Sunday, November 1, 2009

#15 - Goodfellas (1990), 146 mins.

Alf: This movie, unfortunately, was not as good as I had hoped. It was good, but dragged on a little bit. The story was interesting, it just seemed like it was missing a little something, but I'm not sure what. I liked that the story was told all the way from when Henry was a kid and how he got involved with the Mafia. The movie tried to tell both sides of story, like the romanticized celebrity/gangster lifestyle to the point where he was in jail or struggling for money. Part of the problem for me maybe was age-related. Since the movie was taking place in the late 70s/early 80s, some of the "fancy" stuff that people were buying to make it look like they were leading an extravagant lifestyle, just looks like crap...or maybe that's part of what they were trying to show? These people really didn't know what "rich" stuff looked like, so they just bought a bunch of crap that people were supposed to be jealous of? As far as gangster movies go, I still prefer Carlito's Way and Scarface better. I'm not saying Goodfellas was bad, it was good...just not GREAT.

Beth: So, I was all confused when we sat down to watch this movie. Totally thought it was The Firm. So, it turns out I've never seen Goodfellas before. Since I didn't like The Firm and that's what I thought I was getting myself into, I actually liked this movie a lot. I also liked that it was based on a true story so I feel like I got some sort of an education about gangsters. It was neat to see how people not in the family, get into that stuff. And it didn't actually seem all that violent by today's standards. Sad, but true.

We went from one extreme to the other - surprised by the lack of violence in this story to watching a present-day gansta movie and being surprised by the heightened level of violence in that movie. I don't think I've really seen any other ganster movies so I have nothing to compare but I thought this movie was pretty good.

Watched 11/1/2009

No comments:

Post a Comment