It is inexcusable that the 25th anniversary edition does not include captions. If it did, I could have watched this on mute and half-way enjoyed it. Every sound is offensive, whether that’s the interminably repetitive call and response melody, the overblown SFX editing, or the voice over work which is some of the worst put to film. Harper must have recorded her lines on horse tranquilizers. Italian cinema purists can keep this garbage. It is purposefully bad. They had the…

You can definitely feel Scorsese’s love for Kurosawa throughout. Even more charming are his Malick moments which crop up during Garfield’s narration. Not simply because it’s the protagonist voicing over his own actions to a pastoral backdrop, though that’s obviously a clue, but also the philosophical struggles that drive him to his next scene of dramatic uncertainty. This must have been a very personal project for Scorsese; otherwise he would not have taken the run time to explore every nuance…