BOT's Top 50 Historical Fiction Films - The Countdown

[Ethan Hunt]

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[The Panda]

 

 

"Houston, we've had a problem."

 

Historical Setting: 1969, Apollo 13 Lunar Mission

 

Source from the Period

 

"055:55:19 Swigert: Okay, Houston...

055:55:19 Lovell: ...Houston...

055:55:20 Swigert: ...we've had a problem here. [Pause.]

055:55:26 Fenner (GUIDO): FLIGHT, GUIDANCE.

055:55:27 Kranz (FLIGHT): Go GUIDANCE.

055:55:28 Lousma: This is Houston. Say again, please.

 

055:55:28 Fenner (GUIDO): We've had a Hardware Restart. I don't know what it was.

055:55:30 Kranz (FLIGHT): Okay. GNC, you want to take a look at it? See if you see any problems?

055:55:35 Lovell: [Garble.] Ah, Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus Undervolt.

 

055:55:36 Kranz (FLIGHT): Roger, we're copying it, CapCom. We see a hardware restart.

055:55:41 Kranz (FLIGHT): You see an AC Bus Undervolt there, GUIDANCE - ehhhm EECOM?

055:55:42 Lousma: Roger. Main B Undervolt. [Long pause.]

055:55:46 Liebergot (EECOM): Negative, FLIGHT

055:55:48 Kranz (FLIGHT): I believe the crew reported it.

055:55:50 Lousma (CAPCOM): We've got a Main Bus B undervolt.

055:55:51 Liebergot (EECOM): Okay, flight, we've got some instrumentation funnies. Let me add them up.

055:55:54 Kranz (FLIGHT): Roger.

055:55:58 Lousma: Okay, stand by, 13. We're looking at it. [Pause.]"

- Day 3, part 2: 'Houston, we've had a problem'

Apollo 13 Lunar Surface Journal

 

Historical Context

 

"The Apollo 13 mission was launched at 2:13 p.m. EST, April 11, 1970 from launch complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Apollo 13 Launch The space vehicle crew consisted of James A. Lovell, Jr. commander, John L. Swigert, Jr., command module pilot and Fred W. Haise, Jr. lunar module pilot.  The Apollo 13 Mission was planned as a lunar landing mission but was aborted en route to the moon after about 56 hours of flight due to loss of service module cryogenic oxygen and consequent loss of capability to generate electrical power, to provide oxygen and to produce water.  Spacecraft systems performance was nominal until the fans in cryogenic oxygen tank 2 were turned on at 55:53:18 ground elapsed time (GET). About 2 seconds after energizing the fan circuit, a short was indicated in the current from fuel cell 3, which was supplying power to cryogenic oxygen tank 2 fans. Within several additional seconds, two other shorted conditions occurred.

 

Electrical shorts in the fan circuit ignited the wire insulation, causing temperature and pressure to increase within cryogenic oxygen tank 2. When pressure reached the cryogenic oxygen tank 2 relief valve full-flow conditions of 1008 psi, the pressure began decreasing for about 9 seconds, at which time the relief valve probably reseated, causing the pressure to rise again momentarily. About a quarter of a second later, a vibration disturbance was noted on the command module accelerometers.  The next series of events occurred within a fraction of a second between the accelerometer disturbances and the data loss. A tank line burst, because of heat, in the vacuum jacket pressurizing the annulus and, in turn, causing the blow-out plug on the vacuum jacket to rupture. Some mechanism in bay 4 combined with the oxygen buildup in that bay to cause a rapid pressure rise which resulted in separation of the outer panel. The panel struck one of the dishes of the high-gain antenna. The panel separation shock closed the fuel cell 1 and 3 oxygen reactant shut-off valves and several propellant and helium isolation valves in the reaction control system. Data were lost for about 1.8 seconds as the high-gain antenna switched from narrow beam to wide beam, because of the antenna being hit and damaged.

