Review: Danny Collins (2015)

* * *
Director: Dan Fogelman
Starring: Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Christopher Plummber, Bobby Cannavale, Jennifer Garner

If it had been released at pretty much any other time of year, I don't know that I would have enjoyed Danny Collins as much as I ultimately did. It's the sort of low in ambition, high in easy sentiment, middle of the road half comedy, half drama that I don't typically have a ton of patience for, but whether it's the dearth of new releases out at the moment, the right mood on my part, or the film's relaxed charm and the fact that it puts on no airs, but this Al Pacino vehicle won me over pretty quickly. It helps that, though the film has its share of stock/cookie cutter elements, it resists (sort of, but certainly to a greater degree than you have any reason to expect it will) delivering the mushy, hugs all around type ending that films like this tend to demand.

Netflix Recommends... The Panic in Needle Park (1971)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jerry Schatzberg
Starring: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn

This time Netflix's recommendations included Primal Fear, Bill Cunningham New York, Chasing Mavericks, Jack Reacher, The Score, This Means War, Fracture, Friends with Kids and, most intriguingly of all, The Panic in Needle Park, the film which contains Al Pacino's first starring role. Having been curious about this film for a while, I made it my selection and it turned out to be a pretty good one - though I had some doubts that it would be during the film's first 15 overly self-conscious minutes. However, once the film settled down and actually starting living in its setting, it became a wholly engrossing drama about two people caught in the cycle of addiction.

Review: Insomnia (2002)

* * * 1/2
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank

Although I'm a definitely a fan of Christopher Nolan, his 2002 thriller Insomnia has somehow eluded me until now. Seeing it ten years after the fact (and seven years after Nolan began his ascent as one of our most dependable producers of high brow blockbusters), I found it to be a singularly entertaining and captivating piece of work. It's not quite on par with Memento, which I think remains his masterpiece, but it's a great psychological thriller.

The Best Picture Countdown #47: The Godfather Part II (1974)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, John Cazale

I go back and forth over whether I think The Godfather: Part II is the better of the first two instalments of the trilogy. On one hand, the sequel obviously benefits from having the original as a starting point with much of the set-up already done. But on the other, I think that Part II contains the key elements to the trilogy as a whole. Add to that the fact that the world we enter with Part II is darker, more complex and ultimately more ambiguous than its predecessor, and you’ve got a tough choice to make indeed.

The film tells two parallel stories. One follows Vito (played as an adult by Robert De Niro) who begins life in the village of Corleone in Sicily and sees the members of his family picked off one-by-one by the local Mafioso. He escapes to America, takes the name Corleone and eventually usurps power from the local Don to begin his own consolidation of power. The other story follows Michael (Al Pacino), already in control of his empire and struggling to maintain it against conspiracy within his organization, a Senate committee out to bust him, and his own familial troubles. Family is the crucial element of the film. Vito’s rise to power is shown as a way to safeguard his American family and give them a better life, as well as a way to ensure that he can return to Sicily and avenge the family he lost there. The Don he eliminates holds his territory with an iron fist. When he’s assassinated by Vito, it isn’t framed as a bad act, but as something which will ultimately enable Vito to take care of his family. For Vito, business is a way of maintaining the family. For Michael, on the other hand, family is something that must be sacrificed for the sake of business.

The Godfather: Part II is essentially the story of Michael’s isolation as he drifts further and further away from what Vito established. One brother (Sonny) is already dead at the beginning of the film, sister Connie (Talia Shire) is a mild irritation, someone he has to deal with but whose presence has little effect on his life, and adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), once in the thick of things as the family’s consiglieri, is being pushed further and further out of the family business for his own protection, as Michael tries to assure him. His marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) is already falling apart as she grows increasingly impatient with his empty promises to make the family legitimate. Eventually he will push her away completely and, as in The Godfather, shut the door on her, this time definitively. And then there’s Fredo (John Cazale)…

The key to understanding the trilogy as a whole and Michael as a character lies in the death of Fredo, whom Michael orders to be killed. The first film is leading up to this moment, the moment when Michael is so far gone, so completely enveloped in the “business,” that he can order Fredo to be murdered as if that is “just business” and not personal. Everything in the third film leads away from it and much of that film concerns Michael’s guilt over his act (“My mother’s son,” he laments in Part III). How did Michael get to this point? How did the “good” son of The Godfather, the one least expected to get into the business, end up being the most ruthless of them all? It is perhaps his lack of previous contact with this world that made him so susceptible to it, like someone whose immune system is compromised by sudden exposure to a disease never before encountered.

