This list is from serial Boomtown Rap commenter and now guest poster, Keyser Soze (CEO, Department of Overrated Movies).
If you take exception to any of his choices and/or his reasons for them, be sure to let him know in the Comments thread. He thinks his taste is impeccable, his authority absolute. Challenge him at your risk. Keyser riled is a savage beast. You’ll need to be ready to rumble if ya wanna take him on, quick on the draw with yer movie references, yer powers of reasoning well honed. But if you’re up to it, please do. He’s overdue for a well-aimed kick in the arse.
Enough from me. Gotta go and lace up me steel-caps…
Anyone who wishes to compile their own such list, you’re most welcome to post it in the Comments thread. You might find some inspiration by referring to the Sight & Sound Greatest Films Poll.
Now, on with the show. Keyser?
My 10 Most Overrated Movies
by Keyser Soze
Breathless, or if you must have it, A Bout De Souffle (1959) – directed by Jean-Luc Godard; starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg
One mistake critics commonly make is assuming that if something is the opposite of the routine and mediocre then it must necessarily be a work of genius. Unfortunately for such easy assumptions, it’s far more common to find that the opposite of the routine is Still Crap, albeit of a more arresting colour, texture and taste to the more regular variety. Breathless is a perfect example of this: it sho ain’t Hollywood, and that beguiled nerdy critics into eulogizing its “raw energy”, “freshness”, “vision”, yawn yawn yawn… And all the sudden editing lurches that seem to be just amateurish to the rest of us? Well, to the seasoned film critic these were Flashes of Genius. Which is why I guess that they’re film critics and the rest of us are jest regular nosepickers from the burbs.
This movie is historically significant because it started a vogue for amoral anti-heroes. Prior to this, heroes were generally admirable to some degree or other but this one was novel in the way he revelled in the idea of being a complete arsehole. Of course, there had already been Marlon and James (Dean) displaying some elements of arseholehood but at bottom they weren’t really arseholes – they wuz just misunderstood. The hero of Breathless, however, never pretended to be anything but an arsehole. In fact, he would’ve been downright insulted to be regarded as anything else.
Anyway, it may not be great art or even a decent movie but it certainly inspired a chapter in my forthcoming “A History Of Cool”: Jean-Paul made “Jean-Paul” (or any hyphenated Gallic variant) the coolest name on the block for at least three years and film auteurs everywhere with only five grand to make a movie were inspired to vomit all over the celluloid and put on Bohemian airs and become part of the Nouvelle Vogue. That’s “New Wave” to all you nosepicking hicks out there…
Four Weddings And A Funeral, directed by I can’t remember; starring Hugh ‘n’ Andie
Look, everybody loves weddings, especially movie weddings, OK? Can you think of one movie with a wedding in it that wasn’t popular? Anyways, I was thinking: if one wedding is good, why not two? And if two is better, why not three? And if…?
“Surely yer don’t mean four?!!!!!”
“Yup! It’s a stroke of goddamn genius!”
“Well, how about five, then?”
“Five? Are you kidding? Five is ridiculous!”
“Well, umm, isn’t there a chance it could get a bit monotonous? I mean, isn’t there a chance four weddings coming one after another could get a bit too much? So, how’s about putting something else in for contrast?”
“Like what, for instance?”
“Well, something dark and contrasty…something like… like… I got it! A fookin’ funeral, man!”
“Fook yeah, a funeral! In the middle of all those weddings! It can’t fookin’ miss!”
“Yeah, it could get all solemn for just a while so that when we got back into all the wedding shit the punters would be doubly uplifted! It’d be like a burst of fookin’ sunlight after the gloom!”
“A bit of the ol’ Memento Mori! Woo Hoo! Memento Mori can’t miss as long as you don’t overdo it!”
“What about the characters? I’ve been thinking: we have to have a romance between two Widely Disparate Characters. That way when they finally get together after all the trials it’ll be a bit of the ol’ Hegelian Dialectic comin’ through! Reso-fookin-lution!”
“Right on, you little bitch! And doesn’t Hugh look cute when he gets all tongue-tied?”
“Also, let’s have a load of eccentric characters as Hugh’s friends.”
“Yeah, but they can’t be just eccentric, they’ve got to be something else as well. Just “eccentric” is annoying.”
” Well, how about “loveable”, then? Everybody loves “eccentric but loveable”, it can’t fookin’ miss!”
