GOODFELLAS (1990) **** For the first time in my life I found myself laughing hysterically at scenes of horrible violence. Martin Scorsese doesn't show you the petty world of street level mobsters, he makes it your own. You will never, should never, walk down the street in the same way ever again. This is his masterpiece, one of the handful of genuine Hollywood masterpieces. Scorsese pulls out every flash trick in the book: sudden stills, runover sound editing that misses its cut by what seems like minutes, somehow putting everything exactly where it belongs and usually where you don't expect it. Joe Pesci properly got an Oscar for amusing us in a manner anything but clownlike but how could they have missed Robert De Niro? De Niro has never been better, every twitch of every facial muscle, every movement of walking into the light where his eyes shine dark, every shrug and smile is perfect. It's as impossible to imagine this film without De Niro as it is without Scorsese. Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino give us their greatest moments too-these people are really nice and I wish them well in everything except what they're usually doing, but they're scary and nuts. Scorsese puts together shots that are beyond my ability to describe, and uses music beautifully as always. He knows that when the cultural climate becomes pharmaceutically amplified and the stakes are raised and delivery can only be by the side door that you have to put on the Rolling Stones. By the time it winds down to helicopter games with the Feds you have to feel as wired and confused, as doomed as Liotta. And the weird thing is that you end up in the same place.
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