NOTHING LESS THAN AN ABIDING MIRACLE OF CINEMA… The film’s uncompromised glories are manifold. Michael Chapman’s cinematography, whose black-and-white palette emulates the street photography of Weegee, is at the top of the list, along with Thelma Schoonmaker’s crisp editing and the meticulous sound design.The dialogue, which ducks and jabs in cadences distinct to the Italian-American vernacular, spits forth like inchoate poetry. (Steve Dollar, The Wall Street Journal)

30 years later, Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece is still as fascinating and complex a character study as you’re ever to find on film. Raging Bull also offers a unique cinematic vision of New York in a B&W that is incredibly both glamorous and gritty. For the next four days, Film Forum has it on the big screen, in a spectacular new 35mm print. Every detail of Scorsese’s direction, Chapman’s shots, De Niro’s face, is there in its full glory. It runs through Thursday. Not to be missed if you haven’t seen the film recently or on a big screen.

Through Thursday the 11th at Film Forum, 209 W Houston St in the West Village. Playing at 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30. Tickets available online here.

Not simply the greatest boxing movie ever made; arguably the finest American film released in a decade when Hollywood retreated from the tragic realist vision of American life enshrined in Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather films. If Raging Bull is much closer in look and spirit to Rossellini than Mr. Coppola’s films are, it is also an extremely self-conscious masterwork that forces us to feel the metaphorical weight of every bead of sweat, hallway shadow and camera angle. (Stephen Holden, The New York Times)

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