Every Martin Scorsese Movie Ranked, from ‘Mean Streets’ to ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

27. “Boxcar Bertha” (1972)

Scorsese’s first professional job as a director came in the form of this Roger Corman drive-in flick, an unofficial companion piece to the producer’s earlier hit “Bloody Mama.” Although the milieu for this female gangster movie (rural Arkansas during the Depression) was way outside the New York auteur’s comfort zone, Scorsese found his way into the material via crucifixion imagery that would find its way into his later masterpiece “The Last Temptation of Christ,” a film whose seeds were planted on the set of “Boxcar Bertha” when star Barbara Hershey gave Scorsese the novel. While “Boxcar Bertha” certainly delivers the exploitation movie goods in terms of sex and violence, the treatment of both is pure Scorsese — dark, brooding, and conflicted as opposed to the liberating romp Corman was probably expecting. —JH

26. “Who’s That Knocking At My Door” (1969)

It’s incredible just how fully formed Scorsese’s aesthetic was at the very start. Evolving out of his thesis film for New York University, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” is a tough, street-level study of a term that wouldn’t gain currency until decades later: toxic masculinity. Harvey Keitel plays J.R., a young Italian-American guy torn between his Catholic faith and his carousing with his rowdy group of friends. When he falls for a girl (Zina Bethune) he meets on the Staten Island Ferry, it seems promising. But when their relationship evolves to the point that she feels comfortable enough to tell him about how she was raped, J.R.’s response is far from sympathetic. He’s upset that she’s not a virgin, and rather than showing support for her trauma he says he forgives her and will marry her “anyway.” She is rightfully distraught over this reaction, and the relationship is over. Filmed in black-and-white and with a lo-fi New Wave energy, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” captures a type Scorsese will return to again and again: flawed characters, usually men, who actively sabotage their own potential for happiness and inflict misery on others in the process. —CB  

25. “Bringing Out the Dead” (1999)

Scorsese reunited with screenwriter Paul Schrader for this haunting tale of a paramedic (Nicolas Cage) in crisis, and although the film was compared unfavorably with their earlier “Taxi Driver” in some circles, the two movies are as different as they are similar. Sure, they both follow night owls prowling the mean streets of New York, but where “Taxi Driver” is marked by bitter irony and psychosis, “Bringing Out the Dead” is a completely sincere portrait of spiritual struggle — a profound and devastating meditation on mortality that looks forward to later films on the subject both sacred (“Silence”) and profane (“The Irishman”). Scorsese’s presentation of the lost souls roaming urban streets in emotional, mental, and physical anguish is deeply empathetic and brilliantly executed on a technical level, as the director takes the iconography of horror movies and turns it to more transcendent ends; many of Scorsese’s films have elements of ghost stories, but this is the most powerful example. —JH

24. “Kundun” (1997)

If “Casino” was (until “Wolf of Wall Street,” at least) Scorsese’s most penetrating anthropological study of immoral and amoral characters firmly in the grip of capitalist and materialist excess, its follow-up was Scorsese’s purest expression of decency and spiritual awakening. Is it any coincidence that it remains the director’s most underrated work? A bio-pic about the 14th Dalai Lama following his life up until his departure from Tibet, “Kundun” is a kind of miracle, a generously budgeted studio movie (from Disney, no less!) almost entirely populated with Tibetan exiles that delves into religious, historical, and political issues with zero sense of judgment or manipulation. It’s Scorsese’s most open-ended film, and his most mysterious — and for those willing to rise to its challenges, one of his most rewarding. —JH

23. “Gangs of New York” (2002)

