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tt0116130 | Down Periscope | Lt. Commander Thomas Dodge (Kelsey Grammer) is about to be passed over a third time for his own nuclear submarine. The reasons given are (1) his unorthodox command methods, (2) an unfortunate "brushing" incident with a Russian submarine, and (3) after the incident, the rumor of a genital tattoo ("Welcome Aboard!") received after getting blind drunk while on shore leave. Failure to secure a submarine will result in Dodge being dropped from the navy's command program, and that means he will resign his commission.
During his career, Tom Dodge has made an enemy of Rear Admiral Yancy Graham (Bruce Dern), who strongly speaks out against Dodge's promotion. Vice-Admiral Dean Winslow, ComSubLant (Rip Torn), on the other hand, likes Dodge and his unorthodox methods. A war game is planned to test the navy's defenses against possible attack from older Soviet diesel-powered submarines in the hands of America's enemies. Among the defenses being tested is Dodge's prior billet, the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Orlando. Dodge is selected to put the World War II-era Balao-class diesel sub USS Stingray (SS-161) back in commission as the war game's Opposing Force. Winslow tells him to "think like a pirate," promising Dodge that if he can sink a target ship placed in Norfolk Harbor, Dodge will be considered for a permanent command.
Motivated by his dislike for Dodge and his own ambition for promotion, Graham handpicks a "crew from hell" for Stingray: hot-tempered, uptight Lt. Martin Pascal (Rob Schneider) as the Executive Officer; crusty Chief Engineer Howard (Harry Dean Stanton), a civilian contractor familiar with the obsolete Balao-class's diesel-electric engine system; rebellious Engineman 1st Class Brad Stepanek (Bradford Tatum); sharp-eared Sonarman 2nd Class E.T. "Sonar" Lovacelli (Harland Williams); compulsive gambler Seaman Stanley "Spots" Sylvesterson (Jonathan Penner); former college basketball player Seaman Jefferson "R.J." Jackson (Duane Martin), who has dreams of playing in the NBA; shock-prone (and shock-addled) Electrician's Mate Nitro (Toby Huss); and not-so-Culinary Specialist Second Class Buckman (Ken Hudson Campbell) as Stingray's cook. Graham also uses Stingray as a Navy pilot program to evaluate women serving on submarines, knowing the cramped diesel boat is unsuitable for mixed-gender living, and Surface Warfare Officer Lt. Emily Lake (Lauren Holly) joins the crew as Diving Officer.
Using unorthodox tactics and a major storm to offset their huge technological disadvantage, Dodge and his crew achieve their first objective by sneaking in to Charleston Harbor and setting off signal flares. Now desperate to defeat Dodge, Graham cuts the war game containment area in half without Winslow's authorization. Failing in their first attempt at Norfolk Harbor, Dodge leaves the reduced containment area and heads out to sea. Irate at this lapse in protocol, the always strident and by-the-book Pascal (for whom the crew has no respect) attempts to take command of the Stingray; the crew does not supports his action. Dodge then charges Pascal with mutiny and, in mock-pirate fashion (and to the delight of the crew), forces his blindfolded XO to "walk the plank" into the raised fishing net of a waiting trawler that will take him ashore.
During Stingray's second attempt at Norfolk, Graham assumes personal control of Orlando. Dodge employs an incredibly dangerous maneuver to sneak past the ships and aircraft protecting Norfolk. Orlando is eventually able to locate and chase her down. Before the Orlando's shooting solution is obtained, Dodge is able to fire two live torpedoes at long range into the anchored target ship at Norfolk, winning the war game for Stingray.
Upon his return to port, Admiral Winslow chastises Graham and denies his promotion. He welcomes Dodge back and informs him that he will not get his own Los Angeles-class submarine, as the two had previously discussed, but a new Seawolf-class submarine (the US Navy's most advanced attack submarines), plus a proper crew to man her. Dodge respectfully requests that his entire Stingray crew be transferred with him to his new command, and then dismisses his crew to begin a well-earned shore leave. As Dodge and Lake leave the dock, she poses a query to him now that they better know each other, "What exactly is this 'tattoo' I keep hearing about?". | prank | train | wikipedia | I was pleasantly surprised that the movie still had an appeal after all these years and many of the actors in the film did a great job without being overly done.
Being an ex-submariner on both diesel and nuc boats, I wasn't looking for a true to life Navy movie.
I don't want to get into specifics about little things that may not have been correct because that would only serve to detract from what I feel is an excellent movie to enjoy for its entertainment.
One common theme was you can have a great script, great cast, the best director and lots of money and still create a bad movie.Down Periscope is proof of the corollary to that theory.
Other character actors, like Rob Schneider, and the hilarious Harland Williams, added significantly to the enjoyability of the film.Cast dynamics, or that mysterious "movie magic" are really what happened here, creating a film that flows smoothly, has incredibly well executed transitions and line after line of well written and well performed dialog.A preposterous premise, lots and lots of technical inaccuracies and just plan silly things that could not happen in the real world, or the real navy, but you just don't care.
As a merchant marine myself, I found that the overall feel of the movie, while not plausible, was also not too far off the mark as far as life at sea goes.This is a VERY funny movie, a good family film, and, particularly if your a fan, lots of Kelsey Grammar wit, sarcasm and just damn funniness..
The movie manages to pull me right in to root for the characters, and to laugh pretty well all the way through.
The music is a perfect copy of music in the typical serious post war navy movies, which helps to create the humor and point out that greatness is in the eye of the beholder.
I've rated this movie as a 10 because it comes together on all levels, far better than many high budget films and Oscar winners.
This is entertainment.Listen up Fox home video: you have a great movie in your vaults, and it's a shame to find a cheap shot DVD with badly degraded off tint colors only 8 years since release.
The movie has a wonderful intelligent plot and a non-predictable script that still surprises me every time I watch it.
Surprisingly good and quick-witted adventure that features Kelsey Grammer (supposedly in his first lead role in a feature) as an unconventional Navy sub commander who wants to run a nuclear sub of his own, however; he has earn it by competing against the U.S. Navy in a series of war-games with a crew of untested, questionable, and lovable men (and a woman, too).Director David S.
Second, besides the Grammer character, most of the crew provide some or plenty of the movie's humor, which is treated like a double-edged sword.
Three members of the supporting cast - Harland Williams, Toby Huss, and Rob Schneider provide the funniest scenes, which includes weird gestures, impersonations, and, well, their personalities."Down Periscope" is more than a Navy version of "Police Academy" or "The Dirty Dozen".
Harland Williams, Rip Torn, Harry Dean Stanton, Kelsey Grammar, Rob Schneider and William H.
Starring: Kelsey Grammar, Rob Schneider, Lauren Holly, Rip Torn This movie is a classic family favorite.
It's still very funny to me.Naval Captain Tom Dodge (Grammar) is a bit of a black sheep in the navy.
His mission is to clean her up and take her out on the Atlantic for a war game.Dodge is obviously a little bit frustrated to have such a crappy boat given to him when he's worked so hard to get to the point that he's at, so he goes and talks to Admiral Winslow (Torn) about it.
Kelsey Grammar plays a likable role in the Navy comedy.
While Kelsey Grammar is obviously a gifted actor (reference 'Frasier', this movie) the supporting actors/actress play their roles quite well.
The movie is about how an intelligent and motivated man, against all odds, can cheat the entire over-self-confident system.This movie is for all people, who like a funny movie.The action and comedy is well mixed into a brilliant film, that I hope to see on DVD soon..
Kelsey Grammar right at home is this role as a loose but brilliant captain of a diesel sub, pitted against the US Nuclear Navy in a war game, designed to see if Terrorists could get a nuclear bomb through our defenses.
Rip Torn and Bruce Dern.Look plain and simple, you got 90 minutes and need a laugh or pick me up and you're not a prude (their is some language and innuendo) then rent it, or buy it (we did) and enjoy!
i bought both this movie and McHale's Navy cheap at the same time.i thought McHale's navy was pretty much a disaster.it's supposed to be funny,but i didn't think so.Down Periscope is in a similar vein,but is actually fairly funny at times.it's not great,but i did laugh on occasion.Kelsey Grammar is the main star.Lauren Holly,Bruce Dern,William H.Macy,Harland Williams,and Rip Torn also star,among others.even Rob Schneider has a role,but he is actually funny here.of course,he isn't the main character so that helps.along with some laughs,there's also a bit of action and excitement.in the end the movie turns out pretty decent.my vote for Down Periscope is a 6/10.
He is given one chance though to change this as he must lead a rag tag crew on board a very old submarine against a very new and modern sub in a war game type scenario.
which is rare company.Thanks to Kelsey Grammar, Lauren Holly and Rob Schneider for making what could have been an otherwise unremarkable movie, such great entertainment!.
Just the right mix of fast moving story, entertaining characters, hilarious moments (but not overloaded with stupid jokes), and fun performances by Kelsey Grammar, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron Schneider, Rip Torn and more.
Buckman is especially good, and I really enjoyed watching the guy who played Stapanick.I also find it interesting that they used a real submarine, the Pampanito, for the running on top scenes and emulated it almost exactly for their sets.
They did an excellent job on this film.What a light entertaining and truly enjoyable movie!.
I plan to get a DVD of this movie to really take an honest look at at, but more importantly to just have a good time watching it.
This film deserved a better fate than it received and Kelsey Grammar deserved at least one love scene with Ms. Holly.
The first few minutes of this movie don't do it justice!For me, its not funny until they board the sub and those hilarious characters begin to gel.
The misfits pull together to successfully complete their mission.Hilarity ensues.Like the "Police Academy" films, the humor comes from the kooky characters on the boat.
I am almost embarrassed to admit that I like it, it is so goofy in some parts, but I find myself reaching for it when I'm down and just need a good laugh...and trust me, I am just not a "goofy movie" kinda guy.You can read the synopsis so I don't have to bore you with that, just rest assured, if you like Kelsey Grammer you will probably like this movie.One more thing, be SURE to watch the end credits.
If you like just plain fun comedy, and aren't looking too deeply into meaning, you just might fall in love with this one..
It's difficult not to like a movie where the cast seems to be having such a good time.
Down Periscope features fine performances all around, most notably Kelsey Grammer stepping out of character as Tom Dodge, the sub's skipper, and veteran character actors Rip Torn, Bruce Dern and Harry Dean Stanton-- having been around since the earth was cooling--make welcome appearances.
True, it required suspending logic, but that is what the movies are for, and the "rooting for the underdog" plot is satisfying.Interestingly, there was a real USS Stingray (although it was not the submarine used in the movie - which is a working WW II sub made to look "old")..
Kelsey Grammar played 'Fraiser' for 20 years across 'Cheers' and the character's spin-off show, winning lots of acclaim along the way.
Marty Pascal (Rob Schneider) is the XO with a crew including Emily Lake (Lauren Holly), Howard (Harry Dean Stanton), and Sonar (Harland Williams).
Tom Dodge (Kelsey Grammar) is assigned as Captain to the USS Stingray, an old diesel driven submarine that has seen better days.
Even if the film is not that great (and many would say it is not), the sheer breadth of characters aboard the ship is sure to please.The inclusion of Lauren Holly in unfortunate.
Whilst it does have a sprinkling of cheese and some quite puerile moments it is largely inoffensive and quite funny.I couldn't fault the actors, the script, the characters or the general premise.Even better, I wouldn't hesitate to let my kids see it and wouldn't hesitate to watch it again.This movie might not win any prizes or - god forbid - earn cult status; but what it DOES do is entertain and it does that very well..
Tom Dodge (played by Kelsey Grammar) who is given an old diesel-run submarine to participate in a wargame exercise against modern sea vessels.
The characters in the movie were colorful and fun, although most of them were somewhat unfit for naval duty, I think, but that just added to the comedy aspect.One of my favorite scenes is during a silent run, the cook rips a massive fart that smells horribly.
Hilarious!"Down Periscope" actually brandish quite an astounding list of people on the cast list; Kelsey Grammar, Lauren Holly, Rob Schneider, Harry Dean Stanton, Bruce Dern, William H.
Macy, Toby Huss, Rip Torn, Patton Oswalt, to mention the most familiar of faces.If you enjoy comedies like "Police Academy", then chances are that you will enjoy "Down Periscope" as well..
Even the numerous jokes about his infamous tattoo are strangely funny, even though in another film they might put one off.A really fun movie that I would definitely recommend it for some laughs.
This Is A Film That Takes A Whack At All Submarine Movies, This Is Also The Only Submarine Movie I Will Watch With The Exception Of Das Boot(Don't Think That They Are Related Movies In Any Way, Shape Or Form).The Best Performance Is From Either Rob Schnider Or Kelsey Grammar, Both Were Absolutely Hysterical, Schnider Garuanteed Is A Good Performance In This Whether Your A Fan Of Him Or Not.The Tattoo On Kelsey Grammar's Penis In This Film Is By Far One Of The Best Ongoing Jokes In Cinematic History (In My Opinion) Its Funny At The End When Lauren Holly Asks "Whats This Tattoo Business I've Been Hearing About?" And He Replies "Well Its A LONG Story..." That Always Cracks Me Up.Overall I Highly Recommend This Film To A Fan Of Dumb Humour..
With talents like Kelsey Grammar and Rip Torn and a some funny lines, this is a great comedy for when you don't want to think.Premise is a bit dumb.
As Russia is selling Diesel boats to other nations, an admiral wants to know how well one would fare against modern subs.Thankfully, with comedies of this sort, the plot is second nature to the dialog and comic acting.
In this movies case, there's some pretty funny dialog, and some funny characters.I especially like Grammar's understated comedic acting.
And her role was OK, a bit more depth might have been welcome.If you like your basic cliché comedy with some good lines now and again, and like Gammer and Torn, you will probably like this.I like it so much I have seen it three times.
I find myself in need of a movie where I will laugh a few times, and never have to think.
It was great to see Bruce Dern doing comedy again, and as always I loved Rip Torn's wonderful facial expressions.
The movie is great fun, has wonderfully silly characters and even the juvenile humor can make a stuffed shirt (like myself) laugh.
DOWN PERISCOPE was one I'd avoided because the film's publicity made it look like a juvenile POLICE ACADEMY-style romp rather than the cross between STRIPES and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER that it more resembles.Yes it's a pratfalling, farting, misfits-become-team-players kind of a flick, however it also generates some genuine drama and tension during its war game sequences where our heroes in their rustbucket sub must out-manoeuvre a faster, better-armed enemy.So if you want to be entertained and don't mind switching your IQ into low gear, then give this film a go..
My wife and I find this movie to be a wonderful pick-me-up when we need to have a good laugh - the conflict between some characters and the repore between others make this a sure fire comedy relief.
If you like the excitement of a good submarine drama and the fun of a good comedy, then this film comes highly recommended.
Kelsey Grammer gives an excellent performance here.The film also gives you something to think about the next time a serious sub movie asks for 'silent running'.....
To the contrary it was good solid entertainment, well paced, well-acted (for it's type of movie), and just fun to watch.
Kelsey Grammer did not do a "Dr. Crane" take but simply played the character for what it was, a competent, if somewhat irreverant at times, Sub Commander.
I thought Kelsey Grammar, Rip Torn and Bruce Dern did a great job.
The plot is not great or realistic but that does not bother the movie.A good movie if u don´t mind watching it with a sense of humor and an open mind for making the navy look stupid 7/10.
I'm surprised Kelsey Grammar got any work after this, because absent his deep baritone he obviously can't carry a movie on his own..
A couple of misfits (a la police academy) in an old submarine, under leadership of miscasted Grammer (who apparently has a tattoo on his you know what, the source of more than half of the 'jokes' in this movie) play war games against cocky general with new submarine.
Sometimes though there is an American film that actually has some life in it, and Down Periscope is one of them.This movie is a bumbling idiot comedy.
This is basically an impossible task for this is ancient submarine that still runs on diesel.I sort of like bumbling idiot movies, as long as they are done well.
I like Kelsey Grammar--but this movie was numbingly boring.
I like Kelsey Grammar very much and I was looking forward to seeing this movie when it first came out in theaters, so I was shocked by how bad it was--boring and juvenile with really bad jokes.
Any scene involving the cook really just passes as low humor, although I do get the giggles when I think about how he irks Rob Schneider's character.So, if you watch this movie, remember that it's basically really ridiculous, but you might laugh some.
Schneider always makes me think of a poor man's comedy side kick and he doesn't do that well here, but to be fair he tries hard with his character.
Getting names like Macy, Dern Stanton and Rip Torn in the film was a shrewd move as they are always watchable, but they really have little to do.Overall this is not that funny and not that clever.
The plot behind "Down Periscope" is worthy of a great movie.
Kelsey Grammar, could have done a lot for his career has this movie not tried to be "Animal House" on a sub.
A movie I've watched at least 20 times.
I saw the movie in the theater at its release, then watched the VHS tape over the years, and while strolling through Target saw this DVD bundled with "Pushing Tin" for the exorbitant sum of $5.50.There is something about this comedy that has really clicked with me - how Kelsey Grammar, "with a tattoo on his thing", is an unorthodox commander who inherits a rusty diesel sub and a crew of screwballs and misfits.
He's up against the Navy's best - a Los Angeles Class nuclear attack sub - and his old captain (Wm Macy).Bruce Dern plays the bad guy, Rip Torn the admiral running the exercise - If you don't laugh hysterically during the "run silent" segment with the cook, well, you have a different kind of humor from me.Towards the end the machinist says "D.B.F." with no explanation - it is apparently some inside knowledge gotten from an old submariner consultant - thanks to Google I learned that with the advent of the nuclear subs the old salts would wear "DBF" pins - Diesel Boats Forever.
There are some films everyone should have in their DVD collection because they are fun to watch more than once.
Down Periscope (1996): Dir: David Ward / Cast: Kelsey Grammar, Lauren Holly, Rip Torn, Rob Schneider, Harland Williams: Washout comedy that gives new meaning to low budget.
Among the crew is Lauren Holly who wishes to become the first female submarine commander for the Navy.
Rip Torn and Rob Schneider are wasting time when they could be looking for better film projects.
They will give Dodge an old, WW2 era diesel sub to command, with a makeshift crew of misfits, and let him be the aggressor in Virginia war games.
And Rip Torn is Vice Adm. Dean Winslow, who is on Dadge's side.The movie is not high art by any means, but Grammar is in good form, as are the other actors, and it is entertaining to see how the good guys work to come out on top..
Tom Dodge was not; Kelsey Grammar was well cast and believable.
Rip Torn, Bruce Dern, and William Macy played very believable characters; I've known people like them.
The movie managed to be a reasonable action film and a decent comedy at the same time. |
tt0113305 | Higher Learning | At Columbus University, a fictious college in southern California, we first see Malik Williams (Omar Epps), a young black man, Kristen Connor (Kristy Swanson), a young white woman, and Remy (Michael Rapaport), another young white man, at the opening freshman pep rally and as they are decorating their rooms. Malik and Kristen meet in the elevator, with the nervous Kristen shielding her purse and Malik seeing this and shaking his head with resentment. There is a montage of each putting up pictures and posters in their rooms. Track star Malik goes to his first practice unprepared, and is chastised severely by the coach.Kristen meets her roommate, Monet (Regina King), a black girl, and attends a fraternity rush party, where she meets two outgoing freshmen Nicole and Claudi. Monet and Malik attend a party with other black students, hosted by Fudge (Ice Cube), an afrocentric and militant senior whom has been at the university for six years now. Remy, who is Fudge's roommate, is upset at the loud rap music being played late into the night. He calls security, who breaks up the party. Fudge is upset that they don't tell the room down the hall to stop their loud "hillbilly" music. Kristen, while walking home, meets Taryn (Jennifer Connelly), a junior lesbian student who warns Kristen about walking alone late at night and invites her to a student group. Malik's roommate, Wayne (Jason Wiles), is then introduced, with Malik angry about his filthy bed area and lack of hygine.The next day at the campus square, Fudge points out to Monet the self-segregation of the various ethnic groups on campus. We then see Malik's first class, with Professor Maurice Phipps (Laurence Fishburne), a conservative black man from the West Indies whom is teaching Political Science 101. In the class, Malik's and Kristen's names (among others) are called out for having financial problems, embarrassing them. They go to the financial aid office, where Kristen is told she needs a job since her parents are bankrupt, and Malik learns that his athletic scholarship is partial, not full. He talks to the coach, who agrees to help him out if he keeps his grades up and works extra hard on the field.Fudge returns to his room with his friend Dreads (Busta Rhymes), and plays his rap music loud, disrupting Remy's studying. When Remy complains, Fudge mocks and threatens him, causing Remy to move out.Later that night, Remy is beaten by Malik at a video game who further mocks him. Remy then rejects an offer of pool from Wayne and David Isaacs, Remy's new Jewish roommate.Meanwhile, Kristen is shown getting drunk and leaving with frat boy Billy (Jay Ferguson), retreating back to his frat room. Billy and Kristen prepare to have sex, but when Billy indicates that he does not have a condom, Kristen decides she doesn't want to have sex. Despite this, Billy ignores her refusal, and rapes her. She eventually fights him off, and flees.Monet returns to their room and finds Kristen crying in her bed. When Billy calls, Monet refuses give the phone to Kristen, and Billy suddenly reacts violently and insults her racially. Angered, she turns to Fudge, who recruits his friends to confront him at the frat party. Monet forces Kristen to tag along with them where she willingly points out Billy to the black students. Fudge and Dreads pull Billy outside, threatening him and forcing him to apologize to Monet. The security guards arrive and the black students leave.The next day, despite being ostracized by her friends, Kristen attends Taryn's student group on harmony between different groups.Meanwhile, Malik borrows a copy of the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. After telling Fudge he only needs it for a class, Fudge kicks him out, telling him to read it for himself and not for school.That evening, Remy is reading alone outside in the student quad when he is approached and asked out for a drink by Scott Moss (Cole Hauser), a white supremacist and neo-Nazi skinhead whom had been glimpsed in the background shadowing Remy for the past few days. Remy also meets Scott's skinhead friends: Erik (Talbert Morton), James (Trevor St. John), and the weight-lifting hulking Knocko (Andrew Bryniarski).A few days later, Professor Phipps challenges his class (including Kristen and Malik) to determine who they are for themselves and not let others categorize them.Kristen talks about her rape with Taryn, with Taryn encouraging her to report it and attempting to console her.Malik confronts Phipps about a paper he graded, arguing he should have a better grade. When Phipps shows him the various spelling and grammar errors, Malik calls him a sellout for the "white establishment". Phipps angrily responds that the world owes Malik nothing and he must work for his own good to make a difference in this world.Malik is then shown racing in a relay, losing ground to another runner. When his teammates confront him, he responds with Fudge's ideology. He walks away and flirts with fellow runner Deja (Tyra Banks).Remy is seen in Scott's dorm room with James, Erik, and Knocko. The room is decorated with Swastikas and Nazi paraphernalia. Scott expresses his racist beliefs, and the troubled Remy is slowly being convinced that "the white man is endangered" and he is encouraged to shave his head to join Scott's underground neo-Nazi group.In the campus library, Deja is shown helping Malik with his essay and his spelling errors. Nearby, Kristen is shown realizing her growing attraction to Taryn.Phipps then criticizes Kristen's bland paper, telling her that only writing the facts is fine for journalism, but not for a political science course. Phipps tells her that her purpose at college is to think for herself. Phipps then talks with Malik about his much improved paper.Remy is shown working in a class, surrounded by students of other races. He removes his hat, showing he has shaved his head and is wearing an Iron Cross necklace.Wayne asks Kristen for a flier for their group, confronting her when she says the anti-sexism group is for women, flirting with her as well.On Halloween night, Monet attends a costume party with Dreads while Malik also attends with Deja. Kristen attends a rape awareness rally with Taryn. Remy and the other neo-Nazis attack an interracial couple. After the rally, Kristen asks to spend the night with Taryn. Taryn rebuffs her, saying she wants Kristen to be sure about it.While stretching on the track, Malik continues spouting Fudge's ideology to Deja, saying he hates feeling like a thoroughbred. Deja rebuffs him, saying he has opportunities that people would do anything for and he should take them. The stretching and running is then intercut in a montage with a love scene, showing they have started dating. Kristen is also seen going on a date with Wayne.Scott shows Remy his gun collection and Remy talks about his abusive, survivalist father in his Idaho home town (which is the indirect result of Remy's troubled behavior and childhood).Kristen is shown walking holding hands with Taryn in public across the campus. They have a run-in with Monet and another friend of hers who see them. A montage love sequence is shown with Kristen where she sleeps with Wayne, but fantasizes about Taryn. (In a deleted scene, Kristen goes to Taryn's room and indeed has sex with her as well).One day, while Malik and Deja talk about Christopher Columbus and of the college, Remy approaches, condemning Malik's Black Panther shirt and calling him a racial slur. Malik, angered, goes to Remy's room and confronts him about being a racist and Nazi after finding him reading a copy of Adolph Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf' (My Struggle). Remy backs down from a fistfight, with Malik insulting him and leaving. Remy trashes the room, contemplating suicide. After David returns, he confronts Remy about the mess. Remy starts beating David and Malik intervenes. Remy pulls his Glock 9mm, threatening the two and leaving. Malik runs after him, only to be stopped by security guards asking for ID. Resisting, he is arrested, letting Remy escape. Malik then moves in with Fudge and the rest of his friends.A day or two later, Malik and Fudge are relaxing on the student quad when they have a run-in with Professor Phipps and the three of them have a discussion on race, knowledge, and "the system". Phipps tells Malik that he must play the game of life to win, because no one wants to hear excuses. It is here that Fudge used to attend Phipps class when he was a freshman years ago and Malik is somewhat surprised when Phipps addresses Fudge by his real name, which happens to be 'Christopher White'. At the same time, Kristen begins organizing a peace festival with Monet to calm down the students after Remy's actions.Meanwhile, Scott chastises Remy for dropping out of school, arguing that the white community needs more successful members and that he is betraying his race. After Knocko calls out a racial slur, Fudge, Malik, Dreads, and another black student start a gang fight with the white power skinheads, beating them. Later, Deja confronts Malik on his intentions of dropping out and fighting for no good reason. Malik is becoming more and more angry about racial issues. At the underground skinheads's dorm, Scott says that Remy's posturing means nothing, and only actions do. He then shows Remy a sniper rifle and challenges him to action. The alienated and warped Remy agrees to kill for the white race.We then see Malik and Deja walking at the Peace Fest, with Malik saying he wouldn't drop out of college because he'd lose her. Kristen stands on the podum of the rally where she addresses the students while she sees both Wayne and Taryn standing separate among the students, leaving Kristen feeling uneasy to both of them whom she is currently dating without the others knowledge. Remy has moved to the rooftop of a nearby building with the sniper rifle and prepares to open fire on the students. Erik stands lookout while the other racist skinheads attack a gay couple to distract security. Remy is obviously having trouble with doing this, but acquiesces when pushed by Scott who tells him to "do it for the Aryan Nation". He opens fire on the Peace Fest, causing a riot. An unnamed student is killed, and Deja is shot in the stomach. She collapses in Malik's arms. After Phipps tries to help, Malik goes crazy and attacks Remy, meeting him on the stairs of the building and beating him severely and nearly choking him to death before racist security guards, led by the racist Officer Bradley (Bradford English) intervenes and beats him. Bradley and his men confront Remy as he tries to leave. Remy pulls out a pistol, resulting in a stand-off. Remy apologizes to the police for everything that he did and shoots himself in the head, killing himself. After the security guards let Malik go, he returns outside and finds that Deja has died, and he collapses into Phipps' arms, crying and wailing.The racist skinheads are shown mourning Remy's death when they see a TV news report of the university shooting. Knocko, Erik, and James then begin celebrating his actions, chanting, "white power". Scott quietly sits back and for a brief moment seems to smile.(It is strongly implied that Scott and his skinheads intentionally approached, brainwashed, and set Remy up as the patsy for their own actions, taking advantage of the troubled youth to make him do their murderous deeds and they will get away with it since there is nothing to connect Remy to either Scott or his skinheads.)A few days later, Malik and Phipps discuss his future away from the university, with Phipps saying he trusts Malik's judgment whatever it will be. Malik walks out of the office, making it unclear if he is going to drop out of the university or stay on. Afterwords, Malik and Kristen are seen meeting for the first time at a memorial to Deja. Kristen feels guilty about the deaths because she started the festival. Malik assuages her guilt. And shortly after, they part. Malik then begins to run at fast as he can through the campus... running for himself and not for the school.In the final scene, a graduation ceremony is held where Fudge is seen finally graduating with the other students having long ago acquired all of the credits he needs, but refusing to wear a cap or smile for his graduation photo. As Professor Phipps leaves his office, the final shot shows the USA flag fluttering in the wind as the caption "unlearn" appears over it as the image fades to black. | violence | train | imdb | null |
tt2151849 | The Eschatrilogy: Book of the Dead | The Book of the Dead is set in the Nara period at around 750 CE, the era when Buddhism was being introduced from China.
Iratsume, a young woman from a noble house, becomes obsessed with the new religion and spends much of her time hand-copying the sutras, trying to understand the teachings of the Buddha. On the eve of each equinox and solstice she begins to see a radiant figure looking not unlike the Buddha floating between the twin peaks of distant Mount Futakami. One evening, after completing her one-thousandth copy of a sutra, her view the figure she has been longing to see again is obscured by a rainstorm. In pursuit of it she slips away from her household to the foot of the mountain, where she arrives at a temple that women are forbidden to enter. There she learns that the figure might not be Buddha, but the soul of the executed Prince Ōtsu which wanders in torment between this world and the next. When Iratsume and Ōtsu's soul encounter, they feel compelled to unite. They forge a bond, bringing comfort and peace to each other – a bond that allows the prince's soul to find rest. The film follows the Japanese teaching that came from Buddhism: that no matter who they are, friends or foes, the souls of the dead need to be relieved. Kawamoto has said that the film is dedicated to all the innocent people who have died in recent wars.[2] | violence | train | wikipedia | I love horror films.
No, I like CLEVER horror films - ones that make you think, keep you guessing and twist your perceptions of what you think you know.
The Eschatrilogy is such a film.When a stranger walks into the refuge of a lone young man following what looks like the end of civilization, and then faints at his feet, the man finds a book telling of 3 stories involving 3 different protagonists.
This is the true genius of Damian Morter's storytelling, as you are treated to 3 sub-stories all interwoven together to slowly help the man (and the audience) put together the pieces of how things came to pass.
Each story is wonderfully shot and told, and the actors (especially the children) are superb in showing everyday people faced with extraordinary choices.Without giving any spoilers, let's just say characters from each story turn up in the other tales to varying degrees, helping to give a sense of continuity to events rather than it being 3 random stories.
Well, that's a story in itself, and one that brings the film to a logical, yet fiendishly clever conclusion.Look out for cameo appearances from Sarah Jane Honeywell (of CBeebies fame) and several other reasonably well known actors, all of whom lend a sense of credibility to an inexperienced but talented cast who will no doubt go on to great success following this work.
If there's one small criticism, the opening 10 minutes could probably be trimmed but make no mistake - this is one of the best films of the year.
Filmed on peanuts, with a cast of over 300 volunteers and with excellent cinematography, sound and a chilling score, catch this one on the horror convention circuit or eagerly await the DVD release in 2013.
I was really eager to see this film, and when I started watching it I thought this film looks truly beautiful!
The plot kept you gripped and this isn't the usual 'zombie/monster' film, it is far more special than that.
Even if you don't like horror films, watch this as this film is something different.The acting was good and especially the children stood out for me, they added to the story.Please make a point of seeing it, it will make you jump, feel moved at times and there were also some funny one liners.
This film is deemed a low budget film, it sure doesn't give that impression to me as the editing and music were 1st class.
Low-budget independent productions such as The Eschatrilogy blow these doubts out of the water, however, as they prove that money isn't everything.
What is really important is the creative collective drive of passionate filmmakers determined to make something special and passion is something this film has by the bucket load.The film opens with a montage of sole survivor Matthew (Tim Mcgill Grieveson) biding his time in a desolate forest hut.
This sequence is beautifully shot, edited and acted, giving an indication of the fantastic cinematography right from the get-go.
Although it is a lengthy scene to begin the film, we really get a sense of Matthew's loneliness and depravity in a bleak situation and this sets the tone for the three 'nightmare' segments that follow: 'Dead Inside', 'The Dying Breed' and 'A Father For The Dead'.Now I won't spoil either of the stories - it is really something you have to see to believe how well the three sections are tied together by the survivor plot - but I can tell you that you won't have seen anything like this before.
The overriding theme here is family and, like Romero, director/writer/actor Damian Morter weaves what can be interpreted as a social commentary of the present day.
Cal (Morter) travels the land whilst documenting tales of horror in his book to act as a warning for others to support one another no matter what the circumstances.
It goes to show that in the midst of economic crisis and war faith can be restored in humanity by supporting family and friends through difficult times.In short: watch this film if you are even marginally interested in British horror.
Both the storyline and the technical work put into this film are excellent.
I find that the fact the director (Damian Morter) both directs and stars in the film complimentary to the ethics of this movie.
Both Husband and wife (Nicola Morter) have worked together on this and this can be seen, as despite the movie being about zombies, it has a very humanistic, thought provoking storyline.
It is not just your stereo-typical all blood and gore zombie movie, but it actually touches the heart of the audience and would delve into the heart of even the most hardened of zombie movie addict.This movie appeals to both men and women, providing a good balance of SFX with a safe measure of a compassion of what a person would go through if they were to be in this type of situation.The acting from both the main actors and the rest of the cast is believable and consistent throughout the whole of the movie.
Especially, the eeriness of the children in the film, who act their parts out very well.
I read a few reviews, some giving this movie a 4 Star review and then the there are the ones that gave this 10 stars with some @*%# about how others that gave this a low rating just didn't understand something about this movie.
Well, this movie plain and simply gives proof that Britain should not be allowed to make, export or give advice when it comes to horror movies, and should only be allowed to make comedies..
Typical bad low budget zombie movie....
I bought the movie because it is a zombie movie and because of the cover, so I was sorely disappointed with a slap to the face.This is a compilation of three tales that are interwoven.
That being said, I will have to stress that the stories weren't particularly entertaining, neither alone nor in their tied in connections, nor did the overall feel of the movie come off as anywhere near captivating.
And come daybreak of the next day you will have forgotten about this movie already, trust me.There were a bit too many wrong Things with the zombies, such as they could remember their Family members, some were quite fast and agile, and of course the typical poor zombie make-up in low budget zombie movies - where they paint the face a horribly bad gray color and forget about the rest of the body, with the neck and hands standing out like sore thumbs.As an avid zombie aficionado I devour, pardon the pun, anything even remotely zombie.
This movie, however, falls into the lower aspect of the zombie genre, and I can't recommend it to anyone because it is boring and bad on the level that only low budget zombie movies manage to reach..
The acting is just terrible and i am pretty sure i have seen more convincing performances on TV adverts.
The script makes Eastenders look half way impressive (Impossible feat i know) and as for the special effects.
Still, i had such a laugh watching this film that i can forgive just how awful it is.
It's one of them very rare 1 or 10 star rated films depending on your mood kind've like sandsharks.
Anyways, i did enjoy it (for all the wrong reasons) and it's full of just about every zombie cliché out there ripped from everything from the original Dead trilogy to 28 days/months later (The stalking zombie was a highlight <3 ).
Rarely do i notice a score in films, but this stood out like a sore thumb.
Aesthetically stunning movie, set around diverse and interesting characters.Set in a post-apocalyptic world over run with zombies being led by a dark mysterious and demonic character.Man-kinds days are numbered as the unstoppable force of darkness continues to rip through society as we know it.(Not many, if any will survive) Beautifully shot, with some great effects and make up.
with an amazing score by Robert Wingfield and some cracking performances with two dead mans shoes actors and a CBBC presenter included in the cast.
This is a low budget movie but it really dose not show i have seen big budget films with less production values and if i was told this was shot on a budget of a million i would not bat an eyelid.
The Eschartrilogy is definitely worth a watch!No zombie film collection is complete without this movie..
I attended Grimmfest in Manchester with my brother for the very first time this year and saw this film early on the Sunday morning we were pretty tired but were ready to kick the day off with Twisted when we discovered it had been switched with this film instead, so we decided to give it a watch, Im glad we did, because it was the film we talked about the most on the drive home.I didn't know much about it apart from the fact it was a zombie anthology film and it was made by unknowns in the North of England.
The film opened amazingly well and I was immediately drawn in, a young man in a secluded camp (which would not have been out of place in THE ROAD) scours the roads, picking up the now starved dead and burns them in his camp.
As the young survivor begins to read, we are then transported into each particular zombie tale.
First of all the soundtrack was ace, and it reminded me of every great 80's horror film ever made, the production values and locations were very good, far beyond what you would get in a movie of this budget, you can tell the filmmakers were never lazy with their approach.I did have issues with acting on a whole, only the two leads in the framing story really convinced me , the rest of the cast seemed less experienced, some even looked uncomfortable in their roles, maybe having bitten off more than they could chew so to speak, also the mixture of accents at times was off putting, but thats down to personal preference!
What amazed me most was after the film we attended the Q & A where the director, main actor and two crew members were told us it was made for around £15,000, it was a shock and put the film very high on my list of best of fest!
I am an amateur filmmaker and watching something like this gives me a bigger push to get my own work out there and proves it can be done with dedication and hard work, so i suppose the film was pretty inspiring that way!
If you are a fan of horror anthologies and especially zombie movies, this is definitely one of the best low budget zombie movies next to Before Dawn (which also screened at Grimmfest), it's originality alone is worth the look, let alone proof that things can be done with very very little!
I hope to see more from these guys, they looked like they were just there to have fun at the Q & A and I think they have done a great job..
Before we start yes, I am an extra in the film but I'm trying my best to write this without being biased towards it, I'm also a fan of the zombie film genre too so...
Having watched many low budget films lately in the zombie genre (and still working my way through them all as well) I went into the premiere of this movie expecting another mindless horde of zombies to rampage through the streets and countryside of the UK hell bent on devouring everyone in a small rag tag bunch of survivors (typically containing an old man, gun toting muscle bound hero and several big breasted women) but not in this movie, the director Damian Morter who also wrote and starred in the film did something a little different, the way the film is set out reminded me of a few older films the one that sticks in my mind the most is cats eye which has three stories that are based around a kind of main plot following a cat.
A young man then comes across a stranger in a forest who has this book and begins to read the tales within, these tales tell of the pain that three separate families suffer as part of this rising of the undead while the main plot surrounding the young man and the stranger unfold...
Its different, not your ordinary zombie film, in my opinion its definitely worth a watch if you get a chance to visit a festival its showing at or if you get a chance to buy the DVD when its finally released.
The camera work throughout is fantastic and doesn't again in my opinion betray the fact its a low budget film the crew, Damian and Nicola Morter, the make up artists, actors and extras at safehouse pictures have really outdone themselves (yes me included ;) ) bringing this film into being, lots of blood sweat and tears have gone into it.
Definitely one to watch out for if your a fan of horror or zombies :).
Low budget in the worst way.
A friend and I recently caught this at Grimmfest in Manchester and could not believe they were screening it; to say it is low budget is an understatement as this is closer to home movies for production values (and I've seen better acting in Syfy originals)The scenes in between the three stories were the 'highlight' for want of a better word - they obviously had the most effort go into them and the opening section was pretty promising, it looked well shot and as if it would lead into a different type of horror movie to the usual fare.
Then we cut to the stories...These 3 stories were badly acted, badly shot, badly written, and just bad.
The reviews about this being thoughtful because a zombie remembered his child clearly overlook how truly terrible every other aspect of the film was.
I can only assume that the 78 10/10s that are currently keeping this film up at 7.4 are from cast and crew because no-one could ever watch this film and find it good let alone flawless..
Matthew (Tim Mcgill Grieveson) lives by himself in a self sufficient post zombie apocalypse era.
Mathew reads zombie stories from the stranger's book which comprises much of the film.
The first episode concerns the rural beginnings of the zombie issue as a cowboy looking fellow with hat and spurs emerging from a grave as an anti-Christ or something (the explanation tried to be religious without being religious) and starts the zombie craze in a nation that doesn't have a Second Amendment designed to protect the general population from such things.The second story is in a small city during the peak of the outbreak and the third concerns the beginning of a remote survivalist group.
As always in such tales, the fourth story concerns the story teller.My biggest fear of obtaining this DVD (Walmart $9.96) was that the three tales would be parts of other films, or worse, a hand held camera running and screaming in the dark.
The zombies were decently made up with a Tor Johnson looking guy who seemed to be on the screen more than George Clooney in a George Clooney film.
Most characters are alive for 20-30 minutes of screen time before they stick their arms up in the air and start dragging their feet.The zombie direction seemed to be a bit off.
In one scene a little zombie girl has her hands down and is just standing in front of a human, then after the camera pans away and comes back, she suddenly has her arms up in zombie attack mode.
I wouldn't have paid "real" money to see it, but honestly...Not bad.Believe me...There's much worse out there and unfortunately, I think I've seen most of them.
Just like any zombie film, some of it is stupid, some situations you'd look at and go, "what the.....?
David Frampton's performance was touching and helped bring a human element to some of the stupider and badly acted parts.Worth a watch...Could have ended better...Much better, but all in all...Pretty well done!.
Interesting zombie flick, made on the smallest of budgets and pretty successful within its constraints..
