Your name reminded me of another one.

It was pretty cheezy to see Enzo pop up in the beginning of Godfather III and say, "Here is the beautiful cake for you family from Enzo da Baker."

I mean, we all loved Enzo... but was that really necessary? Same thing with Johnny Fontaine.

True surely he hasn't kept in touch with the same baker for all those years

Considering Hollywood was essentially setting Francis up for failure- i'd say GF III was damn good-in fact its my favorite of the trilogy. I have the Vanity Fair article that FFC makes referene to in the DVD commentary, and boy is it rough on him. Te article came out in May before the movies release in December, and it gets nasty. It critisizes and exploits everything from his weight to Diane and Al's romantic fights,etc. it is just ridiculous how cruel hollywood was to this film.

About Sofia Coppola-Paramount Pictures had three options when Winona Ryder dropped out-1.rewrite the entire movie to make it age appropriate for Madonna to play the role, 2.stall the production of the movie till someone like Laura San Giacomo (yuck!) could make it to the set essentially raising the budget to enormous heights, or 3. use Sofia. It was a no-win situation-and as rumor goes, Madonna personally called Sofia and conceded the role to her so that the other cast members would not throw a hissy fit to get her on the set. The entire cast treated Sofia like crap leaving her in tears every day. Maybe if they'd been more respectful and supportive, the media wouldn't have had a field day with her.

In regards to her acting, i actually think her performance in the last scene is boarderline brilliant. and what i just don't understand that people dont seem to get is that is exactly how mary corleone was intended to be!! a naive, awkward girl of 18!!

Andy Garcia is wonderful in this movie. With all due respect you are nitpicking on that one.

Talia Shire gave the performance of a lifetime, and the addition of the connie character to family business added a new depth to the plot.

George Hamilton was a very good supporting character, and it is fairly well documented Bridet Fonda was cast as a likely set up for the now defuct project of GF IV.

It is a very artsy film-this i know-which makes it singularly less commercial. But the beauty this movie creates is just so emotional.

Chilltown, I agree with everything you're saying except for the part about Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime in GFIII. No way was that better than her performance in the Rocky series. Especially part I and part III (the beach scene!"We've got a house! We've got cars! We've got money!!! We've got everything but the truth!! What's the truth Rocky???)... Or even part IV "You can't win, Rocky!!".

I personally liked GFIII even though its not as great as I and II and Sofia Coppola ('Nuff said), and the whole Connie thing-I thought it was really pretty good.

I don't hate Part III like some on this board. But this statement above, pertaining to Connie "making her bones," exposes a huge problem with the third film. Having a fifty-something, mousey woman kill a man? Come on - they had run out of Corleone's to be killers if Connie has to start whacking people. With all due respect, I don't think ANY mafioso would be intimidated if they discovered that Connie had, in fact, killed Don Altabello.

I'm not a GFIII hater by any means, but what you've just said is 100% rubbish. Anyone that knows good acting can see her acting his utter crap. It's as wooden as Van Damme or Arnie. also this excuse that she was meant to be played like that I don't get. she was supposed to be naive and awkward but why does that mean she was to play a naive 18 year old girl really badly.

Sorry I have to disagree I rate his acting as about as good as Sofias, there's no emotion in it at all, he says his lines that's it. you feel absolute nothing for him. As I pointed out earlier just watch the meeting with Zasa and the part before Michael has the stroke or when him and Sofia are in the kitchen,you should be able to see just how bad he is.

Now I think you're just joking.

GFIII is better than a lot of films, but it really does have some big problems.

Something else I thought was stupid was vincents bodyguards who were male stripper twins.

My wife and I watched the trilogy for the umpteenth time this past weekend and we watched GF3 last night.

Another thing that troubles me about it (along with a lot that was mentioned before ) is that Michael Corleone has become Al Pacino, and not the other way around. It seems like Al never even tried to get back into the role, just shouted lines when necessary. Still a wonderful performance, but a lot different than what came before.

Pacino's Michael in Part 3 is no different from any number of Pacino's roles from around that time period. He screams a lot, but with the deep Pacino voice, not the shrill Michael voice from Part 1 and 2.

I know a lot of time has passed from Part 2 to Part 3, but it also seems like Michael has become some happy go lucky mobster. Sure he has demons, but he seems too upbeat at times. Sure a lot of time has passed, and sure he loves his family, and I know that it's necessary to the movie to have Michael older and filled with regret - but I still have a hard time buying it. He just looks a lot differnet than he did in Part 2 too.

However, I do love this movie and cherish the ending. I forgot all about the scene from Raging Bull when the music is played at the end of Part 3. It's put to much better use in Part 3, I mean they are showing the opera in which that piece of music appears...

