EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. Really enjoyed it. I’m a (very) casual fan but one thing that came across to me was how much fun the shows were. Elvis rarely got through a number with out flashing a grin (or a smirk) at someone in the band and his rapport with the audience was terrific. What a great performer and an outstanding backing group.
Waiting for Guffman (1997)
Due to the untimely death of Catherine O’Hara, all of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries are prominently featured on Netflix right now. I have viewed and enjoyed all of them but Guffman multiple times over the years. I haven’t watched this film since it came out nearly 30 years ago. It’s the weakest of the films but still very funny.
Improv performers making fun of amateur actors and community theater is a pretty low bar. They are all in a position to have witnessed the kinds of characters they are playing so it seems a little mean. O’Hara, Fred Willard, and Eugene Levy are better when they are not in the community theater setting. The Chinese restaurant scene is hilarious. Parker Posey and Bob Balaban can do no wrong and a lot of the minor characters are perfectly cast. My last criticism is that I think Guest kind of positioned the film as a showcase for his acting rather than filmmaking skills. Too much of the film is about his character, Corky, who, along with another character, plays the closeted gay man for laughs in a way that hasn’t aged well. Guest wisely took smaller roles in his subsequent films with this ensemble.
Bast from the Past (1999), Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, a cute, sometimes cynical but ultimately a pretty happy-tappy movie. It’s fun. Brendan Fraser as a fish out of water in Los Angeles after growing up in a fall-out shelter. Walken is hilarious as his paranoid, genius father as is Spacek as his ever hopeful and ever drunk mom.
Recommended.
Great choice, @Jack_Batty. Watched that one maybe a month or so ago. Fraser does a great job at being genuinely puzzled by pretty much everything he encounters. And the scene in the swing dance nightclub is not to be missed. “Pretty happy-tappy” sums up this rom-com beautifully.
I kid. Blast From The Past is a bit one-note but Brendan Fraser is always fun to watch and makes the whole thing work.
The Godfather. At the tender age of 59, I finally thought it was time to sit down and watch this classic all the way through (Paramount+.) While it obviously deserves much of the reputation it has as one of the great movies, I had some issues with it, and some questions.
- I thought time was handled sloppily. (I have not read the Mario Puzo novel and assume some things were done to fit it into a 3-hour movie.) For example, Michael still had the bruise on his cheek from his beating from McCluskey outside the hospital on his wedding day to Appolonia. That was some bruise. But worse was when Michael reappeared to Kay and told her he had been home a year. I guess we missed that year.
- In general, Michael’s turnaround from white sheep to family insider happened very quickly and we weren’t given much background on his character to see that transition happen so easily.
- I didn’t understand why Michael “fired” Tom as consigliere. What was the purpose? Tom was still always around and involved.
Those are nitpicks, and I did enjoy the movie. I don’t think it personally cracks my Top 10, but I understand the love. I will be watching Part II shortly.
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014). I had seen the first two, but had been completely unaware that there was a third. This was a good bookend to the series and embedded some heartfelt moments amid the humor. It also touched upon how museums operate and where they get their exhibits rather than simply being the setting, which I thought was interesting. I do not know if it will make any viewers consider how some artifacts end up in museums or not, but it was not simply swept under the rug.
Overall I enjoyed the silliness that is part of the series as well as the shift of setting to London. I think of the three, this one is better than the second. I also thought that this was recent enough (I did not check the release date before I watched it) that the scenes with Robin Williams must have been faked or some such, but it turns out it was the last movie he did, as well as Mickey Rooney, both died after filming and before release.
//i\\
I believe he broke his jaw. I’ve no idea how long that takes to heal though.
I’ve never understood that one either. Tom protests and Michael says “sorry, Tom, you’re out”. Then proceeds to more or less feature just the same.
It’s been awhile since I read the book or saw the movie, but I believe the decision to fire Tom as consigliere was made simply because that the upcoming movements Michael wanted to make required a true Sicilian mindset. Hagen, for all his talents, didn’t possess that type of cunning, him being from Irish/German descent. And as Michael rightly pointed out, if he needed a counselor, who better to assist him than his own father?
You had me at Tom Waits.
I always thought it was to protect him. Tom was essentially Michael’s surrogate brother. But the Sicilian explanation makes sense too - a wartime consigliere requires a different set of skills.
Re: Michael’s face – as I recall from the book, the punch broke his cheekbone, leaving him with long-lasting sinus problems that eventually required surgery. So yeah, some punch.
The time jump: they could’ve put up a title card that said “One Year Later” but most film editors don’t think that necessary any more.
Yeah, that part really was.
