The 10 Most Criminally Underrated Martin Scorsese Movies, Ranked
Nothing says GOAT-status quite like a list rating a director’s ten (yes, ten) most underrated movies. To even warrant consideration, the candidate must a) be beloved, and b) have made enough universally acclaimed movies that there are at least ten left feeling overshadowed. In both of these categories, like so many others when it comes to cinematic achievements, Martin Scorsese excels.
The octogenarian has so far directed 28 features in his glittering career. In that time, he’s never exactly gone off the map, but there are enough commercial flops and critical misconceptions over the years to warrant the following ten movies’ inclusion—some of which you’ve seen, some perhaps not. Many readers won’t need reminding that the following are worthy of the Scorsese canon, but if you’re relatively new to exploring Marty’s back catalogue, or mostly know the classics (like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas), I’m kind of envious—there’s really nothing like seeing movies as good as these for the first time.
The following list—which I’ve arranged in ascending order—offers something for audiences of various ages, but, of course, many of them skew towards more mature viewers. Read on to discover more and use the guide below to find them on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
It’s fair to say that Gangs of New York—a crime movie set amongst the Irish immigrant community in New York in the 1860s—is nobody’s idea of peak Scorsese, but there are plenty of reasons to like it—especially if you’re a fan of the style of shows like Peaky Blinders and House of Guinness.
Cameron Diaz was admittedly miscast as the love interest, but this movie boasts plenty of well-placed talent elsewhere—including the first of Scorsese’s many collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio and, in Bill “The Butcher”, one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s most terrifying creations. Earning almost $200 million at the box office, it also paved the way for the late career heights that followed.
In 1974, Scorsese followed up his early success with Mean Streets by taking a sharp turn toward melodrama with Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The result movie is sometimes overlooked as it’s not exactly the kind of thing people associate with the director. However, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing, not least for fans of movies from that era like The Bridges of Madison County or Five Easy Pieces.
Ellen Burstyn stars alongside Kris Kristofferson, with Jodie Foster amongst the supporting cast.
Cape Fear is probably the closest thing to a straight-up horror movie that Scorsese ever directed. As a result, it’s another one of those genre exercises that people tend to overlook when considering his greatest movies—but they really shouldn’t.
Cape Fear is a nightmarish remake of the 1962 original of the same name (that film’s star, the great Robert Mitchum, even gets a cameo here) with Juliet Lewis as the ingénue and a never more frightening Robert DeNiro as the vengeful ex-con, Max Cady. Check it out if you’re partial to classic psychological horror (like Primal Fear) or if you appreciate Season 5, Episode 2 of The Simpsons—one of the show’s greatest ever homages.
Kundun is the Scorsese movie people tend to bring up as an example of when a director delivers a hit (as he had done with Goodfellas and Casino) and follows it up with a far more personal project—what people in the biz tend to call a “one for you, one for me” arrangement.
Because of that, Kundun has a reputation for being slow and indulgent—but is there really anyone else you’d rather see be indulgent than Martin Scorsese? The movie is a biopic of the 14th Dalai Lama, so if you enjoy Bertolucci’s Last Emperor or even Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, you might be into it.
Scorsese’s first and only musical, New York, New York (which also has a great Simpsons episode dedicated to it), is probably best known for being the most wild behind the scenes production of the director’s cocaine years (it was the ‘70s, after all)—but if you like seeing directors directors of that generation try their hand at the genre (think Spielberg’s West Side Story or Coppola's One from the Heart), you might be really into it.
The movie stars Robert DeNiro as a saxophonist who falls in love with a singer (played by Liza Minnelli) on V-J Day in 1945. Of course, it features that song.
Diehard Scorsese fans will tell you that Silence is one of the director’s finest movies. I wouldn’t personally go that far, but I do think of it as some kind of flawed masterpiece. There are issues with it—for one, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver should probably have been cast in each other’s roles—but the best parts are phenomenal.
Liam Neeson gives one of his finest performances as a kind of monkish Colonel Kurtz, and, working in Japan for the first time, the director takes the opportunity to pay homage to Japanese cinema—and those moments are to die for. If you appreciate Akira Kurosawa (think Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood) or other movies from that era, you’re probably gonna love it.
I think the reason that The Colour of Money is underrated, at least in terms of the history of Scorsese movies and Sports movies (a genre in which it deserves huge recognition), is that people aren’t quite sure how to categorise it. Is it a “legacy sequel” for The Hustler from a time before that term was invented? Is it a swansong for Paul Newman, who finally got to win the Oscar for playing Fast Eddie Felson, having lost it unjustly 25 years before? Is it a changing of the guard between Newman and Tom Cruise, Hollywood’s most glittering young star at the time?
In reality, this movie of pool sharks, late-night dive bars and the inevitability of old age is all those things and more. It also features, in the sequences when Cruise hits the table, some of the most dazzling examples of total confidence ever captured on film. If you like classic sports movies like Hustler and Rocky, you just gotta see it.
Is it gender essentialist to suggest that the reason why Age of Innocence—an immaculate adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel about high society in 1870s New York—tends not to land in the pantheon of great Scorsese movies is that the people who write those lists are usually dudes? It’s not not a theory.
This movie, among other things, features a delicious love triangle between Wynona Ryder, Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer. It also offers some of the most decadent production design of the 1990s. If you appreciate shows like The Gilded Age, you’ll probably devour it.
Ask any Scorsese head which movie they think is undervalued from the director’s canon, and 95% of them will probably say After Hours. This was a smaller film that people had gotten used to from the director, but it was nevertheless a significant swing—a movie that feels like ‘70s Cassavetes (think Husbands or Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky) but with an even more lurid undercurrent of sexual desire.
That said, a movie can only be referred to as underrated for so long, and at the rate that After Hours seems to be inspiring younger filmmakers these days (Anora fans take note), it’s only a matter of time before it’ll be, well, rated. Catch it while it still feels under the radar.
Am I insane for putting this one up top? Casino made a hefty profit in 1995 but was only nominated for a single Oscar—for Sharon Stone. The suits, most of which were designed exclusively by Giorgio Armani, are legendary, and yet, their positioning amongst the “best of the rest” on many lists (somewhere below the usual Mount Rushmore picks of Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and The Departed) always struck me as a little off.
Tracking the early days of Las Vegas, Casino is a dazzlingly stylish tragedy, and a movie that chases its shots of decadence with nostalgia and melancholy—a mood that the filmmaker would later explore with The Wolf of Wall Street. If you haven’t seen it in a while (or, better yet, never have), I highly recommend giving it another watch.
