Every Martin Scorsese Movie, Ranked

Released in 1972, Scorsese's second narrative feature is a Depression-era crime drama starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine as fugitive train robbers. The Roger Corman-produced film is loosely based on Ben L. Reitman's book Sister of the Road.

"Lots of violence, typical of the Corman exploitation mill, but the film still shows the budding talent of Scorsese in his use of moving-camera and period detail." —TV Guide

Enlisting star Leonardo DiCaprio for his fourth straight narrative film, Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis adapt Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel about a marshal who investigates the disappearance of a patient at a rather creepy psychiatric facility in 1954. Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, and Michelle Williams also star. Critics found the resulting thriller to be one of the director's minor works, with an ending that is far better than the bulk of the movie that came before it.

"It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached." —Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

Also screened under the titles I Call First and J.R., Scorsese's 1967 debut feature (which he wrote and directed as an expansion of one of his student films) stars Harvey Keitel as an Italian-American New Yorker whose Catholic upbringing intrudes on his new relationship with a free-spirited young woman (Zina Bethune).

"Martin Scorsese's début feature has just the slightest bit of story line, but the movie is a fascinating portfolio piece: a black-and-white blueprint for 'Mean Streets.'" —Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

After depicting New York City as a sort of hell in 1976's Taxi Driver, Scorsese decided to give his hometown a more affectionate tribute the following year with this musical—starring Liza Minnelli and Robert DeNiro—that blended jazz standards with new songs by Kander and Ebb. While the film itself isn't exactly memorable (and was a flop upon its release), its title song certainly is—especially after Frank Sinatra recorded a version of it three years later.

"Abandon your expectations of an orderly plot, and you'll end up humming the title song. The movie's a vast, rambling, nostalgic expedition back into the big band era, and a celebration of the considerable talents of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The fourth and final collaboration between director Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader (following Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ), this bleak 1999 drama stars Nicolas Cage as a New York City paramedic plagued by the horrors he sees on his job. Patricia Arquette, Ving Rhames, and John Goodman also star.

"In a role as tailor-made for him as the story is for its writer and director, Nicolas Cage anchors the movie with one of his best performances." —Mike Clark, USA Today

By 2002, it had been a full seven years since Scorsese's last gangster drama, so he was due. While Gangs of New York returned the director to his favorite location (after detouring to Vegas for 1995's Casino) and nonfiction source material (in this case, Herbert Asbury's book of the same name), the time period is different: the 1860s. Two decades in the making, the well-received film reunited the director with his Age of Innocence star Daniel Day-Lewis, while also marking his first of many collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio. But though Gangs collected 10 Academy Award nominations, it failed to win any.

"It's a magnificent achievement—holes, tatters, crudities, screw-ups, and all." —David Edelstein, Slate

After detouring into period costume drama with 1993's The Age of Innocence, Scorsese returned to much more familiar territory in 1995 with this epic gangster drama based on a Nicholas Pileggi book and starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci—yes, the Goodfellas formula. But instead of the latter film's New York setting, Casino takes place in Las Vegas in the 1970s. Sharon Stone (who received an Oscar nomination) and comedian Don Rickles (praised for his against-type dramatic performance) also star. Critics think it's hampered a bit by its excessive length (at nearly three hours) and an uneven script, but is otherwise solid.

"Whether or not Casino meets your expectations, it delivers the rush you only get from an audacious gamble." —Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Scorsese's underrated 1982 black comedy thriller—written by film critic Paul Zimmerman and originally set up for director Bob Fosse, who dropped out to direct Star 80—was perhaps ahead of its time. Robert DeNiro plays a struggling (and mentally unhinged) stand-up comedian who is rejected for a spot on a late night talk show. Rather than take no for an answer, he stalks the show's host (Jerry Lewis, successfully playing against type) and kidnaps him—a move that indeed launches him to fame.

