I haven't seen that or New York, New York yet, but I doubt Alice could be better than Mean Streets or Taxi Driver.

I'd be interested to hear why you like it over Taxi Driver

Goodfellas and After Hours my favorite Scorsese films. Goodfellas for the obvious reasons and After Hours is such a weird movie, so fever dream-ish and does the movie over a single night thing very well.

My personal top 5 of Scorsese is Taxi driver, goodfellas, raging bull, departed and Wall Street.
But then mean streets, king of comedy and Irishman is right there too.

Irishman goes so f***ing hard, if thats his last mob movie it would be too fitting. It's like a holistic gangster picture. Ever seen Force of Evil? Great movie in its own right but it made me love The Irishman even more

It’s the perfect way for him to end his mob pieces. Like when is he gonna get the chance to do a film with DeNiro, Pacino, and Pesci all together again. And you had Harvey Keitel

I'm in the minority here but Taxi Driver never clicked with me all the way honestly, like it's great but it definitely feels more like a Paul Schrader movie than a Scorsese movie, and I'm not too into the changes Scorsese added to the screenplay, I think there are some absolutely amazing sequences, but a few things like Travis taking Cybil Shepard to the p***o theatre always felt a bit first-draft to me, like I totally get that it's to reflect how disconnected he is from mainstream romance, but I think even he would know better than to do that

Mean Streets though, rough around the edges as it may be, feels like a pure shot from the heart, someone wanting to present the world around them on-screen by any means necessary, I love how personal it feels, how simple and economic it is while being simultaneously loose and rambling, it's a really inspirational movie IMO and one that has a real pulse of life going through it the whole time, the youthful energy is contagious

I'd say Taxi Driver's an 8/10 for me, but Mean Streets is an 8.5-9/10, I still enjoy both movies, but I really wish I connected with Taxi Driver on the level that so many other people do

WoWS definitely got the biggest laugh I've ever heard in a theater, the qualuudes scene was actually drowned out by how f***ing hard the audience was cracking up. Leo's comedic chops in that are crazy

You gotta see Silence man, I don't know if there's a movie this century that deals in theology more effectively - maybe First Reformed

It's a perfect "getting the band back together" moment, truly crazy to me it didn't take home at least one Oscar that year. But it was a stacked year, people had Parasite fever 🤷‍♂️

Silence is so good man, I went in expecting to see a film that drew inspiration from the greatest movies ever made about faith, only to watch another join their ranks

Yeah I’m not sure why I haven’t checked out Silence yet. I f***in love First Reformed and Paul Schrader in general. I’ll prolly watch Silence later today

2019 was stackkkkkkkked. One of my favorite years of experiencing movies so far. My personal favorite that year was uncut gems. But Irishman and parasite deff made my top 10, top 5 films of 2019

Casino is nothing like goodfellas.. I can’t express how much I HATE how often I see people say some version of this almost flippantly

Well if you see people saying that often maybe there is similarities that exist

they are literally almost opposite stories which makes is even more stupid that people repeat this s*** (not aimed at you just my general frustration when I see that take)

It is understandable that you have strong feelings about the comparison of Casino and Goodfellas. Both films are crime dramas set in the world of organized crime, but they have distinct storylines, characters, and themes. Casino is based on the true story of the rise and fall of a Las Vegas casino while Goodfellas is based on the true story of a mobster's rise through the ranks of the Lucchese crime family. While the two films share similarities in terms of genre and setting, they are ultimately distinct works of art.

Yes, Casino and Goodfellas have distinct storylines and themes, which is why it would be more appropriate to compare them in terms of their artistic and technical achievements rather than drawing parallels between the two stories. It is understandable that you find it frustrating when people make such comparisons without fully understanding the distinctiveness of each film.

While both Casino and Goodfellas are crime dramas set in the world of organized crime, they do have distinct storylines and characters. However, there could be some similarities that people may be noticing, such as both films depicting the inner workings of a criminal organization, the rise and fall of powerful figures within that organization, and the gritty and violent nature of the criminal underworld. But these similarities are not unique to these two films and are present in many crime dramas. Both films are based on true stories, which may also contribute to similarities in how the stories unfold. However, the main characters, their motivations, their actions and the overall tone are different.

Nah I feel you. I don’t mean the stories are the same, cus of course they aren’t. But the tactics he employed to tell those stories feel similar. If you watched goodfellas and casino back to back they would flow together perfectly.

Oh yeah I feel you on that, Taxi Driver is Schrader's picture as much as Scorsese's while Mean Streets is definitely pure Scorsese and you're dead-on about the energy it has. It's very electric and a perfect distillation of what he'd expand on later, thematically and cinematically. And Keitel just f***ing rocks.

Big rambling screed coming up so if yall don't want the thread cluttered up I'll spoil it

By changes to the script in Taxi Driver, do you mean like what QT talks about in Cinema Speculation with making the pimp a white guy? That s\*\*\* is really intriguing to me because I felt like Bickle's racism still came through clearly in the final product. Even in the p\*\*\*o theater scene, where there actually *are* couples in the audience of the theater, they're just black couples. His deadbeat malcontented insanity pushes him to the margins of society so hard that even as he's repulsed and scared by black people, I think he envies that sense of community and what he perceives as a more liberated attitude towards sexual behavior. That's why the taxi ride with Scorsese as the personification of a white devil hits so hard to me, the poison being dripped in his ear is that women are impure traitors and the black man is encroaching on the white man's domain that Bickle wants so badly to fit in with, and that violence can solve it. Which to me adds another angle to his obsession with Jodie Foster's character; to what end is he really interested in her purity being corrupted?

So in that respect, I do think having the pimp be black would drive the point home extremely hard - but maybe too hard? And Keitel as the pimp is so perfectly sleazy. His awkward back and forth with DeNiro is so f\*\*\*ing funny to me that I think the movie would suffer from losing it

But everything you said makes a lot of sense to me, I appreciate you writing it up boss

I think the biggest reason ppl see similarities is because both films are adaptations of the same author. And if I recall Nicholas Pileggi co-wrote on both films too?

yeah I get this & why the comparison is there…every once in a while I hit limit seeing it tho

(Casino being one of my favorite movies ever)

Is Casino as good as Goodfellas

I’m guessing you prefer Casino over goodfellas?

I respect goodfellas influence but I don’t give af abt it tbf …I also don’t like the 4th wall in the court room

I think Casino is the best of his De Niro gangster trilogy.