

  "The first step is love, the second is mercy."

  it will never be accomplished.

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  Review by Branson Reese 8

  Does anybody know who wrote this screenplay?