There’s been a lot of talk about how “Killers of the Flower Moon” is Scorsese’s first Western, and while that is technically accurate he did go full Sergio Leone in this “Eastern” that creates a mythology for the birth of New York every bit as bold and deliriously entertaining as Leone’s mythmaking in “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Scorsese had dipped his toe in epic waters before, but with “Gangs of New York” he took the scale of his work to a whole new level, building New York on Cinecittà’s enormous backlot and applying nearly 30 years of research toward his grandest vision to date. Daniel Day-Lewis’ iconic performance as Bill the Butcher is what people remember most about the film, but it was another actor who would have the greater impact on Scorsese’s career, as “Gangs” marked the first time the director collaborated with Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio’s bankability would enable Scorsese to continue working in the epic mode on “The Aviator,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and now “Killers of the Flower Moon,” auteur films mounted with resources unseen since the days of David Lean. —JH

22. “New York Stories” (1989)

Scorsese only directed one third of this omnibus film (the other two segments are by Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen), but his 40-minute short has more visual and conceptual inventiveness than most directors’ entire careers. Working with his “Color of Money” screenwriter Richard Price, Scorsese used the opportunity presented by “New York Stories” to execute an idea he had been thinking about for years, an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “The Gambler” blended with the story of Dostoevsky’s real-life mistress. The result, “Life Lessons,” is a stylistically dazzling portrait of an artist (Nick Nolte) as incapable of growth in his personal life as he is forward-thinking in his painting life. The circular nature of the painter’s obsessions and behavior is dynamically conveyed by Scorsese’s circling camera (as well as irises and other circular motifs that proliferate throughout the film), which alternates between expressing the artist’s passions and neuroses and those of his younger girlfriend, played by Rosanna Arquette in the second of her great performances for her “After Hours” director. —JH

21. “The Departed” (2006)

Scorsese won his long-delayed Oscar for this rip-roaring crime flick, a somewhat surprising choice for Academy canonization given that it’s one of the director’s more relatively escapist crowd pleasers. Scorsese orchestrates a cast rich in star power (Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg) through a dizzying series of criss-crosses and betrayals inspired by the “Infernal Affairs” trilogy, with a Boston setting that helps to keep the film from feeling like a retread of the director’s earlier gangster pictures. While the movie lacks the historical and sociological heft of “Casino” and isn’t as formally audacious as “Goodfellas,” it nevertheless proves that Scorsese is incapable of anything other than total personal investment in his projects. The moral complexities of the characters’ choices are deeply felt and clearly delineated by both William Monahan’s script and Scorsese’s roving camera, which feels like it’s constantly on the edge of burrowing into the skulls of these conflicted, corrupt characters. —JH

20. “Hugo” (2011)

Martin Scorsese isn’t a name often associated with the phrase “perfect for the entire family,” but that’s the exact type of film he made in 2011. In between the gritty psychological drama of “The Departed” and the drug-fueled debauchery of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Scorsese headed to 1930s Paris with “Hugo,” a spirited, colorful children’s film based on the 2007 kids novel by Brian Selznick. The contrast is jarring, but it’s easy to see why Scorsese would be attracted to this subject matter. At its heart, the film is about the power of cinema, following the titular character (a perfectly plucky Asa Butterfield) on his quest to solve the mystery of why “A Trip to the Moon” director Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) has abandonded filmmaking. As much as Scorsese lives and breathes cinema, it’s not a frequent explicit topic in his movies; “Hugo” is the one where his pure love for the medium radiates most strongly. The luscious visual effects and production design that brings the Gare Montparnasse railway to life, the references to the earliest cinema of France, and the simple but emotional message of how movies can bring people together convey an earnest desire from the master to impart a message about film history to the younger generation. It may not be the best film Scorsese ever made, but “Hugo” is more in line with the director’s worldview than many give it credit for. —WC

19. “The Aviator” (2004)

Come to see Leonardo DiCaprio surrounded by bottled urine, stay for Cate Blanchett’s arguable career-best performance. Too hot of a take? “The Aviator” is among the modern masterpieces of cinema, and of course auteur Scorsese ushered in the period piece epic that is too often overlooked among his top films. DiCaprio brilliantly portrays the titular multi-hyphenate movie producer, aviator, and inventor Howard Hughes, whose personal dedication to being accepted by Hollywood interferes with the government’s hand in aerial travel control, powered by Pan-Am president Juan Trippe, played by Alec Baldwin. The film also serves as a who’s who of classic Hollywood starlets, with Blanchett giving a dead-on Katharine Hepburn performance, along with Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner and Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow. “The Aviator” earns its whopping runtime, reminding audiences why Scorsese is really a master filmmaker, especially alongside editor Thelma Schoonmaker. —SB

