Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

After Joseph Valachi's testimony to the Senate in the early 1960s about the inner workings of the Mafia, for the first time people were exposed to La Cosa Nostra, it's hierarchy, and how it worked. The public became fascinated. Puzo was able to capitalize on that interest with publication of The Godfather in 1969.

I read the novel in 1970, and when I heard a movie was being developed of it, I couldn't wait. I think I saw it three times in the first month! The novel and film were written in such a way as it felt like non-fiction, probably due to Valachi's testimony.

The public became crazy for anything about the Mafia. And it lasted for the entire '70s decade. Anything with "mob" or "Mafia" in the title sold big. And the Godfather movies were at the top of the list. The sequels could have been poor, and it would have hardly mattered. People loved the subject matter, and were fascinated by the Corleone saga.

~Doc

Like what?

This is an unnecessary and ignorant statement.

I don't have much time this morning (I have to get to work shortly), so I can't go into detail but to answer briefly:

GPII really reminded me of Dune. Both were about power plays, plans within plans and double crosses.

Dune worked for me because I've read the book and bought into the whole Dune universe, you could say I'm really into it.

But with GPII I've not read the book nor do I care about organized crime, so I watched the movie not as a fan (like I did with Dune) but with a critical eye.

And most of the double crosses like his brother and the attempted hit on him in his bedroom seemed to me to need more character motivation, more set up. It felt like the plot twist came out of the blue just for the sake of having some twist. And the story seemed abbreviated, like we got parts of the story but the interconnecting stuff was missing, as well as the character studies that would have brought the characters to life. I can't say I even know who Michael really was. I think the direction was real good but it felt like Dune in that there was way too much source material to attempt to distill down into a movie. Unless of course someone is a fan and has read the book or seen the movie a number of times, which then allows the person to fill in the blanks and then the movie (movies) can become richer. But for me it was average, I was never bored but I wanted more.

Hate to bring this up (as there are mixed feelings on it), but I wonder if Rules would have had the same criticisms if his first exposure was to the "Saga" (a.k.a. the "Epic" - the version that puts movies I & II into chronological order with extra footage). Lots of people feel II's lengthy flashback is perfect, but other people aren't big on flashbacks (especially ones that are practically movies of their own). Some feel that without the time jumps, the storylines feel a bit more consistent and you can follow the plot points in a more linear fashion.

I remember you mentioned that. I kind of would like to see that, but I don't think I want to invest 6 hours (or whatever) in watching that.

I liked the turn of the century flashbacks storyline. I can't say if intermixing the past with the present hurt my watching experience or not. I'm going to say it didn't. To me GPII felt like I was watching a classic 12 hour miniseries like Shogun or The Thornbirds, cut down to 3.5 hours. I've had this complaint about other movies made from lengthy novels.

Yeah, I believe the "Saga" is over 7 hours long! Yikes! Definitely has to be watched over 2 or 3 nights.

My only question with the flashback in II, is it covers a character (Vito) who does not even appear in the movie (yet who is a main character in I). Not that it's confusing to anyone or that most people watching the sequel wouldn't have seen the first one - so they already know who Vito is, but... I dunno... I kind of got a kick out of watching it chronologically - the story in II seems to flow better without the hour-long interruption about the main character's father's origins.

I realize that in the making-of the two movies it had to be that way (as Vito's origin wasn't part of the first movie), but I just thought it cool that they strung the movies together chronologically after they were made.

...Now if someone could string all the X-Men movies together chronologically (and have them still make sense)!

Director: Don Taylor
Writers: Thomas Hunter (story), Peter Powell (story)
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katharine Ross, James Farentino, Charles Durning
Genre: Alternative History Drama Sci-Fi

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Off topic regarding Godfather II - years back got into a discussion on YouTube regarding the movie Bugsy Malone - there's a scene during the "Bad Guys" number where the hoodlums steal a carpet during the song. Not too many people took note, but I said it was an obvious homage to Godfather II (when young Vito and Clemenza steal a carpet). People argued with me, saying one had nothing to do with the other, and the "bad guys" in Bugsy were just stealing something from some laborers.
I asked, "but why a carpet, of all things?" It was very obvious that it was a blatant reference to Godfather II - a cute homage in a cute movie that was in itself a cute spoof of mob movies.

