When Goodfellas came out in 1990, the New York Times called it "brilliant and breathless." Roger Ebert talked about an "element of furtive nostalgia, for bad times that shouldn't be missed, but were." EW marveled at its ability to take the "guilt out of crime." Back then, the mob movie seemed like nothing so much as a critique of the excess of the eighties. Last night, as part of BAM's Brooklyn Close-Up series, Goodfellas seemed like nothing so much as a critique of the excess of the aughts. The hair and shoulder pads might have been shrunk in the early years of the twenty-first century, but the greed and unchecked free-market capitalism loomed as large as in the 1980s, if not even larger.
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