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Part II continues the sweeping family epic that ironically juxtaposes quintessential American values with the extremely realistic violence and criminal mentality of mobsters. The Godfather Part II, even more so than its predecessor, tells a story of immigrants in America that — minus the felonies and murders — many of us might recognize as tales our grandparents told.
The Sting is pretty universally acknowledged as one of the best films ever made. From the flawless performances all round to the clever script, this is movie magic that approaches a kind of wizardry. Not a note is out of place — every line, every scene builds on what’s come before until it ends so breathlessly and abruptly that it leaves you astounded at its audacity. Lonnegan’s not the only one who gets conned; writer David S. Ward and director George Roy Hill sting the viewer, too. This is just about as perfect as movies come.
What would the AFA have to say about The Godfather? Francis Ford Coppola’s riveting generational saga of Sicilian mob families in New York City is steeped in themes like loyalty to family and the importance of religion, and at the same time demonstrates how dangerous too-close family ties can be.
The French Connection is Patient Zero in Hollywood’s epidemic of blood, guts, and mayhem, the Typhoid Mary that spread gunplay, car chases, and psychotic cops throughout filmdom. Like Typhoid Mary, though, The French Connection has only a mild, nonfatal case of the sickness that continues to rage through movies. This film demonstrates how smart action movies can be, and points out how dumbed down most of them have gotten.
Charles Dickens’s mostly gloomy Oliver Twist set to music is no sillier than the French tragedy Les Miserables recast as an English-language opera, and it works just as well — that is to say, very well indeed.
Maybe it’s an indication of some slight social progress, or just a marker of how fine a film this is, that In the Heat of the Night also works as a crime-fighting story in a tradition as old as the Sherlock Holmes tales and as new as The X-Files.
West Side Story is a brilliant updating of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the two warring families of Verona now two streets gangs of kids from two different immigrant cultures coexisting in one New York City neighborhood.
A powerful drama with the flavor of Shakespearean tragedy, On the Waterfront is a timeless story of corruption and those who fight it. Terry Malloy (a mesmerizing Marlon Brando) is a former boxer who works as a goon for union racketeers running the docks in the harbors of New York.
I’ve raved over Bill Paxton before, and I’m gonna do it again now. Paxton is one of American film’s finest and most underappreciated actors — a fact obscured by his own supremely subtle talent. A Simple Plan, an outstanding film and an instant classic, should finally bring him the recognition he deserves.
If Shakespeare was alive today and writing science fiction, he might come up with something like the distopian GATTACA. GATTACA is real SF, not to be confused with the likes of Armageddon — GATTACA uses the conceits of science fiction not as an excuse for some really cool explosions but to explore what it means to be human.
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