Goodfellas
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1990
Every gangster film of the last thirty years is arguing with this one: Scorsese made the life so intoxicating for an hour that the comedown lands like a physical event.
★ 9.6
The Movies canon
Sourced and screened.
Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Do the Right Thing
Directed by Spike Lee
1989
No American film has been braver about refusing to resolve: one Brooklyn block on the hottest day of the year, and Lee will not tell you who was right.
★ 8.2
Dog Day Afternoon
Directed by Sidney Lumet
1975
Pacino turned a real 1972 Brooklyn robbery into the most electric performance of the seventies: a bank job collapses in ten minutes and becomes a street carnival.
★ 8.0
Once Upon a Time in America
Directed by Sergio Leone
1984
American distributors cut ninety minutes out of it and destroyed the reviews: restored to full length, Leone's fifty-year gangster elegy drifts between decades like an opium dream.
★ 7.9
The French Connection
Directed by William Friedkin
1971
It made the car chase in Bullitt look choreographed: this one was shot without permits, at ninety miles an hour, through real Brooklyn traffic that nobody had cleared.
★ 7.6
Requiem for a Dream
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
2000
Nobody who has seen the last twenty minutes forgets them: Aronofsky films four people chasing different highs around Coney Island in split screen and body-mounted cameras, with Clint Mansell's string theme underneath.
★ 6.6
Sophie's Choice
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
1982
Meryl Streep learned Polish and German for it and delivers most of her performance in accented English she built from scratch: Brooklyn in 1947, and a survivor who will not talk about it.
★ 5.1
Moonstruck
Directed by Norman Jewison
1987
Cher and Olympia Dukakis both took Oscars from it, and the screenplay took a third: John Patrick Shanley wrote a Brooklyn Italian family who argue at operatic volume and mean every word.
★ 4.8
He Got Game
Directed by Spike Lee
1998
Spike Lee scored a basketball film with Aaron Copland and cast an NBA guard in the lead: a father is released from prison for a week to talk his son into a school.
★ 4.0