This independent horror flick was shot in various locations around Barnsley and Sheffield on a micro budget, and is proof that low-budget movies are not necessarily bad movies.
Here, writer-director Damian Morter deliberately distorts the word to give his portmanteau film a rather intriguing and foreboding title.
The three stories are book-ended with a sequence set in the remote hilly woodland of South Yorkshire, where survivor Matthew (Tim McGill Grieveson) spends his days maintaining a makeshift compound and collecting corpses from the areas of civilisation far below.
One day, an unexpected stranger, Cal (Damian Morter), stumbles into camp and collapses from exhaustion.
Matthew discovers a journal among Cal's belongings which recounts three tales about the zombie apocalypse that has changed the world.
Story 1 (Dead Inside) deals with the outbreak of the zombie virus, brought about by the arrival of a malevolent demon.
As the zombies grow in number it becomes clear there will be no happy ending here.
Finally, story 3 (A Father For The Dead) is set later still, with the number of survivors having dwindled to almost none.
Yes, there's gore and guts and blood and so on, but the film always remembers to come back to the human element to give us something to identify with.
Although the twist ending is a little too predictable from the off, and the acting in some segments is less than convincing, the film overall delivers upon its own modest aims.
Romero pervades throughout the film.
What better endorsement could any zombie film hope to receive? |
tt0091829 | Rawhead Rex | Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes) travels to Ireland to research items of religious significance. He goes to a rural church to photograph some graves. Meanwhile, three farmers are attempting to remove an ominous stone column from a field. Two of the farmers head home. A thunderstorm appears out of nowhere, and smoke pours from the ground. Lightning strikes the column. The monster Rawhead Rex rises from the dirt.
Howard meets Declan O'Brien (Ronan Wilmot), who directs him to Reverend Coot. The curious O'Brien approaches the altar and places his hand on it. Images flash before his eyes. This experience apparently destroys O'Brien's sanity. Afterwards, Howard inquires about the church's parish records. Coot says he can arrange to have Howard look at them.
Later, a man arrives at the home of locals Dennis and Jenny. He discovers a clearly traumatized Jenny. Police arrive. Rawhead drags Dennis's dead body through the forest and comes upon a trailer park. A teenager named Andy Johnson is trying to make out with his girlfriend. The two teens head into the woods. Soon after, Howard sees Rawhead on top of a distant hill with Andy's head in his hand.
Afterwards, Howard speaks again with Coot, who tells him the church's parish records have been stolen. Declan O'Brien destroys his camera. He takes his family on the road again.
On the road, Howard's daughter needs to go to the bathroom, so Howard pulls over and lets her go by a tree. Hearing her suddenly scream, Howard and his wife rush to her; Howard's son stays in the van, alone. Rawhead kills Howard's son and takes the body into the woods. Infuriated by the police's unsuccessful efforts to track down Rawhead, Howard returns to the church. He discovers that there is a weapon shown in the stained glass window that can be used to defeat the monster. After Howard leaves, Coot curiously touches the altar but resists the temptations and images it shows him.
Rawhead arrives at the church to baptize O'Brien by urinating on him. A bewildered Coot goes outside to investigate the noise and sees Rawhead. Horrified, Coot flees inside the church and into the basement while Rawhead destroys everything inside. Coot finds the missing parish records, showing what appears to be some kind of blueprint of Rawhead himself. The insane O'Brien catches Coot and forces him upstairs to be sacrificed to Rawhead. The police arrive at the church and prepare to open fire on Rawhead, but they hesitate because he is carrying Coot. The brainwashed inspector dumps gasoline around the police cars and ignites it just as they begin to shoot at Rawhead, killing all the police, including himself.
Howard leaves his wife and daughter and goes back to the church where a dying Coot tells him that Rawhead is afraid of something in the altar. Howard goes inside where O'Brian is burning books and is overpowered by Howard. Howard, by using a candle stick, opens the altar and gets to the weapon. O'Brian retreats to Rawhead to tell him, leaving Rawhead displeased. Howard tries to use the weapon, but has no effect. In anger, Rawhead kills O'Brian by tearing out his throat, with Howard's wife watching in terror.
As Rawhead tries to kill Howard, his wife picks up the weapon, it activates, stopping Rawhead from killing Howard. A ray of light comes out of the weapon and hits Rawhead, hurting him. Howard realizes that it has to be a woman for it to work. Then the form of a woman appears from the stone and shoots electric rays through the stones and into Rawhead's body, knocking him to the ground. After a few more blasts, Rawhead is drained and weakened to the point where he has no hair, has aged, and is ill and dying. Finally he falls through the ground with Howard's wife dropping the weapon in with him. Rawhead is smashed under giant stones and finished. Both Howard and his wife cry in light of it being over.
In the end, the boy from the trailer park places flowers on Andy Johnson's grave. As he walks away, Rawhead emerges from the ground and roars. | violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0107302 | Kalifornia | Brian Kessler (David Duchovny) is a graduate student in psychology as well as a journalist, who has written an article about serial killers, which draws interest from a publisher that offers him a book deal. After the book deal advance is spent, Brian realizes that he needs to start working on finishing his book. His girlfriend Carrie Laughlin (Michelle Forbes), a photographer, persuades him to move to California, and they decide to drive from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to California and visit infamous murder sites along the way. Short on funds, Brian posts a ride-share ad.
Meanwhile, psychopathic parolee Early Grayce (Brad Pitt) has just lost his job. His parole officer (Judson Vaughn) learns of this and comes to the trailer park where Early lives with his young girlfriend Adele Corners (Juliette Lewis). Early refuses the officer's offer of a job as a college janitor, saying he wants to leave the state. The officer informs him that if he does not keep the appointment, he will be "having dinner with the sheriff". Early decides to go to the job interview. However, when he is on his way out, he is confronted by his landlord over non-payment of rent. Early grows violent and spins out in his car, chasing the man all over the park.
Early sees the ride-share ad at the college and calls Brian, who agrees to meet him the following day. Early sends Adele ahead, then murders his landlord before joining Adele to wait for Brian and Carrie. Carrie's first response to seeing the rough-hewn couple is to suggest Brian turn the car around and leave, but Brian asks her to give the plan a chance, and she reluctantly agrees.
On the road, unbeknown to his companions, Early murders a man in a gas station bathroom and steals his money. When they arrive at the first hotel, he cuts Adele's long hair shorter, to try to match Carrie's. At another hotel, Early invites Brian out to play pool, leaving Adele and Carrie alone together.
Carrie trims Adele's hair in a less brutal, more stylish 'bob-cut' and Adele paints Carrie's toe-nails. Adele explains that her mother did not approve of her relationship, because Early had just been released from prison. Adele reveals to Carrie that she is a rape victim and that she views Early as her protector, even though he has beaten her. While Carrie and Adele are drinking beer, Adele also admits to Carrie that Early forbids her to smoke or drink.
At a local bar, Brian is confronted by another man at the pool table, and Early steps in, punching out the attacker. Later on in the road-trip Early introduces Brian to pistol shooting in a remote, unnamed location which doesn't arouse local suspicion.
Carrie is alarmed by Brian's growing fascination with Early and Brian's nonchalant response to the news that Early has been in prison. She gives him an ultimatum: either they rid themselves of Early and Adele, or she will leave.
At the next gas station, Carrie glimpses a newscast with footage of Early and the announcement he is a suspected murderer. Early kills the gas station attendant and continues the trip with the couple as hostages. They encounter two police officers, whom Early shoots. They next come to the home of an elderly couple. Early beats the man to death, but Adele allows the woman to flee. As Early rushes to find the woman, Adele confronts him and says she wants nothing more to do with him. Early fatally shoots Adele, strikes Brian on the head, and kidnaps Carrie.
Brian regains consciousness, and the elderly woman gives him the keys to her truck. Brian arrives at an abandoned nuclear testing site and surprises Early, hitting him in the head with a shovel. Brian finds Carrie bloodied and handcuffed to a bed, having been sexually assaulted. Early, who was only stunned, attacks Brian and they struggle until Early is hit over the head by Carrie. When Early continues the attack, Brian kills him.
Some time later, Brian and Carrie are living in a California beach house. Carrie tells Brian that a gallery is interested in her art, and he suggests they go out to celebrate. | dark, neo noir, murder, bleak, cult, horror, violence, atmospheric, insanity, suspenseful, sadist | train | wikipedia | null |
tt4263482 | The VVitch: A New-England Folktale | The film starts with William (Ralph Ineson), the patriarch of a Puritan family, on trial in 1630s New England. He dismisses those around him as false Christians, and the others claim that he speaks ill of the word of God.In a flashback, William's family includes his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), and baby Samuel. They recently moved off their plantation in England to a small farm. Mercy and Jonas frequently play with a large black goat that they named Black Phillip.One afternoon, Thomasin is outside playing Peek-A-Boo with Sam. She covers her face to scare him, but when she looks down, Sam is gone. We cut to somewhere in the darkest part of the woods where a wrinkled hand strokes Sam's body, moments before the creature lowers a knife to his chest. We then see a haggard old woman pounding what appear to be Sam's remains before consuming them. The woman then slowly walks out into the woods.Katherine becomes distraught following Sam's disappearance. The family believes that a wolf took the baby. Caleb goes out to hunt with his father, but first he starts to notice Thomasin's breasts. Out in the woods, Caleb becomes fearful that Sam was taken because he lived in sin, making Caleb worry that he is also leading a sinful life that will lead to his doom.William comforts his son, and they proceed to hunt. William aims his rifle at a rabbit, but the recoil from the shot gets him in the eye, and the rabbit runs away. The two return home to an angry Katherine. Thomasin takes the blame for her father for the two of them going to hunt.Thomasin and Caleb are by the river gathering water. Mercy comes along and accuses Thomasin of being a witch, blaming her for Sam's disappearance. Thomasin plays along with the accusation and starts to terrify Mercy. Thomasin says she is a witch, and that she will get Mercy if she continues to bother her.With a lack of growth on their crops beginning to turn problematic, Thomasin and Caleb venture into the woods. The two are separated from each other. Caleb disappears and comes across a small cottage. From the doorway emerges a beautiful woman (Sarah Stephens). She lures Caleb toward him and she kisses him before grabbing his head with a haggard hand.Thomasin later finds Caleb outside in the rain, naked and scarred. The family becomes worried that something evil is overtaking them. Mercy and Jonas continue to accuse Thomasin of being a witch, to the point where even Katherine appears to believe it. Later, Katherine discusses with William that they should give Thomasin to another family, which she overhears. Caleb is bedridden, and the family prays for him. After a while, Caleb begins to writhe and speak some sort of prayer, while Mercy and Jonas also writhe on the ground as if they were possessed. Caleb speaks as though he accepts that he is about to meet God, and he starts to moan passionately before dying with a smile on his face.Thomasin runs outside to cry in despair. William starts to accuse her of evildoing that led to Caleb's death. She angrily defends herself and states that perhaps it was Mercy and Jonas that made a demonic pact with Black Phillip. William locks his three surviving children in the barn with the goats until something happens. Inside the house, Katherine tearfully confesses to William that she had an affair from which Samuel was born.In the barn, the kids see a pale, nude figure drinking the blood of one of the goats. The creature (a witch) turns around and cackles at Mercy and Jonas, causing them to scream. Meanwhile, Katherine appears to find Caleb sitting in a chair, holding Samuel. She approaches them and takes Sam to breastfeed him, but in reality, it is just a crow picking at Katherine's bosom while she laughs gleefully.In the morning, the goats have been slaughtered, and Mercy and Jonas have vanished. Thomasin emerges from the barn and sees Black Phillip charge at William, impaling him with one of his horns. William grabs a hatchet and seems ready to fight, but he then drops it, allowing Black Phillip to charge at him again and knock him into a pile of logs that crushes him. Katherine comes out and continues to accuse Thomasin, blaming her for the deaths of her family members. Katherine starts to choke Thomasin, who continuously tells her mother that she loves her. Thomasin grabs a nearby blade and hacks at Katherine's face until she is dead.Thomasin quietly walks into a barn and dons a cloak. She later encounters Black Phillip and demands to speak to him. After a brief moment of silence, we hear the quiet voice of Phillip. He asks Thomasin what it is that she desires, and tells her what he can promise to give her. Phillip appears to take human form and walks behind Thomasin, telling her to undress. She does, and she follows him into the woods while naked. In the middle of the woods is a coven of witches, all dancing nude around a fire. The witches then start to float in the air. Thomasin embraces the darkness and begins to float high above the trees herself. | gothic, murder, violence, horror, insanity, suspenseful | train | imdb | "The Witch" lives in that territory as a horror movie for cinephiles, not for audiences who love the thrill of a good scare.That's not to say "The Witch" isn't scary; it is.
Writer and director Robert Eggers, who makes his feature film debut, builds his terror with tension drama and mystery, not by creating the pervasive sense that some creepy thing will pop into the frame at any moment.Eggers, a production designer first and foremost, builds his "Puritan nightmare" from the ground up, starting with all the tiniest era-appropriate details in the set, costumes and even dialogue.
Well, until the end, but let's not go there except to say that by then, the realism matters much less.The story follows a Puritan family that leaves its plantation and village over religious differences and goes off to build a home near the edge of the woods.
The story could definitely have gone deeper into distrust and paranoia, but then it might have become too much of a "witch trial" movie.The way the movie ends will draw no shortage of opinions, but without a doubt, Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke have made an and utterly engrossing film that would be just as effective had it just been a period drama instead of a horror film – from a visual standpoint.
They are forced to move to a farm that feels like it is on the edge of the world, as from the opening the woods that line the farm are presented in ominous fashion, almost creating a character that could serve as the scariest element of the film.
Instead of drawing on historical events, though, it draws on historical folklore -- it's the story of witchcraft afflicting a family, such as might have been told at the time.The characters are a very believable, ordinary family, with the sorts of tensions and problems you'd expect from people living a hard and substantially isolated life after being exiled from the local colonial town.
They also have period Calvinist attitudes, and the storytelling doesn't present an outsider's view of this or offer a modern commentary, but instead it just displays these attitudes and tells a story from the characters' standpoint.Their reliance on period folklore means that it doesn't strictly follow modern horror movie tropes, either.
If people from the 17th Century could make a film about their deepest darkest horrors - it would look a lot like this movie!
The Witch engrosses you in the time and place of its setting, it's a family drama, a horror and a folk tale.
I found "The Witch" to be a generally unnerving film, and one which--though I would not place it in the pantheon of scariest flicks I've ever seen--had some moments that I'll not easily forget.The atmosphere Eggers creates alone is enough to wrench serious dread from scenes other directors would be otherwise unable to make even remarkable.
This is not as much about scary moments or jump scare and more about a family coping with a lost child, and the movie trying to build suspense and just make the viewer feel uncomfortable.
Because of this, I can see why some people will see it as really really slow with not much happening.Some PLUSES for me: - Anya Taylor-Joy (the older daughter) is amazing in this movie and I also think Ralph Ineson (the father) did a good job.
- the score is really really good, there are periods of intense silence and periods of creepy music at just the right times to build tension - the cinematography with nice wide shots combined with the score works really well in most momentsFor the MINUSES: - I felt like the other child's acting was pretty bad and over the top and just took me out of the movie in most scenes where they are the focus (thankfully there were not THAT many) - a bit too slow of a pacing during the first half even for my tasteSo, just like I said in the title, KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GETTING INTO.
The tone and imagery of this film crawled inside me and nestled itself in my mind like no other had in a long time.The aspects of the film (lighting, sound, dialog, pacing, composition) created an atmosphere so real I was no longer sitting on my couch watching, but rather living this inherited puritan nightmare.
This was the result of a director who not only painstakingly researched every aspect of colonial life in the 1630s, but who also executed his ideas with striking confidence.Calling this movie scary doesn't due justice to how truly powerful and intense the horror scenes feel.
This is more of a historical psychological thriller than a Hollywood blood and guts horror film.The film is a loving and accurate recreation of Puritan New England in the 1600s with everything from the language to the sets being authentic to the period.
The best part about The Witch, besides the acting, is the dichotomy between drama and what is actually a surprisingly fast paced and accessible horror movie (with few genre clichés.) The film could be looked at as two separate stories heavily intertwined: the supernatural horror of the woods vs the very real terror of violence erupting within the family, and amazingly this is all done seamlessly, missing no beats and never seeming to give up one for the other.
This is how you make a horror film.+Terrifying imagery+Egger's direction+Invested from beginning to end-Sometimes the dialogue is difficult to follow7.6/10.
I could really tell I was watching a film rather than believing the story and characters it involved.This was the type of film which certainly had the possibility of being great but due to choice of actors, choice of director and the unexciting plot it failed miserably..
If you'd like to see a family simply existing, with about 4 minutes worth of witch related (not full blown witch scenes either) content, go see this.Playing Oregon Trail back in the day was scarier and more psychologically thrilling than this movie.
I myself have enjoyed horror movies my entire life, and although this was meant to be more of a suspense building film it missed the mark completely.
I rarely feel compelled to write a review but I'm hoping my 50+ years of watching psychological thrillers/horror flicks will help save someone from wasting their time on this total silliness.
The Witch, following a family upon their move into the wilderness of 1630s New England, is the debut feature film from director Robert Eggers who embeds the project with an essence of horror not often seen.
While many audiences are busy looking for, or even lazily just waiting for, big jumps and stingers for their scares like most modern movies of the genre, they are missing the creepy details that truly push a slow burn like this film into horror.
The forest, already a naturally dangerous place, is left open to become a supernatural place of folklore where any animal you encounter could be something more and the tall trees creep in close to overcome you.It's a masterful choice to shoot this film in more of a full frame aspect ration, which makes its presentation alone feel old and classic, purposefully dated to a time long since experienced.
I watched 20 minutes of this "horror" and decided that this should lead to my first review on IMDb. reason for this is mostly because the trailer actually looks quite cool and the IMDb rating was around 6.5 at the time and this alone would make people spend money on this movie.
I went to see The Witch based on the intriguing previews, plus the high user and critic ratings on IMDb. What did anyone find the least bit redeeming in this wretched film?Based on the previews I was expecting a frightening, exciting, tense movie about, oh I don't know, a witch!?!?
It's been a long time since a film has made me want to walk out in disgust.I give The Witch two stars because of the acting performances.
The actors and actresses were really doing good jobs with their given roles, despite having a limited script and storyline to work with.There was a really good and realistic atmosphere to the movie, and it definitely seemed like it was quite true to the time period in which the movie was set to take place.
This was somewhat of an acquired taste of a movie by the hands of writer and director Robert Eggers, and I believe that having an interest in the time period and particular aspect of American history that "The VVitch" is set to take place in is a definite must to fully enjoy this movie.One thing that puzzled me was the fact that if you have seen the original trailer to the movie, then you have essentially already seen the entire movie.
Being a huge horror fan, I was really looking forward to watching this film, after the great reviews on IMDb by both Critics & Users .......
The movie had nothing to do with horror, and barely had anything to do with a witch, but was little more than an old world family religious drama.
The twins are stolen by some nasty naked witch, and Black Phillip gets loose...goring their father to death.Now, only the mother is left, and she immediately attacks her daughter...ignoring her own godly premonition...turning against the only one who is left...the only one who is truthful, and good.And there is only one thing you can do when you're getting choked to death...This film is very atmospheric, and does a great job of putting you in a position of empathy with Thomasina- who we are, sort of, experiencing events through.But what really stands out, are the performances.
It's not often I get completely duped and screwed by IMDb ratings, but the 6.8 (especially for a horror film) led me to buy this movie before even first watching (save your judgment, I buy movies all the time before watching and due to a decent amount of research and a pretty good intuition with movies, I rarely get burned).
I look for only a few things in horror movies (I'm an avid fan), A: Logical and interesting story B: at least decent acting C: some feelings of being scared, unsettled, disturbed, something....this movie severely lacked in the most important one....C. Where was I supposed to be scared?
One of the most complex and haunting films to emerge within the past decade, writer/director Robert Eggers' "The Witch" is a troubling fable of religion and fanaticism expertly combined with the trappings of a classic horror story of witchcraft and savagery.
that a witch of the woods may be silently stalking the family.The film is Kubrickian in nature, relying on the slow and methodical establishment of character and atmosphere combined with complex metaphors and symbols to create a masterwork of terror and drama.
Speaking of dialogue, I encourage you to utilize the subtitles because you'll only understand half of the Old English verbiage."The Witch" is a mix of family drama, folktale and horror, coming across as a combo of four films: "The Crucible" (1996), "The Village" (2004), "Blood on Satan's Claw" (1971) and the satanic ritual sequence of "The Devil Rides Out" (ake "The Devil's Bride) (1968).
While the movie's admirable in so many ways, including the fact that it's ambiguous enough to be open to interpretation, it's also generally dull and too unpleasant for my tastes (yes, I realize it's SUPPOSED to be 'unpleasant' to a degree since it's a horror flick, but the third act just gets too ugly and leaves a bad taste).
The last scene of a movie is visually quite strong without being showy, but the punchline feels meaningless beyond saying that darkness prevails; again very generic for a horror film.Strong acting and eerie scenery are the additional highlights, but the finished product is neither scary nor memorable..
I urge all of you who are reading this to just give this movie a chance; it will make you think about all sorts of things (religion, film-making, family, 17th century, corns?) while taking you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and scares.
The idea that nature is foreign and hostile to man appeals to our basest instincts.I'm not sure I'd agree with Jay from RedLetterMedia that The Witch is the best film to hit theaters in 2016, but it's definitely the best horror movie to come out for a while.
If it wasn't for my partner clinging onto false hope that the movie would get better or have some crazy ending we would have left early.So slow from start to finish at no point did the film grip me.
The script in my opinion was not the right one for this movie, it just builds up the suspense and makes one feel hyper endlessly without any jump scares and it lacked the element of surprise which you would expect in a horror film.
I know what a horror film should look and sound like, and if this film is rated 7.4/10 on IMDb, and Silent Hill is rated 6.6/10, then you must know that there is a clear issue in this regard and it makes you ask the question, who is really managing the ratings and how do they do it?I hope I have been fair in my judgement regarding this movie as I feel I am only telling the truth about how disappointed I am.Thank you.
If you think you are going to see some terrifying horror movie, you will be extremely disappointed as I was.1 star from me since I was bored out of my mind after being so hyped up to actually see a decent HORROR film in theaters.
I wasn't expecting an in-your-face horror movie...I like films which get to my mind more than shocking me with visuals...but I DID expect a coherent story line.
If someone paid me to watch it again I wouldn't.I honestly believe the good reviews were people who were paid to write them, or paid off critics, I bet they gave out gold and diamonds in the review bags, maybe some hard cash too, threw one heck of a review party because the movie I saw was awful I'd give it a -2 stars because honestly if you turned off all the sound ignored the dialogue and fast forwarded thru the violence and the really bad ending, you *might* have a beautiful and sad sense of what it was like to be a pilgrim in the 17th century..
The low score on this movie and equally horrifying reviews is a great injustice for this exquisite piece of art.The movie takes place in 1630's New England the family gets banished from the plantation and have to fend for themselves in the harsh conditions of this brave new world.The story of this film is nothing new, it's mainly based off of folklore that is told during that era.
The Witch is a historical period horror movie written and directed by Robert Eggers in his directorial debut.
I loved this film and I would recommend any horror and movie fan in general who just wants to see a masterpiece, to watch it now..
So boring and over religious.I usually love historical dramas and horror films but it wasn't interesting in the least or scary, just bizarre.
So fake you can't even understand them half of the time.This was billed as one of the great horror films of the year, yet it is boring crap.No horror, no frights.People are just over-thinking this movie to make it seem interesting.
His performance is probably one of the best aspects of this film, other than the lack of great color variety that truly sets the mood for this film.In terms of "horror" films, this movie does not produce many jump scares, and is instead just disturbing in content, making it comparable to films like The Shining or perhaps Rosemary's Baby.
However I must say the acting was really good and so was the camera work but as a movie it's not a a slow horror movie leading to an amazing pay off instead it's a very boring movie about a family getting upset and doing typical family things around that time.
I know that sounds dumb but the moment I seen the first thing causing the family to start their drama I knew immediately where the film was going and since I knew it was boring the entire time.
Despite the movie title this film had not that much to do with the actual witch.
I have watched a lot of horror movies in my time but.
While The Witch is simply that good as to not suffer in quality on this fault's account - I can't help but feel disappointed, as it really was one good ending (not even great, just good and better than the actual one) from being a Horror masterpiece.In summary?
That's my only complaint."The Witch" (or "The VVitch", if you want to mock the marketing) is a splendidly scary film that should be watched by any horror movie aficionado..
In an era when it seems like horror has little more to contribute, here comes a movie that packs a punch comparable to great modern films like The Babadook.It's an undated time when America is barely colonized.
The next- youngest, a set of twins who playfully run throughout the farm, claim to know stories of 'the witch of the wood.' It's laughed off.When I recall to mind great horror movies, I think of moments that catch you off guard, where you as an audience member are generally frightened for what is about to happen.
The performances he draws out of his small cast (especially the children) are remarkable, and at times this feels like a movie that is already a classic in the horror genre.
The witch is a great horror film.
It's dark and disturbing, just what I like my horror to be.BTW, if someone plans to write a negative review on this film or any other for that matter, please do not say "I want this period of time in my life back". |
tt0086993 | The Bounty | London, 1790. Lieutenant William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) arrives in court, facing charges that his ship, The HMS Bounty, was taken by mutiny. Admiral Hood (Laurence Olivier) and Captain Greetham (Edward Fox) ask him to tell the court his story.Bligh recounts his story. In December 1787, he recruits Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) to bring breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica (and also to circumnavigate the world). John Fryer (Daniel-Day Lewis) is Master of the Ship, so Fletcher would serve as Master's Mate. The ship's bosun is William Cole (Bernard Hill).The Bounty sails from Spithead, England on December 23rd and over dinner in the crew area, seamen Charles Churchill (Liam Neeson) and Matthew Quintal (Neil Morrissey) fight, while Bligh and Fryer eat with Nelson (Simon Chandler) and Doc Huggan (Malcolm Terris). Thomas Heywood (Simon Adams) goes to investigate, but the crew covers the fracas with loud music.As the ship crosses the equator, the crew hazes Heywood while Bligh watches. Bligh shows a mean streak for even the slightest transgression, and seems to enjoy putting the crew through extra efforts.Rounding Cape Horn, the ship is buffeted by strong weather and waves. Fryer argues with Bligh over whether they should turn back; Bligh disagrees, and even though they have to take an alternate route, Bligh expresses his doubts about Fryer in the ship's log. He announces to the crew that Fryer is being replaced by Christian; Fryer is upset.The Bounty arrives in Tahiti on October 26, 1788 after ten months at sea. Bligh barters with King Tynah (Wi Kuki Kaa) for breadfruit. During the time spent waiting for breadfruit to grow, Fletcher falls in love with a native girl, Mauatua (Tevaite Vernette) the daughter of King Tynah, eventually impregnating her. Upset by this turn of events, Bligh seeks to disrupt the relationship. Romanced by the beautiful scenery of Tahiti, Churchill and some of the crew desert the ship, and Heyward is lashed for not reporting it. Bligh tells the crew that shore leave is cancelled. Fletcher refuses to enforce Bligh's discipline.The deserters return to the island, and Doc Huggan is found dead. The deserters are flogged as Fletcher bids farewell to Mauatua. Shortly after, the Bounty sets sail for Jamaica on April 4, 1789. Bligh tries to reconcile with Fletcher, but he is withdrawn. Bligh continues to be harsh on the crew, especially towards Fletcher and his watch. Bligh announces that they will return around Cape Horn to sail to Jamaica. Disagreements lead Fletcher and the crew to plot a mutiny.On the evening of April 28, Fletcher and his group take over the ship in a relatively bloodless battle. Of the 42-man crew, 18 join Fletcher in the mutiny, two remain neutral, and 22 side with Bligh. Fletcher and the mutineers order Bligh, two midshipmen, the surgeon's mate (Ledward), and the ship's clerk and 14 others into one of the ship's lifeboats and they are cast adrift, and Fletcher sails the Bounty back to Tahiti.Upon arrival back in Tahiti, Fletcher is unable to barter with King Tynah, but Mauatua elects to leave with him, so Tynah gives some of his men to help sail the ship. Heyworth stays in Tahiti, as does Churchill. The Bounty leaves Tahiti in September 1789 to sail for an unchartered island for them to settle on and to avoid the Royal Navy.Meanwhile, Bligh and his men sail the open boat 30 nautical miles to Tofua in search of supplies, but are soon forced to flee after attacks by hostile natives result in the death of one of his men, and they are forced to leave without provisions. Bligh decides to skirt other islands like Fiji and head to Timor. Bligh's men are forced to ration food and water, but he maintains order. After a 47-day, 3,000 mile journey in the open rowboat, Bligh and his men reach the Dutch port of Coupang, Timor in Dutch Indonesia... exhausted and barely alive. Bligh reports the mutiny.Fletcher and The Bounty do not fare as well. They have little luck finding a paradise island for them to hide out on, and the men do not respect him. Fletcher decides to try and find Pitcairn Island, mentioned in logs but not specified. On January 15, 1790 they discover Pitcairn Island, which had been misplaced on the Royal Navy's charts. After the decision is made to settle on Pitcairn, livestock and other provisions are removed from the Bounty. To prevent the ship's detection, and anyone's possible escape, Fletcher orders the ship to be burned. The date is January 23, 1790.Back in England, Bligh is exonerated by the court for having anything to do with the cause of the muntiny.Back on Pitcairn, Fletcher and the mutineers watch the Bounty burn in the shallow bay of the island.The disclaimer during the end credits states that 35 years later, only John Adams and his new English-Tahitian mixed race family was found on Pitcairn Island by a passing British warship. The descendents of the HMS Bounty mutaineers continue to live on Pitcairn Island. The fate of Fletcher Christian remains unknown but it is believed that he was killed somtime in 1793 during a civil conflict on Pitcairn Island along with most of the other muntineers with the exception of Adams. | violence, action, cruelty, flashback | train | imdb | The acting (particularly by Hopkins) is superb, and the cinematography and realism are stunning.Unlike some of the previous comments for this film I think it is pretty loyal to the true historical facts of the real mutiny.
An able commander trying to carry out his orders, but let down by those around him.The confrontation between Bligh and Christian in the captain's cabin the day before the mutiny is one of my favourite movie scenes of all time.
I have seen this film many time over the years and i never get bored of watching Sir Anthony Hopkins give a riveting performance in this classic story of life aboard The Bounty and the events that lead to mutiny.
Mel Gibson plays Fletcher Christian who must watch helplessly as his captain(Hopkins) demoralizes his men and drives them ever closer to the brink of mutiny.
The Aussies took another shot at filming the Bounty mutiny in 1933, providing a young Errol Flynn (as Fletcher Christian) with his first movie role.
These earlier movies were based on the books by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall that portrayed the Bounty's commander, William Bligh, as a brutal disciplinarian and the second in command, Fletcher Christian, as a hero.
And those characters are brought to life by an amazingly strong cast - Anthony Hopkins (an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs) as William Bligh, Mel Gibson (an Oscar for directing Braveheart) as Fletcher Christian, Daniel Day-Lewis (an Oscar for My Left Foot) as John Fryer, and Liam Neeson (nominated for an Oscar for Schindler's List) as Churchill.
He seems to work a little too hard at being the tormented soul during the mutiny but it's a good overall performance and does not detract from the story.The Bounty does an especially fine job of showing the Tahitians as real people.
Just look at the list, Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson, Bernard Hill, Daniel Day Lewis, Liam Neeson, Laurence Oliver and even a young Neil Morrissey who puts in a good performance.
For one we have Anthony Hopkins as a caring but ruthless Captain Bligh who is hell bent on his ship sailing around Cape Town or something like that and the shipmen believe that doing it once was bad enough but doing it twice is suicide and that is where the film really kicks off but there are moments of tension between Bligh and Fletcher played by Mel Gibson and that's what makes this film all the more special than its predecessors.
If this film was made today with the same cast then it would not have had the same effect because it would have tried to win over it's audience with it's cast but the likes of Day Lewis, Liam Neeson and Mel Gibson were still unknowns in most countries and it was like an older version of the rat pack as they were the fresh faces coming up in the movies in 80's Hollywood especially for Gibson who just made action in the 80's apart from The Bounty and Gallipoli.
That would also unfortunately include Bligh's second mate Fletcher Christian, played in this version by Mel Gibson.It wasn't Bligh's fault they lingered in Tahiti, the plants had to be mature enough to stand the voyage to Great Britain.
That didn't help his historical reputation a bit.Among the crew of the Bounty you will find Daniel Day-Lewis as John Fryer who Bligh replaced mid voyage with Fletcher Christian and Liam Neeson as one of the mutineers.
Laurence Olivier plays Admiral Hood who led the court of inquiry that cleared Bligh of blame for the mutiny.Still Hopkins and Gibson dominate the film with their skills and talents.
It's much better than 'Mutiny on the Bounty (1962' version by Lewis Milestone with Marlon Brando , Trevor Howard, and Hugh Griffith but inferior to classic 'Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)' by Frank LLoyd with Clark Gable , Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone .The real deeds are the following : In 1787, Captain Bligh was chose to command HMS Bounty on a voyage to Tahiti, where he was to collect breadfruit trees with the object of introducing them to the Caribbean.
Continuing my plan to watch every movie in Mel Gibson's filmography in order, I come to The Bounty (1984)Plot In A Paragraph: A more accurate re telling of the famous mutiny on the bounty featuring Fletcher Christian (Gibson) and Captain William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins)Gibson is OK here, if a little bland at times.
However, I enjoyed this exotic adaptation with its stellar cast.This is the old classic sea fable in which the Bounty's first mate Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny against Captain Bligh because of his cruel behavior and unwise, possibly suicidal decision to sail the ship again around Cape Horn.
The film chronicles the events leading up to the rebellion, the actual mutiny, and the subsequent fate of both sides, as Christian seeks to avoid British naval repercussions and Bligh attempts to ensure the survival of his remaining loyal men to East Timor in their little lifeboat.The movie has a star studded cast, including Lawrence Olivier as Admiral Hood, though I don't recall much of his role here...it's been awhile.
Mel Gibson is a sincere and passionate Fletcher Christian, but Anthony Hopkins is especially brilliant at turning Captain Bligh into a real three dimensional character.
His 3,500+ mile voyage in a small open boat with his loyal crew members has never been bettered.After the slander of the two previous films in the 30's and 60's, this film gives a far more accurate and sympathetic portrayal of Bligh, and Anthony Hopkins is excellent as always..
Furthermore, the depictions of Bligh and Fletcher Christian seem quite balanced.Great performances in the lead roles by Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins.
It includes the mutiny, the voyage of survival by Bligh and his faithful crew members, and the fate of Fletcher Christian and the rest of the mutineersSo, for its historical rendering, "The Bounty" excels.
While the original Academy Award Winner film of 1935 is a story about how tyrannical some men can be, and the first hour of the film of the film is pretty much Captain Bligh punishing his subordinates, the 1984 version is more light in this aspect and twists the story in a very different way."The Bounty" is told in flashbacks from the point of view of Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) telling how things were in the ship and how the mutiny situation took place.
Hopkins portrays Bligh as a friendlier commander who becomes more and more tyrannical after the Bounty gets to Tahiti and then his great friend Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) forms a group of rebel that takes over the boat.
I couldn't help but compare these two films and despite being a more accurate view of the real story I must say that the classic film was more appealing than this one, the adventure moments were fantastic, and the quality of the performances were impeccable while here only Anthony Hopkins display a great performance, the other members of the cast are good (Mel Gibson, Bernard Hill, Edward Fox), some of them are better in other projects (Daniel Day-Lewis, Laurence Olivier, Liam Neeson).Why you should see this movie?
The HMS Bounty, captained by the stern and disciplined Lt. William Bligh (Hopkins) leaves England for Tahiti, with Bligh's friend and newly appointed second-in-command Fletcher Christian (Gibson).
Mel Gibson makes an outstanding Fletcher Christian, and Anthony Hopkins is superb as Captain William Bligh.There's a lot of excellent performances in this film.
Anthony Hopkins portrays William Bligh who in real life was a subordinate of James Cook and later the master of the Bounty upon which the famous mutiny occurred.
Anthony Hopkins portrays William Bligh who in real life was a subordinate of James Cook and later the master of the Bounty upon which the famous mutiny occurred.
The film is filled with faces- Anthony Hopkins plays the Captain, a dashingly young Mel Gibson is Fletcher Christian- key conspirator and other faces such as a young Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson as well as Laurence Olivier.
The film is filled with faces- Anthony Hopkins plays the Captain, a dashingly young Mel Gibson is Fletcher Christian- key conspirator and other faces such as a young Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson as well as Laurence Olivier.
This takes a different slant on the usual take on the mutiny making Bligh, (an excellent Anthony Hopkins), if not exactly the hero, considerably less of a villain than he is usually painted while Christian, (Mel Gibson), is weak and dissolute with his own, selfish motives for rebelling.
Here, Mel Gibson & Anthony Hopkins play friends turned bitter enemies Fletcher Christian and Captain Bligh, who sail the Bounty on a trading mission to Tahiti, where most of the crew are seduced by this paradise of great weather, abundant food, water...and beautiful native women.
This movie is really great and this movie is the best movie i have seen in the last month and a half.The great actor Anthony Hopkins does a really great job at acting as Lieutenant William Bligh in this movie and this is one of his best movies he has ever been in.There are a lot of other great actors in this movie like Mel Gibson,Daniel Day-Lewis from the great movie Gangs Of New York,Bernard Hill and i was surprised to find Liam Neeson from the good movies DarkMan and BatMan Begins stars in this movie.Over all this movie is really great and if this movie is ever on t.v u should watch it.And my rating for this movie is 8 out of 10..
This 1984 version of Mutiny on the Bounty has an impressive cast featuring Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson and others.
Due to reasons that become clear throughout the course of the film, the episode has remained one of the most documented and talked about in maritime history and the movie does well to live up to legend.Most time is spent examining the relationship between Lieutenant William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) and Masters Mate Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) who had been friends for many years before setting sail, but whose friendship becomes tested after a clash of interests while harboured in Tahiti.
roger donaldson and Arthur Ibbetson truely captured the moment, Artur has always been a great photograhic genius, with credits like willy wonker, and Little Lord Fauntleroy being child favorites of mine, and in need of great photographic angles , with the bounty he found that special moment with each scene...Mel Gibson after completing films like MAD MAX, Galipoli made his American film debut with this great movie, the New Zealand director has made a movie which will never be beat...If you are looking for a movie with a wonderful story great acting and breathtaking scenery with beautiful music, this is the movie for you.
Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson carry the main roles but look for outstanding work by future stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson (Day-Lewis would've been an outstanding choice to play Fletcher Christian).
His portrayal of Bligh is far closer to historical truth---Bligh actually punished his crew very little in comparison to other ship's captains of the time and he was able to get the Bounty to Tahiti after 27,000 miles of sailing having lost only a single man en route.
The story focuses on the tension that builds between Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) and Captain Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) - who start out as friends and become murderous enemies.
Gibson is also good as Fletcher Christian, showing him not as some kind of rebel party-animal who defied Bligh's authority, but as someone truly torn between serving his superior officer or doing what he feels is best for the rest of the crew.No one is 100% sure of all the details of this historical incident, but it's evident that those involved with the writing and production of this film did their research.
Of all the Bounty films perhaps this one reflects the most accurate description of what happened between these two friends, and later, rivals.Bligh in earlier films had always been seen as overly sadistic & vicious, but in this film he is not quite the dictator as previously seen, and perhaps in reality should have been deemed a misunderstood hero rather than a bullying cad.Hopkins gives a very powerful & rounded characterisation of the restless Bligh, a man where honour for his King & country prevails over all else, including the wellbeing of his men.Mel Gibson's Fletcher Christian is perhaps the weak link in the film.
It's a pity he didn't give Fox or Olivier enough to do, since their contribution is reduced to redundant cameos when one felt they could have offered a far more richer story given more interesting characters.The late Arthur Ibbetson's cinematography should not be overlooked here either, for he really does do a good job with the camera and not just for framing the picturesque islands either.One final mention should also go to the wonderfully haunting soundtrack by Vangelis especially the main title which when played from CD with the lights dimmed you can visualise The Bounty coming into dock on some dusky Island full of natives & pretty maidens.Overall then a film that visually impresses and perhaps tells us more about the real Bligh than the earlier versions.
First off, The Bounty is historical film making at its finest, and many comments justly pay tribute to the cast and particularly to Anthony Hopkins for fleshing out the very human complexities of Lt. William Bligh.The Royal Navy's most infamous captain was not a monster, after all, but a somewhat ambitious officer sent on a very difficult mission with a small ship and no Royal Marines to maintain discipline.
Conversely, the real-life Fletcher Christian was a volatile man who may have acted upon impulse when leading the mutiny.Instead of the simplistic good-evil storyline of earlier Bounty films, 1984's version presents the meaty conflict between two complex men placed in extraordinary circumstances.
Hopkins is an excellent Captain Bligh and in my opinion Gibson is a better Fletcher Christian than Clark Gable.
Mel Gibson's acting is not at the same level as Clark Gable in 1935 version while Hopkins is as usual simply the best giving the real bad image of Captain Bligh.
