With the brilliant Shutter Island opening tomorrow (come back for a review then), many critics have looked back over the four-decade career of arguably the best living filmmaker, Martin Scorsese. Who are we to stay out of the discussion? More than nearly any of his peers, it's actually difficult to whittle his films down to the ten best. And then to rank them? It's tough.

What's most remarkable about Scorsese's work is that he has no dry period like so many of his peers. On the list below, you'll find films from the 1970s through the 2000s. If there's any weak period, it's in the late 1990s and early 2000s but even some of those films – Casino, Kundun, Bringing Out the Dead, Gangs of New York – would easily be on the top ten of most other filmmakers, not just minor ones. Casino and the underrated Dead should be considered runner-ups to the list below, as should Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, After Hours, and The Color of Money. Shutter Island has been excluded for now merely because, unlike every other film on the list, it's only been seen once and hasn't really been allowed to sink in, although if the list is done again in ten years, it would probably be on it. It's that good. Without further ado, the ten best movies of Martin Scorsese are ...

 

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm, Danny Huston, Gwen Stefani, and Jude Law
Written by: John Logan
Gross: $103 million

The Aviator features Scorsese playing with new technical tools like CGI in an effort to recreate not just an era of history but an era of filmmaking. Very few directors know as much about the history of his medium as Scorsese and The Aviator works on two levels. Of course, there's the human story represented by the fantastic performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and the Oscar-winning turn by Cate Blanchett. But the film is almost more enjoyable for the downright gleeful period recreation and love of classic moviemaking by Scorsese. What's the first thing you think of when you think of The Aviator? (Besides DiCaprio pissing in bottles.) It's those massive party scenes, glorious costumes, and the aerial sequences, elements of the film that feature Scorsese and his marvelously talented team using modern tools to tell an old story. The Aviator is wildly entertaining from first frame to last.

 

 

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Alexis Smith, Geraldine Chaplin, Mary Beth Hurt, Richard E. Grant, and Miriam Margolyes
Written by: Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese
Gross: $32 million

After the controversy of The Last Temptation of Christ and the violent one-two punch of GoodFellas and Cape Fear, everyone was shocked when Scorsese turned to Merchant/Ivory territory and decided to adapt a beloved novel by Edith Wharton. It's not as if we expected this clearly chameleonic filmmaker to make mob movies for the rest of his life but there was something weird about seeing a PG-rated Scorsese movie with that guy from My Left Foot and Winona f-in Ryder in it – which makes it all the more remarkable how completely he pulled it off. What's most notable about The Age of Innocence is the remarkable attention to detail, something all great filmmakers have in common but especially Scorsese. Every small movement of the characters and decision in the production design works together to create the mesmerizing overall mood of this remarkable romantic drama, a film that’s only now finding the audience it always deserved.

 

 

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard, and Shelley Hack
Written by: Paul D. Zimmerman
Gross: $3 million

For Scorsese fans like me, the Labor Day Telethon is mostly just a reminder that we need to watch The King of Comedy again. I remember being a young kid and working my way through the comedies of the 1980s on VHS. Like most kids of my generation, I fell for Caddyshack, Vacation, Animal House, Airplane!, and the other standards, but when I stumbled across The King of Comedy, I had no idea what I was in for (and, of course, it wasn’t until years later that I would really appreciate it). Marty's fifth collaboration with Bobby D. (and arguably his most underrated performance), The King of Comedy is one of Scorsese's more surreal and straight-up weird films, a black comedy that has lost none of its dramatic power nor its ability to comment on the allure of the ever-loving spotlight.

 

 

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Verna Bloom, and Barbara Hershey
Written by: Paul Schrader
Gross: $7 million

The quality of one of Scorsese's most controversial films was somewhat lost in the wave of press surrounding its subject matter and the protesters carrying signs outside theaters. More people remember Last Temptation for the uproar it caused than the film itself. Easily one of Scorsese's most personal films, it was a project that he had tried to get to the big screen for years and earned the man his second Best Director nomination from the Academy (losing to Barry Levinson for Rain Man). It's interesting to view Last Temptation in the context of all of Scorsese's films, many of which are about men struggling with both power and what it means to live a good life. With one of the best performances by one of our more underrated actors in Willem Dafoe, The Last Temptation of Christ is one of Scorsese's most poetic and mesmerizing dramas to date, having lost none of its power two decades later.

