Shameful #2 - The Godfather Part II

What can I say about The Godfather that hasn't already been said? The first film is an absolute masterpiece, and at first I thought, why bother watching the second part? The ending of the first is so poignant, what could come next that would beat that? Part II isnt quite as great as the first, but it gets as close as I think it possibly can.

The Godfather, Part II (Coppola, 1974)

Part II picks up a few years after the first, as Michael struggles to hold his family together while trying to turn legitimate. His story is put parallel to the life of Vito Corleone, starting with the death of his father all the way to his success in America. The strongest points of the film are Michael's struggles with his family. Throughout the film he isolates himself from everyone in order to make deals that he belives will help the family in the long run, but end up destroying all of his relationships. The first film dealt with destiny; Michael does his best to stay out of the family business, but once his father is shot, everything comes crashing down, and the question is, was it the right thing to get involved? In the end, he becomes the one thing he said he wouldn't, and we are left to wonder if, even under different circumstances, could he have really escaped?

Part II deals with the balance between power and relationships; Vito gains power to help his family and friends, whereas Michael destroys his family for power. We watch him push away his sister and his wife as Vito brings together his neighborhood and forms bonds, and we remember the Michael from Connie's wedding who loved his family and would do anything for them. While the events of the first film can be considered out of Michael's control, he is fully responsible for his family, and in the end, he fails. He neglects his wife and son, then expects her to follow him through hell and highwater and threatens her when she resists, he looks down on his sister for remarrying after he killed her first husband, he pushes Tom out of the picture, and finally, he murders his own brother. At the end, we feel horrible for Michael, but the pity and sorrow is for the Michael of the first film, who is long dead, and replaced with the Michael now who deserved the solitude he has.

I still think the first one is better; the transitions between Michael and Vito sometimes disrupt the flow of the film, but that's a minor point in an otherwise fantastic movie.

Shameful film series #1 - Raiders of the Lost Ark

I'm currently participating in a little online experiment where people post movies they're ashamed they haven't seen, and others pick what movie on their list they should watch. So far I've watched five films, and next week will be watching the sixth.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)

 Raiders is one of those films that's an instant classic. Even if you haven't seen it, its best scenes are so popular that you've seen endless parody and homages of them. Inspirted by 30s and 40s swashbuckling heroes, Indiana Jones (as pretty much everyone who has even a passing interest in movies knows) is an archaeology professor who travels to strange, perilous lands to retrieve priceless and rare artifacts. In Raiders, he has to keep the Ark of the Covenant and its mysterious power away from the Nazis while trying to outwit his archaeology rival. So it has a smart, witty hero who can squeeze out of any trap and weild both a gun and a whip, exotic locations, and some of the most menacing villains ever: Nazis.

So why didn't I really like this film? I could blame part of it on the ubiquity of homages to this film (the race against the giant ball in the temple and the face melting at the end being the most famous), but that's not entirely true. While watching it, I could see on a technical standpoint that the action almost never stopped, but emotionally, I felt like I had been there and done that already, even though I can't recall exactly what. I think part of the problem might simply be the genre; maybe I'm just not into the swashbuckling type.

But I think another reason doesn't have to do so much with film, but with cartoons. When I grew up, the 90s, saturday morning cartoons reigned supreme, whether they were classics like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, or newer ones like Batman and Animaniacs. I guess the heroes I grew up with were either witty goofballs like Bugs or Wakko, or quieter, subtle heroes like Batman, and so Indy just doesn't grab me as much. Or maybe other cartoons filled the niche that Indy filled with most other people; the only example that comes to mind at the moment is The Adventures of Jackie Chan (which I remember giving up on after a season or so), but that show had the sort of artifact hunting combined with mysticism that Raiders has.

Of course, there's always the simple answer that I just hate fun.

What the hell is this all about? (Intro Post)

So welcome to Film Deprived! I'm a film studies about to go into my senior year of college, and I've called myself film deprived for a while because despite supposedly being a film scholar, I just really haven't seen nearly as many movies as I should have, the classics in particular. I've decided then to, with the help of Netflix, vastly increase the number of films I watch, and I plan to write something about each one I see.

I'm starting off by participating in a Nicolas Cage year-long marathon (see Deconstructing Cage) along with another effort on a film forum to get myself to watch some of the classics (and not so classics) that I've missed. When I go back to school, I might write more about more recent films; the town that I go to school in is a lot cheaper to go see a movie in than New York City.

Hopefully this'll be at least sort of interesting!