 

As a result of these occurrences, the CM was powered down and the LM was configured to supply the necessary power and other consumables.  The CSM was powered down at approximately 58:40 GET. The surge tank and repressurization package were isolated with approximately 860 psi residual pressure (approx. 6.5 lbs of oxygen total). The primary water glycol system was left with radiators bypassed.  All LM systems performed satisfactorily in providing the necessary power and environmental control to the spacecraft. The requirement for lithium hydroxide to remove carbon dioxide from the spacecraft atmosphere was met by a combination of the CM and LM cartridges since the LM cartridges alone would not satisfy the total requirement. The crew, with direction from Mission Control, built an adapter for the CM cartridges to accept LM hoses.  The service module was jettisoned at approximately 138 hours GET, and the crew observed and photographed the bay-4 area where the cryogenic tank anomaly had occurred. At this time, the crew remarked that the outer skin covering for bay-4 had been severely damaged, with a large portion missing. The LM was jettisoned about 1 hour before entry, which was performed nominally using primary guidance and navigation system."

- APOLLO 13 (AS-508), Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"The 1995 film Apollo 13 has been praised for its accuracy, but many people still wonder if director Ron Howard played up the tension among the astronauts and inside mission control to heighten the movie's emotional impact. Bill Parkinson, an attorney working for the U.S. Department of Justice in Dallas, is one of the wonderers. "Apollo 13 portrayed the capsule's reentry as protracted beyond all expectations," he writes. "As a teenage junkie for all things aeronautical, I followed that flight and seem to recall that the flight's descent path was shallower than ideal, and that the blackout period was indeed much longer than it should have been. [But] I'm certain the movie embellished the scenario for dramatic effect. Can you help before I tear out what little is left of my hair when the movie is on?"

 

Even when they finally heard astronaut Jack Swigert's voice over the radio, confirming that the crew had survived, the controllers didn't say a word, just kept silent until the capsule splashed down in the Pacific nine minutes later, according to Cooper's account. (In the movie, as soon as the astronauts are proven to be alive, the cheering starts.) At 12:07 p.m. Houston time on April 17, Odyssey hit water and the flight controllers finally cheered.

 

At least one contemporary account did downplay the drama of that day. BBC reporter Reginald Turnill wrote that after Swigert, Jim Lovell, and Fred Haise moved into the command module in preparation for their return, "it was a familiar reentry procedure." Kranz scoffs at this. "We had a 500-plus item checklist that had been written only hours before," he says. "Power and water were critical, we did an emergency trajectory correction maneuver, and a battery was predicted to fail about the time the chutes came out. Nothing about the reentry was routine in mission control."

It seems, then, that the movie got the reentry scene mostly right. But that's not to say Howard has a perfect record. On the tenth anniversary DVD of Apollo 13, Lovell and his wife Marilyn detail several inaccuracies, including the inflated role of astronaut Ken Mattingly (whose work is an amalgamation of efforts undertaken by several astronauts and engineers), exaggerated doubts about Swigert's role in the mission, and the fact that the engine burn that corrected their course was not, as the movie showed, aimed in the direction of Earth."

- Did Ron Howard Exaggerate the Reentry Scene in Apollo 13?: A little, maybe, but not much, Air and Space Magazine

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"Based on the true story of the ill-fated 13th Apollo mission bound for the moon. Astronauts Lovell, Haise and Swigert were scheduled to fly Apollo 14, but are moved up to 13. It's 1970, and The US has already achieved their lunar landing goal, so there's little interest in this "routine" flight.. until that is, things go very wrong, and prospects of a safe return fade."

 

Critic Review

 

"A movie about astronauts — Pauline Kael once called them walking apple pies — raises visions of flag-waving and the gung-ho sentimentality we expect from director Ron Howard (Cocoon, Parenthood). Well, surprise. Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It’s easily Howard’s best film.  Cmdr. Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) and co-pilots Jim Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) are on their way to a lunar landing — the third in NASA history — when a tank of compressed liquid oxygen explodes in the spacecraft. To avoid death by freezing or suffocation, the three men squeeze into the ship’s lunar lander, basically a tin can that might keep two men alive for two days. It will take four days to get them back — that is, the men aren’t incinerated on reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.

 

Houston, we have a problem,” Lovell tells mission control, headed by Gene Kranz (Ed Harris in ironman mode). It’s a typical understatement from Lovell, whose 1994 book, Lost Moon (written with Jeffrey Kluger), formed the basis of the screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert. Hanks gives another great performance — instinctive and assured. He humanizes the hardware and the space-speak, shows feeling in Lovell’s scenes with his children and wife, Marilyn (a touching Kathleen Quinlan), and subtly draws us into the heartache of a dedicated man who won’t fulfill his dream to set foot on the moon. There is nothing showy in the Philadelphia and Forrest Gump mode in what Hanks does here, yet his acting as the unassuming Lovell ranks with his most impressive work.