“AND let’s make them cover all the bases. Diversity is big right now and the whole theme of tolerance for the foibles of mankind and we can all fookin’ live together and…”
“Shut up. Let’s hit the boozer.”
La Dolce Vita – directed by Federico Fellini; starring Marcello Mastroianni and NICO!
One dreary party scene after another…will it never end?
Goodfellas – directed by Martin Scorsese; starring Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro
Arresting on a first viewing but looks more and more mechanical on repetition. And the characters are all so disgusting how could you care what happens? Rather like The Sopranos in this regard.
M – directed by Fritz Lang; starring Peter Lorre
One of those ancient movies accorded classic status simply by dint of always having been so. Primitive in the extreme and only watchable from an extremely forgiving “historical” perspective.
The Committments – directed by Alan Parker; starring lots of “characters”
90s cinema had an obsession for “characters” and where better to find them than Oirland? With “characters” with so much “character” that “character” was coming out of their arses how could it fail? Music consisted of a coarsened rendition of hallowed Motown and Stax classics but the audiences were too entranced with the characters to notice the difference. Made a star for all of three and a half minutes of soon-to-be-forgotten Andrew Strong, who had the kind of “big” “emotional” voice that always has people devoid of musical instinct thinking is “great”. And thankfully modern cinema has gone back to stereotypes. They’re so much easier to live with.
Silence Of The Lambs – directed by Jonathan Demme, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster
The thing you have to understand is that Hannibal Lecter is really, really, really, really evil. Fiendishly so, in fact. And wasn’t it a stroke of luck that his first name is ‘Hannibal’? So that he could have the catchy nickname ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’? Perhaps the most ludicrous movie ever to be considered plausible by people who had purportedly made it to high school. Unless people viewed it as a piece of ridiculous camp and were just pissing themselves silently? Naw, they took it seriously!
Once Upon A Time In America – directed by Sergio Leone; starring Robert De Niro and James Woods
I like Leone’s westerns, which have all the best qualities of a simpleton – naive charm and an absence of enervating “sophistication”. This one, unfortunately, has the less salubrious qualities of simpletonhood, namely leering vulgarity combined with smutty prurience and unabashed silliness. In fact, this is in the running with Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ for the honour of being The Silliest And Most Vulgar Movie To Ever Gain Critical Plaudits. It’s obsessed with sex, which is always a bad thing: sex may be inherently funny for all those not in its throes but the constant parading of sex as the motivation behind pretty well everything in this movie isn’t even intended to be hilarious. In fact, I do believe it’s meant to be INSIGHTFUL.
Remarkably, this would-be gangster epic is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as The Godfather – a bit like comparing Krakatoa to an imperfectly-suppressed fart.
Singin’ In The Rain – directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen; starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor
This is so relentlessly eager-to-please, so insistently “entertaining”, that I just have to be stubborn and refuse to be entertained. I prefer my movies to be a little stand-offish, to preserve just that bit of dignity. But – with its one knock-em-dead scene after another – this is like a project to elicit a series of perfectly-predicted (and, needless to say, ‘positive’) reactions. If Herr Goebbels had made it it would be denounced, but as it’s only innocuous Stanley and Gene it’s prime innocent fare of the purest kind. I feel as if I’m being assaulted by a huge mass of candy-floss.
Gone With The Wind (1939) – directed by Victor Fleming; starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh
Crap, Golden Years Of Hollywood-style. For years, I’ve been mulling over whether to pronounce this much-loved period epic as Defintively Crap Keyser Soze-style but I kept on falling asleep before I could do so with complete conviction. However, I have recently – after suffering severe traumas in the process – made it through to the end. Now I can deliver my final verdict: Crap, Golden Years Of Hollywood-style.
For Boomtown Rap movie reviews, see Movie Review Archives
You did a good job of portraying me as a shithead in your introduction, Roland.
Thank you.
I thought you’d have appreciated my portrayal as fact leavened with benign humour, Keyser. All goes to show, you never know…And it’s Rolan, not Roland. Actually, evolution has dispensed with old Rolan, who has morphed into rolanstein (a less foul-mouthed and bilious character, with – I fondly imagine – a whiff of mysterioso about him/me). Please note for future reference.
Was waiting for some comments on your list from punters who happened by, but nothing forthcoming so I might as well chime in now, in the hope of getting things going.
Completely agree re Breathless. Lead characters don’t come much more annoying than that ADD dick. And what’s with the constant cigarette when clearly the actor is not a smoker – he bum-sucks his way through the entire film. The American actress was pretty irritating too (and not much of an actress). And I found that recurring jazz backing track a pain.
