All of Martin Scorsese’s Movies, Ranked Worst to Best

Published: February 29, 2024 by John Harrington

Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, known for intense, violent, and long movies. Scorsese has been nominated for an Academy Award 14 times, nine times for directing, and he won an Academy Award for “The Departed” in 2007.

Among film directors, Scorsese is tied for second place with Elia Kazan with 24 Oscar nominations for his performers, five of whom took home the coveted golden statue. Nine of his movies have been rewarded with a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score of 90 or better.

To determine the best and worst Martin Scorsese movies, 24/7 Tempo developed an index using average ratings on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon, and a combination of audience scores and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator, as of January 2024, weighting all ratings equally. Cast information is from IMDb.

Scorsese received a Master of Arts degree from New York University in 1968. But he also got an education on the hardscrabble streets of Manhattan’s Little Italy, which inspired his first theatrical movie, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” (1967). That neighborhood helped inform Scorsese’s vision of motion pictures. Violence, and its effect on people, is never far off in a Scorsese film, be it “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “Casino,” or “Raging Bull.”

Though a lot of his films feature Italian mobsters, movies such as “The Departed,” “Goodfellas,” and “The Irishman” also depict Irish gangsters. (These are the best mafia movies of all time.)

Scorsese has broadened his film portfolio to include historical-themed motion pictures such as “Aviator,” “Gangs of New York,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Silence,” “Last Temptation of Christ.” “Wolf of Wall Street” and “The King of Comedy” were examples of Scorsese’s venture into black comedy. He also has done period pieces (“The Age of Innocence”) and thrillers (“Cape Fear”).

Like directors such as John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock, Scorsese is known for frequent collaborations with actors such as Robert De Niro (seven films), Leonardo DiCaprio (six) and Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel (four each).

A veritable who’s who of Oscar-winning actors have appeared in Scorsese movies, among them De Niro, DiCaprio, Pesci, Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicolas Cage, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Cate Blanchett, Patricia Arquette, Jessica Lange, Paul Newman, and Jodie Foster among others.

As Scorsese’s stature in the industry has lengthened, so has the running time of his motion pictures; seven are at least three hours long: “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Irishman,” his latest effort “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and various documentaries. (These are the 10 best documentaries of all time.)

34. Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Source: Photo by American International Pictures/Getty Images

Barbara Hershey and David Carradine embrace each other near train car in a scene from the film Boxcar Bertha, 1972. (Photo by American International Pictures/Getty Images)

IMDb user rating: 6.0/10 (9,872 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 33% (5,450 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 52% (23 reviews)
Starring: Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus

33. Rolling Thunder Revue (2019)

Source: Courtesy of Netflix

IMDb user rating: 7.6/10 (5,646 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: .% (. reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 92% (97 reviews)
Starring: Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith

32. New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York (1977) | Robert De Niro, Nicky Blair, and Liza Minnelli in New York, New York (1977)

Source: Courtesy of United Artists

N/A

IMDb user rating: 6.6/10 (19,281 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 58% (9,841 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 63% (41 reviews)
Starring: Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro, Lionel Stander

31. Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967)

Source: Courtesy of Joseph Brenner Associates

IMDb user rating: 6.6/10 (8,793 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 61% (5,171 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 70% (20 reviews)
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune, Anne Collette

30. The 50 Year Argument (2014)

Source: Arturo Holmes / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images

IMDb user rating: 6.6/10 (694 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 61% (50 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 78% (9 reviews)
Starring: Robert Silvers, Barbara Epstein, W.H. Auden

29. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Source: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

IMDb user rating: 6.8/10 (66,537 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 70% (38,833 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 72% (109 reviews)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman

28. Silence (2016)

Silence (2016) | Andrew Garfield in Silence (2016)

Source: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

N/A

IMDb user rating: 7.1/10 (114,684 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 69% (25,424 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 83% (285 reviews)
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson

27. Cape Fear (1991)

Source: Courtesy of Universal Pictures

IMDb user rating: 7.3/10 (183,201 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 77% (68,903 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 73% (52 reviews)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange

26. Kundun (1997)

Source: Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures

IMDb user rating: 7.0/10 (28,826 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 79% (11,819 reviews)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 75% (61 reviews)
Starring: Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Gyurme Tethong, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin