I feel like Pacino has been in less great movies?
As with De Niro, I am not judging the quality of the performance.
There are at least a dozen other Pacino movies I like more.
With that being said, here are my ten favorite Al Pacino movies.
But Pacino and Jack Lemmon really carry this.
Roma is just as fragile as the other guys in the room.
Scarface
This chaotic movie brings out the best and worst of Pacino.
He wildly overacts here but the movie needs it.
This doesn’t work with a quiet, thoughtful performance.
I’ve never done cocaine but I imagine this is what it feels like.
Everything is ramped up, subtlety is out the window and the whole experience is pretty exciting.
Heat
When I saw Heat in the theaters, I walked out really disappointed.
I expected far too much.
It’s not but it’s really fucking good.
The worst part of the movie is Pacino’s performance.
It’s just bizarre and cartoonish EXCEPT for the scene with De Niro in the diner.
That is just great acting by both of them.
Donnie Brasco
This is the opposite of the Heat performance.
Pacino is so much softer and more thoughtful here.
Mike Newell directed this and it feels different than most gangster movies.
Newell had directed Four Wedding And A Funeral before Donnie Brasco.
He hasn’t gone back to the crime genre either.
I wish Newell had gone back to making movies like Brasco.
The Insider
This is the best Al Pacino performance since the 1970’s.
Russell Crowe is equally great but that part is much flashier.
If you haven’t seen The Insider, check it out.
However, The Insider is one of the most compelling movies I’ve seen.
I never bought Pacino as Hoffa.
That was my takeaway from this movie, not the Hoffa elements.
This is about bank robbers holding people hostage and you care and root for the robbers.
Nothing about this movie should work yet all of it does.
It’s certainly more of Tarantino/DiCaprio/Pitt movie.
But it is my favorite movie of the five years.
I have it just above Belfast, The Worst Person In The World and 1917.
Pacino does a nice job here though in the small part.
He sets the movie up really well with that initial conversation with DiCaprio at the restaurant.
Because it’s Pacino, you believe that he can talk to DiCaprio’s character like that.
Plus, it’s pretty great we finally got Pacino in a Tarantino movie.
The Godfather Part II
1.
The Godfather
Al Pacino as Michael Corleone is the greatest acting performance I’ve ever seen in a movie.
Seeing Michael go from good to bad in Godfather I is perfection.
He even somehow looks different.
Look at the those pictures from the beginning of Part 1 to Part II.
Those movies only came out two years apart but you’d think at least a decade had passed.
Michael changes the way he speaks, walks and looks at the world and it never feels rushed.
It all feels earned.
The first Godfather is my favorite movie ever.
I love Part II but my favorite pieces of that movie are the Young Vito flashbacks.
I also don’t enjoy the Hyman Roth stuff as much.
The Michael/Fredo piece is brilliant though.
Watching him lose the last morsel of humanity in him as he has his own brother killed is heartbreaking.
You are reminded how much Michael has changed.
I don’t know if you’re free to have better acting in a movie.
The third Godfather never existed.
