Goodfellas 5 Ways Its Scorseses Best Movie (& 5 Alternatives)

Goodfellas: 5 Ways It’s Scorsese’s Best Movie (& 5 Alternatives)

Goodfellas can easily be argued as Martin Scorsese’s best movie but there are several other strong contenders for the title.

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Martin Scorsese is hailed as possibly the greatest living filmmaker. Ever since his big break in the early ‘70s with his “New Hollywood” contemporaries, Scorsese has been regularly turning out masterpieces that capture the zeitgeist and stand the test of time. Very few filmmakers can speak to their audience through sounds and images quite like Scorsese can.

Arguably the director’s finest film is 1990’s Goodfellas, his biopic of Henry Hill. It’s the pinnacle of his ongoing cinematic thesis about guilt, violence, and the dangers of a criminal lifestyle. But in his storied five-decade career, Scorsese has also produced plenty of alternatives.

10 Goodfellas Is The Best: It Hits Like A Speeding Bullet

Scorsese’s goal with Goodfellas was to make a two-and-a-half-hour movie with the rapid pace, all-over-the-place cutting, and manic energy of the opening minutes of Jules et Jim in order to give the best possible cinematic representation of mafia life.

He succeeded masterfully. Goodfellas is a 145-minute movie that feels like an 80-minute movie. It hits like a speeding bullet. Viewers aren’t given a second to breathe.

9 Alternative: Mean Streets

While it wasn’t technically Scorsese’s directorial debut, Mean Streets is the earliest Scorsese movie that feels like a Scorsese movie, with its rampant themes of Catholic guilt and gangland violence.

Instead of following a traditional three-act plot, Mean Streets is a collection of vignettes about Italian-American mobsters, focusing on the relationship between the embattled Charlie and his reckless friend Johnny Boy. The dynamic is played impeccably by Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro.

8 Goodfellas Is The Best: The Performances Are Unforgettable

Almost all Scorsese movies have one or two memorable performances, usually courtesy of Robert De Niro or Leonardo DiCaprio, but in Goodfellas, every single cast member is firing on all cylinders at the height of their powers. Ray Liotta leads the parade as Henry Hill, nailing his personality at each stage of his life, from his early days as a young, hungry mafioso to his debilitating, paranoia-inducing drug addiction to his misery in witness protection.

An Oscar-winning Joe Pesci steals every scene as the hot-tempered Tommy DeVito, while Robert De Niro quietly gives one of his most nuanced performances as Jimmy Conway. Lorraine Bracco brilliantly conveys the way Karen gets seduced by Henry’s glamorous lifestyle, while Paul Sorvino brings a subtle, but powerful humanity to betrayed mob boss Paulie.

7 Alternative: The King Of Comedy

Robert De Niro and, to a lesser extent, Scorsese himself had become burned out with fame in the early 1980s when the script for The King of Comedy came across their desk. This showbiz satire was the perfect outlet for the duo’s frustrations and insecurities.

The humor in The King of Comedy is pitch-black, from the abduction of a talk show host to the over-the-top delusions of a disturbed mind obsessed with making it as a comedian, and it works wonders.

6 Goodfellas Is The Best: It’s Artful AND Entertaining

Most movies are either artful or entertaining. Moviegoers can watch a movie that’s artful and thought-provoking, like Roma, or they can watch a movie that’s fun, escapist entertainment, like Guardians of the Galaxy.

But Goodfellas is a rare example of a movie that can have its cake and eat it, too. There are heavy themes at play in Goodfellas, as well as an informative, true-to-life plot. But it’s also fast-paced, action-packed, and really funny.

5 Alternative: The Irishman

Scorsese’s most recent movie, The Irishman, feels like a spiritual successor to Goodfellas. But it’s slower, more mature, and more meditative than its predecessor. In telling the story of Frank Sheeran, the mob hitman who claimed to have been responsible for the unsolved murder of union boss Jimmy Hoffa, Scorsese placed a heavy emphasis on how all these mafiosos are ultimately left sad and alone at the tail end of their lives.

Shaky de-aging effects aside, Robert De Niro gives a poignant performance as Frank, while Al Pacino steals every scene as Hoffa and Joe Pesci offers a heartbreaking counterpoint to his usual short-tempered on-screen persona as Russell Bufalino.

4 Goodfellas Is The Best: It Has The Feel Of A Documentary

Real-life mobsters have said that Goodfellas plays like a home movie because it captures the daily life of the mafia so perfectly. Scorsese dedicates as much time to the gangsters’ personal lives, like when Tommy’s mother shows her new painting to her son and his cohorts, as he does to all the murder and theft and intimidation.

Scorsese allowed his actors to go off-script and improvise lines, so a lot of the conversations aren’t burdened by the inherent artifice of written dialogue and ring true.

3 Alternative: Raging Bull

Martin Scorsese credits Raging Bull with saving his life when he was in the throes of drug addiction. Robert De Niro had brought him Jake LaMotta’s story a few times, but he’d always turned him down because he didn’t want to make a sports movie. When he finally convinced him it wasn’t a sports movie, but rather a character study about an angry, broken, terrible person, they got to work on one of their finest masterpieces.

Recovering from his first box office bomb, Scorsese made Raging Bull like it was going to be his final film. To capture one of De Niro’s rawest, most honest performances, Scorsese contrasted the stylish, cinematic fight scenes with minimalist domestic scenes.

2 Goodfellas Is The Best: It’s The Perfect Cautionary Tale About Mafia Life

The life of Henry Hill, a mobster who had it all, got hooked on drugs against his boss’ wishes, and eventually sold out all his closest friends to gain federal protection, provided Scorsese with the perfect groundwork to caution viewers about the inevitable tragedy of working for the mob.

In Goodfellas, Henry has a fraction of the glitz and glamor of the Corleone family and he has to do all the dirty work that the Michaels and Vitos get to avoid. The message behind all of Scorsese’s gangster movies is that becoming a gangster is never a good idea, and Goodfellas is the best example of that.

1 Alternative: Taxi Driver

Scorsese’s neo-noir masterpiece Taxi Driver can be described as “The Searchers in New York.” The director was heavily inspired by the central dynamic in John Ford’s classic western in creating the greatest vigilante thriller of all time. The ongoing waste management strike left the streets of New York piling up with trash, which provided the perfect visual metaphor for the backdrop of Scorsese’s movie.

Robert De Niro gives the performance of a lifetime as Travis Bickle, the quintessential antihero, a Vietnam vet who returns to his native city with PTSD and insomnia, filling his nights with cabbie work as the surrounding crime sickens him and he’s driven to exact his own brand of justice in a hauntingly realistic climactic shootout.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/goodfellas-reasons-best-martin-scorsese-movie-other-alternatives/

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