The Godfather: Part III (1990)

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2012)

This is my third time watching GF3, with about 8-9 years between each viewing. I probably won't watch it again. It's not just that it pales in comparison to the first two movies. Watching it now, completely separated from its predecessors, makes that clear. In fact, for a while I was thinking "eh, this isn't so bad". But it really is. Slow and boring, with a complicated web of Vatican blah blah that is too hard to follow, and yet all the major emotional themes are presented in a wretchedly blunt fashion. Everyone pretty much blurts out exactly what they're feeling. I think Eli Wallach and Talia Shire might be the only decent performances in the movie. And speaking of performances... you know where I'm going with this. Sofia Coppola has taken a lot of crap for her role in this film (and Francis for casting her), and deserves every bit of it. She's awful, awful, awful. There are a few lyrical sequences and intriguing elements, but overall it's a dull, muddled, heavy-handed mess.