18. “Shutter Island” (2010)

Scorsese’s gift for scoring his films with rock-and-roll needle drops is well-documented, but he’s no slouch when it comes to other genres of music. Working here with his old friend Robbie Robertson as music supervisor, Scorsese created his most nerve-shredding soundtrack since “Taxi Driver”; there’s no original score, but the eclectic tracks by John Adams, Brian Eno, Krzysztof Penderecki, and others are so perfectly matched to the imagery that it feels as though they couldn’t exist without it. And what imagery! Finally letting his inner Hitchcock and Val Lewton run wild, Scorsese turned Dennis Lehane’s chilling thriller into a harrowing horror film jammed to the hilt with unsettling moments. Leonardo DiCaprio gives one of his best performances as a U.S. Marshal investigating a mental institution where he quickly finds himself in danger of becoming the craziest guy in the place; as his grip on reality grows more and more tenuous, Scorsese takes the audience in the palm of his hand and squeezes, ratcheting up the tension to almost unbearable levels before the inevitably heartbreaking climax. —JH

17. “The Color of Money” (1986)

The only sequel Scorsese ever made, “The Color of Money” reads today like a goodbye to one era of Hollywood as it meets with another. A two-decade removed sequel of Robert Rossen’s “The Hustler,” the pool playing drama pairs that film’s lead Paul Newman against another hustler, played by a fresh-faced and still new to fame Tom Cruise. Seeing an old-school Hollywood legend like Newman and a modern great like Cruise together feels liek a surreal meeting between two types of stardom. But that’s exactly what makes the movie pop, and Scorsese wisely focuses his energy on basking in the glow of their onscreen charisma. As an older version of the original “The Hustler’s” Eddie Fox, Newman is wearier and embittered, while Cruise as his young rival Vincent is exuberant with the pride of youth. It’s a fascinating dynamic that both actors play wonderfully, and if the film feels a bit more anonymous than most Scorsese films, it’s likely because their combined star power would overshadow any director. —WC 

16. “Cape Fear” (1991)

Here’s all you really need to know about Scorsese’s remake of the 1962 film noir of the same name: it’s not nearly as serious as it sounds on paper. This is — truly — a compliment. That’s not to say Scorsese’s vision, also based on John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel “The Executioners,” isn’t scary, dark, chilling, or genuinely unsettling, but for a film that features Robert De Niro going absolutely insane as the demented career criminal Max Cady, Scorsese has more than enough fun bringing his vision to the screen. He wants you to have fun, too! Consider this: When Cady finally gets out of prison for a rape he maybe didn’t commit, he celebrates by heading off to take in a screening of the comedy classic “Problem Child,” howling with laughter the entire time. Now that’s a villain we can fear and wonder about (and one with aces taste in comedy). But this grimy, gritty, sweaty just-so-slightly schlocky chiller doesn’t skimp on the premium stuff, even as Scorsese and De Niro’s Southern accent have essentially a B-movie time of it all. Young co-star Juliette Lewis earned an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actress, one she more than deserved for her portrayal of a teenager getting her eyes way, way opened to the evils of men thanks to her own father’s (Nick Nolte, excellent and unhinged) misdeeds as a bad lawyer. —KE

15. “New York, New York” (1977)

When “New York, New York” released in 1977, everything that could go wrong did. A purposeful turn away from the gritty realism of his most famous films, “New York, New York” was intended by Scorsese to be an homage to the classic musicals of his youth, complete with the daughter of musical legend Judy Garland Liza Minnelli at the center of the Big Apple fantasia, alongside his recurring star Robert De Niro in one of the most oddly matched couples in cinematic history. But production was troubled, fueled by an affair between Minelli and Scorsese, and lots and lots of drugs. The movie bombed and reviews decried the film as a sour mixture between the sugary sweet musical form and the bitter realism Scorsese brought to the project. 

The seams are obvious when you watch the actual movie: a confused project that wobbles tonally throughout its recounting of the union and dissolution of Minelli’s cabaret singer and De Niro’s saxophone star. But its hardness, and how it mixes reality with wish fullfillment in a way that reads a bit like a precursor to “La La Land,” makes the film a fascinating and often heartbreaking work to revisit. And the moments Minnelli gets to let loose and sing — including the title theme, one of the most iconic songs of the ’70s — sees all the film’s issues melt away in the face of the pure emotion she’s able to summon. Scorsese made many perfect movies, but his flawed films are far more interesting. —WC

14. “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)

Even before he began making films that explicitly dealt with faith, the influence that Martin Scorsese’s Catholic upbringing had on his artistry was apparent to anyone paying attention. As he cut his teeth making brutal films about criminals and societal outcasts pushed to their breaking points, his fascination with sin, guilt, and the possibility of redemption shone through every frame.

So it was inevitable that his pious upbringing and 1980s hubris would eventually coalesce with him making a film about Jesus. And while “The Last Temptation of Christ” might have shocked audiences upon its initial release, in hindsight it feels like the only religious film Scorsese could have possibly made. Written by Paul Schrader — cinema’s other most tortured lapsed Christian — the film takes a highly revisionist approach to the Gospels’ depiction of Christ’s crucifixion, with Willem Dafoe’s Jesus shown being tempted by sexual hallucinations and bogged down by insecurities during his final days. And 35 years after its initial release, the film still feels like one of the most illuminating tableaus of the contradictory ideas that have animated Scorsese’s entire career. The man who famously said that living a religious life comes down to figuring out “how much sin you can live with” wanted to prove that Jesus himself wasn’t exempt from his theory. 

“The Last Temptation of Christ” opens with an unforgettable title card: “This film is not based upon the Gospels but upon this fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict.” While it may have simply been added to ward off ire from religious groups, it also serves as a window into the arc of Scorsese’s filmography. From “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas” to “Silence” and “Kundun,” Scorsese obsessed over our forgivability and worth (or lack thereof) in the eyes of our Creator. He became a legend by pouring his own eternal spiritual agony onto celluloid and giving us a chance to gaze inside. —CZ

13. “The Irishman” (2019)

Scorsese reunited with several old friends — Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci — and picked up a new one, Al Pacino, along the way for this bitter, melancholy treatise on aging and regret. It’s another gangster film, but we’re a long way from the giddy energy of “Mean Streets” and “Goodfellas,” and even the expansiveness of “Casino.” In spite of its 209-minute running time, this is a film of contraction, a tragedy about one man’s world getting smaller and smaller until it can be easily contained in a space the size of a retirement home bedroom. The film’s most talked about feature, a revolutionary approach to de-aging visual effects that enabled the actors to span decades in their portrayals, is actually one of its least impressive attributes; far more lasting is the emotional weight of cumulative bad choices that lead to the literal or spiritual death of nearly every character in the film, a gangster movie that ends not with defiance like “Goodfellas,” but with weary resignation. —JH

12. “Casino” (1995)