It's almost as if the film takes you back in time to view the actual events.This version also gives the most balanced and positive portrayal of the infamous Captain Bligh, played by Anthony Hopkins to great effect.
There's no doubt that it pales in comparison with 1935's "Mutiny On The Bounty," and although I thought they both put on very good performances, when I think of Bligh and Christian I will still see Charles Laughton and Clark Gable rather than Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.
This third major film version of "Mutiny On The Bounty" stars Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh.
A hundred years later, their population would be reduced by 80% by the white man's diseases, it was a French colony, Christian missionaries has done their work, and it was like any other port-of-call in the Pacific.To get back to the film itself: Anthony Hopkins is good as Bligh; he's a talented actor.
Movie lovers know Captain Bligh as evil incarnate, so cruel and horrible that his crew, led by Fletcher Christian, mutinied - but the story is more complex than that.The film begins in London, 1790 with Lieutenant William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) in court, before Admiral Hood (Laurence Olivier) and Captain Greetham (Edward Fox) to explain why his ship, the HMS Bounty, was taken from him by mutiny.
The story unfolds, with Bligh recounting how he brought his good friend, Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) along as Master Mate on the voyage to secure breadfruit from Tahiti.
Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins,Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis all in a film together has the makings of an epic...
The story follows Lieutenant William Bligh --played by Anthony Hopkins -- who commands a British ship to the island of Tahiti, seeking to trade goods.
Tension begins to boil furiously between Bligh and Christian all the way to the film's climax, when Christian leads the men to an act of mutiny, when they take over the ship...The Bounty leads an all star cast on an adventure across the sea, well worth witnessing.
Long, moody, self conscious film based on the actual historical event of the allegedly brutal sea captain Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) being over thrown by friend and first Mate Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson) and the crew.
However, one cannot ignore the magnitude of the actors that are in this film: Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis, and the great Laurence Olivier.
They became enemies in Paradise." This is the third film version of the book by Richard Hough about the true story of the HMS The Bounty, which was the scene of a large mutiny by it's crew against the harsh discipline conducted by their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh.
This version from Australian director Roger Donaldson, stars Anthony Hopkins in the lead role as Bligh, and Mel Gibson, back in the day when he was virtually unknown, with the only major films under his belt being "Mad Max" and "Gallipoli", as Fletcher Christian, the man who leads the mutiny.
While at sea, the crew finally snap, and take over the ship, sending Bligh and the other officers adrift in the life boat, while they set sail back to Tahiti..."The Bounty" is a superb film with an outstanding performance from the brilliant Anthony Hopkins ("The Elephant Man", "A Bridge Too Far") as William Bligh.
It's no surprise the story of the mutiny on the Bounty has been adapted to screen several times: it has the potential to be both a fascinating adventure and a compelling psychological drama.Not here, though.The 1935 film with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton is still enjoyable, but I liked the idea of a more morally complex version where Bligh was not a one-dimensional monster and the mutineers not idealized heroes (I haven't watched the Brando-Howard movie yet).
He was Lieutenant William Bligh and was very convincing.Mel Gibson was Fletcher Christian, Master's Mate, and the cast included young versions of such present stars as Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson. |
tt2649264 | Untitled Murder in Paris Project | Misfits Slate and Kelly are wannabe police officers who both get put on desk duty - Slate for being over-zealous with her weapon; Kelly for being too scared to pick his up. The deciding moment happens between the two of them, so each blames the other for their demotion.Slate has taken a leave of absence from the force after her girlfriend Carly is killed in a hold up while they are on vacation in the City of Lights. Unable to move on, Slate lurks around Paris crime scenes, desperate to get a lead on who the murderer might be.Kelly is in Paris, on loan from the LAPD, to install his newly designed software program for tracking international criminals.When drag queens start showing up dead and the police are unable to infiltrate the community to find the killer, Slate is on the case, sure that this is a crime she has a chance of solving and maybe in the process, solving her girlfriend's murder. Unbeknownst to her, Kelly has been asked to act as a beard to help a not so feminine Paris detective (Said Taghmaoiu) go undercover and gain acceptance into the drag club. When Kelly is unceremoniously dumped once his usefulness has passed, he decides to do a little investigating on his own. Both on the same track, Slate and Kelly are literally thrown together and against Slate's better judgment, she agrees to team up with him.Slate plans for Kelly to go undercover as a performer and ferret out more intel. Much to her chagrin, he turns out to be a lousy drag queen, forcing Slate to take the role. Frustrated, she is about to drop his ass, when he proves his usefulness by hacking into secure files to dig up information on a suspect. Both realize they need each other to actually succeed. Despite a bumbling beginning, an embarrassing faux pas that includes beating up an innocent person, threats from the Commissaire (Thierry Lhermitte) that they will be arrested for interfering with a police investigation, and a risky stake out, they catch the killer or be killed themselves. | murder | train | imdb | null |
tt2112287 | Thale | Two men are in plastic biohazard-type suits working as a cleaning crew on a crime scene. One of the men, Elvis, is vomiting continuously in a bucket; and you get a sense that he is inexperienced at this type of work. The second man, Leo, is calmly using handfuls of paper towels to mop up a large pool of congealed blood on the floor. Leo's cell phone rings and Elvis answers the phone for Leo and holds the phone to Leo's ear to speak as Leo still has the bloody rubber gloves on. Leo answers the phone, "no shit cleaning service, Leo speaking." As he is listening to the details of their next cleaning job, Elvis makes the mistake of glancing over at the bloody crime scene for just a second and immediately doubles over vomiting again, dropping Leo's cell phone in the bloody mess in the process. Leo calmly kneels down and bends his ear down next to the phone on the floor to finish receiving the address to the next job. He finishes speaking and announces to Elvis, "lunchtime" Elvis says, "great!" Elvis is standing on the shore of a lake in a heavily wooded area. The wind is blowing and he's swaying slightly in the breeze with his eyes closed. Leo walks up and tells him that it's an elderly man they are about to clean up. (You see a cabin in the background, they are at their next job already.) Leo says that the police only found half of the body as they are in a remote area with wild animals around and the animals have scattered the remains. Elvis continues swaying with his eyes closed, but answers, "so we have to find the other half." Leo gives his usual nonchalant shrug, he's obviously not surprised by the details of this kind of work. He asks Elvis what he is doing, Elvis says he's swaying in the breeze. Leo asks why and Elvis says, "why not?" Leo closes his eyes and sways also. He tells Elvis that they have to tear up the outhouse floor to recover all of the human remains that have been scattered around. Elvis is inside the outhouse throwing assorted clutter out, in order to make room to start removing the outhouse floor. | flashback | train | imdb | Thale is visually stunning, interesting in mythology and well - played movie.
Yes, the story is poor and screenplay has some holes, design of "hurdles" is quite upsetting (the CGI is done well, but they look really strange), but this has an mysterious atmosphere, supplemented by shots of beautiful nature and melancholic music.
Short footage is good move how to cover few deficiencies of screenplay, but maybe, it should have been 10 minutes longer...Over an above, the character of Thale was played very suggestively by beautiful Silje Reinåmo, and the characters of "two friends" are quite nice.
Thale is strange fantasy, but it has also some aspects of art movie (the way the shots are stylized, minimalistic acting, static camera, few actors...).I'm certainly sure, that Thale will be forgotten, and that's really pity.
It is because this movie is very unconventional, so it will barely engage the attention of masses, or at least some group of people - and maybe because you can't classify Thale into some universal film genre.
In addition, the low budget is obvious - but I don't think it is an negative in here.Would I recommend this movie to someone?
Namely, if you expect much of horror/gore and action - forget it and better don't watch it.
But if you like shots of beautiful nature accompanied by suggestive music, slow storyline, and you like the impressions more than action, maybe you will enjoy the Thale, as I did..
After seeing the first teaser of Thale I wasn't expecting very much of this Norwegian low budget film which is a mix of the genres crime, drama, gore and adventure.
'Thale' is based on a mythical character in Norwegian folklore called 'Huldra'.
It's a long time since I've seen such a start of a film involving blood, stiff body and puking.
But the film soon changes more into a thriller when the two men find i cellar looking like a serial killers office.
Then they discover Thale...It's easy to see that this film is low budget, but there's much talent here.
Silje Reinåmo (Thale) is very good, and the CGI is handled well.
If you have read anything about the film, including the title of this review, or have seen any trailer, then you already know what the story is about.
It is hardly a horror movie and I could only place it in the fantasy genre.The plot revolves around huldra, seductive creatures from Nordic folklore that seem to be very beautiful women, but are actually forest creatures.
After all, there are only four actors in total and a voice.Even if the lead character is supposedly the one driving the story, the movie being seen from his perspective, the one that really made the film feel real and interesting was, in acting and role, his friend, interpreted by Jon Sigve Skard.
A phlegmatic character, he underlines the weirdness of the situation by acting totally cool, creating the appropriate contrast.Over all it was a nice film, although the entirety of it was pretty much about the same thing and something that was already obvious from the beginning.
Made on a shoe string budget by rising Norwegian director Aleksander Nordaas, the film explores the huldra a mythical being from Nordic folklore.
Without giving anything away I will just say that the acting, especially that of the very beautiful Silje Reinåmo in the title role, was excellent for such a low budget picture.
The CGI and cinematography in the movie also impressed offering another breathtaking view of the Norwegian countryside.
This said Thale is an excellent example of what an imaginative director can fulfill within the confines of a small budget..
Thale is really a great movie.
This could easily have been maudlin or even silly but the two male leads manage to make you believe through understatement.Don't expect to be jumping out of your seat but welcome the thoughts this movie conjures up.Aleksander Nordaas is a force to be reckoned with.
lots of sci-fi,s start slow,then pick up speed.This Nordic thriller starts off with a bang,and actually gets better.Being into folklore from anywhere,i had heard of this film,and after a bit of a wait,i got to check it out.I was very pleased.As many people here in the states may remember, a year ,or so ago,a movie sorta like this came out.Not even close.This story is a good one,with great acting,interesting plot,and fx.
i love a good sci-fi,and on that note,i was happy,but this story is good,simple to follow,gripping,and well told(a very good "tail" )-all in all ,a solid 6-pop some corn,grab a cold drink,and just watch.Enjoy !.
From this unappetizing scene, we get the feeling that Thale will be a movie about what these guys do for a living.
Thale is an odd, mysterious and somewhat beguiling supernatural thriller from Norway that is built on mood and atmosphere and suspense made up of things that we learn along the way.
It is a relief to find a movie this quiet and moody when so many thrillers fall back on the standard of jack-in-the-box terror.In a series of creepy images banded with effectively melancholy music, the next scene reveals quick-cut elements that we only understand later.
Leo and Elvis find that their next job is to clean up a crime scene that reminds us, uncomfortably, of Buffalo Bill's lair in The Silence of the Lambs.
She doesn't speak, but an old tape recorder reveals that her name is Thale (Silje Reinåmo).
It is the kind of movie where the thrills come from what the characters discover for themselves.
Holed up in that room with Thale, something else manifests itself, something else that isn't suppose to exist.What is even more interesting is what we learn about Elvis and Leo along the way.
It is curious to see a supernatural thriller like this that takes a few seconds to give its characters a bit of dimension.
They aren't fully-realizes souls but they have lives that we can imagine exist apart from their predicament.Having recently sat through the halfwit (not to mention boring) nonsense of Fede Alvarez's remake of Evil Dead, this movie comes as a breath of fresh air.
While it isn't a perfect film, Thale exudes a measure of tension and grounds its story in reality before revealing the supernatural forces that are present.
This is the kind of movie that builds slowly, giving us time to discover things.
It moves slowly and has long passages where we wait for something to happen, but given the sad state of most other films in this genre, we welcome the chance to discover things for ourselves.***1/2 (of four).
I believe that Thale had roughly one third of Troll Hunters budget, yet its very beautiful.
I've seen a lot of low budget movies but this one would have made a great movie if it had more funds.
The storyline of the movie is pretty good but a bit lost also .
The author did a great job in telling the huldra's story and why she was like she was but the narration from the tapes and of her description is actually wrong.
And now having seen it, I must say that I was impressed.The movie isn't extraordinary in any way, as it was limited by budget and also limited to a very small aspect of a potentially greater storyline.
But still, the movie was entertaining and good fun to watch.Now, when I say that I was impressed, I mean by the performances put on by Silje Reinåmo (playing Thale), Erlend Nervold (playing Elvis) and especially Jon Sigve Skard (playing Leo).
They did really good jobs with their characters and carried the movie so well.I believe that you have to really be accustomed to Norwegian folklore and legends to really get the storyline of this movie.
And one thing that I was puzzled about was why Thale was so different from the other Hulda people in the forest.
Gives you something to think about.The story in "Thale" is about Leo and Elvis who are out deep in the forest on a cleaning job on a very messy site, when they discover a hidden entrance to a basement.
Leo and Elvis find themselves wrapped up in some mysterious events as they start to find out who or what Thale really is.This movie came out of nowhere and proved to be good fun to watch.
This movie didn't get a 10 because, being low-budget, the CGI wasn't perfect.
The current era favors fast-paced films full of action, quick changes of scene, and tight plots that jump from moment to moment.
A happy ending for Leo and it's up to you if thale has something to do with it or not.
If you enjoy dark fantasy or brooding and atmospheric horror films, then this supernatural tale will be well worth your time.
Leo and Elvis may not be the most engaging characters, but they are believable, and you don't find yourself cheering for their demise as so often in horror flicks in which the protagonists are anything but worth your empathy and time.
Thale steals the show--Silje Reinåmo owns her role as a mysterious woman held captive; she conveys more by not uttering a word than any of the other characters do--and I doubt that the English subtitles did the dialog much injustice.
The beginning and end do drag on at times, as is the case with many films that would be excellent at 45-50 minutes but feel the need to plod on for 90 minutes or more.
But Thale proves the old Scandinavians are no slouch when it comes to horror movies either...
Extremely well paced fantasy/horror/drama film....
1st watched 9/1/2013 – 7 out of 10(Dir-Aleksander Nordaas): Extremely well paced fantasy/horror/drama film about a couple of clean-up guys from murder scenes who discover a girl alive in a basement dwelling who may be something other than just a girl.
This movie does a great job of revealing bits and pieces of the story as it goes along until you finally understand everything at the very end.
The main character(found in the basement), Thale, is one of a few of her kind – but she was kept away from the others by a slightly-abusive but mostly fatherly scientist in hopes of keeping her away from the scarier characteristics(like eating people) of the rest of the Tailed-group.
This movie mixes many different genre's but keeps the main focus on the story when it could have become overly filled with special effects, gore or sex appeal(which would have happened if it was American made).
The movie focuses primarily of where Thale came from, how she became who she is, and where she is going in the end.
Thale is an low budget adventure film, that takes place in Norway.
and as far as the music goes, i must say that it is one of the better soundtracks in Norwegian film history.
but as I said, it is an low budget film.
So i would recommend to see this movie, if you are tired of the same old horror or adventure films.
This is not a teen movie, this is a good example for a new story film.
if you expect a horror slasher film, you will be disappointed.
There are some flaws after the initial realization of what's happening, but the overall mood of the film is consistent and it's surely not something you have witnessed in many movies.
Great character!I liked this so much I got my husband to watch it with me.
Proof that filmmakers don't need blockbuster budgets to create believable and suspenseful sci-fi/fantasy films.
The pacing was perfect, the dialog very natural, and the story intriguing (as well as easy to buy into even without knowing the folklore behind the mystery).
I highly recommend this movie--it harks back to the best of traditional story telling in film..
Out of the blue, Leo and Elvis are captured by a group of paramilitary soldiers and their leader wants to know where Thale is.
What will happen to Thales?"Thale" is an eerie Norwegian supernatural film.
Unfortunately the story is too short and consequently the plot is developed in too slow pace with a boring narrative.
I guess with a bigger budget Thale could have been better but unfortunately at this moment it's just not good enough to be remembered.
Nothing wrong with that genre, but this Nordic tale is just too slow and lacks a bigger budget.
The cast isn't bad, it's just the story that is a bit slow.
I caught myself several times trying to stay awake and that would not have happened if the story was better, with a bit more action.
I had higher hopes for this Norwegian movie and so I'm left disappointed..
The characters, apart from Thale, speak and move at a snail's pace adding to the shear frustration felt in trying to follow the story.
Maybe the CGI for the spider women here is a lot lower budget and tackier looking than it would be for a Harry Potter movie, but having Kaja Fjellberg on the cello with Liv Ulvik doing vocals sort of makes up for it.
This sort of reminded me of a Canadian zombie movie I saw recently called something like GROUND ZERO, in which an amoral crime scene cleaning crew is hired to tidy up what turns out to be Patient Zero in World War Z.
As was the case with the Canadian movie, the THALE writing staff could not come up with a plausible explanation as to what got the ball rolling here, so they dispense with the origin story and open in the middle of something never fully explained.
Great movie, makes the most of a low budget..
Just got finished watching the low budget Norwegian film "Thale".
It's a bit like Troll Hunter in a way, in that it's based on some folk tales, and shot very well for how low budget it is.
Based on a popular norse legend about a type of mermaid of the forests, "Thale" is, unfortunately, a little short of his enormous potential, because I believe that this folklore legend had the potential to yield a little more power and suspense to this movie, nevertheless, this fantasy product of Aleksander Nordaas is pretty good.
He managed to create, with a limited budget, a slightly curious film that benefits a lot from the strong performances of the small but talented cast.
The two main male actors, Erlend Nervold and Jon Sigve Skard, have to great performance, but the most mesmerizing performance in this movie belongs to one of the most promising stars of nordic cinema, Silje Reinåmo, which, without speeches or many screen time, was able to give her curious character a lot of energy and enigma.
Unfortunately, Thale it is not given much space or time to grow and shine within a median plot that, apart from being practically free of active or violent sequences, unfolds, virtually in its entirety, within a basement, where Leo and Elvis try to learn more about Thale and realize what secrets and dangers hide behind this beautiful creature.
The interactions between the three actors are a bit limited and, at the end of the film, we get the feeling that we didn't get to know very well the mysterious Thale or their violent "sisters" but, at least, we are given an good characterization of these mythological creatures that begin and end up a mystery to all of us, even though the movie give us a small explanation of its origin and some glimpses of their strength and real nature.
It's true that the minimalist plot of "Thale" doesn't stand out the full potential of the legend that is in the core of the film, but it can't be said that this movie is a weak fiction/fantasy product, because it manages to entertain the audience and emerge us in a fantastic and tense world with some surprises.
It's true that the plot should have focused a little more on Thale and should have also instilled a bit of suspense and action to this production but, taking into account the limitations and the essence of the film, I consider this "Thale" a reasonable cinematic product..
I really didn't like this movie.
On the other hand, the FX are quite good for a shoestring budget and the photography and lighting are quite well done.The movie starts with an interesting gory tone.
And it has some classic elements of suspense, horror and fiction movies.
Different kind of horror movie.
I think this is very different kind of horror movie than others what I have see.
I like how the plot goes, you get small pieces all the time why things happen like they do.Movie could be a little longer, maybe even 10 to 15min.
More like this horror movies..
This is an odd little (and quite short – 76 minutes) Norwegian fantasy horror film.
A simple plot and a small cast lend a quaint feel to the movie.Two men discover a woman (Thale) in the basement of a place they are cleaning up, beyond that they try to figure out who or what Thale is, leading to a mysterious back story.There is some strange and dark humour thrown into the mix and given the relative length of the feature, not much happens but the plot development combined with a rather alluring performance from Silje Reinåmo make for an interesting watch.Inoffensive and quirky Norwegian film in a similar style to Trolljegeren (2010).
Definitely worth a watch if you want something a little bit different to the normal Hollywood fare..
While I was watching this movie, I had a feeling of 5-7 stars, but when it ended - having introduced several plot-lines but neglecting to even explore any of them - it plummeted to a 3.Spoilers below:The two main characters had the most developed backgrounds - but even theirs was threadbare. |
tt0433362 | Daybreakers | 10 years after the Outbreak (2019).A view of the world during daylight shows the world to be empty. Focus on a newspaper says that a German blood substitute failed. During night, the desolate city is shown to be alive and booming. This is the world of the vampires.On a television two vampires are debating the current situation which has enveloped their society: a shortage of blood. A vagrant vampire snarls at a wealthy one and is quickly subdued by the police.Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) drives to work at Bromley Marks Corp. He looks at his reflection in the mirror, but it isnt there. He goes to a train station and waits for train. Underneath, two feral vampires, sub-siders, are fighting. They are winged monsters with no trace of human characteristics. Edward goes to work. He walks into a lab where humans are chained to harvesters for blood extraction. At a personnel meeting, a death sentenced prisoner was deprived of blood and the corporation knows that with the large blood shortage sub-siders will become more common. Since only 5% of the human population survived the outbreak to become vampires, Edward realizes that the corporation he works for has actively discovered what will be the extinction of the human race in its recognizable form. Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) listens intently and then calls Edward to meet in private.Charles and Edward have blood coffee in private. Charles tells Edward that in 2008 he contracted cancer and was then forced to tell his daughter, Alison, that he was dying. She was devastated and Charles prayed for a miracle. He then became a vampire and immortal and was happy. But Alison saw vampirism as a disease and she ran from Charles, rejecting the life of vampirism. Charles notices that Edward doesn't drink his coffee and asks if he pities the humans. Charles wants Edward to test a blood substitute in order to save the human race.Edward's lab partner was testing the substitute on animals, and tells Edward that it works. It's time for testing on vampires. Unfortunately, the situation in the outside world is deteriorating. The need for blood has driven society to crime and it's only getting worse. They test the substitute on a vampire patient. His temperature increases quickly and then stabilizes as the substitute is added. He then starts vomiting as boils appear all over his body. The Vampire convulses and the boil disappears before he explodes. Edward looks on in grave horror.He drives home while listening to the news. He is able to see his ear in the mirror for a moment, which shocks him. He hits another car and the two spin off and crash. He goes over to the other car and the driver shoots him through the wrist with a crossbow. He realizes that they are human. Once sirens appear, he hastily tells them to get in his car. He puts the daytime protection mode on his car so that the police can't look inside. He directs the police to the opposite direction and then the humans get out of his car. They thank him and he asks if they are ok. They leave and wish him a happy birthday.Back at Bromley's residential area, Edward enters his apartment and listens to advertisements. Vampires travel through the city via the SubWalk system. His door opens and his friend Frank visits. He has been gone for months and gives Edward a bottle of human blood as a birthday present. It's his 10th 35th Birthday. Edward doesn't want to drink the blood and Frank gets upset. Frank hunts humans for their government. Edward tells Frank that the substitute will mean the end of human hunting. He pours the blood down the sink and Frank throws the bloodless bottle against the wall. A feral vampire enters the house to lick the blood and the brothers are shocked. Frank tries to attack it but the vampire just starts drinking before throwing Frankie away. Edward fights the feral vampire with a chair. The two attempt to stake it with a kitchen knife. Frankie decapitates it and the two brothers call the police.The Police tell Edward to update his security. The forensics officer cuts off the ring finger of the subsider's corpse and sees a wedding ring. Together forever Lily and Carl. Edward tells the police he knew Carl, a gardener, and had seen him two weeks prior. Carl had hit hard times and started feeding on himself, which turned him into a sub-sider.During the day, Edward's back door opens and his security system tells him that someone has entered the premises. He cautiously walks around and turns on the light to see the female leader of the humans, Audrey, pointing a crossbow at his heart. Audrey tells him that there is a cure for vampirism and gives him a map to a meeting place. She then leaves since she knows she can trust him. He walks upstairs and sees Frankie was listening. Frankie looks conflicted but doesn't press the matter.Bromley Marks is encountering public backlash for not being able to handle the blood shortage. Edward visits and asks Charles if the blood substitute would put a permanent end to human hunting. Charles says that there will be time for the human race to repopulate and tells him that there will always be people who want to pay more for the real thing. Edward asks how Charles would feel about someone hunting Alice.During the day, at noon, Edward drives over to the meeting area and stops his car in front of Audrey. She tells him that He is waiting for Edward. Edward drives to the tree and puts on a hat and glasses before debating whether to step outside. He steps out into the shade and avoids the sunlight so that he doesn't burst into flames. He sees another car and approaches it cautiously. He meets Elvis (Willem Dafoe) sitting under the tree. Elvis is carrying a crossbow and they discuss their common interest: a future for the human race.As the two talk, Frankie, who is covered in black riot gear, attacks Aubrey. Elvis tells Edward that he was a vampire once but not anymore. He shows Edward his bite marks and then makes Edward feel his beating heart. Aubrey is then marched out and a stand off ensues between Edward, Elvis and Frankie. Frankie is distracted by the sound of his reinforcements and Aubrey knocks him out. The trio pile into Edward's car and drive away with reinforcements in pursuit, firing bullets into the car. Elvis takes over and drives through a hole in the windshield while they keep Edward away from the rays of light. As more and more armored vans appear, Elvis takes a gamble and drives over a destroyed bridge. The tanks follow, only to crash and explode.Elvis is pissed that his car got destroyed and drives the trio to a hideout in the desert. He then explains that he was never good with science but tells him how he discovered the cure for vampirism. He was driving during the daylight for the thrill of it and ended up crashing due to lack of blood. He lost control and crashed. He was thrown out of the car and exposed to daylight, which set him on fire. He then fell into the water and was dowsed with water. When he surfaced, he was burned but cured thanks to the sunlight. Edward is skeptical, but Elvis insists that it is true.At Bromley Marks, Charles calls Frankie in for a meeting. He introduces himself and congratulates Frankie for reporting his brother. Charles requests that Frankie hunt down and turn his daughter Alice (Isabel Lucas) into a vampire so that he can be with her forever.Aubrey asks Edward about the last time he fed since she noticed that Edward was distracted and out of focus. She cuts her hand and pours blood into a cup and forces him to drink it. They arrive at the human shelter and Edward isn't very comfortable. It becomes clear that Edward wants to become human again as he admires the human shelter and its inhabitants. They are in the cellar of an old vineyard. Elvis brings Edward to a vampire politician who wants to rebuild the human race. They want to bring humans back in a big way, but know that Charles would exploit the cure to farm more humans.As the price of blood increases, the vampires become more and more desperate for blood. Vampires can only get 5% blood in coffee. A man tries to steal some and they attack the blood stand. Policemen arrive and attack the rioters until they are all subdued.Edward asks Elvis about how it felt to transform. Elvis tells him that the sunlight deep fried him and electrocuted his heart into restarting. Edward realizes that if blood is separated and exposed, nothing happens. The body can only transform back to human form if exposed in a specific manner. Edward and Aubrey talk about his condition and Edward tells her that he forgets what it is like to be human. He tells her that a part of him is afraid to die. Frankie betrayed Edward and turned him into a vampire. He then sees a fermentation tank and realizes that it is air tight. Using the tank, he can create a control burn which will keep vampires from burning to a crisp.Alison and a human driver called Jarvis drive toward the vineyard with a large amount of humans in caravans. Their tires pop and the caravan is forced to stop. They turn on their UV lights and draw guns. Vampire Hunters start shooting tranquilizer darts at all of the humans until they are all incapacitated. Jarvis gets one in the heart with an arrow and the vampires explode upon staking. However, after a little while, all the humans have been knocked out. Alison sends out a distress call before they tranquillize her. Frankie activates a trace on the radio. The vampire Senator gives the humans a new place to hide, but Edward is intent upon testing the experiment to see if he can become human. Elvis decides to stay behind with Edward.At Bromley Marks, Alice comes to in the lab. Charles arrives and talks to her. She begs for her friend's safety. Charles tells her that she is so beautiful and grew up so much. He hugs her and tells her that she's safe but that it is too late for her friends. He asks her to join him before realizing that she stabbed him in the gut. She tries to take the elevator but Frankie knocks her out.As it draws closer to Noon, Edward prepares to test the fermentation vat and become human. Aubrey touches him and he tells her that she feels warm. As he prepares the fermentation vat, tanks approach the vineyard ready to capture the trio. Elvis opens the tank and Edward bursts into flames. The fire goes out when the tank becomes airtight. Edward heals but isn't cure. They try again, testing his heartbeat with an EKG monitor. Edward exposes himself completely and revives as a human. The Vampire hunters arrive soon after but do not find the trio.Frankie and Charles talk with one another. He sends Frankie to Alison and he turns her into a vampire after telling her that being a vampire is true freedom. He feeds on her then leaves her to turn on the ground.Edward walks out into the daylight for the first time in ten years. Elvis gets his car from the garage and it becomes clear that the group intend to go to the Senators. They drive to his cabin only to find everyone has been rounded up or killed and the Senator has been staked. Edward tells Aubrey that he can save them and decides to bring them to his lab partner, Chris.Charles visits Alice, who refuses to drink her blood ratios. Instead she feeds on herself. She tries to force him to drink her blood, but Charles refuses in disgust. She is slowly losing her grip on humanity and begins to turn into a sub-sider.As the blood thins, the issue becomes not the trouble in finding blood, but the rise of the subsiders. Vampire policemen try to round up and imprison the people who can become subsiders. The imprisoned are shown half transformed and being rounded up like slaves. The untransformed vampires are disgusted and afraid that they will soon all become like the sub-siders. The sub-siders are thrown into the sun and burned to a crisp. Without a reprieve from sunlight they turn to dust. Alison melts away to nothing as the vampires look on. Frankie becomes disillusioned with this lifestyle and decides to help his brother.Chris discovers a blood substitute and goes home to celebrate. He arrives and sees Edward, Elvis and Aubrey in his living room. He realizes that Edward is human and shocked. Edward tells him that what they have is a chance to change everything back to the way it was. Chris is shocked by this and asks how Edward was cured. Edward is about to answer when the phone rings. Chris doesnt pick up immediately but does upon Elvis's prompting. He claims its his ex-wife and goes into another room. Instead of wanting a cure, Chris wants his substitute to be the salvation of the future. Vampires storm the building and capture Aubrey. Edward and Elvis fight back and escape through a backdoor. They enter the SubWalk and end up followed by Frankie, who saves them from a sub-sider.Frankie tells Edward that when he turned him, he did so to save his life since he knew the humans would be hunted for food. Frankie wants to help Edward, but his need for blood drives him to feed on Elvis. However, once he does, he changes back to human form. Edward was shocked that the blood turned Frankie back and realizes that it cured blood turns vampires human as well.Edward returns to Bromley Marks and sets off all of their sensors in his attempt to get to Aubrey. She is captive in a chair with Charles, bleeding from her wrists to fill his cup. Edward is brought in forced to listen to Charles. He tells Charles that he doesn't want to die. He claims that he never realized that being a vampire was the key to living forever. He tells Charles that he needs to turn him and Aubrey in order for Edward to give him the method of turning back to human. Charles tells him that they don't need the cure thanks to Chris's blood substitute.Charles calls Edward a weak coward and then Edward calls Charles out on having Frankie turn Alison. This upsets Charles enough in forcing him to feed. It cures Charles and he instantly realizes that something is wrong. He collapses in front of Edward and asks what has happened. As Charles transforms, Edward breaks a chair and blocks the door so that transformation cannot be stopped. Edward welcomes him back to humanity and tells him that now, Charles is going to die. Charles is sent out, gagged and bloody, and his troops feed on him. All the guards become human and are then fed upon by other vampires. Frankie drives Elvis's car into the building and saves his brother and Aubrey. However, Frankie is surrounded by guards. He begs them not to attack since there is a cure. He offers himself to the horde and they feed on him until he is dead and they are all cured.A guard grabs Aubrey and Edward stakes him to save Aubrey. He grabs her and the two leave the building. A mass feeding frenzy hits the city and the cure rapidly spreads. With a cure now running rampantly through the city and the streets running red with that cure, Edward and Aubrey leave the building. Only three human guards remain alive at the end of the frenzy. Chris arrives and kills them since he doesn't want the cure to spread. However, Elvis arrives and stakes Chris. Edward mourns Frankie but now has a strengthened resolve to spread the cure.As dawn arrives, the trio leaves the building in Elvis's car ready to cure everyone in the world of the disease. | cult, murder, violence, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt1176251 | Gigantic | Not so typical boy meets girl story, that is delusional and twisted. Quite a bit like this media driven life since the main characters all act like they are at the top of their game (Like they are on some sort of metaphysical stage.). Intermixed with the controversy of brutal and crazy honesty, there lies a hair of truth. It's the hair of truth you have to see to feel. Side-lining the story the male main character has a recurrent assailant which breaks up the stream of events, in a mysterious way. The modern delusions held by the main character are complex and hard to understand, even as the movie comes to a close. However the delusions are made real leaving you really pondering something outside the box (brain). As the story progresses and you learn more about the main character, his life gets entangled with those you are introduced to. One is an old school friend, the other is a beautiful girl with an odd family. At times the drama appears as if it will turn depressing, dwelling on the repressed emotions the characters are a part of. However Gigantic manages to string you along until all is well and you are pondering whether such a story is possible in real life. | romantic, psychedelic | train | imdb | Some jaded film-goers might feel they've watched Paul Dano portray Brian's charisma-free loner cousins overplaying their quirkiness in far too many Indie projects.
In 'Gigantic' Brian possesses the stubborn ambition to adopt a Chinese baby - a plot contrivance which appears designed to distract from his stupefying dullness.
Despite being single, earning little money and suffering from violent hallucinations, he considers himself good parent material, and an irresponsible adoption agency is helping him achieve his goal.The story begins when Al Lolly, an overweight businessman with chronic back problems, visits the gloomy warehouse where Brian is employed.
He doggedly obliges in an underground car park, but their romance doesn't amount to much - almost immediately Happy expresses her own quirkiness with lame attempts to escape the relationship, while Brian continues obsessing about Chinese babies.
Like it or leave it - that's how love is in Indie-World.'Gigantic's' script is a strangely schizophrenic beast - the main story is the lovers' moth-eaten romance, but the sub-plots contain some offbeat black humor, providing John Goodman, Ed Asner, Jane Alexander, Clarke Peters and Zooey Deschanel with opportunities to create some original characters.
After reading the comments and reviews on this page for the film Gigantic, I felt compelled to register an account on IMDb and add my own voice to the apparently confused chorus.
I've read comments that have mentioned 'believability' of certain scenes and plot points, but I think these types of viewers were doomed to misunderstand the film from the very beginning (and isn't it always these viewers who do choose to comment?
The debut from Matt Aselton is far from perfect, but certainly provides high expectations for his next film.Blessed with a terrific cast including Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood), indie favorite Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman, and veterans Ed Asner and Jane Alexander; Aselton creates some odd characters that somehow connect not only to each other, but also to the viewing audience.The film does sometimes suffer from the mistake of many first time filmmakers ...
The brutal attacks/images by the homeless guy (played by comedian Zach Galifianakis) and the massage parlor scene are two that jump to mind.On the other hand, and more importantly, there are a few scenes that are remarkable and really provide hope for Aselton's next film: When Zooey first awakens from her nap in the store, she and Dano have an exchange that sets the stage for their relationship; the family dinner without Zooey; John Goodman on his kitchen floor and at the doctor; Jane Alexander on the balcony with Zooey proves what an effective and elegant actress Ms. Alexander remains as she is the first one to connect with Zooey on an adult level.
Refreshing for a first time director, Matt Aselton has managed to bring a new dimension to the acting repertoire of his leads, Zooey Deschanel, Paul Dano, and veteran, John Goodman.Deschanel in particular shines brightly in Gigantic, as a privileged, underachieving heiress who is facing up to becoming a woman evidenced in the empathy her character, 'Happy', somehow manages to elicit.Gigantic certainly plays against gender expectations, as Deschanel's love interest, Dano, looks to fix a situation in order to mend himself, indeed, this is a chick flick that should also appeal to guys; funny, rude, touching, violent, gentle, brutal, kindly, inconsiderate.Once you overcome the gimmick of the unique premise mattress salesman who wants to adopt a Chinese baby this really becomes an enjoyable watch, peppered with cool, sharp dialog and seasoned with warm, elevated charm.
It is a movie in which the viewer is invited to contemplate how inner turmoil can be overcome if one doesn't give up on what one wants.Shot in 35mm, it is also a beautiful thing to behold, and with a soundtrack (scored by Roddy Bottum) that includes Animal Collective, there is much about Gigantic which stays with the viewer long after its conclusion not least the movie's Fight Club character: as Zach Galifianakis portrays a brutal representation of disconnection..
I'm surprised at the so many negative reviews that Matt Aselton's 'Gigantic' received, as I found it to be quite a charming, funny, absorbing and well-made little film.
I suppose not everyone appreciates subtle storytelling and that much of 'Gigantic' is open to interpretation (for example the homeless man, whom I interpreted as Brian's alter-ego).The quirky premise may appear a little awkward on the surface.
John Goodman, Ed Asner and Jane Alexander and Zack Galifianakis are great.Aselton's debut is a fun and absorbing watch and it lingers in mind long after the end credits have rolled....though perhaps it's not for everyone given the negativity, but so what.
Brian and Harriet are drawn to each other sexually but cannot connect emotionally and the Chinese baby only makes things worse.Alternately comical and melancholic this surreal story is about people managing their angst.
'Gigantic' is the debut film from writer/director,Mark Aselton (a name to look out for in the future).
It concerns a mattress salesman (played by Paul Dano,from 'There Will Be Blood','Little Miss Sunshine',and others)who receives an odd customer (John Goodman),who's daughter (Zooey Deschanel)falls asleep on one of the beds in the show room.
If you are looking for some movie to make you forget about the gray life and all of its happenings, don't watch Gigantic.
It suffers from all the clichés that make people hate indie films: mumbling characters that irritate the crap out of you, no script to speak of, jokes where the audience is evidently supposed to imagine the punchline, and so much cynicism you wonder why the writer didn't just kill himself when he was 16.Throw in a bunch of homophobic wisecracks, anti-Semitic slurs, racial slurs of all shapes & sizes, and an opening scene of animal cruelty (American Humane did not monitor this film), and here you have a bona fide painful experience.I think I laughed more watching "Platoon" than I did watching this dud of a movie.Please don't think all indie films are like this.
I love Zooey, but it was painful watching her and Paul Dano play their typical personalities in this wannabe symbolic bullsh!t quirky comedy.
Zooey's quirky personality is played out in this movie, and Paul Dano is a horrible casting role for the protagonist, if you can call him that.
To me, a blatant association of our elitist political system with sex.At certain points in the film the lead is attacked by someone whom he describes as a homeless guy, but is at times dressed as a worker.
Some viewers have over-interpreted this profoundly mediocre film made somewhat more tolerable by the presence of Zooey Deschanel, Ed Asner,John Goodman and Jane Alexander.
Asner and Goodman masticate the scenery in high fashion, Deschanel is, as usual, strangely charming and Alexander has one crucial scene where she reassures Zooey's character that she can make it with Dano's character and the Chinese child he has just adopted.
I really enjoyed the setting and the characters played by Goodman, Deschanel, Dano, and the entire supporting cast.But many parts of the plot were not believable, or even nonsensical.
The film resorts to passé plots (quiet boy meets sexy rich girl), but where it is inventive, it's inexplicable (the stalker, the lifelong interest to adopt, ...).Goodman is a favorite of mine anyway, and his character here serves to balance the meekness of the other leads.It was worth my time, however if it wasn't able to get Goodman or the other leads, it would have been a forgettable film.TP in Texas.
The film however disappoints in various levels mostly in all the side stories - for one thing although I couldn't believe I was seeing Galfianakis again this year, I couldn't quite make out of what to do with the homeless man every time he appeared.
Zooey Deschanel is fantastic, as always, and Paul Danno was surprisingly good (i think, i am not too sure, really...) but the script and the situations all seemed kind of forced and unnatural, which i kind of got the idea was at least partially the point.
Though i would definitely recommend watching this film, it is not because its good(because its really not), and it is not because i even really liked it(because i really didn't), but simply because once watching it, for better or worse, i couldn't get it out of my head..
Early on in the film Zooey Deschanel falls asleep on a mattress in a store where future love interest, Paul Dano, works as a salesman.
Any viewer lucky enough to have dozed off at a similar time would have not missed much, and would still be able to have a good stab at guessing how it all wrapped up when the credits kicked in.The script, written by first and hopefully only time director Matt Aselton, mistakes eccentricity for character and randomness for humour and contains bizarre and heavy-handed symbolism that bears no relevance to what little plot there actually is.
Paul Dano wants to adopt a specifically Chinese baby and Zooey Deschanel doesn't seem to really want anything, apart from possibly to be loved, and both of them dispassionately amble from scene to scene towards these goals, occasionally interrupted by the odd subplot or two to drag the film out to a standard running time of just over 90 minutes.A depressing and boring waste of both talent and time..
Happy Lolly (Zooey Deschanel) is the daughter of Al (John Goodman) who purchased a mattress for $14k.
Do not waist your money on this movie because you will feel like you have been robbed.As for Zooey Deschanel.
I think she is a great up and coming actress and she did not need to be affiliated with movie like this, She is just too good for this movie and that goes the same with some of the other actors that played in it as well.
I was forty minutes into the movie and I said to myself, I can't believe I keep watching this.Sub-plots were out of left field and superfluous and stretched any sense of credibility.Did want to tip my hat to Dano, who carried his performance with depth and nuance.
You might well think he has a few screws loose.But that is exactly the role Paul Dano plays as Brian Weathersby, bed salesman.
