Check out one of my previous posts Shawshank vs. Titanic for some background on my thoughts about the prison movie with Morgan Freeman doing the awesome voiceover. In summation, it’s a good movie, but not great.
I still can’t move past the fact that the Internet Movie Database users ranked frigging Shawshank Redemption higher than The Godfather on the site’s Top 250 movies ever made. We might have to go to the mattresses if you agree with the IMDB users.
Because I don’t.
I REALLY don’t.
Living in Seattle affords so many opportunities to the obsessed moviegoer, I sometimes can’t decide what to do with myself. Cinerama keeps getting better now that I can have a beer with my chocolate popcorn, movies in the park during the summer are a growing concern, and the Seattle International Film Festival offers programming year-round. I saw Lawrence of Arabia for the first time at Cinerama (on my birthday no less!), drank a bottle of divine cab sauv with my friends as we watched Teen Witch at Cal Anderson Park, and have laughed along with the best at midnight shows at The Egyptian during SIFF’s annual film festival.
I love bad movies for their sheer gonzo level of entertainment, but I love great movies because they elevate an everyday occurrence for me (watching aforementioned movies) into an occasion. There are films that I absolutely love, but I make sure not to watch them too often so the experience won’t become mundane.
The Godfather is very definitely one of those films. I watched it on the big screen for the first time recently (God bless SIFF), and the experience thrilled me to my toes.
I’ve seen the film before, and like most well-versed cinephiles, I can rattle off famous quotes and tropes with the best, but this time, The Godfather was mesmerizing. In a dark theater, a movie becomes something special. I’m not on my computer, or folding laundry, or doing any of the other hundreds of little tasks that make up my daily life. Every iota of my attention was on that screen. The characters were literally larger than life, the scenes of life and death more immediate, and for the first time, I got the full force of Coppola’s visual composition alongside great dialog and superb acting.
It was only after the house lights went up that I realized no one else in the audience had made a sound during the show.
My people.
She Can't Refuse 