Screenwriters: Francis Ford Coppola (The Cotton Club) and Mario Puzo (Superman II)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather: Part III)
Actors: Al Pacino (The Devil's Advocate), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), Andy Garcia (Ocean's 12), Joe Mantegna (Redbelt), Talia Shire (I Heart Huckabees), Bridget Fonda (Monkeybone), George Hamilton (Hollywood Ending) and Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)

Labels: Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Diane Keaton, film, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Mantegna, Mario Puzo, movie trailer

Screenwriters: Francis Ford Coppola (The Cotton Club) and Mario Puzo (Superman II)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather: Part III)
Actors: Al Pacino (The Devil's Advocate), Robert Duvall (The Apostle), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), Robert De Niro (Goodfellas), John Cazale (Dog Day Afternoon) and James Caan (Thief)

Labels: Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, film, Francis Ford Coppola, James Caan, John Cazale, Mario Puzo, mob, movie trailer, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall

Great film, but the trailer is a bit grating. After the first ten minutes of the trailer I have to admit, I started to drift a little. Honestly, the trailer shouldn't be as long as the actual film. Can we lighten up on the spoilers as well? If you've never seen the film and you've watched this trailer, you've now seen the film.

Labels: Al Pacino, film, Francis Ford Coppola, James Caan, Marlon Brando, movie trailer, Robert Duvall

This isn't a film for everyone. Its smart and engaging but may be too slow and internalized for some audiences. Gene Hackman gives a brilliant performance as Harry Caul, a private investigator who is hired to spy on a corporate executive's cheating wife and her lover. Caul, already consumed with being secretive, even to those closest to him, becomes even more cautious when the investigation of the lovers turns dangerous. Supported by solid performances by John Cazale, Robert Duvall, Teri Garr and Harrison Ford, Hackman presents a fully developed and intriguing portrayal of paranoia and isolation. Outside of the first two Godfather films, this stands as one of Francis Ford Coppola's best works.


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DVD Verdict
Reel.com

Labels: film, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford, movie review, private detective

A forgotten gem of a film that never received the attention it deserves. Jeff Bridges provides a lively performance as the car designer who ran with the big dogs for a while. Well crafted and beautifully shot, this is certain worth the price of a rental if what you’re looking for is not available.


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Labels: film, Francis Ford Coppola, Jeff Bridges, movie review

Short Review: Incoherent ramblings were never so interesting

This is the greatest bad movies of all time. It is a distracted, unkempt heap. Director Francis Ford Coppola's epic ode to Vietnam is one of the grand shams of world cinema. The script by Coppola (The Godfather) and John Milius (Clear and Present Danger) is a ludicrous string of haphazard scenes that lead nowhere. By the time the wandering narrative stumbles into the final act, the film has descended into an incoherent rant.

I mean every word I’ve written. This is a bad movie. On the other hand I also love this movie.

Honestly looking at this film, one has to admit that it is indeed a horrible wreck. It lacks a basic structure and it suffers from numerous flaws. The film also offers some of the most striking moments from its generation of American cinema and is one of the rare moments where the parts are greater than the whole.

For the uninitiated, Coppola’s view of Vietnam is widely considered to be one of the greatest war movies. It is a reworking of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness takes place in Vietnam. Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is assigned to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has gone insane and is waging his own war in Cambodia. Willard takes a U.S. Navy boat up the winding river to Kurtz’s last known location. Following Willard on his trip we experience the violent and surreal world of Vietnam. The film became famous not only for its stark expression of war but also for the legendary behind-the-scenes mishaps. From Sheen’s heart attack to Coppola’s near mental breakdown, the making of the film is often more interesting than the piece it produced (for more on this I suggest watching Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse which is a chronicle of the film’s creation).

Willard’s Homeric journey is handled in episodic fashion with each of his stops on the river being a separate piece of the collective whole. This leads to a mixed bag of scenes where some work and others simply fall flat. This disjointed storytelling saps the coherency from the piece but adds an element of uncertainty which works to enhance the chaotic hell Willard finds himself in. When this approach works it works brilliantly and makes the film worth every second. The problems settle in when the film has to resolve itself.

The final act when Willard confronts Kurtz is a ridiculous piece of film making. Marlon Brando in all of his bloated, mumbling glory is a laughable disaster. Coppola, unable to control the actor allowed the man to ramble whatever came to his crooked mind instead of his scripted lines. The result is long segments of a man who looks like the devil’s version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man slurring nonsense in the dark. On top of this we are asked to struggle through a cameo of Dennis Hopper as a frantic photojournalist who is a John the Baptist to Marlon’s doughy anti-Christ.

This is not a film for everyone, although I haven’t met a guy who doesn’t absolutely love the Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) air cavalry/Flight of the Valkyries scene. Non-film geeks will probably end up looking at their watches during the final half hour. The trip up the river before the fat man sings offers some of the most exhilarating film work from the seventies and is worth the effort. If you haven’t seen this film, there’s no better day than today to give it a shot.



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Labels: film, Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, movie review, Robert Duvall, Vietnam, war

Labels: Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, movie trailer, Robert Duvall, Vietnam