Cape Fear
For one reason or another I'd never been able to catch Scorsese's take on the 1962 original. Lame, I know. Anyway, now that I've seen it I'd take it any time over the Gregory Peck / Bob Mitchum original. For one thing, it has a real sense of humour, intentional or not. The best example of this is the scene when the private eye is searching the house for Cady, who he knows is in there somewhere. The way Scorsese reveals Cady is straight out of a cartoon, even more so when Sam Bowden has his accident on the floor soon after. Maybe it's details like this, as well as De Niro's portrayal of Cady, that is why The Simpsons were able to produce such a hysterical episode based on it, musical cues and everything.
Bad points? Well, Scorsese's use of negative photography grates and feels schlocky. Maybe he was going for that because he's not going to make mistakes like that. Also, Mitchum was actually scarier for me than De Niro as Max Cady because he wasn't so OTT. He was dangerous, calculating and a vindictive SOB. He was also so much more real. But De Niro's character was more justified in his revenge due to the character change between Peck's and Nolte's Bowden. Having a morally ambiguous hero makes the film more interesting, rather than having us side with Peck's all-American family. A lot of this (including the daughter's attraction to Cady) may have been off-limits in the 60s as the level of violence certainly was, but it still results in the more entertaining film.