Goodfellas (1990)

This movie is about as perfect a film that there can be. Its absolutely criminal that Scorsece (sp) didn't win for Best Director and Best Picture. I agree that this should be hailed as his Magnum Opus.

I always liked that when we finally hear Karen's rationale for staying with Henry, it was completely honest, the idea of a her husband beating another man half to death, turned her on.

The scene with Karen holding a gun to Henry's face, that was some powerhouse acting.

It's also interesting how Karen is seemingly cut off from the outside world, kind of like Kay in The Godfather. It's such an inclusive world where the men get to enjoy themselves but the women (wives) are only marginally allowed to enjoy themselves.

Even Karen points out how worn down the women look in terms of their clothes and attitude, only Illeana Douglas seems adrift like Karen.

I also like Karen's disturbing confrontation with Janice Rossi.

"FIND YOUR OWN GODDAMN MAN"

This is the movie that introduced me to Layla's piano exit. Wonderful and fit the scene perfectly. Every song is perfect. I still can't hear Atlantis without thinking of Billy Batt's getting the shit beat out of him.

This is my go to choice for favorite movie. It manages to encapsulate every single thing I love about movies and moviemaking.

Everyone loves Pesci and DeNiro in this, but Ray Liotta wins.

It was an homage to the ending of The Great Train Robbery.

Quicker on the draw there, Mangy...

Near as I can tell, Home Alone came out a month after Goodfellas.

If the beginning of the movie doesn't suck you in immediately, then you're one cold/squeamish bastard.

Liotta really does own this film. As many have pointed out in other threads, he even manages to make his nervous laughter in the film seem positively terrifying.

Even while Scorsese is showing the less-glamorous side of the life, there's definitely a sense of sadness at what the Mafia became as time wore on. Not that it's ever presented as a 100% positive thing, but the film feels like a requiem for the Mafia as it was in the 50s and 60s.

Liotta ain't straight-laced!

Well, for one thing, the mob did change. Among other things, there was the disintegration of their code of silence. Social order is something Scorsese is interested in, and so I think it's important to him to show that breakdown.

But also, this is Henry's story... and that was kind of his arc. His rise, his prime, and his decline. There is much more dramatic impact to the fall when we feel the exhilaration of his rise.

That's fine. I just love the Liotta pistolwhip scene. I like it more than the analagous Sonny Corelone in Godfather.

I've always felt DeNiro punched his way out of the womb, fully-formed, at 35.

The Godfather was more operatic, Devin made a great call when he said it was about gangsters who don't believe they're gangsters. Goodfellas was about the life in as much as they knew they were gangsters and didn't pretend to be anything else, they robbed, killed and fucked whoever they felt like, there was no pretension of family honor.

I was trying to think of how to compare the two. I'd say Goodfellas is more pulpy, more lurid, more dynamic. None of which is to be a back-handed compliment of any sort - "operatic" is a good word to imply that The Godfather seems to have a grand, epic sweep to it, where Goodfellas just feels a lot smaller in scope.

It's like comparing Once Upon a Time in the West to Tombstone.

Actually, The Godfather's roots are in pulp. Coppola just elevated the material. Goodfellas is not what I would call pulpy or lurid. Stylish, certainly, but if anything it's the more realistic film. The Mafia is more of a backdrop for the story Coppola wanted to tell about family and America. Scorsese is much more interested in examining the mob itself.

Empire Strikes Back might be the movie that made the two year old version of me fall in love with going to the movies, but Goodfellas is the film that made the twelve year old version of me fall in love with movies. I finally saw film as an artform, and I became aware of filmmakers at that moment and began to understand the unique mark a good filmmaker can leave on their work.

The 'long tracking shot' is probably my favourite filmmaking technique of all, and Goodfellas is the reason why. It's also the one to beat in my mind. I will never cease to be impressed by that sequence, it's flashy, it's complex but it pulls me into the movie's world in a way few films have equalled. It's an essential piece of cinematic world building. You're not just watching these people now, you're walking to your table with them.

I'll never be able to compare The Godfather to Goodfellas, mostly because I feel like they approach the notion of the Mafia and family in completely different ways; in The Godfather the obligations of the Mafia are secondary to the needs of the family, theres a real sense of love and loyalty between these people. In Goodfellas the lifestyle comes first, Henry Hill treats his actual family like shit in favour of the mob.