 

Bacon and Paxton also do wonders in fleshing out their characters with an assist from script doctor John Sayles. Gary Sinise is superb as Ken Mattingly, the pilot whose exposure to measles knocked him out of the flight in favor of the less-experienced Swigert. Sitting in a flight simulator, Mattingly tries to figure out a way to get his buddies home. Though the trio’s safe return is historical fact, Howard and editors Michael Hill and Daniel Hanley build nail-biting tension in the crosscutting from ship to mission control. The you-are-there feeling is intensified by cinematographer Dean Cundey’s documentary realism. It all adds up to a triumph of stirring storytelling and heart-stopping suspense."

- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

 

BOT User Review

 

"Two of my favorite moments early on are where Tom Hanks is leading the tour around Cape Kennedy & remarks how anything is possible then talks about a computer fitting in a single room & containing millions of pieces of information. This was filmed in 1995 so remember the real internet explosion to becoming everything in our daily lives hadn't happened yet so very nice touch by Hanks & Ron Howard portraying how fast we can accomplish things that seem impossible. That quote "give me a lever long enough & I'll move the world" should be used more today in the space program. It's sad how little of importance NASA (space exploration in general) has become in the 21st Century. 

 

2nd is much smaller philosophically, but when Hanks is calming his wife down about the mission having the number 13, he brushes it off as any scientist would. It goes to show you despite all the randomness out there things can happen that defy expectation. What were the odds to have something unlucky happen & survive? They can't be good but somehow it turned into one of our space programs finest moments." - @GiantCALBears

 

Factoids

 

Apollo 13 was directed by Ron Howard.  It received 64 points and 10 votes.

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (3), Outer Space (1), Poland (1), Japan (4), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Rome (1), Spain (1), United States (17), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (2), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (8), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (3), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (3), World War 2/1940s (8)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s - The Ocean (1), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - Outer Space (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Classical Period - Rome (1), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (2), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: James Cameron (1), Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Ron Howard (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (2), David Lean (2), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Ridley Scott (1), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (4), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (7), 00s (7), 10s (9)

 

 

 

[The Panda]

Honorable mentons for today

 

 

56.    Throne of Blood
57.    Black Hawk Down
58.    Glory 
59.    A Beautiful Mind
60.    The Pianist 

61.    All the President’s Men
62.    Spartacus
63.    The Age of Innocence
64.    Gandhi
65.    Gone With the Wind 

66.    Chinatown
67.    Kundun
68.    Kingdom of Heaven
69.    There Will Be Blood 
70.    Argo 
71.    Inherit the Wind 
72.    Fiddler on the Roof
73.    The Thin Red Line
74.    Little Women (2019)
75.    BlacKkKlansman 
76.    The Wind Rises 
77.    The Shawshank Redemption
78.    Letters from Iwo Jima
79.    Casino
80.    MASH 
81.    Roma 
82.    The King’s Speech 
83.    Unforgiven 
84.    The Last Samurai 
85.    Alexander Nevsky 
86.    Aguirre, The Wrath of God 
87.    Spotlight
88.    (Tied for 88) Platoon 
88.    (Tie for 88) L.A. Confidential 
90.    1776  
91.    The Godfather Part II
92.    Persepolis 
93.    A Man for All Seasons 
94.    Blood Diamond 
95.    Becket 
96.    Barry Lyndon 
97.    First Man 
98.    Ugetsu 
99.    The Searchers 
100.    Cinema Paradiso

[Dementeleus]

On the one hand, APOLLO 13 is great. On the other hand, ranked higher than THE RIGHT STUFF?! Insanity. 

[The Panda]

We’ll finish the top 10 tomorrow, at least one director who’s shown up before will show up again.  I’ll also give the final honorable mentions.

 

There’s still one film at #4 that I was surprised at how high it managed to place.  Maybe the most surprising ranking on the list in that regard (although I had suspected it’d show up given the fan base)

[Cap]

What's left? Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Amadeus, Grave of the Fireflies, Lawrence of Arabia, Bonnie and Clyde, Patton?

 

TBH, It's gonna be like The Color Purple, Amistad, Ryan, and Schindler's right?  Arabia's gonna be #51 and Tele's gonna rage quit?

[chasmmi]

26 minutes ago, Cap said:

What's left? Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Amadeus, Grave of the Fireflies, Lawrence of Arabia, Bonnie and Clyde, Patton?