As noted it was supposed to be a slow-healing broken jaw, but “book Michael” was in country for months before he met Apollonia. It was a heck of a lot longer than a year before he saw Kate. He was actually in exile in Sicily for ~three years total while the war raged on, then another year back before visiting Kate. He spent his first several months in Sicily moping about in hiding, before he met the teenage Apollonia, fell in love and married her. He then lived in blissful if hidden domestic contentment for maybe a couple of years before she was inadvertently assassinated on the eve of his return (while pregnant as well for that extra bit of tragedy). Then returned to U.S. to spend months in mourning and consolidating power under his father before finally recovering, getting lonely and approaching Kate again.
But all of that he had endured had hardened him into a different person.
He had always been the intended heir (smarter than Sonny, miles smarter than Fredo), raised in the family business until he rebelled and ran off to join the army (seen in the second film). As above the hit on his father, Michael’s retaliatory strike, three years in exile in Sicily steeped in Mafia culture, his marriage to a more traditional wife, her assassination, the murder of his eldest brother - all of that hardened him. He just stepped back into what he had in fact originally been groomed for.
He still had shreds of his youthful idealism (wanting to eventually go legit, not raise his children in the business), but he was more than prepared to get there the hard, bloody, ruthless way.
Far-sighted machiavellian maneuvering not adequately explained in the first film, but addressed a little bit in the next film. He wanted Tom to manage the civilian side of things but be insulated from the inner workings of the criminal. Since he considered Tom the only intelligent family he had left, he needed someone loyal outside the temptations and strictures of the criminal network so in the event of an internal compromise he would know he could trust the one insulated, competent foster-brother to have not been his betrayer and have his back.
He also set-up a hidden family within a family, with Al Neri (a former cop, his own smarter version of Luca Brasi, the one that dresses as a cop to do the hit in the courthouse steps) and Rocko Lampone (the guy that hits Paulie in the back of the car and has to bring the canolis) as ‘secret capos’. You see them in a position of power in the second film. But in the first they were just Michael quietly creating an internal parallel power structure loyal to him alone, as opposed to the entrenched autonomous capos promoted by his father - Clemenza and Tessio. He needed to bait one of those two into buckling under pressure and betray him, causing his opponents to relax and give Michael an opening to comprehensively eliminate them all.
However Neri and Lompone would then become part of the new power structure with their own autonomy and hence a potential future threat as well, as all Mafiosi are. Most are only loyal as long as their better interests align with yours. Hence Tom Hagen being firewalled as a loyal fail-safe that then can be activated in case of emergency.
Thanks. That makes more sense. I’m sure if I had read the book some of those issues wouldn’t have been so jarring in the movie. Was GFII also from the source material of the original novel?
Mostly inspired by, co-written by Puzo and Coppola as partners (as was the third film). If you liked the first, you should see the second. It is simultaneously a flashback prequel (rise to power of the Corleone family) and a sequel (Michael continues to slowly try to go legit while dealing with assorted threats, internal and external). Many consider it the best quality sequel film in history, with some considering it slightly better than the first, others considering them roughly on par.
The third by contrast is a let down. Not bad at all and worth watching IMHO if you enjoyed the first two. But a bit cartoonish and draggy in spots.
In the book it was explained that McCluskey broke Michael’s cheekbone, and it didn’t heal properly. He had surgery to fix it when he returned to the U.S. I agree that this wasn’t adequately explained in the movie.
The Godfather 1 and 2 were also shown in chronological scene sequence on TV (apologies for cutting and pasteing from Google AI):
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were edited together in chronological order, with additional scenes and modified for television as “The Godfather Saga” (1977). This 434-minute version (also known as “The Godfather Epic”) aired on NBC over four nights, rearranging the narrative to follow Vito’s youth through Michael’s rise, while omitting some violent scenes for broadcast.
- The Godfather Saga (1977): Created for NBC, this version combined both films into a chronological story, including roughly 75 minutes of deleted scenes. It was sanitized for television to reduce violence, sex, and profanity.
- The Godfather Epic (1981/1980s): Paramount released a non-censored version on home video, often referred to as the “Epic,” which maintained the chronological order of the television version but restored the excised scenes.
- Additional Footage: The blended versions contain scenes not in the theatrical cuts, such as the fate of Fabrizio (who bombed Apollonia’s car) and deeper scenes of Michael’s transition into the family business.
He also re-edited…well, more like slightly re-edited Godfather 3.
It’s called “The Death of Michael Corleone” and the changes are extremely small, mainly the opening scene and final scenes.
It’s better than the original edit, but not enough to fully save it.
Rush 1991 starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jason Patric. It was an enjoyable movie about the dangers of undercover cops going too far undercover. It was based on a true story from the 1970s though I wonder how close it followed the actual events. Either way, I think it’s worth a watch.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Recommended.
I think it might be the most interesting movie in this series. I kind of loved the whole thing. It is only in a very small part a zombie movie and I love they went that direction.
Ralph Fiennes is amazing, but so are the the other actors that make up…well, a Jimmy Saville cult. Worth pointing out Jimmy Saville didn’t every get revealed to be a monster in this world…but then again, the cult in this movie worships “Old Nick”…Satan.
It’s weird.