The Godfather is a strangely romantic, noble depiction of the mobster whereas Goodfellas has no such interest in such things, it makes the world look exciting and dangerous (in the same way skydiving without a parachute probably feels like a rush when you don't think about the ground below) but never forgets to remind you of the downsides to everything; most importantly, loyalty only goes so far. Sure, The Godfather Part 2 touched on this quality more so than the first film (that was an overall more morally complex tale than it's predecessor) but it still felt less like a documentation of mafia life and more like a classical tragedy.

They're both perfect at what they set out to do, but I will always side slightly more towards Goodfellas because I appreciate that unflinching eye towards it's subjects and was, and continue to be, blown away by the sheer bravura filmmaking on display.

I agree with Dragon Ma. To me, I wouldn't say either film is greater than the other - I hold them in equal greatness, just in very different ways.

Goodfellas is right up there with the Godfather for me as one of those truly perfect films. There are three movies, Jaws being one of them, that I absolutely drop everything if they're on. These are the other two.

YES. I've always been surprised that people seem to think Godfather is realistic in any sense. It's pure cheese, and more akin to something like Star Wars than people might want to admit. It also happens to be one of the best movies ever made, but just as Hamlet is, at it's heart, a Jacobean revenge potboiler, Godfather is purely broad and grandiose Hollywood.

Goodfellas, on the other hand, has more of a theme than a narrative. It's almost entirely episodic. It's a very different movie, and despite, or probably because of, the wild filmmaking technical trickery, I think it shows what life actually felt like to this one specific guy maybe more than any other film I can think of.

It's interesting how the introduction of drugs brought about the decline of the mafia, before, it was booze and cigarettes. Drugs singlehandedly changed everything.

Joe Pesci get's the most props for his performance in this film but he's been doing variations on this role going back to Raging Bull (I'd mention Once Upon a time in America but he had a fairly small role in that)

I think they just get compared because they're the two greatest mob movies of all time. Other than that, not much correlation. Goodfellas has much more in common, I think, with the Sopranos, though that show also has a lot in common with The Godfather. But like The Sopranos, Goodfellas is really interested in the psychology of mobsters, which is, I think it's greatest achievement. These characters feel so fully formed, especially in terms of their contradictions, hypocrisies, and prejudices.

The scene where Liotta is coked up and the helicopter is following him is my favorite scene in the movie. Love it.


Also, during that scene, when he is talking to the girl on the phone and tells her to tell his brother to keep sturing the sauce and not to use the house line, she takes something out of her purse and a black line appears over it, as to cover up a brand or something. Anyone know anything about that?

I love the opening because no matter what you expect from the film, it isn't that. The reason why I don't love BOOGIE NIGHTS is that it has as much style as Goodfellas, but when you have all the elaborate tracking shots, angles, etc. it's for a purpose in Goodfellas, to convey the world, in BN, it's jerking off.

ALSO: Clay Davis as the doctor.

To be fair though, Dre, Goodfella's kind of made it so that any movie that does certain tracking shots now risks looking like they're ripping off Goodfellas. I'm surprised the steadicam hasn't been renamed the Marti-Cam.

The stylized gritty realism pulls me in every time for this movie. That's another reason it feels so strange compare to The Godfather, is that this is based on the real life Henry Hill's autobiography. Obviously there are major embellishments, but still it sits more in the real world than The Godfather, which is a fiction based on Puzo's interpretation of "The Mafia".

The drugs play so heavy into this film I feel like they should have been credited. The character changes they put people through. Coked out Henry yelling "WHY KAREN WHY?!?!?" is, for me, on of the most desperate moments on film.

The Godfather really is a film that is using the organization of the mob as an excuse to explore American identity and its individual constituents (family, patriotism, money, power, assimilation, justice, and so forth). It has little in common with Goodfellas outside that both portray the mob.

The Scorses film that merits the The Godfather comparison in terms of how it is put together and what it wants to say is Gangs of New York.

AGREE.

Rewatching it recently, Goodfellas hit me as having a uniquely and authentically autobiographical feel that I haven't seen before or since. It's Henry telling his story, so of course Henry is the only guy you never see killing anyone. He's describing all his sins/crimes, but he's still glossing it up.

Pretty sure when he beats up his mistress' boss ("Fuckin' Janice can do whatever she wants you understand?"), the actor playing her boss is the same actor who played the mailman in the similar pizza shop scene near the beginning.

I love how the music the gangsters listen to is consistently 5-7 years out of date throughout the film.

Whoever said the pistol whipping scene felt fake is crazy. Still produces a cringe.

IMDB lists Vincent Gallo as being in the film but I haven't spotted him.

That's an interesting point, both Jimmy and Tommy are both presented as violent bullies but Henry, while no saint, comes off as not quite as bad, he's constantly painting himself in a slightly better light than his friends.

