The Godfather (1972) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Astrid:
It is very fascinating to learn that when Godfather was being made the studio and Coppola did not actually think they were making such a classic. In fact Coppola considered making this first film as a compromise on his road to better and more artful films. Also, Al Pacino and Brando almost didn't make it into the cast. The studio found Marlon to be hazardous to the film and Pacino they thought was a too short nobody from New York. I've been reading on this in Biskin's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

Watching Godfather is so easy. It has the perfect look and you don't notice that it takes three hours. What should I say about the subject matter then? That somehow it follows logically for Michael to take on the family business. There goes my unwillingness to understand the family values and the murdering. I'm nodding my head.

But my favorite part of Godfather I is the 15 minutes of Michael's life in Sicily. The thick Sicilian accent and the scenery somehow justify everything...The beautiful first wife (who used to make me really jealous somehow) is amazing. There is something so fragile and out of place about her.
Yet, she is very real and I wish there was an alternative version of the film available where Michael just stays in the barren hot country side with her and has many babies. Forget the honor and the Family and eat some more spaghetti with your red wine.

Oh, well. Luckily there is Diane Keaton in America. But what is wrong with her hair in this film?

Nick :
As my father came from Sicily anything Mafia related held a fascination ever since I was in my early teens. I have seen this film at least 30 times. At various times in the past I've just paid extra attention to Marlon Brando's performance. His various twitches and mannerisms round off his warm performance which draws us in. On one occasion I paid extra lip service to the chemistry between the brothers, played by a never better Al Pacino, James Cann, Robert Duvall and the late great John Cazale. How perfectly cast they were. Sometimes I'll just watch the amazing cinematography by Gordon Willis, who actually won a life time achievement award at the dreadful Oscars this year but amazingly was not nominated at the time of the Godfather's release. The brutal assassination has never looked so beautiful. Even when I watch this film and try to focus on a certain aspect, it still completely involves me, the storytelling is so rich.
The Godfather is arguably the point when the Mafia became mainstream. It made Puzo's book more popular, it gave Scorsese a reason to live. This film invented Robert De Niro (at least the sequel confirmed him). This film inspired the greatest ever TV series in The Sopranos. It's infiltrated our Western society unlike any film in recent history has. It's also an adult's film. Coppola used the Family as a conduit to tap into our basic emotions.

Watching The Godfather in 2010 it surprised me how well the film stood up. I know these scenes inside out, yet they seem so fresh. What I noticed this time was how this film has made us want to like pure evil. It has made the audience relate to mass crime and murder. We can muster sympathy for a cold monster like Michael Corleone. These bad men fuck, drink, cook pasta, have affairs, wear the coolest clothes, drive the best looking cars, are affluent, go to church, play with their grandchildren. Marlon Brando's Don Vito Corleone is a cuddly teddy bear by the end. This humanizes the bad guys. They are just like us. This film is glamor. I aspire to have hair like Al Pacino's in this movie. And this amazing film is still getting better.

Logan's Run (1976) Directed by Michael Anderson

Nick :
Aah, Jenny Agutter. I said hello to Jenny Agutter once. It was in a dining room of a Liverpool Hotel. She looked the same as always. That might not mean much to you but since my adolescence Jenny (we're on first name terms) has been the object of much pent up desire. Going further back then Liverpool in the mid-90's I always remember being at school and the word went out amongst school friends that we should watch Walkabout (Roeg's film about 2 school kids lost in the Australian bush). My father and me at age 13 watched Jenny frolicking naked in the outback! It must be an English thing, but Jenny was a genuine British sex symbol. From the innocence of the Railway Children to the shower scene in An American Werewolf in London Jenny has usually been more interesting than the films she stars in. Safe to say the director of Logun's Run has Jenny near naked on a couple of occasions. It must have been written in all her contracts : remove clothes.
Logun's Run is Sci-Fi 70's style. It's the 23rd Century and the ideology of society is based on pleasure. Everyone lives in a Dome City till the age of 30, then face renewal (which really means death but no one realizes). Logan is a Sandman, who kills runners (runners being people who reach 3o but refuse renewal so they run). One day Logan goes for a briefing with a computer and finds out that renewal does not happen, people just die and it's all been a big con. He is given a mission to go outside the dome to find Sanctuary (a mythical name for outside) and destroy it. He loses four years of his time left and becomes a runner. Logan is played by Michael York who resembles a public school Nazi. Agutter plays Jessica 6 who is in touch with the underground and helps Logan escape the Dome City to the outside. They are both chased by Logan's fellow Sandman and best friend Francis (played by a good Richard Jordan).
All one can really say about this film is it's terrible. It's a great idea, with a condescending script that has to spell everything out in case we don't understand the most basic language.
The effects are bad, the sets move, Anderson directs with the pace of a snail. Peter Ustinov plays the only old man left and even he hams it up. Of course the future is depicted with the fashion sense of Studio 54. Jerry Goldsmith's score is analogue synth heaven. Yet, despite all these problems, this is enjoyable fun. Someone should re-make this with some edge. But still, we'll always have Jenny.....aah.

Astrid:
Logan's Run is another one of those movies that Nick insists on watching by using the punch line: -You'll like this one! Usually it is a lame attempt to convince me to watch something that I most certainly won't care for, but Nick has a history with. Yeah, in this case it was Jenny Agutter, who does absolutely nothing for me.

Although Logan's Run is a pathetic movie as far as acting, script and dramatic tension goes, it looks great. the 1970's vision of the future is groovy and colorful. Also, the novel behind the movie script is probably full of fascinating propositions. The idea of a future community without any manual labor left to do, just hedonism and death at 30 (to cut down over-population) sounds inspiring to begin with. The question of bringing up children without any biological parent contact is another interesting thought, but for this film it is simply something awful to frown upon. Killing other people, such as Runners who attempt to continue life after 30, has been made to look like renewal and/or is done by robots. This removal of human empathy in a society must be a central theme in the novel. In the film such crucial visions of the future play only a small part as the thematic backdrop for Jessica's and Logan's boring escape into the real planet earth outside the dome.