Martin Scorsese is arguably the greatest living filmmaker. The number of masterpieces to his name rivals such legendary directors as Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock. Movies like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas have been meticulously studied for decades, and will continue to be studied for decades to come. While he’s mainly known for gangster movies, Scorsese has dabbled in a wide range of genres, from musicals to dark comedies to psychological thrillers.
Not all of Scorsese’s movies rank among the best ever made, but his ratio is a lot higher than most. Across a career that spans half a century, there’s only one “rotten” score among Scorsese’s directorial efforts on Rotten Tomatoes.
26 Boxcar Bertha (52%)
Scorsese directed his second feature, romantic crime thriller Boxcar Bertha, for producer Roger Corman, whose heavy-handed sensibility seriously hindered Scorsese’s usually nuanced filmmaking. The one good thing to come out of Boxcar Bertha is that after fellow director John Cassavetes saw it and told Scorsese, “You’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of sh*t,” he was inspired to helm his first masterpiece: Mean Streets.
25 New York, New York (63%)
The flop that almost ended Martin Scorsese’s career, musical New York, New York benefits from a phenomenal lead performance by Liza Minnelli, whose title theme became iconic when it was recorded by Frank Sinatra.
24 Shutter Island (68%)
Culminating in a doozy of a plot twist, Shutter Island is a harrowing psychological thriller that flips the all-is-not-as-it-seems trope on its head several times over. Leonardo DiCaprio’s captivating lead performance keeps the audience hooked even when nothing makes sense.
23 Who’s That Knocking At My Door? (70%)
Scorsese’s feature debut, Who’s That Knocking at My Door? is a sobering drama in which Harvey Keitel plays a young man who finds out his girlfriend was sexually assaulted by her ex-boyfriend. This simplistic, but powerful premise serves a poignant examination of relationships.
22 Bringing Out The Dead (72%)
In many ways, Bringing Out the Dead is a spiritual successor to Taxi Driver. It’s another Scorsese/Schrader collaboration about a disturbed mind whose job has them driving around a bustling city in the middle of the night, but instead of a cabbie, it’s an ambulance driver.
21 Gangs Of New York (73%)
One of Scorsese’s most ambitious projects, Gangs of New York tells the story of how America was born. Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis anchor the movie with phenomenal lead performances.
20 Cape Fear (75%)
Scorsese’s remake of the classic 1962 thriller Cape Fear doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Bernard Herrmann’s score is left intact and Robert De Niro’s Max Cady is similar to Robert Mitchum’s. But it works, because the original did everything right and the remake just brings those familiar thrills into the modern age.
19 Kundun (75%)
With a timeline that spans more than two decades, Scorsese’s biopic of the 14th Dalai Lama follows a pretty episodic structure, but Roger Deakins’ cinematography and Philip Glass’ score are impeccable.
18 New York Stories (75%)
Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen each directed a segment in New York Stories, an anthology movie that sought to capture the titular city. Scorsese’s segment, “Life Lessons,” is the first one shown and arguably the best of the three.
17 Casino (80%)
While it’s often criticized for emulating the style of Goodfellas instead of branching off and becoming its own thing, Casino does have a very different story. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci’s dynamic is the crux of the movie’s examination of organized crime in Las Vegas.
16 The Wolf Of Wall Street (80%)
There’s a widespread debate about The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s an excessive pitch-black comedy that bombards audiences with the shocking antics of stockbrokers for three hours.
Some viewers believe it’s an incisive satire cutting down the culture that made Jordan Belfort’s crimes possible, while others believe it celebrates the legacy of a criminal. Ultimately, like any great piece of art (or better-than-average biopic), it’s in the eye of the beholder.
15 The Last Temptation Of Christ (81%)
Almost all of Scorsese’s films involve Catholic themes, but his most overtly religious film is The Last Temptation of Christ, a biopic chronicling the life and times of Jesus Christ. Instead of adapting Jesus’ life from the Bible, Scorsese drew from the darker alternate version found in Nikos Kazantzakis’ controversial novel.
14 Silence (83%)
A close second to Last Temptation for the title of Scorsese’s most overtly religious movie, Silence is an underrated gem. The director developed the project for decades and the end result didn’t disappoint: it’s a touching, beautifully shot epic about the harrowing ordeals faced by missionaries in the 17th century.
