All three of the Godfather films include plot elements rooted in real history, like the sequence in Cuba just before the Communist revolution.
This detail, an important difference between The Godfather III (1990) and The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020) has been bugging me since you pointed it out.
I have looked at wikis, Godfather websites, asked Claude.ai, and, crucially, asked my wife, who watched the movie with me. I have come to this conclusion: I misremembered.
It seems weird. But I can’t very well ignore the clear evidence. And as a denizen of the internet community that gave the world Anyone else remember the alternate ending to “Big?”—whose OP was @Mahaloth himself!—I can hardly deny the ability of people to misremember key details of movies.
But it’s weird when it happens to you, especially when it’s a movie you’ve seen quite recently!
What did you misremember?
The ending. My memory:
Michael is sitting alone outdoors at a villa in Italy. He slumps and falls over–an orange falls to the ground. A dog wanders into the frame. The screen goes black and a text appears saying “When the Sicilians wish you ‘Cent’anni,’ it means ‘for long life’…and a Sicilian never forgets.” Then credits.
This is apparently a conflation of the end of Godfather III which has the apparent death, but not the text about Sicilians with the end of Coda (definitely the one I saw) which cuts before he slumps over and does include the Sicilian text.
Americathon 1979
I really enjoyed the opening song by the Beach Boys. And I love the idea of bicycles taking over the roadways. Living in cars, not so much, but as big as they are today, it seems doable.
The rest of the movie is not particularly good, but I will say John Ritter is the high point. He’s just so darn likeable. Peter Riegert is the lead but doesn’t do anything in the movie, he’s just there. Harvey Korman is Harvey Korman and is fun to watch.
I would like to see a remake of this and in the right hands, it could be a fun movie.
I saw Americathon when it first came out and laughed by ass off over the absurdity of the Beach Boys actually still performing in 1998.
The Mandalorian and Grogu. It was fine.
This is basically 2-3 television episodes strung together. The plot is entirely predictable throughout, Sigourney Weaver phones in a minor role, and there’s even a “Magical Negro” character who appears at just the right time.
All that said, if you like the television show then this is a lot of fun. Lots of Mando-on-alien fight action, lots of Grogu being funny and adorable, a few familiar characters, a few entertaining cameos (including Martin Scorsese voicing a food truck proprietor), a smidgen of moving the canon along, that sort of thing.
As Nixon allegedly said, it’s the sort of thing you’ll like if you like that sort of thing. But if you wait until it hits Disney+ you won’t be missing much.
Would the Mandalorian movie make sense for someone like me who has never seen the series?
Not really. It is very much a continuation of the series.
I’ve always heard it to ascribed to Abraham Lincoln (kind of opposite of Nixon!).
For me, that describes a lot of the MCU movies.
To get back on topic, I just rewatched Doctor Zhivago. I first saw it upon its initial release in 1966. I had a brother in college when I was only ten years old and he dragged me along to a matinee showing. I didn’t remember much about the movie, except the snow scenes, Lara’s theme, and the heart attack (which my brother had to explain to me). I do remember how bright the sun was after sitting in a dark theater for over two hours, plus the wonderful air-conditioning, a rarity back then. It has many similarities to Gone With the Wind, being set in wartime but not really about the war, instead being a love story at heart.
Like you, I saw it on it’s first release. I was 12 or 13 then. It was the grand opening feature of a brand-new TransLux theater, with a huge curved screen and wonderful stereophonic sound, and I was quite impressed. I’ve seen it a few times since on the small screen and my opinion has gone both down and up on every viewing, depending on my mood at the time. It’s still a spectacular film, though slow-moving, and certainly wouldn’t appeal to everyone.
Wonderful music. The main title theme featuring the balalika is beautiful and brings a tear to my eye whenever I hear it. “Lara’s Theme” returns much too often though.
I read the book a few years ago and was struck by how different the book and the movie were. Zhivago’s cousin Yevgrav was an important character in the film, but in the book, he’s mentioned on one page and goes away, never to return. It was just an incidental meeting in the novel. Robert Bolt did a wonderful job of condensing the story for a screenplay.
But waaaaaay less problematic.
Another upvote for The Sheep Detectives. It’s a little like Knives Out but with sheep.
The first two film adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories were Alibi and Black Coffee, both from 1933 and both now lost. This was the third and last movie in the brief series, all of which starred Austin Trevor as the Belgian detective. I had not previously heard of Mr. Trevor (though I have apparently seen him in several other films) and I was not impressed. As Poirot, he is bland, without quirks of any kind and lacking any facial hair! WTF?