Quite right, of course, that it was a radical departure from Hollywood of the time, yet for me the movie was haunted by a sort of American counter-culturalism awareness – I saw it as a self-conscious attempt by Godard to continentalise beat-style American hipness. Didn’t work for me.
Agree re La Dolce Vita – at least as far as I can agree without having seen the whole movie. Quite seriously, I’ve never managed to stay awake past the first hour or so.
Ditto Gone With The Wind – although I think I made it over the half-way mark before succumbing. I came to in time to hear the famous Gable line, and was bitterly disappointed. I always imagined the stress would be on “damn”. ie: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a DAMN!” – but it is on “give”! Another demo of the danger of expectation, I suppose.
Re: Once Upon A Time In America – completely agree with just about all you’ve said. Dire! I’d add that the length of the thing is sheer indulgence, and that the narrative structure is severely flawed. What’s with all the skipping back and forward in time? Fine, if there’s a good reason for it, but for me it was just confusing. As for the “twist” at the end – WTF?
Re Silence Of The Lambs. I thought I was the only one who was underwhelmed by this. In fact, you are more critical than I. I went along with the Lecter character, assuming at that lift scene that we were in the realm of horror, rather than thriller. Not so, it transpires. This thing is supposed to be taken seriously, it seems. What, then, do we make of the gaping logic flaw at the end? What sort of dimwit (the Foster character) goes into a dark house alone knowing old Hannibal is in it, when all she had to do to ensure her safety and his capture was call the cops for backup? Acceptable in the horror genre, but unforgivable in a thriller. Otherwise, though, I wouldn’t come down on it as hard as you have.
Re: Four Weddings – hilarious commentary! And astute. That said, I saw it on release and quite enjoyed it at the time. Can never trust even yerself, can ya?
Re: The Committments – as with Four Weddings, saw it on release and enjoyed it. My memory is that it was vibrant and different, and that the music was uplifting in the context of the flick. Think I liked the Andrew Strong character and his “big voice”. Suited the role, I thought. But it’s a long time ago now…
Re: Goodfellas This is the only one where we’re completely at loggerheads. Again, I saw it on release and haven’t watched it since, but I loved it. While I agree that the characters are “all so disgusting”, I was still intrigued by them. I don’t think you always need to “care about” characters (ie: identify or empathise with them) to maintain your involvement. They can be disgusting and still fascinating. Whatever, the more interesting aspect for me was the gangster culture and the perverse and contradictory ways in which it operated, which I think Goodfellas depicted with a gripping realism.
Re The Sopranos. Actually, I don’t agree at all that the Sopranos characters are so disgusting that you don’t care what happens to them. They are terrible specimens of humanity, sure, but one of the most intriguing and perplexing aspects of this truly great TV drama is precisely that you do care! Not as you might care for your pet puppy, but in terms of “what happens”, certainly. I found the entire series rivetting. Until Breaking Bad, I rated it as the best TV drama I have seen (and I say that as a bona fide TV addict).
And while I wouldn’t dream of imposing my takes on you or anyone else, I did care about the Tony character – ie: I liked him. Yes, he’s appalling in all sorts of ways, but then there’s the flipside – the whacky sense of honour, the twisted moral dilemmas, the family man stuff. He’s a complex creation, quite wondrous in somehow maintaining a weird sense of humanity while being capable of torture, killing without a conscience, etc.! The entire gangster genre is full of this brand of dysfunction, and is really only a dramatised grotesquerie operatically reflecting the sort of behavioural dynamics that go on in family and society all the time. Which is why the genre is eternally fascinating for me. But I’m getting sidetracked and don’t want to hijack your thread, so will not elaborate further on this here.
I haven’t seen M or Singin’ In The Rain, so can’t comment on those.
Finally, I wanna thank you for a most entertaining and thought-provoking list and commentary. You should do this sorta thang more often.
Cheers!
rolanstein
Why thank’ee, Rolan, for your commentary. I’ll just respond in the areas we disagree. Which seems to be “Goodfellas” in the main…..first of all, I agree that the depiction of the gangster lifestyle is riveting on a first viewing. It’s difficult for a milksop from the burbs (me, not you!) not to get a vicarious thrill from hangin’ out with psychopaths without the SLIGHTEST risk of anything unpleasant happening to oneself! There’s an eerie fascination seing the HORRIBLE things these people get up to. However, the thrill – like all cheap rushes – diminishes badly with repetition. Watch “Goodfellas” a second time and it’s not QUITE so riveting. A third, and you’re beginning to yawn. I just find Scorsese’s way with movies to be flashy and obvious; you can SEE the thinking behind every scene. What I ask for in movies is the je ne sais quoi UNTRANSLATABILITY of visual and, to a lesser extent, sonic images. Everything Scorsese does is CONCOCTED.
