Casino

“In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and to keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose, and in the end, we get it all.” I say this without any hesitation whatsoever: Casino is my favorite Martin Scorsese film that I’ve seen throughout this chronological watch-through. My infatuation with the greed that bleeds through Las Vegas has been unshakable since the first time I remember staying there—to be exact, it was the Wynn Hotel, for a basketball trip back in high school. I’ve always been tempted by that I couldn’t touch, so as you could assume, shuffling by what then appeared to be a glamorous maze of neon lights was no easy feat. Simply put, I not only wanted to gamble, but also I needed to understand my own natural gravitation to something so clearly shrouded by greed. Maybe I was greedy myself, at that that time I mean; or Maybe this was a point of internal realization, that these Casinos are built to seduce you into a rattling state of desperation, and that I too, even from a young age, fell victim to gamblings over arching hand of intrigue. Martin Scorsese encapsulates all of that spellbinding Vegas chaos into one of my favorite three hour epics of all time, one that as a whole completely embodies my personal obsession with the power, greed, addiction, and corruption directly associated with Casinos and gambling. Scorsese’s Casino may also be my favorite of his visually, as he created an atmosphere unlike anything I’ve seen within the crime genre. The returning cast from GoodFellas with the addition of Sharon Stone feed into this perfect production design, as their performances are transformative—the layered performances they gave feed directly into the creative production and costume design, all together creating one of the most addicting on screen atmospheres that I’ve experienced within film. I understand why this film is often considered divisive, as it’s impossible not to notice the uncanny similarities to Goodfellas story structure, yet to me, I actually found that Casino worked slightly better. What many consider to be overbearing narration in Casino felt much more manageable to me than GoodFellas did. It took me over half of the run time with GoodFellas to appreciate the narration, yet with Casino, I was engaged the moment the film started. In all realities, it could be massively unnecessary to compare, but I couldn’t help myself after reading so many reviews complaining about the narration in Casino. To me, It’s fucking awesome. 98/100 * *Martin Scorsese, Ranked* * My 75 Favorite Films, Ranked