Best of: Martin Scorsese films

In case you missed it, Martin Scorsese’s new film, The Irishman—about the Buffalino crime family and their connection to infamous Teamster Jimmy Hoffa—landed on Netflix on the 27th of November after a limited cinema release. It’s a big deal because, well, it’s Scorsese, and also because it marks the re-uniting of some of the best actors of our time; namely, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci (who hasn’t appeared in a film since 2010). So, in honour of his latest three-hour extravaganza, here’s a list of what I consider to be Scorsese’s five best films.

5. Raging Bull

Scorsese’s gritty 1980 drama Raging Bull is the kind of film that’s hard to love, lacking the sort of re-watchability of some his other works. That’s not a criticism, though. It’s proof of the unyielding intensity of the film, and the horror and discomfort that it evokes. Despite appearances, it’s not a film about boxing. It’s about a man, Jake LaMotta (De Niro in a transformative role), who is paralysed by jealousy and insecurity, and for whom fighting in and out of the ring is his only respite: a form of repentance and absolution. The film is an agonising portrait of the quintessential tortured male, and an undeniable testament to Scorsese’s abilities as a filmmaker.

4. The Departed

It’s an unfortunately common occurrence at the Oscars for a director to win the Award for Best Picture for the film that isn’t their best picture, as a sort of implicit acknowledgement that they should have won at some point earlier in their career. For Scorsese, that film is The Departed, which is sort of all of his best ideas rolled into one slick crime thriller. It’s got mafiosos and mobsters, police corruption, bar fights, and one of the best casts of any Scorsese flick. What the film might suffer from in an overblown Jack Nicholson performance, it compensates for with a near-flawless Leonardo DiCaprio performance (for which, outrageously, he did not receive an Oscar). The film isn’t perfect, but it’s damn close, and more enjoyable with each passing year.

3. Mean Streets

Mean Streets is Scorsese’s 1973 retelling of I Vitelloni, Federico Fellini’s 1953 drama about a group of young men at defining points in their lives. It follows two small-time crooks, tortured Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and wild Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), who live among the lower echelons of the New York mob world. In Mean Streets, Scorsese is experimenting with the themes that would come to define his career: violence, masculinity, Catholicism, and guilt. He explores these themes more successfully and with more focus in his later projects, but Mean Streets feels like an important first step in that direction.

2. Taxi Driver

Like its protagonist, Travis Bickle, Scorsese’s 1976 drama Taxi Driver has always verged on too real, too discomfiting, and nightmarish. De Niro plays Bickle in an iconic performance that captures the anguish of an alienated and sadistic young man who is dangerous in a way that even he can’t comprehend. He represents the disillusioned male figures that we’re surrounded by every day, that exists in every culture. Bombs waiting to detonate. Both Bickle and the hellish vision of New York he inhabits remain as powerful and familiar as ever.

1. Goodfellas

This is one of those rare occasions where a director’s best-known film is also their best film. In fact, Goodfellas is now so ingrained in our cultural conscience that it risks being reduced to a collection of memorable quotes and Stones songs, but it only takes revisiting the film to realise how captivating, nuanced, and, frankly, entertaining it is. It’s a reminder that the criminals that are the frequent subjects of Scorsese’s work love the chaotic lives they lead, despite, or perhaps because of, the dangers they’re exposed to. Goodfellas is Scorsese’s cinematic vision of the American Dream, disfigured and corrupted by rampant violence, capitalism, and individual arrogance, and I’d say it’s one of the best films ever made.