Goodfellas/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain: Billy Batts. At least he gets one of the most famous mob deaths in history.
• Award Snub: Goodfellas, Scorsese, and Braco lost to Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner, and Whoopi Goldberg for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. In hindsight, Goodfellas is considered Scorsese's Magnum Opus.
  • On the other hand, Joe Pesci not only got a fully deserved Oscar for Best Supporting, he didn't even expect to win and gave one of the shortest and most modest speeches in Academy history ("This is a great privilege. Thank you.")
  • Ray Liotta wasn't even nominated.
• Awesome Music: Pretty much the whole soundtrack, or at the very least, all the classic rock.
  • The part where Jimmy is seen smoking at the bar while Sunshine of Your Love by Cream plays. Pure badass.
  • The way the instrumental coda to Layla is used during the montage revealing the fate of everyone involved in the Lufthansa heist.
  • Film critics point to the mix of songs during Henry Hill's worst day - Jump Into The Fire, and Mannish Boy in particular - as the best use of period soundtrack ever.
• Complete Monsters: You watch this movie, you'll think twice about so much as pissing in the urinal next to a gangster. (But you'd be quite happy to let them cook you dinner.)
  • Once again, the movie actually manages to downplay the monstrosity of most of the gangsters, especially Tommy and Jimmy. Go look their real life counterpoints up and cringe.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Some of the violence in this movie is so extreme, it almost verges on Crowning Moment of Funny.
• Memetic Mutation: Tons, with the "Do I amuse you?" scene topping the list.
• Moral Event Horizon: Jimmy crosses this when he has his conspirators in the heist murdered rather than share money with them. Tommy completely obliterates it when he kills Spider
• Periphery Demographic: Considered one of the quintessential mob films, reportedly by gangsters themselves.
• Wangst: Having watched Henry become a major player in the Mafia, act as an accomplice in several major crimes (including murder and a major armed robbery), become a drug dealer, abuse his wife and eventually rat out all his friends and colleagues, it's hard to feel too sorry for him at the end when he whines about the fact that, now that he's in Witness Protection having escaped any prosecution and even mob retribution for his crimes, he's no longer a bigshot.
• What an Idiot!: His bosses want to put a hit on Henry at the end because they are worried he'll squeal to the cops. It's the realization that he has a hit on him that makes Henry squeal.
  • Note that despite the What an Idiot! aspect, this really happened on several occasions.
  • Henry's exposition about his drug mule/babysitter; she is insistently told to leave the house in order to make a drug related phone call. And what does she do? She phones from the house. The narcs of course are wiretapping everything.

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