Gangster film Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" was released. The epic story of the Corleone family, its generational transition from post-prohibition to post-war, its fratricidal intrigues, and its tapestry of mid-century America's criminal underworld became a huge critical and commercial success. It accounted for nearly 10% of gross proceeds for all films for the entire year. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the award for Best Actor for Marlon Brando and is widely considered one of the greatest American films of all time. Two years later, "The Godfather Part II" became the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year and garnered
American Gangster (film) offers "the spectacle of grand themes and two bigger-than-life characters played by two of the best actors in cinema." Concluding his review, Byrnes gave the film four out of four stars. IGN's Jim "Stax" Vejvoda rated the film four out of five stars, praising the acting—particularly of the two protagonists, "both dynamic presences on-screen, with neither actor outweighing the other's importance to the story"—and declaring that despite being preceded by other gangster stories such as "Scarface" and "The Sopranos", "American Gangster" managed to justify its existence with "emphasis on the human and class elements of the story". Manohla Dargis of