Every Martin Scorsese Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best

Rejoice movie lovers: A new Martin Scorsese picture has arrived.

His latest film is Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the shocking true story (and non-fiction book by David Grann) about a series of murders and mysterious deaths in 1920s Oklahoma, all of which centered around the members of the Osage tribe. Pushed out of their previous home and dumped on this supposedly worthless property in Oklahoma, they instead found their new land was sitting on top of a massive oil deposit — and thus were systematically targeted by their white neighbors because of the invaluable mineral rights. Scorsese’s film is not simply a mystery; it’s nothing less than a sweeping consideration of a dark chapter of American history and the corrupting influence of money and power — and possibly even a love story between two people at center of all of this violence: Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone).

Killers of the Flower Moon is three and a half hours of pure Scorsese, full of all of his favorite themes, filtered through the perspective of a man nearing the end of his career. As part of our excitement about having a new Scorsese movie to talk about, and because Killers of the Flower Moon really does feel like the conclusion of an artistic statement spread across decades of work, today felt like the best time to look back at this great filmmaker’s career and rank all of his movies. Where does this timely, powerful epic rank among all the other timely, powerful epics he’s made through the years? (The dude’s made a bunch of timely, powerful epics. It’s kind of his thing.)

Keep in mind the list that follows is just of his fiction features; it seemed weird and hard to compare, say, The Last Waltz to something like The Wolf of Wall Street. And there are enough Scorsese documentaries, particularly when you factor in the shorts and films he’s made for television, that they really deserve their own list. We’ll get to that another time; for now, here is every Martin Scorsese fiction film, ranked from worst to best: