#32: The Godfather Part 2

To follow up last week's blog on The Godfather I figured that I might as well as review the sequel right afterwards, so today's review is The Godfather Part 2.  Like I mentioned last week I have never seen these movies so all I knew about this one is that it is always on "the best sequels of all time" lists.  Oh, and I also know according to almost everyone the third one is stupid.  Anyways, lets get on with the review.

As I mentioned before the first Godfather has had a huge influence on culture and I think the same can be said for this movie.  These two movies work so well together that I think it would be difficult to separate the impact of each movie. The one thing this movie has offered us though it one of the best sequels in film history.  Now not all sequels are great in fact most aren't: 

I know some of you might not agree with my list and to you I say, my opinion is more important so keep your comments in your pocket.  This film not only is one of the best sequels ever but also cleaned up at the Academy awards.  It won six Oscars for: Best Writing, Best Picture, Best Music, Best Director, Best Art Direction, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (De Niro); as well as being nominated for five other awards. 

Now it is time for everyone's favorite part.... the internet ratings!!!!!
IMDB = 9 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes (Critic Rating) = 98%
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Rating) = 96%
So despite many people feeling this sequel surpasses the first movie the internet rating are all slightly lower.  I wish the internet could make up its mind.

Now it is time for my favorite part.... my own review!!!!  Acting once again was fantastic.  Though I was sad that characters like Tom were in it a lot less.  I really enjoyed his character in the first one and just would have liked to see this character built upon more.  Diane Keaton returned as Kay and though her acting was good, man do I hate her character, but I feel that the character is supposed to stir up emotions in us, it is one of those characters that, depending on how you view the morals of other characters, is either likeable or you hate her.  The bad guy in this film was fine but the character was not anything spectacular.  There is also a character named Frankie, the actor was nominated for an award and when I saw that I didn't even know who the character was.  You see, I am really bad with names when there are a lot of characters so some of the names slip through the cracks of my brain.  Anyways, he did a good job and his character was good as well.  Now for the Corleone Family we have Talia Shire, playing Connie, who is not only annoying but barely in this movie.  Yet, she was nominated for an Oscar!  How?  How does this happen?  She was only in it for ten minutes total yet it was Oscar worthy:

I hope you liked that.  She was in like 4 scenes total!  This happened a few years ago when Tilda Swinton won an Oscar for Michael Clayton when she was hardly in it!  She beat out the little girl from Atonement!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  Also Fredo was in this movie a lot more and he did a great job.  His character I felt is similar to Kay where you choose sides and you either sympathize with them or hate them.  I love when movies and characters make you do this.  Now we have Robert De Niro.  He was fantastic.  I really enjoyed his story arc, his character, and the acting.  Oh, also since he wasn't in the last one I guess I should do a then and now picture.  Al Pacino once again plays Michael and does a great job showing the depth and complexity of the character.  The character is extremely well written and Al does a great job making the character seem real.  Before I move on I want to also mention all the little characters in this movie who just all are great and are acted very well.  My personal favorite being some awesome black hat wearing, killing guy.  I think it shows a lot when you are sad that one of these little characters dies and you know you won't be seeing them the rest of the movie.

As I talk about the story of the movie I need to first warn people that you will have to read in parts of this movie.  I know, why make us read, we are watching a movie not reading a book.  The story has tons of symbolism and moves at a very quick pace which helps this movie, which is over three hours, feel much shorter.  The movie may be hard to follow since they change location and time periods with out much of a warning but it isn't too difficult.  The story was great and it follows Michael as he deals with the hardships of being in charge and we see how it is hard to hold to one's morals in that situation.  While watching it all I could think of was how I wish the Star Wars prequels had a more rise and fall or morality story, like this, with Anakin rather then his just being a little &%^#.  I also really enjoyed the beginning of the movie and seeing the immigration of Vito to America.  The script once again was fantastic and really helped the story and characters seem real.  As always I did learn some thing from the movie:
#1: My high school band does funnerals
#2: Cubans like to riot
#3: Italian brothers show love in weird ways
Seriously though, I have never done this to my brother:

The music was once again very good and much like the last movie nothing stood out either good or bad with the special effects.  I did really enjoy the parts of the movie in Miami because the look and feel of them was very cool and reminded me a ton of GTA3:Vice City, which I am not sure if that is more a complement to the movie or the game... oh well.