 

TBH, It's gonna be like The Color Purple, Amistad, Ryan, and Schindler's right?  Arabia's gonna be #51 and Tele's gonna rage quit?

 

Yeah like at this point Grave of the Fireflies is either crazy high (as it should be), or devastatingly low (which would be a tragedy), and I just cannot believe that either outcome has occurred.  

[TalismanRing]

3 hours ago, Plain Old Tele said:

On the one hand, APOLLO 13 is great. On the other hand, ranked higher than THE RIGHT STUFF?! Insanity. 

True though not nearly as insane as Gladiator (yack) making the list and Spartacus missing it

 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by TalismanRing

[Jake Gittes]

4 hours ago, Cap said:

What's left? Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Amadeus, Grave of the Fireflies, Lawrence of Arabia, Bonnie and Clyde, Patton?

 

TBH, It's gonna be like The Color Purple, Amistad, Ryan, and Schindler's right?  Arabia's gonna be #51 and Tele's gonna rage quit?

Amadeus has already shown up. I'm guessing Schindler, SPR, Lawrence, Grave and Dunkirk

[The Panda]

 

 

"It's a good story, it's funny, you're a funny guy."

 

Historical Setting: 1955-1980, New York Mafia

 

Source from the Period

 

""Stuff like The Sopranos and Goodfellas and everyone wants to be a f**in' gangster. But if they had to live one f***in' day the way I lived they would completely change their minds. I used to shit my pants every day - I didn't know which bum was gonna whack me, whose best friend was gonna whack me - it's a sick existence.  It's 21 years on May 29 since that fateful, glorious day that I went into the witness protection. I gave up 'cos everyone was lookin' to kill me. The Feds was gonna kill me, my friends was looking to kill me, you know. I was gonna go to jail for a million years.  I knew my life was over. I woulda blew my own f***in' head off if someone would ever say: 'You're gonna be a rat' - you know whadda mean?"

 

"Those guys coulda never have turned themselves round like I did, They was gangsters to the f***in' core. If we sat down today the first f***in' thing they'd want was their piece of the action. They'd say: 'You stay alive as long as you give us 50 per cent, and if you can't we'll f***in kill ya.'  Those characters were played way down in the film. They couldn't show the true violence we used. These guys were murderers on a daily basis.  I never killed anyone, but I was present many, many times. I was an earner - I showed 'em how to make the money. But guys like Tommy (Joe Pesci's character) were real sick pieces of work.

 

"A couple of the old guys, now they all wanna do movies - they gotta script - it's crazy. They all think they can knock out the next Goodfellas.  But I think I can thank my father for the way I've managed to turn things round. He used to whip the f***in' shit out of me.  He'd shout at me: 'You stay away from those f***in' bums' and I used to think: 'How can my father call those guys bums? They got Cadillacs, and diamond rings on their fingers.'  But before my father passed away, I got to spend some time with him. He went to his maker knowing that I understood that all he'd tried to do was the right thing for me.  He was a good good hard-working Irishman - eight kids and never missed a day's work - and I was just a f***in' little f***in' snotnose.  My parents were wonderful, sure, but the other family I had gave me a pretty good education too. I got my masters in bad stuff, that's for sure."

- Henry Hill

"I don't worry about getting whacked no more but I still ain't gonna go in a restaurant where 14 wiseguys are packing" - Henry Hill interview from the archives

 

Historical Context

 

"The family's namesake was Tommy Lucchese, who immigrated with many other Italian families to East Harlem from Italy in the early 1910s and began partnerships with some of the biggest names in the annals of organized crime.  Lucchese, known as "Three Fingers" because of an industrial accident that took his right thumb and forefinger, became friends with Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Together they formed a street gang that operated with the blessing of an East Harlem mob boss.  After brief prison stints, Lucchese went into the bootleg business with Luciano and Meyer Lansky in the 1920s.  A gang war in 1930 led Lucchese to form an allegiance with Tomasso Gagliano. The war ended with the creation of the Mafia Commission controlled by the five ruling families. Gagliano was named one of the bosses. Lucchese was his underboss.

