Fred Roos Movies

The Godfather
Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible.

After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola's legendary continuation and sequel to his landmark 1972 film, The Godfather, parallels the young Vito Corleone's rise with his son Michael's spiritual fall, deepening The Godfather's depiction of the dark side of the American dream. In the early 1900s, the child Vito flees his Sicilian village for America after the local Mafia kills his family. Vito (Robert De Niro) struggles to make a living, legally or illegally, for his wife and growing brood in Little Italy, killing the local Black Hand Fanucci (Gastone Moschin) after he demands his customary cut of the tyro's business. With Fanucci gone, Vito's communal stature grows, but it is his family (past and present) who matters most to him -- a familial legacy then upended by Michael's (Al Pacino) business expansion in the 1950s. Now based in Lake Tahoe, Michael conspires to make inroads in Las Vegas and Havana pleasure industries by any means necessary. As he realizes that allies like Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) are trying to kill him, the increasingly paranoid Michael also discovers that his ambition has crippled his marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) and turned his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), against him. Barely escaping a federal indictment, Michael turns his attention to dealing with his enemies, completing his own corruption. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The Godfather Part III
After a break of more than 15 years, director Francis Ford Coppola and writer Mario Puzo returned to the well for this third and final story of the fictional Corleone crime family. Two decades have passed, and crime kingpin Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), now divorced from his wife Kay (Diane Keaton), has nearly succeeded in keeping his promise that his family would one day be "completely legitimate." A philanthropist devoted to public service, Michael is in the news as the recipient of a special award from the Pope for his good works, a controversial move given his checkered past. Determined to buy redemption, Michael and his lawyer B.J. (George Hamilton) are working on a complicated but legal deal to bail the Vatican out of looming financial troubles that will ultimately reap billions and put Michael on the world stage as a major financial player. However, trouble looms in several forms: The press is hostile to his intentions. Michael is in failing health and suffers a mild diabetic stroke. Stylish mob underling Joey Zaza (Joe Mantegna) is muscling into the Corleone turf. "The Commission" of Mafia families, represented by patriarch Altobello (Eli Wallach) doesn't want to let their cash cow Corleone out of the Mafia, though he has made a generous financial offer in exchange for his release from la cosa nostra. And then there's Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), the illegitimate and equally temperamental son of Michael's long-dead brother Sonny. Vincent desperately wants in to the family (both literally and figuratively), and at the urging of his sister Connie (Talia Shire), Michael welcomes the young man and allows him to adopt the Corleone name. However, a flirtatious attraction between Vincent and his cousin, Michael's naïve daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) develops, and threatens to develop into a full-fledged romance and undo the godfather's future plans. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This adventure is set in the Philippines and chronicles the exploits of two men who survive a plane crash in the jungle. One of the men is an avaricious killer who has come to the islands to search for a fortune in diamonds. The other is an international adventurer. Now they must somehow overcome their vast personal differences and desires to survive in the steamy wilderness ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Jack Nicholson first put his well-documented enthusiasm for basketball to good use in this film, which he wrote and directed between his roles in Five Easy Pieces and Carnal Knowledge. William Tepper plays Hector, a student at a college in Ohio who shares a room with his friend Gabriel (Michael Margotta) and is the star player on the school's basketball team. Hector has been approached to quit college and play pro ball, but Gabriel is urging him to devote more time to radical political causes. Of course, both have plenty of other things on their mind; Hector is having a clandestine affair with the wife of one of his professors (Karen Black), while Gabriel, in a bid to beat the draft and avoid going to Vietnam, is trying to convince the draft board that he's insane. Unfortunately, Gabriel is feigning madness so well that he's not so sure he hasn't actually become crazy. Director Henry Jaglom and screenwriter Robert Towne also have supporting roles, as do future sitcom greats Cindy Williams and David Ogden Stiers. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

