The Godfather Part II

I had a pretty fun day today - got my hair did, had some good food and got some errands done. I was hoping to go out with some friends but today's movie was horribly long and I didn't really follow up with them so I ended up just being lazy instead. I bought the two dumbest (read: best) Blu-rays when I was out today, too - Ferris Buller's Day Off and The Big Lebowski. I'm stoked. And I can't really focus on writing this for whatever reason.

Today I watched The Godfather Part II, directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1974. I don't really get why it was like, some big controversial Ebert review or whatever. His original review sounded critical but positive to me, but I'm probably dumb. Maybe people were upset to see something not just praising a movie that they really loved? Ebert hates my favorite movie of all time, but I think his review about it makes some good points, although I disagree. Quite possibly I'm just used to disagreeing with criticism about movies, so I don't think someone is...whatever...for not loving something right away or pointing out parts they weren't on board with. Anyway, I really like this film, maybe not as rabidly as some fans, but it's a great movie, and it was nice to watch it again - it had been a while.

The Conversation

I spent most of the day sitting outside and reading, which was fun. I came in once it got chilly to watch today's movie - The Conversation, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1974. I'll be honest, I never heard of this movie before. I watched it by myself, but when Anthony came over, he said he had never heard of it either. I feel pretty suprised that we haven't! I would assume that for our...generation....thing...it gets overshadowed by Coppola's other works. No one wants to tell there friends to watch a serious thriller like this film - it's much more exciting to watch mafia movies or Vietnam movies. Well, maybe it's not, but that's my best guess.

I really loved this film. It was such a perfect slow burn, building up to the tense scenes with so much care. I love that sort of style, so this just worked so well for me. There was so much time to get involved in the plot and get to know the characters that when the action picked up a little, it was so exciting and tense! I could tell that some parts of it were inspired by Blow Up (and later I'm sure helped to contribute to the inspiration behind Blow Out). Loving both of those movies, I pretty much melted instantly for this film.

The Godfather

This post, for the record, is only about the first movie in The Godfather trilogy - I have to watch Part II in a few months, but never Part III, which everyone hates. The Godfather is the father of all good mafia movies, directed in 1972 by Francis Ford Coppola. It basically created the style of mafia movies that most of us are so familiar with - where we see the mafia from an insider's perspective, and we feel a lot of sympathy for the characters. Pretty much all mob movies that do this are indebted to Coppola's film. The characters are evil people, but we care for them, somehow. I'm going to assume, perhaps wrongly, that most people have seen this film and know the basis of the plot. If not, head over here to read it.

Apocalypse Now

E

I haven't sat down and watched all of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) for a long time. I feel like saw the whole thing a while ago, and then continually saw bits of it on TV and whatnot. I'm glad that I was able to watch this again now, after college. Majoring in English, I studied T.S. Eliot a lot, so when Kurtz reads from "The Hollow Men" and when Dennis Hopper's character, the photojournalist, references "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", I got so much more out of this film. I finally understood what they were referencing, since I studied those poems so in depth during college. Here is the most embarrassing thing I will ever say an as English major - I know that this movie is based on Heart of Darkness by Joesph Conrad. It is hard, I know, to avoid reading this novella. I have never read it. I'm currently reading it on my nook/iPhone, but I'm working through it. Yikes! Some of the nuances of this film are still probably lost on me, being still in the middle of Conrad's story.