This *might* be the best picture in movie history.

Rating: 10/10 (7 July 2008)

When Francis Ford Coppola is on, he is absolutely on. The Godfather, in all of its noirish glory, is brilliant in virtually every respect. It's hard to criticize it, so I'll just honor it some more.
In The Grapes of Wrath (the novel), Ma Joad asks Tom if being in prison has made him "mean-mad." She knew Pretty Boy Floyd's mother, and she recalls how Floyd started out as a nice boy who kept getting hurt time and again, and who eventually became a monstrous killer. Michael Corleone is the epitome of that concept. As soon as Vito says that Michael is not to enter the "family business," you know that he will be damned. The movie is his struggle to overcome every single hurt that comes his way, especially when they involve the ones he loves most. You can watch him lose his soul as the movie progresses, and your heart breaks. Coppola and Pacino make you wonder if you should pity Michael, hate him, love him, admire him, condemn him, worship him. That's the difference between a film that skulks around the bottom of the Top 100 films ever made and a film that is always in the top three.