Anyway, this flick was quite stagey, virtually all talk and repeatedly burdened by Poirot’s sidekick(/lover?) Captain Hastings, a relentlessly unfunny comic doofus. The story was adequately full of suspects and convoluted situations to retain moderate interest (a short running time helped).
Watched on YT, the print had a bar of time-code running across the top of the screen which sometimes obscured the heads of the characters. It didn’t seem to have a significantly adverse impact on the film’s already low entertainment value.
Make sense in would you be confused? You’ll be fine, it is apparently* very simple and straightforward and doesn’t weigh you down with lore.
But if you mean does it make sense for you to jump into Star Wars here, rather than more appropriately with another movie, not really. It would be an odd starting point.
*I have not seen it yet
Return to Oz (1985). I used to love this as a child (more so than Wizard of Oz, which was always too saccharine for my taste). It’s a grimly realist take on Dorothy… returning to Oz (like it says on the label). And I have to say, rewatching it as an adult… it really holds up. Brilliant film. It”s like a Grimm (and grim!) fairytale. Based primarily on two of the sequel novels to the original, it’s a dark fantasy warts-and-all take on an Oz fallen into disarray and decay since Dorothy’s first adventure.
Consider, as a representative sample of how this films approaches the subject matter, its opening scenes, set (as before) in Kansas. Six months after the infamous tornado, the farm still in shambles, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry worry about what to do with their poor little Dorothy, who is unable to sleep at night and continues to maintain that she visited some fantastical land called Oz, where the animals talk—just like the scarecrows—and she had the power to bring about whatever she might wish for with the aid of a pair of ruby slippers. But whatever happened to this magical footwear? Oh, uh, they must have fallen off as she whisked herself back to Kansas. Sure…
So what are her loving Aunt Em and Uncle Henry left to do? Well, naturally they choose to go into debt so that they can afford to board her overnight in the nearest insane asylum so that she might finally cured of her “Oz” delusion with a touch of that newfangled electroshock therapy!
And that’s our reentry point into world of Dorothy Gale. Love it.
Anyway, there is only one flaw with this film, and it’s not the *claymation, it’s that it is a sequel to a film that was never made. It is visually, tonally, and in every other way a complete 180 from the 1939 film. Which, for my part, is perfect, but I gather (from the wiki) turned off people who were expecting more of the same color-saturated, sappy musical feel of the original. Make no mistake: it is beautifully shot with a magnificent musical score (but no singing), and the writing and acting are likewise excellent, but the overall effect is grim and dread punctuated by absolute horror (for example, how many heads would you demand in exchange for imprisoning the child heir to the Emerald City—and which of these heads would you don to impress upon your next victim the importance of submissive obedience?).
Anyway, if you’ve never seen it, but are intrigued, it’s on Disney+.
*I’ve seen far worse efforts with present-day CGI efforts in big budget blockbusters, and the claymation here is arguably better/more suitable in any event because it’s used to animate stones, so… yeah, claymation kind of makes sense. Oh, and the effects (and the scenes) are by and large practical (and filmed on location) in any event (also unlike far too many present day blockbusters).
I agree (although I first saw it as a grad student). They tried to walk th line between being faithful to L. Frank Baum’s original book and to the 1939 movie, and I think they succeeded briliantly. They retained the “it was all a dream” notion from the 1939 film, introducing characters and items that would be reproduced fantastically in Oz (like the doctor becoming the Nome King, and the therapy machine becoming Tik-Tok). They made the original three companions (Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion) more closely resemble the drawings in the books, and they introduced new threats and allies. Then they got Will Vinton and his Claymation people to do a lot of the animation work, which was brilliant.
I had actually seen some of this material as a kid on Shirley Temple Theater, but this gave it all more time and money.
Nonetheless, a lot of people weren’t happy with it because it had too much of the book and not enough of the movie, and had scary things like the Witch who Changed Heads. Wimps.
It’s long been clear to me that Disney reallr, really, really wishes they had done Wizard of Oz, and are pissed that MGM got it and continues to profit from it. Not only did they do this movie, they also did Oz…the Great and Powerful a few years ago. It was more Movie than Book, but it had the desperate feel of “let’s get this made before they make a movie out of Wicked.” They also bankrolled The Muppet Wizard of Oz.
I finally saw Tron: Ares over the weekend – good flick, bringing 3D printing to the world of Tron. I like the way the scenes in the old computer (“80’s chic”) resemble the aesthetic of the original 1982 film.
I also finally finished watching Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron, the last of the three movies in his “Trilogy of Life”.
Obsession (1980) - 6/10
Could/Should have been better..
Huh! I had never (that I remember) heard of Return to Oz before seeing *The Sheep Detectives" characters enthuse over it, but this is inspiring me to check it out.