13 The Age Of Innocence (84%)
As far removed from the usual graphic violence of Scorsese’s filmography, The Age of Innocence is a period romantic drama adapted from the Edith Wharton novel of the same name. It’s always interesting to see a director with a distinctive style step outside their comfort zone.
12 The Aviator (86%)
Leonardo DiCaprio gave one of his finest performances as Howard Hughes in the big-budget Scorsese-helmed biopic The Aviator. He would’ve been a shoo-in for Best Actor if it hadn’t been the same year as Jamie Foxx’s revelatory portrayal of Ray Charles.
11 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (88%)
One of the criticisms aimed at Scorsese’s work is that he usually features male protagonists and sidelines female characters like Peggy Sheeran in The Irishman. But Scorsese did once make a movie with a strong female protagonist played by an Oscar-winning Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
10 After Hours (89%)
Although movies like Goodfellas are funnier than most comedies, Scorsese has only made one full-on comedy, After Hours, about an office worker’s surreal odyssey through New York across one fateful night.
9 The Color Of Money (89%)
Scorsese’s comments about the Marvel movies have made it clear he’s not a franchise guy, but he did direct Paul Newman in a sequel to The Hustler. The Color of Money catches up with an aging “Fast Eddie” Felson as he takes a mentor played by Tom Cruise under his wing.
8 The King Of Comedy (89%)
Exploring similar themes to Taxi Driver but with a razor-sharp comic edge, The King of Comedy was one of Scorsese’s most underrated movies until Todd Phillips’ Joker ripped it off and bungled the satire. Robert De Niro’s turn as aspiring comedian Rupert Pupkin is one of his all-time greatest performances.
7 The Departed (91%)
The movie that finally won Scorsese an Oscar for directing, The Departed adapts the complicated plot of Infernal Affairs for Hollywood as a cat-and-mouse thriller in which the cat and mouse are looking for each other.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon play an undercover cop trying to figure out the identity of the mob’s police mole and a mole trying to figure out the identity of the undercover cop who’s infiltrated the mob, respectively.
6 Hugo (93%)
During the 3D boom of the early 2010s, Martin Scorsese ventured into the third dimension for Hugo, his first kids’ movie, which starts off as a journey through 1930s Paris and morphs into a film studies lesson when Ben Kingsley’s character turns out to be Georges Méliès.
5 Raging Bull (93%)
Flitting between a stylized cinematic ride inside the ring and a minimalist, almost documentary-like slice of life outside the ring, Raging Bull gives a beautifully rounded portrait of the tragic figure at its core: boxer Jake LaMotta.
Robert De Niro gives arguably the greatest performance of his career, portraying LaMotta’s rage with a powerful authenticity. It’s not always easy to watch, but it’s always compelling.
4 Mean Streets (95%)
Although it was his third directorial effort, with its focus on life in the mob and themes of Catholic guilt, Mean Streets is the first Scorsese movie that feels like the kind of Scorsese movie the director’s fans have come to expect.
3 The Irishman (95%)
With cutting-edge de-aging effects (that still aren’t quite there yet), Scorsese brought the entire life of Frank Sheeran to life in Netflix’s three-and-a-half-hour giant The Irishman. The CGI wasn’t always perfect, but seeing Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino starring in the same movie, firing on all cylinders, was a treat for cinephiles.
2 Goodfellas (96%)
Having grown up around the mob, Scorsese has explored organized crime in a number of his movies. The thesis is always to warn audiences against a life of crime by reminding them of the inevitable outcome. The life of mafioso-turned-informant Henry Hill presented him with the perfect vehicle to explore this message. Pulling out all the cinematic stops, Goodfellas hits viewers like a speeding bullet.
1 Taxi Driver (96%)
With the aesthetic of a film noir and the themes of a western, Taxi Driver is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Scorsese’s dark urban tale of an insomniac cabbie with PTSD from fighting in Vietnam who is driven to exact vigilante justice by the rampant crime and corruption around him perfectly captured the fears of its time.
Along with Network and Cuckoo’s Nest, Taxi Driver is one of the cornerstones of the post-Watergate New Hollywood movement’s cynical, rebellious tone.
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