He has been working on this task diligently for some time and we sense he is getting close.His world is rocked when he meets Zooey Deschanel as Harriet 'Happy' Lolly, who comes into the store to pay for the $14,000 bed that her dad tried out the day before.
Soon he and Happy are seeing more and more of each other, and neither of them is quite sure how the adoption of a baby girl from China might affect that.As he often does, John Goodman steals all of his scenes as Al Lolly, quirky rich father of Happy.
Some might say bits of this film are mundane and were not needed, but that's what makes this film a sensation, to be able to relate to these so called scenes can in fact bring you deeper into the film.However, my only criticism would be the ending, I think it leaves us wondering about too many things.Overall, this is a great film which explores the life of a salesman with a very unique life, not seen very much in many films these days, who falls in love with a customer who leads a very strange life too.
Paul Dano give evidence of maturity in this film, I do not think there is a scene where he smiled.
I read the negative reviews, but I just couldnt believe that a movie with Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel and John Goodman could be so lousy.
I had no prior knowledge of this movie, I decided to watch it because of Paul Dano - he is definitely in my Top10 actors list and I do not know a movie with him in the lead which is bad or boring (and I have seen most of them with his participation).
And the cast is even and great - especially Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman - but all the others provide strong and versatile performances.
A little shuffling weed of a movie Gigantic may be, but it does deal in giant-sized subjects: first love; starting a family; being forcibly chucked in at the deep end of maturity.
Unfortunately, the absence of silly bourgeois trifles like heart, charm, or even wit, prevents its elevation to the status of a 'Secretary', 'Juno' or 'Little Miss Sunshine.' The latter's Dano, one of the most fearless young actors working today (let alone 'There Will Be Blood', check out 2001's 'L.I.E.' for some early, brilliant promise) is essentially muzzled here, as Deschanel competes for the distinction of most catatonic cat.When Jane Alexander, playing Brian's mum, finally shows up at the end to talk some sense into Happy, it's like a jet of cool, cleansing water blasting away all that obfuscating mud.
The great Ed Asner and John Goodman, playing Brian and Happy's dads respectively, tear up the screen every time they appear, whether hunting for magic mushroom or hawking up their own brain tumours by willpower alone.
But it's two more stars than the film deserves.Want a fantastic, unselfconsciously quirky indie rom-com about emotionally blunted, poor little rich kids finally facing up to life?
Gigantic has a few funny moments and good performances by John Goodman, Ed Asner and Zooey Deschanel is attractive and has the requisite quirkiness, but I also found the main character Brian to be incredibly dull and the weak link in this film.I'm also never impressed by the use of the "f-word" or for that matter the use of the "n-word" (even when it's said by a black person) when it feels that it's only being used for a cheap shock laugh.There are also too many questions left unanswered in this film.
But, most of all, the main character, Brian, wanted to adopt a Chinese baby since he was eight?
I have absolutely no idea what this character was supposed to be representing, if anything, though his regular appearances which include an implication that he's followed Brian from NYC to somewhere upstate, my money is on "figment of the imagination" -- in which case, FIGHT CLUB did that kind of imaginary- abuser/friend-gone-wild thing twenty times better; there was some consistency to Tyler Durden, there is none with GIGANTIC's Hobo.
The second with real emotion is when Brian's mother talks Harriet out of a panic episode and explains that "nothing's normal".Apparently the scriptwriters are "from literary backgrounds" and thought they were writing a film like a novel, forgetting that novels (like FIGHT CLUB) are typically better than the films that are made from them simply because of the time that is taken to carefully explain certain things; there is little to no explanation of anything in GIGANTIC; while it seems to aim for a character-driven rather than plot-driven film, the end result is that it just kind of meanders about without much to really endear the characters to, much less make one care about what happens to them.
I usually like these quirky little character pieces, but this simply didn't deliver on such promises; the leads, who are the focus of the film, are ultimately kind of bland, and their families seem like caricatures of eccentricity..
Writer/Director Matt Aselton has
come up with unique, memorable characters though as weird and messed up as they are, you wouldn't mind being part of the family.The writing is what fascinates me about this movie.
It's got some random acts that happen for no reason and they just crack me up That said, GIGANTIC also has rich characters that stem from America's individuality and the freedom to choose whatever it is that you want to be and that in itself can bring so much pressure on one person.
I believe in greatness in simplicity and GIGANTIC is exactly that.Paul Dano who floored me in Little Miss Sunshine, I also thought he should've been nominated for There Will Be Blood, plays the character Brian in GIGANTIC and Paul proves to us again that he's a young but powerful force to be reckon with.
There's a certain calmness to his performance but he can also deliver a certain commanding stubbornness and he does it just as good as any experienced actor out there which makes him capable of sharing screen time with veterans like John Goodman and Ed Asner and not drowning in their shadows.
The cute Zooey who somehow has the ability to put your guard down when you're at her presence, plays the quirky Happy who's not sure what she wants to do with her life, causing her to be unsure either about letting Paul Dano be a part of her life.
I think it's a feel good movie aimed to let the audience know that you can still pursuit your plans and fall in love at the same time.
GIGANTIC may be Matt Aselton's first feature film but it's good enough to make me a fan and I'm looking forward to his upcoming projects.--Rama's SCREEN--.
If only slick-worries were that of selling fourteen-thousand dollar Swedish beds, and adopting withdrawn Chinese daughters; Brian(Paul Dano) falls into a cloud-like spontaneous sexing of Harriet(Zooey Deschanel), after he's confronted in the 'straight up' sense.I enjoyed the films' great screen-scapes and script.
The End. Again, John Goodman as the mafia-type father of Happy, played by Zooey Deschanel, adds luster and laughs.
Asner is the 80-year old dad of mattress salesman Brian, played by Paul Dano.
The title is very befitting of the gigantic life changing situations Dano and Deschanel are presented within the story.
Gigantic is the story of mattress salesman Brian (Paul Dano).
Dano and Deschanel are both fantastic here, and the film has an interesting and fun spark to it.
Gigantic isn't an amazing work of art, or even a great film, but I had a good time with it. |
tt0118694 | Faa yeung nin wa | The story takes place in Hong Kong in 1962. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbours. Each has a spouse who works and often leaves them alone on overtime shifts. Despite the presence of a friendly Shanghainese landlady, Mrs. Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms. Their lives continue to intersect in everyday situations: a recurring motif is the loneliness of eating alone. The film documents the leads' chance encounters, each making their individual trek to the street noodle stall.
Chow and Su each nurse suspicions about their own spouse's fidelity; each comes to the conclusion that their spouses have been seeing each other. Su wonders aloud how their spouses' affair might have begun. Su and Chow re-enact what they imagine might have happened.
Chow soon invites Su to help him write a martial arts serial for the papers. Their neighbours begin to take notice of Su's prolonged absences. In the context of a socially conservative 1960s' Hong Kong, friendships between men and women bear scrutiny. Chow rents a hotel room away from the apartment where he and Su can work together without attracting attention. The relationship between Chow and Su is platonic, as there is the suggestion that they would be degraded if they stooped to the level of their spouses. As time passes, however, they acknowledge that they have developed feelings for each other. Chow leaves Hong Kong for a job in Singapore. He asks Su to go with him; Chow waits for her at the hotel room and then leaves. She can be seen rushing down the stairs of her apartment, only to arrive at the empty hotel room, too late to join Chow.
The next year, Su goes to Singapore and visits Chow's apartment. She calls Chow, who is working for a Singaporean newspaper, but she remains silent when Chow picks up. Later, Chow realises she has visited his apartment after seeing a lipstick-stained cigarette butt in his ashtray. While dining with a friend, Chow relays a story about how in older times, when a person had a secret that could not be shared, they would instead go atop a mountain, make a hollow in a tree, whisper the secret into that hollow and cover it with mud.
Three years later, Su visits her former landlady, Mrs. Suen. Mrs. Suen is about to emigrate to the United States, and Su inquires about whether the apartment is available for rent. Some time later, Chow returns to visit his landlords, the Koos. He finds they have emigrated to the Philippines. He asks about the Suen family next door, and the new owner tells him a woman and her son are now living next door. He leaves without realising Su is the lady living next door.
The film ends at Siem Reap, Cambodia, where Chow is seen visiting the Angkor Wat. At the site of a ruined monastery, he whispers for some time into a hollow in a ruined wall, before plugging the hollow with mud. | romantic, depressing, atmospheric, melodrama | train | wikipedia | I think that New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell wrote the best one line review of In the Mood for Love when he said that it is "dizzy with a romantic spirit that's been missing from the cinema forever." How true those words are!
So, given this cinematic climate, Wong Kar-wai's latest film feels like a much needed breath of fresh air.
In the Mood for Love is about the doomed romance between two neighbors ("Mr. Chow," played by Tony Leung and "Mrs. Chan," played by Maggie Cheung), whose spouses are having an illicit affair, as they try "not to be like them." But after hanging out with each other on lonely nights (while their spouses are away "on business"/"taking care of a sick mother"), they fall madly in love, and must resist the temptation of going too far.Several factors are responsible for making In the Mood for Love a new classic among "romantic melodramas," in the best sense of that term.
(It should also be mentioned that Wong Kar-wai's usual hyper-kinetic visual style is (understandably) toned down for this film, although his pallet remain just as colorful.) Third, there is the haunting score by Michael Galasso, which is accompanied by slow motion sequences of, e.g. Chan walking in her elegant dresses, Chan and Chow "glancing" at each other as they pass one another on the stairs, and other beautiful scenes which etch themselves into one's memory.
The main score--which makes its instruments sound as though they're literally crying--is heard eight times throughout various points in the film and it serves to highlight the sadness and the longing which the two main characters feel.
Fourth, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung both deliver wonderful performances (Leung won the prize for best actor at Cannes) and they manage to generate real chemistry on screen.The above elements coalesce and work so nicely together to create a film that feels timeless, "dizzyingly romantic," and, in a word, magical.
A strange bond emerges between the man and woman as they cope with their sadness by taking turns playing each other's spouse, before a more complex bond emerges...No summary can do it justice, for Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love" is nothing short of a miracle.
At the core of the film are two characters that will ease into your heart and stay there long after the end credits roll: Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung are simply amazing and no language barrier undermines a single fragment of immediacy and truth they display.
The settings and locations are used repeatedly but the film manages to breath new life into them each time they featured, there always seems to be a key prop, light fixture, or set piece to slightly clue the audience as to where we are in the characters world.The acting reminds me of the "The Bicycle Thief", not the style, but the fact that you forget that you are watching two actors engaged in their craft.
It is used in conjunction with the story, and not just a means to put music to action, or to cue the audience to feel a certain way at a certain plot point.I would not recommend this film to anybody, I fear most people would be jaded by the calm flow of the story, but I would recommend it to someone who is looking for an alternative to the romantic schlock that fills the multiplexes on our side of the world.
It's easy to see why many people consider In the Mood for Love to be Wong Kar-Wai's best film.
The erotic displacement of these scenes is both fascinating and frustrating, as two star-crossed lovers reject physical consummation due to their humble fidelity.Other scenes in the film are punctuated with brief slow-motion shots of Cheung erotically moving through her interior surroundings, set to Mike Galasso's hauntingly beautiful score.
Mother Nature even seems to respond to their love lust, often unleashing a soft crest of rain over the characters after their bodies have glided near each other.Kar-Wai's hauntingly atmospheric shots of a waterfall allowed Leung's Lai Yu-Fai to experience a cathartic release in Happy Together, even if Leslie Cheung's Ho Po-wing was not there to enjoy it with him.
When I fist watched the movie, I said to myself, "so a film can be made like this." Wong Kar Wai's gorgeous poetic love story captured me throughout and even after the film.
Also the music defines the sadness of the love which plays along the beautiful slow motion frames and shows the characters in despairing moods.
As they try and piece together how it happened, they also embark on an emotional journey that aches for a resolution
Building on his previous success with Happy Together and Chungking Express, Wong Kar Wai gives us this rather old fashioned and marvellous story of reawakened passions, yearning and unrequited love.
And it is played to perfection by two of Hong Kong's finest, Maggie Cheung and Leung Chui Wai, with some excellent support from Ping Lam Siu and Rebecca Pan.It is also a virtuoso performance by Wong Kar Wai, who treats the audience to a sensory, and sensual, overload.
Beautiful film set in 1962 Hong Kong about a man (Mr. Chow) and woman (Mrs. Chan) who become close friends when they suspect their spouses are having an affair.
Wong Kar-Wai also doesn't allow the audience to see what the spouses look like, suggesting that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan should be together.
A whiff of smoke from Chow's cigarette tells us his state of mind, the ever-changing tight-fitting cheongsams of Lizhen reflects the constraints of decision-making, the ruins of Angkor Wat ties in with the deteriorating relationship of the two leads.The excellent use of mis-en-scene gives the film just the right amount of feel needed to flesh out the complicated nature of the characters' relationship.
In Hong Kong, 1962, the editor Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and his wife, and the secretary Su Li-Zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung) and her husband simultaneously move to an old building.
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE - will make you fall in love with Wong Kar Wai, especially, if this is his first film that you are watching.
It always gave into a mystery and mystic feeling about the characters who are in focus yet out of focus - signifying a lot about the many confusions that cluttered their minds: emotions and the natural urge versus the high moral standards they want to uphold to.The film's main narrative is nothing different if one would say it in plain text.
But like an auteur's film, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE wins you through its screenplay, usage of light, cinematography, acting and music which takes the entire context of adultery and morality deeper with a higher philosophical undertone.
Set in Hongkong of sixties, the film is about two characters - Chow Mo-wan (played by Tony Leung), a journalist and Su Li-zhen (played by Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company, both of whom rent a room in an apartment of a building on the same day.
Chow's wife and Su's husband are most of the time out of the town on their work assignments thereby leaving their better halves to lead a monotonous life in an otherwise crowded city.There are beautifully shot motifs with lovely background scores showing both these characters carrying forward with their mundane jobs with a smile in their face and hollowness in their heart.
There are so many glowing reviews here I was expecting some kind of masterpiece but for me this was the biggest yawn fest I've seen in some time.For one thing, I absolutely love foreign films and watch world cinema far more than Hollywood movies...
In "In the Mood for Love", the director Wong Kar wai uses the only kind of lens movement pattern: shift shot.
It breaks my heart to say it, but 'In the Mood for Love' disappointed me really.Let me start by saying that I am a major fan of Wang Kar Wai - he's my favourite Chinese director and Maggie Cheung is my favourite Chinese actress.
the quintessential romance of Wong Kar Wai. In the Mood for Love, a film shot in an improvisational style with the actors and, frankly, the most mature and least feverish lensed and edited work of Wong Kar Wai's career, is about two people who know exactly what is right and what is wrong, but have the feeling, the emotion, to possibly cross the line.
We want these two characters, Chow (Tony Leung) and Chan (Maggie Cheung) to be together not simply as friends, or even playing their 'game' of acting out like they're married, but fully invested in each other's ever growing affection and companionship.
Towards the end (i.e. Cambodia) it gets strange anyway, but for a while it's sublime.And lest not forget stars Leung and Cheung, both regulars of WKW's films, who inhabit these characters as opposed to playing specific parts; they're people sort of stuck where they are in life, one at a printing press the other a secretary, and they both have possible dreams for themselves (mostlty for Chow as a serial novelist).
Together, they start acting out the roles of each others spouses, sort of filling in the spaces left behind, and the actors convey the sense of slight hope within this hopeless relationship that few I could imagine ever pulling off period, much less in this setting.It's all a combination of factors, between the subtle experimentation with the direction, the realistic edge of the actors, the music, the clothes, the direct lighting, all of it comes together better than in any other film I've seen from this HK romantic wildman.
In one of the first scenes of "In the Mood," protagonists Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung meet in a narrow hallway as they are both moving into an overcrowded Hong Kong apartment building.
Leung asks her "How shall I address you?" She responds "My husband's name is Chan."The formality is amazing, especially for Americans who find telemarketeers who they have never met referring to them by their first names during unsolicited phone calls.By this scene is also a little preview of what is to come in the movie itself, for it is the formalized manners and constant displays of mandated respect that restrict these two potential lovers, who quickly discover their spouses are having an affair.It's hard to say too much more about the plot without giving things away and this is a story with one, great big event which may or may not happen and around it the movie revolves.Director Kar-wai Wong has done a remarkable job of conveying the restrictions that the two lead characters undergo as they live out the lives expected of them in 1962 Hong Kong.
SPOILER ALERT!!!You can listen to Wong Kar-wai's movies like a radio play: Invisible vibrations between the characters, the rooms where they stay in, the rhythm that presses them ahead, attraction and dislike - the whole spectrum of the atmosphere is played back by the sound track.
Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are the two big names in Hong Kong cinema but that does not make this movie the best love story of all time.
There is a very strong belief why the international audiences especially viewers in Europe and America have declared themselves to be the biggest of the besotted admirers of the Hong Kong film "In the mood for love" directed by Wong Kar Wai.According to many critical texts written about modern cinema, American and European cinema have completely lost the notion of feminine beauty.
If one looks closely at this film, it is not only the Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai but also the Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle who have virtually cashed on this aspect by making the leading actress Maggie Chaung appear as highly sensual,seductive and alluring."In the mood for love" also gives allusions about unrequited love made coherent through maximum use of closed spaces.
'In the Mood for Love' is a quiet movie about a man (Tony Leung) and a woman (Maggie Cheung) who both have cheating spouses.
You can easily identify his trademarks, which the movie is full of them; playing with the time, using elliptical editing, and repeating songs, but they are utilized in a more beneficial and purposeful way, hence more delicate and exquisite way.Even the beauty of the cinematography is different from those of Wong Kar-wai's other works.
But like a real poet, the director manages to tell this story to the viewerSlow, stiff, melancholy frames from his films are framed in beautiful music that complements the characters' feelings and moods.In the mood for love that Karwai creates in his painting seems like an eternal mood.
Christopher Doyle and Wong Kar-Wai made Maggie Cheung look like a goddess in this movie .
It felt to me that I was watching something secretive yet enticing in its own way, and the general mood this technique actuates is simply beautiful.There are a lot more, my words do not do any justice to this movie, the use of colours, slow shots, silhouettes, the soundtrack (Oh how I love the soundtrack)...
The second of an unofficial trilogy by Chinese director Wong-Kar Wai which started with Days of Being Wild (1990) and concluded with 2046 (2004), it would be difficult to describe and appreciate In the Mood for Love without using the words beautiful, sumptuous and erotic.
Continuing with the semi-improvised, free-flowing approach that brought him international success with the likes of Chungking Express (1994) and Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love is an achingly romantic experience, and may just be his finest work.Set mostly around a cramped apartment block in 1962 Hong Kong, the central 'love' story is between Mr. Chow (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung), who, along with their spouses, rent a room in neighbouring flats.
But feelings are developed and suppressed, with things intensifying when they begin work on a martial arts serial, renting a hotel room to escape the gossiping of neighbours.The era in which the film is set not only gives the opportunity for some exquisite costume design (Mrs. Chan's colourful dresses radiate sensuality), but also offers the chance to reflect on a more conservative, socially-conforming time.
A beautiful relationship blossoms between the two as they spend more time together and attempt to reenact how their partners' affair must have begun but decide to keep their bond platonic.Written, produced & directed by Wong Kar-wai, the movie allows ample space for its characters to breathe and the bond that develops between the two isn't hurried either as Wong establishes their similar predicament first, while little details such as coincidental interactions & fleeting glances on a daily basis give their budding relationship a genuine touch & natural feel.
Camera follows our characters around like a silent observer and is thoroughly focused on their activities, however, what stands out are the brief slow-mo vignettes of their lives which is accompanied by a specific track that makes those particular sequences more memorable while enriching the overall experience.Coming to the performances, In the Mood for Love is steered by compelling inputs from Maggie Cheung & Tony Leung, and the sizzling chemistry between the two is the real highlight that makes their romance work so effortlessly.
It's not unbearably oppressive, however, and a little bit of comic relief is provided by Mr. Chow's coworker Ah Ping, played by Ping Lam Siu. Strikingly, Ping Lam Siu wasn't a professional actor at all, but rather a prop man, but he's a real character and I'm glad Wong Kar-Wai brought him in front of the camera.Besides the memorable acting, another strong point of this film is its exploitation of the medium.
The husband of Mr. Chan is never directly shown, while the face of Mr. Chow's wife is always turned away from the camera, an effect that strengthens the viewer's identification with these protagonists and leads us to sympathize with their feelings of neglect.Wong Kai-Wai shot something like 30 times the amount of footage that ultimately made it into the finished film, and some of this cut footage can be seen on various home media releases.
Wong Kai-Wai filmed a number of directions for the story to go in (like a final meeting between the lovers, scenes of their spouses, etc.), only to cut them out, and the end result is so much stronger for it.
The plot is quiet sad, and the movie slow, but if you can accept that from the start, and enjoy a film for its excellent cinematography, then you will enjoy your time with "In The Mood For Love.".
The two main characters especially are beautifully played; Maggie Cheung the very beautiful, slightly daydreamy wife, across from Tony Chiu Wai Leung, the hopeful, lovely husband...
Having never seen any of Wong Kar Wai's films before, "In the Mood for Love" was a refreshing piece of work that instantly drew me in.
Director Kar Wai Wong uses the most hidden camera placement and graceful camera movement to give the viewer a glimpse into the subtle and sensual love affair that grows between Mr. Chow and Mrs.Chan.
Kar Wai Wong's movie is a period piece, set in Hong Kong in the 1960s, with a strong emphasis on style, elegance and subtlety.
It bears a fascinating auratic - or let's say for the sake of word play - erotic mix of poetry, nostalgia, melancholy, framed by society conventions and daily routines in which an impossible romance against a backdrop of loneliness is quietly thriving, causing longing, desire, hardship and demanding painful decisions."In the Mood for Love" has a couple of artistic touches and cinematic patterns which add considerably to the enjoyment: Kar Wai Wong e.g. intentionally keeps the story of Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow to themselves.
With In the Mood for Love, Kar Wai Wong makes a comedy about a romance that is not at all a romantic comedy.
Another great film by Wong Kar-wai.
Kar-wai Wong's In the mood for love is a very interesting expression of the beauty of love and relationships that goes beyond standards. |
tt0346156 | Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow | The film is set in New York City in 1939. The moment his zeppelin docks in New York, Dr. Vargas (Julian Curry) sends a pair of bullet-like metal vials to Dr. Jennings, another scientist; within moments, Dr. Vargas is gone and his name is crossed off a list.Dr. Jennings (Trevor Baxter) arranges to meet reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) during a showing of The Wizard of Oz at Radio City Music Hall. They discuss the disappearance of the world's top scientists, and he reveals that he knows who will be next: himself. He hints that he and the missing men have a connection, and whispers the name of the man behind the disappearances: Totenkopf. (Totenkopf is German for death's head.) Jennings drops a blueprint, which Polly picks up.Polly's return to the office is sidetracked when New York is invaded by flying robots that shoot laser rays out of their heads and crush people and property under their enormous feet. The overwhelmed military broadcasts a call for help to someone called Sky Captain. As Polly runs along the streets photographing the robots and gathering information for a story, Sky Captain (Jude Law), a.k.a. Joe Sullivan, appears in his Warhawk airplane, which is equipped with amazing high-tech modifications, to fight the monsters. He trips up several robots and the rest are driven off. Joe has one of the downed mechas taken to a base near New York, home of his mercenary air force, and turns it over to his gum-chewing technical expert Dex (Giovanni Ribisi). Polly follows and surprises Joe in his office. Polly and Joe have a back-story; they were an item some years before in Nanjing, but split up amid suspicions on her part that he was cheating and on his that she sabotaged his plane. Polly uses Dr. Jennings' blueprint, which turns out to be a plan for the killer robots, as leverage to convince Joe to work with her -- and let her ride along when he goes after the robots.First Polly and Joe go to see Dr. Jennings in his laboratory, but they arrive too late. He's been attacked by a mysterious woman in black (Bai Ling), who escapes from Joe while Polly speaks to the dying scientist. Jennings gives her the two metal vials he received from Dr. Vargas and says that if Totenkopf acquires them, he'll destroy the world. He dies before he can explain.Back at Joe's base, the robots attack again. Joe, following Polly's directions, leads them on a nearly street-level flying chase through Manhattan while Dex tries to trace the source of the robots' control signal. Joe throws off the pursuing robots by diving his plane into the ocean. Polly's sure they're going to die, but the plane can function as a submarine so they're able to resurface and fly back to base. They arrive in time to exchange fire with a departing squad of robots lead by the mysterious woman in black. The robots have taken Dex, but a brief search reveals that Dex left a clue. Stuck to a downed girder with bubblegum is a scrap of map on which he marked the source of the control signal: a remote valley in the Himalayas. Joe and Polly take off immediately to get Dex back.In Nepal Kaji (Omid Djalili), a contact of Joe's, reluctantly agrees to take them to the valley of Shambala. He notes that in Hebrew it's called Eden, "and you may know it as Shangri-la." A trek through the snowy mountains with Kaji and a couple of guides brings them to an old mine, where the guides trap Polly and Joe in a vault rigged with dynamite and make off with the metal vials, which Polly had never mentioned to Joe. Kaji finds them and lets them out in time to save their lives, but not Polly's extra film. (She has only two shots left in her camera and spends the rest of the movie agonizing over how to use them.) The explosion knocks them out and the three of them wake up naked in a large, richly appointed bed. A Nepalese monk comes in and tells them (via Kaji) that they are in Shangri-la. He agrees to help them when they say that they're after Dr. Totenkopf. Totenkopf had forced the people of Shangri-la to work in the "poisoned mine" -- a uranium mine -- and all but one of the miners have died. They ask to speak with the survivor, who gives them a cane that he says will guide them to Totenkopf's base. In return for this favor, the horribly disfigured miner asks them to kill him.Back in the plane, Joe and Polly use the inscriptions on the cane to plot a course to Totenkopf's location, which Joe marks with an X on the map. Then he makes another X, somewhat closer to them than the first. "What's that point there?" asks Polly. "That's where we run out of fuel," Joe replies. Joe radios a message to his old friend Franky, who commands a secret British airborne air base where he hopes they can refuel. Shortly after the plane's tank runs dry and they begin a gliding descent, the air base materializes out of the clouds and they're able to land safely.Franky turns out to be Commander Francesca Cook (Angelina Jolie), who Polly realizes must be Joe's other woman when Franky mentions Nanjing. She leads her amphibious squadron to escort Joe and Polly to the island they've identified as Totenkopf's hideout. Franky and her squadron distract the robot guardian of the hideout's underwater entrance so that Joe's plane can slip through. As they disembark, Polly sees the registration number on the fuselage reflected in the water: h-110d, inverted, reads "polly." She doesn't say anything to Joe.In the island's huge underground base, a spaceship is being loaded with animals. (Joe is astonished that Polly doesn't find this spectacle worthy of her last remaining frame of film.) Dex turns up in a kind of flying flat-bed truck to rescue Joe and Polly from some of Totenkopf's robots. Dex has also rescued several of the scientists who disappeared. They tell Polly and Joe that the spaceship is meant to give life a fresh start on a new world that Totenkopf calls the World of Tomorrow. In addition to the animals, the ship will carry the mysterious vials, which contain genetic material for a new, improved human race -- Totenkopf's Adam and Eve. However, after the ship takes off its booster rocket will destroy the Earth.The group locates Totenkopf's quarters, but they're booby-trapped, and one of the scientists is electrocuted trying to get in. The booby-trap triggers a projection of the head of Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier), a la the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Totenkopf condemns "a world consumed by hatred and bent on self-destruction." He concludes, "I am the last desperate chance for a doomed planet. Now, leave this place or die!"Dex disables the booby-trap and the party enters the villain's study to find Totenkopf's dessicated, long-dead corpse clutching a note that says "Forgive me." Joe, deciding that he'll have to board the spaceship to stop it, first socks Polly in the jaw -- if she's unconscious, she can't insist on coming along and she'll be safe. As he attempts to get inside the ship, he's attacked by the woman in black, who turns out to be a robot. Polly turns up to save him, and gives him a sock in the jaw for good measure.Joe and Polly go aboard and cross a narrow bridge over the deep, hollow core of the ship to reach the controls. The rocket takes off and begins a countdown toward the release of the booster stage, which will destroy the planet. As Joe and Polly struggle to turn off the booster, the robot in black attacks again. Joe fends her off and uses her raygun to disable the booster. He and Polly get away in an escape pod just before the rocket blows up without harming the Earth. They land in the water, surrounded by pods containing animals from Totenkopf's space-ark, which Polly released before they disabled the booster. Polly pans around in search of an image for her final photograph and finally settles on Joe. After she snaps the shutter, he looks disturbed. Polly: "You don't have to say anything." Joe: "Lens cap." | boring, neo noir, murder, alternate reality, atmospheric, psychedelic, romantic, sci-fi | train | imdb | But the movie is just too good not to like, sorry guys.It gives the great atmosphere of old cinema plus comic books, and it does so perfectly using flying funny looking evil robots, strange laser guns, and comic-book like dialog.
Computer generated special effects have been around for quite some time now, and often questionably so, but they come into their own with Kerry Conran's SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW--an innovative film that failed in theatrical release but which now makes a big splash in the home market.
With an assist from Sky Captain's faithful sidekick Dex (Giovanni Ribisi) and the disconcertingly military Frankie (Angelina Jolie), the two search the world--and finally track the wicked Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier, resurrected via CGI) to his secret lair.The look of the film follows suit.
It wouldn't be too much to say that in many respects SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is akin to an inside joke.But most particularly, your liking for this film will depend on how you react to the visuals.
But I have to come down in favor of SKY CAPTAIN: this isn't an effort to "make it look real;" this is an effort to make a totally artificial world, and whether it be giant robots, Shangri-La, or Radio City Music Hall the designs are stunning and remarkably well executed.
Yet, it is a live-action movie with real actors whose faces aren't altered, except for Gywneth Paltrow's hair which is made more blondish and shimmering.Story-wise, it's nothing special, just a corny old-time serial story about someone using high-tech robots and spaceships to take over the planet.
You won't find many movies with the look of 'Sky Captain', the film has a style that is all its own.Apparently set in the 1930s yet featuring technology most of us associate with a time in the 2030s, 'Sky Captain' does a good job of blending the old generation with the new.
I also think Angelina Jolie's "Frankie" character deserved more screen time.'Sky Captain' is an interesting experiment and certainly a movie that will hold your attention for 90 or so minutes (the movie is pretty short in comparison to other blockbusters).So, if you're curious, check it out, you likely will get something enjoyable out of it..
I am still wary of this possible trend, but after seeing 'Sky Captain', I found that art can be realized in this medium.'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' not only boasts one of the longest film titles in recent months, but a great cast: Jude Law as Joe 'Sky Captain' Sullivan, our hero, Gwyneth Paltrow as Polly Perkins, our intrepid reporter and Sullivan's former flame and Angelina Jolie as Capt.
The robots in the first half hour of the film look like something out of comic book, the clothes and character styles are most certainly inspired by the 1930's, and the backdrops and locations are very Deco.
With further attacks around the globe, Sky Captain and his group team up with Polly to track down the source of the robot menace, uncover the plot involved and stop it before it is too late.All the interviews around this film have talked up the visuals and the possibilities of making movies entirely on blue screen etc and, to be honest, the marketing behind the film reflects it really well because it is all about the visual style and effects with very little else.
Thinks looked good at the start with Godzilla making an appearance on a Japanese newspaper but aside from this and a handful of other comic touches the film is played pretty straight meaning we feel we should treat it so, something I found too hard to do.
I'm not totally sure that bringing back Olivier was a good idea but it was such a small part of the film that it didn't really matter and left me wondering why they bothered in the first place.Law is boyishly handsome and works pretty well with the material, looking very British in his beautiful Spitfire.
None of them are good enough to make the plot engaging or bring out characters in their genre clichés but they try their best and at least fit into the period quite well.Overall this is eye candy but it is candy that will develop a cult following based on how well it captures those old serials and the scale of the visual designs and effects.
My love of serials is one of the few things I remember sharing with my father.So when I was sitting in the theater and the first preview for Shy Captain and the World of Tomorrow came on I was transported back to the safety of my grandparents' home and the love I felt while watching old cliffhangers with my dad.I was instantly in love with the movie, the beautiful quality of every frame that made the movie appear to be one beautifully illustrated comic book and, of course, the similarity to the campy sci-fi movies of the 1930's.
I went home and immediately looked the movie up on the internet.I was stunned to find out that this was the first film Kerry Conran had directed or written, and that Sky Captain was originally a six minute reel that producer Jon Avnet saw and wanted to turn into a feature length film.
By far the greatest reference to past greatness is the appearance Sir Laurence Olivier, who died in 1989, as the villain Dr. Totenkopf, using CGI and archival footage Conran brings back to life one of our greatest actors.I was in movie geek heaven, for about the first hour, and then my attention started to wonder.
We receive through the dialogue what little character development the movie has to offer, which isn't much, and in the end no one grows, or changes, or even becomes deeper than a character in a commercial.Looking back at the old serials I realize that the characters remained the same generic, two dimensional characters they were at the beginning, but the lack of development goes unnoticed in an action film less than twenty minutes long.
"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (an amazingly incovenient title) is simply a bad movie; it has no heart, no deep ideas, nothing very special about it.
I kept thinking during the film, you know, this movie would've worked if Harrison Ford was Sky Captain, Karen Allen was Polly, and Steven Spielberg was the director.
I recommend the film as a great way to spend ninety six minutes when the kiddies are looking to see what the old world used to be like.
I suspect that this film was aiming for the sort of insincere fun found in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, but unlike the "Pirates" franchise, the acting, humor, and dialog are all played down, rather than played up, and the plot is, amazingly, utterly and notably inferior.While many people have criticized the dialog and acting, in fact, I think that both are somewhat cleverly done, but both are also so shriekingly at odds with the supposed action on screen, that one is reminded of a janitor sweeping in front of a movie screen while a film is running; a veritable exercise in DE-integrating live action and CGI.I think (or at least hope) that this film marks something of a milestone in Hollywood as the final gasp of pure special effects awe over special effects artistry, and film craft.
As computer graphics are becoming more and more a part of movies, it only makes sense that eventually a film would come along that is completely computer animated with humans just inserted into the footage.That's the feel of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," a strange but fun fantasy/action movie inspired by the likes of classic sci-fi comics like "Buck Rogers" and "Flash Gordan." The characters are essentially live-action people walking in front of green screen images, but it does all mesh together nicely, if not too nicely.The year is 1939, and several famous German scientists have wound up missing.
When plucky New York reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is contacted by a scientist who fears that he's next, she discovers a diabolical plot by a mad scientist named Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier, thanks to some digital trickery).Totenkopf has unleashed an army of massive robots on the world, and the call soon goes out to Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Jude Law), a well-known hero-for-hire fighter pilot, to come to the rescue.
Committed to the task of stopping the scientist and rescuing his friend, Sullivan goes after Totenkopf with Perkins in tow, smelling a story exclusive that's too big to pass up."Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a nice throwback to the old adventure serials of the 1940s, and the look and feel is certainly inspired by the Max Fleischer "Superman" cartoons of that era, particularly the 1941 short "Mechanical Monsters" whose title robots bear a striking resemblance to the ones in this film.First time director Kevin Conran, also the screenwriter, clearly has respect for the source material of the era, and the movie certainly has a unique atmosphere to it.
However, the problem is the visuals and production design command so much attention that the characters come off as ancillary at best.As the "Sky Captain," Law gives a laid-back performance, not really in keeping with a world famous adventurer.
"Sky Captain" may be considered an homage to comic books, pulp adventures and movie serials but it contains little of the magic of some of the best from those genres.
"The Last Samurai" was as predictable as the days of the week and I am no fan of Tom Cruise but it had everything that "Captain" didn't most notably it drew the viewer into its world and made us accept its rules and way of being in a way that "Sky Captain" most definitely did not.I'd like to see a similar approach taken for films about comic book heroes of the 30's and 40's.
I love the way they pick the crap out of a movie, saying, Oh they should have done this or that, or the acting was....., using words you need a dictionary to understand, Yes everybody thinks they're really clever.Sky Captain would have to be one of the most fun works of art I have ever seen, so damned clever in it's execution.
I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), that it was the first of it's kind (to completely use green screens), going places and doing things that that hadn't been done before, so it was largely experimental.Sky Captain is a triumph, a hell of a lot of fun, brimming with innovative and clever ideas, something to help forget the world for a couple of hours, good clean family viewing.It has one of the all time best endings.Do yourself a favor, don't analyze, just watch and enjoy.Oh, and one more thing, to the clever critics, instead of criticizing other people's work, get out there and show everyone how it's done.
It pays homage to the black and white Flash Gordon type serials that used to be repeated on TV when I was a kid.The film is in a steampunk style combining art deco, pulp fiction, film noir and serial film styles of the between the war years.The story is straightforward, New York is being attacked by giant robots, famous scientists are disappearing and the protagonists race around the world in search of Dr Totenkopf played by Laurence Olivier via the use of archive footage.Although the script and pacing could be better, the visuals are glorious and the actors are top notch getting in to the spirit of adventure.
This is nothing more or less than a love letter to "Flying Disc Man From Mars" & "Flash Gordon." When you look at the story you have to understand that it is built around the model of films like "Radar Men From the Moon" and others of the genre, it is simple (for kids there for their Saturday morning adventure fix.
Famous scientists around the world have mysteriously disappeared and Chronicle reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) along with ace aviator Sky Captain (Jude Law) are on the investigation.
The film begins in New York City when is attacked by giant robots and a gorgeous journalist (Gwyneth Paltrow) and an adventurer pilot, the Sky Captain, set off in pursuit the enormous aircrafts are destroying the megalopolis.
Meanwhile , they will face off a mysterious enemy(Bai Ling) and an amazing array of technical bizarre robots , being helped by a flying aircraft carrier General (one-eyed Angelina Jolie).The picture mingles great lots of action packed , rip-roaring , shootouts,derring-do adventures,spectacular scenes and is pretty entertaining .
Yet throughout the movie there are brilliant shots of thing that will not roam this planet for years.Set in the 1930s, it is the story of The Sky Captain (Jude Law) who is to save the world of an evil genius.
It has all the ingredients of an IMDb Top 250 movie, great special effects, catchy storyline (maybe a bit too shot), some humor here and there, a mystery for you to solve, and actors (Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow) doing a great job in playing there classic like characters.Though something is missing to actually make it a Top 250 movie, it really is a surprisingly good movie that you should just go and see sitting in the dark on a rainy Monday evening..
Films like Sky Captain show how a technological oriented "artist" may not always understand the concept of movie-making, characters and most importantly, story telling.
It all looked real, not cartoonish like Spider-Man did, not even like CGI.Unlike some recent special-effects serials that look great but are basically dumb, this had a sharp, funny script, excellent action from a great cast, and truly good, fast-paced direction.The movie clearly went over the head of a lot of theatergoers, especially younger ones who didn't understand the look or style of the film.
Jude Law was a perfect choice for Sky Captain all the casting was excellent.If you enjoy watching old 1940's sci-fi classics then "Sky Captain and the world of Tomorrow" will breath new life into your imagination..
I saw this accidentally not knowing what to expect from the title and was in for a treat.I personally found it enjoyable all the way through and even happier when I saw Tibet shown on the map, separate from China (as it's three regions of Amdo, Kham & U-Tsang are currently an occupied country since the 1950 Communist Invasions & subsequent genocidal regime killing 1.2+ million).At the time of the movie placement which is set in an alternative 1939 Tibet was fully independent country, as declared by the 13th Dalai Lama on 13th February 1913.There was some Tibetan script on the map & monastery pillars, all looked fairly well researched; but would need to check details sometime.Omid Djalili did a great job speaking some Tibetan also & commend him for that (he told me on twitter he had a good teacher).I'd put this film up with 'Iron Sky' as one of my all time favourite movies to date.I will watch again in a few years, which rarely do with films as it was so good fun!
It's your normal "stop this person from destroying the world" type movie.I liked the acting by Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Giovanni Ribisi.
Soon after, giant mechanical robots attack New York City, only to be pushed away by the fearless Sky Captain, played by Jude Law.The movie follows these two character trying to find out the answers to whats behind it all, save the missing scientists, and stop the numerous attacks..
To me , Sky Captain is a pompous mug always trapping in silly situations - it must be a parody on the old-time movie heroes, at least i feel it is, and Polly is way too smart as well , so the only sane person there is Dex and if i were Polly, i'd prefer him at the end (but, certainly , would cling to Joe while the plot is going on , so is the nature of women:)) Great!
the feel this movie has is of the old b- movie sci fi's of the 50's and some of the comics from the 20s and 30s, and the way the characters are all painted, or seem to be, and the special use of shadowed lighting are reminiscent of those types of filmsthe kind of people that wont enjoy this film are people who don't generally like that kind of film, and while I admit some of those "B-Movie" movies that i've seen were terrible, i think Kerry......Kerry Conran that is not the candidate, was on the right track when trying to bring that style into this movie.
Conran gets extra points for giving the film a sense of humor, narrative flash, and (most importantly) a good heart.After several of the world's most renowned scientists start disappearing, it is up to daring pilot, Joe 'Sky Captain' Sullivan (Jude Law), and tenacious reporter, Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) to solve the mystery.
And the trailers made Angelina Jolie look like more of a headliner than she actually is, when she really appears very little in the film.But if you're a fan of Sci-Fi cinema, you should definitely check this movie out!.
