Post by Doomsday on Feb 21, 2018 16:41:32 GMT -5
As some of you may have already noticed, they put all the Godfather movies on Netflix. As I'm up in the middle of the night a lot these days I've managed to watch all three over the past week for the 1,000th time each. Like many of you, the first two are among some of my all-time favorite as well as most-watched movies. I always have new thoughts an opinions on them as I revisit which I'm sure I'll go over more but right now I have a couple initial thoughts.
The Godfather Part II - There's so much good stuff here and even though it's almost 3 1/2 hours long it's a shame that there was still so much cut from it. If you look on youtube you can find many deleted scenes most of which take place with DeNiro and company. When it comes to Michael though, there's one thing that I have a little trouble with and that's his arc over the movie. Naturally in the first movie he goes from civilian to Don however in Part II he beats Hyman Roth at his own game and deals with Fredo's betrayal. As a character is there anything that's really changed or evolved? Or are we witnessing Michael losing what he loves in order to consolidate his power? I love seeing the back and forth between the players here but I'm wondering if I've always missed something in Michael's development.
The Godfather Part III - over the years I've written probably a dozen posts on the old boards both criticizing and defending Part III. Sofia aside, there's a lot that this movie does right and other very basic things it does wrong. For one, Part's I and II feel like a long storyline. This one feels like it's living in the shadows of those ones. It's constantly referencing the others, bringing up characters or scenes that have no real bearing on Part III's wacky plot and even cuts to flashbacks from time to time. By trying to pay tribute to the previous installments it feels like it's using them as a crutch. Also, my lord the dialogue in this movie. Some lines are so canned they feel like they were written just to include in a trailer. 'Now they will fear you' and 'Now that you're so respectable I think you're more dangerous than you ever were.' Yeesh. A lot of this comes from Kay who is so useless and serves no purpose in this movie, she's only here because they wanted to bring back Diane Keaton, another crutch.
Just my thoughts for the moment, more to come.
The Godfather Part II - There's so much good stuff here and even though it's almost 3 1/2 hours long it's a shame that there was still so much cut from it. If you look on youtube you can find many deleted scenes most of which take place with DeNiro and company. When it comes to Michael though, there's one thing that I have a little trouble with and that's his arc over the movie. Naturally in the first movie he goes from civilian to Don however in Part II he beats Hyman Roth at his own game and deals with Fredo's betrayal. As a character is there anything that's really changed or evolved? Or are we witnessing Michael losing what he loves in order to consolidate his power? I love seeing the back and forth between the players here but I'm wondering if I've always missed something in Michael's development.
The Godfather Part III - over the years I've written probably a dozen posts on the old boards both criticizing and defending Part III. Sofia aside, there's a lot that this movie does right and other very basic things it does wrong. For one, Part's I and II feel like a long storyline. This one feels like it's living in the shadows of those ones. It's constantly referencing the others, bringing up characters or scenes that have no real bearing on Part III's wacky plot and even cuts to flashbacks from time to time. By trying to pay tribute to the previous installments it feels like it's using them as a crutch. Also, my lord the dialogue in this movie. Some lines are so canned they feel like they were written just to include in a trailer. 'Now they will fear you' and 'Now that you're so respectable I think you're more dangerous than you ever were.' Yeesh. A lot of this comes from Kay who is so useless and serves no purpose in this movie, she's only here because they wanted to bring back Diane Keaton, another crutch.
Just my thoughts for the moment, more to come.
