Considering how generally craptacular the last 12 months have been, we wager there’s no one reading this who won’t be happy to see 2008 sleep with the fishes. So it seems fitting that the Brattle Theatre (40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 17.876.6837) is closing out the year with a full week of The Godfather and The Godfather II, two Mafia hits destined to forever hold their spots on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 list. And thanks to Francis Ford Coppola’s newly rejuvenated prints — the result of two painstaking years of meticulous restoration from shrunken, warped, and tattered negatives — Vito Corleone’s silk suit has never looked so crisply black, nor his childhood Sicily so achingly gorgeous (though deadly). The films screen at the Brattle from December 25 through 31.