 

When Gagliano died in 1951, Lucchese became boss. They led the family through five decades and made it a force to be reckoned with in the criminal underworld.  The Lucchese family ran clothing and trucking companies and owned several buildings in downtown New York City.  At its peak in the 1960s, the family-controlled unions in the clothes manufacturing, food distribution, airport, construction and newspaper industries. It controlled the Local Teamsters unions in New York and New Jersey, and family bosses worked with former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa throughout the 1940s and ‘50s.  The family-controlled freight in and out of John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty airports.  Lucchese was popular and was friends with celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. When Lucchese died in 1967, politicians, judges and criminals attended his funeral.

 

The family conducted most of its business peacefully and quietly until the late 1980s, when two underbosses rose to power and initiated one of the most violent eras in Mafia history. Vic Amuso and Anthony Casso ordered hits on rival gang members and anyone else they perceived to be a threat, including many Lucchese family members.  After learning they were about to be indicted, Amuso and Casso went into hiding in 1991.  Amuso ordered a hit on acting boss Alphone D’Arco in 1991, which led him to become an informant, the first major family boss to do so. His cooperation caused other members to flip and cut deals of their own. Amuso was caught by the FBI in 1991 and Casso was caught in 1993.  Amuso and Casso were sentenced to life in prison. Amuso remained boss until 2012, calling the shots from his cell."

- The Five Families of New York: How the Mafia divides the city

Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic

 

Historical Accruacy

 

"The real-life Henry Hill’s crime resume is way too long to fit into a single movie—even one with a meaty 148-minute runtime. In fact, Scorsese even left out a Hill crime that eventually became a national sports controversy: Boston College's 1978-1979 point-shaving scandal.   The scam was born when Jimmy Burke (De Niro’s Jimmy Conway in the movie) and Hill recruited Boston College players Rick Kuhn, Jim Sweeney, and Ernie Cobb to manipulate scores to cover point spreads. In the ESPN documentary Playing for the Mob, which chronicles the history of the scandal, Hill claims he mentioned the operation to federal investigators in passing after flipping on his mob associates in 1980 without knowing that point-shaving was illegal.   Also absent is the time Hill reportedly took cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder out for a drink as his buddies lifted over $1 million worth of goods from her swanky New York pad.

 

According to Hill, despite combining characters and slightly altering plot points and timelines, Goodfellas was about 95 percent accurate. Perhaps some of that remaining five percent has to do with the on-screen portrayals of Paul Vario, the one-time head of the Lucchese crime family, and Jimmy Burke, architect of the Lufthansa heist.   Vario (Paul Cicero in the film) was far from the relatively coolheaded powerbroker Paul Sorvino portrayed. A federal prosecutor called Vario, who served jail time for rape and had a notoriously unhinged temper, "one of the most violent and dangerous career criminals in the city of New York.” And while Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway comes across as cunning and conniving with a brutal streak, the real Jimmy “The Gent” Burke was, according to Hill, a “homicidal maniac,” brutally violent and responsible for at least 50 to 60 murders. 

 

Louis Eppolito, a police detective who had a bit part as a wiseguy in Goodfellas, was later convicted for carrying out hits for the Lucchese crime family, which is, of course, the family chronicled in the movie. According to screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, there was an open call for real wiseguys, and Scorsese “must have hired like half a dozen guys, maybe more, out of the joint.” And Tony Sirico, who had a bit part as a wiseguy in Goodfellas but is best known for playing Paulie Gualtieri on The Sopranos, had a longer crime resume (28 arrests) than acting resume (27 credits) when the movie was released in 1990."

- Mental Floss

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"Henry Hill might be a small time gangster, who may have taken part in a robbery with Jimmy Conway and Tommy De Vito, two other gangsters who might have set their sights a bit higher. His two partners could kill off everyone else involved in the robbery, and slowly start to think about climbing up through the hierarchy of the Mob. Henry, however, might be badly affected by his partners' success, but will he consider stooping low enough to bring about the downfall of Jimmy and Tommy?"

 

Critic Review

 

"For two days after I saw Martin Scorsese's new film, "GoodFellas," the mood of the characters lingered within me, refusing to leave. It was a mood of guilt and regret, of quick stupid decisions leading to wasted lifetimes, of loyalty turned into betrayal. Yet at the same time there was an element of furtive nostalgia, for bad times that shouldn't be missed, but were.  Most films, even great ones, evaporate like mist once you've returned to the real world; they leave memories behind, but their reality fades fairly quickly. Not this film, which shows America's finest filmmaker at the peak of his form. No finer film has ever been made about organized crime - not even "The Godfather," although the two works are not really comparable.