“Goodfellas” was a tight character study about not just the perils, but the deep appeal, of mob life and how that life is a cracked-mirror version of the American Dream; “Casino” goes for a sprawling, epochal statement using Vegas as a metaphor for an increasingly impersonal America ruled ever more singularly by big business. It’s a gangster movie that becomes a diagnosis of “the way we live now.” Some say then that it lacks the energy of “Goodfellas” — and a three-hour running time can result in some exhaustion, especially when the last act is an ever-increasing fugue of shouting matches between Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone. De Niro plays “Ace” Rothstein, sent by the Chicago Mafia to run the Tangiers casino on the Strip in the early ‘70s, with Stone as his (eventual) wife, Ginger. Over the span of a decade and a half, Scorsese and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi (returning from “Goodfellas”) show how Vegas stopped being a Mob town, as massive corporations moved in instead. Yes, the risk of being murdered by having your head clamped in a vice — maybe the most violent scene in the entire Scorsese oeuvre — was ended. But what’s worse: that, or having to face the buses full of fanny pack-wearing tourists who’d come to populate Sin City instead? As the choral finale to Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” accompanies images of the old casinos being demolished, we stare into the cold eyes of the gilded, glowing lion sitting outside a symbol of the new junk-bond-funded Vegas, the MGM Grand. “Today it looks like Disneyland,” De Niro opines in the voiceover. Hey, what doesn’t? —CB 

11. “Silence” (2016)

“What does Christ want from us?” Terrence Malick wrote in a letter to Scorsese after watching “Silence,” Scorsese’s most searching religious film since “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Andrew Garfield worked a year with Jesuit priest James Martin to inhabit the role of Sebastião Rodrigues, a would-be missionary who attempted to bring Catholicism to the closed and cut-off Japan of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 1600s. Losing 40 pounds for the role of the long-suffering cleric, Garfield ends up giving one of the most agonizing performances in Scorsese’s body of work, as Rodrigues tangles with the inquisitor Inoue Masashige (a menacing, sometimes hilarious Issey Ogata, playing the single most dangerous Scorsese character since Tommy DeVito). What does it mean to recant your faith? And does publicly recanting while still believing in your heart really mean anything? These questions in “Silence” get to the heart of Scorsese’s decades-long grappling with his own faith. And though it operates on such an intellectual plane that you can rather easily guess what the final image of the film will be in advance, it’s still a compelling piece of drama, with its own reflections on the forces that shape the world feeling like, oddly, a companion to the ending of “Casino.” As broad-collared Dutch merchants looking straight out of a Rembrandt painting introduce their own religion — commerce — to Japan and look with puzzlement upon one-time missionaries such as Rodrigues, it feels like Scorsese’s ultimate statement about how materialism would come to overwhelm everyone’s spiritual life. —CB 

10. “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974)

Martin Scorsese’s fourth feature, “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” showed the director’s love for cinema, and for the actresses who built it, in its first frames. Shot by Marty’s pal Michael Ballhaus, this luminous 1974 drama opens with a nearly shot-for-shot homage to Victor Fleming’s “The Wizard of Oz” before opening up onto the world of Alice, played by Ellen Burstyn. Her delivery-driver husband, with whom she and her small son lived in a middle-of-nowhere New Mexico town, is killed on the job, and so they jettison to California in hopes of cobbling together a better life.

Burstyn and Alfred Lutter, who plays Alice’ son Tommy, have an easy chemistry; he’s a child who’s been around only adults his whole life and can’t relate to people his own age, forced to fathom the dramas and dealings of those older than him. Alice and Tommy wind up in Arizona, where she takes up a job at a folksy diner in hopes of scrounging up enough change to get all the way to California. Their time in Phoenix surrounds a lovely, leisurely plot where Alice gets into yet another bad relationship. Fabulous minor roles are played by the likes of Diane Ladd as another waitress at the cafe, who has an angry and witty tongue, and Jodie Foster as a tomboy Tommy later meets in Tucson. This and “Mommy Dearest” were the only films screenwriter Robert Getchell was really known for. The gentle lilt and warmth of this kitchen-sink drama — really the last from Marty — make for a refreshing entree into Scorsese’s meaner and more viscerally pungent later work. It’s the rare portrait of an intelligent and funny woman who stands on her own, even as she’s wobbling, in the director’s mostly male-driven filmography. —RL 

9. “Mean Streets” (1973)

