This documentary also has a spiritual sequel called Pretend It’s A City on Netflix. He’s also known for testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and contributing names to the Hollywood blacklist. But Scorsese made A Letter to Elia to focus on the filmmaker himself, and the enduring contributions he made to the medium. Similar to Cape Fear, it won’t shake you to your core or make you view the world in a different way. But it also isn’t trying to do those things. The movie is telling its small, black comedy story in the best way it can be told. The best parts of this film are when we truly get a sense of Hughes’ near-animalistic lust for life, speed, and thrills, but we expect that to come to some sort of fruition, whether good or bad. But life doesn’t work like the movies. As a pure retelling of the tycoon’s life, The Aviator is as larger-than-life as Howard Hughes. Casino is the type of movie Scorsese loves making, and for good reason. The suspense, dread, and certainty that it’s got to come crashing down at some point keep you hooked until the very end. This is a gritty, grimy, and aggressive depiction of the streets and the guilt people can feel over their crimes. It was a debut of sorts for Scorsese, considering Boxcar Bertha (which came out one year prior) was so influenced by its producer. It also introduced Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel to wider audiences. Scorsese has often said he was obsessed with movies as a kid, and you see in My Voyage to Italy how he interprets and contextualizes his own experiences through cinema. If Italianamerican is a family scrapbook, My Voyage to Italy is like sitting down with Scorsese over a beer and having an extremely one-sided conversation. The biggest knock on this movie is that it’s just “Goodfellas meets Wall Street,” and that’s valid. There are no consequences for all the greed, and anytime there’s a brush with real emotion (such as Cristin Milioti’s character being cheated on), it’s quickly swept away. Because that’s what it takes to be The Wolf, and the movie is a masterclass in showing and not telling us what it’s about. And as we follow Travis throughout the movie and things never get better, we keep wanting to look away but are never given the chance. But it’s such a successful movie because it so thoroughly explores the character of Travis Bickle and his struggle with the harsh realities of life. When he says “I’m only one here” in the famous “You talkin’ to me?” speech, you can feel he might believe it in more ways than one. Just like Taxi Driver, this is a grim movie that, at times, you want to look away from. And while it’s the city defeats Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta damns himself to a cycle of rage and outbursts that will never end. It may be an ugly study, but it’s one that is as well-acted, well-told, and well-shot as any of Scorsese’s greatest films. If the biggest knocks on Taxi Driver and Raging Bull (besides all the political incorrectness they are laced with) are that they have main characters who are hard to watch, Goodfellas does not suffer from this same problem. Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill does a lot of despicable things, but he is far more sympathetic and charming than Jake La Motta or Travis Bickle. Maybe this is partly due to the fact that we’re introduced to the character of Henry Hill as a young boy, desperate to fit in with the gangsters. But even before that, the very first scene of the movie shows us that Hill has trepidations about killing a man in cold blood. But what about when he goes down the rabbit hole, addicted to drugs, cheating on and hitting his wife, putting everything in danger? Goodfellas has a saving grace that Taxi Driver and Raging Bull do not have: Lorraine Bracco’s character Karen. She is a complex character who struggles with her own attraction to Hill’s criminal tendencies, though still challenges him when he strays too far. Goodfellas is similar to a lot of other Scorsese movies (and vice versa), but none are as well-balanced and cohesive as this.
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