Great movie, but one point i'd like people to consider

Rating: 8/10 (20 April 2006)

I feel about this movie the way I feel about all Scorcese films; my one controversial contention is that they lack heart. They are so well executed, virtuosic, precise, controlled, and at the same time, a little exuberant. Still, they lack heart. Have you ever seen deep parts of yourself in his characters or in his worlds, have you ever recognized, as one might, in the look of a Wes Anderson film, or even in the playful inventiveness of Back to the Future, a world that feels new and familiar at the same time, particular and general, some world or situation or feeling that you feel has been in you forever though you're only recognizing it now. Do you feel deeply about any of them? Simply put, do they move you? Perhaps an answer of 'No' to these questions does not indicate a deficiency. But out of the best works of art I want that phenomenon of meeting myself in something separate from me, a new and yet familiar part of myself, that sense of expansion, that presentiment of a mysterious and universal beauty. Given that, though, I do not hesitate to say that Scorcese's films are compelling, and furthermore, that Goodfellas ranks high among them. I am involved in its story easily and always when I run across it on TV. Just remembering the cocaine helicopter pasta sauce sequence makes me think well of the movie.