Few names carry the weight and reverence as Francis Ford Coppola. Is it the wine? The famous daughter who dated Quentin Tarantino? Being best friends with people like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese? Or is it the history of his incredible films? Let me think for a second...

The Godfather films
The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II are not only the two single most influential crime films ever made, they are arguably two of the most perfect films ever made. These films are a zeitgeist unto themselves and it's hard to call yourself a film buff without having sat down to watch these in their entirety at least once. The third film that rounds out the trilogy is pretty much crap though.

The Conversation
Just before the dawn of the digital age, before miniaturization gave us undetectable microphones and cameras, this film introduced America to the sense of paranoia that was coming -- where your every whisper could be recorded, your most intimate moments examined by your government. Gene Hackman gives an amazing performance as the surveillance expert who might have seen too much. Or did he? Ahead of its time, this film came out amidst a wave of government distrust and may have helped pave the way to the very government surveillance laws that have been in the news in recent years.

Apocalypse Now
This was the film that almost destroyed him. Coppola took the classic Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness and set it in the very unpopular setting (at the time) of the Vietnam War. No one wanted to see a movie about the Vietnam War, he was told. They were wrong. Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen both give career-defining performances in what is also considered one of the greatest films ever made.

The Outsiders
This classic greaser film, while good, is actually best known for its cast. Coppola chose from a large groups of relative unknowns, people who are still pretty unknown today. Young kids like Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, and some guy named Tom Cruise. I mean, geez, what truck stop are these guys working in these days? Yeah, I thought you might recognize a few of those names. This is that solid film where you can watch these actors before anyone really knew who they were. Okay, so Ralph Macchio might actually be working in a truck stop, but I can't be one-hundred percent.

C. Robert Cargill - - - Email Me

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