Fredo is the soul of the film and when he kills Fredo, Michael kills his soul, committing an act he will never be able to fully justify or find redemption for. As Fredo, John Cazale renders a heartbreaking performance. “I’m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over… I’m smart. Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!” he says to Michael, who responds dispassionately. It’s an emotionally charged role, that of the older brother trying to step out of the shadow of the younger, the brother who is aware that no one believes he is capable of running the show, the one who is forever stuck at the figurative kid’s table. Cazale’s film career was brief, but he left a filmography that any actor would be jealous of, having appeared in The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter in addition to the first two Godfather films. Pacino, Keaton, Duvall and De Niro are all great, but it’s Cazale who really stands out from the crowd as a man desperate to show that he’s as good as his brother while also being so slavishly eager to please the same.

The story presented here is much bigger than that of The Godfather and I know that some become impatient with it, feeling that it digresses too much, that it isn’t as tightly focused as the first. I also know that some prefer Part II because it’s more epic in scope and much darker, showing a Don who is more realistically cold-blooded. But anyway you look at it this remains an excellent film, its story a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

The Best Picture Countdown #45: The Godfather (1972)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando

It was unlike the mobster movies that came before, and set the standard for all those that followed. While James Cagny and Edward G. Robinson played bad guys in movies that knew they were bad, The Godfather succeeds by creating its own moral compass, eliminating the law and order side of the story and focusing squarely on the cloistered world of the mafia and its men. It isn’t just a matter of bad guys being bad; this is a story of social and business politics, of moral shades of grey, and above all else, family.

The Godfather opens and closes on family events: a wedding at the beginning, and a christening towards the end. The opening scenes are familiar even to those who haven’t seen the film as they’ve been referenced and parodied so much. This is where Michael (Al Pacino), in his soldier’s uniform, informs Kay (Diane Keaton), that his father made a man “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” and where Brando appears as Don Vito Corleone, creating the cinema’s most lasting and iconic image of the mafia boss. The first scene with Vito and Bonasera, a man who has come to ask a favour, is one of the best in the film because it lays down the code, the governing laws of this world. The Don chastises Bonasera for going first to the police – the police can do nothing for him; this is a “family” matter. He then tells him that he’s not in the business of murdering for hire – the men who caused Bonasera’s daughter pain will be made to suffer, but the punishment must fit the crime. And then he utters that immortal line: “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.” And he will, later, ask a favour of Bonasera, but not of the kind that Bonasera no doubt fears.

Vito is the looming, central figure of The Godfather, although Michael is its central character. At the beginning of the film he is the son who isn’t involved in the family business – his brothers, the hot-headed Sonny (James Caan) and soft-headed Fredo (John Cazale) are directly involved, adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) acts as the family’s counsel – but as the story progresses, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire. When the time comes for the reins to be passed, they go to Michael, who must learn quickly how to handle them and consolidate his still unstable power. The baptism sequence operates on multiple levels. On the literal level, Michael is acting as Godfather to the baptized child. On the figurative level he is becoming the Godfather and undergoing a baptism of his own as his enemies are eliminated one after the other and he makes his first great demonstration of power.

Michael wasn’t the son being groomed to take things over; shortly before he takes his first steps into the family business, Vito tells him, “I never wanted this for you… I always thought when it was your time that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone. Governor Corleone. Something… There just wasn’t enough time.” But even though Michael isn’t the most obvious choice, he does turn out to be better suited for the position than any his brothers. Sonny, even if he didn’t die in a hail of bullets, is too unpredictable, too quick tempered. Michael, on the other hand, is calm and collected and treats what comes as part of the business. When he and Tom learn that Tessio (Abe Vigoda) is a traitor, Tom expresses surprise, but Michael takes the news calmly. “It’s the smart move. Tessio was always smarter.” Michael recognizes that power is up for grabs now that Vito is out of commission, and he doesn’t take it personally that people are trying to grab it. He doesn’t take it lightly, though, either.

The Godfather is a film that is brutal for the myriad ways in which people are threatened and killed, but within the context of the story the Corleones aren’t considered villains. Even when Carlo (Gianni Russo) is murdered after being reassured that nothing will happen to him (“Do you think I’d make my sister a widow? I’m Godfather to your son” Michael says), we the audience are assured that this isn’t bad since Carlo betrayed the family. There aren’t any traditional good guys in this film – the only cops are crooked and anyone who’s not “with” the family is actively working against it. The film’s moral compass is skewed towards the Corleones because the story limits itself to them and the people who try to harm them; the people whom the Corleones harm through their various business endeavours don’t factor here at all.

