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Goodfellas
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Final Verdict: [Meh...]
Goodfellas
Crime Drama / English / 1990
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Originally Posted by Camo
Goodfellas.
Originally Posted by mark f
Goodfellas gets my vote.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
I generally don't like crime/gangster movies and the reason is pretty simple: I can't empathize with these guys.
If I can't relate to the characters then I want their story, at the very least, to be engaging on it's own merits. If you can't hook me with the character, hook me with what the character is doing.
Even if I didn't like Light from Death Note, his genocidal god-complex can still be extremely entertaining to follow.
If I can't relate to the characters then I want their story, at the very least, to be engaging on it's own merits. If you can't hook me with the character, hook me with what the character is doing.
Even if I didn't like Light from Death Note, his genocidal god-complex can still be extremely entertaining to follow.
In this respect I think Goodfellas succeeds because it managed to engage me even with what seems to be a rather hit-or-miss convention of having the main character monologue about his life over the movie. I think it works here because the entire presentation of the movie is shaped around this idea so while we largely follow around our main character during his rise and fall as a gangster, the camera really just seeks to absorb entire scenes and it's all edited together in a way that allows us to glean seemingly random bits of dialog to fit a picture.
In this way it also serves to excuse a lot of the period soundtrack which proliferates the movie, not only setting the general tone, but also being an easy element to pull away and turn up the tension in certain scenes. I honestly haven't seen a gangster movie which pulled me into the era and mood they were going for as well as this one, and I think that's a big point in the movie's favor.
I think my favorite scene is when Robert De Niro's character tells Main Guy's wife that "Oh no, there's a store right around the corner back here." Instantly I'm all "AWWW ****."
A point AGAINST the movie though, would have to be the main character, I KNOW I just said that I don't need to relate to them, but I do expect them to exercise some modicum of common sense and what this movie serves to exhibit is his inability to retain the status quo.
He gets mixed up in one thing or another and whether it's by omission of information or outright recklessly ignoring advice, he brings it all on himself, and I'm not talking about getting caught by the cops, I mean he crosses the wrong people in the mob. Self preservation does not appear to extend far with this guy.
Another issue I have is that it takes nearly half the ****in' movie for him to press that envelope. Is this about his rise to success or his fall from grace? Cause I gotta tell you, I don't give a crap about anything that happens during a full half hour or more of this movie. When he finally gets involved in covering for Joe Pesci's character (by the way, LOT of big names perfect for these roles) I'm like, "Okay, NOW we see where it all goes downhill", but no it just continues to idle while his offenses rack up and it doesn't even really accumulate into anything it's just, "Welp, that happened. Sucks. Hope I don't get caught. Next scene."
His girlfriend/wife was aggravating too and I have no idea why she got any kind of narration because that perspective added nothing to the movie.
As you can imagine I also got righteously sick of all the food scenes. OH MY GOD, I get it. They're ****ing Italian. You don't need to cut down from the conversation to show one of them just poking at a sausage on the stove, YOU'RE JUST DOING THIS TO MESS WITH ME NOW, AREN'T YOU!? I'd make a 'breakin' my balls' reference, but Sexy's gonna leap on that in an instant.
In this way it also serves to excuse a lot of the period soundtrack which proliferates the movie, not only setting the general tone, but also being an easy element to pull away and turn up the tension in certain scenes. I honestly haven't seen a gangster movie which pulled me into the era and mood they were going for as well as this one, and I think that's a big point in the movie's favor.
I think my favorite scene is when Robert De Niro's character tells Main Guy's wife that "Oh no, there's a store right around the corner back here." Instantly I'm all "AWWW ****."
A point AGAINST the movie though, would have to be the main character, I KNOW I just said that I don't need to relate to them, but I do expect them to exercise some modicum of common sense and what this movie serves to exhibit is his inability to retain the status quo.
He gets mixed up in one thing or another and whether it's by omission of information or outright recklessly ignoring advice, he brings it all on himself, and I'm not talking about getting caught by the cops, I mean he crosses the wrong people in the mob. Self preservation does not appear to extend far with this guy.
Another issue I have is that it takes nearly half the ****in' movie for him to press that envelope. Is this about his rise to success or his fall from grace? Cause I gotta tell you, I don't give a crap about anything that happens during a full half hour or more of this movie. When he finally gets involved in covering for Joe Pesci's character (by the way, LOT of big names perfect for these roles) I'm like, "Okay, NOW we see where it all goes downhill", but no it just continues to idle while his offenses rack up and it doesn't even really accumulate into anything it's just, "Welp, that happened. Sucks. Hope I don't get caught. Next scene."
His girlfriend/wife was aggravating too and I have no idea why she got any kind of narration because that perspective added nothing to the movie.
As you can imagine I also got righteously sick of all the food scenes. OH MY GOD, I get it. They're ****ing Italian. You don't need to cut down from the conversation to show one of them just poking at a sausage on the stove, YOU'RE JUST DOING THIS TO MESS WITH ME NOW, AREN'T YOU!? I'd make a 'breakin' my balls' reference, but Sexy's gonna leap on that in an instant.