The Movie Forums Top 100 of All-Time Refresh: Countdown

Probably Goodfellas, maybe 2001

Dark horse candidate: Dark Knight and The Departed

I think Black Beauty might be a dark horse candidate.

1. The Dark Knight 2. The Departed it is then

The gap between #4 and #3, 88 points, is not only the highest on this list, but is almost three times as high as the second-highest.

Goodfellas is #1 on my ballot list

My Summary:
Seen: 43/98

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My favorite Scorsese and my favorite gangster flick. What's more to say?


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81/98 films seen

Well, we all know The Godfather won so mine as well post the final 2

GoodFellas was #1 on the MoFo ‘90s List. Now go home and get yer fu*kin’ shinebox.

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Goodfellas made my final list of 37, but obviously had to cut 12 and it was one of the cuts. It could have made it on a different day maybe. After Hours was another of those cuts.

Goodfellas wasn't on my list but probably should have been. I think that it's my brother's number one favourite film.

There are certain films that just exude non-stop energy, that have a vibrance to them that makes them immensely rewatchable. Goodfellas definitely does that and more, which is remarkable considering its fairly long runtime. It constantly feels fresh, alive. I don't think Scorsese has ever topped it.

I love this letter from Scorsese's friend and idol, Michael Powell, after he read the screenplay. Michael Powell was also introduced to and married Scorsese's film editor Thelma Schoonmaker late in his life.

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I had Goodfellas all the way up at #5 on my list, just behind Braveheart. I thought I would mention that so all the MoFos that are still unsure know just how bad my taste in film is.

Thinking back to when I created my list, I don't recall what jack-hatted reasoning I had for putting Braveheart over Goodfellas, but I can't think of a good reason for it today. Oh well. I can fix it in ten years or so. Until then, it's the shinebox for me!

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My second favorite Scorsese movie at 12 (RB at 11).
The book is a fun read too.


Also, one of the best award speeches given by Joe Pesci when he received the Oscar for his role.

Totally second this sentence, my #2 film.

It's like a movie intro that just carries on at that pace for the whole film, with great scene after great scene, Joe Pesci on his absolute peak game, and amazing that Scorsese wasn't even going to cast him as Tommy at 46 years old until Pesci turned up with a wig on.

If there was a re-watchability countdown Goodfellas would be #1 and it wouldn't be close.

There are 2 sentences that I always recall in reference to that life in the movie, 1) that the mafia was really just the police force for guys that couldn't go to the cops, which I guess is part way true and 2) it's your friends that come to kill you when things are bad, what a terrifying thought that is.

The film certainly doesn't glorify Henry Hill but it always bothers me that he just runs to the FBI to save his own neck, we have to take his word that his friends were going to kill him and he's probably right, but ultimately the people who looked after him his whole life were betrayed, both in him carrying on with the drug trade and when caught he just betrayed them all.

I posted this guy's YouTube channel earlier with this specific Goodfellas video, but he's also done just about every other mafia movie, from fictional ones like The Godfather, The Departed, TV's Sopranos to the real ones like Gotti(96), Donnie Brasco. He was there, in the 80's knowing many of the people involved and if you're a fan of mafia movies it's worth hearing some of his insight and stories he has including run ins and business he had with Henry Hill, Paul Vario, Jimmy Conway, Donnie Brasco and the family he was attached to, sit downs with Gotti and Paul Castellano etc.

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Oh man, I love that. I bet that meant so much to Marty given how much he idolised Powell and his work.

Not on my list but a good film.

Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are damn near perfect themselves but GoodFellas is Scorsese's masterpiece among masterpieces. From the bloody trunk to the introduction of the voice over, "As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster" juxtaposed so perfectly with Tony Bennett crooning "Rags to Riches", this is a special cinematic ride-along with some very unsavory people whose charms and code of camaraderie are thin veils for ugly brutality and selfishness that come off like one of Morrie's toupees when shee-it goes down. And down it goes. Marty Scorsese is at his absolute heights of craft. For a story about cold-blooded criminals it is deceptively amusing and one of the most rewatchable films ever made. For me it may be the ultimate remote drop. If I'm flipping around cable and GoodFellas is on it doesn't matter where I've joined it. Whether it is ten minutes in or there are ten minutes left I am watching the rest of it. I cannot count how many times I have watched it on LaserDisc, DVD, and BluRay but fifty would be a lowball guess.

The camera, the music, the editing, the humor, the humanity, the barbaric savagery, and those characters will keep me interested forever and ever. Even after dozens of Mafia related movies, "The Sporanos", and every other damn thing GoodFellas remains a unique and incessantly satisfying cinematic journey. A top ten finish seemed inevitable here but I am as proud as Paulie on the courthouse steps after Henry took his first pinch that it made it all the way to number three. Great job, MoFo!

That is the last of my ballot to show. I had thirteen make the collective list. I have two more to reveal tomorrow, undisputed classics in my top ten that shockingly missed out.

HOLDEN'S LIST
1. Chinatown (#17)
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (#12)
3. Lawrence of Arabia (#15)
4. Casablanca (#4)
5. Blade Runner (#7)
7. GoodFellas (#3)
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (#31)
10. Singin’ in the Rain (#64)
11. After Hours (DNP)
12. Miller's Crossing (DNP)
13. La La Land (DNP)
14. Amélie (DNP)
15. North by Northwest (#57)
16. Young Frankenstein (#77)
17. The Social Network (DNP)
18. In a Lonely Place (DNP)
19. Brazil (#100)
20. His Girl Friday (DNP)
21. The Long Goodbye (DNP)
22. Rushmore (DNP)
23. Unforgiven (#43)
24. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (#33)
25. The Princess Bride (DNP)


As an unabashed Scorsese maniac, while it is great and fitting to have GoodFellas so near the top it is equally gratifying that The Departed missed the list completely! It's not a bad movie, but it is so far removed from the best work Scorsese has done it is downright embarrassing that it was the film that won Marty his ridiculously overdue Oscars. It is certainly watchable but it feels like Scorsese going through the motions. Like The Color of Money this seems to me like nothing more than giving the studio something marketable so he can finance the likes of Hugo and Silence down the line. If it succeeded on that level then goshvbless, but pretending The Departed is top tier Scorsese just because it made money and won awards is sacrilegious in the cathedral of cinema. For me Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone and The Town are both better Boston-set crime pictures, not to mention Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle and even Eastwood's Mystic River.

Good riddance, I says.

Goodfellas This movie is a drug. Whenever I come across it on the guide I have to watch it. It could be five minutes in or five minutes left, doesn't matter and it was my number four movie Of all the great scenes in the movie my favorite is how Scorsese films a coked up Henry on his last hectic day before turning informant. You feel Henry's paranoia and it's all Scorsese flipping a switch on style. Also, I can't think of another movie that uses popular music as well as Goodfellas. When I hear Layla I instantly think of a Pink Cadillac with a couple dead bodies in the front seat and a guy, frozen solid, hanging in a meat locker. Every chosen song works perfect for the scene. Who thinks Atlantis is an appropriate song for a beatdown? Yet it works. The only other movie I think is comparable with it's use of music setting the timeframe is Boogie Nights. I know some people don't think there is such a thing as a perfect movie but I do and Goodfellas is one of them.

I'm not very good at predicting but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess 2001 and the Godfather are next two.