THE ROAD TO PERDITION

I saw this when it first came out but decided, after Newman's passing away, that I wanted to watch it again. I had forgotten how good this movie really is, I mean I knew it was good but I'm just taken back how good it is.

I'm not going to go much into the story but I will say that Paul Newman plays a mob under boss (under Capone--Anthony Paglia in an cut scene found on the DVD) and Tom Hanks and Daniel Craig as his adopted son and birth son respectively.

Everything is going good until Tom Hanks kid sees them kill someone, then everything goes bad. Lots of people get killed, banks get robbed. Jude Law and Daniel Craig try to kill Hanks, Hanks goes after them.

The acting is great across the board, I had forgotten it was Craig in this role as Newman's kinda weak son and he's really good, but the movie really belongs to Newman, who beats on Craig in one scene that's oddly disturbing and moving at the same time, and to Hanks.

The kid playing Hanks kid isn't annoying, but isn't some outstanding kid actor. The rest of the supporting cast is good too. Stanley Tucci, as always, is good. Dylan Baker was good too, but I wasn't sure if he was supposed to come across as a homosexual or not. Jennifer Jason Leigh was good in her small role.

Conrad Hall did a marvelous job with how he shot this. Mendes did a nice job with the direction.

This may be my 2nd favorite MODERN gangster film

The Godfather Part 2

So they say that the Godfather 2 may be the best sequel ever made, and I can't say that they are wrong, this really is a great movie. As good as The Godfather (1), it's debatable. The Godfather told an epic story of the fall of a family from power and their attempt to rise out and possibly above it. The story The Godfather Part 2 tells is really at it's heart, and in both stories (sequel and prequel) a revenge story.

What Coppola masterfully did though was tell two similar and yet different stories: The rise of the Don Corelone (Vito and Micheal) framed around revenge. I also found it interesting that Don Micheal may be more alike to his grandfather's killer then he is like his father. Despite his viciousness Vito clearly loved his family and I don't think he would have treated Fredo like Micheal did, especially after what Don Ciccio(sp?) did to Vito's family and attempted to do to Vito himself. Maybe I'm wrong here but the portrait I get of Vito from the prequel and from part 1 was that Vito viewed things as business whereas Micheal, despite what he says, takes things much more personal. Even the birthday party scene when Micheal is almost sulking, hurt by Vito and the family, you see that he is taking this personally.

The acting was again just wonderful. DeNiro was maybe not as polished as we'd see him a few years later in Raging Bulls and later in Goodfellas, he still had the kinda slump shuffle thing that he did in Mean Streets, but is really good here, although I will admit that seeing him in a film like this not directed by Martin Scorsese is strange. I think it goes back to Coppola and Scorsese 's backgrounds and experiences. FFC grew up in a musical family, almost I'd call it "high Italian" large family, where things are a family business. His father was a musician who helped with the music on his films, his mother was an actress, his sister is Talia Shire, his nephews act. I think that's why his focus, in these movies, is never on the grunts or the soldiers but on the High Mafia families. Scorsese, on the other hand, grew up in a more working class Italian family, a street family, and that's why his best gangster movies, even something like The Departed, have a focus on the mafia soldiers.

Honestly I haven't see anything with Lee Strasburg in it other then this, but I can see why there is an acting method named after him. Talia Shire didn't annoy me in this movie, in fact I kind of enjoyed her trampy performance. It was really different then Adrian, which really is her defining role. Diane Keaton still bugged me in this movie, maybe it's just the character of Kay, maybe it's Keaton's performance, I don't know but I don't like her. I talked to one of the biggest Godfather fans I know and he agrees that Keaton is annoying.

Finally JOHN CAZALE! This is the actor that played Fredo, and brought such humanity to a real jerk of a person.

Again a great movie.

The Godfather

For a movie fan this may seem like near blasphemy but until this week I had never seen any of the Godfather movies.

I have to say that opening scene is FANTASTIC, totally unexpected, I don't know if that was Robert Evans (I think in EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS, it is mentioned that Evans did have a lot of control over the first 2 movies as well) or Coppola, but that VO over black, then pulling back on the man in the shadows until you get to the back of Brando's head, was mesmerizing. I talked to my brother today about that scene (he's 19) and he said it was one of the longest dullest scenes he's ever seen, but what does he know. I really don't know if this is a movie that kids grown up on on Bay and Tony Scott and Roland Emmerich can appreciate, but I loved it. Interestingly I found out that the long zoom out was one of the first uses of a computer controlled camera.

My absolute favorite scene though is outside the hospital, the baker Enzo (which is another thing I loved, we didn't just meet people in the wedding scene for shits and giggles they had a genuine purpose and when they are introduced in Act 1 we see them again in Act 3 [Enzo] or Act 4 ["Sinatra"]), anyways Enzo and Micheal are standing outside the hospital and neither of these men are "made" they are civil ans, Micheal has been protected his whole life from this and now he has to step up, they have no weapons, they are NOTHING and they have to use Micheal's intelligence to keep The Don alive. It was a chilling taunt but very quiet scene.

I also really enjoyed Brando's scene with the little boy (Anthony) toward the end of the movie with the water pump and the orange. The only other scene in the movie between Brando and children is when he gets home from the hospital and everyone is moving him in and the baby is crying and whatnot. This scene really brought up the fact that this man, this killer, criminal, etc; was a father and a grandfather who really did care about his family.

I won't say this is a perfect movie, couple things I didn't care for:

a)Talia Shire's overacting especially in the scene where she finds out her husband is cheating on here and she just starts throwing crap around. She was loud obnoxious and I know we are supposed to sympathize with her because her husbands a dick who cheats on her and hits her but I didn't, I found her shrill.

b)Micheal's descent into becoming the new Don, it just felt like it happened too fast. Up to that point, he was the civilian, he was nervous when he shot the drug dealer and the cop, he never really took hiding in Sicily important. But now all of a sudden he's as cold hearted as Brando. It just didn't work for me,I think I would have liked to seen his fall from grace to happen a little more quickly. I also, honestly, didn't see what he saw in Diane Keaton. She was pretty and perfect for his life before Brando's attack and Caan's death, but I couldn't tell what he saw in her after that. Maybe that's the point of it though, he was trying to hold unto a life that was gone now. I also didn't buy his throwing Duvall under the bus if you will, Sonny I could see doing that but not Micheal. Up to that point Micheal had always talked well of Tom.

c) This is a little nitpicky but I hated when we see Vegas for the first time, we see a sign for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, up to that point, I don't recall them mentioning J Edgar Hoover, any presidents (Truman, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, etc). There is a throw away line about Hitler but most of the time they don't talk about anything in the actual "culture" of America. It's a fictional studio, a fictional singer, etc, but then you see something that reminds me of our actual reality and took me away just a split second on the movie reality that had been established so well up to that point.

d) Maybe it's a lack of knowing my history of America at that period in history, but I also really questioned weather the heroin (or narcotics) business was really worth starting a 6 family war over in the late 40s.

The actors were fantastic, I didn't recognize honestly Duvall until about halfway through, same with Cann and Keaton.

I also really liked how this felt like it was made in the period it was set in. The look, the feel, the music, the atmosphere. Even Coppola's limited use of the camera, using limited movements and static shots felt like something made in the 40s not the 70s.

I can see WHY this is an American classic and one of the greats. I'm anxious to see part 2 which I hear is better then 1.