Ugh, more Godfather II talk, don't make me quote Orson about that movie

I've not seen Bugsy Malone, but yeah I'd say the carpet bit is homage to GII.

Yeah, I just wanted some confirmation.

(But you must have known that not giving Godfather II 5 popcorn boxes would open up a Pandora's box... I guess it's Pandora's popcorn box!)

P.S. Bugsy Malone is almost an acquired taste - it's definitely unique. It's fun, but parts of it are also cringe worthy... and some still feel it's controversial & creepy (putting children in the roles of adults - especially ones who are mobsters, not to mention the girls as showgirls, gun molls or apperently *ahem* ladies of the evening. Some people feel that, because of Bugsy Malone, Taxi Driver wasn't Jodie Foster's first roll as a child prostitute!)

I suspect this could be a polarizing film for some. I certainly experienced a lot of different emotions while watching this. At times I didn't know how to feel about this movie, it's certainly daring.

It reminded me of a cross between: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) and Adaptation (2002). I liked it and found it challenged me on different levels...sometimes it made me squirm, sometimes I thought it was funny, mostly I was awed by how brazen the subject matter was. And I think they handled that subject matter intelligently.

I'll be interested in seeing how others view this. The idea that the college grads come up with and the execution of that idea, is alone worth watching the film for...I loved that the director goes to great lengths to add several seemingly unimportant layers to the film that give it a certain amount of quirkiness. Like the tomatoes! What an idea! I'm not sure why that was done in the film, and I don't care as it added something spicy. So did the dark themed paintings we see at the beginning of the film, not to mention the whole investigation for the missing girl and the small town sheriff lady.

This was one of the most interesting films I've seen in a long time.

I'm glad to be able to say, I liked it...I wasn't sure at first if I would, but the film kept me interested by intrigue. That intrigue is generated by the mystery of why does Morvern do what she does, and what motivates her.

I find the mystique that the film presented to be interesting and in that aspect it reminded me of another movie directed by a woman Wanda (1970) Both showed an odd, yet interesting woman that we the viewer follow up close and personal. Both women seem to be heading towards trouble and yet they're mostly escaping from boredom.

I'd call this film honest film making in that it never spoonfeeds emotions to us. And it never tells us what to think by use of heavy camera work or overly dramatic score. It seemed honest in that the POV is always from Morvern's view point. We follow her around as if we're standing right there beside her. That felt like a very personal style of film making. There's very few extreme closeups or majestic wide angle shots, no fast cut edits, it looked to be filmed with a hand held camera with a medium range telephoto lens and that made it feel like I was there. I like this style of film making.

I didn't feel connected to the character, but then again I don't think many people would, and that too is honest as not every person in this world is likable....or are they so evil that you love to hate them. Morvern is an open book, but never does the film tell us to like or hate her. That's refreshing.

The most emotional engaging part for me was the friendship bond between Morvern and Lanna. I liked both actresses and the fact it follows just those two. I really got a sense that this was directed by a woman director in that it's more about the shared time, then it is about an overly dramatic event. Even the scenes that could have been shown as deeply dark and disturbing where done in a more subdued way and I suppose one could call that a feminine perspective too. And I liked that.

I'm of a mixed mind on this one. I really liked the first hour of the film. I loved the dark satire of the whole 1980s Wallstreet-Yuppie-Greed thing...it was brilliantly done. It was great how Patrick Bateman's anti-social psycho killings were driven by his deep insecurities, and by his need to be a name dropping rich snob. I loved the whole send up of the 80s stuff, that was cool.