It is easy to take measure of how influential The Godfather has been since its release. It has been echoed and quoted and satirized numerous times (perhaps most notably in The Freshman, where Brando plays a mobster who is a spoof of Don Corleone), and the image it created of the romanticized gangster – the honest man simply trying to run his business – continues to shape the way we look at the mob in film and television. But perhaps even more importantly it has transcended the realm of fiction to become, in a way, a philosophy of life. You don’t take sides against the family. It’s business, it isn’t personal. And you always leave the gun, but take the cannoli.

Great Last Scenes: The Godfather

Year: 1972
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Great Because...: If there was ever a finale more heavy with symbolism, I don't think I've seen it. These final moments say it all: what Michael has become, what he has abandoned in the process, and how life for everyone around him will be irrecovably changed.

Michael Corleone has just consolidated his power and brought a renewed sense of calm to the business side of his family. The personal side of his family, however, is another matter. Kay, having been told that Michael ordered the murder of his brother-in-law, Carlo, confronts him, desperate for him to confirm that he's still the man she thought he was. Michael denies any wrongdoing and, for a moment, Kay is appeased.

Kay leaves the room, turning back just in time to see Michael officially confirmed as "Don Corleone." As she watches her worst fears being realized, the door to Michael's office is closed on her, locking her out of part of his life forever. There are no words during this final moment but absolutely none are required; Diane Keaton's face says everything that could possibly need to be said. The division the door represents is not just between Michael and Kay, but between the idealistic/good Michael who wants to be different from his family and the dark/bad Michael who is capable of anything. It's an amazing, spellbinding close to a great film.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, Diane Keaton

I go back and forth over whether The Godfather: Part II is the better of the first two instalments of the trilogy. On one hand, the sequel obviously benefits from having the original as a starting point with much of the set-up already done. But on the other, I think that Part II contains the key elements to the trilogy as a whole. Add to that the fact that the world we enter with Part II is darker, more complex and ultimately more ambiguous than its predecessor, and you’ve got a tough choice to make indeed.

The film tells two parallel stories. One follows Vito (played as an adult by Robert De Niro) who begins life in the village of Corleone in Sicily and sees the members of his family picked off one-by-one by the local Mafioso. He escapes to America, takes the name Corleone and eventually usurps power from the local Don to begin his own consolidation of power. The other story follows Michael (Al Pacino), already in control of his empire and struggling to maintain it against conspiracy within his organization, a Senate committee out to bust him, and his own familial troubles. Family is the crucial element of the film. Vito’s rise to power is shown as a way to safeguard his American family and give them a better life, as well as a way to ensure that he can return to Sicily and avenge the family he lost there. The Don he eliminates holds his territory with an iron fist. When he’s assassinated by Vito, it isn’t framed as a bad act, but as something which will ultimately enable Vito to take care of his family. For Vito, business is a way of maintaining the family. For Michael, on the other hand, family is something that must be sacrificed for the sake of business.

The Godfather: Part II is essentially the story of Michael’s isolation as he drifts further and further away from what Vito established. One brother (Sonny) is already dead at the beginning of the film, sister Connie (Talia Shire) is a mild irritation, someone he has to deal with but whose presence has little effect on his life, and adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), once in the thick of things as the family’s consiglieri is being pushed further and further out of the family business for his own protection, as Michael tries to assure him. His marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) is already falling apart as she grows increasingly impatient with his empty promises to make the family legitimate. Eventually he will push her away completely and, as in The Godfather, shut the door on her, this time definitively. And then there’s Fredo (John Cazale)…

The key to understanding the trilogy as a whole and Michael as a character lies in the death of Fredo, whom Michael orders to be killed. The first film is leading up to this moment, the moment when Michael is so far gone, so completely enveloped in the “business,” that he can order Fredo to be murdered as if that is “just business” and not personal. Everything in the third film leads away from it and much of that film concerns Michael’s guilt over his act (“My mother’s son,” he laments in Part III). How did Michael get to this point? How did the “good” son of The Godfather, the one least expected to get into the business, end up being the most ruthless of them all? It is perhaps his lack of previous contact with this world that made him so susceptible to it, like someone whose immune system is compromised by sudden exposure to a disease never before encountered.

Fredo is the soul of the film and when he kills Fredo, Michael kills his soul, committing an act he will never be able to fully justify or find redemption for. As Fredo, John Cazale renders a heartbreaking performance. “I’m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over… I’m smart. Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!” he says to Michael, who responds dispassionately. It’s an emotionally charged role, that of the older brother trying to step out of the shadow of the younger, the brother who is aware that no one believes he is capable of running the show, the one who is forever stuck at the figurative kid’s table. Cazale’s film career was brief, but he left a filmography that any actor would be jealous of, having appeared in The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter in addition to the first two Godfather films. Pacino, Keaton, Duvall and De Niro are all great, but it’s Cazale who really stands out among the crowd as a man desperate to show that he’s as good as his brother while also being so slavishly eager to please the same.

