has done many things as a filmmaker over the past 50 years or so, most notably directing some of the best films of both the 20th and 21st centuries. He’s been one of the best in the business for a ridiculously long time, having directed one Best Picture Oscar winner () alongside a bunch of other movies that probably deserved to win Best Picture, but didn’t.

One criticism of The Departed, though, is that the very last scene is a bit on the nose, so if the best endings to Scorsese films are being considered, that movie – though great – doesn’t quite qualify. But these other Martin Scorsese films have . These all-time great endings are ranked below, starting with the excellent and ending with the perfect.

The following article will contain spoilers for the films of Martin Scorsese.

There’s no shortage of humor (usually of the dark variety) found throughout the filmography of Martin Scorsese, but full-on comedies are a little rarer. With The King of Comedy and , the comedic stuff is balanced against a good many intense scenes, with .

Once it gets going, After Hours never really stops, being funny, bleak, and harrowing in its depiction of a man having a very bad night in New York City. Things rush to a head as it gets super surreal in its closing scenes, with the protagonist eventually surviving his whole ordeal, but finding himself dropped right off at work as the sun’s coming up, right back where the film started. Whether he’s broken the cycle or he’s still in the nightmare when the end credits start rolling is kind of left up to the interpretation of the viewer, and that approach to ending this sort of film feels fitting.

Standing as one of the more intense Martin Scorsese movies, is fairly unsettling, even by psychological thriller standards. It’s a film that’s basically all about plot twists, with things kicking off as a movie seemingly about trying to find a patient who’s escaped from a high-security psychiatric facility, only for it to be eventually revealed that the lead character, a U.S. Marshal, is actually a patient at said psychiatric facility.

That makes it sound dumb, but there are reasons for the other characters going along with the whole preposterous idea, and it comes together nicely by the end. Shutter Island reveals this big twist close to the end, but , where the former wonders to the latter whether it would be worse “to live as a monster, or to die as a good man.”

isn't just one of the best Martin Scorsese films, as it’s up there with the best movies of all time, period. It explores alienation and loneliness in a way that still feels powerfully haunting nearly half a century on from its release, focusing on a Vietnam War veteran who takes up driving a cab in New York City to fill in his time as an insomniac, and finds himself growing increasingly despondent with the world around him.

The climax involves a violent shootout that main character Travis Bickle either survives or perishes in, as it’s not entirely clear if what follows the shootout might've happened or is simply a dying dream. Either way, it sees Bickle being celebrated for his act of violence, reuniting with a young woman he pined for earlier, and then catching something in the mirror right before the end credits roll. , certainly being a final scene that leaves one thinking.

A film with a perfect rise-and-fall storyline supported by some of the best acting you'll ever see in a gangster movie, is just as much of a classic as Taxi Driver, or perhaps even more so. It is the rare perfect crime film that starts fantastically, maintains a great pace throughout a runtime of about 2.5 hours, and then just so happens to end in an undeniably ideal way.

Things crumble, and the main character, , rats out his associates and goes to live in witness protection, narrating the whole ordeal while breaking the fourth wall, addressing the camera in court before looking right at it in the very last scene. He laments what he’s done and what he’s lost, and . Smash-cut to the end credits, with ’s punk rock cover of “My Way” blaring. Magnifique.

Playing out a bit like a funnier, raunchier, longer, and more twisted Goodfellas, is another crime movie with a rise-and-fall storyline directed by Martin Scorsese. Rather than focusing on the mafia and the violent crimes associated with it, The Wolf of Wall Street looks at white-collar crime, focusing on Jordan Belfort and his exploits as a fraud-happy stockbroker during the 1980s and 1990s.

Belfort gets off pretty lightly considering the damage he’s done, and The Wolf of Wall Street is unafraid to reveal how criminals with money don’t get the sorts of punishments they arguably deserve. Further, Belfort is celebrated by the film’s final scene, which … and yeah, the audience of people looks a little like an audience of moviegoers, which might make you reflect on how you engaged with – or potentially enjoyed – the movie you just saw, and what that could mean.

Plenty of sports movies – even boxing ones – like to pull certain punches, but isn't interested in doing anything of the sort. This is, straight up, one of the darkest sports movies ever made, with its central figure, , terrorizing pretty much everyone he comes across, be they opponents in the boxing ring or friends/family members outside the ring.

He digs himself into holes and seems unable to change his ways, making him both a tragic figure and a deplorable one, but his journey from a star boxer to a washed-up celebrity doing stand-up comedy is powerfully depicted. That final scene sees him all alone, (the method-acting he loves convinced him to pack on weight for what’s ultimately a very short sequence). It’s a strange yet perfect ending to this kind of biopic.

Things unfold slowly, dramatically, and perhaps expectedly for much of the runtime of . It’s a film that sees Scorsese exploring an exceptionally bleak story from American history, with the setting being Osage Nation land in the 1920s, and the narrative involving a group of people marrying into – and sometimes murdering – various Osage people to obtain the rights to their oil-rich land.

At the film’s conclusion, things get shaken up pretty dramatically, with Scorsese himself having a cameo as the producer of a radio drama who delivers an epilogue of sorts regarding what happened to some of the film’s characters in the final years of their lives. It’s – as a “true-crime story” intended, in some ways, to entertain – prompting the same kind of uneasy feeling that The Wolf of Wall Street’s ending provokes.

Returning to the gangster genre for possibly the last time, saw Martin Scorsese reuniting with numerous actors he’d worked with before a bunch of times… plus ! It’s another lengthy film, spanning decades and focusing on , an elderly man looking back on his life as a cold and ruthlessly efficient hitman who worked for the mob.

Throughout the film – as you'd expect from a movie about crime and death – lots of people die, and the way they die is often shown on screen with text, which can sometimes be humorous. Anyway, it means that by the end of The Irishman, Sheeran is entirely alone. . He’s left by himself at the film’s end, and the final shot of him framed to look tiny and trapped within a dark room is genuinely haunting in its bleakness.

is not intended to be an adaptation of any book from the Bible necessarily, which means its story about Jesus Christ still has the capacity to surprise those otherwise familiar with the Bible. Jesus does get betrayed and dies on the cross, sure, but that titular last temptation is a huge – and surprising – part of the film, with it taking up pretty much the whole final act.

When it’s revealed that Jesus didn’t give in to this final temptation, and was able to die on the cross, such a death is surprisingly triumphant. Jesus is humanized, and what he did becomes extra powerful as a result… well, depending on your view of the film, because some don’t like such an approach being taken to a story like this. Also noteworthy is the way the ending to The Last Temptation of Christ was .

Now, before the pitchforks come out, is in no way Martin Scorsese’s best film. It’s true that it contains a great performance, has a bold opening scene, and functions as a truly impressive epic on a technical front. It perhaps bites off more than it can chew throughout, and it does feel uneven at times, but it really sticks the landing, which is what counts for present ranking purposes.

After a violent climax that sees almost everyone dying, a series of shots show the progression of New York City’s skyline, from the early 1860s until 2001, when the film was shot, all the while an orchestral intro to U2’s "The Hands That Built America" swells. Ending in 2001 means showing the World Trade Center towers in the very last shot, which feels bold and bittersweet, considering the film was released after they were destroyed. But in highlighting the city that was born after a history of violence, it feels oddly inspiring and celebratory of the towers, and how they defined such a recognizable skyline. The music, editing, and boldness on offer here all add up to make this perhaps the best – and most powerful – ending to any Martin Scorsese film.

NEXT: The Best Movie Endings of All Time, Ranked