Half a century later and “Mean Streets” is still one of Scorsese’s most memorable films — and not just because of how absolutely star-making Robert De Niro’s turn as sad sack Johnny boy is. “Mean Streets” clearly set up Scorsese’s ode to his Lower East Side New York upbringing, with Harvey Keitel’s Charlie a Scorsese surrogate for a semi-personal tale about butting heads with local organized crime members in Little Italy. The 1973 film has shootouts, car chases, and gangsters, but it’s the quieter moments of Charlie caring for his epileptic sister (Amy Robinson) and visiting a confessional at church that grounds the reminder that however “mean” the life of street thugs is, there is a relatable relationship to just how tenuous power and a sense of self can be in this world. —SB

8. “Killers of the Flower Moon” (2021)

Martin Scorsese may like to think of “Killers of the Flower Moon” as the Western that he always wanted to make, but this frequently spectacular American epic about the genocidal conspiracy that was visited upon the Osage Nation during the 1920s is more potent and self-possessed when it sticks a finger in one of the other genres that bubble up to the surface over the course of its three-and-a-half-hour runtime.

The first and most obvious of those is a gangster drama in the grand tradition of the director’s previous work; just when it seemed like “The Irishman” might’ve been Scorsese’s final word on his signature genre, they’ve pulled him back in for another movie full of brutal killings, bitter voiceovers, and biting conclusions about the corruptive spirit of American capitalism. But if the “Reign of Terror” sometimes proves to be an uncomfortably vast backdrop for Scorsese’s more intimate brand of crime saga, “Killers of the Flower Moon” excels as a compellingly multi-faceted character study about the men behind the massacre. Over time, it becomes the most interesting of the many different movies that comprise it: A twisted love story about the marriage between an Osage woman (the indomitable Lily Gladstone) and the white man who — unbeknownst to her — helped murder her entire family so that he could inherit the headrights for their oil fortune (Leonardo DiCaprio, giving the best performance of his career as the dumbest and most vile character he’s ever played).

Finding the right balance in this story is a challenge for a filmmaker as gifted and operatic as Scorsese, whose ability to tell any story rubs up against his ultimate admission that this might not be his story to tell. And so, for better or worse, Scorsese turns “Killers of the Flower Moon” into the kind of story that he can still tell better than anyone else: A story about greed, corruption, and the mottled soul of a country that was born from the belief that it belonged to anyone callous enough to take it. —DE

Read IndieWire’s complete “Killers of the Flower Moon” review.

7. “Taxi Driver” (1976)

The legend looms large — and for once, the reality matches it. To watch “Taxi Driver” for the first time now is to be astounded and, more importantly, not disappointed. So many paradigm-shifting films seem weaker now after years of imitators; “Taxi Driver” looms above them all. In Travis Bickle’s singularly American tragedy, Scorsese fine-tuned the themes that would haunt his later work, from the pain of loneliness to the man undone by the world. Robert De Niro gives one of cinema’s all-time greatest performances, of course, but what often gets lost in contemporary conversations about the film is its groundedness in the underbelly of ’70s New York, where even morally repugnant characters still maintain a personal code of honor. Jodie Foster’s teen sex worker is still a tart-tongued wonder, but Scorsese’s genius lies in how he casually drops audiences into scenes of camaraderie before yanking it all away and leaving us alone with Travis as he paces and stews and mutters, inching closer to the breakdown that the whole country felt on the brink of at the time the film was made. —MP

6. “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)

More is more in Scorsese’s perversely outlandish, uncharacteristically slick, gleefully colored “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The 2013 black comedy biopic puts an exuberant, semi-exaggerated spin on the life of stockbroker/fraudster Jordan Belfort — as portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in a performance that seems to better understand the themes of “The Great Gatsby” than his actual stint as Jay Gatsby for Baz Luhrmann’s take on the book from that same year. Scorsese puts the pedal to the metal with an intentionally gauche ’80s production design, making a surf ‘n’ turf meal of steak dinners, luxury yachts, chrome cars, “short short skirts around the house,” and, yes, a few too many Quaaludes. 