The story presented here is much bigger than that of The Godfather and I know that some become impatient with it, feeling that it digresses too much, that it isn’t as tightly focused as the first. I also know that some prefer Part II because it’s more epic in scope and much darker, showing a Don who is more realistically cold-blooded. But anyway you look at it, this remains an excellent film, its story a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Godfather (1972)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton

It was unlike the mobster movies that came before, and set the standard for all those that followed. While James Cagny and Edward G. Robinson played bad guys in movies that knew they were bad, The Godfather succeeds by creating its own moral compass, eliminating the law and order side of the story and focusing squarely on the cloistered world of the mafia and it’s men. It isn’t just a matter of bad guys being bad; this is a story of social and business politics, of moral shades of grey, and above all else, family.

The Godfather opens and closes on family events: a wedding at the beginning, and a christening towards the end. The opening scenes are familiar even to those who haven’t seen the film, they’ve been referenced and parodied so much. This is where Michael (Al Pacino), in his soldier’s uniform, informs Kay (Diane Keaton), that his father made a man “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” and where Brando appears as Don Vito Corleone, creating the most lasting and iconic image of the mafia boss. The first scene with Vito and Bonasera, a man who has come to ask a favour is one of the best in the film because it lays down the code, the governing laws of this world. The Don chastises Bonasera for going first to the police – the police can do nothing for him; this is a “family” matter. He then tells him that he’s not in the business of murdering for hire – he will make suffer the men who caused Bonasera’s daughter pain, but the punishment must fit the crime. And then he utters that immortal line: “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.” And he will, later, ask a favour of Bonasera, but not of the variety Bonasera no doubt fears.

Vito is the looming, central figure of The Godfather, although Michael is its central character. At the beginning of the film, he is the son who isn’t involved in the family business – his brothers, the hot-headed Sonny (James Caan) and soft-headed Fredo (John Cazale) are directly involved, adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) acts as the family’s council – but as the story progresses, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire. when the time comes for the reins to be passed, they go to Michael, who must learn quickly how to handle them and consolidate his still unstable power. The baptism sequence operates on multiple levels. On the literal level, Michael is acting as Godfather to the baptized child. On the figurative level he is becoming the Godfather and undergoing a baptism of his own as his enemies are eliminated one after the other and he makes his first great demonstration of power.

Michael wasn’t the son being groomed to take things over; shortly before he takes his first steps into the family business, Vito tells him, “I never wanted this for you… I always thought when it was your time that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone. Governor Corleone. Something… There just wasn’t enough time.” But even though Michael isn’t the most obvious choice, he does turn out to be better suited for the position than his brothers. Sonny, even if he didn’t die in a hail of bullets, is too unpredictable, too quick tempered. Michael, on the other hand, is calm and collected and treats what comes as part of the business. When he and Tom learn that Tessio (Abe Vigoda) is a traitor, Tom expresses surprise, but Michael takes the news calmly. “It’s the smart move. Tessio was always smarter.” Michael recognizes that power is up for grabs now that Vito is out of commission, and he doesn’t take it personally that people are trying to grab it. He doesn’t take it lightly, though, either.

The Godfather is a film that is brutal for the myriad ways in which people are threatened and killed, but within the context of the story the Corleones aren’t considered villains. Even when Carlo (Gianni Russo) is murdered after being reassured that nothing will happen to him (“Do you think I’d make my sister a widow? I’m Godfather to your son” Michael says), we the audience are assured that this isn’t bad since Carlo betrayed the family. There aren’t any traditional good guys in this film – the only cops are crooked and anyone whose not “with” the family is actively working against it. The film’s moral compass is skewed towards the Corleones because the story limits itself to them and the people who try to harm them; the people whom the Corleones harm through their various business endeavours don’t factor here at all.

It is easy to take measure of how influential The Godfather has been since it’s release. It had been echoed and quoted and satirized numerous times (perhaps most notably in The Freshman, where Brando plays a mobster who is a spoof of Don Corleone), and the image it created of the romanticized gangster – the honest man simply trying to run his business – continues to shape the way we look at the mob in film and television. But perhaps even more importantly it has transcended the realm of fiction to become, in a way, a philosophy of life. You don’t take sides against the family. It’s business, it isn’t personal. And you always leave the gun, but take the cannoli.