Formal Film Studies Project - Scorsese

For my Formal Film Studies project, I watched three movies by renown director, Martin Scorsese.  The three that I watched were his 1990 classic, Goodfellas, his 2006 action film, The Departed, and his 2010 thriller, Shutter Island.  I noticed several patterns with the film that seem to be Scorsese's style of directing that crossed into all three movies, however similar or different the stories in the filming techniques, the goal of having a message in each movie, and the actors used.
The first thing I noticed was similarities in style.  While Goodfellas was the only movie actually about gangsters, the other movies still had the 'gangster film' vibe in several characters.  In the Departed, he has a mob boss as the antagonist, which gives the movie the gangster element present throughout Goodfellas.  At the same time, Shutter Island also takes on some of the same style and vibes as Goodfellas.  Taking place in the 1950s, the way the main character, a US Court Marshall behaves and talks is reminiscent of the characters in Goodfellas.   However, the style of the way the stories are told is different in some of the movies.  Goodfellas features direct narration from the main character, while the other two do not.  A few other of Scorsese's signatures are present throughout the films as well.  For example, in The Departed he has a scene similar to the ending of Goodfellas, with a man shooting straight at the screen, although it is during a moment of action and not randomly at the end.  All movies feature plenty of action packed scenes with shoot outs.  In addition, Scorsese, particularly in the two recent movies, likes to put plot twists at the end of the films.  In Shutter Island, the whole concept of the movie was turned upside down at the end and in the Departed the main protagonist is suddenly and unexpectedly shot dead when he seemed to be about to have a moment of victory, suddenly ending the story.
All of the Scorsese films I watched touched on political issues at least somewhat.  In Goodfellas, it obviously commented on not only the gangster culture, but also the rising drug trade.  The Departed touched on corruption, while Shutter Island spoke very openly about the horrors of war, the main character having fought in World War II and liberated a Nazi death camp, scarred from the experience.
Scorsese has pretty specific people he chose to act in these movies.  In Goodfellas, Ray Liotta portrays the slick gangster, Henry Hill.  In both The Departed and Shutter Island, Leonardo DiCaprio stars.  DiCaprio I felt is a very similar actor to Liotta, both in presence and even looks.
Overall, Scorsese is definintly one of the best directors of the past 20 years.  He manages to put his own mark on many different movies that makes them identifiable as a Scorsese film.  I think out of the three movies I watched of his for this assignment, Goodfellas was the best put together, while Shutter Island might just have been my favorite because of the mind blowing twist at the end.