The Barbeardian

Casino (1995)

If you're gonna have a Main Man Movie, eventually you're gonna need a Scorsese. And right at the top of the list are Goodfellas and Casino. Really, they're the same movie; they just changed names and locations. Who cares, though? Pesci and DeNiro are just so much damn fun to watch.

You've got the cool, calculated, anal-retentive man-in-charge that is Sam "Ace" Rothstein. The thing that makes him so badass is not that he kicks everyone's ass. It's that he doesn't have to. He just gives the signal and someone does it for him. God, I want that.

And the only one capable of rivaling how fucking cool he is: the maniacal, unpredictable, incredibly short-fused Nicky Santoro. At this point, I wanted to include the famous pen-stabbing scene followed up by the scene where Nicky crushes a guy's head in a vise until his eye pops out. I apologize on Youtube's behalf for letting us all down. This is a good substitute, though. Joe Pesci beating Don Rickles with a phone -

And, somehow, that's not all. The icing on this money-power-violence-sex-crime cake is the brilliant soundtrack. It's Scorsese, so you already know there's gonna be some Rolling Stones. On top of that, you've got Muddy Waters, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Cream, Harry Nilsson, The Animals, and motherfuckin' Devo.The great thing is that Scorcese also has the ability to be artistic without coming across as faggy, so the Strauss and Bach don't seem out of place in the least.

In closing, I'd just like to leave you with, yet another, scene in which Joe Pesci beats a man with a telephone.