Considered a superior effort to the first film by some critics, "The Godfather Part II" remains perhaps the greatest film prequel - not to mention sequel - of all time. It certainly boasts a more ambitious structure than its predecessor, with Coppola's cross-cutting narrative between Vito's rise and his son Michael's subsequent fall presenting a challenging, complex and disturbingly poetic allegory of the American Dream's dark underbelly.  - CE