From a reader:

Yes, GoodFellas is the best movie ever made. In particular, it is better than the Godfather movies, which had the great flaw of romanticizing the Mob lifestyle and endowing with a patina of undeserved honor. GoodFellas came along at just the right time to puncture that despicable myth with a look at the story of someone who fell for that myth, who “as long as I can remember, wanted to be a gangster.”
Creatively, Scorsese and Pillegi did a good job in shaping the amorphous collection of anecdotes that was the book “Wise Guy” into a morality play depicting the rise and fall of a group of psychopaths. What could be a greater fall that Henry Hill’s being reduced to being “just another schmuck” picking up his paper in a suburban tract where he can’t even get good calamari?
You could also broaden the movie’s message into a story about midlife disillusionment, the time of life when one’s chosen profession turns out to be just another trap like every other.
So much a better movie than the pernicious myth of the Godfather.

Me: My wife and I have this argument all the time. She won’t watch The Sopranos because she thinks it glorifies crime and she’s a serious skeptic about the merits of the Godfather as well. Obviously, my wife is 100% correct, but a reasonable person not married to her might have some quibbles.

Regardless, even if one concedes that Goodfellas is surpasses the Godfather — which I do not — does that mean it is also the best movie ever made? Surely one can do the former without being the latter.