Brian De Palma

1940-

I am fascinated with the films of De Palma. With the exception of Scarface, I love everything that Ive seen from this brilliant director. Recently I rewatched Blow Out and found striking similarities with Antonioni's Blow-up. De Palma's version however, succeeds where Antonioni's thriller failed- at delivering a taut mystery that builds up on its narrative. Blow-up felt shallow and its ending was disappointing. But anyway, this thread's about De Palma and his movies. He is one of the few imaginative (though at times he does get carried away by his visual excesses) directors to emerge during the 70s.

What are your favourite movies from this man?

Highly recommended films: Blow Out, Dressed To Kill

Recommended films: Carrie, Carlito's Way

Not recommended films: Casualties of War, The Untouchables, MI

Avoid like the plague: Scarface

I like this director,well he's not my favorite but nearly all of his movies which I saw,I enjoyed.Well,I didn't like The Black Dahlia but I saw it long time ago.My favorites of Brian Del Palma are: Scarface,Carlito's Way and The Untouchables.

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"Anything less than immortality is a complete waste of time."

Your least recommended De Palma films are my favourites, Tyler . But I definitely agree that Blow Out is a great movie.

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"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."

Tyler, you forgot to give De Palma his full and proper name. His name is Brian "Look At Me! I've Got A Camera!" De Palma. While he's made some films I like, I'm definately not a fan. I know a lot of people like Phantom Of Paradise (and a lot of them would probably expect me to like it to) but I'm not one of them. Obssession is truly one of the most boring films I've ever seen. I like Carrie, with which he pretty much (single handedly ) invented the final jump scare. The Fury I've not seen since I was about 9 or 10, but I thought it was boring at the time. Dressed To Kill is fun, but the ending is a little... AAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!! Enjoyable, though. Blow Out I didn't care for. Scarface is my favourite film of his and on my top 100. Body Double's quite good and a much better Hitchcock film than Obssession. Wise Guys? The Untouchables? No. (Though I have to admit that my dislike of Schawn Connery and his attrocious accent attempt are both turned up to full with this one.) Casualties of War is good, but a tough watch. My overall feeling about Bonfire Of The Vanities is that it was really, really bad. I can remember virtually nothing about it though. I liked Raising Cain. John Lithgow turns it on in full scene-chewing mode. Carlito's Way is a really good gangster film. Mission: Impossible is, almost, the definition of meh. Even Emmanuelle Béart in all her mid-90's glory hasn't created many memories in my mind. Snake Eyes is not good, plus there's Nic Cage to deal with.

That's the last De Palma film I saw. I have The Black Dahlia on the shelf, but have yet to check it out. Not that I'm missing much, from what I've been told.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I quite like De Palma. He's one of those guys, like Malick, with whom there appears to be little or no middle ground. You either hate or love the guy. I personally think his visual style and creation of a certain atmosphere is top notch. His stories are not easy to follow and can seem incomprehensible, but it's not like it's complete rubbish ALL the time.

Here's how I'd rate his work:

The Untouchables +
Carlito's Way
Mission: Impossible +
Casualties of War
Blow Out
Dressed To Kill
Scarface
Body Double +
Obsession
Femme Fatale
The Black Dahlia +
Snake Eyes

I got excited about this thread when I first opened it, but then I saw that you do not recommend The Untouchables. One of the best films of the 80s and you don't recommend it.

Yes, honeykid, he says, "look at me, I have a camera" so what is wrong with that? That's the best part! Every frame of The Untouchables screams "I love movies, don't you?" And that makes the movie such a treat. I remember nearly screaming with delight when I saw the sailors in the stairway scene, knowing what dePalma was doing (I was a film student who studied Eisenstein).

I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!

I'm sorry, how can you not love that??????

GREAT MOVIE!

&feature=related

Here endeth the lesson.

P.S. The music alone should make this a recommended film.

Note Language

^ Yuck. Pacino overacting again.

What? It's a classic! C'mon, mate!

Only for sweaty teenage boys.

This something a teenager would find funny

Not for me. Do you like Guy Ritchie, too? He does the same thing, but with even less talent and is even more annoying.

Again, not for me.

So did I and I hated Eisenstein. So very, very boring. I will give De Palma some credit for making that scene slightly less boring and annoying than the original "falling pram" part of The Odessa Steps scene.

Meh?

Sad to see Casualties of War in the "not recommended" films list. It's long been one of my favorite movies.

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Ah, honeykid loves arguing with me.

I am sad that you cannot find the joy in The Untouchables that I can.

I do have a lot of time for The Untouchables, too.

Okay, Ive not seen The Untouchables for a very long time. All I know was that it did not leave a lasting impression on me. Seeing the amount of praise for the film here makes me want to watch it again, if I have the time.

I'm a huge fan of De Palma. I probably shouldn't even try to pretend to be objective or rank his films from good to bad, considering I even like turkeys like Mission to Mars (which I just watched for the third time the other day - there's some pretty fantastic stuff in that movie) and Bonfire of the Vanities. I will just say that my long-time favorite (the first that I really got into) is The Untouchables, and that I've more recently come to love The Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie and Casualties of War just as much. There are a whole mess that I need to see again (Femme Fatale is near the top of that list) as well as several early/obscure films that I haven't seen at all yet.

Unfortunately I've only seen two of his movies on the big screen: The Black Dahlia and Dressed to Kill (double feature with The Prestige at a Michael Caine retrospective in Silver Springs). There was a retrospective of a whole bunch of his thrillers a year ago in Brooklyn, but it just happened to coincide with finals week.

Getting into De Palma's films recently and I have yet to see a bad one- I've watched Sisters, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and Body Double. Looking forward to Obsession, The Fury, Scarface, and The Untouchables. Tyler, I'll agree with you that Blow Out and Dressed to Kill is his best work, at least from what I've seen so far.

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"Puns are the highest form of literature." -Alfred Hitchcock

De Palma's very hit and miss for me - I enjoy, Blow Out, Dressed to Kill and to a certain extent Carlito's Way. I really can't stand Scarface, The Untouchables and a fair few others that would take up too much space to name.

De Palma is of course notorious for 'homaging' other directors, to put it politely. Out and out stealing from other directors would be the unpolite way of putting it. Hitchcock is the director that gets mentioned most in this regard and there are definite call backs, shot selections and ideas in DePalma's films that can be directly paired with many directors works not just Hitchcock's. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide. This of course isn't to say he's the only person who borrows, sometimes heavily, from directors of a previous era, Tarantino of course being the most notable in this instance

While I agree with the OP that Blow Out succeeds in creating a taut thriller, where Antonioni's Blow Up did not. Where our the disagreement would come on such a point is in the fact that I'm not sure creating such a film was Antonioni's intention - but that's a discussion for another day.

Interesting that you love this director and not for the films he is most famous for.