Haven’t got time to discuss THE SOPRANOS right now but will just say that it is so LAZILY done I’m surprised it’s rated so highly. Once again people are rating it on the subject-matter rather than the CONCRETE way it’s treated.
But more of this later……
Yeah, Keyser, on repeat viewings of Goodfellas my findings might well equate with yours. I can’t know, though, since I’m not a collector of DVDs/bluray and don’t often see a film more than once.
Another difference in our experiences of this movie that I do think is significant: I saw Goodfellas (and most of the other films on your list) at the cinema on the “big screen”, which is far different from watching at home on DVD or bluray, as I assume was the case with you, given your multiple viewings. It’s many years now since I saw Goodfellas on release, but I do recall feeling almost claustrophobic in response to the hugeness of the faces – lots of facial close-ups if I remember correctly. This had the effect of ensuring the viewer could not escape for a moment from the world Scorcese created, which made for an unsettlingly immersive experience I thought was quite remarkable at the time – an experience a small-screen domestic viewing could not possibly replicate. Can’t really comment further on the film per se. Too long ago for me to offer a more detailed critique.
I do feel bound to comment on some of your assertions, though. First, I don’t particularly relate to your “vicarious thrill” stuff. That’s not to invalidate this take of yours, of course – but I do reject the implication (if indeed it was an implication) that this cheap rush thing is THE appeal of Goodfellas. I’d be interested in your response to my previous comments on the aspect of Goodfellas – and the gangster genre generally – that I find most intriguing. I have a sense that you will relate as little to my comments as I do to your vicarious thrill take.
Why? Because my interest in the psychological dynamics of cults – and I use that word ‘cult’ broadly – is personal, and partly arising out of my own experience of family dysfunction and the suffering and warped perception of ‘reality’ that goes along with it. It’s a bit of an obsession of mine – and probably not shared by you. Hence, we bring different perceptions of human nature with us to the viewing of something like Goodfellas, which is especially rich in characters displaying the types of traits I’m alluding to (as is the gangster genre as a whole).
As with my focus on particular types of relationships within cult settings, going on your comments on Scorcese I think you’re imposing a somewhat blinkered critical ideal on your viewing. Fair enough – this is an evolved and mature aesthetic on your part (which, incidentally, I share in the main), but I think it should be acknowledged that there are other critical criteria and vantage points that are equally valid. You give great weight to the “je ne sais quoi UNTRANSLATABILITY” factor, which I would describe as purity of form. Fine, but there are other ways of seeing and other critical bases on which to assess a director or movie.
Which brings me to your Sopranos comment. I don’t buy your sweeping generalisation that “people” rate it on the subject matter, rather than etc etc. I point you again towards my comments on The Sopranos and the gangster genre in my first response in this thread. You may not relate to these comments, and therefore will also not relate to my appraisal of the series or my reasons for finding it so gripping. I say it’s psychologically astute in terms of the characterisation, and brilliantly performed (most of the time, at least). I say it’s superbly written. And paced. And shot. Blah blah. The reasons for my assessment are multiple and linked, with my personal interest in cult dynamics in the mix and inseparably so. I put it to you that I do not neatly fit into the category of “people” you refer to who rate the series “on subject matter rather than the concrete way it’s treated.” My assessment criteria are not as simple as that. And I don’t think the broad critical criteria dichotomy you’ve presented is as well-delineated as you’d have it, either. It’s not necessarily an either/or – my assessments typically take in both sides of your divide. I don’t think I’m extraordinary in this sense – doubtless there are plenty of viewers/reviewers who do likewise.
Lastly, you can say what you think, and why – but when you start making assumptions about “people” and their critical criteria I think you run into all sorts of trouble. That is not to say I go along with the pissweak and feeble-minded populist notion that there is no good or bad anything in the realm of art, that it all comes down to personal taste – fark NO! I am putting it to you, though, that worthy and valid criticism can come from multiple angles, and that this should be acknowledged.
Cheers
R
Hey Keyser, thanks for the entertaining and insightful remarks on your ten most overrated movies. I haven’t seen all the films you mention so can’t really comment except to say that I do agree about The Silence of the Lambs – yawn! – and although I laughed at your imagined script conference for Four Weddings, it’s one I’ll happily watch every time it pops up on TV.