Christian Bale nails it! I liked his character. He's quite charming in an odd way...and that's why I liked the first hour so much. Patrick Bateman was personable just like Anthony Perkins was as Norman Bates. Clearly the movie Psycho has inspired this movie.

In the first half of the movie the killings weren't too graphic, so were tolerable for me as they were done with a tongue in cheek humor, which also reminded me of Heathers.

In the second half the film gets more real and more darker as Patrick goes completely over the edge and the body count rises...And that's where I stopped liking the film, as it then took on the feeling of a slasher movie and I never liked those. Patrick 'eating' the first woman and then naked and covered with blood chasing the prostitute down the hall with a chainsaw seemed like a popcorn slasher scene. Which to me ruin the brilliant narrative of the first half.

I wanted the second half to be more like the first, but it wasn't.

I've seen this twice. And yes, it's got a very interesting premise - a great dark comedy (that must be taken with a grain of salt.)

Granted, the plot is a bit hard to swallow, and it becomes increasingly absurd. The liberals and their mentality are ultimately made to look bad as some of them get further and further out of control. I'm not criticizing the movie for that fact as the plot calls for it to become increasingly absurd in order to build to its conclusion.

In some ways it's reminiscent to other satires where guests are killed off one by one (Arsenic & Old Lace) although this plot is far removed as it centers around conflicting political philosophies.

I loved some of the ultra-stereotypical dinner guests (and the fact that they are a who's who of cameos). But Ron Perlman really hit a home run and delivered the message that sometimes those who wear the label of tolerance are the least tolerant of all, while even the most radical extremists may not be as irrational or extreme as they appear, as he plays what I assume was supposed to be a Rush Limbaugh character who turns out to be far more centered than his on-air persona.

I think this film is having a well-deserved resurgence in our current age of political division and strife! Recommended for anyone the least bit interested in conflicting political views or dark comedies.

It sort of reminded me of Arsenic & Old Lace too. Ron Perlman was the best character in the movie, second was SNL's Nora Dunn. Some of the liberals weren't that great. I don't know if it was the script or them. Not a big fan of Cameron Diaz. I'd say she was the wink link in the chain. Overall a very interest film.

I liked this, it was a fun way to spend an evening. An idea like this could have easily been milked for all it's worth with low hanging fruit jokes, but no this movie plays it pretty straight and so it works. The main thing that I like was that the film wasn't mean. I expected the guy who had been living underground away from society, and is then exposed to reality, to end up the butt of jokes. But no, that never happened. Instead he finds a friend and together they make a movie. How cool is that! Sure there's a couple of plot holes that were big enough to stuff a bears head through, but all in all a decent little movie.

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Writers: Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Lanham (screenplay)
Cast: Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Naomi Watts
Genre: Biography, Drama

Based on the novel by Jeannette Walls who recounts her life growing up in a poor dysfunctional family of nonconformist nomadic parents. With a intelligent & insightful father who's dreams never take flight due to his rampant alcoholism, and the mother who's a artist off in la la land and in complete denial about the wretched conditions her children. The family lives a hand to mouth existences as they travel around the county living as nomads and sleeping where they can.


The Glass Castle, wants to do two different things and it does neither very well. At it's heart it's a bittersweet tale of a family headed by a well intentioned but unrealistic father, played to perfection by Woody Harrelson. It succeeds at this but then it shows us a dark side with sexual abuse haunting the past of the father and perhaps causing him to be a belligerent tyrant. But just when you think he's a tyrant the film shows he has a good heart that is unfortunately drowned in a bottle of booze. I wish the film had either been enlightening or dark and daring. It tried to be both and ends up doing neither well.


Naomi Watts as the artsy mother, really didn't work here for me, she was too light and too ditzy. Maybe that's what her character was suppose to be but I just couldn't buy into her story line.


I also didn't care for the flash forward to the adult daughters story, that was boring and took away from the power of her earlier days as a young girl with her bizarre family. This felt like a lost opportunity.