With a screenplay adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, John Huston's drama examines the meager hopes and resigned dreams of small-time boxers. In limbo between retirement and his youthful prime, alcoholic farm laborer Tully (Stacy Keach) shacks up with fellow outcast Oma (Susan Tyrrell) and keeps trying to make a boxing comeback, but his personal demons repeatedly overpower his ambitions. Meanwhile, fellow Stockton, CA resident and budding fighter Ernie (Jeff Bridges) takes Tully's advice to join trainer Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto)'s gym and make something of himself. Learning the tough lesson that winning is not as easy as it sounds, Ernie is still determined to get what he can out of boxing and, unlike Tully, not let disappointments get the best of him. Shot on location in Stockton by Conrad Hall, the film maintains a realistic, slice-of-life view of Tully's and Ernie's struggles, eschewing theatrical boxing victories for psychological and social details. As Huston avowed at the Cannes Film Festival that Fat City's virtue was its "modesty," critics agreed that he had made his best film in two decades; and Tyrrell was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. However, despite the praise and the efforts of producer Ray Stark, Fat City failed at the box office. Even so, its unromanticized depiction of modest wins and personal losses revealed that old Hollywood pro Huston had adapted well to the late '60s-early '70s New Hollywood grit, and the film revived his artistic standing. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Made between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and in part an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni's art-movie classic Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation was a return to small-scale art films for Francis Ford Coppola. Sound surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired to track a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), taping their conversation as they walk through San Francisco's crowded Union Square. Knowing full well how technology can invade privacy, Harry obsessively keeps to himself, separating business from his personal life, even refusing to discuss what he does or where he lives with his girlfriend, Amy (Teri Garr). Harry's work starts to trouble him, however, as he comes to believe that the conversation he pieced together reveals a plot by the mysterious corporate "Director" who hired him to murder the couple. After he allows himself to be seduced by a call girl, who then steals the tapes, Harry is all the more convinced that a killing will occur, and he can no longer separate his job from his conscience. Coppola, cinematographer Bill Butler, and Oscar-nominated sound editor Walter Murch convey the narrative through Harry's aural and visual experience, beginning with the slow opening zoom of Union Square accompanied by the alternately muddled and clear sound of the couple's conversation caught by Harry's microphones. The Godfather Part II and The Conversation earned Coppola a rare pair of Oscar nominations for Best Picture, as well as two nominations for Best Screenplay (The Godfather Part II won both). Praised by critics, The Conversation was not a popular hit, but it has since come to be seen as one of the artistic high points of the decade, as well as of Coppola's career. Its atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, combined with its obsessive loner antihero, made it prototypical of the darker "American art movies" of the early '70s, as its audiotape storyline also made it seem eerily appropriate for the era of the Watergate scandal. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

One of a cluster of late-1970s films about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now adapts the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to depict the war as a descent into primal madness. Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen), already on the edge, is assigned to find and deal with AWOL Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), rumored to have set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a local, lethal godhead. Along the way Willard encounters napalm and Wagner fan Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), draftees who prefer to surf and do drugs, a USO Playboy Bunny show turned into a riot by the raucous soldiers, and a jumpy photographer (Dennis Hopper) telling wild, reverent tales about Kurtz. By the time Willard sees the heads mounted on stakes near Kurtz's compound, he knows Kurtz has gone over the deep end, but it is uncertain whether Willard himself now agrees with Kurtz's insane dictum to "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all." Coppola himself was not certain either, and he tried several different endings between the film's early rough-cut screenings for the press, the Palme d'Or-winning "work-in-progress" shown at Cannes, and the final 35 mm U.S. release (also the ending on the video cassette). The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Despite the studio's fears and mixed reviews of the film's ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Duvall's psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound and for Vittorio Storaro's cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor; it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions and confusions of the Vietnam era. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

After completing Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola initially planned for his next picture to be an intimate romantic musical shot on a low budget in Las Vegas. Three years later, One from the Heart had mushroomed into a big-budget spectacular, shot on strikingly stylized sets at his newly opened Zoetrope Studio and costing a then-massive $27 million. The story concerns Hank (Frederick Forrest) and Franny (Terri Garr), a working-class couple living on the outskirts of Las Vegas; after five years together, their relationship has fallen into a rut, and they both set off in search of new partners. Hank meets up with Leila (Nastassia Kinski), a beautiful high-wire artist, and Franny has a fling with Ray (Raul Julia), a dashing actor-waiter. But Hank and Franny still love each other, and their search for romance brings them back into each other's arms. Singer/songwriter Tom Waits received an Oscar nomination for his widely acclaimed song score, performed with country crooner Crystal Gayle. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Only Kelly Reno and Teri Garr from the cast of the original Black Stallion make appearances in The Black Stallion Returns. In the first film, young Reno rescued his beloved stallion from its cruel Arab owner. This time around, the stallion is abducted by Moroccan henchmen and bundled back to Africa. This paves the way for a repeat of all the salient action from the first Black Stallion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of two S.E. Hinton novels Francis Ford Coppola directed in 1983, Rumble Fish is a stylized black-and-white film about the death of gang culture in a rough-and-tumble town full of stunted youths. The central character is the strutting Rusty James (Matt Dillon), a foul-mouthed lunkhead clad in sweaty tank tops, who passes his time at the billiards hall waiting for "something" to happen in his life. That something might be the return of his brother, known only as the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), from exile in California. Charismatic and intelligent, the Motorcycle Boy once led numerous wide-eyed followers into battle, into the "rumbles" once commonplace in town. Rusty James wants to take over that role, but lacks the smarts necessary for leadership, nearly getting himself killed in an opening fight. The Motorcycle Boy stops the fight with equal parts efficiency and cool, and Rusty James seems delighted by his brother's return. But it quickly becomes clear that a local cop (William Smith) is still gunning for the Motorcycle Boy, waiting for him to slip up, even though the mysterious youth has developed a weary philosophy of life and a skeptical view of his former power. As the Motorcycle Boy seems more and more distant, lost in deaf and color-blind fugues, Rusty James gets into greater trouble, running afoul of his girlfriend (Diane Lane) and friends (Nicolas Cage, Christopher Penn, Vincent Spano), and seeming on the path to destruction. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

