Godfather Part II is as great as you remember - or greater!

Sorry haven't posted for a while because haven't been "watching" for a while - been traveling - but made up for lost time last night and watched "The Godfather Part II," the Coppola restoration, which clocked in at 3 hours and 22 minutes, a true epic, and worth every second. If you wonder whether it's worth re-watching this movie, the answer is an emphatic yes - it's as great as you remember or greater. It builds on the first part in amazing ways, by not only advancing the life story of the Corleone family, this part of the cycle focused on their life in Nevada and attempts to control the gambling industry there and in Miami and Cuba, but also, memorably, on the back story of Don Corleone, his childhood in Sicily, immigration to New York, and most interesting how he took on the local boss in Little Italy and became a player. Part II not as gorgeous visually as The Godfather, which was composed like a series of Renaissance paintings, but far grander - man amazing crowd scenes, notably the street scenes in Little Italy, the revolution in Havana, and the Senate hearings. Some of the (many) great scenes include the assassination attempt in Lake Tahoe ("why are the blinds open?"), the revenge in Don Cicci in Sicily, Kay leaving Michael ("it was an abortion!"), and everything involving Fredo. The restoration version is, I think, longer than the theater version - I wasn't complaining, but I think in some ways shorter is better. My memory of this may be wrong, but I think the theater version begins with the party in Tahoe - this one begins with the childhood in Sicily - and the Tahoe makes a stronger opening and a good match with The Godfather; also, in my memory the Nevada senator plays no role after the whorehouse scene in the theater version, but appears again a few times in the restoration, to diminished effect. In any case, movie is a good or better than you remember and you should definitely see it.

Debt be not proud: One move that pomises much but doesn't pay off

"The Debt" has some redeeming qualities and it probably could have been a good movie or at least a better movie if it were 20 minutes shorter, but ultimately at most it's a reasonably entertaining, often exasperating thriller that breaks no new ground. J Chastain is excellent in the lead as a young Mossad agent, dispatched to East Berlin ca 1965 to capture and bring back alive to Israel a doctor who's much like Mengele. The movie has one really interesting twist: the movie takes place in the near present (the 90s, anyway) and in the 60s, and in the present Helen Mirren places an older version of the Mossad agent; in the present we see a scene of Mengele's escape, as Mirren remembers or retells it, but over the course of the movie we learn that her version is not accurate at all: a little bit of Rashomon, and also a little bit of an examination of the accuracy of historical accounts, as well as an exploration of a moral dilemma that the team of 3 Mossad agents faced when their captive escaped. That said, much of the rest of the movie is a mess - the attempt to steal the doctor out of East Berlin is very poorly staged and almost impossible to understand, much of the movie is highly unpleasant (the long captivity of the doctor, the force feeding, etc. was just plain repulsive and unredeeming), the brilliant Mossad plot to extirpate the doctor is utterly ridiculous if you think about it for 2 minutes (why, for example, would they have Chastain attack him while he's giving her a gynecological exam? Could she ever be in a more vulnerable position? it's just a cinematic ploy, like much else in the movie), and, as noted, the final 20 minutes or so when Mirren puts her spy cloak back on and goes on a far-fetched mission to the Ukraine is beyond absurd. Had this movie been a little more modest and little better thought through, it could have been much more powerful - true of so many American commercial films, by the way. I wonder if the Israeli original version was better - would guess so.

Don't worry, I won't give the ending away (Les Diaboliques)

Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" (mistranslated as "The Devils") is a bit creaky at times but overall an entertaining and captivating suspense film that gives a great look at the poverty and desperation on post- WWII Europe (France, in this case); set in a boarding school in a Paris suburb, run by a horrible tyrant and misogynist, who's terrible to his wife, flaunts in her face the fact that he has a mistress (Simone Signoret) whom he's nasty to as well, mean to the students, a brutal bully to his staff. The two women plan to kill him, and though we rarely root for the killers in a movie in this case we do - we can't wait for them to off him. But things don't go the way the expect. At the end of the movie, a hilarious title screen tells us: Don't be devilish; do not give away to your friends what you have just seen. So I won't, but the ending is a quite a surprise, even if it strains credulity. The movie is or ought to be well known for its several very powerful scenes: the dining room in the boarding school when the schoolmaster, Delaselle, commands his wife to swallow a mouthful of fish; the two women drowning Delasselle in a bathtub while the tenants upstairs try to listen to a radio quiz show, and most of all the final sequence, as Madame Delasselle stumbles through the hallways of the boarding school pursued by a phantom. A clever movie whose techniques of editing (the man appearing from behind the door in the otherwise empty hotel room) have been used successfully by many suspense directors over the past 50 years.