"The King of Comedy ... brilliantly keeps viewers unmoored, the result of its consistently off-kilter tone. Though filled with sight gags and corny jokes, the movie is also darkened by genuine menace." —Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

Scorsese's 1991 remake of J. Lee Thompson's pulpy 1962 thriller casts Nick Nolte in the Gregory Peck role and Robert De Niro in the Robert Mitchum role, though both Mitchum and Peck (in his final film) appear in the remake as different characters. The remake remains one of Scorsese's biggest box office hits—adjusted for inflation, it trails only The Departed in domestic grosses for the director—and it earned Oscar nominations for De Niro and co-star Juliette Lewis.

"It's a brutal, demonic film with a grip like a vise; it grabs you early, its fingers around your throat, and never lets go." —Hal Hinson, The Washington Post

A major box office flop when it was released on Christmas Day on 1997—not that it stood much of a chance, given the arrival of Titanic one week prior—Scorsese's epic drama examines the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama, beginning in the 1930s. Kundun features a screenplay by E.T.'s Melissa Mathison, but was hampered commercially by a no-name cast and the release of a similar film (Seven Years in Tibet) just a few months earlier.

"Ultimately Kundun emerges as a movie that's hypnotic without being truly compelling, sensuously stunning but not illuminating." —Emanuel Levy, Variety

Scorsese's 2011 documentary, which earned six Emmy nominations (and landed the director his second career Emmy trophy after picking up his first the prior year for Boardwalk Empire) after it debuted on HBO, spends nearly four hours tracing the life and career of the former Beatle.

"The exhaustive nature of it, and the intimacy that Scorsese and his collaborators develop with both their subject and those who knew him, makes it into something more than a three-plus hour rehash of an oft-told tale." —Alan Sepinwall, Hitfix

Working for the fifth time with star Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese and his Boardwalk Empire collaborator Terence Winter adapt the memoir of the same title by Jordan Belfort, recounting (with more humor than is typical in Scorsese films) the former stockbroker's rapid rise and equally rapid fall after being arrested and jailed for securities fraud. Nominated for five Oscars, it remains Scorsese's highest-grossing film to date.

"A very fast three hours, Wolf is a fascinating, revolting, outlandish, uproarious, exhilarating and exhausting master work on immorality." —Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

Scorsese followed his 2006 crime drama hit The Departed with a return to his second-favorite genre, the rockumentary. This 2008 concert film captures a New York City performance by The Rolling Stones during their Bigger Bang Tour in 2006.

"Shine a Light has two maestros, Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, and once they begin to mesh, around the third or fourth song, they put on a display of showmanship that erases the line between art and entertainment." —Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun

After going a decade without a commercial hit, Scorsese recovered with this 1986 sequel to Robert Rossen's 1961 film The Hustler, again based on a Walter Tevis novel (adapted by novelist Richard Price). Paul Newman reprises his role as pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson from the original film—winning his first best actor Oscar in the process—joined by Tom Cruise, who would also star in Top Gun that same year.

"From the first frames of The Color of Money, you feel, almost physically, the presence of a man singularly obsessed with the romance of movies. In this movie, Martin Scorsese enters a new period in an already extraordinary career. It would be hard to exaggerate the complex pleasure and wonderment that The Color of Money conveys." —Paul Attanasio, The Washington Post

Scorsese must have been impressed with the work of Leonardo DiCaprio on 2002's Gangs of New York, since he immediately made him the lead in his next film: a biopic about famed businessman, aviator, film producer, and germophobe Howard Hughes. The film was a box office hit and was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning in five categories. The Aviator was also Scorsese's first collaboration with screenwriter John Logan; the pair would later reunite for 2011's Hugo.

"It's not [Scorsese's] best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining." —William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Released a year after Scorsese's 1973 breakthrough Mean Streets, Alice is a much lighter film, following a widow (Ellen Burstyn in an Oscar-winning performance) who sets off with her young son in search of a better life—which includes work as a lounge singer. The hit film's excellent cast includes Scorsese regular Harvey Keitel plus Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, and an 11-year-old Jodie Foster. Vic Tayback also co-starred as the owner of a diner, and he would reprise his role as Mel for nine seasons on the CBS sitcom Alice, which was very loosely based on the film.

"One of the rare films that genuinely deserve to be called controversial. I think people will really fight about it. It's the story of a woman who has a second chance thrust on her; she knows enough not to make the same mistake again, but she isn't sure of much else. Neither is the movie. Alice is thoroughly enjoyable: funny, absorbing, intelligent even when you don't believe in what's going on--when the issues it raises get all fouled up." —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

This 2010 HBO documentary about outspoken author Fran Lebowitz combines new interviews with Lebowitz with archival footage.

"This may not be Martin Scorsese's most sophisticated film, but it actually takes a smart filmmaker to understand that, with a subject like Fran Lebowitz, the best thing you can do is let her talk." —David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle

Scorsese's most recent narrative feature (at least until The Irishman arrives in late 2019), this 2016 release marks another one of the director's long-gestating passion projects that finally came to fruition after over two decades of effort. An adaptation of Shūsaku Endō's novel, Silence follows a pair of Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who travel to Japan in the 17th century in search of their mentor (Liam Neeson).

"The movie's being promoted as the third in the director's unofficial trilogy of faith, after 'The Last Temptation of Christ' (1988) and 'Kundun' (1997), and it feels like a self-conscious masterpiece, a summing-up from a filmmaker who, at 74, may be thinking of his legacy." —Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Scorsese co-directed this 2014 HBO documentary about the history of The New York Review of Books with David Tedeschi.

"Scorsese and Tedeschi's film is more than a traditional non-fiction document of what happened in the intellectual circles that inspired and were inspired by The New York Review, but a relevant, vital film about the importance of journalism and commentary." —Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Released in the spring of 2023, Scorsese's first feature of any kind in four years (though just one of two planned 2023 releases) is a documentary co-directed by David Tedeschi, who worked as an editor on Scorsese's 2019 Bob Dylan doc Rolling Thunder Revue. Here, the two filmmakers profile musician David Johansen, best known as the frontman for the influential punk band New York Dolls, though he has also performed as a solo act under the name Buster Poindexter (and does so again during the film, with the cabaret-style pre-pandemic concert taking up a big chunk of Personality's running time). Some critics found the film a bit long, but most deemed Johansen a very compelling subject.

"It's a documentary of sterling musical moments and clever connections between culture and the city that all the principals here so clearly adore." —Dan Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

Scorsese has been around long enough that he has not only had several long-gestating passion projects but has actually been able to see them through to completion. The first was this epic (and highly controversial) 1988 retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, based on the book of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis which Scorsese first optioned a decade earlier. Last Temptation features a Paul Schrader script (the writer's third of four Scorsese collaborations), a terrific Peter Gabriel score, and a cast led by Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas, Barbara Hershey as Mary, and David Bowie as Pontius Pilate. The film was a box office flop (and was famously banned from Blockbuster Video once it reached VHS), but it did earn Scorsese his second best director Oscar nomination.

"A film of challenging ideas, and not salacious provocations, The Last Temptation of Christ is a powerful and very modern reinterpretation of Jesus as a man wracked with anguish and doubt concerning his appointed role in life." —Variety

Scorsese's fifth film released during a particularly busy two years from 2010-11 is a unique entry in his filmography: It's his first 3D film, and his first (semi) children's movie. Based on Brian Selznick's historical novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret (in turn inspired by real-life filmmaker and inventor Georges Méliès), Hugo is an adventure set in 1930s Paris. No film that year had more Academy Award nominations, and Hugo eventually won five Oscars, though it lost the best picture race to an actual French film set during the same time period (albeit in Hollywood): The Artist.

"As well as an engaging fable about a homeless orphan living in a train station, Scorsese's film is a richly illustrated lesson in cinema history and the best argument for 3-D since James Cameron's 'Avatar.'" —Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail

Scorsese's two-part documentary about legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's rise to fame (and conversion from folk singer to rocker) in the period from 1961-66 aired as part of the PBS series American Masters in addition to making a brief theatrical appearance. It was Scorsese's first rock-doc since his lauded 1978 film The Last Waltz (in which Dylan also appeared), and the director would later helm a second Dylan documentary in 2019.

"It runs 3 hours and 37 minutes. It's too darned short." —Jonathan Storm, Philadelphia Inquirer

Considered the gold standard for concert films, Scorsese's 1978 documentary chronicles the final performance by The Band at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom in late 1976. Waltz intersperses interviews with Band members with performances from the evening, which found the group joined by an impressive roster of guests including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, and Bob Dylan (who would later be the subject of two additional Scorsese rockumentaries).

"The greatest rock concert movie ever made -- and maybe the best rock movie, period." —Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

It may not be Scorsese's highest-scoring film, but it was his only best picture winner—and his only Oscar win for best director. A remake of the 2002 Hong Kong cop drama Infernal Affairs penned by William Monahan, The Departed transports the story to South Boston and finds Scorsese enlisting Leonardo DiCaprio for his third straight narrative feature. Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, and Martin Sheen are just some of the other names in an impressive cast.

"When a director of Scorsese's caliber is working at the top of his game, it's a reminder of why we go to the movies in the first place." —Scott Tobias, A.V. Club

The first of two 2019 Netflix features from Scorsese, Rolling Thunder Revue finds Scorsese once again focusing on Bob Dylan, as he did for 2005's No Direction Home. While the latter film focused on Dylan's early 1960s career, Rolling Thunder Revue chronicles his 1975-1976 comeback concert tour. Bookending the release of his album Desire, the tour is famed for the quality of Dylan's performances as well as its star-studded lineup, which at times included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Roger McGuinn, among other big names. It was also, fortuitously, extraordinarily well documented with both video and audio recordings, which Scorsese has reconstructed into a playful, truth-bending work.

"A rambling magic trick of a movie that reanimates a hazy chapter of American history by unmooring it from the facts of its time, and even perhaps from time itself." —David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Much like The King of Comedy, After Hours is an early-1980s black comedy made by Scorsese after originally being set up for a different director (in this case, Tim Burton) during a slow period when Scorsese was otherwise attempting—and failing—to get The Last Temptation of Christ in production. Neither film was a box office hit, but both have developed a cult following, with After Hours having the better reviews of the pair. The film, based on (or perhaps stolen from) a story by radio monologist Joe Frank, spends an evening in the life of a computer programmer as he makes his way through a series of misadventures in New York. The ensemble includes Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, and Cheech and Chong.

"This unpredictable and hilarious paranoid fantasy is a contemporary, urban "Wizard of Oz," peopled by punk artists and Yuppie vigilantes instead of wicked witches and Munchkins." —Julie Salamon, The Wall Street Journal

Running at nearly three and a half hours, Scorsese's return to narrative filmmaking in 2023 (after a rare four-year break) depicts the true story of the FBI investigation into a series of murders within Oklahoma's Osage Nation during an oil boom in the 1920s. Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro head a cast that also includes Jesse Plemons, Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser, and John Lithgow. The eighth Scorsese feature selected for the Cannes Film Festival, Flower Moon immediately won raves from critics at the festival who ranked it among the best films of the director's storied career.

"Killers of the Flower Moon is vast and vital in its scale, purpose and emotional scope, a Western-thriller and ensemble piece that is every bit a Scorsese crime picture as one can dare to imagine." —Tomris Laffly, The Wrap

Unlike anything else in Scorsese's catalog, this 1993 costume drama (which in fact won an Oscar for its costume design) is an adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of the same name, a romance set in New York in the 1870s. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder head the cast. Critics certainly liked it, but audiences stayed away.

