#94. Goodfellas (1990)

How f'ing cool is "Goodfellas??!!"

One very basic acid-test I've always used for how much I like a movie is how many times I find myself saying "YES!" Looking back after having just watched "Goodfellas" I wish I would have counted, but there are quite a few.

Contrary to the attitude I have carried about this movie for years without having seen it, this is not a typical mobster movie- despite all the evidence to the contrary. Yeah sure DeNiro and Pesci play the kinds of characters you almost always see them as, sure there is a scene where a bunch of wiseguys bury a guy they just whacked in the middle of nowhere and of course a guy gets strangled with piano wire, but there is something significantly different about this mobster movie.

The body-count isn't ridiculously high, they don't force that notion of family honor on you and most importantly, and VERY hard to do- they don't glamorize the world of organized crime, but they also don't scorn it. Movies that depict criminals or anti-heroes as the protagonist tend to either preach the consequences of living a lawless life to you or they show no consequences at all. "Goodfellas" is very matter-of-fact about everything. Yeah, you screw up you might get killed. If you aren't smart with your money you're gonna go broke. Very few movies have been able to show people making a frowned-upon living in a non-judgemental kind of way. The only other movie that even comes close that I can think of is "Boogie Nights."

"There was thirty billion a year in cargo moving through Idlewild Airport and believe me, we tried to steal every bit of it." (Henry Hill, "Goodfellas")

As I have said before, I am a music man first and a movie man second- this film is a beautiful marriage of the two and it is laced with some of my favorite music of all time, it is especially Phil-Spector heavy. In fact a pivotal scene featuring a staggering tracking shot that never cuts away or edits the perspective is set to my favorite Spector production "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals.

Of all the movies I have watched so far for this project, none have awed me with their cinematography as much as this one. In addition to the tracking shot I mentioned before, there is a scene where Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta and Robert DeNiro realize the body of a wiseguy they buried 6 months ago is probably going to be exhumed so they set out to do it first. The only lighting comes from the tail-lights of an old Pontiac. The black silhouettes of the three with a strong red backlight conjures up all kinds of sadistic imagery, blood-saturation, the pits of Hell, even the Nazi flag. If Martin Scorsese ever should have won the Oscar, it should have been for this movie just based on the creative use of lighting, silent acting and still shots alone. I wonder if, 20 years later, the Academy thinks it may have dropped the ball a little bit handing that award over to Kevin Costner.

I really don't even mind the fact that Joe Pesci shows us how much of a one-trick pony he really is in this movie because, lets face it, if you are going to have an obnoxious mafia guy with short-man syndrome character, why not go with what you know works? His reckless killings and the way his colleagues react to them is a much more realistic depiction of how the mafia probably works rather than everyone just laughing about it and sticking the mook in a trash compactor. His scenes are among the best in the movie but you still find yourself cheering when someone finally shuts his ass up.

"Goodfellas" is the best example so far of why my wife and I decided to embark on this endeavor in the first place- to make us watch movies we normally never would have, and discover that we in fact loved them.