I’m interested in your appreciation of the “je ne sais quoi UNTRANSLATABILITY of visual and … sonic images” – what rolanstein calls “purity of form”. Yes! I read an article today about that notion: “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”.
Of course you’re right, Rolan, that a movie is LOTS OF THINGS. It’s about SOMETHING, it contains implicit ideas about things, it is made up of visual images, it has acting, dialogue, music, all of which contribute to one’s experience of the thing. So why should MY idea of aesthetic unity have precedence? The only reason I can advance is that it’s the only one that isn’t self-contradictory.
For instance, the movie is about something (its subject-matter). For many people (and critics) this is the primary reason for its existence. The movie is a “study” or an “examination” or an “investigation” into SOMETHING OUTSIDE THE MOVIE; the movie itself is almost incidental. So if the viewer APPROVES of the ideas depicted by the movie they generally like it and vice-versa. Go through almost every movie review and you will find this mode of judgement at work. A politically “liberal” viewer will generally like movies which mirror his (yes yes I know but I distinguish between the grammatical and the ontological – so there!) ideas; a conservative a different set. You say you like “Goodfellas” and “The Sopranos” because of the insights it provides into a cult but then surely a documentary, a book, or, even better, direct experience, would give you a similar or better set of insights. The thing is, movies aren’t investigations; they’re loaded with the director’s and writer’s biases, they give a very particular slant, they’re not scholarly or comprehensive or even remotely objective. In short, if you want information or understanding on any particular subject you’d be far better off dealing with it through other mediums.
But, you may say, they’re BORING, dry as dust, they don’t give you the same FEELING and immediacy that the movies do! And here you’re on firmer terrain; movies ARE about direct and immediate feeling. You EXPERIENCE them rather than think about them; the more UNMEDIATED the experience and the less translatable into other modes of presentation the more perfect the movie. And the feelings presented in the aesthetic world aren’t the same )although they’re related) as the “real” world. They’re purer, more concentrated, more unified, more “real” in a transcendental (but vividly-experienced) sense than the extraneous emotions of everday life. They’re the consummation that our real-life feelings are only fitfully groping towards.
True, very few movies achieve this state of nirvana to the extent that music consistently does and this is why they don’t stand up to repeat viewing. In musuic you have to “learn” the piece, sometimes after multiple listens, but how many movies can you say this about? So I agree with you that in the relative absence of this aesthetic unity, movies are more likely to be enjoyed for their incidental attractions, all the “subjective” aspects that make for divided views on its merits.
Karen, I hope the foregoing offers some INSIGHT into my views on UNTRANSLATABILTY. There’s a lot more to be said, especially on the idea of “form” and the difference between the scientific idea of form as something that holds together “content” and the aesthic view that sees the two as identical.
One thing I should say, Rolan, is that when I wrote “people are rating it on the subject-matter” I wasn’t using “people” as code for YOU in particular with the snottiness and snideness that implies! It was a general remark about “people who rate The Sopranos highly”.
Truly excellent post, Keyser. You’ve explained your position admirably well, and perfectly anticipated my response re non-fictional sources of info about cult dynamics vs artistic modes.
And I’m right with you on your contention that “movies ARE about direct and immediate feeling”, as well as your subsequent elaborations (expressed with terrific clarity).
Absolutely agree with you on music vs movies. Ditto your subsequent musings on movies being “more likely to be enjoyed for their incidental attraction”, and the reasons therefor.
Very satisfying, having a discussion like this in which there is a real exchange of views, rather than opposing sides spouting off and asserting their ‘rightness’ over the other. I now understand your position far better, and have learnt something along the way (including about my own views and how I arrive at them). Unusually for Comments threads to-and-fros, we’ve ended up in harmony!
Most enjoyable and worthwhile.
I didn’t take it that you were coding a personal putdown in your reference to ‘people’ in the context of the Sopranos discussion, but appreciate your going to the bother of clarifying thus.
Hey Karen, I see you are another who does not rate The Silence of the Lambs – well, that makes three of us! Did you really find it a yawn though? Can’t say I was bored – just somewhat underwhelmed, let down due to the goods not living up to the acclaim, and contemptuous of the unforgivable narrative logic flaw at the end.
“Remarkably, this would-be gangster epic is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as The Godfather – a bit like comparing Krakatoa to an imperfectly-suppressed fart.” – That cracked me up. Having said that, I liked Goodfellas (and Sopranos).
