One night, Bobby Vinton sent us champagne

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2009)

In many ways the quintessential Scorsese picture, tying together all the director's favourite hobbyhorses and actors (The Mob, De Niro, the Rolling Stones), GoodFellas was the first great crime thriller of the 1990s - and a classic as soon as it opened.
Based on the memoir by stool pigeon Henry Hill, it has lost none of its chilly, seductive power with the passing of time, owing to career-defining turns from Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci - the latter so good he'd virtually reprise the role for Goodfellas' spiritual twin, Casino, along with a soundtrack to literally die for, bravura camera-work and some authentic, blackly funny dialogue. Funny, how?