Movies just don't get any better than this

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2000)

What can I say that hasn't already been said a million times. This is one of those movies that just holds you in thrall from beginning to end, with no let up in interest or involvement - an amazing feat under any circumstance but almost unheard of for a three-hour movie! As such, it's interesting to compare this with more recent epic-length films of today. A couple years ago, on its 25th anniversary re-release I saw this in the theater on the same day I saw "The English Patient". The difference in the two films was just amazing. The English Patient wasn't bad or anything, it's just that it was way too long for the story it told; a good 90 minute-to-2 hour premise was padded out with gorgeous but pointless scenery, an unnecessary subplot, and a shooting and acting style which emphasized dragging things out just for their own sake. The Godfather, by comparison, crams every single minute of its running time with richness, characterization, intrigue, etc. - so much so that, for me, the film actually seems SHORTER than its running time would lead you to believe. There's so many movies that could learn from this - movies that want to be epic length to inflate the importance of their subjects, but just arent' interesting enough to hold us for that long. Many films are guilty here, from Titanic to The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Green Mile - even such "great" films as Lawrence of Arabia and (yes) Shindler's List use their lengths more as endurance tests (i.e. if you can't stay interested through the whole thing than you must be somehow boorish or unfeeling) and as proofs that the directors just became so enamored of their subjects that they couldn't bear to take anything out than as necessary for the telling of their stories. Sadly, I must say that, in my opinion, even The Godfather Part II falls victim to this tendancy - definitely one of the most overrated and unnecessary sequels of all time.
But if you want to see the Corleones (and Francis Ford Coppola) when they were all at the top of their game and everything was just cooking, go back and watch this movie. Even after all the imitations, the rip-offs, the parodies and the cultural appropriations of lines like "Make him an offer he can't refuse" and "He sleeps with the fishes" to the point where the movie sometimes seems as entrenched (and as tired) as cliches like "Mom, God and apple pie" --- once you start watching all of that stuff flies out the window and you're amazed to learn that, wonderfully, this film has lost none of its edge or entertainment value in the nearly thirty years of its existence.
(BTW Don't anyone get the idea that I am against the concept of long movies - some of my all time favorites besides The Godfather are Apocalypse Now, 2001:A Space Odyssey, The Deer Hunter, and Oliver Stone's Nixon. It's just that, I believe, a film really has to justify that running time, because it so opens the door to pretension and indulgence.)