Like a 50's radio program come to life this movie does deliver a fun story, a few plot holes and the beautiful Angelina Jolie (so this is a must for her fans).
And above all, "Sky Captain" is film-literate in a consistently amusing and intelligent fashion - with nods to every sci-fi movie from "Things to Come" to "Thunderbirds".Surprisingly, this is also one of the great visual homages to "Citizen Kane".
I do hope somebody tries to make more films in this way.Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie were born to make these type of movies!Well done Kerry Conran.
Now, saying that, the visuals are the ONLY thing good in Sky Captain.After ten minutes, I knew I was watching one of the worse movies of all time. |
tt0085404 | The Day After | The story follows several citizens—and people they encounter—in and around Kansas City, Missouri and the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, 40 miles (64 km) to its west.
The film's narrative is structured as a before-during-after scenario of a nuclear attack: the first segment introduces the various characters and their stories; the second shows the nuclear disaster itself, and; the third details the effects of the fallout on the characters.
During the first segment, as the characters are introduced, the chronology of events leading up to the war is depicted entirely via television and radio news broadcasts as well as communications among US military personnel and hearsay, enhanced by characters' reactions and analysis of the events.
=== Chronology of the war ===
The Soviet Union is shown to have commenced a military buildup in East Germany (which the Soviets insist are Warsaw Pact exercises) with the goal of intimidating the United States, the United Kingdom, and France into withdrawing from West Berlin. When the United States does not back down, Soviet armored divisions are sent to the border between East and West Germany.
During the late hours of Friday, September 15, news broadcasts report a "widespread rebellion among several divisions of the East German Army." As a result, the Soviets blockade West Berlin. Tensions mount, and the United States issues an ultimatum that the Soviets stand down from the blockade by 6:00 a.m. the next day, and noncompliance will be interpreted as an act of war. The Soviets refuse, and the President of the United States orders all U.S. military forces around the world on DEFCON 2 alert.
On Saturday, September 16, NATO forces in West Germany invade East Germany through the Helmstedt checkpoint to free Berlin. The Soviets hold the Marienborn corridor and inflict heavy casualties on NATO troops. Two Soviet MiG-25s cross into West German airspace and bomb a NATO munitions storage facility, also striking a school and a hospital. A subsequent radio broadcast states that Moscow is being evacuated. At this point, major U.S. cities begin mass evacuations as well. There soon follow unconfirmed reports that nuclear weapons were used in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt. Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, naval warfare erupts, as radio reports tell of ship sinkings on both sides.
Eventually, the Soviet Army reaches the Rhine. Seeking to prevent Soviet forces from invading France and causing the rest of Western Europe to fall, NATO halts the Soviet advance by airbursting three low-yield tactical nuclear weapons over advancing Soviet troops. Soviet forces counter by launching a nuclear strike on NATO headquarters in Brussels. In response, the United States Strategic Air Command begins scrambling B-52 bombers.
The Soviet Air Force then destroys a BMEWS station at RAF Fylingdales, England and another at Beale Air Force Base in California. Meanwhile, on board the EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft, the order comes in from the President for a full nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Almost simultaneously, an Air Force officer receives a report that a massive Soviet nuclear assault against the United States has been launched, further updated with a report that over 300 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are inbound. It is deliberately unclear in the film whether the Soviet Union or the United States launches the main nuclear attack first.
The first salvo of the Soviet nuclear attack on the central United States (as shown from the point of view of the residents of Kansas and western Missouri) occurs at 3:38 p.m. Central Daylight Time, when a large-yield nuclear weapon air bursts at high altitude over Kansas City, Missouri. This generates an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that shuts down the electric power grid to any remaining of nearby Whiteman AFB's operable Minuteman II missile silos and of the surrounding areas. Thirty seconds later, incoming Soviet ICBMs begin to hit military and population targets. Kansas City, Sedalia, Missouri, and all the way south to El Dorado Springs, Missouri are blanketed with ground burst nuclear weapons. While the story provides no specifics, it strongly suggests that America's cities, military, and industrial bases are heavily damaged or destroyed. The aftermath depicts the central United States as a blackened wasteland of burned-out cities filled with burn, blast, and radiation victims. Eventually, the U.S. President delivers a radio address in which he declares there is now a ceasefire between the United States and the Soviet Union (which, although not shown, has suffered the same devastating effects) and states there has not been and will not ever be any surrender by the United States.
=== Storyline ===
Dr. Russell Oakes lives in the upper-class Brookside neighborhood with his wife and works in a hospital in downtown Kansas City. He is scheduled to teach a hematology class at the University of Kansas (KU) hospital in nearby Lawrence, Kansas, and is en route when he hears an alarming Emergency Broadcast System alert on his car radio. He exits the crowded freeway and attempts to contact his wife but gives up due to the long line at a phone booth. Oakes attempts to return to his home via the K-10 freeway and is the only eastbound motorist. The nuclear attack begins, and Kansas City is gripped with panic as air raid sirens wail. Oakes' car is permanently disabled by the EMP from the first high altitude detonation, as are all motor vehicles and electricity. Oakes is about 30 miles (48 km) away from downtown when the missiles hit. His family, many colleagues, and almost all of Kansas City's population are killed. He walks 10 miles (16 km) to Lawrence, which has been severely damaged from the blasts, and, at the university hospital, treats the wounded with Dr. Sam Hachiya and Nurse Nancy Bauer. Also at the university, science Professor Joe Huxley and students use a Geiger counter to monitor the level of nuclear fallout outside. They build a makeshift radio to maintain contact with Dr. Oakes at the hospital as well as to locate any other broadcasting survivors beyond their area.
Airman Billy McCoy is stationed at a Minuteman missile silo near Whiteman Air Force Base, 70 miles (110 km) east-southeast of Kansas City, and is called to duty during the DEFCON 2 alert. His crew are among the first to witness the initial missile launches, indicating full-scale nuclear war. After it becomes clear that a Soviet counterstrike is imminent, the airmen panic. Several stubbornly insist that they should stay at their post and take shelter in the silo, while others, including McCoy, point out that it is futile because the silo will not withstand a direct hit. McCoy tells them they have done their jobs and speeds away in an Air Force truck to retrieve his wife and child in Sedalia (20 miles (32 km) east of Whiteman AFB), but the truck is permanently disabled by an EMP from an airburst detonation. McCoy abandons the truck and takes shelter inside an overturned semi truck trailer, barely escaping the oncoming nuclear blast. After the attack, McCoy walks towards a town and finds an abandoned store, where he takes candy bars and other provisions, while gunfire is heard in the distance. While standing in line for a drink of water from a well pump, McCoy befriends a man who is mute and shares his provisions. McCoy asks another man along the road about Sedalia, and the man indicates that Sedalia and Windsor no longer exist. As McCoy and his companion both begin to suffer the effects of radiation sickness, they leave a refugee camp and head to the hospital at Lawrence, where McCoy ultimately succumbs to the radiation sickness.
Farmer Jim Dahlberg and his family live in rural Harrisonville, Missouri, very close to a field of missile silos about 37 miles (60 km) south-southest of Kansas City. While the family is preparing for the wedding of their elder daughter, Denise, to KU senior Bruce Gallatin, Jim prepares for the impending attack by converting their basement into a makeshift fallout shelter. As the missiles are launched, he forcefully carries his wife Eve, who refuses to accept the reality of the escalating crisis and continues making wedding preparations, downstairs into the basement. While running to the shelter, the Dahlberg's son, Danny, inadvertently looks behind him just as a missile detonated in the distance and is instantly blinded and carried back to the shelter by Dahlberg.
KU student Stephen Klein, while hitchhiking home to Joplin, Missouri, stumbles upon the farm and persuades the Dahlbergs to take him in. After several days in the basement, Denise, distraught over the situation and the unknown whereabouts of Bruce, who, unbeknownst to her, was killed in the attack, escapes from the basement and runs about the field that is cluttered with dead animals. She sees a clear blue sky and thinks the worst is over. However, the field is actually covered in radioactive fallout. Klein goes after her, attempting to warn her about the effects of the invisible nuclear radiation that is going through her cells like x-rays, but Denise, ignoring this warning, tries to run from him. Eventually, Klein is able to chase Denise back to safety in the basement, but not before Denise runs to the stairs to find her wedding dress. During a makeshift church service, while the minister tries to express how lucky they are to have survived, Denise begins to bleed externally from her groin due to radiation sickness from her run through the field.
Klein takes Danny and Denise to Lawrence for treatment. Dr. Hachiya attempts to treat Danny, and Klein also develops radiation sickness. Dahlberg, upon returning from an emergency farmers' meeting, confronts a group of silent survivors squatting on his farm and attempts to persuade them to move somewhere else, only to be shot and killed mid-sentence by one of the silent survivors.
Ultimately, the situation at the hospital becomes grim. Dr. Oakes collapses from exhaustion and, upon awakening several days later, learns that Nurse Bauer has died from meningitis. Oakes, suffering from terminal radiation sickness, decides to return to Kansas City to see his home for the last time, while Dr. Hachiya stays behind. Oakes hitches a ride on an Army National Guard truck, where he witnesses US military personnel blindfolding and executing looters. After somehow managing to locate where his home was, he finds the charred remains of his wife's wristwatch and a family huddled in the ruins. Oakes angrily orders them to leave his home. The family silently offers Oakes food, causing him to collapse in despair, as a member of the family comforts him.
As the scene fades to black, Professor Huxley calls into his makeshift radio: "Hello? Is anybody there? Anybody at all?" There is no response. | insanity, violence, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1611224 | Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter | In 1818, Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) lives in Indiana with his parents, Nancy (Robin McLeavy) and Thomas (Joseph Mawle), who work at a plantation owned by Jack Barts (Marton Csokas). There, Lincoln rushes to the aid of his friend, a young African American boy, William Johnson (Anthony Mackie), being beaten by a slaver. Because of his son's actions, Thomas is fired. That night, Lincoln sees Barts break into his house and attack Nancy. She falls ill the following day, and dies shortly afterwards. Thomas tells Lincoln that Barts poisoned Nancy.
Nine years later in 1827, a vengeful Lincoln tries to kill Barts at the docks, but Barts, who is actually a vampire, overpowers him. However, before Barts can kill him, Lincoln is rescued by Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper). Sturgess explains that vampires exist, and offers to teach Lincoln to be a vampire hunter. Lincoln accepts and, after a decade of training, travels to Springfield, Illinois. During his training, Sturgess tells Lincoln that the vampires in America descend from Adam (Rufus Sewell), a vampire who owns a plantation in New Orleans with his sister, Vadoma (Erin Wasson). Sturgess also tells Lincoln of the vampires' weakness, silver, and presents him with a silver pocket watch.
In Springfield, Lincoln befriends shopkeeper Joshua Speed (Jimmi Simpson), and meets Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Though Sturgess warned him not to form any close relationships, Lincoln develops romantic feelings for Mary.
Lincoln successfully finds and defeats Barts. Before dying, Barts reveals that Sturgess is also a vampire. Lincoln confronts Sturgess, who reveals that, several years ago, he was attacked and bitten by Adam. Because Sturgess' soul was impure, he became a vampire, and that prevented him from harming Adam or any other vampire (since "Only the living can kill the dead"). Sturgess has since been training vampire hunters, hoping to destroy Adam.
Disappointed, Lincoln decides to abandon his mission. However, Adam learns of his activities and kidnaps Johnson to lure Lincoln into a trap at his plantation. Adam captures Lincoln and tries to recruit him, revealing his plans to turn the United States into a nation of the undead. Speed rescues his friends, and they escape to Ohio.
Lincoln marries Mary and begins his political career, campaigning to abolish slavery. It is at this time in the movie Lincoln symbolically puts on the top hat which he dons the rest of the movie. Sturgess warns Lincoln that the slave trade keeps vampires under control, as vampires use slaves for food, and if Lincoln interferes, the vampires will retaliate. After Lincoln's election as President of the United States of America, he moves to the White House with Mary, where they have a son, William Wallace Lincoln (Cameron M. Brown). William is later bitten by Vadoma and dies.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis (John Rothman) convinces Adam to deploy his vampires on the front lines. Lincoln orders the confiscation of all the silverware in the area and has it melted to produce silver weapons. Speed, believing that Lincoln is tearing the nation apart, defects and informs Adam that Lincoln will transport the silver by train.
On the train, Adam and Vadoma, who have set fire to the upcoming trestle, attack Lincoln, Sturgess, and Johnson. During the fight, in which Speed is killed, Adam learns that the train holds only rocks. Lincoln reveals that Speed's betrayal was a ruse to lure Adam into a trap. Lincoln uses his watch to stab Adam, killing him, and the three escape the train before it explodes. Meanwhile, Mary and the ex-slaves have transported the silver to Gettysburg through the Underground Railroad.
The now leaderless Confederate vampires stage a final, massive assault and are met head on by the Union. Armed with their silver weapons, the Union soldiers destroy the vampires and eventually win the battle. During that battle, Mary confronts Vadoma, the vampire that killed her son, and kills her.
Nearly two years later, on April 14, 1865, Sturgess tells Lincoln that the remaining vampires have fled the country. Sturgess tries to convince Lincoln to allow him to turn Lincoln into a vampire, so that he can become immortal and continue to fight vampires, but Lincoln declines.
In modern times, Sturgess approaches a man at a bar in Washington, D.C. as he once approached Lincoln. | revenge, stupid, historical fiction, violence, flashback | train | wikipedia | If I had any complaints it would be that I did feel like the film dragged a bit in the middle.Overall, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a fun flick that delivers on exactly what it promises.
And, yes, Benjamin Walker makes a good Lincoln especially with the beard later on in the movie.
Ridiculously over the top but in a very entertaining way.The action doesn't stop from the get go and there's a narrative that runs through the whole movie that keeps you interested.The SFX are impressive too.Performances are good, particularly Rufus Sewell who plays a very good villain.
After watching Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter at home I asked myself why I didn't go to see it in a movie theater during the summer.
Benjamin Walker creates a fantastic hero in Abraham Lincoln, a secret vampire hunter and the 16th President of the United States.
It plays very much like a comic book movie, and it takes liberties with the facts of Lincoln's life while poking fun at some of them.
Sadly, instead of any story approximating the book, I got a mess of not-so-special effects with a way over the top story.During the sequence with the burning trestle bridge (I don't want to be any more specific because I don't like posting spoilers) I actually turned to my wife and said, "This is stupid." She agreed.My 11 year old daughter liked the movie so maybe grownups weren't the target audience for this mess.If you liked the book, keep away.
Some look at it and see the name "Abraham Lincoln" and expect the movie to contain more of an historical aspect to the flick; however, in reality, it is a movie regarding Vampires.
The only thing similar with this movie and that book was its title and the vague idea that Abraham Lincoln was something other than just a president.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter sounds like a strange silly title.
People would expect it as a ridiculously fun bloody action film starring one of America's greatest Presidents.
It's entertaining but it could have been a lot more fun.With that kind of title, people would expect it as a campy horror action film with a different version of Abraham Lincoln that has a potential to be a movie icon.
When the movie began being advertised in theaters myself and my friends joked about it sounding ridiculous, my boyfriend and I decided we'd like to see it for the action sequences and creativity aspect of such an outlandish title.
The movie almost completely leaves out the historical events surrounding the main plot, and in doing so leaves the story lacking a real point and focusing on "How awesome can we make this Abe vs Vampire confrontation look??" Absolutely ridiculous.
I've recently read books about the American Civil War and Lincoln's assassination so probably know more than the average Brit about the President and this period of America's history and there were nice details, incidents and characters taken from the period and Lincoln's life that were included to give a bit of authenticity to the story.
With a title Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter you'd expect to see tongue firmly in cheek but instead it is played completely straight as a historical epic/action film.
In terms of action, the film delivers; it's still the director's tamest and sanest work, but what we get would be something comparable to an "Underworld" movie.The story for this madness is generally sound, believe it or not.
Regardless of how you accept the idea that Abe slays the undead in his off-hours, the film does a fine job of weaving historical accounts and personal history in with the vampire storyline.
Music for this movie has some really awesome parts.There could have been more to the film: more crazy action, more to the Civil War scenes, more consistency to the plot, etc.
Still, if you're looking for stylish vampire-slaying action like I am, the film generally satisfies.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is the new movie from director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch) and Tim Burton, based upon the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the film's screenplay.
The music by Henry Jackman worked great, as it blended in with the film itself, cued in for the right moments when needed.Overall, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was a fun, well-made film that could be considered an action masterpiece as it never let up on its impressive action or suspense.
Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, did not merely take up arms against the act of slavery but against the very thought of it, the idea that it is somehow acceptable.Abraham Lincoln, played by Benjamin Walker -- a young Gary Cooper who astoundingly triumphs in an iconic role that could have failed so easily -- learns quickly that his town of Springfield is rife with vampires: the pharmacist, the blacksmith...
What was presented before me was Abraham Lincoln's life not only in Lifetime movie drama form but also a way, way over the top action flick.
He was in no real danger either; he was almost caught a few times but somehow just got lucky, too lucky to create a real suspenseful movie I think.All in all, I can deal with the history inaccuracies and even the action, the seriousness this film tried to portray just made is god awful corny.
Even if Abe just had some one-liners, I think I wouldn't be so disappointed.Please don't see this movie, unless you want ridiculous way-over-the-top action.
The movie had great acting, an actual story - not filler, excellent special effects and entertainment!
Even worse, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is developed with quite a laziness, without any energy or any excitement during the action scenes.Another big problem from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is Benjamin Walker's poor work in the leading role, because he shows a total lack of credibility and charisma in his character.
At least, I have to say that the rest of the actors makes a decent work in their roles, highlighting Mary Elizabeth Winstead.In conclusion, I can't recommend Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, mainly because I found it very boring.
If my wife had not insisted I stay, I would have walked out in the first ten minutes of this one."Abraham Lincoln Vampire" Hunter makes that film look like pure gold and "Ishtar" tolerable..
A slick, action heavy vampire slayer movie that has more in common with Blade than Interview with a Vampire, like the novel, this re-imagines a history in which Abe Lincoln became a vengeance lusting, ax wielding vampire hunter, where vampires have a part in American History.
I've been a fan of Timur Bekmambetov's films "NIGHT WATCH" and, especially "WANTED..I really thought there was the potential for something pretty special here...A b-movie classic in the making..
you know what, and that it was based on a novel of the same name, I expected no more than some cheesy CGI mediocrity.Boy, was I wrong.Let's start with the best thing about the movie: the action scenes.
Dominic Cooper was also very memorable in his role as the "trainer" of Honest Abe, and was always a pleasure to watch on-screen.The movie's pace is always consistent, and always generates excitement, be it through the simply outstanding action scenes, or the more dramatic ones.
Originally, I thought a more humorous tongue-in-cheek would be appropriate for a movie like this, but I definitely would agree that the serious tone that the film employed definitely worked to its advantage by so seamlessly interweaving real-life history with the vampire mythos.
If you're in for some simply awesome vampire-slaying action, or even if you're into the historical aspect of Abraham Lincoln, the film delivers on every level.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) *** (out of 4)This horror/action film sets up to tell the true story of Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) who witnessed his mother getting killed by a vampire so he dedicates his life to stopping the bloodsucking creatures.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER might have a silly title but it's actually a fairly ambitious little movie that really took me by surprise.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER should have been a really, really bad movie but I think for the most part they got it right and those with a little knowledge of the real history around the war should find the touches interesting..
But in this movie they're a cheap plot prop to weave a tale purporting to explain everything about Abe Lincoln and the US Civil War. In some ways it reminded me of Dick, the movie about the Watergate Scandal where "Deep Throat" turns out to be two teenage girls, and many of the veiled happenings of that scandal happen to have been caused by Betsy and Arlene, one way or another.To really appreciate Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in that respect, it helps to know something about US history leading up to and during the Civil War. At the very least, you should look up Harriet Tubman, Jefferson Davis, and Gettysburg in Wikipedia before seeing the movie.Bekmembatov manages to pack a good deal of history, dialog, action, and story telling into this movie.
Sometimes she was adequate, other times she was spitting her lines out too quickly, as do many pretty young women when playing this kind of historical role.The script veers between using fairly accurate language, to complete anachronism, like "How'd that work out for ya?!" But you know, the story is about how Abe Lincoln was killing vampires, so yeah.On the other hand, the sets, costumes, and other artwork seemed historically accurate and some of the CGI provides a new look at that era.
There's a scene of the Mississippi River at New Orleans full of paddle wheel riverboats that lingers with me.So in the end I turned out liking the vampire prop, and the bad-ass Lincoln as portrayed by Benjamin Walker..
But like I mentioned before simply as a vampire hunter film, this one isn't very good.
The introduction to the film and Lincoln as a vampire hunter felt like a run through.
Maybe if this film had dropped the gimmick, which is what the Abraham Lincoln aspect is, and made a movie about a vampire hunter during the same time, we could of had a far more interesting film on our hands.Oh yes, in the summary/header I put three alternatives for those looking for good vampire films.
Similarly movies such as 'Abraham Lincoln- the Vampire Hunter' succeed in keeping the legend on.
I really don't know much about the real life Mr. Lincoln (other than the fact that he was lovingly called Abe Lincoln), but I believe that Benjamin had indeed been able to imbibe the character perfectly and has done justice to Abraham Lincoln.This movie indeed boasted of some excellent action sequences and especially those involving copious amount of blood spilling- it was quite graphic.The 3-D effect was good, the setup- quite wonderful.
Just because the CGI is good and the story is almost not bad, it does not give people the right to make Abe Lincoln a ridiculous character.
The movie went away from everything great about the book and made the whole idea of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter as hooky as it sounds.
The development on them was really good.So overall, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is great, and probably one of the biggest surprises of the year..
Like in the movie poster, the real life figure of Lincoln is seen to identify him as a vampire hunter.Anthony Mackie was the high note in the movie, as he played Abe's long time friend Will, who later joined in the hunt of the un-dead.The plot is a little loose, as it portrays vampires as one of the pioneers of slave trade.
The Abe Lincoln character could be any young American fighting vampires.If the plot had been about Lincoln fighting vampires while he was in power, maybe some kind of well thought out conspiracy, with an older and better lead actor, then this might have been a good film.Unfortunately it's garbage.
The movie left out essential details that help molded Abe's character into a vampire hunter in the book.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a film that appears to either be just a title joke or a joke trailer.
If you don't like horror films or vampire stories, don't go see it and don't review it.
So I'm going to review it.I'm going to start by making one exception to the rest of my good review without giving too much away, of what I did NOT like about the movie: There is one scene, in the middle of the film, which was completely ridiculous.
If you can overlook this one flaw, you have a good, entertaining film.With that out of the way -- The rest of the movie was great.
The story plot is almost the same as a book, but a lot of the story itself has changed drastically, just to make it an action-horror film rather than a movie with a lot of dialog.
the only thing that i take on the writer is trying to convince us that this is true events all the time ( which appears in making Abraham GROW OLDER through out the movie after being the vampire hunter they claim ) , now to the movie , it is a well made movie , sound effects and graphics are well done , the music is very very good , the action scenes and fights are super , i really enjoyed them , some fright moments and horror scenes that are well combined to achieve the goal , this is a very good horror movie ,,, the actin yet stands good , not bad not excellent , simply good , and ( Benjamin Walker ) reminds me of the great ( Liam Neeson )in all aspects , overall i recommend this movie to you , go watch it and take some pop corn with you , you will like it :-) 7 out of 10 , cause the writer did a simple good job ..
the World, The Thing).The story starts you with a young Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) dealing with the death of his mother due to a Vampire.
From then on you see young Abraham Lincoln grow as a person with him becoming a great vampire hunter, a politician, and a love life.
This is as far as I want to go with the story but from there Abraham Lincoln deal with becoming the 16th President of the United States, deal with the Civil War, and hunt vampires.The 3D was actually pretty good at some of the heavy action scenes which was awesome, but for the slower parts of the film is was just added depth.
I recommend seeing it in 3D for some of the really fun action scenes, but if you are not into the whole 3D craze, then the standard 2D should be just as good.I really did enjoy this movie for how realistic they made the story seemed.
They tied in this fictional story of vampires with the real life story of Abraham Lincoln so well that it seems like this movie could have been real.
Timur the director did a great job in making this movie( really liked his work in Wanted and night watch) .
It's a great time at the movies and good, bloody, ax spinning, vampire killing fun..
Like a Russian Doll that never ends, you keep having to remind yourself, "well the way this scene is playing out is f*cking retarded, but then again it is Abe Lincoln fighting vampires".
A film with Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, the guy with the iconic beard and a very tall top hat, hunting vampires?
It's not all garbage, but with light-hearted action and the thrill of supernatural violence written all over the premise, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter proves to be a major let-down.Maybe a simpler story would've helped?
(Ha!) Though I found the axe-wielding Abe Lincoln to be a truly laughable character (as well as this film's story hinging on the very edge of being a total Looney-Tune cartoon, sans any humour), I was actually quite impressed by the striking cinematography that prevailed, as well as the attention to detail which was placed on the period setting.All-in-all - This was a pretty average horror movie (with some decent gore).
"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is fist of all a nice and entertaining movie.
Still, after watching this I looked some more titles up and there are actually a lot of monster movies where Abraham Lincoln is the protagonist and kicking a lot of monster butt.
I mean, seriously, who has that much of a twisted imagination or has dropped enough acid to come up with a story that makes Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest Presidents in American history, into someone who hunts vampires?
Sure, it's not Lawrence Of Arabia, but it was never supposed to be; instead, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is entertainment well done, and as such, it's an enjoyable watch..
I kept thinking to myself during the film that the premise that Vampires defined Lincoln's actions as well as the politics during the dark period of slavery in America, was as good a premise as any other historic biographical.
Verdict: In many ways, the acting in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by the lead and many of the supporting cast may well be a work of tongue in cheek ingenious; an, unbeknownst to the director, mutiny against the terrible script and tone of this, the worst film of 2012.
Just watched 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' (2012)History's not my strong suit, but I have this nagging feeling that they seem to have taken liberties with some of the historical facts here.
Together with his friends and helped by his experience, Abe must once again save the situation which is in need of a savior.It's an interesting action-horror movie which "creates" a different version of the history of Abraham Lincoln, posing him as a vampire hunter with a silver axe as his weapon. |
tt0093828 | Real Men | This is a fully detailed synopsis which does contains spoilers.The movie opens with a secret U.S Agent walking through a forest holding a map and a glass of water. He is shot and the government thinks it was an inside job and without the agent to meet the requirements, the person with the package the government wants will be out of their reach. This is because the person who was shot is the only one who they will trust. The captain says there is only one other man who can help but they dont like him because he is a loose cannon. The action cuts to a market where the man that they are speaking about Nick Pirandello is in working on the fish stall. During his undercover work, he spies a rival agent who he chases after and traps him in truck. The rival agent is impressed that Pirandello has caught him trying to flatter Pirandello to let him go. Pirandello doesnt fall for this and tricks the agent by saying he has swallowed a poison pill and hell be dead in 2 mins if he doesnt tell Pirandello where the stolen map is. The agent finally cracks and tells him that the map is at the room 505 at the Highway Hotel. Pirandello then walks and the agent begs him for the antidote. Pirandello shouts back that the agent didnt swallow a pill at all, what he did swallow was a button from his shirt before punching him unconscious. While Pirandello is I the room at the hotel, the KGB pull up outside the room armed with shotguns. Pirandello finds the map in an alarm clock. Pirandello manages to evade the murderous KGB by using his shoelaces to make a crude version of a rope to swing from the firescape and through another window. A KGB agent kicks down a door and sees a man and woman having sex. The man cannot be seen as he is under the covers. It turns out to be Pirandello who turns around and shoots the KGB agent through the shoulder. Pirandello finally gets the map to his captain named Cunard but it is intercepted at the last moment by an assistant of the captain who throws it out of the window and it gets picked up by another rival agent. He briefly says that he is with the other side before being carried away. Once he has gone, Pirandello tells captain Cunard that the mole didnt just throw the map out of the window but a note saying to the rival agents to give themselves up. Cunard tells Pirandello that a look-alike of the original agent who was shot in the forest is sought after. They want the look-alike to pretend to be the dead agent and make the exchange in the forest like what was supposed to be done originally. Cunard says to Pirandello that his job is to convince the look-alike to accept the mission. A job that isnt going to be so easy. The look-alike is named as Bob Wilson. Wilson is driving his car and nearly collides with a passing milk truck. The milkman gives Wilson a sly wink and drives off. Wilson pulls into his garage, gets out of his car and set a bunch of ducks/ swans on the lawn back to their rightful places. He walks in the house to find himself confronted by his wife and children. His wife tells him that their daughter and son have been bullied. The daughter has had foul abuse screamed at her and the boy has had his bike stolen. Wilson goes down to the place where his sons bike is supposed to be and finds a group of delinquents spray painting it. One of the youths says to Wilson that the bike is going to be sold on at a profit and if Wilson is prepared to pay for it, then he can have it. Wilson asks to inspect the bike as it says a unique serial number on it that will determine whether or not that is in fact his sons bike. The youth confronts him as do the rest of the gang. He tells Wilson to give him $250 and he can have the bike. Wilson tries to take the bike and is hit in the face by one of the gang whose name is Oaf with his elbow. The leader Buddy asks Wilson if he wants a hand, after which Buddy steps on Wilsons foot and pushes him over into a empty box filled with Styrofoam. He returns from a broken man and falls asleep on the sofa in his house. The white noise from his TV wakes him up and he pulls himself from the sofa. He hears a noise in his house. He thinks its a burglar. He goes into his garage and picks up a rake. Seeing a light on the other side of the door, he bursts in and flails around with the rake, knocking things over as he searches the cupboards. Pirandello eventually makes himself known and tells Wilson that he needs his help. Wilson waits until Pirandello turns his back to him before trying to hit him with the rake. He fails however when he cant pull it out and falls to the floor. Pirandello turns around and gives him his gun to prove that he can trust him. Wilson takes the gun and tries to shoot Pirandello again while his back is turned but Pirandello is no fool. He made sure that the bullets were not in the gun when he gave it to Wilson. Pirandello then playfully threatens Wilson with his own loaded gun. He tells him that the house is surrounded by men wanting to kill Wilson. Pirandello says that they have to be in Washington by 8.00am on Monday as time is of the essence. Wilson says he doesnt want to go. By now Pirandello is getting enraged with Wilson, wondering why he wont go. Wilson says he has a lot of work to do and that his boss wont let him go. Pirandello tells him that he will square it away with Wilsons boss when he returns from the little trip. Pirandello makes a nail gun from some items in Wilsons garage before both he and Wilson sprint outside to cover after taking out the guy with the machine gun hiding up a tree. Pirandello tells Wilson not to worry about his family as he has already left them safely with the neighbours. The rest of the men shoot and destroy Wilson beloved ornamental ducks which Wilson is furious about. One of the men shoot at Wilson with a rocket launcher, luckily it misses Wilson and makes a large hole in his garage. The man then repeats the shot several more times and completely misses Wilson. However he does not miss the house and the rockets proceed to blow it up. Having had enough of the shooting, Wilson screams to the men that he isnt with Pirandello. They dont care about his pleas and continue to shoot at Wilson. Wilson runs away and is clothes lined at an agent, knocking him to the ground. The agent is then shot by another pair of rival agents over the road upon a roof. Pirandello manages to scare off the other rogue agents and picks up Wilson from the ground. Wilson is having difficulty speaking as the agent smacked him in his throat. Pirandello tells him that he was brave drawing the other agents fire. He leads him into another house. Pirandello helps himself to a snack and finds a 3 day old milk in the fridge. Pirandello tells Wilson that his fridge was full of milk and not just one or two cartons. He tells Wilson that the milkman has been making extra stops at his house to have sex with Wilsons wife while he is out slaving the day away at work. Wilson is upset by this and again tries to hot Pirandello. Foolishly he has chosen to tango with one of the best agents in America. Pirandello counters Wilsons punch and punches back right back, knocking him into the kitchen top. Pirandello then jumps on top of Wilson and restrains him. Seething with anger, Wilson squirms under Pirandellos grip. Pirandello then goes into detail about what the milkman and his wife are doing while he is at work before helping Wilson back up. Wilson again tries to punch Pirandello and yet again Pirandello counters it with a gut punch, winding Wilson. Pirandello then asks if Wilson has got the notion of punching him out of his system. Wilson nods and they walk out of the house. Pirandello helps Wilson through a wire fence but Wilson repays the favor by simply running away. However Wilson is greeted by an agent with a sharp knife. Though luckily for Wilson, Pirandello sneaks behind the agent and hits him over the back of the head with his gun, knocking him unconscious. Pirandello says to Wilson that he was selfish for not holding the fence open for him rather than trying to distract the agents. He also tells Wilson that he is doing a good job before hitting on the head with his gun to stop him running away again. Wilson wakes up to broad daylight as he is lying in the back of Pirandellos car. The screen read LAS VEGAS Tuesday. Wilson pulls himself out of the car seat. Winking in the sun, he looks around for Pirandello. Seeing that the coast is clear, he gets out of the car to again make another run for it. He runs down the street and gets to a pay phone. He calls up his daughter and tells her that he is Las Vegas. The family think he is in a mental hospital because that was what Pirandello told his family in order to throw them off about Pirandello taking Wilson. Wilson tells his family that he has been kidnapped by Pirandello. He turns around to find Pirandello looking straight at him with an annoyed look on his face. He takes the phone off of Wilson pretending to be a doctor and tells Wilsons wife that he shouldnt be talking to anyone yet and that he is fine and should be coming home soon. Pirandello then tells him that they had to change cars, this is due to the fact that the other agents are looking for Pirandellos car. Wilson then tries to steal a car but it wont start. The reason for that is because Pirandello has taken out the main cable to the engine. Pirandello tells Wilson nicely to get out of the car and Wilson tells him that he isnt going anywhere with him. Pirandello says fine and walks to the boot of the car. He pulls it open and pulls out a can of Gasoline which he starts to tip all over the car. Pirandello tells Wilson that he knows that hes upset about the mission but he will feel much better when they finally arrive in Washington D.C. Wilson still doesnt want to go so Pirandello puts the gasoline can on the hood of the car, showing Wilson what he just covered the car in. Pirandello strikes a match and Wilson quickly gets out of the car and blows the match out. Pirandello then tells Wilson about the mission that they have to get the big gun from the aliens before its too late. Wilson doesnt believe him and tells him to drive him back home. To convince Wilson, Pirandello shows Wilson a gift he got from the aliens, a special pen that works as a beacon for the UFOs. Pirandello hammers the pen into a baseball. Wilson finally understands and believes that what he saw was real but just as he is about to agree to the mission, a shot takes out the cars back windscreen and Pirandello pushes Wilson to safety. Wilson and Pirandello run into a house and several men are shooting at them. Pirandello throws Wilson to the floor to protect him while he reloads his gun. Wilsons asks Pirandello who is trying to kill them. Pirandello replies its the KGB who want the map so they can get the sacred big gun from the aliens and they would kill just to talk to the UFOs. The men outside surround the house block any means of escape the two of them. Pirandello asks Wilson if he has any special abilities that might help them in this situation. Wilson tells him that he was an alternate on the debating team in the high school. Pirandello then makes a quip about going out there to argue with them. The car that Pirandello was going to take to escape in is unfortunately blown up leaving the escape plan void. Suddenly a black car pulls up outside the window. Pirandello says the KGB is sending in their top negotiator to draw them out. Pirandello greets the Russian negotiator and calls her Dolly. Dolly tells Pirandello that not even his own government will allow him and Wilson to arrive at Washington D.C alive. Dolly insults Wilson and Pirandello tells him to pay no notice to the insult once he tells him what it means. Dolly says that if Pirandello hands over the map then both he and Wilson will get to walk away alive but theyd need a guarantee that Wilson wouldnt talk to the police or government about them. Pirandello asks her what guarantee does she want. She tell Pirandello that they want Wilson dead therefore their original bargain was a lie. Pirandello asks her what the terms of the surrender of Wilson are. She tells him a million dollars in cash and other compensations. Pirandello takes her into the back room to talk while a hysterical Wilson stays out in the firing line of the front of the house. After what seems like hours, Pirandello emerges from the back room with a smile on his face. Dolly emerges and tells Pirandello that the stock he bought is going to crash and they are going to crash it. Pirandello says that it will cripple him financially if that happens. Pirandello tries to find a way out and gets ambushed by the KGB hanging out in the backyard. He runs back to Wilson and asks Wilson if he wants the good news or the bad news first. Wilson asks for the bad news first to which Pirandello tells him they wont make it out alive. Wilson then asks whats the good news to which Pirandello replies that it dont look like they will survive for long. Pirandello tells Wilson they only have one chance but Wilson will have to stay close to him and do whatever he does. Pirandello shoots an agent and Wilson tries to do it with his hand as an imaginary gun. He shoots an agent and kills him. What he didnt know was the agent slipped and fell back onto a piece of sharp wood sticking out of the tree which impaled him in his back. Wilson then thinks that the little men in the UFO are helping them. Pirandello says thats good because they are going to need all the help they can get. He run to a phone box and Pirandello takes out the remaining agents left. Pirandello asks Wilson if he has a quarter for the phone to which Wilson tells him no. Pirandello then runs out towards some ground to try and find one that he thinks he sees lying on the ground. He is shot at and finds out that the quarter he thought he saw was an aluminum bottle cap. A couple of shots from the rogue agents obliterates the coin box in the pay phone, showering Wilson with change. He shouts to Pirandello that he has a quarter now. Pirandello runs back screaming for Wilson to cover him and takes the quarter from Wilsons hand. He shouts Wilson about not covering him. Wilson shouts back that he only has two hands. Pirandello places the coin in the payphone and calls his friend telling him to sell his stock as quick as can. He sighs that he out of bullets and looks to see no-one is on the rooftops. Wilson asks him where they have all gone to which Pirandello tells him they have gone to lunch. Wilson stares at Pirandello in disbelief, the agents have gone on lunch? Pirandello tells Wilson that the KGB isnt as dedicated at their job as the Americans are as they have no incentives or motivation to finish a task. They run away and Pirandello helps Wilson over a high wooden fence. Wilson asks Pirandello what are the aliens negotiating with the Americans to get the big gun, that if he is going to agree to the mission just what is he risking his life for. Pirandello asks him to write down what he about to tell him. Wilson asks Pirandello if he has something to write with. Pirandello tells Wilson that he used to have a pretty good pen (the pen that he used to convince Wilson in the first place). Wilson pulls his own pen from his pocket and begins to write. He basically tells Wilson that all life on planet earth will be dead in five years if they dont succeed with this deal. He tells Wilson they need a safe place to go and Pirandello takes Wilson to his own mothers house. Pirandello introduces Wilson to his mum. Mrs. Pirandello asks him to help her in the kitchen, leaving poor Wilson alone in the hall. Wilson encounters a beautiful woman coming down the stairs who takes an instant liking to Wilson. The woman tries to make out with Wilson on the sofa but to his horror finds out that the woman is in fact Pirandellos Dad who has had a sex change. Pirandello asks his mother if he may borrow the car which she allows. They stop off in NEW MEXICO on Wednesday and buy some items from the petrol station. Wilson points out a copy of the National Enquirer which has the headline Earth dead in Five years. That was exactly what Pirandello was talking about in Vegas. Reading through it while they are driving, Pirandello points out that half of the news in the paper is top secret information that CIA have tried to keep secret. Pirandello drives the car down a corn field encased road because he needs to pee. Getting out of the car, Wilson tells Pirandello that he has changed his mind about the mission. Pirandello tells Wilson that if he walks away now that he will have no choice but to shoot him because of the secrets he now knows. Pirandello goes in the corn field to pee and once again Wilson tries to run away. He falls down and pulls the note he wrote on from his pocket. But it isnt a note at all, its the real map. Wilson runs out of the field to find Pirandello has gone with the car. He sprints up the road looking for the car. Finally collapsing from exhaustion, Pirandello appears above him. Wilson is now very furious. He screams at Pirandello about where he has been. Pirandello smiles and says he just moved the car to a spot it cant be found. Wilson argues with Pirandello calling him an imbecile and that he has jeopardized the whole mission by giving him the map. Wilson orders Pirandello to get in the car, teeth gritted as he does so. Pirandello does what Wilson tells him and walks back to the car. They drive to Indianapolis for Thursday and stop off behind an old warehouse. Pirandello reaches under a dumpster and pulls out the glass with the White house insignia that the CIA agent who looked like Wilson was carrying at the start of the movie. They are about to walk out of the alley where the dumpster is but they get ambushed by clowns. Well actually they are the top agents gone rogue disguised as clowns to hide their identities. But Pirandello knows each and every one of them even with the makeup on. Wilson starts crying because the whole mission and these clowns is really getting to him. Pirandello tells Wilson to stop crying. To stop him crying Pirandello tells Wilson that he is an undercover Russian agent working with the United States. Wilson doesnt believe him and Pirandello says that he was hypnotized to remain undercover but one word would reenact him back to duty of the United States. Believing this Wilson rushes at the clowns, only to be knocked unconscious by one of them. Pirandello fights off the rest of them and Wilson awakes from his sleep. Pirandello lies down on the ground and pretends to have been beaten in the fight. He tells Wilson that he took on all the clowns and survived. Wilson cant remember anything and after some boasting, Pirandello tells him that he is no Russian agent and that he lied to him to make him man up. However Pirandello does tell Wilson that he still did fight and win against the clowns. This gives Wilson the confidence boost he needs. Then as he is talking, the clown who knocked him out go to hit him again but this time Wilson punches the clown in the face and knocks him out. Pirandello cant believe what he just saw. Wilson punched out a top agent with one punch. They arrive at Pittsburgh that night. They stop off at a bar as Pirandello thinks they deserve a little fun before arriving in Washington D.C on Friday morning. Pirandello sees a god looking blonde woman with glasses and goes over to chat her up. While hes gone Wilson finds his seat at the bar taken by some redneck. Thinking he still has the power to knock a guy out, he foolishly confronts the man sitting in his seat. However this works in his favor as his eyes scare the men who take off. Pirandello tells Wilson that he has scored with the woman and that he is going back to her place to have sex. However for the first time, the joke is on Pirandello because the woman turns out of be a dominatrix who enjoys S&M. Pirandello doesnt like this one bit. Wilson outside, takes out a few shifty men while he is at it. Pirandello tells Wilson that he has fallen in love with the dominatrix. Pirandello says that he should get off the mission. Wilson tells him to get out of the car and that he has an important job to do. The roles are now reversed instead of Pirandello telling Wilson what to do, now its Wilson who is telling Pirandello what to do. While shopping Wilson finds a note in the windscreen. Its from Pirandello and he has chosen not to go through with the mission as his new love for the woman has now made him change his reckless life. Wilson drives to Washington D.C by Friday morning. He takes a gun from the glove box and walks up a hill. He is startled by a clown who he thinks is one of the clowns he encountered earlier. He pulls the gun on him but it turns out to be a clown at a kids party who proceeds to walk away back to the party. While walking in the forest Wilson hears a noise and drops all his bullets on the ground. As he is picking them up, he sees a foot stepping on a branch. He looks up to find Pirandello looking down at him. Wilson asks what he is doing there. Pirandello tells Wilson that he was worried about him and sorry for running off. He also tells him that Wilson should never hold his weapon in his left side of his pants just in case his right arm is shot off and that he must always carry a loaded weapon in case he is shot at by someone else. They both venture deep into the forest but are shot at by more rogue agents. A friendly agents tries to help them but is shot down before he can truly help them. Pirandello then shoots the branches of the trees causing the rogue agents to fall out of them and thud onto the ground. They then have to find a tree that gives the water they need for the glass. Pirandello finds the perfect tree. It has a cool water tap in it. Pirandello fills up the glass with the water from the tree and walks on with Wilson to the designated spot where they are rendezvousing with the aliens. Pirandello is shot in the arm by an unknown assailant which turns out to be Captain Cunard. He tells the two to throw their weapon on the ground. They do so unwillingly. Pirandello knew that Cunard was behind the operation the whole time. Cunard orders Wilson to go to the point and rendezvous with the aliens for the big gun. Wilson tells Cunard to pretty much go to hell as he will comply with Cunards order. Cunard warns him if he doesnt do what he is asked, he will kill Pirandello. Wilson calls a bluff and tells Cunard to shoot Pirandello. Pirandello is horrified by what Wilson has just said and tells Cunard that Wilson was kidding. Wilson says that Pirandello can take it and Pirandello says back because he is now in love that his reckless streak is over. Cunard says to Wilson that he thinks hes bluffing. Wilson snaps back that he doesnt care what Cunard thinks. So Cunard shoots Pirandello again in the arm. Wilson tells Cunard that if he kills Pirandello then he still wont get the big gun. Pirandello pleads with Wilson to stop the mind game with Cunard. Luckily the agent who came to help them earlier shoots Cunard just as Wilson shoots him with his hand gun. Cunard is shot in the chest and falls into a tree truck before sliding to the floor. Pirandello cant believe what he just saw. He thinks Wilson took out Cunard with his hand gun. Pirandello asks Wilson how he did that. Wilson tells him not to make a big deal out of it. Suddenly a big white light shines down on the spot for the meet. Pirandello tells Wilson to go and make the exchange. Wilson walks off towards the light but not before giving Pirandello a friendly pat on the arm, too bad it was the one he was shot in twice. He walks into the light with the glass of water in his hand. He is met by one of the aliens who smiles at him. The alien looks like a human being. Wilson tells the alien that it is amazing how they are just like the human race. The alien tells him that all life in the universe is like the human race. He asks Wilson does he want the good package or the big gun. Wilson decides on the good package instead of what he was ordered to get. The alien tell him that on behalf of the human race that was a wise choice to make. He hands him a white package and Wilson hands the alien the glass of water. The alien drinks the water while Wilson stares at him in awe. The alien says to Wilson that they got the baseball that he sent them (he is referring to the baseball that Pirandello hammered the pen into to convince Wilson about the mission) and that they are learning to play the actual game of baseball. He tells Wilson that they love the game and to think Pirandello for it. The alien give Wilson his very own pen and hands him Pirandello original pen too to give back to Pirandello. The alien tells Wilson thank you and the ship takes off leaving a bewildered Wilson looking up at the night sky. Wilson tells Pirandello that the encounter was amazing and Pirandello tells them you never forgot your first time you save the world and the thrill that comes with it. Upon arriving home in the presidential Limo, Wilson steps out a new man having just saved the world. He is greeted by his wife and kids and the house is completely rebuilt. He walks into the house and then into the living room and tells his wife that he has been thinking that they have been getting too much milk lately. The wife confesses that she cant stop the milkman to stop delivering to their house. She wasnt having an affair with the milkman after all. She then tells him that the milkman has been making a lot of sexual advances and suggestive remarks. Wilson tells her that he will take care of the situation. She begs him not to do anything violent and Wilson tells her that only a word or look is all it takes to right a wrong. He walks with his kids to Buddys house to get back his sons bike that they stole. Buddy tells Wilson that he has decided to pay for the bike after all. Wilson tells him that he hasnt come to pay for the bike but to take it back. Oaf gives him some abuse and Wilson beats up the thugs. He even hits Oaf with his own elbow exactly the way Oaf hit him earlier. Buddy finally decides to get his son the bike back and Wilson repeats what Buddy did to him earlier by stepping on his toe and sending him into the box of Styrofoam. He also says that Buddy will have to pay to get it re-sprayed the original colour. The kids are now proud of their Dad. Wilson asks Pirandello if he was a little too forceful. Pirandello tells him that he used the right amount of force and it was also well controlled. He tells Wilson that he has to go because he has a date. A rope ladder descends and Pirandello gets on it. It turns out his new girlfriend is flying a helicopter just above them. She smiles down at them in her glasses she was wearing in the bar when Pirandello picked her up. He says goodbye and is hoisted into the air still hanging onto the rope ladder. Pirandello shouts down that Wilsons house looks great from where he is standing. The sleazy milkman returns to Wilsons house to deliver yet more milk. He opens the gate only to be caught out by Wilson hiding behind it. He punches the milkman who falls to the ground. Wilson looks down at him and tells him to "try and be more sensitive". | comedy | train | imdb | for me, real men was an utterly hilarious experience.when i saw the movie, i never heard of it, and was therefore without any expectations about plot, people playing in it or general need for suspension of disbelief.
