Goodfellas

Dir. Martin Scorsese. U.S., 1990, 146 mins. With Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci. With Goodfellas, Scorsese redefined the gangster film by humanizing it, taking the viewer inside his characters’ minds to understand their drives and fears. He masterfully uses every film technique in the book to demonstrate Henry Hill’s attraction to a life of crime, his drug addiction, and, finally, the isolation he feels in making the choice to go straight. Goodfellas was based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, adapted to screen by Scorsese and Pileggi, and features groundbreaking, propulsive editing by Thelma Schoonmaker. Pesci won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as loose cannon Tommy DeVito.