2015 marks 25 years since Martin Scorsese's gangster phenomenon "Goodfellas" landed in theaters. It's an endlessly rewatchable, wickedly funny, brutally violent and brilliantly incisive example of cinema at both its purest and most coolly, deliciously corrupt. At the time of its making, Scorsese was at exactly that point in his career which he could easily have started a gradual slide into stately irrelevance, having already earned his podium in the Hall Of Fame for his early masterpieces like "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull." His previous few films had seen him move away from his trademark fascination with the visceral and the criminal on the mean streets of New York, since after the box office disappointments of "The King of Comedy" and "After Hours," he'd begun to explore his more spiritual side with "The Last Temptation of Christ" and the more refined if not necessarily gentler impulses in the short "Life...