 

6. The Last Waltz (1978)

Starring: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, and Van Morrison
Written by: Mardik Martin
Gross: $0.3 million

Arguably the best rock and roll movie ever made, The Last Waltz documents the final concert by the legendary group The Band. The talent on stage in that room in San Francisco was not only mind-blowing but the way Scorsese filmed it displayed a director aware of the power of the event he had in his lens – one that was clearly a commentary on the end of a rock 'n' roll era as much as the dissolution of a band. One of many things I love about The Last Waltz is how important it truly is to the rest of Marty's filmography. Robbie Robertson reportedly asked Scorsese to make the film after seeing how he used music in Mean Streets. One of the most notable elements of many of Scorsese's best films has been his use of rock and roll music, something that may not have been such a part of his filmmaking if not for The Last Waltz. Robertson continues to work with Scorsese, supervising the brilliant music choices for Shutter Island.

 

 

 

Starring: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and David Proval
Written by: Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin
Gross: $32,000

Martin Scorsese's first post-Corman film is as influential as any of the 1970s and not only because it introduced the world to Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Scorsese himself but because it was such an important part of the American independent film scene, one that told countless filmmakers they could bring art to the big screen with a very small amount of money. It was a legendary breakthrough that would define so much of what Scorsese would do over the next three-and-a-half decades in character and directorial style. Scorsese's films are so "big" now that it's sometimes easy to forget that he started as essentially an independent filmmaker, just another guy making movies about what interested him with his buddies. As influential as his later works would be, it all starts here with a film that has lost none of its gritty, urban power.

 

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, and Cybill Shepherd
Written by: Paul Schrader
Gross: $21 million

One of the most oft-quoted films of all time, Taxi Driver is not just a movie, it's a cultural phenomenon. I don't think a year goes by that some anti-hero isn't compared to the legendary Travis Bickle, the role still most identified with one of the best actors of all time. Taxi Driver took the street level urgency of Mean Streets a step further, asking the question of what happens to a man when the darkness of the world becomes too much for him to bear. What more is there to say about Taxi Driver that has yet to be written? How about this little fact? When Scorsese made Taxi Driver he was only thirty-five and would have dozens of films to go in his still-strong career. How many filmmakers have a film this good under their belt when they're that young? Very few.

 

 

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Anthony Anderson, and Alec Baldwin
Written by: William Monahan
Gross: $132 million

This is the entry that might get the most flak for being this high but I'll stand by one of the most purely entertaining films of the 2000s every single time. The only true masterpiece of the Leo-Marty era to date, The Departed is unbelievably riveting. I remember seeing it in a full screening room in Chicago and watching the looks on the faces of the often-considered-cynical faces of my fellow critics leaving as the credits rolled; the word that came to mind was awe. It was clear that Marty would finally get his Oscar. The revisionist history that claims that he only won this for his body of work is a load of crap. Sure, it was nice to finally give him a trophy, but he earned it with one of the most expertly made films of the decade. Yes, he should have won an Oscar for the two films above it on this list, but he should have won for this one too.

 

 

Starring: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino
Written by: Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese
Gross: $47 million

Does anyone out there still think Dances with Wolves is a better film than GoodFellas? I know Academy Awards are political above all else and Kevin Costner's film has held up better than you might think but GoodFellas is a modern masterpiece and it should have won a half-dozen Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. Ironically, it wasn't the first time that Scorsese was screwed by a former actor; that happened ten years earlier and one spot up this list. Very few movies have held up as well twenty years later as Scorsese's best gangster movie a film that influenced pop culture in so many ways from bad Joe Pesci impressions to the way mob fiction has been told in film and television ever since. Very, very few filmmakers have ever made a film as masterful as GoodFellas, and much less one better....

 

 

Starring: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, and Frank Vincent
Written by: Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin
Gross: $49,000

One of the best films of the 1980s is also one of the best dramas ever made about the arc of the modern man from hero to villain to redemption. The true story of Jake La Motta is the seminal Scorsese film for a few reasons. First, it details the rise and fall of a man not unlike so many future heroes of Scorsese films – Henry Hill, Christ, Howard Hughes, Travis Bickle. Scorsese has long been intrigued with arguably the most timeless cinematic archetype – "man gets put on pedestal, man gets knocked off pedestal" – and Raging Bull is one of the most influential of those films ever made. Second, it is Scorsese's first technical masterpiece, the film that hints at the artistry he would display over the next three decades, all the way up to Shutter Island. It is the rare perfect film on every level and the best work by one of our best filmmakers.