Looking past the controversy, "The Last Temptation of Christ" gained critical acclaim and remains an important work in Scorsese's canon: an explicit attempt to wrestle with the spirituality underpinning his films up until that point. The director went on to receive his second nomination for a Best Director Academy Award (again unsuccessfully, this time losing to Barry Levinson for "Rain Man"). As a separate film project, and along with directors Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola in 1989, Scorsese provided one of three segments in the portmanteau film "New York Stories", called "Life Lessons". Roger Ebert's gave the film a mixed review, while praising Scorsese's short as "really successful".