Martin Scorsese: Ranking His Feature Films

9) Mean Streets (1973)

Martin Scorsese was told by John Cassavetes that Who’s That Knocking on My Door was a good film, and that he should make something like that again. Scorsese was encouraged by such advice, as it was a path he was eager to explore further. And being a huge fan of Cassavetes and his work was a sweet bonus. Scorsese was on the back of directing Boxcar Bertha for Roger Corman, where he developed a certain disciline as a filmmaker.

He wanted to depict a street life not dissimilar to the one he grew up with, as well as taking another step into his own filmmaking journey. Mean Streets promises much of what was to come from Scorsese. And in Robert De Niro, too, a star was born. His Johnny Boy is a live-wire, and the actor portrays him with a certain amateurish venom, as well as a raw emotion.

Robin Write

8) Casino (1995)

Now, despite these familiar themes regarding crime and consequence, Casino is not a carbon-copy of what Scorsese did with Goodfellas. In fact, there are a few elements that distinctly separate one film from the other. The first being empathy for it’s main character. The point of Goodfellas wasn’t to romanticize the gangster lifestyle, but to condemn men like Henry Hill, James “Jimmy the Gent” Conway, Tommy DeVito and Paul Cicero, and label them as the scumbags that they are. And while Scorsese didn’t shed any sympathy for Pesci’s Nicky when he sees his own brutal end, Marty shows a significant amount of empathy toward Rothstein. Yes, he was a part of the Mafia, but you could see his passion for his craft.

You could tell he loved being in charge of the Tangier: running the floor, keeping guests entertained and throwing away their money, making sure that there was an equal amount of blueberries placed in a muffin, and you can see how much it killed him when the Nevada state legislature screwed him out of gaining his gaming license to continue running the place, and when he was resorted to doing tricks on TV in order to stay on the hotel floor. In short: running the casino was his identity.

Jonathan Holmes

7) Silence (2016)

Set in 1667, two Portuguese missionaries, Father Sebastian Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), embark on a perilous journey to Japan to find their missing mentor (Liam Neeson) who it is rumoured has denounced the Catholic religion and is now living life as Japanese civilian after witnessing the torture and death of many of his fellow missionaries. The two men’s guide is a Japanese man named Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka) who has become a drunk after being forced to renounce his religion. While there, the two men minister to the Christian villagers who worship in secret. If caught by feudal lords or ruling samurai, they must renounce their faith or face a prolonged and agonizing death at the hands of the Inquisitor named Inoue (Issei Ogata).

Eventually Rodrigues and Garupe separate, and we follow Rodrigues as he tries to continue his task, all the while finding that his faith is being tested. The film is written by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. The film is inspired by true historical events, being set in the time when it was common for Christians to hide from persecution following the suppression of Japanese Roman Catholics during the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638), the end result is a moving drama which is visually breathtaking.

Bee Garner

6) The King of Comedy (1982)

The King of Comedy does a wonderful job showcasing the cult of celebrity, the machinations of the media, and how the deranged and delusional drive to be someone can make all the difference. We spend the better part of two hours with a desperate dreamer who can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.

He has nothing but that impossible dream pushing him from place to place, chasing down every possibility and being foolish in the process. Rupert manages to successfully kidnap Jerry and negotiates with the FBI to allow him to host the Late Night show in return for releasing him once the show airs. Through the kidnapping it sinks in that we’re not only dealing with a delusional individual but a dangerous one as well. Someone that is willing to go to these lengths to obtain fame and notoriety is frankly capable of just about anything.

Rob Motto

5) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Martin Scorsese has perfected the stylish crime and gangster pictures with music, editing, creative and intuitive composition and framing and a fundamental understanding of cinema. So as I sat down to watch The Wolf of Wall Street again, it occurred to me that it was structured almost entirely like Goodfellas.

There is one voice who tells the whole story just like in Goodfellas. There are multiple digressions piecing together the whole narrative and all the players, put together much like a movie trailer. The same type of stylistic storytelling that Scorsese is known for with some breaking the fourth wall by DiCaprio, intimating how illegal what he and his company were doing. It shows the rise and downfall of a prominent criminal albeit a white collar criminal. That’s really the difference between these two movies, the class difference of Wall Street crooks like Belfort and the lower class ones like Henry Hill.

Rob Motto

4) The Departed (2006)

It’s an amazing journey the film takes us on with DiCaprio’s Costigan going through a rollercoaster ride of close calls and near deadly experiences. There are open questions that aren’t answered and the film only offers possibilities.

Like Delahunt who worked as muscle for the Costello gang, who died of a gunshot wound after a gun fight with the Cops after the death of Captain Queenan. He calls Billy over and reveals to him that he knows he’s the informer amongst them, and to ask him why he didn’t tell anybody. It’s a haunting moment and just a second later he succumbs to the gunshot wound and dies. It’s reported the next day after the Police find his body that Timothy Delahunt was an undercover Police Officer with the city of Boston. Costello offers up that the news is simply reporting this so that he won’t look for the informer among them. We never know whether Delahunt was an undercover cop, it would explain why he didn’t say anything but the fact that we don’t know is haunting.

Rob Motto