Martin Scorsese’s vibrant filmmaking meets both the luxury and thrills of the gangster lifestyle with a spirited energy in Goodfellas, pushing its brisk pacing forward through kinetic editing and dynamic camerawork, and in his construction of such a transcendently compelling narrative on top of this, he brilliantly stands it up among the finest of its genre.
Even in his escapist storytelling, Paul Verhoeven still finds a way to let the philosophical questions of identity and perception uncomfortably linger in our minds, sweeping us away on Total Recall’s waves of outlandish retrofuturism and thrilling set pieces that lead us into the depths of a Martian conspiracy, though never letting us forget the existential possibility of its unreality.
The gritty realism of Abel Ferrara’s location shooting in New York City streets, nightclubs, and hotels is a perfect fit for King of New York’s character study of urban grit and power plays, whereby one drug kingpin struggles to find the redemption he seeks, only succeeding in pulling both sides of the law into a dark, muddy underworld of corruption and bloodshed.