i guess that it came upon me pretty quickly that nobody in this movie took themselves seriously, and even better, played their parts over the top and had so many completely unbelievable situations happening to them that i couldn't help but be entertained.
yes, this movie might not have eminently quotable lines, a brilliant script or a beeline to the oscars for best comedy, or even the most inspiring actors, but i've seen a lot of movies that label themselves comedies yet fail miserably where this movie succeeds brilliantly; it ends with me having a huge smile on my face.
It is really a hilarious film because John Ritter is such a wimp and James Belushi is a pro CIA agent.
John Ritter then gets self confidence when he is convinced that he won a back ally confrontation with renegade CIA agent clowns.
I had the opportunity to watch this movie again (possibly my 20th time) this weekend and laughed all the way through it.
If you have seen these movies and NOT enjoyed them (even as a guilty pleasure)- please don't waste your time on "Real Men" - you simply don't have that sense of humor.
- This movie is not Ben Hur - it exists to make you laugh - it's a comedy..
I watch this movie over and over and enjoy it more every time.
It's great to see the friendship and bonding develop between Belushi and Ritter as the movie progresses.
Some of the best scenes are when Ritter finally realizes his purpose, and the skills he has learned, and puts them to work, and when he finally realizes his mission and takes it seriously.This movie is not only funny but also filled with lots of action.Watch for the scenes with Belushi's "dad" and when Ritter clobbers the milkman..
I'm not a John Ritter fan, but he and Jim Belushi are really good together.
Ritter is a look-a-like of a dead agent who the CIA needs to help deliver a message to aliens (see, here we go).
The film then turns into a road movie with Ritter going through a transformation from the wuss to a more confidant guy.
Belushi starts to go a little soft toward the end and it's up to Ritter to (you ready for another one) deliver a glass of water to an alien-human in exchange for the secret to a better earth.
When a CIA agent is killed, Nick Pirandello (James Belushi) is sent in to save the world.
Nick is forced to recruit a timid insurance salesman look-alike, Bob Wilson (John Ritter) and drive cross country to the destination.This is mostly a buddy picture, in which each of our protagonists learn something from the other and they bond.
It has a nice mix of action and comedy.Some of my favorite scenes : Nick's Macguyver-like nail gun creation, his shoelace Tarzan impression and the bad clown attack.
I write this review today in salute to him after his untimely passing.Too me Real Men is one the best worst movies ever made.
Ritter and Belushi hit the mark in this comedy team up.
This a true example of John Ritter at his best.Don't miss it.Bottom Line: 7/10!
I saw this movie when it came on television the first time and I loved it.
Maybe it's because I love Belushi and Ritter as actors and I thought the story was cute.
For one thing there are some very nice action sequences in this.Then there is the buddy factor.Jim Belushi and John Ritter make a great pair and are the main reason to keep you watching.
And to add to the insult, the delivery and timing was all over the place.I have to agree with the other reviewer in that Ritter can be under-appreciated, but even though he actually seemed to be trying (unlike Belushi, who couldn't be bothered), nothing could possibly save this movie.
It's simply so stupid that I couldn't help feeling the joke was on me, that some jaded burned-out exec in Hollywood was laughing at MY stupidity for thinking that a movie with two "stars" couldn't be THAT bad.
Maybe he's still laughing today, judging by the continual stream of garbage that's come out over the last couple of years.Really, don't see this movie, it's not even good as camp..
I can only surmise that the writers who worked on this film, faced with a creativity crisis you know, one of those dark moments of writer's block must have solved the creativity problem by consuming a few deep hits of laughing gas, and this movie is what resulted.
(Unlike Bill, they DID inhale.)I've seen this movie several times over the years, and I somehow always find myself enjoying the comedy in it, though I find it (the comedy) really rather hard to define.
It's not really a "Laugh-at-the-funny-lines" sort of humor, though again, both Ritter and Belushi do have some very funny lines in it.I think it's one of those movies that you must approach much as you do, say, a Monty Python film: you need to be in "that frame of mind," you need to straight away drop some of your defenses and your preconceived notions of what constitutes "funny".
By then you would probably get more comedic value out of switching the TV channel to Bill O'Reilly or Neil Cavuto.What makes Real Men work for me is the combination of the bizarre, almost Twilight Zone-like storyline, and the excellent chemistry between John Ritter and James Belushi.
Combine that with the acting and antics of Ritter and Belushi, which are just spot-on smooth as silk, and the whole thing just makes for compelling watching.
CIA Agent Pillbox (John Ritter) is killed before he is scheduled to meet space aliens.
Nick Pirandello (James Belushi) is a hard-charging super-agent.
Belushi was absolutely impossible to like, and his chemistry with John Ritter was virtually nonexistent.
I must be missing something here, subliminal messages or something.From the evidence gathered here, I'm almost certain that there HAS to be another movie named "Real Men" from 1987 starring James Belushi and John Ritter that has a better script, fewer embarrassing situations and more sense.Anyway, this has got to be one of the biggest disappointments I have seen since "Batman Returns".
I am a fan of both Belushi and Ritter, I even liked the trailer for this movie (where both guys just talked into the camera about their contrasting lives) and the idea of a macho CIA operative (Belushi) clashing with a milquetoast-y middle class guy (Ritter) had some promise.But every time they try to make a funny scene, there's either too much gun fire, too many explosions, too many painfully un-funny one-liners or too much S&M.
And the whole clown thing was kind of a head-scratcher (Sure, you would have to be good to be able to get away with that, but why go to all that trouble?).In the end, Ritter becomes a little more assertive through his adventures and Belushi gets in touch with his more tender side (thanks to a girl who is into leather and electrical current).
However, the jokes all fell flatter than John Ritter's hair, and the performances were worse than Jim Belushi's clothes!
James Belushi is incredible as an unstopable and fearless agent that doesn't even blink an eye in any situation and how he deals with John Ritter as the cowardly yuppie like guy is great.
Then near the middle it turns into a boring movie about John Ritter overcoming his fear and some real stupid parts about James Belushi being seduced by some woman he met who wears black leather and carries a whip.
This we have seen over and over again.What sets it apart, however, is the fact that Jim Belushi also has to boost up John Ritters confidence even as he's beating him up.
ABC Tuesday night alums (John Ritter and James Belushi) come together for this waste of film.
Ritter is a super-cautious suburban husband/father who unwittingly gets involved with silly super-agent Belushi who happens to be chasing down some Russian thugs in America.
Nothing makes much sense as a long week of spying goes on with Ritter becoming much tougher and Belushi becoming much more sensitive emotionally.
Ritter and Belushi are a perfect coupling, combining chalk and cheese, as it were, yet it turns out to be one of the best films of the 80s!
I would have probably liked this movie better with someone else, say Bill Murray or even John if he had been alive, in the role of Nick.Still, I enjoyed the goofy storyline.
John Ritter was, while not the best I ever saw, still good as a nerdy spy who had no real qualifications--at first--except for resembling a real spy who was killed.
I liked the physical comedy and the wacky story line, and of course the bad puns.There have been better movies of this type, but this one was fine for my taste..
Yeah it feels more like an SNL skit than an actual movie, but it's absurdness is fantastic!
this movie is very funny, and very well done, john ritter is awesome in this movie, i love real men, i love the comedy i love the writing, i love the plot, i love all the scenes, why is this movie so hard to find, anyone i know that has seen it, cause i made them see it, loves it.
im sure youve seen it, thats why your here, you probably love it, i have only seen it about 10 times cause i have to rent it, or when it comes on tv, but i would love to buy this movie i would watch it all the time, john belushi is incredibly funny.
I caught it from the start, and being that little bit older, enjoyed it even more.Belushi's character is superb and he delivers his lines with perfect timing, "I only smoke after sex" "oh not that much then"...."about a pack a day." Not wanting to make a big thing out of this, I can only recommend if you haven't seen it to give it a try - you'll be using the quotes for years to come.Enjoy..
Oh come on this movie is a classic comedy !!!.
I have watched this movie so many times with so many people and they all agreed that this is one funny film indeed, ok ill be the first to admit that there are some scenes that were a little strange to say the least like the clowns !.But all in all this is funny the story line aint so bad aliens the big gun or the ?, maybe people expect to much from a film but i think its played well by james and john does suit his part very well ...Its a good film "Dont make a big thing of it" ,its funny and without the clowns it would be much better 8-10 for me I still think of it whenever i see James in any other movie although he has had many better films......dont trust me watch it it so old must be able to buy it for pennies.
This is a movie for Real Men!.
It was not super great or anything, but it was a rather funny comedy that passed the time quite nicely.
There are chases and stuff like that, attacks of clowns and during the course of the film the bumbling everyman does get good.
He is played by the late John Ritter, and though I am not really much of a fan of his, he does a particularly good job as the everyman being a bit of a unwilling participant at first, but getting better as time goes on.
As for the rest of the cast, a treasure trove of virtual unknown stars, thankfully though the movie focuses on Ritter and Belushi's characters and the carry the film quite well..
I first saw this film on television when I was 10.I'm now 24 and I still laugh when I think about Ritter running around shooting people with his finger!.
And one that always made me laugh, particularly in Three's Company and this movie, Real Men. It's a bit too 80s at times, but it's a hilarious movie and John Ritter does a terrific job.
So, of course, our hero's CIA Agent Nick Pirandello, played super-coolly by James Belushi, and everyday-Joe Bob Wilson, played brilliantly by John Ritter, who's a look-a-like for a dead agent, set off across America to make the deal.
All the ET's want in return is a glass of water.Along the way, Nick and Bob have to deal with quite a few obstacles, such as the Russians and the CIA Clown Squad.
The plot is simple, all life on earth will be dead in a few years if Jim Belushi cannot get John Ritter, a milquetoast, that he has it in him to save the world.
This is a great satire on our national security.John Ritter is one of the greatest comedic actors of all time and Belushi is in top form as well.
John Ritter starts off a wimp and turns into a tough guy just as Belushi changes from tough guy into a wimp!
this is kind of simple movie with small budget who get maximum fun of it I really enjoyed this movie I keep laughing all the way it has not some awesome story nor a plot or ending but it keeps simple and funny just a feel good movie i think that john Ritter and James Belushi are awesome actors and combination of both excellent choice it keeps you watching and real unexpected things happen I rarely laugh as much as on this movie some people maybe expected much more from it...
but those people never look at budget nor at acting skills for example if you would put any other actors on that movie you would get totally other experience of it probably not worth to watch but Belushis and Ritter awesome acting made of this c movie a full A movie.
And even though this picture had a big one (Jim Belushi and John Ritter spend most of the movie being chased by bad guys trying to get a map indicating where aliens will land, but when they arrive at the spot they find the bad guys already there waiting for them.) I didn't really care.
Between the "clown attack," clever banter and the premise of aliens offering a formula to save the world in exchange for a glass of water, this movie delivers by continually taking the viewer in unexpected (and often ludicrous) directions.Watch it with an open mind and few expectations (as I did the first time I happened to catch it on cable late one night) and you may be pleasantly surprised..
On the case is charming, sleazy, and unflappable super agent Nick Pirandello (James Belushi, in the kind of role that fits him like a glove).
Belushi and Ritter are well cast, and they do have their moments.
James Belushi and John Ritter star in this 1987 action-comedy.
A CIA agent, Nick (Belushi) is sent on a dangerous mission to work with insurance agent, Bob (Ritter) who looks exactly like an agent that was killed.
I've always liked this film and James and John were great together.
Let's just say,when he gets the Micheal Jackson jacket from thin air (you will know what i'm talking about), he grows a pair and starts to stand up for himself.It is one of the most random movies i've seen for many reasons...Transvestite dads, pretending your hand is a gun, the whole alien sub-plot, flying pens, S&M freaks, Jackets appearing from nowhere, winking milkman.Nothing really makes any sense in the film, characters are random and double crosses turn into something else.Just enjoy the banter of the two leads, and you will find a very funny buddy movie..
Everyone thought that war would break out, and the future looked grim.Many movies dealt with this topic, and so did Real Men, only they poked fun at everything, and satirized cold war feelings.The plot is a little over the top, but interesting.
It's up to super agent Nick Pirandello to take Wilson under his wing, and a super agent out of him.Part cop buddy movie, part road trip, Real Men does strain the suspension of disbelief, but still manages to be very entertaining.
One of the classic scenes in the film involves Ritter being seduced by a woman who turns out to be Pirandello's post sex change father!
James Belushi plays a tough CIA agent saddled with John Ritter who bears a striking resemblance to one of his fellow agents who was killed before he could give a glass of water to the aliens so that they would give us the special package to stop the destruction of all life on earth in five years.
Not for everyone, as the 10 star and 1 star reviews indicate but the chemistry between Belushi and Ritter works.
John Ritter as the lost look-alike in the world of guns and spies works and the "what are you going to do with a gun that will blow up the entire planet?" "Point it at the Russians" - that gets me every time.
Well, this was the 2nd time I saw "Real men" (2015) and I still remembered some scenes since 25 years ago.This is a movie with a naive ridiculous feel.
The raw power to control things.James Belushi and the late John Ritter are really good in this.
There are some unexpected laughs (like in the "Dad" scene) but overall the scripted jokes are somehow weak with todays standards.It is a cheap looking movie. |
tt0436697 | The Queen | The film begins on the eve of the 1997 British general election, which sees Tony Blair (Sheen) elected as the United Kingdom's first Labour Party Prime Minister in 18 years. While posing for an official portrait, the Queen (Mirren) talks with the artist and expresses her regret about not being allowed to vote. She is slightly wary of the new prime minister and his pledge to "modernise" the country, but Blair promises to respect the independence of the Royal Family. When Blair visits Buckingham Palace to kiss hands, the Queen follows custom and asks him to form a Government in her name.Three months later, during a visit to Paris, Diana, Princess of Wales is killed in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel along with her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul. Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell (Mark Bazeley), immediately prepares a speech in which he describes her as "the people's princess." Blair gives the speech the next morning and the phrase catches on immediately. Over the next few days, millions of British people in London erupt in an outpouring of grief, as they flock to Buckingham and Kensington palaces to leave floral tributes and notes.Meanwhile, the Royal Family are still on their summer residence at Balmoral Castle, the Queen's estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Diana's death immediately sparks division among senior members of the family; while the Queen is saddened by Diana's death, she and her husband differ with Prince Charles, Prince of Wales over what arrangements should be made. The Queen observes that since Diana divorced Charles (Alex Jennings) a year earlier, she is no longer a member of the Royal Family. Consequently, she insists that the funeral arrangements are a "private affair" and are best left to the princess's own family, the Spencers. A visibly grief stricken Prince Charles, however, argues that Diana was mother of the future King and that the Queen's suggestion is dismissive of this fact. Following her mother's suggestion, the Queen eventually sanctions the use of an aircraft of the Royal Flight to bring Diana's body back to Britain. Charles ensures that his ex-wife's coffin is draped with a Royal Standard instead of remaining a "wooden crate."In London, the bouquets begin to pile up along the palace railings, forcing the changing of the guard to use another gate. Meanwhile, British tabloids become increasingly inflammatory about the lack of any statement by the Royal Family. Prince Charles, during a brief conversation with Blair and later through back-channel contacts, leaves no doubt that he shares the Prime Minister's views about the need for a more public expression of grief. As the Queen's ratings plummet, Blair's popularity rises sharply, to the delight of the his Anti-Monarchist advisers and wife Cherie (Helen McCrory).Blair, however, does not share these sentiments. Despite not concurring with the Queen's course of action, he admires her and tells his wife that a Republican Britain is a ludicrous idea. Later on, he angrily denounces the anti-royal disdain of his Labour advisors and accuses Diana of having tried to destroy everything which the monarchy stands for. After days of building pressure, Blair calls the Queen at Balmoral and urgently recommends a course of action he believes is needed to regain the public's confidence in the monarchy. These measures include attending a public funeral for Diana at Westminster Abbey, flying a Union flag at half mast over Buckingham Palace (the flag is only meant to be flown when a Royal person is present and has never been used for mourning), and speaking to the nation about Diana's legacy in a live, televised address from the palace.Blair's recommendations outrage Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (James Cromwell) and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms). Philip is also surprised that Elton John is asked to attend and sing a song, "Candle in the Wind" in Diana's honour. They view such steps as an undignified surrender to public hysteria, created by the tabloids, that will eventually calm down when the public comes to its senses. The Queen seems more concerned about this and although she shares their feelings, she begins to have doubts as she closely follows the news coverage. Speaking with her mother, the Queen muses that there has been some shift in public values, that perhaps she should step aside and hand over the monarchy to the next generation. The Queen Mother dismisses these ideas, however, saying that she is one of the greatest assets the monarchy has ever had, stated: "The real problem will come when you leave." She also reminds her daughter of the promise she made in Cape Town, South Africa, on April 21, 1947, her 21st birthday, in which she promised that her "whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong..."Later at Balmoral, Philip attempts to distract his grandsons from their mother's death by taking them deer stalking. While venturing out alone in her Land Rover, the Queen damages her vehicle while fording a river and has to call for assistance. While waiting, she weeps in frustration but then catches sight of the majestic Red Deer stag which her grandsons have been stalking. Hearing a distant gunshot, she shoos the animal away. Later that day, the Queen decides to carry out the recommendations of Blair. While preparing to return to London, she is horrified to learn that the stag has been killed on a neighbouring estate, by a visiting stockbroker. She visits the estate where the stag is being dressed and expresses dismay at the amateurish way it was hunted.In the film's climax, the Royal Family return to London and inspect the floral tributes. The Queen also goes on live television to speak about Diana's life and legacy, even going so far as calling her "an exceptional and gifted human being." Two months later, Blair comes to Buckingham Palace for a weekly meeting. The Queen has regained her popularity, but believes she will never quite fully recover from "that week." She cautions Blair that one day he too will find that public opinion can rapidly turn against him. She declares, however, that times have changed and that the monarchy must "modernise." When Blair suggests that he can help with this, The Queen responds, "Don't get ahead of yourself Prime Minister. Remember, I'm supposed to be the one advising you". | boring | train | imdb | This glowing, suspenseful docudrama retells the story of the days of upheaval in London and elsewhere, in 1997, shortly after Tony Blair had just won for Labor, by steering clear of trades unions and welfare statism, while flogging his "let's modernize Britain" program, window-dressing for his Clinton-like political shift to the right.Then, on August 31, Princess Diana, recently divorced from Prince Charles, was killed in a high speed auto accident in midtown Paris.
Dramatized are many vignettes that bring together the major personalities at the center of the highly public dilemma that unfolded in the few days following Diana's passing.Helen Mirren was, as they say, born to play Queen Elizabeth II.
Besides The Queen, we have The Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms), Prince Philip (James Cromwell), Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), Mr. Blair (Michael Sheen), and their respective retainers, playing out at close range their responses to one another, within the framework of a taut cultural and political crisis, one that is, above all else, a threat to public support of the Monarchy.This drama takes place in an enervating, though also suppressed, emotional atmosphere, the tension level constantly ratcheted up by the principals' responses to pressures from the public and the press.
The point is made crystal clear in the film: Elizabeth's seemingly callous aloofness from the public in the wake of Diana's death is the result of her conviction, based on her upbringing, that duty must come first, that stoicism is the face one shows the world, while personal feelings are an entirely private matter, hence not to be aired in public.
The English way.According to this film narrative, Queen Elizabeth makes a serious miscalculation when she fails to consider, or perhaps even to perceive, the fact that the terms of public discourse - perhaps especially with regard to the open expression of personal sentiments - have changed radically around the world.
It is a staggering achievement.Director Stephen Frears, using a superb script by Peter Morgan, details the time from the election of Labor Party Prime Minister Tony Blair (a brilliant Michael Sheen) to that momentous international outpouring of grief and love that followed the tragic death of Princess Di in 1997, showing the bifurcation of response between the Royals and the People as represented by Blair.
The ogres in the Balmoral Castle were in fact Prince Phillip (James Cromwell) and the Queen Mum (Sylvia Syms) abetted by the very proper Robin Janvrin (Roger Allam) and the wishy washy Prince Charles (Alex Jennings).The entire production is beautifully filmed with the use of clips from Princess Di's life (and death) instead of creating an actress role to portray her - a very wise choice.
Helen Mirren brought to life a Queen Elizabeth II that I would have never expected, and the outstanding performances of Michael Sheen as Blair and James Cromwell as Prince Philip (and the entire supporting cast) only made everything that much better.
In this film, we get a glimpse of what life was like inside Buckingham Palace, and whether The Queen (played here by Helen Mirren) was being cold and uncaring, or, if she was the one who was suffering most of all.Director Stephen Frears recreates one week in 1997 with intelligent, deft strokes.
The Queen chose not to make a parade of her feelings in response to Diana's death, and, though the nation hated her for it, we learn here that it is not because she did not care, but because she honestly thought it the right thing to do.As a young and newly elected Tony Blair with big aspirations and an even bigger grin, Michael Sheen is freakishly good as the Prime Minister.
His performance shows a likable side of the prime minister in his refusal to side with the public over the denouncement of The Queen for her actions, and his attempts to make The Queen limit the damage that she has made is the basis for a very insightful story.Other delights in this film come in some high-brow one-liners and some other good performances, but the best thing about it is how it manages to make you think, and even empathise with a group of people that you never saw yourself giving a toss about.
Stephen Frears' The Queen, written by Peter Morgan (co-author of The Last King of Scotland) and starring Helen Mirren, is a glittering, compelling, solemnly anxious news comedy about the week in late summer, 1997, when Tony Blair, fresh in office as new-Liberal Prime Minister, "saved" the British royal family, or saved it from itself, when Lady Di died in Paris.
But also as Peter French has said about this film, the royal family "are shown to be morally and socially blinkered." Tony Blair reluctantly taught the Queen to see their absence of public response to the death, her insistence at first that it was a "private, family matte," was a disastrous policy that had to be reversed.Diana had skillfully manipulated the media to form an image of herself combining Demi Moore and Mother Teresa.
But a monarch isn't tutored in such strategies.No flag flew at half mast over Buckingham Palace, because that flagpole was used only for the royal flag, to show if anyone was home, and they were all at Balmoral, being private in their grief, avoiding publicity, and protecting the boys.The Queen as seen here and imagined with enthusiasm by Morgan is not as witty as Alan Bennett's Queen, in her last on screen recreation, in A Question of Attribution (directed by John Schlesinger, 1992), nor does the estimable Ms. Mirren (who's nonetheless very fine) have the buoyancy of Prunella Scales in Schlesinger's film.
The formal grandeur of the film inherent in its subject matter the Prime Minister and the royal family is offset by its ironies and by the intimacy of the tennis match that develops in communications back and forth by telephone.This movie is ultimately kind to Blair and to the Queen.
Certainly not, anymore than we should condemn James Goldman for being fanciful as to what may or may not have occurred in the Court of Henry 11 and Eleanor of Aquitaine."The Queen", then, is not some purposeful account of the facts surrounding the death of Princess Diana as seen from the Royal, (and Prime Ministerial), perspective as a wonderfully human comedy hewn from a national and a private tragedy.
This is great acting which I have no doubt will be rewarded with every prize going come the year's end, (and anyone unfamiliar with Mirren's work who thinks, perhaps, that this is largely just a brilliant piece of mimicry should seek out her very different but equally brilliant performance on television as the present Queen's namesake Elizabeth 1).The biggest glittering prize most likely to come Mirren's way is, of course, the Oscar and amid the ballyhoo surrounding her performance, Michael Sheen's brilliant turn as Tony Blair has been mostly overlooked.
Stephen Frears' competent, well written, expertly cast and intimate look into the Royal Family and British government in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death is a straightforward, no-nonsense stunner.Operating both as a comedy of manners where the newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (an excellent Michael Sheen) must save the Royal Family from themselves before the Monarchy is tossed aside completely by an angry, guilt-ridden public desperately wanting a statement, a word of comfort, or at very least the presence in London of their Queen Elizabeth II (played masterfully by Helen Mirren, who is as cold and stubborn here as she was conflicted and passionate as Elizabeth I in the HBO miniseries of the same name earlier this year), and also as a surprisingly touching testament to the British people's love affair with Princess Diana and more importantly the Monarchy, "The Queen" succeeds splendidly on multiple levels.Frears combines archival footage of a grieving public and newscasts with intertwining splices of historical recreations and fictionalized riffs on what it must've been like inside the Royal Chambers.
The rest of the Royals serve as a sideshow, with Prince Charles wimpy and ineffective in the presence of his mother, Prince Phillip (James Cromwell) a rowdy lout, and the Queen Mother (Sylvia Sims) providing equal parts comic relief and aristocratic wisdom to her daughter.In the end, "The Queen" is a film that sneaks up on you, funnier and more touching than you imagined, and anchored by a classic turn from a consummate British actress as a Queen who desires to understand her people and do them proud while honoring the traditions of her lineage..
Every performance is spot on and helps do justice to the brilliantly written script by Peter Morgan who somehow has drawn to light the different sides involved in that week of tragedy and media spin without being too intrusive in terms of the grief of Princes William and Harry, while Stephen Frears never turns the stock footage of Diana into something overly ghoulish or unseemly.Ultimately though, this story is not really about Diana at all, her death merely serving as the catalyst for a deep and painful self-reflection for The Queen on her monarchy and personal aversion to Diana and the circus slowly gathering outside Buckingham palace.
Given, however, the incestuous interdependence of the media world, where press barons own shares in television and film companies, film-makers are often reluctant to subject the Fourth Estate to too much scrutiny.This is, rather, an examination of the relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and her Prime Minister Tony Blair and of the roles played by them in the events following Diana's death.
His politician's instincts tell him that the Royal Family's attitude represents a public relations disaster in the making, and tries to persuade the Queen to return to London, to fly the flag and to grant Diana the official funeral for which the public are clamouring.Michael Sheen bears a close resemblance to the Tony Blair of nine years ago, and has clearly studied him closely in order to catch his every gesture and nuance.
No hard-line royalist, Mirren has said she thought twice before accepting her honours as a Dame of the British Empire in 2003, but her portrait here is convincingly astute, supporting a remarkable physical transformation with a sensitive characterisation that endears the Queen to us and renders her majesty's charisma all the more apparent.In an early scene where the Queen is chatting to her portrait artist, she mentions the coming election and expresses a longing to vote, just once, for "the sheer joy of being partial." The artist reminds her that it is, after all, her government, and Queen Elizabeth retorts, "Yes, I suppose that's some consolation." Obviously there's some things money can't buy.The film examines her character, her stoical dignity born of years of tolerance not of her choosing, and is maybe so gripping because previous portraits have been little more than a regal cipher.
Add to that the crisis of feelings within the Royal Family itself, the sense of isolation felt by the Queen, and the release of the film near the end of Blair's career, and you have a movie that presents a whirlwind of emotion that will thrill public tastes..
In 1997, after the death of Lady Di in a car accident in Paris, the reluctant Queen (Helen Mirren) and The Establishment do not accept to honor the "People's Princess" as a member of the Royal Family.
However, the public and the media question the utility of the monarchy and the just-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) advises the Queen to make a public speech mourning the loss of Diana."The Queen" is probably the best performance of Helen Mirren in the cinema.
The Queen, HM Elizabeth II(Helen Mirren) is an interesting portrayal of the British Royal Family during the turbulent 1997, when the death of Lady Di, the ¨People Princess¨ in Paris when unfortunately happened a car crash .
Then Prime Minister Tony Blair(Michael Sheen,his wife Cherie is well played by Helen McClory)seeing British people is questioning the monarchy advises the Queen to do a speech mourning the death of Diana of Wales.This excellent movie is perfectly performed by a magnificent plethora of actors playing real people in actual deeds.
Stephen Frears surely knows how to start and end a movie, skills that amazingly rare to judge from what's in the world.This film begins with a small vignette, having nothing at all to do with the story, but introducing the character Helen Mirren plays.
But when the actors are Princess Di the most famous woman in the world, Queen Elizabeth and her dysfunctional family, Tony Blair and his power crazy New Labour henchmen (a withering portrayal of press secretary, Alistair Campbell), we see society as we lived it a decade ago personified through them and it gives us a window on ourselves.To take one scene, the Queen returns to Buckingham Palace to find crowds of people and flowers (some with very unkind messages attached).
Helen Mirren turns out a fascinating performance as Queen Elizabeth II dealing with the death of Princess Diana.
The Queen tries very hard to do the "proper" thing, but it is in conflict with what might be the "best" thing for her people.All in all, an excellent film that anyone who likes British history or the royal family should watch..
The film specifically focuses on the Queen and Tony Blair but you also get some insights into Prince Charles (mostly very positive) and Prince Philip (mostly horrendous).I appreciated the acting of Helen Mirren and I wasn't at all surprised to see that she received the Oscar for her performance.
During the week following the death of the Princess of Wales, Queen Elizabeth II and her family struggle to come to terms with their own reaction, that of the new Government and that of the British public.Frears and Morgan offer up a speculative view of the private dynamics between Royal Family members and between Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Queen.
Although Queen Elizabeth is still in the spotlight, Helen Mirren's strong portrayal made that role much easier to swallow.Fresh subjects are tough to hit upon anyway, and you have to give credit where it is due; Stephen Frears certainly deserves some acclaim for simply attempting to make a film about the Royal Family and their reaction (or non-reaction) to Princess Diana's accidental death.
Set in the months around the death of Princess Diana, the film focuses on the deep emotions that occurred within the royal family, and relationship between her royal majesty the Queen (Dame Helen Mirren) and the British Prime Minster, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen).Helen Mirren is forever a treasured gem in acting show-business and here, she is no acceptation.
The buck in "The Queen" died but Elizabeth, like Sir Walter Scott's famous "Stag at eve," certainly did not.The film examines how the new Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the queen work out the queen's initial refusal to publicly acknowledge Diana's death in any way.
A magnificent rendition of this brief but tumultuous period in British' history, Stephen Frears' "The Queen" chronicles the series of events that took place between the car crash and the public funeral in West Minster.But more than a political film, "The Queen" is constructed like an exhilarating psychological arm-wrestling between two antagonistic forces: the freshly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II.
Meanwhile, the film avoids the opposite Manichaeism by showing a Tony Blair convinced that Britain needs monarchy, while on the Royal Family side, Queen Mum and Prince Edward (a grouchy James Cromwell) don't feel concerned by Diana's death.
Helen Mirren is "The Queen," a 2006 film that dramatizes what went on in the Royal House of Windsor after the death of Princess Diana, when Queen Elizabeth is deeply criticized for refusing to speak publicly about the event.
Michael Sheen was absolutely uncanny as Tony Blair, who walks a fine line dealing with Buckingham Palace and political forces; and James Cromwell as Phillip comes off as a bitter, angry Diana hater...probably not far from the truth.To understand Queen Elizabeth and her actions, the family's history is important.
Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II comes under fire from her people after her stoic dignity prevents her or any of the Royals from showing public grief after the passing of Princess Diana of Wales.
Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, and Michael Sheen as the young Prime Minister Tony Blair are impressive in their respective roles.
The film features Helen Mirren in the lead role as Queen Elizabeth II and captures the dilemma that engulfed the royal family after the heartbreaking demise of the most loved royalties of England, Princess Diana.
Chief among them is Helen Mirren, and the legendary actress got her chance to portray what is perhaps the role of a lifetime in 2006's 'The Queen.'The film looks behind the curtains of Buckingham and Balmoral to show the royal family's thought process and sparring with newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) in the hours and days following the tragic death of Princess Diana - "the People's Princess." This glimpse into a circle of people that is rarely possible is what many found to be the main draw in the best picture-nominated film, and while there is an all-star cast here (James Cromwell as Prince Philip, Sylvia Syms as the Queen Mother and Alex Jennings as Prince Charles), Mirren's first-rate delivery of Elizabeth II's calculating, cold demeanor during this period in her life is really what everyone is here for - and the Academy agreed, handing Mirren a gold statue for best performance by an actress in a leading role.While it's true that Mirren steals every scene she's in, Sheen's portrayal of Blair is also to be respected.