The three-hour film (editor Thelma Schoomaker reportedly kept it from reaching four) separated the Scorsese fans from the Scorsese disciples in a time when that sort of duration was much less common, and its nauseating portrayal of capitalistic excess had plenty of audience members walking away more disgusted than entertained. And yet, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is some of the most fun you’ll have watching what’s quite possibly Scorsese’s best cast movie. With Matthew McConaughey pounding his chest to an unseen drum circle, then 22-year-old Margot Robbie delivering a minxy bombshell turn as Jordan’s wife (still her sexiest, funniest part), and Jonah Hill slithering around like a buck-toothed little worm, this merry band of wrongdoers anchors another Scorsese meditation on greedy, contemptible forces of nature. 

It’s satirical yet sad, visually overwhelming and yet crystal clear in its meaning, a testament to what cinema’s greatest filmmakers can do when allowed to run completely hog-wild with their wildest film fantasies. —AF

5. “After Hours” (1985)

Scorsese is many things, but one of the traits that makes him a great director is that he’s incredibly fucking funny. “Goodfellas?” One of the funniest films of all-time. “The Wolf of Wall Street?” One of the raunchiest and most audacious movies of its decade. So it’s no surprise that some of the director’s greatest works are the few outright comedies he’s made. The ultimate crazy night out film, “After Hours” stars Griffin Dunne as data entry drone Paul, whose boredom of his milquetoast life melts away when he embarks on an insane late night odyssey through New York City in an attempt to get back home after a failed SoHo hookup. Through his attempts to get home, he constantly bumps into a menagerie of crazy, off-the-wall characters that drag him into wild situations, played by the likes of Rosanna Arquette, Catherine O’Hara, and Cheech and Chong (yes, Cheech and Chong are in a Scorsese film). Joseph Minion’s script is one of the sharpest Scorsese ever directed, and the film’s freewheeling loose structure feels singular and unique in his filmography. The adventure has Paul eager to get back to his menial job by the next morning, but “After Hours’” riotus humor makes it a thrilling escape for the audience. —WC

4. “The King of Comedy” (1982)

At this point, more people have probably seen Todd Phillips’ riff on “The King of Comedy” than Scorsese’s actual film. But if you visit the film after first seing the muddled messaging of “Joker,” it’s a shock to the system how clear-headed and pointed the stand-up comedy drama is — a ruthlessly cynical and brutal look at delusion, fame, and media’s relationship with the two. Robert De Niro plays an even more pathetic, troubled version of the mentally unwell Travis Bickle in aspiring stand-up Rupert Pupkin, who fantasizes about a world where he and successful late night host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) are colleagues and friends. When his attempts to get on Lanford’s show are rebuffed, he takes matters into his own hands with a kidnapping case that climaxes in a queasy, jaw-dropping comedy act. In it’s examination of celebrity, “The King of Comedy” feels decades ahead of its time, looking at how parasocial obsession can drive someone insane, with an ambigious, heightened tone that makes it hard to tell fantasy from reality. It’s possibly the most cutting, vicious movie of the director’s career. —WC

3. “Raging Bull” (1980)

To call “Raging Bull” a boxing movie is akin to calling “The Princess Bride” a fencing movie; you’re not technically wrong, but, wow, are you missing the point to an almost mystifying degree. Scorsese’s first film of the ’80s — a decade that would see the director exploring the perils of fame (“The King of Comedy”), mining the humor of nightlife (“After Hours”), crafting a brilliant billiards movie/”The Hustler” sequel (“The Color of Money”), and honoring his Catholic roots via harrowing biblical homage (“The Last Temptation of Christ”) — this bonafide 1980 sports cinema classic stars Robert De Niro as real-life middleweight boxing champ Jake LaMotta.

De Niro reportedly took interest in LaMotta’s autobiography long before Scorsese voiced his support for the project, and the actor pored over the source material while learning to box ahead of shooting. With punishing editing and sound design that packs self-hating intensity into every jab, the black-and-white film is an astounding vehicle for the actor who floats between violent extremes, emotional and physical, like an irate butterfly. 