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After watching the first 5 minutes, I was thinking I would really enjoy this. Michelle Williams has become one of my favorite actresses working today and she's good in this movie too.

But after we get to the first scene in the airplane, I found I hated the dialogue. It sounded artificial, like something a writer cooked up. It sounded forced and contrived and not natural at all.

No big deal I though, it's just one scene. But as the movie went on I found every scene was like that. When ever the characters spoke, it seemed unnatural, like the writer Sarah Polley (who's also the director) had no style of her own, but was forcing eclecticism into the film, to give it some sort of faux style. The more I paid attention to the writing the worse it became.

The sets too seemed desperate, they screamed 'look at me, I've created style by overdoing it'. I mean every little thing that can be kitschy upped or garishly painted in a look-at-this way, was done and overdone.

Wes Anderson can create a unique look with unique characters who don't sound or look like the real world, and yet it works as he creates his own universe and within that universe his characters make sense. The characters in Take This Waltz made no sense at all to me.

Michelle Williams' character seems too cutesy, too charming and too deeply bonded to her husband...for her to then decide to cheat on him. I liked Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen in this, but geez I hated the casting choice for the boyfriend, who was two dimensional. He should have paired with Sarah Silverman who was also over done for the sake of being over done.

The DVD cover called this 'sexy', but I didn't find anything 'sexy' in this film. The sex, like the dialogue seemed 'jazzed up' to make something out of nothing. I didn't believe the actions the characters took as natural. They didn't feel organic to the world the film created for them, so the film didn't work for me.

In the first hour I was totally into the movie, and I was thinking this would be a favorite of mine. I loved the subject matter of exploring the idea of how strong Tore's faith was, and of him believing all the crap that happened to him was a test and that to prove his faith he had to endure all of the crap, and without fighting back. That was a fresh idea and the movie at first explored it well. But only up to a point.

After 1 hour it crossed over into schmucky horror film. If this had been a dark comedy, well OK it might have worked, but once they did the old and tired kill a pet to prove your a crazy bad ass bit, I started rolling my eyes. I mean I've seen the wickedly bad guy kill the pet to prove he's really bad, more times in a movie that I can count, it's a tiresome troupe and one that screams unoriginal.

A bit later in the movie we get a scene of forcing the poor helpless boy to eat a maggot infested rotting chicken...The film lost me at that point, not because it was so gross (and it was gross) because it was so stupid of a scene. I can't even begin to image how the film makers could kill such a good idea with cheeso horror stuff in the third act.

It was all so brilliant and playing out like a realistic docu-drama then all of sudden the family from hell along with their hellish friends decide to torture the kid, but why? Totally unbelievable and ruined a perfectly good movie for me.

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At first I thought this looked pretty promising with the artsy overhead shot of the tomato festival in Spain. It's a cool looking shot too with all those masses of people covered in bright red tomato juice.But as the movie went on, I started to realize the director was mainly relying on fancy tricks done in the editing room. By taking scene shots out of time context, it creates an illusion of tension. Then with the more abstract shots like the microorganisms, it creates a sense of importance and grandeur, that isn't present in the story outline.

If I think only of the basic story and not all the extra fancy stuff, I must say it's not all that powerful. Tilda Swinton was really good in this but the teen age Kevin (Ezra Miller), had a one note performance...a continual sneer, into the camera. I wanted him to be more multi dimensional, I wanted the story to be more multi dimensional. I kinda feel like I watched a one hour average movie that was jazzed up with clever editing tricks, that then masquerades as something more than what it really is.

We Need to Talk About Kevin, felt to me like it had nothing much to offer in the way of story narrative or character arch or anything substantial. Without the clever use of editing in climax reaction scenes out of sequences in the beginning of the film and some moody static shots. It never evoke any philosophical, existential type responses from me. I mean we don't really see any of the whys, hows, of Kevin being like he is. Nothing in the family relationship dynamics is explored.

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