"The Queen" deals with her death and offers a look into the royal's point of view of the events and Queen Elisabeth II personal conflict when she was caught between the relentless media and the desire to protect her family.The plot of the film is as follows:In the beginning the new elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) meets Queen Elisabeth II (Helen Mirren) in Buckingham Palace for the first time. |
tt0414852 | Banlieue 13 | In 2010, social problems such as violence, drugs and organized crime have overrun the poorer suburbs of Paris, especially a Banlieue commonly referred to as B13 (Banlieue 13, or District 13 or Borough 13 in English), a ghetto with a population of some two million. Unable to control B13, the authorities construct a high wall topped by barbed wire around the entire area, forcing the inhabitants within to survive without education, proper utilities, or police protection behind the containment wall. Police checkpoints stop anybody from going in or out.Three years later, an almost feudal system has developed amongst the street gangs of B13. The area is now flooded with hard drugs such as heroin and completely controlled by gangsters. Certain blocks are ruled over by various individuals and one high rise apartment block is looked after by an athletic and street-wise man known as Leïto (David Belle). Leïto hates drugs and injustice and wages a one-man war against a neighboring gang lord named Taha Bemamud (Bibi Naceri) to keep his own building and people safe and free of drugs. Leïto captures 20 kg of cocaine from Taha, worth over a million euro, which incites Taha to send his thugs to recover the merchandise, led by the towering K2 (Tony D'Amario). Leïto destroys the cocaine by using bleach and uses parkour to evade Taha's thugs through the building and across rooftops.Taha kidnaps Leïto's younger sister Lola (Dany Verissimo) to use against him, but Leïto manages to invade Taha's base, rescue his sister, and kidnap Taha in turn. Leïto takes Taha to the police office at the edge of the district perimeter, but the police are in the process of abandoning their position on orders from the French Ministry, and are also threefold outnumbered by Taha's gang. The police release Taha and allow him to take Lola with him to avoid a confrontation. In addition, they put Leïto in a cell also to contain the situation, but Leïto kills the police chief in the process for handing over Lola.Six months later, outside of B13 in the affluent areas of Paris, an undercover police captain named Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) infiltrates an underground casino and attempts to arrest the gangster who owns it. His extraction procedure fails, however, forcing him to fight his way through an army of thugs to escape the casino. Upon the mission's completion, Damien immediately receives another assignment from his chief and also the Defence Secretary of France, Mr Krüger. He is told that Taha has stolen an experimental neutron bomb that is set to detonate in 24 hours. His mission is to convince Leïto, imprisoned for months, to lead him to Taha's base so that he can disarm the bomb.Damien attempts to pass himself off as a fellow prisoner and helps Leïto escape to B13, but Leïto sees through Damien's act and abandons him. After fighting off some of the local thugs, Damien locates Leïto and admits the truth. They team up to disarm the bomb and rescue Lola. The pair surrenders to Taha in order to gain access to his base. There, they discover that Taha has rigged the warhead to a missile launcher, pointed towards the center of Paris and is prepared to blackmail the government with it. Taha demands a high ransom, which is refused by Damien's government contact. The pair escape, and while Taha's thugs pursue them, he discovers that the government has emptied all of his offshore accounts in the Bahamas. One of Taha's men asks how Taha will pay them. Frustrated Taha trys to shoot the member who asked him that only noticing his gun to be unloaded. Taha offers money from a safe he possesses. Knowing that with Tahas accounts emptied and unable to have any reason to work for him the thugs shoot Taha. This leaves K2, a more sympathetic character, in charge and K2 has a moment of reconciliation with Leïto, suggesting that peace is possible in the future within B13.Leïto and Damien fight their way to the tower holding Lola and the bomb. Once there, Damien calls his contact to receive the deactivation code, 9293709B13. Leïto recognizes the code as a reference to the bomb's location (9293 is the district's area code), the day's date (7 September), and the district, B13. Leïto deduces that the government has set them up and the code will actually detonate the bomb instead of deactivating it. He fights Damien to prevent him from entering the code. The timer runs out and the bomb does not detonate, proving Leïto's theory.The pair return to the government building with the bomb and force Mr Krüger to admit that he had planned to blow up B13 as a means to get rid of it. The confession has been taped and is immediately broadcast by pirate television transmission. The pair's actions cause a major scandal that sparks public support for B13. Soon the rest of the government promises to tear down the containment wall and bring back schools and police to B13. Leïto and Damien depart as friends, and Lola kisses Damien to encourage him to visit B13 in the future. | revenge, action, murder, violence | train | imdb | When the government learns that local kingpin (Larbi or Bibi Narceri , Sami Narceri's brother ; even though Bibi Naceri co-wrote the script, he still had to audition for the part of Taha along with other actors) has acquired a nuclear weapon , Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) and Leito (David Belle , the originator of Le Parkour ) are called upon to avoid an atomic bomb on destroying the blocks at the heart of District 13 with tactical precision and as save the city .
They confront their enemies in order to find out location the bomb (the bomb code is: 9293709B13) and his sister (Dany Verissimo who spent two whole days on a roof in the freezing cold in ripped clothes, handcuffed to a bomb and Luc Besson wrote the part of Lola specifically for her) who was formerly kidnapped , but someone is still after them and are forced to once again take up violent means to survive .¨13th District¨ is an exciting film that contains suspense , thrills, noisy action , shootouts and violent fights .
The highlights of the movie are The Parkour , also known in USA as Free Running whose origin was in ¨Yamasaki¨ film directed by Ariel Zeitoun , Julien Seri and also produced by Luc Besson with his production company called ¨EuropaCorps¨ .
This film takes everything that has been learned in the last 100 years about how to make an action movie and distills it into a perfect 85 minutes.The stars are true athletes, including David Belle, the co-founder of the sport of Parkour.
He has spent 18 years perfecting his skills, which means that most of the spectacular stunts are real, not done with special effects.The plot is action-movie perfect as well: A criminal kingpin, a damsel in distress, an honest cop, a noble criminal, corrupt officials, double crosses, nearly superhuman enemies.
I'll have to watch it at least a few more times before I make a proper review, but for NOW, let me just attest that the action was so intensely awesome that I forgot to breath; I actually found myself short of breath more than once just from watching.I have followed eastern action cinema for years and have been continuously intrigued and impressed with their inventiveness and physical expression, but without doubt this film has not just raised the bar for western martial arts/action movies but for the entire Action Movie genre.The stunt work is flawlessly executed, and utterly amazing.
If this movie gives you a sense of deja vu, don't worry just flow with it.The movie follows the recent Ong Bak trend of action movies in that there is very little plot or a somewhat lacking storyline but is compensated for by bone crunching and realistic action/athletic sequences, albeit in this case with a French flavor.After the opening "fly through" of the barrio we get a glimpse at one of the protagonists, Leito (David Belle).
Violent, like kids schoolyard games, not horrific (no torture, no blood), not "adult" (even if Dany Verissimo happens to be a famous adult movie actress), but not too unbelievable either : while you watch, you're in, you believe in all, the action and the plot..
The story is good and develops at a good pace.Cyril Raffaelli and David Belle deserve huge credit for the way they performed in this film, the stunts were all real and just looked incredible.
Much better than most American recent action movies, especially due to lack of fast editing and more focus being put on actually being able to see what our two heroes are up to.Leïto is a local resident of the infamous Banlieue 13, a district cut off from the rest of France in 2010 due to uncontrollable crime.
This is because the stunt-work is so amazing and insane that I STILL recommend you see it.When the film begins, you learn that in the future, cities are often walled up and the scum inside are allowed to flourish--sort of like in "Escape From New York".
Its just basic stuff but i have to give the film a thumbs up for sheer over achievement on the technical side.Its like watching a really good advert that goes on for just a bit too long but still leaves you with the feeling that you've experienced something quite fresh and unique.I cant really say a great deal more about the film, the stunt work pretty much does all the talking and gives the film a 7/10 all by itself.
i had heard of this movie having David belle who inspired me and many young men alike to take part in parkour- so I had to see this movie.David and Cyril did great acting i thought and the director's use of camera angle was really effective in capturing the audience.The dialogue drags out a bit but well worth waiting to see the action- truly inspiring!
The music is well suited to the movie and provides great effect to the scene presented and to the audience watching.The combination of drugs, politics, hot cars, parkour and kung-fu make this movie one to see just for the action..The storyline is not the best, however once the movie starts it will have you waiting to see the action of David and Cyril.
- I thought.The writers had other ideas, however, and turned in a story written by one of their 13 year old children - drowning in cliché and hackneyed movie concepts, awful simplistic characters and unbelievable plot developments.I feel sorry for the free jumpers involved in this film.
Parkour, a martial art in which the expert uses his environment to bounce around like a monkey on speed, is indeed an art, and just amazing to watch, and when this film is in action mode, it can be a lot of fun.
It just leaves me with my jaw dropped - most of us would actually die if we tried to do what they can do!**Small spoiler to anyone unaware of the plot**So as I said, it is quite simple close to a perfect action movie; it has; very simple plot, loads of fantastic real stunts (not CGI made for a change) performed by amazingly fit guys, an honest cop, a noble criminal, bad & good guys are evenly matched (which is rare), there is a criminal kingpin & his underdogs, at stake: honour and the lives of millions & all that in 85min!.
With incredible Parkour stunts and one of the main characters played by David Belle, considered by many the founder and leading pioneer of Parkour, "District B13" delivers what you can ask from a good action-thriller - and more.
The straight-faced absurdity is part of the film's charm, but it's the relentless pace with invigorating action sequences that comes to define "District B13." Director Pierre Morel, working from a script by producer Luc Besson, focuses only on the essentials for an action film: speed, stunts, and the kind of human special effects that technology can't deliver.Set in future of 2010, "District B13" imagines crime and anarchy to have gotten so out of control that the government has erected a wall to isolate a suburban ghetto from proper Paris residents.
Produced by Luc Besson (one of the coolest directors of all time), directed by Pierre Morel (who went on to make "Taken" and "From Paris With Love"), and starring David Belle (the guy who founded the urban sport of parkour, where people run and move in fancy ways to overcome obstacles), "District B13" is all about style and action, and it's pretty damn cool that way.
Towards the end, a type of "fight the power" message emerged, which might be seen as a little pushy, dumb, or one-sided; I personally thought it was something of a redeeming factor.With quality, stylish photography and editing effects, the film looks really cool, especially in the way it captures the action and the seedy ghetto settings.
It's probably one of the coolest flicks that I've seen, French or otherwise, and chances are that if you enjoy action, impressive stuntwork, and stylish cinema like I do, then this film should be right up your alley.4/5 (Entertainment: Very Good | Story: Average | Film: Pretty Good).
I can not possible say enough good things about the action and stunt work in this film, it is absolutely jaw dropping, I have never seen anything like it, ever.
One of the heroes' sister is kidnapped by a gang of underworld-type drug dealers who have also stolen a rather large neutron bomb, cue the other hero, an undercover cop sent to retrieve the bomb.Penned by the legend Luc Besson, you can guarantee the story is gripping enough to hold its own with the mix of the extraordinarily executed parkour, this movie is definitely designed to have you holding your breath on the edge of your seat.Packed with adrenaline, District B13 is a must for action lovers!.
I like the quiet meandering of traditional French films; the tranquil village settings, occasional incidents, such as when a young woman takes a dip in the lake or a bottle of wine is opened in a sensual manner, ah yes, vive la difference...until this, Pierre Morel's Banlieue 13, a wham bam thank you m'am action picture that beats some Hollywood movies at their own game.I quite liked the asides and minor whimsy interspersing the action and fighting; the 17 year old who lent me the DVD loves action movies, but I also enjoyed the plot, energy and traditional good guy versus bad guy theme.
Most of the acting of all the side characters is only so-so or just what you'd expect from an action-flick, but the two male leads (David Belle, in his first leading role as Leïto and Cyril Raffaelli, who started out as a stunt choreographer in the late 90's, as Damien Tomaso) are doing a damn fine job and even have a nice bit of chemistry together on-screen.
Not at acting of course, but at putting their very lives on the line to deliver a movie that revolves around the sport and makes similar action movies look stale.The story takes place in near future France where a massive wall has sprung up around district 13, the most crime-riddled ghetto in the country in an attempt to keep the unsavoury inhabitants separated from everybody else.
Each of these sequences are incredible - Belle makes running away from fights look phenomenal, while Raffaeli comes across as a French Tony Jaa as he gets up close and personal with some bone crunching martial arts fury - but unfortunately, they unleash the full bag of tricks too soon.Not that there isn't plenty of similar stuff to follow, it just pales in comparison to these opening scenes.
It isn't meant to be a work of great drama its merely a well put together entertaining french action film, with some amazing parkour stunts.
My favorite movie last year...even above Ong Bak. Le Parkour (the art of movement) is featured prominently in this sci-fi action film featuring amazing martial arts and "stunts".
I believe this film will spark more directors and writers to include parkour into their movies.With fantastic performances from David Belle and Cyril Rafaelli and great choreography this film is simply fantastic.This film uses no stunt doubles as far as the main characters go, and there are no wires used, this film has drawn comparison to Ong Bak also used these factors.
I'm a girl who loves action films (unlike many females) and guys, many girls will actually enjoy much of this film; try to talk them into watching it for just 10 minutes ...they should be hooked after Leito's opening Parkour scene.
Though predictable and familiar,District B13 is one heck of an adrenaline excitement that won't be seen in a Hollywood film.It's not best action film,it's actually an action film featuring one of the best action scenes in recent years.The best action film is packed with smart writing,characters,drama,like Matrix or T2.But here you'll get fantastic action scenes.This is the new age of action films and the impact that Tony Jhaa fight style has made ,I hope future action films can be as jaw dropping as this.Cuz once the action starts you don't give a damn about the plot holes or errors of the script including a weak third act.Set in the year 2010,in a dystopian France,a young man and his sister attempts to get a ruthless crime lord who's turned District B13 a hell, to the government.But when the government police back stabs him,his sister is captured by the crime lord and he's imprisoned.Months later, a bomb is stolen by the crime lord that will go off in 24 hours,and will wipe out District B13.A military officer is assigned to go to the worst sides of the area,that is to the Crime lord and diffuse the bomb.He's teamed up with the young man and then they combine their skills and energy and watch these two men as they blow your mind away with their athletic performance that can be compared with that of TOny Jhaa's.It's as simple and predictable it gets.I wish I could learn Parkour.It's an exciting sport,where you are taught to defy gravity.These guys are super-humans.Watching them do all those path breaking stunts without any safety really kicks your ass.The plot is good enough to keep you engaged.But it's two leads,who surprised me that they don't just do incredible stunts,but can act.The directing and editing is solid and the action scenes,like I said, are unbelievable.Packed with ultra cool chase scenes and soundtrack.This is not to be missed if you love action films.It's fast,kinetic and non-stop thrill ride with enough drama and fun.It avoids cookie-cutter speeches and skips straight to the point.It's short and sweet.Vastly entertaining action film.Recommended..
Cyril Raffaelli (who attended the screening) is a long-time associate of Besson, mainly working stunts or as a body double in a number of movies such as Double Team and Ronin before moving on to acting in films such as Kiss of the Dragon (where he can be seen fighting Jet Li in the climax) and Crimson Rivers 2.David Belle is an interesting choice in that he is the founder of Le Parkour, a movement where people try to move from point A to point B as fast as possible, in the most fluid manner as possible, without stopping, and always moving forward, never backward.
He's now been in almost 70 films, 10 of them with Europa, Luc Besson's company.He's been a body double for Jean-Claude Van Damne in Double Team.Raffaelli's work in Kiss of the Dragon led to the role in Banlieue 13.He is very into martial arts and action films of all kinds from all over, but when he is making or choreographing a film, he likes to read the entire script to get a sense of the character, and tries to be realistic in the stunts and the combat, unlike a lot of US films.Raffaelli tried to show the differences between Leito and Damien in their fighting styles; Leito, being from the street, has a rougher style, more boxing-like, while Damien, being from the more civilized part of Paris, has a cleaner, more calculated style.Since Belle had no background in acrobatics or martial arts, Raffaelli took him to Thailand and trained him over a two-year period.Raffaelli doesn't do parkour himself in the pure sense, but has used elements of it in a chase scene he choreographed for Crimson Rivers 2, plus as a stunt professional he feels he is supposed to be able to do anything (he's certified in scuba diving, skydiving, horseback riding, driving cars/trucks/motorcycles).He has trained in multiple martial arts, including karate, Tae Kwon Do, Brazilian ju-jitsu, and combat-style kung-fu (of which he was the French champion in 1997).
Ostensible the story of two guys, one a local from District 13 who's been wrongly imprisoned and the other a Cop who are brought together to work for the French Government when a Nuclear Warhead goes missing (As they tend to do, if you will it's a bit like Escape to New York).The beginning of the film certainly packs a punch, with a 5 minute action sequence built around the French phenomenon of 'Le Parkour' or 'Free Running'.
With a poll coming up on IMDbs Classic Film board for the best titles of 2004,I was happily caught by surprise,when a very kind fellow IMDber sent me a DVD of a great-looking French Action movie,which led to me getting ready to enter District 13.The plot:Seeing crime go out of control,the French government in 2010 decide to build a wall to separate the most crime-ridden ghettos from the rest of France.2013 (How futuristic!):Finding that all of his heroin supply has been destroyed by Leïto,leading gangster Taha Bemamud decides to get his revenge by kidnapping Leïto's sister Lola.Discovering that his sister has been taken, Leïto fights to get her back,but his stopped in his tracks by a group of corrupt police officers,who put Leïto in jail.6 Months later:Learning that Bemamud's gang has gotten hold of a nuclear bomb which is set to go off in 24 hours,the French government decide to send Capt.
spelling might be wrong) and www.le-parkour.com (have to look around for David belle) are better choreographed and executed.But i can't complain, I mean to see these guys on film is simply my dream come true...it's like watching people who have worked SO HARD in their life finally get some credit.I TRULY hope they get some more rules and control in the action scenes.Final score: 8.5/10 because of how amazing the action is it's a sight to see and judge only from a first hand perspective.
The Transporter, Ong Bak and Escape From New York, and while I enjoyed the action and the chemistry shown between the two charismatic leads Cyril Raffaelli|Damien| and David Belle|Leito| the story was often lacking in my opinion, it was much too simple. |
tt1727388 | The Way Way Back | The Way Way Back begins with four people in a car Trent (Steve Carell) driving, his girlfriend Pam (Toni Collette), a divorced Mom, sitting beside him. Trent's teenage daughter Steph (Zoe Levin) lies across the backseat listening to music; Pam's son Duncan (Liam James) sits in the rear-facing seat in the trunk of the car, known as the way way back, hence the title of the movie.While Pam sleeps, Trent asks Duncan how he rates himself on a scale from 1-10. After some badgering by Trent, Duncan hesitantly replies a 6. Trent tells him he's a 3, and that he needs to put himself out there more.They arrive at Trent's beach house, and see their neighbor, Betty (Allison Janney), who seems to be a little boozy and needy. She is divorced and has three children: an older son, who is seen later in the movie selling marijuana to some of the parents, a teenage daughter, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), and a younger son (with a lazy eye) named Peter.They bring their things into the beach house with Betty following behind. Steph fetches her swimsuit to head to the beach. She comes downstairs, and Trent and Pam coerce Duncan to go down to the beach with her. Both kids don't want Duncan to go, but he goes to please his mother. He heads down to the beach, sitting a distance from Steph and her friends. Susanna is there with Steph, but she wants to read, while Steph and her whiney friends complain about things. Steph calls to her boyfriend Chad, complaining she wants to go in the water, and he doesn't seem to care. Steph takes off her clothes to get into her swimsuit. She sees Duncan just looking over to her, and she says, "Stop staring perv." Steph and her friends go into the water. They rudely tell Susanna to go in the water with them. Duncan then leaves.On the way back to the beach house, Duncan runs into Betty and Peter, and Betty begins telling Duncan that he and Peter need to have a playdate. Duncan says he needs to ask his mom and walks away. Duncan comes home and later, comes downstairs to find Trent's party-hearty friends Joan (Amanda Peet) and Kip (Rob Corddry) chatting with Trent and Pam. They all eat dinner together, and Duncan remains quiet and seems to be miserable. The next day, Duncan finds a small girls' bike in the garage, and takes a ride into the town.At the local pizzeria he sees Owen (Sam Rockwell) playing Pacman on an old machine. They talk for a bit until Owen has to leave because his lunch break is over.Duncan comes back to the beach house and finds that they are going on Joan and Kip's boat. Duncan is forced to wear a life jacket (the only one required to do so), and Betty and Susanna tag along. They come back and later, Duncan goes outside and talks to Susanna about how it sucks here. She turns to go back indoors, and Duncan says, "It looks like it's going to be a hot summer" and she says, "I thought we were done here."The next day, Duncan goes to the Water Wizz water park and sees Owen. Owen takes him around and takes him to get a rental bathing suit from Lewis (Jim Rash) and learns that Lewis doesn't like working there. They go up to the water slide and meet Roddy (Nat Faxon) who runs it. Owen calls him an artist because he makes girls hold and wait so he can look at their butts before they enter the water slides tube.Later, Duncan and Owen run into Caitlin (Maya Rudolph) and she asks Owen if he did his work. As Duncan leaves for the day on his bike, Owen drives up to him and offers him a ride home. They get going after Duncan's bike is put into the rear seat of the car, and he drops off Duncan at the beach house. Owen asks Duncan if he wants a job at the water park, and Duncan accepts. When she sees Owen depart, Duncan's mother, Pam, asks him who that was, and Duncan tells her he's his friend. She replies "A friend with a license?"The next day, Duncan reports for work at the water park. In his first scene at the water park, they see a group of people have taken cardboard and are break dancing on it. He is instructed by Owen to go over and to stop them. He turns off their music and attempts to pick up their cardboard. The guy dancing says that he can only take the cardboard if he shows them his moves. Duncan doesn't have any, but he tries some dance moves anyway. One girl from the crowd of onlookers shows up and teaches him some moves. They then flip him over and he spins on his head. He takes the cardboard, smiling brightly until he trips. Duncan is shown in a series of scenes, dancing with increasing levels of confidence. He then does what Roddy does at the top of the water slide, having the girls hold and wait so he can check them out.Duncan meets three boys who have been trying to pass each other on the water slide forever. No one has done this before. The three boys rush into the water slides tube at once and end up getting stuck and need someone to push them down.One rainy day he doesn't go to work. He stays at home and they all play the board game Candyland and end up getting into a huge fight over how strictly to apply the rules.The next day Duncan finds Owen setting up the chairs, and Duncan continues to work on his tasks. On the fourth of July, Betty hosts a clambake at the beach. At the clambake, Duncan observes Trent making out with Joan in the shadows next to the house.He returns to the table. We see Betty's oldest son passing out weed to the adults. Duncan walks on the beach with Susanna. They talk and watch the fireworks.Next day Susanna sees Duncan leave on the bike on his way to work, and she follows him to the water park. She is surprised that he works at the water park, Duncan having kept it a secret. When they meet up, he shows her around the water park. While talking to her, they are eyed by Owen and Roddy, who call Duncan over using the loudspeaker. They ask Duncan who the young woman is and why he doesn't "seal the deal" with her.He returns to Susanna, and Owen announces over the loud speaker "Duncan please return to your lady friend and let her know this conversation was entirely about her."That night, Duncan arrives back at the beach house and he notices that Trent's car isn't there. Pam, Steph and Duncan wait for a while and then eat dinner without him. Trent returns later that night and says he was stuck on the boat with Kip.The next day there is a party at a neighbor's house. Steph, Duncan and Susanna eat with the adults. Trent and Joan go out to dance. Pam overhears Kip telling Betty that the boat hasn't been working for a week, and needs help to fix it. Pam realizes that Trent's excuse was a lie, so she gets upset and walks away.Duncan gets up from the table and says, "He's sleeping with her! And you know it!" They get into an argument, and it gets a little physical.Later that night, Duncan sees Trent and Pam arguing. He goes down to the beach with Susanna. They talk about ghost crabs. He tries to kiss Susanna, but she leans back. Duncan is embarrassed and runs away from the beach.He sees Peter, who demands that Duncan take him wherever he's going. They go to a going away party for Lewis at the water park. As Lewis starts to make a speech, Roddy, Caitlin and Duncan surprise him by spraying him with water from water guns. A general water gun fight ensues.Duncan and Owen talk the next morning about Trent, and Duncan tells Owen about the time that he called him a 3. The next morning when Duncan arrives back at the beach house, he sees his mom packing, and he infers that he and his mother are leaving. But he is told they are all leaving together, which upsets him.As they are packing the car, Susanna comes over to say goodbye and kisses Duncan, and tells him that she was just taken by surprise the night before. Duncan sees Steph looking on, and says "Stop staring, perv."They get into the same seats in the car as at the beginning of the movie. They drive away and pass the water park. The song "Power Hungry Animals" plays. They stop at a gas station and Duncan hops out of the car and runs towards the water park. Pam and the others chase after him.Inside the water park Pam sees a noticeboard with a sign that says "Employee of the Month" and the photo is of Duncan. Duncan tells Owen he is going to pass him on the water slide. The two rush up the stairs to water slide, dive inside the tube, and Duncan comes out before Owen does. Duncan becomes the first person to ever pass someone on the water slide.We see that, despite his big plans for the future, Lewis is still working there.Owen talks to Pam and Trent. He tells Pam that she's got a hell of a kid in Duncan. Owen says Hi to Trent, saying, "I'm a good friend of 'the 3'". Duncan tells Pam he needs a minute with Owen before they leave, and Duncan and Owen say an emotional goodbye. They then all get into Trent's station wagon again.On the road all four passengers sit in silence, absorbed in their thoughts. After a few minutes Pam climbs over the seats and gets into the back with Duncan. They smile at each other. The movie closes. | dramatic, cute | train | imdb | There are no big action scenes or special effects here, just really good writing with actors who can bring such a realistic story to life.The movie begins with the boy, Duncan, riding in a car with his family to his mother's boyfriend's beach house.
Of course, there are the usual complaints from critics about how it "doesn't break any new ground" as if it was a construction site, but to me it felt fresh and alive with real and relatable characters far removed from the stereotypes of most films in this genre.In the film, 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) is a sullen, withdrawn adolescent whose shaky self-image is not helped by his divorced mother Pam's (Toni Collette) and her obnoxious boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell), or his snippy daughter Steph (Zoe Levin).
Lian James, a Vancouver actor, not only disappears into the role of Duncan, he is Duncan and his struggle to reconnect with the world he has been estranged from is so honest and painful that we identify with him and want to help him, in Langston Hughes words, "to break his shadow into a thousand lights of sun." As in many great films, The Way Way Back has laughter and tears in equal measure..
The cast is strong and in addition to the lead played by Liam James you have the likes of Steve Carell, Toni Collette and Sam Rockwell.The movie does occasionally get a little too "feel good", but that's a small drawback in what is otherwise a very enjoyable watch.
Like the blank-faced children queuing for the water chute during the superb Holding out For a Hero scene, it makes little sense for those who never sang along to Bonnie Tyler but tickles the funny bones of almost everyone over the age of 35.The Way Way Back is a gentle coming of age comedy about the world Duncan (Liam James) has been thrust into.
For anyone who couldn't wait to leave home and adolescence far behind and found exciting possibilities in their summer jobs, this is a film with enough references to make you smile and belly laugh in solidarity and complete understanding.At the centre of The Way Way Back is James' Duncan.
The film stars teen actor Liam James as 14 year-old Duncan who is an isolated teen who despises the idea of taking a summer vacation with his timid mother Pam, her arrogant boyfriend Trent, and Trent's narcissistic daughter Steph.
Other supporting turns that were no lazy river works were of Anna Sophia Robb as Susanna, Rob Corddry & Amanda Peet who we had fun with as Kip & Joan, and Maya Rudolph as water park manager Caitlin; and I would be remiss if I did not mention the standout, scene-stealing performance from Allison Janney as the wickedly-hilarious Betty.
the waterpark in the film is known as Water Wizz and Sam Rockwell plays Owen, the man-child mentor to Liam James' Duncan.
The writing and acting are such high quality that even though we are living in movie cliché-land, we still find ourselves caring about Duncan and Pam, laughing at Owen, and tossing tomatoes at Trent (Carell).Special recognition to Sam Rockwell.
This movie is well worth watching for its story alone, but Rockwell is what gives it that extra little push over the cliff.Playing lesser roles but just as fun to watch are Owen's band of misfit coworkers at "Water Wizz" (ya gotta love that hilarious name which, oddly enough, is the REAL name of the water park where this was filmed).
The story, as you've probably figured out by the IMDb summary, is about "Duncan", a 14-year-old boy who is subjected to an excruciating summer at the home of his mother's new boyfriend (played by The Office's Steve Carell, but in a role that makes you want to call child services on him).
My point is, in this movie when you don't really like the mother, the potential step father, the step sister, the neighbor--all the characters are playing in most respects negative roles to drive the plot, all of the burden falls on the protagonist, but, Duncan is a kid.
Thanks to some fun spirited supporting turns and an easy going charm The Descendants writing duo of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash's coming of age dramedy The Way Way Back is one of this year's most enjoyable and lovable films and one that will make you want to find the nearest water park.Despite The Way Way Back not being particularly original by any stretch of the imagination, there is a freshness and sincerity to Faxon and Rash's script that allows actors such as the ever great Sam Rockwell as charming man-child Owen and Alison Janney as the not so charming divorce' Betty to truly shine in roles that are some of the year's best written and best performed.
In concerns to the other performers in the film, Carell as an against type arrogant pig does well to subvert his usual characteristics and Collette is as solid as ever.The Way Way Back's major stumbling block is strangely Liam James as our 14 year old protagonist Duncan.
Jame's role was perhaps played to perfection but his sulky introverted teenager isn't exactly a barrel of laughs to be around and in some scenes it feels like his in need of a good old fashioned shake up and a reminder that your life is not that bad.
The film focuses on the extremely awkward and strangely enigmatic 14-year old Duncan (Liam James), who is caught right in the middle of a messy divorce, and is being forced to spend the summer with his mother, her new 'jerkish' boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell) and her boyfriend's (older )teenage daughter.
James gives an awesome performance embodying an awkward teen that most viewers can relate to in one way or another, not to mention the supporting roles of Duncan's mother, Pam (played by Toni Colette), her boyfriend Trent, and Owen (Sam Rockwell) which emphasize the roles that adults play in a teen's life.
Written and directed the team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who together won a best screenplay Oscar for "The Descendants," "The Way Way Back" is peopled with living characters, believably nuanced situations (with the exception of one somewhat awkward scene during a nighttime beach party) and smooth, seamless direction.
Rest assured, we'll being seeing more of these two Relative newcomer Liam James plays Duncan, a shy and awkward teen dragged by his mother, her new boyfriend and his teenage daughter to one of those boringly generic east coast beach communities to spend what is supposed to be an idyllic summer.
I can relate to the kid in this story.I think I must've set a record for low self esteem in my youth.The Duncan character from this film probably would have looked pretty good next to me.I wish I could have had a summer like Duncan did.I liked this film because it spoke to the kid I used to be.I only wish it had been made 30 years ago.Steve Carell plays a not so nice guy in very impressive fashion,but I was even more impressed with Sam Rockwell,who was perfect as the water park manager.The real star though is Liam James as Duncan.Thank you,Liam for channeling that shy,reclusive,kid I used to be and making him smile.I had a blast..
In "The Way Way Back," Nat Faxon and Jim Rash ("The Descendants") portray the "life-changing summer" in a sincere way, but they also capture the nostalgia and fairy tale-like qualities with which we often remember these times in our lives.It starts and ends with Duncan (Liam James).
Too many characters in independent films are written like Duncan, the socially challenged kid who discovers himself with the help of some quirky role models and a beautiful girl, but James actually looks and acts the part, compared to the many protagonists we usually see in these films.
He's quiet, closed off and doesn't stick up for himself, but he's more than the product of a the unlikable supporting characters jerking him around and most importantly, James is actually close to the same age as Duncan (a 16-year-old playing a 14-year-old), which so many coming-of-age characters aren't.Duncan is going for a long summer vacation to the Massachusetts shore with his mom (Toni Collette) and her serious boyfriend (Steve Carell), Trent, who tries to impose rules on him while taking shots at his self-confidence.
Rockwell's Owen is by no means a paragon of self-made success, but there's something about his attitude toward life and that of the other park employees played by Maya Rudolph, Rash and Faxon that's infectious.The family drama away from Duncan's chlorinated safe haven, on the other hand, can get heavy and real.
You see Steve Carell in the trailer making a few mildly funny comments and you think it will be a comedy (and the guy is in general truly a funny dude) but when you watch the movie, he's a total jerk.The plot is totally predictable, unrealistic, and the characters have little depth, and are overacted!
But the star of the movie is Sam Rockwell, as the carefree Water Park Manager, who brings life to the proceedings and makes you fall in love with his careless attitude.I am going with 4 out of 5 for THE WAY WAY BACK.
Be sure to check out my reviews and other entertainment news on themovieboy77.comThe Way, Way Back is a coming-of-age Comedy-Drama about Duncan, played by Liam James, who has to deal with his mothers over-bearing boyfriend Trent (played by Steve Carell, who's never been better), while on summer vacation at Trent's summer home with his mom and Trent's daughter.
The boy deals with his mistreatment by going to a water park, without anyones knowing, where he befriends the water parks slacking manager Owen (played by a scene stealing Sam Rockwell), who ends up giving him a job.This was my most anticipated movie of the summer.
14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) is forced to join by his mother (Toni Collette), who wants to spend time with her new love (Steve Carell).
With songs like "Can't Fight This Feeling as background," it's low-key lyrical, unassuming and watchable.It's a long journey in a short summer that takes off when brooding Duncan joins the circus, so to speak, rather the Water Wiz Park, where impresario Owen (a superb Sam Rockwell doing his brash "I'll do it my way" persona to perfection) clowns and generally keeps all ages happy with his comical but hip patter and big heart.
Simply put, it's about the summer Duncan, (a terrific, star-making performance from Liam James), spends with his mother, (Toni Collette, brilliant), and sister at the summer house of his mom's new boyfriend, (a superbly slimy Steve Carell), and naturally this is the summer he grows up, falls for the girl next door (a lovely AnnaSophia Robb), and makes a new friend and something of a surrogate father in Sam Rockwell's Water World manager.
First there is the courage of the casting with the pretty much unknown Liam James starring in a movie where Steve Carell is not a comedian, but a macho douchebag and Sam Rockwell in an important, yet secondary role, while Amanda Peet and AnnaSophia Robb are playing really small roles.
It's that kind of stuff that makes the movie so relatable.The film does a nice job of seeming like it could be set in any beach town, in almost any time in the last 40 years.
Duncan is shy and doesn't really fit in with anyone else, until he meets a friend called Owen, who works at a water park.There is a lot of character development in this film, we see relationships building up, crossing over with each other and also some failing.
Written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, they previously worked on The Descendant, but this time they got chance also to direct a film together.The story is about a 14-year old boy going to a summer house with his mother and her jerk boyfriend and bitch daughter of the boyfriend.
Steve Carrel, this is definitely something new in his career, a total mean and selfish person and he does this role very well; Toni Collette, what a sexy woman and talented actress, I don't understand why she doesn't get bigger roles in feature films; Allison Janney, WONDERFUL, she's absolutely great in this film, very sexy and funny – I loved her so much; Sam Rockwell, I don't know what is about him, he's always funny and charming in this kind of roles, and at the same time not being repetitive, he's such a underrated and unique actor; AnnaSophia Robb, my god, with the beauty she has, she must get a lot of offers in the future , but I seriously hope she makes the right decisions because in my opinion she's got a talent to be a real star; and finally Liam James, I think he's done a great job, I'm very jealous honestly, because working with such a talented cast like this is the biggest learning experience for a new starter.
However I have a few problems, one would be the relationship between Sam Rockwell and Maya Rudalph, it doesn't have a chemistry to make any impacts to the story, and another one is Rob Corddry's character, he's a very funny actor but nothing would have been changed without him, which I feel like his role could do more in the third act, but I can be wrong.
The Way Way Back (2013)*** 1/2 (out of 4) Charming coming-of-age drama about the 12-year-old Duncan (Liam James) who can't seem to fit in with anyone and especially his mother's new boyfriend (Steve Carell).
While Janey makes her marks with an over-the-top flamboyance, Robb is quiet, using her face and her body to communicate volumes.Steve Carell shows he's capable of playing an ordinary person, after so many off-beat (to be kind) performances ("The Office", "40 Year Old Virgin", "Dinner for Schmucks"), and the rest of the cast (Amanda Peet, Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph) all do well.The "coming of age" theme might have been better developed had it focused a little more on the other changes (Rockwell's decision to be more grown up, Collette's decision to put her son's needs ahead of her boyfriend), instead of the blossoming of Liam James, the 14 year old star of the film.
A little nip and tuck here and there and this could have been a much better film, and this is often a problem when the actors, writers and the directors share the same pair of pants - Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.Bottom line – an enjoyable "coming of age" story that you can take your kids to..
Each character in this movie was ingenious - from the socially-awkward protagonist, Duncan, or to the water park employee, Louis, who brings laughs every time he appears on screen despite his extremely minor role.
Steve Carell was very convincing playing a total jerk and Sam Rockwell was great fun as the slacker owner of the water park.But if you're looking for anything approximating real life, you've definitely come to the wrong film..
Director debut from Oscar-winning writer-duo Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (THE DESCENDANTS 2011, 8/10), a diffident but sensitive 14-year-old boy Duncan (James) unwillingly spends the summer vacation with his mother Pam (Collette) and her new boyfriend Trent (Carell) in a beach house where he cannot fit in and is constantly under strains with the domineering Trent, coincidentally he forms a bond with Owen (Rockwell), a happy-go-lucky clerk in the local water land "Water Whizz", after clandestinely takes a part-time job there, Duncan experiences the time of his life and the dreary summer does't seem to be so unbearable.
Within one of these lives Duncan (Liam James), a reclusive youth struggling to find a connection with his peers, while accompanying his mother Pam (Toni Collette) and her rigid, at times bullish, boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) to a small beach-front summer house.
Very little change happens for the main character which disappointed me, Duncan may make new friends and experiences, but when he leaves the summer home at the end he does not seem too different from the man he was at the beginning, there was not enough of a transformation, which people like to see in movies.
The filmmakers, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (along with Alexander Payne) wrote the beautiful and pensive screenplay for "The Descendants" and perhaps it's too much to ask for a comparable effort in their directorial debut, when the slight story--about the coming of age of a fourteen year-old product of a broken home (Liam James) on a summer trip with his mother (Toni Collette) and her bullying boyfriend (Steve Carell)--will seem familiar to many viewers.
With a title that will confuse many, this film has it's work cut out from the get go.Shy fourteen year old "Duncan" (Liam James) accompanies his divorced mum "Pam" (Toni Collette), her new boyfriend "Trent" and his teenage daughter "Steph" (Zoe Levin) on a summer holiday to Trent's beach house in Massachusetts.Sitting at the very back of the old station-wagon, hence the title, Duncan knows this is not going to go well and he will not be disappointed.
Stumbling across a local water-park employee "Owen" (Sam Rockwell) playing "Pacman", the two form a bond which enables Duncan to work casually at the water-park and fill his days.This is a classic coming of age story and James fits the bill very well, acting just like a shy fourteen year old, all elbows, bad dancing and hopeless "chit chat" with Betty's pretty daughter.With a cast this good, you would expect the acting to be of a high standard, Carrell playing against type makes an unlike-able character, thoroughly unlike-able.
The Way Way Back gets my respects and I definitely recommend this movie.Fourteen year old Duncan (Liam James) is a shy and lonely kid who is being forced by his mom, Pam (Toni Collette) to travel with her to her boyfriend's beach house for the summer. |
tt1093370 | Jab We Met | Aditya Kashyap (Shahid Kapoor), the son of a recently-deceased famous industrialist, demoralized by his mother's public affair and subsequent departure, gets even more depressed after attending the marriage of the woman he loves to another man. Feeling ashamed to face the world, he walks out of the wedding, boards a train at night, and appears on the verge of committing suicide. While on board, he meets Geet Dhillon (Kareena Kapoor), a lively and talkative young woman who is leaving Mumbai to go to her hometown, Bhatinda in Punjab.
Initially, Aditya finds Geet very irritating, and every meeting becomes mental torture for him. She discloses big plans of eloping with her boyfriend Anshuman (Tarun Arora), as she fears resentment from her parents. Geet irritates Aditya to the point where he leaves the train. In trying to get him back on the train, she ends up missing it and finds herself stranded on a desolate station, Badnagar, with no luggage or money. She confronts Aditya and tells him that he is now responsible for getting her safely to her house in Punjab. Both of them begin an idyllic journey through the exuberant North Indian heartland, making their way via buses, taxis and camel-carts to reach her house. Through spending so much time with Geet, Aditya begins to feel good about life again.
On arrival, Geet's family (Pawan Malhotra, Dara Singh and Kiran Juneja) mistakes the two for lovers, but they quickly assure them that there is nothing of the sort. Aditya tells her family he is a musician to avoid being recognized as the famous industrialist, and her family accepts this. A few days later, Manjeet, an old childhood friend of Geet's who wants to marry her, arrives as her suitor. While he is there, Geet leads him to believe that there is something intimate going on between her and Aditya, and successfully dissuades him from following through with the match. Later that night, Geet runs away from her home, along with Aditya, to marry Anshuman in Manali. However, Geet's sister sees them running away together and informs the entire family. The two hurriedly make their escape, but this confirms the suspicion in Geet's family that they are lovers. The two escape to Manali together, and then part to continue on their separate ways.
Upon returning to Mumbai with a new conviction and positive outlook on life because of Geet's influence, Aditya guides his company to extreme success. Around nine months later, he launches a new product, a calling card named "Geet", as he has now fallen in love with Geet. Geets family sees this launch on TV and runs to Mumbai to meet Aditya. Aditya is shocked to learn that Geet has not returned home. He takes it upon himself to find her and return her to her family. He returns to Manali, where he expects her to be with her new husband. Instead, he finds that Anshuman had turned her out to the streets and refused to marry her.
After chastising Anshuman for what he did to her, Aditya leaves and finally tracks Geet down in Shimla, shocked to see what she has become: a quiet, reserved, and miserable schoolteacher. Convincing her to face her circumstances, he manages to bring her back to normal life, and things start to look up for her again. However, Anshuman arrives and tries to patch up their relationship, claiming he realized he was a jerk. Initially, Geet does not want to accept his apology, but Aditya pushes her to be with him, even though he loves her too. All three then travel back to Bhatinda to unite Geet with her family, and to announce that Geet and Anshuman are together. However, upon their arrival, the family again assumes that Geet and Aditya are together and in all the confusion, there is no chance to right the family's misconceptions. While trying to clear the misconception, situations make Geet realize that she is in fact in love with Aditya, not Anshuman. She then confesses her love to Aditya, and the couple get married and have two daughters.
[edit]Cast | romantic | train | imdb | Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met is one of the most refreshing love stories made in recent times.
It is a very simple, interesting and charming film about a heart-broken and serious guy who meets an extremely vivacious and talkative girl who gradually manages to change his perception of life and love.
The store line is the usual girl meets boy on a journey moving towards their own destinations and eventually fall in love but again the execution is so damn superb and realistic that no situation in the movie looks out of place.
Over all the chemistry Imtiaz Ali (who directed soocha na tha) manages to built between the lead characters is stunning, absolute real, natural and believable, I have not seen (and I am sure people would agree) such a sweet and heart warming chemistry in any romantic couple for a loooong time.
