Dog Day Afternoon Upends Your Expectations At Every Turn To Immensely Riveting Success

Dog Day Afternoon as a whole is just so darn good, but man, that opening sequence is especially a work of art. This opening sequence concerns Sonny (Al Pacino), Sal (John Cazale) and Stevie (Gary Springer) bursting into a New York City bank armed with guns preparing to pull off a robbery. It's a sight that sends the bank tellers and bank manager scrambling as chaos descends on their bank...but then things begin to go wrong. Sonny's timing is just a little bit off as he races through the bank, Stevie immediately wants out of the whole gig and there's nowhere near as much money as expected in the bank. In the span of one scene, Dog Day Afternoon goes from nail-biter crime thriller to dark comedy about human error. It's a masterful transition, especially since director Sydney Lumet can lend each of these different styles an authentic sensibility that totally makes you believe, for instance, that Sonny and company are about to pull off a bank robbery.

Few Sequels Are As Amazing As The Captivating The Godfather: Part II

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #38
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #31 (Tied witb Taxi Driver)   

For years, I've heard the usual picks of when people say best sequels; The Empire Strikes Back, Spider-Man 2, and of course, The Godfather: Part II. That 1974 Francis Ford Coppola has been held up as the paragon of sequel filmmaking for decades now and getting to actually watch it for the first time totally made me realize why The Godfather: Part II is held up in such high stature in discussions of cinema. This thing not only manages to surpass the quality of its already incredible predecessor but it also does a remarkable job of enhancing the world established by the first movie by lending a sweeping mythic quality to the Corleone crime syndicate.