The Irishman Is Like No Other Gangster Movie Scorsese Has Ever Made

Early on in The Irishman, the film's titular lead character, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), recounts a story about his time serving in World War II where he held two enemy soldiers at gunpoint while they dug their own graves. Sheeran, while telling this tale, puzzles over why the two soldiers were doing this task. "Did they think that, if they did a good enough job, they would be let go?" he ponders. Whatever drove them to dig those graves, it really didn't matter in the end, they ended up as corpses in the ground. Such a tale ends up being a parallel for the overarching story of Martin Scorsese's epic crime saga The Irishman, which is all about gangsters like Sheeran digging their own graves while ignoring the inevitable doom that awaits them.

After Hours Is A Rapid-Fire Dark Comedy Gem

Typically, Martin Scorsese movies are known for their expansive nature. They follow gangsters for numerous years of their lives, they follow Jesus Christ all the way to a theoretical life hinging on him never getting crucified or they follow the lead character of Silence as he grapples with his personal religious calling over decades. This means After Hours is an intriguing anomaly in his filmography, it takes place over the course of a single night. This is a far leaner Scorsese motion picture all about cramming as much as possible into a small amount of time, which means both the protagonist and camera are constantly being whipped across the screen to some new sight that's bound to fascinate the audience.

The Snowman Is A Frosty Murder Mystery Misfire

Do you want to build a snowman? C'mon, your snowman can't turn out any worse than Tomas Alfredson's new thriller The Snowman, a film that clearly was meant to be a snowy Silence Of The Lambs but ends up being more incoherent than anything else. The premise of The Snowman, alas, does not revolve around a crime-solving snowman, but rather Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender, and yes, multiple characters solemnly intone that name throughout the film) taking time away from his favorite past time of drinking booze and passing out on playground equipment so that he can concentrate on a local missing person case, with the individual that's missing being a mother who's having marriage troubles.