Professor Elam

Saturday March 6 2010

A good friend forwarded a list of the ten best movies to me, And it was an interesting list but I think such things are near impossible, as I related, how does one compare Scent of a Woman with say It's a Mad Mad Mad World?  One a great drama, the other a great comedy. It seems to me rather that we have great films but genre, take for example, Gangster movies. These movies are about gangsters but the great films, ie Godfather, are about eternal human emotions, the lust for power, consider the great line between Kay and Michael. 

Michael Kay my Father is like any other powerful man

Kay, Michael, powerful men do not have other people killed

Michael Kay, now who is being naive?

At any rate, here is my chronological list of great gangster movies as the gangs have evolved in America

Godfather III is nowhere the equal of the first two, and frankly I do not detect the story line disguised as real history,  my gangsta group would be

Gangs of New York ( the Prequel to the Godfather)

Untouchables (not particularly accurate but such great performance by Sean Connery et al, the baby carriage scene at the train station is a classic in itself, another Scorcese)

Godfather I

Bugsy, the founding of Las Vegas (the Jewish Mob)

Godfather II

Goodfellas

Casino

Gotti (wonderful performance by Armand Assante)

Blow ( the cocaine story from Central America, great performance by Johnny Depp)

Look them up on amazon.com or http://www.imdb.com, great stuff