Scorsese was coming off a critical failure with “New York, New York” but then delivered his career-best to that point: a movie that is at once accosting in its nihilistic brutality and stunningly soft in its nuanced arc for the interminably insecure Jake whose possessiveness over his wife (Cathy Moriarty) drives the character study. The director’s precise artistry is made more impressive by the context. He was still recovering from heavy drug use and an overdose from two years before: a point of fear, shame, and loss of faith that’s softly reflected in his poignant consideration of toxic, theatrical self-loathing. —AF

2. “Goodfellas” (1990)

From the opening sound of a corpse reanimating in a trunk (“What the fuck is that?“) to gangland cinema’s most enduring last line (“I’m an average nobody, I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook…“), “Goodfellas” takes the true story of mafioso-turned-FBI informant Henry Hill and spins it into pure cinematic gold. Coming off his 1988 feature, the worlds-apart “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Scorsese combines the crowd-pleasing appeal of his later “The Departed” with the lived experience of his New York upbringing in a superlative mob drama underscored by Ray Liotta’s sensationally mean laugh. 

An even more amped up “Mean Streets” that has Scorsese perfectly crystallizing his appreciation for crime dramas, “Goodfellas” is at once much more direct with its intentions — you can’t cast Joe Pesci and hope he doesn’t steal the show — and somehow lighter in its touch. Religious symbolism still abounds but where “Mean Streets” had Harvey Keitel pontificating about God, Scorsese’s 1990 flick is a claustrophobic and morally caustic master class that challenges its characters’ faith in the mob itself. 

There are too many stunningly crafted scenes to count: Pesci’s “How am I funny?” monologue! Robert De Niro and Liotta in that dinner! Lorraine Bracco flushing the drugs! The unceasing queasiness of cinema’s definitive helicopter scene! That last act fourth wall break-turned-bonafide jump scare! “Goodfellas” is the Scorsese movie the director’s fans can’t help but watch from start to finish at least a dozen times in their lives: an unfaltering, pitch-perfect testament to the stories and worlds the Italian American filmmaker was born to create. —AF

1. “The Age of Innocence” (1993)

Scorsese has referred to “The Age of Innocence” as the most violent movie he’s ever made. That promises a lot from the man who made “Goodfellas,” but the brutality of the lush Edith Wharton adaptation isn’t the spilling of blood or guts, but a cruel, ruthless emotional warfare. And according to Scorsese himself, the stifling social pressures of 1870s New York are far more brutish than any gangster shoot-out: “What has always stuck in my head is the brutality under the manners. People hide what they mean under the surface of language. In the subculture I was around when I grew up in Little Italy, when somebody was killed, there was a finality to it. It was usually done by the hands of a friend,” Scorsese told Roger Ebert in a 1993 interview. “And in a funny way, it was almost like ritualistic slaughter, a sacrifice. But New York society in the 1870s didn’t have that. It was so cold-blooded. I don’t know which is preferable.” 

For as stuffy and mannered as “The Age of Innocence” seems at first glance, it’s one of Scorsese’s most emotionally raw films, a story of love mercilessly stomped out and extinguished. Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer, as the lovers unable to be together due to social propriety, burn hot alone together, while holding their feelings back cooly while in polite company. They’re supported by an equally exceptional turn by Winona Ryder as Day-Lewis’ fiancée, whose seemingly simple nature masks a shocking capacity for manipulation. The subtextual power struggles that occur between these three in opera houses and carriage rides are riveting, and Scorsese situates it in a style that mixes cold-blooded remove — an omnipotent narrator describing the society of the time, an anthropological eye at the table settings and decorations of the wealthy elite — with the burning emotions of its characters, represented through flashes of bright colors and a central, stunning symbol of a lighthouse. Scorsese as a director has always had a knack for looking at mankind’s potential for darkness and cruelty, whether that includes theft, violence, or murder. “The Age of Innocence” gets at that darkness without ever staining one of its impeccable gowns with a single drop of blood. —WC