*** Top 10 ***

Rating: 10/10 (5 December 2016)

Phillip Fawcett says it is hard to choose which single Godfather movie should go into the top 10 at the expense of the others. The saga really needs to be taken as a whole - even the 3rd installment, generally seen as the weakest, rounds the epic story off in poetic fashion - and as such would go into my personal top 10 of all-time movies as a trilogy.
That said, I single out Godfather II if I must. This is the most self-contained in theme and form, tracking the origins of the Corleone dynasty and the rise to crime of Michael Corleone. It is the ultimate portrayal of a man allowing himself to fall to the corruptions of power , and lose his morality to murderous evil. He is both victim of fate, of forces which seemed to compel him into this monstrous world, and a willful sinner.
The final scene, as he sits alone in his spacious grounds reflecting on his life, encapsulates the true theme of this tale: not 'the mafia', not 'murder', not 'American-Italian culture', but that of a human being losing his soul.