"Thoughtful and reflective, it stands with the most exquisitely crafted films in recent memory, joining eloquently conceived images to an uncommonly literate screenplay." —David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor

Scorsese closed out the 1970s with yet another masterpiece—and certainly one of the best sports movies ever made. Though Raging Bull couldn't match the best picture win of Rocky, another boxing film released just four years earlier, the film did receive a nomination for best picture among its eight total Academy Award nominations—including Scorsese's first best director nomination. Robert De Niro famously gained 60 pounds to portray real-life boxer Jake LaMotta, while Joe Pesci—in his first major film role and first of four Scorsese collaborations—plays his brother and manager. Why isn't it ranked even higher in our list? Reviews at the time of its 1980 release were surprisingly mixed, though it didn't take long for Bull to develop its reputation as one of Scorsese's best films.

"Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull is the best American movie of the year, Scorsese's best film and at long last replaces Robert Wise's 'The Set-Up' (1949) as the best film about prizefighting ever made." —Jack Kroll, Newsweek

Airing on Italian television in 1999 and screened at film festivals in 2001, this four-hour documentary traces the history of Italian cinema, and features Scorsese discussing films that influenced his own career. It echoes a similar documentary about American cinema that Scorsese made a few years earlier (and which is not included in this list because it was just one portion of an even longer TV miniseries by multiple filmmakers).

"Has power not only as film scholarship, but as an inquiry into cinema's interplay with our collective memories and the nature of history itself." —F.X. Feeney, LA Weekly

For Scorsese, the 1980s were mostly forgettable, with only one modest box office hit (The Color of Money) and years spent pursuing a movie that few people ultimately had interest in seeing (The Last Temptation of Christ). Then came 1990, and Goodfellas, which immediately became the best gangster film ever made to not have the words "The Godfather" in its title. (Coincidentally, The Godfather Part III came out that same year, but nothing more need be said about that film.) An adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book Wiseguy, Goodfellas reunited Scorsese with his frequent star Robert De Niro, joined by Ray Liotta and a memorable Joe Pesci, who won an Oscar for best supporting actor. The film as a whole collected six Academy Award nominations, including best picture (which it lost to Dances With Wolves) and best director (ditto).

"No finer film has ever been made about organized crime - not even 'The Godfather.'" —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

It may be attracting attention for its use of a digital "de-aging" process to allow its stars to appear as their younger selves, but this 2019 Netflix gangster feature is clearly the beneficiary of decades of experience, as it finds the director and his stars (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and a coming-out-of-retirement Joe Pesci) operating at the top of their game. The story, told over multiple decades, touches on the famed disappearance Jimmy Hoffa, and critics think it represents Scorsese's best work in ages.

"It's the film that, I think, a lot us wanted to see from Scorsese: a stately, ominous, suck-in-your-breath summing up, not just a drama but a reckoning, a vision of the criminal underworld that's rippling with echoes of the director's previous Mob films, but that also takes us someplace bold and new." —Owen Gleiberman, Variety

One of the best films to emerge from cinema's greatest decade, Scorsese's 1976 classic was nominated for four Oscars, though it lost the best picture race to Rocky. (It did, however, win that year's Palme d'Or at Cannes.) Taxi Driver featured a screenplay by future director Paul Schrader and the final score by film composer legend Bernard Herrmann. It also marked the on-screen debut for Albert Brooks and featured Cybill Shepherd and Harvey Keitel in supporting roles. But the grimy, violent, New York-set thriller's two real stars are its two other Oscar nominees: Robert DeNiro as Vietnam War veteran turned taxi-driving vigilante Travis Bickle, and 12-year-old Jodie Foster, playing a very young prostitute in her breakthrough role.

"Acting of this sort is rare in films. It is a display of talent, which one gets in the theater, as well as a demonstration of behavior, which is what movies usually offer. Were Mr. De Niro less an actor, the character would be a sideshow freak." —Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Scorsese achieved his first masterpiece with his third narrative feature, released in 1973. A gangster drama set in New York's Little Italy, Mean Streets returned the star of Scorsese's debut, Harvey Keitel, and the star of his second, David Carradine, and added a man who would soon become the director's most frequent on-screen collaborator: Robert De Niro.

"Mean Streets is a jazzy riff of a movie, zigging and zagging as if to the beat of snapping fingers. Its greatness lies in its leanness, with nary a word, a move, a gesture that's nonessential." —Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times