“Breathless” is shite. Check out a South Korean movie called “Breathless” (same title, totally different story, lol).
The problem with you agreeing with me, Rolan, is that I find contention (of the civilized kind) the best way of getting to understand stuff. Having somebody attack my arguments is a great way of refining and strengthening them. When people agree with me I get complacent.
However……..there are still a few areas of disagreement so all is not lost. You say you care about Tony Soprano because he has all sorts of contradictory and endearing aspects. To be honest, I find his character a bit on the screenwriters-meeting concocted side (“hey, let’s make sure Tony has a HUMAN side to him”) but I STILL don’t care what happens to him (at the moment I’m only at the end of Season Two so this may change). He just seems to be a horrible SLOB; if he were a complete arsehole I think I’d more readily identify with him.
And “Stumblefuck”, isn’t it amazing how people empathize with farting? I once thought about writing a book called “1001 Great Farting Jokes To Enliven Your Dinner-Parties”. Alas, it has never come to fruition. But maybe someday…..
Keyser, it’s not ‘Rolan’ – it’s rolanstein.
So, you find Tony Soprano concocted with the seams showing, and I don’t. While I agree that challenges thrown down through civilly argued disagreement keep you on your game, I don’t see we have anywhere much to go with Tony. I do agree that he’s a slob, but don’t agree that you can see the screenwriters’ strings pulling the puppet about. I accept him as a character because for me he makes perfect psychological sense as the godhead of a cult. The role-changing when he reverts to ‘personal life’ Tony rings true to type and is fascinating for me. I think he’s most astutely depicted, and that James Gandolfini is superb in bringing him to life. I don’t see the actor in there at all. (Bryan Cranston is another who ‘disappears’ into his character in Breaking Bad – which for me is one of the fundamental qualities of uncommonly great acting).
Here’s a thought: as someone with a particular interest in cult dynamics and narcissistic personality disorder and its many variants, I am probably more familiar with Tony’s character type than you, and recognise all sorts of traits from ‘real life’ prototypes (traits that emerge naturally and not necessarily predictably, without sense of the writers referring to a checklist). That might go some way to explaining our differences of perception on Tone. OTOH, sometimes these things are not easily explained, except in terms of the personal baggage we all bring to our ways of seeing.
On farts: I used to be a fart joke enthusiast of the highest order – farts have delivered me some of the most ecstatically, gutbustingly funny moments of my life. But fart humour is so overdone these days – every dull dick is in on the act. It takes an adept hand to restore the hilarity. Happily, Keyser, you demonstrated that rare quality in your Krakatoa remark. Like Stumblefuck, I chuckled aloud at that one. Twas good to be back. Put me down on your advanced order list for your dinner party book. Hang on, I never get invited to dinner parties, and if perchance I did I’d be making excuses to get out of it. Oh well.
rolanstein
Rolanstein, take heed: the man who is tired of farts is tired of life………
Sage advice, Ben, I mean Keyser. But I didn’t say I was tired of farts. I said I was bored with fart jokes because they’re overdone. BIG difference (my poor partner will vouch for that – as would the unfortunate jogger ranging up behind us as we walked around Lake Monger the other day…I wasn’t aware of another presence when I yielded to nature’s windy calling with hearty gusto and not a little exhibitionism).
You see, I’m full of, erm, life.
Goodfellas is the best gangster movie ever made because its real and well acted and if you read the book its close to it as it gets. Of you dont like the characters in the movie and you read the book they were even worse in real life. But the movie shows what the life was like for an average mob associate or a mob soldier in those years.Unlike the godfather which is clear that Mario Puzzo did not understand how the American mob worked and so the plot is ridiculous even if the movie was well acted.
Well, Robert L, you sound as authoritative and certain of your critical self as Keyser. I don’t know about how authentic either The Godfather or Goodfellas was, so can’t comment on that. I can say that to someone like me who knows a fair bit about what makes a good movie, both seem pretty authentic, and both are brilliant films. I loved Goodfellas. At the time of release I thought it was as good as mob movies get. I still rate it extremely highly. I think it’s Scorcese’s best work.
But I also think The Godfather deserves its acclaim. It’s a great film.
There’s my response. Dunno whether Keyser will get back to you, but let’s see.
BTW, sorry about this delay in posting your comments. Haven’t been paying a lot of attention to my blog since Covid.
Best to ya!
rolanstein