The "magic" in One Magic Christmas is often (and surprisingly) of the "black" variety. Like Jimmy Stewart before her, worn-out wife and mother Mary Steenburgen wishes that she'd never been born. And like Stewart, Steenburgen is visited by a guardian angel, in this case the western-garbed Harry Dean Stanton. Instead of granting Steenburgen's wish, Stanton shows her what life would be like without Christmas--and that vision is as grim as anything you're ever likely to see in any Holiday film. Throughout the horrendous tragedies heaped upon Steenburgen, we are comforted in the knowledge that Stanton is working in concert with Steenburgen's young daughter. Steenburgen learns her lesson of course, but what a ride! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Bukowski, the talented crown prince of self-abuse, wrote the short stories upon which the surprisingly entertaining Barfly was based. The film concentrates on alcoholic writer Mickey Rourke (the Bukowski alter ego) who carries on a hate-hate relationship with bartender Frank Stallone. Rourke makes the acquaintance of another of society's castaways, Faye Dunaway, who in addition to being a souse is said to be crazy. They move in together, even though Dunaway all but promises to be unfaithful for the price of a drink. Rourke has a chance to clean up his act when offered a large commission for his writings by publisher Alice Krige. They too end up in bed, each trying to change the other. The clarion call of the cheap wine bottle overrides Rourke's half-hearted efforts to enter the mainstream. Watch for author Charles Bukowski, as well as Fritz "Pop!" Feld and Vance Colvig (who's made a career out of playing street people) in Barfly bit parts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

History tells us that would-be automobile mogul Preston Tucker was a silver-tongued con man, who misappropriated his investors' money and played fast and loose with ethics and legalities in the pursuit of his dream. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola isn't buying this: to hear Coppola tell it, Tucker was "Mr. Smith Goes to Detroit," a sincere visionary who tried and failed to buck the Big Three auto manufacturers. Moreover, he was a staunch defender of family values, as witness his inseparable relationship with his loyal wife (Joan Allen) and adoring children. It was for his family's sake, rather than any dreams of financial gain, that Tucker created the oddball three-headlight vehicle which he envisioned as the "car of the future". Naturally, the corporate fat cats of 1947 can't abide competition from a rugged individualist; thus, with several politicos in their pockets, they crush the Tucker and the man who built it. We'd have been more inclined to believe the story had Coppola adopted a straightforward Capraesque approach and not utilized all sorts of complicated camera trickery. Somehow, by presenting Tucker in so showoffy a directorial manner, the character comes off more as a sleight-of-hand artist than a bastion of sincerity. Even so, Jeff Bridges does a nice job as Tucker, as does Martin Landau as Tucker's incongruous business partner. Jeff's dad, Lloyd Bridges, appears in an uncredited role as a "bought" senator. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a break of more than 15 years, director Francis Ford Coppola and writer Mario Puzo returned to the well for this third and final story of the fictional Corleone crime family. Two decades have passed, and crime kingpin Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), now divorced from his wife Kay (Diane Keaton), has nearly succeeded in keeping his promise that his family would one day be "completely legitimate." A philanthropist devoted to public service, Michael is in the news as the recipient of a special award from the Pope for his good works, a controversial move given his checkered past. Determined to buy redemption, Michael and his lawyer B.J. (George Hamilton) are working on a complicated but legal deal to bail the Vatican out of looming financial troubles that will ultimately reap billions and put Michael on the world stage as a major financial player. However, trouble looms in several forms: The press is hostile to his intentions. Michael is in failing health and suffers a mild diabetic stroke. Stylish mob underling Joey Zaza (Joe Mantegna) is muscling into the Corleone turf. "The Commission" of Mafia families, represented by patriarch Altobello (Eli Wallach) doesn't want to let their cash cow Corleone out of the Mafia, though he has made a generous financial offer in exchange for his release from la cosa nostra. And then there's Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), the illegitimate and equally temperamental son of Michael's long-dead brother Sonny. Vincent desperately wants in to the family (both literally and figuratively), and at the urging of his sister Connie (Talia Shire), Michael welcomes the young man and allows him to adopt the Corleone name. However, a flirtatious attraction between Vincent and his cousin, Michael's naïve daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) develops, and threatens to develop into a full-fledged romance and undo the godfather's future plans. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide