A channel I can't refuse

Last Friday, I had a conversation with some folks about the strange thrill of watching a movie on TV that you would never go out of your way to watch, but will spend hours with it only because it turned up in some channel surfing. Do I really need to see the middle part of Saving Private Ryan or the end of Ghostbusters yet again? They're great movies, sure, but I'll never put on a DVD of it and watch the whole thing. It's only appealing when the clicker lands on them in that jackpot of Remote Roulette. "Come onnnnn, movie classic...YES!"

The conversation turned out to be a harbinger of my weekend, as AMC was showing all three Godfather movies back-to-back-to-back¹ all weekend long, so in between everything else that I did this weekend, I'd switch to channel 53 and catch bits of I and II, mercifully missing III altogether.

Part I is by far and away my favorite. It's a "moments" movie, one that's made almost entirely of lives changing in seconds. It's just one film epiphany after another, especially in the last hour. Michael single-handedly guards his father in the hospital, realizing he can never be far from the "family business". Kay realizes what she really married into. Vito gets anxious over what he's brought his younger son into. And my favorite scene, line, and moment of the entire movie:

Tessio: Tom, can you get me off the hook? For old time's sake.
Tom: Sorry, Sally. Can't do it.

I had to watch Part II a few times before I really got it, but I do love it now. There's a lot more talking and plotting in it, and it features the most inept hitman in Hollywood history (Dude...considered using a GUN?!), but I love the story of the generational divide between the young, virtuous (though admittedly still criminal) Vito and progressively more ruthless Michael. And the Sicilian kiss scene is as shattering as the Sal/Tom quote above:

Michael: I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!!

Tell me you don't get chills just reading that. And, more to the point, tell me you've never acted out those lines into a mirror.

The first (and only) time I watched Part III, I spent the first half of the movie thinking, "This isn't as bad as everyone said it is," and the second half thinking, "Oh, yeah it is." It's probably not coincidence that I started realizing that it was bad round about when I realized that Bridget Fonda wasn't going to be in the movie anymore and began to concentrate on the weak plot instead of my weak knees. I guess it's a movie worth seeing for a few choice quotes, for Pacino's silent scream of grief at the end, and for Sophia Coppola's ridiculous Valley Girl death scene. These days, she tries to pass off her acting as though she was just doing a fun little project and had no idea that the movie was going to be a big deal, but I don't buy it for a second. She was just lousy, though is a fine director.

So there you have it: this week's entertainment tip. Check out these underground, under-appreciated films. Mark my words: they'll all be classics someday. I don't care what you say.

¹ I realized that I wrote this that it isn't physically possible, and then it started to make my head spin. If movies had backs, two movies couldn't stand back-to-back and then still have the second movie then share a back with a third. It's back is already being used. The movie would have to turn around when it was done, and I don't know how a movie would do that.