 

There is a real Henry Hill, who disappeared into the anonymity of the federal government's witness protection program, and who over a period of four years told everything he knew about the mob to the reporter Nicholas Pileggi, whose Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family was a best-seller. The screenplay by Pileggi and Scorsese distills those memories into a fiction that sometimes plays like a documentary, that contains so much information and feeling about the Mafia that finally it creates the same claustrophobic feeling Hill's wife talks about: The feeling that the mob world is the real world.  Scorsese is the right director - the only director - for this material. He knows it inside out. The great formative experience of his life was growing up in New York's Little Italy as an outsider who observed everything - an asthmatic kid who couldn't play sports, whose health was too bad to allow him to lead a normal childhood, who was often overlooked, but never missed a thing.  There is a passage early in the film in which young Henry Hill looks out the window of his family's apartment and observes with awe and envy the swagger of the low-level wise guys in the social club across the street, impressed by the fact that they got girls, drove hot cars, had money, that the cops never gave them tickets, that even when their loud parties lasted all night, nobody ever called the police."

- Roger Ebert

 

BOT User Opinion

 

"My pick as the best film ever made. Everything just comes together beautifully here." - @DAR

 

"The third act kinda falters a little bit" - @4815162342

 

"You get to live the rest of your life as a schnook." - DAR

 

"good and entertaining, but i think i prefer scorsese's less glamorous early works. 68" - @luna

 

".................................. That's like an A coming from you.  I'll take it." - DAR

 

"got a little a better after he went out of jail, but overall it was still was boring as hell. 40/100" - @Goffe

 

"Do you like movies?" - DAR

 

Factoids

 

Goodfellas was directed by Martin Scorsese.  It received 70 points and 11 votes.

 

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (3), Outer Space (1), Poland (1), Japan (4), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Rome (1), Spain (1), United States (18), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (2), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (8), 1950s - 1980s (1), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (3), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (3), World War 2/1940s (8)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s - The Ocean (1), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1950s - 1980s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - Outer Space (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Classical Period - Rome (1), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (2), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: James Cameron (1), Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Ron Howard (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (2), David Lean (2), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (3), Ridley Scott (1), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (4), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (8), 00s (7), 10s (9)

 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by The Panda

[terrestrial]

11 minutes ago, The Panda said:

= snip -

the clip at the end of the post made me remember a movie I actually like a lot and had forgotten to add:

We Own the Night 

😢

[TalismanRing]

12 hours ago, Jake Gittes said:

Amadeus has already shown up. I'm guessing Schindler, SPR, Lawrence, Grave and Dunkirk

Now just 4 spots left.   Hopefully it's the dull Dunkirk that misses out but then this is Nolanville.

[Cap]

Bwaaaaaaaaaah. 

[Jake Gittes]

12 hours ago, Jake Gittes said:

Amadeus has already shown up. I'm guessing Schindler, SPR, Lawrence, Grave and Dunkirk

How could I forget my own #1 jesus. Forgive me Marty

[MrPink]

9 minutes ago, Jake Gittes said:

How could I forget my own #1 jesus. Forgive me Marty

 

 

Pathetic. I still remembered and am still rooting for my #1 jesus for this list, Marty McFly

[chasmmi]

1 hour ago, TalismanRing said:

Now just 4 spots left.   Hopefully it's the dull Dunkirk that misses out but then this is Nolanville.

 

Yeah, Like Dunkirk is good, but its not even in the top four World War 2 films, let alone all of history.  

 

... Although the top 4 are looking like they could all be WW2 so...

[Dementeleus]

14 minutes ago, chasmmi said:

 

Yeah, Like Dunkirk is good, but its not even in the top four World War 2 films, let alone all of history.  

 

... Although the top 4 are looking like they could all be WW2 so...

Greatest Generation, man. 

[The Panda]

EDIT: Prematurely hit submit some how, dumb Panda.

Edited May 15, 2020 by The Panda

[Jason]

2 hours ago, chasmmi said:

... Although the top 4 are looking like they could all be WW2 so...

Pretty sure one of the top 4 is not WW2.

[The Panda]

11 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

 

"The bodies are coming back."

 

Historical Setting: World War 2, The Evacuation of Dunkirk Beach

 

Source from the Per

 

Oh shoot, went to grab a drink during the middle of a write up and somehow this was posted!

 

Will edit it out and post the actual full write up in a bit!  Sorry about that premature reveal guys!