For very different reasons, I think The Godfather and Apocalypse Now are among the all-time best from any director, and The Godfather Part II is almost in the same category, IMO. The rest that I’ve seen are just okay: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Rainmaker, The Godfather Part III and Jack. I thought this odd until I realized that I haven’t seen many of his films.
Critics seem to have liked The Conversation and The Rain People.
What say all of you?
Here’s his Wikipedia entry.
The Conversation is a great film in the venue of ‘Seventies political paranoia ‘thrillers’ (and Gene Hackman considered it one of his best). After Apocalypse Now basically broke Coppola, his subsequent work has never had the same intensity although certainly films like The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married, or Tucker: The Man and His Dream would be good films in the oeuvre of any well-regarded director. (I think The Cotton Club, while not a great film in any particular sense, is a good period piece that was hamstrung by studio interference, finance and production issues, and various personalities involved in the picture.). Since the ‘Eighties Coppola has really failed to make great, or even particularly good films despite promising casts and intriguing premises (Youth Without Youth was a particular disappointment) but that is scarcely unusual; John Frankenheimer went through a long period of making some pretty lousy films (and climbing into a bottle) after a strong run in the early to mid ‘Sixties, and his career didn’t really recover until the mid-‘Nineties with TV miniseries Andersonville and George Wallace and the underrated Ronin.
Stranger
I recall Tucker: The Man and his Dream starring Jeff Bridges as quite good, and The Conversation starring Gene Hackman was well-regarded in its time and is still an interesting watch.
I would agree that The Godfather and Apocalypse Now are masterpieces.
I thought his work on the re-edited U.S. version of Battle Beyond the Sun (1962) showed real promise.
Granted, it’s a bit raw, there’s an undeniable intensity and authenticity - and, for perhaps a deranged few, eroticism - underscored by the realistic costumes and treatment; it’s almost like watching a nature documentary.
Sadly, Mr. Coppola never returned to the kaiju genre, instead choosing other, more popular, critically acclaimed and/or distinguished projects to make his reputation before overestimating the appeal of his own interests, losing his audience and suffering a career decline.
I was super drunk late at night trying to watch “Dementia 13” and doubted whether it was worth another shot.
He has a new movie, Megalopolis, coming out which will debut next month at the Cannes Film Festival:
I respect “The Conversation” because he wrote it, unlike “The Godfather” (greater movie) but was a #1 best-seller with the greatest actor (Marlon Brando)
For some reason I’'m just not a big fan of Adam Driver .Good Actor. I’ll figure it out.
a corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) - I am there.
The sprawling ensemble also includes Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne (who was a teenager soldier in Apocalypse Now), Kathryn Hunter, singer Grace VanderWaal, and James Remar, as well as the filmmaker’s sister, The Godfather actor Talia Shire, and her son (Coppola’s nephew) Jason Schwartzman.
Golly. Looking forward to this.
ETA: They noted Larry Fishburne yet did not make note that Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight had once been in a film together?
A trailer was just released, but I didn’t find it very appealing:
Click on Francis Ford Coppola | Rotten Tomatoes. Then click on the label at the top of the chart called the Tomatometer. Look at the films toward the top for which Coppola is labeled as being the director, the screenwriter, or the writer. Unless you want to do a really serious study of Coppola that will take a fair amount of time, you can ignore for now the ones where his credit is “Self”, since those are documentaries about Coppola. You can mostly ignore the ones where he’s listed as just the producer or the executive producer. The only important one where he produced but nothing else is American Graffiti, which is the film that was good enough to allow George Lucas do the Star Wars films. You can then see which of the films that he directed or wrote are very good. The first two Godfather films certainly are, as are The Conversation and Patton. You can see that the rest of his films range from pretty good to nothing special. You can also tell that most of his movie career has been about producing other people’s films.
You can also look at IMDB. By the number of votes as director:
It looks like he has directed more feature films than a lot of other directors