I think had FFC and Puzo not had been rushed by the studio and others, they could have laid out the groundwork for a much better story. And Duvall and Rider would have helped bring the lack of credability too.

But I am happy with the way it turned out, despite all the obsticles it faced. And also, how cool was it to see all those old characters again like Enzo, Lucy, Carlo the Bodyguard, and Don Tommasino?

The movie is great for nostalgia alone.

I Like Godfather 3 the acting could have be beter but it was good to me it need more killing and vincent need more lines and more men aswill to watch his uncle. JOEY ZAZA!

God point ClothesHanger, I think that Al Pacino did do a good job and I think after 20 years, it's inevitable that his character would have gone through some sort of metamorphisis by the 3rd Movie.

I persoanlly think that Godfather 3 is a bit ridiculed because it fell so sort of the mark of the other 2 movies, which were sycint, complex masterpeices. Upon giving it much thought, I think Godfather 3 fell short because of various reasons and the main reason is FFC wanted to do too much witht he movie. GF and GF II both were complex and grand in scale. GF III attempted to top this by showing Michael's growth, as he attempted to move away from a life he knew would only lead to heart ache and loss, but was at the same time tempted back into it by his knowledge of how to run a crime family. Also he tried to add a myriad of themes to make this movie a true sucessor to the other 2 movies.

Michael moved from the most power Don in NY to controlling a huge empire in America to becoming legit and then became a global player. Quite impressive and as such FFC upped the enemies, and the complexity of the plot in GF III. Only it was so complex that I think 2 three hour movies would have done a better job ironing everything out and expressing everything he wanted to express.

I agree that the plot in an attempt to up what was done before fell short of the sycintness of the other 2 movies due to time constraints. As such much was left out by nececity, or glazed over in an attempt to do everything FFC set out to do. The plot is one example, it's not just complex, but too complex and confusing for us really get into and never really explained or ironed out. The new characters are not elaborate upon enough for us to efficeintly connect with them.

Also, we are introduced to enemies we know little about and we are not ever clearly clued into the plot as it unfolds, we are given hints here and there, but due to the complexity of the plot , FFC is given little opportunity to explain the dizzy array of enemies we are finally it seems introduced to at the end of the movie.

Both Mary and Andy Garcia's characters were not given an introduction sufficient enough to allow us to click with them. Mary was very one dimensional in the way she was written, and lacked the complexity or character development that was characterisitc of the other characters in the other GF's. Vincent's character wasn't sufficently elaborated upon to allow us to fully beleive he would be an effective Don. This is a major down point in the film. His intelligence or leadership ability is never fully elaborated upon.

What I think was done really well was the themes of the movie. Connie evolved into a true Mafiso-ette, by the 3rd movie and was an enemy to Michael in the sense that she was the main tempter to michael's righteous goal of being 100% legit, this is a true stroke of shakespearian intrigue. Also after 20 years of attoning and finally attempting to become completly legit, michael is tossed back into the ring by events and a small time hood backed by larger than life enemies. Also, no matter how hard he tried he cant' escape his past nor can any amount of money attone for his sins.

I think the final tragity of his character is not that he dies alone or even that his daughter dies. But the life-long dream of now 2 generations of Corleones, that was within his grasp (becoming legit) is undermined when he allows Vincent to take over the family by some coercion from his sister. It can be argued by grooming Vincent for the role, he ultimatly allowed himself be tempted back into the life and allowed circumstance and environment ultimatly control his destiny. Which in and of itself is a theme in the GF, the influence of one's environment on who they become.

One note on Mary, I don't doubt there was a shred of nepotism going on in GF III by hiring Sofia to do the role of Mary, butI thikn one of the justifiable reasons is that FFC's wife is a WASP and as such Mary is half Italian, half WASP and at least ethnically fits the role well.

Im always loathe to critisise Al Pacino in any way, but I think he lost sight of the Michael character in this film. He should have went back and really studied the films and got a more accurate aproximation of the original persona. Its enivitable and realistic that there should be change, but I think the change went too far.

BUT his scream at the end makes the whole movie worth while....I think its possibly the most beautiful moment in the whole trilogy

As for the Sofia Coppola debate - shes shit. End of debate.

Nobody is surprised when guys like Luca Brasi kill people; it's when meek, mousy people start rubbing people out that you get impressed.

As far as being "intimidated," it's not in the sense that she's gonna rip your head off with her bare hands (a-la Luca Brasi), but that she's a ruthless cold-eyed beeeyatch who'd have you snuffed in a minute if it suited her purposes.

I still think it was an effective character development.