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List Price: $49.99 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 847
Released: October 9, 2001 |
| Our Price: $39.95 |
| Used Price: $19.94 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The complete saga of the Mafia Corleone family, from Don Corleone's childhood in Sicily, his son Michael Corleone's rise to power and finally the struggle to succeed him. Contains, as originally released, the 3 Godfather films.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD
Description of The Godfather DVD Collection (The Godfather/ The Godfather - Part II/ The Godfather - Part III):
Throughout his long, wandering, often distinguished career Francis Ford Coppola has made many films that are good and fine, many more that are flawed but undeniably interesting, and a handful of duds that are worth viewing if only because his personality is so flagrantly absent. Yet he is and always shall be known as the man who directed the Godfather films, a series that has dominated and defined their creator in a way perhaps no other director can understand. Coppola has never been able to leave them alone, whether returning after 15 years to make a trilogy of the diptych, or re-editing the first two films into chronological order for a separate video release as The Godfather Saga. The films are our very own Shakespearean cycle: they tell a tale of a vicious mobster and his extended personal and professional families (once the stuff of righteous moral comeuppance), and they dared to present themselves with an epic sweep and an unapologetically tragic tone. Murder, it turned out, was a serious business. The first film remains a towering achievement, brilliantly cast and conceived. The entry of Michael Corleone into the family business, the transition of power from his father, the ruthless dispatch of his enemies--all this is told with an assurance that is breathtaking to behold. And it turned out to be merely prologue; two years later The Godfather, Part II balanced Michael's ever-greater acquisition of power and influence during the fall of Cuba with the story of his father's own youthful rise from immigrant slums. The stakes were higher, the story's construction more elaborate, and the isolated despair at the end wholly earned. (Has there ever been a cinematic performance greater than Al Pacino's Michael, so smart and ambitious, marching through the years into what he knows is his own doom with eyes open and hungry?) The Godfather, Part III was mostly written off as an attempted cash-in, but it is a wholly worthy conclusion, less slow than autumnally patient and almost merciless in the way it brings Michael's past sins crashing down around him even as he tries to redeem himself. --Bruce Reid
The Godfather DVD Collection (The Godfather/ The Godfather - Part II/ The Godfather - Part III) Reviews:
Completely Happy 
2009-11-07 - Everything was as it should be. The box set was in excellent condition and the DVD's were in perfect shape. Thanks loads, this made my husband very happy.
Of course I love it!
2009-10-16 - Of COURSE I love the product. It came as it said it would. I would just add the that Amazon sent it even earlier than expected. That;s why I keep coming back.
The Godfather Collection [VHS] or (DVD) A+A+A+
2009-08-25 - The Godfather Collection [VHS]A+++ Rated, The Gadfather DVD Collections about a old time mob family full of top rated Actors and Actresses. The only other series of move collection that is as good as The Godfather is ROOTS, another outstandind movie Collection!
The Boringfather is moar liek it. LOLOL! 
2009-08-09 - I know this series is in high regard for being the greatest gangster film of all-time, so I decided to check it out myself. Originally it was WAY too long for me to even want to see, but I was curious so one afternoon I sat through all of these films. That's 8 hours I'll never get back! I could've been doing something productive like playing World Of Warcraft instead. The films dragged on WAY too long and overstayed their welcome by about an hour each. There wasn't enough violence to make this a worthwhile gangster flick. Also, it was annoying when they spoke in Italian. They should've dubbed the voices instead. No one wants to read subtitles! How inconvenient. Finally, I'm giving this 2 stars because the third one was the only watchable one. Sequels made 20 years later are the bomb!
See the new Johnny Depp movie "Public Enemies" or "Get Carter", "Be Cool" or "Dick Tracy" for real gangster films!
Excellent, but best movies ever...? 
2009-07-28 - The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Put ten critics in a room and ask them what the best movie ever made is. At least seven of them will tell you it's The Godfather. (An eighth will tell you it's The Godfather Part II, but that's another review. The other two will come up with something way out of left field that you've never heard of, but is made of awesome anyway.) I first tried to watch The Godfather about twenty years ago and found it an unwatchable, unforgivably slow mess of a movie that became one of the handful (at best) of movies I turned off without finishing. With all the critical acclaim the movie continues to receive, however, I decided to go back and given it a second chance; I'm a lot more patient now than I used to be. In fact, this time I grabbed the entire extended trilogy boxed set form the library and watched all three films over the course of a week. I liked this one a whole lot better the second time around, to be sure, but I do still think it had its share of shortcomings.
The Godfather was made (as, I assume, the novel was written) with an eye toward the epic; everything about this movie is bigger than life, from its Bollywood-esque running time (just shy of three hours) to its frankly jaw-dropping cast. It tells the story of the passing of the guard in the Corleone family from the aging patriarch, Vito (Marlon Brando), to one of his sons. (While I seriously doubt there's anyone who doesn't know the end, I won't give it away.) The thing is, all three of Vito's kids--Sonny (James Caan), Fredo (John Cazale), and Michael (Al Pacino)--are in some way unsuitable for the role. Fredo is what we'd call these days a little slow (may, in fact, be mentally challenged); Sonny, the closest of the three to the old man, is loyal but wants to do things his way; and Michael wants to shake free of the family business entirely, to the point where he's enlisted in the army and found himself a non-Italian wife (Diane Keaton). In fact, things are so bad that Vito's even considering naming his adopted lieutenant, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), as the head of the family--and he's Irish. The fireworks erupt when the entire clan gets together for a wedding, and the gang warfare in the city, which has been in a state of uneasy truce for a while, swings back into high gear.
The depth of acting talent in this movie is beyond compare. Brando, of course, had already won an Oscar (for On the Waterfront) and had been nominated for four more. Pacino would pick up an Oscar nomination for his role here, and would go on to nab six more nominations and a win (including being one of the very few actors to be nominated in two different categories in the same year). Caan picked up a nomination for his role here. Duvall picked up his first nomination here, and would go on to four more nominations and a win. Keaton would go on to an Oscar win and three more nominations. The only one of the main cast without an single Oscar nomination is John Cazale, who made only five films before his untimely death (but he did pick up a Golden Globe nomination for Dog Day Afternoon). And that's just the principal cast; we're not even getting into the incredible cast of supporting players (Talia Shire, Abe Vigoda, and Sterling Hayden are just the tip of the iceberg). It goes without saying that the acting here is stellar. Mario Puzo's script, adapted from his own novel, is well-done, but my complaint about the leisurely pace of the movie still stands (though not nearly as strongly as before); yes, there's a lot of character development here, but I don't see why it couldn't have been done in about two-thirds the time. It also helps to think of this less as an action film than as a character-driven family drama, but not like any family drama you'll ever see on the Lifetime Movie Network; this is family in all its bloody glory (and let's face it, the mafia stuff is nothing more than overblown allegory for the more intimate family dynamic here), and despite the incredible slowness, it's all fascinating.
As I said about The Seven Samurai (above), I'm not saying The Godfather is a bad movie in any way (though I'll agree with that eighth critic that Part II is the slightly better movie). It is, in fact, a very good movie. But is it the best movie ever made? As I keep my own list of the 100 Best Movies Ever Made, and something else is at the top of it, the answer in my case should be obvious. But that doesn't mean it's bad. ***
* * *
The Godfather, Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
[NOTE: this review necessarily contains spoilers for The Godfather. If you haven't seen that one and plan to, don't read this.]
Where Francis Ford Coppola set out (as my hypothesis goes; see review of The Godfather above) with The Godfather to make an epic film, when he wrote the screenplay for The Godfather Part II, he set out to surpass epic and head into the realm of the immortal. And how does one do that, you ask? By taking an already amazing cast and adding one of the finest actors of his generation, Robert DeNiro. After all, when you're already the finest screenwriter on the planet (and Coppola had already proved that on several occasions, including screenplays for Patton and The Conversation), you've got Mario Puzo's writings to work from, and the first movie was widely hailed as a masterpiece, all you have to do is keep doing what you were doing before.
Part II of the series interpolates scenes of Vito (De Niro) as a young man, showing how he became the man we saw in the first film, with present-day footage of Michael (Al Pacino) trying to clean up the mess left for him by Vito's death. The family is still in tatters, and things are only getting worse; his wife Kay (Diane Keaton) , originally part of the driving force behind Michael's decision to walk away from the family, is upset by his taking over, adding stress to his already fragile situation. In order to expand his empire, as well, Michael reaches out to Cuba, and its insane dictator Batista.
It is rare for a sequel to surpass the original film it follows, and whether Part II does that is something that's been hotly debated by both critics and the public for decades. I'm one of those who thinks it does; we already know many of these characters, but that doesn't prevent Coppola from continuing to deepen our relationships with them (and them with each other), while adding in new characters and giving them the same treatment. As a result, this one's even longer than the first, running about three and a half hours. Unlike the first, however, Coppola had gotten into the groove of this thing and had a better handle on how it should be paced; this one has far fewer places where it drags. As well, while the first film is essentially plotless, just showing us the family in its decline, within the story of the family's rises to power, we get the story of Vito and his wife, which is a true masterpiece in every way. It could have been a film on its own.
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that The Godfather Part II is a great film; you've probably heard it from every critic you've ever read. Well worth seeing, even if you weren't thrilled with the first one. ****
* * *
The Godfather, Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990)
When it was originally released, Coppola's third (and, to date, final) entry in the Godfather series was almost universally panned, considered by most to be a case of a lot of those involved needing the money and capitalizing on the series name. In the intervening twenty years, however, perception of the film seems to have mellowed a good deal, and the good things about it have gotten more press; after all, despite its critical reception, the film was nominated for seven Oscars, and there's usually a reason for that.
The action takes place (mostly) during the late seventies. Michael Corleone is approaching sixty, and feels tremendous guilt about the violence and mayhem his family was responsible for in previous decades, and he has turned the family business towards legitimate interests. The bulk of the movie deals with Michael's attempt to buy the Vatican's shares in a real estate holding company (the Vatican needs the money, while Corleone needs the legitimacy); all well and good, except Corleone's old mafia buddies also wantin on the deal, and are willing to go to great lengths to secure a part of it. Meanwhile, Michael's old bodygyard Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), feeling slighted on the deal and an enemy of Michael's new protégé (Sonny's illegitimate son), declares war on the family he served for so long. Life is never tranquil in the world of the Corleones.
Much of the criticism surrounding this movie, it always seemed to me, centered on the performance of Sophia Coppola. I don't think it deserved anywhere near the vituperation poured upon it. It's not that Coppola's performance is bad, it's that the Godfather series has always featured the kind of acting that makes a good performance look mediocre. There are some interestingly topical bits (like the ascension of Pope John Paul I) that haven't aged terribly well, but anyone old enough to have been alive during that time should have no problem with it. I enjoyed it just as much as the first one. ***