In conclusion, I have to agree with most people out there and say I like this movie better then the first one.  It had two great stories that paralleled each other very well and afterwards my mom, my girlfriend, and I all had great conversations about the differences between Michael and Vito.  I really enjoyed both these movies and this movie a little more.  This movie gets an  A+

#2: The Godfather

So it is the Christmas season and instead of putting on a fire and snuggling up to watch some Christmas movie we decided to watch The Godfather.  Now if you are like my families and friends you might find it weird that I have never seen this movie, if you don't think it's weird then I like you more then them. But, I do know certain things about the movie (referential pop culture things) as well as know that this is a very well liked movie so I was really looking forward to watching it, almost as excited as you are to read this review.

Like I mentioned earlier The Godfather is referenced multiple times in media, some of which I didn't even know because it was from my childhood:

Okay, okay, okay, I know Fat Tony might not be a normal "Godfather" reference but in my naive youth I thought all Italian gangsters were references to The Godfather.  This movie though next to maybe Goodfellas is probably the most referenced mafia movie in pop culture.  This film also broke new ground by being a movie told from the side of the mafia.  Most mafia or gangster movies at this time were more focused on the police trying to stop the mafia.  All sorts of movies and TV shows now take a look from the side of the mafia, one of the most recent ones being The Sopranos (though the mob dressed better back in the day then they do now).  This film won three Academy Awards for Best Writing, Best Picture, and Marlon Brando for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Now lets see what the always positive people of the internet have to say about this film:
IMDB = 9.2
Rotten Tomatoes (Critic Rating) = 100%
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Rating) = 97%
Holy cow these are some high ratings, I guess not everyone on the internet is negative.

Now before I start my own personal review I want to talk about how weird it is for me to watch older movies and see how young some of the actors look.  I feel it is very similar to how when you see pictures of your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. as kids and teenagers and you think to yourself, "you were young once?"  Well the same thing happened to me while watching this movie:

Before I talk about the individual characters I just want to say that all the actors were great.  I really thought that this was a very well acted movie.  This movie had so many characters so there is no way I will be able to talk about them all so I will just talk about the ones I had either positive or negative opinions on.  First of the character of Clemenza was awesome.  I cannot explain why I liked him so much but I just thought he was awesome.  Not sure if you ever like characters like this, you know, the ones that aren't that important, or even in the film much, but for some reason you really like them.  That is what Clemenza is for me.  Now the family has some great characters and some not so great characters.  Fredo and Connie were both pointless and annoying.  I have no idea why these characters even exist.  They were so pointless and underused that they might have well not even been in it.  Kay played by Diane Keaton was another character that did not really add much to the overall movie.  Honestly the most i can say about her is that Diane Keaton looks better now then she did then (holy big forehead Batman).  Then we have Vito, the character we all know, played by Marlon Brando.  It is really hard to me to judge this character and this acting since, I CAN"T UNDERSTAND HIM:

So I will have to go with what other people say and just say he was great and the character is great too.  Now we will get to my three favorite characters of the movie, Tom (Robert Duvall), Sonny (James Caan), and Michael (Al Pacino).  All these characters were not only interesting but were awesome characters.  I would watch a "Sopranos" like series if it followed these three characters.  I really really liked them.

The story was very good and for a three hour movie there were not many times I was bored.  It was great to see the character development.  At times the pacing may seem slow and the movie does take some time getting to the main plot line it feels but I think it is worth it if it adds to the movie.  The characters were well developed and the feeling of the movie was established.  I really wish more movies would do this.  I don't want to ruin the main story for you because I really enjoyed it and I want you to have the same experience.  The script was fantastic.  My only question is why do they always use Mario references.  Now I also, as always, learned something from this movie.  Here are just a few things:
#1: Horse heads are not as nice to cuddle with as teddy bears
#2: My Italian stereotypes aren't really stereotypes
#3: Cops suck (seems to be a trend)
#4: Italy is boring
#5: Women are more dangerous then shotguns and have lightning powers
#6: Babies crying are REALLY annoying
#7: Al did not age well

The music was really great in this film (one of the songs in is the Now and Then video).  Though it was not something that really stood out all the time, when I did notice it I really enjoyed it.  The effects, stunts, etc. were nothing to write home about (which is weird since I live at home) but they were not distractingly horrible either.

In conclusion, I really thought this was a good movie.  It was well made and I really enjoyed watching it.  Now I don't think it will become a movie I watch over and over again, but I did like it.  Why do some great movies never become a movie that I can watch multiple times yet some lesser movie like Ocean's 11 can become a movie I watch almost every time it is on?  Whatever, my grade for this film is an A.