Henry finally realizes, they were never really his friends at all, I think Paulie probably had more love for Henry than Jimmy or Tommy.

A woman told me that the pistol whipping scene with the jock guy got her hot. Yes.

She had ta admit the truth, it turned her on.

The pistol-to-face scene produces a cringe, no doubt. This is despite it looking 'off'. The sound effects, performances, and my investment in that world go a long way in making me not care about that gun not really going all that close to the guy's face.

Seeing Boogie Nights ape Goodfellas so well definitely made watching Anderson's film a familiar rush. But Goodfellas is the film I go back to more often. I haven't seen Boogie Nights for a while.

We are not seeing the same thing.

And we'll never have to.

The fact that the guy getting pistol-whipped was a douchebag probably made it easier to side with Henry.

"What do you want fucko? *crack*"

I mentioned in the 'best-of' pistol-whipping thread (only on CHUD) that Brian Billick showed that clip to the Ravens before games instead of the usual inspirational shit. he would say "Today, we're going to walk across that street."

I've read some folks prefer The Departed to Goodfellas. Can't fathom it.

That's awesome.

The Godfather and GoodFellas are different breeds of greatness. For one thing, everyone in GoodFellas has seen The Godfather. Even if they don't reference it like they do on The Sopranos, you know they've all seen it and they idolize it and goof on its romanticization of The Life in roughly equal measure. It's like Tarantino's distinction between his "movies" and his "movie-movies," the latter being the movies that characters in his "movies" would go to see. The Godfather is a movie-movie, GoodFellas is a movie. GoodFellas unfolds in the same universe as Mean Streets and Casino. A universe of mooks killing each other over stupid provocations, leading to bad consequences (i.e. Tommy whacking Billy Batts). This, Scorsese says, is what The Life is really about, a bunch of wannabe neighborhood gods at war over turf and testosterone (which, essentially, is what all war boils down to). If they're marginally smart enough or even-tempered enough not to get themselves whacked young, they eventually get ratted out and die in jail with a fuckin' bag on their hips.

And at heart, Scorsese's three great gangster films (the ones cited above) are larger than gangster films. They're about guilt, greed, obsession, the American dream seen in a cracked mirror. Gangs of New York and The Departed are not playing in the same league or on the same level; they play, for me, like mere gangster films. Scorsese has said everything he needs to say about The Life in those three films. Everything after that is reiteration.

This section is so paranoid and claustrophobic, I love it, it is just a beautiful way of showing the (start?) of the decline as he's trying to juggle too many balls and rely on idiots. So incredibly fraught - always keeps me on edge.

I know liotta is a joy in this and it's his film fundamentally - by Pesci makes it. Liotta's main role is exposition but on the whole any scene that doesn't have Tommy somewhere, doing something is instantly less radiant.

It sounds like he's ready to come out of retirement after his singing career didn't pan out.

I never read it that way. I always saw that as Henry just being a weasel the entire time. Not really getting his hands dirty, but still enjoying all the spoils. Then he rats them all out. One of my favorite bits of dialogue is between him and Tommy's mom-
"You don't talk much."
"I-I'm just listening..."

Very true, that's an interesting way to look at it. And for that matter, you could easily add Karen to the mix:

You can see it from the time they walk hand in hand through the back kitchen of the restaurant to "And Then He Kissed Me" on one of their first dates. She likes the money, she likes the way he gets what he wants, she likes only hearing "yes". But 20 years later when Henry rats everyone out, she's having second thoughts about even standing by him in witness protection.

Not that I can't understand it in part - who would want to go into witness protection? And probably from the moment she senses Jimmy's setting her up by sending her in to get the Dior gowns, she knows they have to do something. But, if she can, she's ready to wash her hands of even her husband when it all comes down.

I hadn't seen this in a few years, and while I remembered it being brilliant, I forgot just how much of a masterpiece it is. The fluidity of the camera, the pitch-perfect freeze frames on a lot of the turning-point moments, the sensational performances, and the phenomenal editing combined with use of music, technically it's genius, and genius in service of story and character at all times.

'Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut'

Hill is really such a deplorable guy, but I wrestle with how much of it is his fault, and how much is down to the whole mafia life having seduced him. It's strange in that we should be wanting this guy to rat out from the opening sequence, yet we also feel a bit betrayed when he does- which is a measure of how successful the film is. Scorsese's ability to humanise even the most deplorable characters is one of his greatest talents- the talent to make the viewer feel ambiguous and actively engage. To do that whilst also creating something so viscerally thrilling and entertaining is incredible.

Seconded.