I watched the Godfather Part II the other day and was very surprised at how well the sequel was compared to the first movie. Many contemporary films that are released today happened to be sequels for whatever odd reason, but for the most part they don’t compare to the original. In my opinion the Godfather was the more fun movie to watch, however Part II was directed and filmed much better as well as Robert Dinerros performance as a young Vito Corleone. The movie tells two stories simultaneously of Vito Corleone’s rise to power from Cecily to New York and continuing the story of Michael Corleone’s mafia empire in Nevada. *Spoiler Alert* The movie starts with titles telling us some pretext to the scene unfolding which is said to be Vito Antolini's father's funeral. He is said to have upset the local mob boss and was murdered, his other son swore revenge. Gunshots break out and Vito's brother is killed where his mother stands over him widowed and now the mother of only one child. She goes to the mob boss to ask him to spare her only son, but which he refuses to saying he will one day seek revenge. She immediately tries to kill him with a knife, but is disarmed and shot after telling Vito to run. Thanks to the help of a random family, he escapes to America. The film the skips to Micheal's story where they are at his son's communion. Later he his almost killed in an assassination attempt where he flees for a long time. Back with Vito he is now older and starts his own small mob which makes money from the olive oil industry. After the local mob boss in New York finds out about it he asks for a cut. Refusing to pay the fee, Vito kills him and becomes the new mafia lord. Michael finds out it was his brother who set him up and the movie ends with a death sequence similar to the first godfather where Fredo, Micheal's own brother dies as well, all plotted my Michael. *End Spoiler* The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on the book by Mario Puzo.
Most of the shots in the movie are from far away or mid shots, very few close ups and if they are they dont last long. There is a strange use of light and dark the Coppola continues to use in this film as well as the first to have dark represent shadiness and corruption while the light shows the faces they put on in public. The scenes in the past of Vito that take place in Italy are in sepia, but its almost not noticable to where it almost looks like an orange color. The scene the stands out to me the most is tworads the beginning of the film when the senator and Micheal have their first informal conversation in his office. The scene opens with a long shot of everyone in the room and many shadows. Out the window is a sunny ceremony full of happy people, but the room where the "business deal" is going on in is dark and black.
I chose to research director James Cameron for my formal film studies project. James Cameron has won many awards and Oscars in his career, has been married 5 times and is known for his love of special effects. For the 3 movies I watched some of his most popular films including the award winning Avatar, famous Terminator 2, and the not so heard of Ghosts of the Abyss. They were not all related, however they were from different eras and they were some of his big films, so that is why I chose them. For the most part of this post I will be referring to Terminator and Avatar, because Ghosts was so diferent from the others. What I mean by this is that Ghosts was a documentary and was underwater for the most part, providing almost no action scenes or similarities to the others. The reason I chose James Cameron is because I had only seen a few of his movies up until recently when I began to take an interest in his love for action movies. Terminator movies are often regarded as some of the most popular old time action movies and especially Arnold's most famous appearances/roles. In fact the phrase, "come with me if you want to live," which is referenced in many other movies and even by people is from the series. After hearing all of this about them I knew I had to watch at least one of them. Judgement day wasn't the one I chose for any specific reason, it was just the only one that was on Netflix... Avatar I had seen when it first came out in theaters, but never really paid much attention to it or tempered anything from it until we watched it in class, which made me want to finish watching it agian. Ghosts of the Abyss was not a good choice and was random, which would soon prove to be brutal to watch. 