People specially couples whose heart throb with a universal feeling called love go and watch the movie, you would come out mesmerized by the romantic extravaganza.......trust me..
The plot is excellent, a bit predictable just like any Hindi movie , but the way the story goes is great.
It works primarily because of these three ingredients: - Genuine storyline, quite realistic without going too OTT - Charming and very likable character played by Kareena - Music by Pritam, the recycling king/Bhappi Lahri of the 2000sToo bad Imitiaz Ali could not follow it up with as good a movie.
Although the storyline is not that new with the old movies as a boy meets girl and slowly fall in love but the way Imtiaz presented each and every scenes are worth to watch.
It is not for masses.Talking about the movie Kareena's acting is one of the best in her career and Shahid Kapoor charmed the screen with his chocolate boy look.
"Jab We Met" turned corners for three people namely Imtiaz Ali, Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor..
Shahid, thank God, is portraying a much matured role in this film unlike his other movies and Kareena is just Kareena with great acting.2) The humor was good in this film.
I even liked the character who plays Kareena's boy friend as he was really funny and it was humorous to watch him get agitated by you'll know when you watch the movie.3) The first half was really good, witty and humorous as the audience didn't get bored or didn't feel to leave their seats.
However, the essence of the film is just "loving the journey more than the destination." The cute interactions between Shahid and Kareena and their hilarious dialogues are terrific!!
She demonstrates her acting skills to the fullest and looks very good in the process.The movie is a modern day Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge with chance meetings, missed trains, shared hotel rooms, partings, families, elopements and is bubbling with a youthful fun feel.
Surprise SurpriseI saw the promos and felt this is another run of the mill type of Kareena film but i was wrongThe film is a nice film though similar to A WALK IN THE CLOUDS(remade earlier as KUNWARA and DHAAI AKSHAR PREM KE) The film is well handled by Imtiaz Ali in whose faith i saw the filmThe Shahid-Kareena interactions would be boring had it not been handled well by himThe entire journey is well handledthough you get to see certain convenient situations and clichés and flaws but such films are from the heart and not the brainThe turning point is well handled and the entire Shahid trying to get Kareena back is well handledBut the sudden change of Anshuman's character plus the entire last 20 minutes do spoil the show by simply dragging the film Even Anshuman becomes a jerk suddenlyImtiaz Ali does a great job after SNT Music is great, my favorite is TUM SE HI Camera-work is greatShahid is a surprise, often the actor just played normal youthful films and has the tendency to overact or copy SRK but here he shows a diff side He acts subtle, effective,mature The first scene is proof of his growth Kareena too is fantastic, often known for overacting though she did a great job in some films here she shows a different side to her and she is flawless Tarun hams and irritates Pawan Malhotra gets out of his terrorist image and does a great job Dara Singh irritates.
This movie is such a nice love story that i couldn't help myself watching it two times.Despite of the fact that some might say the fine performances by shahid and kareena are due to the fact that they were a couple at the time of shooting but i would say i don't care how they shot it, it's just BRILLIANT!!!Shahid has done his homework and portrayed his character pretty well and kareena has done an excellent job in both looks as well as acting dept.
Overall i would say a must watch for every Bollywood movie fan.So the story goes like this Aditya (shahid) is depressed by his life mainly due to his recent losses in business and his breakup with his girlfriend.
Jab We Met is a type of a movie you can watch with anyone you like,your family,your girlfriend or your spouse....I enjoyed each and every scene of the film from start till end....Kareena acted superb and Shahid was good in his new bold role....Their chemistry is awesome.....I hope that they both get back together....The story is normal story but is presented in an amazing way....A fun film everyone can enjoy....It should be nominated for best film category for sure.....One of the good films this year............Amazing film that should be witnessed by everyone....Go and watch this film......
jab we met has Fun, frolic & emotions running parallel to each other.This film will also be remembered for natural & intense On screen chemistry between shahid kapoor & kareena kapoor, the bollywood star pair which have been linked together in real life for long.
i did not expect too much from movie as i thought it will be just another mainstream boring love story and also i don't like acting of kareena and shahid as they always do overacting and always believe in dancing and being pretty as if they are not actors but some models who are advertising for a cheap product.but this time they surprised me,imtiaz Ali wrote a very nice script full of adventure,fun and romance.this is the only movie of kareena and shahid together that did good business at box office and also it was their last movie,as they breakup during shooting.this is the first movie of kareena in which she did a good acting and shahid did not show his style but did a mature performance.kareena did a good job in a role Punjabi girl who don't care about anything,funny and daring.shahid also show some maturity in his acting in a role of,serious,very rich ,depressed businessman runaway from home.this movie is not like mainstream cinema Rom-com but have good script,with good performances and above all good direction from imtiaz Ali in his first movie.
his presen- tation is very new and refreshing.comedy in the movie is very new and path breaking for Indian cinema.songs are very good and melodious.if you love bollywood movies and bored of traditional mainstream cinema,watch this,totally refreshing,adventurous ,funny movie which will not disappoint you..
They may have split in real life but Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur's reel love story Jab We Met is a cute film, and is sure to touch the hearts of those in love.The film starts with Geet (Kareena), a Sikh who talks nonstop.
But then again, we're watching a Bollywood film.Geet then informs Aditya that it is his responsibility to take her to Bhatinda, as she missed the train because of him.
What follows next is a journey across picturesque landscapes where the two discover each other and understand the meaning of love and friendship.Aditya learns that Geet is in love with one Anshuman but her family is against their union.After reaching Bhatinda, you feel the plot has been lifted straight out of the Hollywood film, A Walk in the Clouds, though director Imtiaz Ali also adds Yash Chopra's 'Punjabisation'.Aditya promises to help unite Geet with Anshuman, even though he falls in love with her.Post-interval, we're introduced to a very new Aditya, who becomes a big businessman.
The change is too abrupt, and it is difficult to connect the first half with the second.But besides that, Jab We Met is a fun film, with quite a few moments worth watching.Though Kareena is loud at times, she is a treat to watch -- funny and full of life.
She gets to mouth hilarious lines like, 'Bachpan se mujhe shaadi karne ka bahut shauk tha.' Shahid, on other hand, acts composed and provides a perfect foil to the Kareena's bubbly character.Pritam's music also enhances the film.
Geet (Kareena Kapoor) and Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) have polar opposite personalities when they initially meet each other in a train.
Kareena and Shahid were really in love when this movie was shot and it shows om screen.
A True Masterpiece by Imtiaz Ali.The Movie is Based on two People Geeta(Kareena Kapoor) and Aditya(Shahid Kapoor), One is a Incomplete Man who just Lost his Hope in the World and one is a Completely Childish Person with Fantasies that she didn't even think about.This is a Complete Clean Film!
Go Watch it With your Family!The Movie STATS by meThe Acting: Shahid Kapoor (Aditya) Fine Performance one of his Best!
She wasn't able to convince that she was in fact that character which is a slight flaw (some thing on the lines of what Abhishek Bacchan made in Yuva like Amitabh Bacchan said once in an interview).Shahid Kapoor was very good in the film.
He can be a very good actor in the future according to me.Imtiaz Ali, the director, shows a lot of promise again and I am looking at watching Socha Na Tha, his debut movie in the future and hope he can go from strength to strength..
Both passengers on a Delhi-bound train, Shahid Kapur stars as Aditya, a dejected young fellow who's nursing a broken heart when he bumps into Geet, the annoyingly cheerful chatterbox played by Kareena Kapoor.
It's many months later and under entirely different circumstances that they meet again, and must make another long journey together, but this time with the excess baggage of their confused feelings.Despite the film's severely flawed second half which is too long, too contrived and predictable to the extent of being seriously boring, Jab We Met is still an engaging watch because it sets off on such a fresh note.
Together, they set off such sparks, that the strength of their chemistry alone is enough to make up for several inconsistencies in the screenplay.Fresher than any romantic comedy you've seen this year Jab We Met works because it delivers what it promises – a snug, heart-warming, relatable love story, indeed a respectable follow-up to director Imtiaz Ali's last film Socha Na Tha. But because much of that freshness is replaced by mundane predictability in the film's second half, Jab We Met cannot claim to be a perfect film.
What made this movie different from other Indian live comedy is that Aditya and Geet getting to like each other little by little.
Direction, Screenplay, Cinematography: This is my most favorite movie written and directed by Imitiaz Ali. The filming locations, the visuals, the other factors everything is worked out well (4/5).Tone: A free spirited girl (Geet) meets depressed business tycoon (Aditya) and shows him the ways to live life a different way.
When this movie actually knocked off a few shows of the high profile Saawariya I knew I had to see it, the reviews were very good as well and i must confess i had unnecessarily high expectations from this movie.The first thing that struck me about this movie was Kareena Kapoor, I've never really liked her, but the moment i saw her climb the train i was smitten, the non-bitchy look really works for her, and i must confess my opinion of her after this movie has completely changed, she looked superb and her acting was very good as well, HER LOUD TALKATIVE CHARACTER ENDEARED MOST OF THE TIMES BUT THERE WERE TIMES IT GOT ON THE NERVES AS WELL (may have been intentional).THERE IS NO DOUBT THIS IS COMPLETELY HER MOVIE, shahid makes very good attempts at making this film his but there is no doubt who will walk away with all the kudos.The movie starts quite well and at a good pace, the hotel decent sequence was particularly brilliant, as were most scenes with the family throughout the movie.The entire cast including does very well with very good casting specially of the family, nobody really had much of a role except shahid and kareena but each and everyone does a good job in their limited roles.The movie really loses out is towards the later part of the second half, the reconciliation scene between the 2, the useless song, and the extra long stretched out sequence before the light dawns on Kareena was particularly excruciating though surprisingly un-melodramatic, still this is clearly the weakest part of the movie and what brings down the ratings.The humour and the 2 main protagonists are clearly the hallmarks of this movie, but what also endears is the lack of melodrama even the climax of the movie which is tailor made for tears had none of them, the kiss was unnecessary considering most of us have scene photos/mms of a much more passionate kiss between the two, hehahaha.The cinematography of this movie was also very good, the filmmakers were equally adept at capturing the small town station, as they were with the haveli, and the mountains.THE LACK OF FOREIGN LOCALES WAS PARTICULARLY GOOD, AND THIS MOVIE CLEARLY SHOWS THAT THE SCENIC BEAUTY OF India IS MORE THAT ADEQUATE.
Indeed the mountains and its people looked brilliant, im sure thats where im going for my next vacation.I am an "in the closet" romantic comedy lover (obviously ill deny it later), and although i give it full marks for the lack of melodrama ((which is most undesirable for me), the over stretched ending was still very bad.IF you keep the right expectations unlike me and maybe even pay lesser rates like me than this movie is a clear winner, watch it on TV or DVD and you cant go wrong.-s the end and nothing but the end.+/-s kareena did annoy sometimes.+s Kareena Kapoor, less melodrama, good comedy, nice small movie feel, great acting all around.total 7/'0 (just fell below expectations that may have been too high but don't want to spoil others experience by giving it a higher rating)..
That movie incedentally is a treat to watch, if you haven't seen it yet, do check it out.Kareena is tolerable; she is especially good in the second half when she gets to drop the annoying non-stop chatterbox avatar.
Shahid Kapoor's performance though not very polished still is tolerable; but Kareena's bubbly image gets pretty hyped in this film.
Like his first movie, Imtiaz Ali's 'Jab We Met' is also a romantic comedy about two people meeting in unusual circumstances where one of them is already 'taken'.
'Jab We Met' starts off with a heartbroken Aditya (Shahid Kapur) who wanders his way to a train where he has an encounter with a chatterbox runaway bride-to-be (Kareena Kapoor).
'Jab We Met' may not be Imtiaz Ali's best but it is an amusing watch and way more entertaining than his latest, 'Love Aaj Kal'..
Anyways, Jab We Met is a fairly odd movie which centers around the meeting of two people, Aditya (Kapur) and Geet (Kapoor).
Kareena Kapoor overacted a bit, but it is still a movie to check out if you like any of the actors..
"Jab We Met" has the flavor of Hollywood screwball comedies – watch for the wild taxi ride Aditya takes Geet on in order to try and get her back to her train – rounded out with a touch of "she makes him a better man" depth.
The movie is totally a must see.It is a perfect diwali treat.The direction is excellent.The script is outstanding.The movie tells us about Adithya Kahyap.He is a son of the Famous Dharampal Kashyap.He is dumped by his girlfriend one day.He runs away.He goes to a train station.He comes across Geet a talkative Punjabi girl.They go to a wrong station.Geet says he should take her all the way to Bhatinda.He does take her.She is being engaged to a man.She does not like it.They run away.Then one day separate.By that time they are in love..Aditya becomes successful and launches a company called Geet.He family sees him and asks him to bring her back.He finds her working in a school.It is revaled that she was dumbed by her boyfriend.She was found by a nun.Which took her there.The movie is a must see.Shahid and Kareena were superb.The others are superb too.The music is excellent.This movie will keep you totally entertained from start to finish.This movie is 100%Family Entertainer.This is much much better than "Om Shanti Om".A must see movie Rating-10/10.
And it's really unfortunate that now when Karina and Shaheed chemistry looking good, they are separated.The movie starts with the character of Aditya Kashyap (Shaheed Kapur) running away from his responsibilities giving away hopes in life.
Now it is for Aditya to bring back Geet in her life.The second attempt of the director Imtiaz Ali 'Jab we met' in first half hour puts some expectation and at the end succeeds in meeting those.
'Serious' Aditya Kashyap (Shahid Kapur) and Ms "Garrulous" Geet (Kareena Kapur) in a train goes a long way in transforming lives of both.
If there is one way to ruin a good movie, it's by throwing in some ill-timed pathetic songs and Jab We Met is a classic example of it.
Were Shahid and Kareena still boyfriend and girlfriend in real life when they filmed this? |
tt0088117 | Silent Night, Deadly Night | It's Christmas Eve 1971, and the Chapman family - father, mother, and two sons, Billy, age 5, and infant Ricky - are traveling in their station wagon along desolate Utah roads, with the radio for company. They arrive at their destination, a state mental hospital, where they visit Grandpa. Grandpa is severely mentally ill, and while not dangerous, he can't take care of himself. He doesn't seem to even realize he has visitors. The father and mother, with little Ricky, go off to discuss things with the doctors, leaving Billy momentarily alone with Grandpa. As soon as they are alone, Grandpa turns his head and smiles, and starts talking to Billy. He tells him "the truth" about Santa Claus: that Santa will only leave presents for boys and girls who have been good all year; those who haven't, Santa punishes instead. Billy is terrified, because he hasn't been good all year and he knows it. Grandpa returns to his trance before the rest of the family returns to collect Billy for the return trip home. It's after dark by the time they get started.On the way home, Billy, having taken Grandpa's words to heart, asks his mother if Santa Claus ever punished her when she was little. The mother is visibly upset by this question, and taken aback when Billy tells her that Grandpa told him the story. She pronounces Grandpa a silly old fool, which disturbs Billy even more. He had been taught it was naughty to say bad things about old people, and Santa Claus might punish his mother for it.Meanwhile, not too far away, a man in a Santa Claus suit robs a gas station at gunpoint, and kills the clerk when he tries to fight back. He leaves with only $31, swearing as he gets into his getaway car, which we see later broke down. The Chapman family has the misfortune to meet him when they drive up to him on the highway, thinking he is on his way to a party when he had car trouble. Billy is terrified, thinking Santa has come to punish him, and his worst fears are borne out when the man pulls his pistol, intending to steal the station wagon. The father slams the car into reverse trying to escape, but the man shoots him dead, and the car crashes into the ditch. Billy runs out of the car to hide in the bushes while the Santa drags his mother out of the car and rips her clothes off, intending to rape her. The mother fights back, and the Santa, further enraged, changes his mind and kills her with a switchblade instead. Then, with Ricky crying in the background, the Santa stands by the side of the road, looking for Billy, saying "Where are you, you little bastard?"Now it is near Christmas in 1974. We see that the boys both survived, but we aren't told if the killer was ever caught. Billy, now 8, and Ricky, now 3 or maybe 4, live at a Catholic orphanage. Billy's gruesome Christmas drawing gets him into trouble, and he is sent to his room by the Mother Superior while the other children play outside. She discusses the case with the younger nun, Sister Margaret, who was teaching the class. Margaret realizes that Billy remembers what he saw, is mentally unstable and gets worse every Christmas, but the tyrannical Mother Superior believes that Billy was too young to remember and she can beat the thoughts out of him. Margaret goes to release Billy from his room, believing that getting outside will do him good, and knowing that Billy will improve after Christmas. Billy walks down the hallway, but is distracted when he hears noises coming from a closed room. Peeping through the keyhole, he sees two of the orphanage's older residents, in their teens, naked and having sex. He has a flashback to the murders, remembering his mother being forcibly stripped by the Santa Claus. Mother Superior catches him there and throws him aside before entering the room to punish the teenagers with her belt.Billy goes outside to play, but the Mother Superior soon comes back for him to punish him, brushing aside Margaret's protests that she gave him permission to go outside. The Mother Superior explains to Billy that the teenagers he saw were being naughty, and they were punished, and that he would now be punished himself for leaving his room. Mother Superior whips him with the belt and sends him to bed. Later, Billy has a nightmare about the murders and runs into the hallway screaming, and Mother Superior catches him and punishes him again by tying him to the bed.On Christmas morning, the orphanage has a man in a Santa Claus suit come by, and of course Billy is terrified of him. Mother Superior drags him kicking and screaming to Santa, and he punches Santa in the face and runs back to his room. Soon Mother Superior comes to administer even more punishment...Now it is spring 1984. We see Sister Margaret, ten years older but looking much the same, talking to the manager of a toy store, Mr. Sims. Sims is reluctant to hire Billy, who just turned 18 and is ready to leave the orphanage and enter the real world, but changes his mind when he meets Billy, who has grown tall and strong, just what Sims needs for the warehouse. Billy starts the new job and for the first few months, it works out well for him. Besides him and Sims, there is Mrs. Randall, the assistant manager, Andy, the warehouse clerk, and Pamela, a girl who helps in the store. But Christmas comes eventually, and few places are more into it than toy stores. Billy is upset, especially by the Santa Claus imagery, and it affects his work. Andy, who shamelessly sucks up to Sims but is verbally abusive to his co-workers when Sims is not around, yells at Billy about it.Shortly before Christmas, Sims has a problem. The guy whose job was to play Santa Claus in the store hurt himself, and the only replacement available was Billy. So they dress Billy up as Santa Claus and the next day, the parents shopping at the store remark of how good he is with the children - in fact, he frightened them into silence with his warnings of punishment, believing that's what Santa Claus does. On Christmas Eve, just before closing time, Sister Margaret calls the store to see how Billy is getting along, it being his worst time of year and all. When Andy tells her that he is dressed as Santa Claus, she realizes that this was a very bad idea, and she sets out to go there. It will be awhile before she arrives.At closing time, Sims locks the store and starts the Christmas party by getting out the booze. Everyone seems to be having a good time, except Billy, still in the Santa Claus suit, who is still moody, thinking about his parents' murders. Sims, becoming more and more drunk, tries to cheer Billy up while Andy takes Pamela into the back. Billy, becoming somewhat drunk himself, believes Sims's joke that he will soon think he is Santa Claus. He walks to the back, and sees Andy becoming more aggressive with Pamela, he has ripped her shirt open. Seeing this give him another flashback to the old days, and this pushes him over the edge at last. Believing that he really is Santa Claus and has the power to punish the naughty, he steps forward and kills Andy by hanging him from a string of Christmas lights. Pamela freaks out, and Billy, believing her to be naughty as well, cuts her stomach with a utility knife. Sims, thinking he heard noises in the back, goes to investigate, and Billy kills him with a claw hammer. Mrs. Randall, realizing she is alone, goes to look for Sims, and finds him dead. She runs for the door, but it is locked. Then she goes for the phone, but Billy chases her with a double-bit axe. She hides from him, then pushes him down and takes his axe, intending to break the doors and escape. Billy picks up a bow and and shoots her with an arrow from across the room. Then he unlocks the door and leaves, axe in hand, a few minutes before Sister Margaret finally arrives to see what Billy has done.Next, we see two policemen, incredulous that they have orders to pick up Santa Claus. They see a man in a Santa suit climbing in the second-floor window of a nearby home, and go to get him, but it turns out to be a false alarm: it was the man who lived there, intending to surprise his young daughter.Next, we see a teenage girl named Denise, making out with her boyfriend Tommy on top of a pool table. The girl's younger sister Cindy starts walking down the stairs, anxious for Christmas to arrive and hoping to see Santa Claus. Not wanting to be seen half-naked, she tells Cindy to go back to bed lest Santa pass the house by. She does so, unhappily. Then Denise hears jingling outside, and tells her boy-friend to wait for a moment, so she can let the cat in. Denise pulls on some very short shorts, and wearing nothing else, goes to let the cat in. The cat runs inside, but then Billy shows up, dressed in the Santa suit and carrying his double-bit axe. Denise screams and slams the door shut, but Billy breaks the door down. After a brief struggle, Billy picks up Denise and impales her on the antlers of a trophy deer that was hung over the fireplace. Tommy couldn't hear the ruckus over the radio, and has been killing time playing pool. Eventually he goes up to check on Denise, finds the door broken and then finds Denise hanging on the antlers. Then he meets Billy. He puts up a better fight, but eventually Billy gets hold him and throws him from the window, where he lands on the hard ground outside, breaking his neck.Just as Billy gets ready to leave, Cindy comes out of her room again, and she is overjoyed that she did get to meet Santa Claus. Billy asks Cindy if she's been good all year, and she insists that she has. Billy puts a "present" into the little girl's hands, the utility knife, and then he leaves. We can hear Cindy's voice, puzzled but excited, calling for her sister to tell her what she saw.Meanwhile, two boys in the early teens are out for a late-night sled down a snowy hill. Before they start, they are set upon by two older boys who steal the sleds for themselves. The first one sleds down the hill; the second is attacked by the axe-wielding Billy halfway down. He falls sideways off the sled at the bottom of the hill, his head rolling down behind him. The other boy screams.By morning, Billy has still not been caught. Sister Margaret, who had fallen asleep at the police station, wakes up and one of the policemen tells her the bad news, three more killings overnight. They believe that Billy will likely return to the orphanage and radio the police there to keep a lookout for a man in a Santa Claus suit. Sister Margaret tries to call the orphanage to warn them, but one of the little girls there has been playing with the phone and left it off the hook, so she only gets a busy signal. After several failed tries, she and one of the policemen set out to drive there.One of the policemen on patrol near the orphanage does see a Santa Claus walking toward the orphanage, and gets out of the car and yells for him to stop. When the man doesn't respond, the policeman shoots him. He falls forward, dead. But we soon learn that this was a case of mistaken identity when the dead man turns out to be middle-aged. Sister Margaret instantly recognizes the description as that of Father O'Brien, who had been their Santa Claus for several years, and who could not hear the policeman because he was deaf.The policeman apologizes to the Mother Superior, and tells her that the killer may still be coming and that he will keep watch. Over the last ten years, Mother Superior's health has declined, she is now in a wheelchair and no longer able to physically punish the children, but she is every bit as bitter and hateful. She tries to comfort the children, who have just seen Santa Claus shot dead, by leading them in singing Christmas carols, while the policeman circles the building. The children include Billy's younger brother Ricky, who was a baby at the time of the killings but is now in his early teens. The policeman makes his rounds but he is ambushed by Billy, who has finally arrived at the orphanage. Billy kills him by slamming the axe into his chest.Billy then goes to the front door, and one of the children, overjoyed at seeing Santa apparently alive and well, lets him in. He walks toward the Mother Superior, helpless in her wheelchair, and raises the axe. Just then, the other policeman who was driving with Sister Margaret arrives and shoots Billy twice in the back. He falls forward, dying. His last words, to the children, are, "You're safe now. Santa Claus is gone." Billy's axe falls at Ricky's feet, and he appears ready to pick up where his older brother left off someday, as he looks at Mother Superior and says, "Naughty!" | cruelty, murder, cult, violence, insanity, revenge, sadist | train | imdb | Silent Night, Deadly Night tells the story of a boy whose parents were killed in front of him as a child, and it was by a man dressed as Santa Claus.
A classic to many fans of horror and independent cinema, Silent Night Deadly Night definitely wins the award for having the most gorgeous, super nice, hunk of a killer ever on screen!I mean, if this guy came at me with an axe, I wouldn't be running...Robert Brian Wilson, who went on to star in many US soaps, just has you hooked as the beautiful, gentle killer with his W shaped smile that has such good reason to be the way he is, you can't help feel sorry for him.Adding to the tragedy of what he witnessed as a young boy when a guy dressed as Santa killed his parents, comes an evil nun bitch who just makes his life worse, and to be honest, would do the same to anyone!With great 80's flair and drama, the final cherry on top is when the store he works at has him dress as Santa for the Xmas period.
There's a reason that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" air on TV every year to solid ratings: in today's dour times, where even our popular movies have deviated from escapism and taken on a depressing quality, it is refreshing to see a film that can make us feel good about ourselves and life in general.This is also why Christmas-themed horror movies are often more disturbing than their regular themed counterparts.
The two children are brought to an orphanage, where head-nun Mother Superior consistently punishes young Billy for the rest of his childhood, especially around Christmas time, which is usually when Billy begins acting out with memories of his parents murder still fresh in his head.
However, when he is required to don a Santa's suit for Christmas Eve and the co-workers begin referring to him as Santa, Billy goes over the edge, setting out to punish those who have been naughty...with the help of an axe.Silent Night Deadly Night is another entry in the long list of eighties slashers, and while some may see it as nothing more than Friday the 13th featuring Santa Claus instead of Jason, it differentiates from other slashers in several ways.
There is more depth to Billy than Jason or Freddy, and that is part of the reason the film is more disturbing than most other slashers.The final aspect of Silent Night Deadly Night that really propels it above most other slashers is not a variation from other slasher genres (like the previous things I have mentioned), but an improvement on most others.
The story is good, it sounds cheesy with santa being a killer, but the back story is very well done, the character development is great, the music works, and it has one of the coolest death scenes in a movie ever....(antlers) Sure, here and there it can be cheesy-PUNISH!- but it still is very watchable and I recommend it to any horror fan around the holidays..
In the height of the Reign of the Slasher film, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" (like the far superior "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" series) mixes horror with a theme, this time, Christmas.
Taking place of three periods in time, the film follows Billy Chapman and the horrific events that he witnessed on Christmas as a child - the murder of his parents by a man dressed up as Santa Claus.Naturally, this disturbed young Billy who (along with his younger brother Ricky) was placed in an orphanage, run by the cold Mother Superior, where each Christmas he gets understandably upset.
When Billy reaches 18, he gets a job working in a store, but at Christmas time Billy starts to get a little ax-happy, killing anyone who he sees doing anything naughty - usually involving sex, for years or child hood trauma had disturbed him so much, Billy was told people who do naughty things get punished, so now he was the punisher.Production values aren't that bad, but the acting is rather mediocre.
Being the 1980's and during the Reign of the Slasher, naturally there is plenty of sex and bare breasts."Silent Night, Deadly Night" is a fairly good film that could have been explored a little further, it just didn't seem to hit the mark in terms of addressing the story on more than a couple of levels.
Performances range from very static (Robert Brian Wilson as the old Billy turned Santa killer), dominating (the Mother Superior played by Lilyan Chauvan) and to livingly short (the gratuitously topless Linnea Quigley chips in as a bubbly victim and a memorable Will Hare as the very scornfully nutty grandfather).A drab, lowbrow holiday feature that's has Santa Claus coming to town in nothing more than your amusing cut and dried horror slasher with a somewhat baffling reputation..
He suffers abuse there at the hands of Mother Superior, gets a job at a toy store as a young man, then he goes on a demented killing spree as Santa.The DVD opens with the statement that this is "the most complete and unrated version," which is why there are scenes of varying quality.
He's on his way to visit the Mother Superior and settle an old score...When this came out in 1984 many people (parents in particular) were outraged that a movie featuring a killer Santa was being shown.
The only good thing is that Robert Brian Wilson gives an OK performance as the killer Santa.But, all in all, this is a cruel, vicious, badly made slasher film that doesn't deserve all the attention it gets.
If you like horror at its most terrifying, Santa at his most traumatizing, and scenes of kindly old priests getting killed, then you're in luck, because this movie has two out of three.
And that is the scene where little Billy Chapman (Danny Wagner), our future Killer Santa, visits his disturbed, psychopathic grandfather (Will Hare) at Xmas time and cops an earful about being "good" for Santa and, when he sheepishly admits that he hasn't been good all year, Grandpa assures him that Santa will be coming for him and that the boy "...better run, better run for your life!!!".The scene is hilarious and disturbing for its incredible mean-spiritedness and is this film's only virtue.
The original classic that started it all (it all being the pentology of films it would go on to inspire over the next two decades), is about as close to perfection as one can expect a slasher film to achieve.It is constructed in four sections, with the first half covering the psychological development of our antagonist, Billy, and the latter half documenting his fall, as well as the slashy aftermath that would ensue in it's wake.Everything begins with an ominous warning from his creepy old Grandpa: Beware Santa, for he punishes those who are naughty.Coincidentally, shortly after this, a murderous criminal in a Santa Claus outfit intercepts their vehicle...murdering his mother and father...right before his eyes.Fast forward to the local orphanage three years later.
He starts to think he IS Santa...and he knows what Santa does to the naughty on Christmas Eve...punish them...The rest of the film is essentially made up of boobs, psychological breakdowns, strangulations, impalements, axe killings, and mistaken identity murder.
A kid who sees his parents get butchered by a maniac in a Santa suit grows up to be a killer Claus himself in another '80s gorefest with a sense of humor and Linnea Quigley.After HALLOWEEN, Friday THE 13th, MOTHER'S DAY, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE, it was only a matter of time til Christmas rolled around and when it finally did in November 1984, the film even out-grossed A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, which opened the same week.
(The free-wheeling '70s were a lot more chill - when I saw BLACK Christmas at the drive-in back in December 1974, there wasn't an uproar in the press or anywhere else.)SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT was eventually re-released with cuts and without the offensive ads that scared so many kids and the DVD I have is "the most complete version" spliced together from two different film elements -one crisp and the other dark- so it was interesting to see just what had been cut (mostly lingering or explicit shots of the more gory murders).
I think they gave up and turned the movie off, just as they did with Madonna's "Blonde Ambition" show on HBO (I'll never get over that!) I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I ever saw breasts in any context, and seeing them in the context of sexualized violence probably messed with my head, just like it did little Billy's.
it started the controversy and was banned in many places.there were inferior ripoffs of this like don't open till Christmas and Christmas evil.i wont give away the plot but there's people getting hacked to death by the killer,one person is impaled on reindeer's antlers.and much more gruesome slayings.maybe the killer has seen Friday the 13th a few times.there's a very good cast,Lillian chauvin,Toni Nero,Britt leach, will hare,Tara buckman,and a young Linnea quigley.if you like slasher splatter holiday movies put this on your list and check it twice,to miss this will be naughty.part 2 is not as good.part 3 is the best one.
First,the good,the killer,he is unique and very interesting when it comes to his personality.The kills,they are creative and have great effects.The setting and the beginning are very creepy.The score and cinematography are good.There is a great scene where the killer talks to a little girl.I like how the movie shows that nobody is completely nice.The best part is the first 30 minutes,similar to the Halloween remake,they both delve into the killer's mind and how he is affected by the world around him.Now,the bad,the characters,they are all unlikable and you don't care about any of them.Another flaw is that there is too much nudity,it makes you feel awkward while watching it.There is no suspense and the killer gets worse once he starts killing everyone in sight for no reason and only saying the word "punish".Silent Night,Deadly Night is very overrated(horror fans love it),although it has good kills,setting,and concept,it also is too in your face,with no characters to care about..
This is what happens to 5-year-old William, who, on Christmas Eve, sees his mother raped and both parents murdered by a street thug dressed as Santa Claus -- right after his semi-senile grandfather tells him that Santa Clause punishes those who are naughty.
4 years later they are at a orphanage run by nuns especially the mean spirited Mother Superior who punishes poor traumatized Billy who is now afraid of Santa Claus no thanks to that night as it still haunts his mind, 10 years later he has became 18 and gets a nifty job at a toy store.
He's been a great worker for the past few months until Christmas time which is his most loathed holiday, he's assigned to be the store's Santa but during Christmas eve he snaps and goes on a murder spree killing those who have been naughty or nice.A shocking, violent, disturbing and sleazy low budget horror flick that was one of the most controversial movies of it's time mainly because in November of the year 1984 when this movie came out in theaters there were angry parents who picketed this movie because they didn't like the idea of Santa Claus as a murderer then the studio Tri-Star Pictures pulled it out in three weeks but was released on video in the full Uncut version with some gore trimmed out to avoid an "X" rating and became a cult flick.Also recommended: "Halloween Series", " Nightmare on Elm Street", " Friday The 13th series", "Freddy Vs. Jason", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", " Maniac ( 1980)", " I Spit on Your Grave", " Mother's Day", " Christmas Evil", " Tales from The Crypt" ( 1972 movie), " The Prowler", " Scream 1 & 2", " A Clockwork Orange", " Driller Killer", " High Tension", " Gremlins", " Urban Legend", "The Hills Have Eyes ( 1977 and 2006)", " House of 1000 Corpses", " The Devil's Rejects", "Santa's Slay", " Terror Train", " Hostel", "Wolf Creek", " Cry Wolf", " My Bloody Valentine", " Bloody Birthday", " "Sleepaway Camp", "Ichi The Killer", "Silence of the Lambs", "Se7en", " The New York Ripper", " The Toolbox Murders ( 1978 and 2004)", "Cape Fear", "Bad Santa", and " Psycho ( 1960)"..
But as Christmas approaches and Billy is forced to wear a Santa suit for the job, flashbacks of his terrible encounter years ago return, and in a bout of psychosis, he goes on a rampage, slaughtering everyone who's been "naughty" this year.I enjoyed this movie quite a bit actually, mostly because of the decent story and the unique and interesting ideas that are put into it.
It was ultimately banned two weeks after it's theatrical run in November 1984, and was shelved for two years and then re-released on an "uncut" VHS videotape.To sum things up, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is a bizarre, interesting, and somewhat unique horror movie.
While it isn't nearly as great as Bob Clark's 1974 film "Black Christmas", "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is a worthy effort in the genre, good fun holiday horror.
The plot is about a little boy (Billy) who sees his parents brutally murdered by a man in a Santa custume on the way home from a road trip on Christmas eve.
I know that this film took a lot of criticism and still does---yes, the murders and almost too violent (deer antlers!!), but overall it is a decent, well acted flick that seems to really want us to care about Billy and his past, making everything that happens much more difficult to watch.
Sorry, but he felt too hokey to be taken seriously.Needless to say though, while I don't consider Silent Night, Deadly Night good by any means, I do respect it for taking a different approach to the slasher movie genre, especially towards the holidays.
Once he dons the Santa suit and goes on his killing spree, the film drops any attempt at story as we watch him move from one scenario to the next, killing those he encounters, or as he thinks of it, "punishing the naughty." It's all pretty dopey, but the lead (Robert Brian Wilson) gives it his all, and some of the gore effects are memorable.
I've watched numerous 'slasher' films over the years, so I flatter myself I've seen most things when it comes to the genre, but 'Silent Night, Deadly Night' kind of left me speechless.
It has a simple enough set up (but fairly original) with a young kid who sees his parents killed in front of him by a disgruntled Santa Claus, becomes an orphan, and then snaps when he's an adult and under the control of some nuns.The movie is not any kind of 'high art'.
With the approaching Christmas season, and with me being a huge horror fan, I just had to get my hands on Silent Night Deadly Night--the band Santa slasher that really scorched a lot of mothers in its day.When the movie started it was freaking good, the scene with the grandfather in the mental institution is classic.
"He punishes those who are naughty." But about twenty minutes into the movie, once we see a grown up Billy working for a toy store(an obvious prop), the budget surfaced, and the rampage that follows just wasn't quite bloody enough for my desensitized appetite--it was comparably to an early Friday the 13th film.But don't let this deter you, because if your reading this, your most likely into b-horrors like myself and can put up with such things.
Billy's parents see someone on the side of the road, it is the Santa Claus killer, he pulls out a gun and ends up killing Billy's father, he rapes his mother, slits her throat while Billy is hiding.Billy and his brother Ricky are in an orphanage where the mother superior runs it with an iron fist, she makes Billy's life more difficult, even around Christmas.Years later he's a teenager working in a toy store and flips out after having to dress up in a Santa Claus suit.He murders one co worker when he sees him raping a female coworker and she is ungrateful, he kills her and the others in the store, he goes on his killing spree and Sister Margaret, the nun who is sympathetic to Billy growing up figures out where he is going to go next, her and the Police Chief go to the Orphanage where Billy kills a cop and is about to kill Mother Superior, Billy Gets shot by the chief, his last words are, "It's alright, Santa Claus is gone", he dies, his little brother Ricky was looking down, then looks up and says "Naughty".I give this movie 10/10 stars, I am so glad that I have this movie on DVD.
He scares the heck out of the little boy saying that Santa Claus punishes the bad.This film is very freaky, all true horror fans should see it.
Billy is traumatized after watching his parents being brutally murdered by a psychopath dressed in a Santa suit after his loony grandpa tells him that ol' Saint Nick punishes bad little boys and girls.
"Silent Night, Deadly Night".This horror movie "perfect" for holidays is about a traumatized boy who when grows up, for the trauma (a thief that kill her dad and mom in Christmas eve) go with a disguise of Santa Claus in Christmas eve and kill a lot of people.
SPOILERS Billy Chapman is deeply traumatized at age five when a man dressed as Santa Claus kills both parents and rapes his mother on Christmas Eve. A combination of this murder and something his insane grandfather tells him leaves the impression to him that Santa leaves presents for the good children punishes the naughty children. |
tt0482599 | Shutter | Shutter tells the story of photographer Ben (Joshua Jackson) and his new wife Jane (Rachael Taylor). The film begins with the couple's wedding, and the audience learns that they are planning to leave their apartment in Brooklyn for Japan, where Ben has been hired to take pictures for a particular client. The couple has made the decision to leave for Japan a few days early, renting a cabin so they can enjoy a shorter honeymoon. In the car on the way to the cabin, Jane gets lost and asks a sleeping Ben to check the map. While attempting to get their bearings, Jane sees a girl walk into the road. She hits the girl, and swerves off the road, crashing the car into a tree. They both fall unconscious. When she awakens, Jane realizes the girl could very well still be laying in the road, and rushes out of the car to find her, Ben on her heels. They find nothing, and Ben thinks that the girl was already found and has gotten the medical help that she would need. He also thinks the injuries weren't life-threatening, as they cannot find any blood or evidence of a collision and wants to call for help. Later, help does arrive for them, and they are able to continue with their travel to the cabin, but Jane is haunted by the image of the girl. Ben's shoulder is bothering him, since the accident. Jane tells him he needs to get it checked out. Ben chooses to ignore it, and at the cabin, they are able to enjoy a few day long honeymoon, and Ben wants to take pictures to record the event.Days later, Ben has to report for work with his friend Bruno (David Denman) Jane accompanies him but is somewhat left to her own devices as Ben needs to meet with the clients right away. We learn that Ben is fluent in Japanese, while Jane is not. Later, the pair are taken to their home, a building of which they are the solo occupants, and also the home of Ben's photography studio. Jane notices an alcove where an old chair sits, and the image sticks with her. After meeting Ben's assistant Seiko (Maya Hazen), Jane again is left to her own devices while Ben works. She eventually gets the photos from the honeymoon, which are full of a mysterious light, and in showing the photos to Ben, makes the realization that something is off with them. Ben simply assumes there was an error with the camera. Seiko mentions that the light is not from a camera error, but from spirit energy. Interested, Jane asks how she knows what the light is, to which Seiko responds that her ex-boyfriend runs a spirit photography magazine. She insists that Jane meet her ex the next day after work, and Ben, hearing that the girls have made plans to go out, jokes that "the girls have a date". That night, Ben, Jane, Bruno, his date and Adam (John Hensley) go out to a traditional Japanese restaurant. Here we learn that Adam is a model agent, but that his motives may not be in the best interest for the models.The next day, Jane heads with Seiko to see the spirit photography magazine Seiko's ex Yoko (Eri Otoguro). While there, Jane learns that the magazine is mostly full of fake photographs, but that 1) a Polaroid picture cannot be faked and 2) a psychic named Murase (Kei Yamamoto) was written up by the magazine for his efforts in analyzing the photos. Later, Jane tells Ben about her visit and asks him to go with her. Ben's shoulder continues to bother him, and he goes to the doctor. While there, he is weighed a couple of times, and the doctor tells him that there is no source of injury, but that he will give him some medicine for the pain. Rattled himself by the presence of the light in some of his work photos which have landed him in hot water with the client and a random encounter with 'someone' in the darkroom, he agrees to travel with Jane to visit Murase.Once at the home of Murase, Jane and Ben show him the photos and tell him that there was an accident and they believe this spirit may be that of the girl Jane hit. Ben serves as translator between the two. Murase takes the photos and begins to speak very emotionally, but Ben does not translate all of what he says, and tells her they are leaving. Ben does tell her that spirits bond with humans when extreme emotions (love, hate, anger, etc) are involved.Jane later looks at the photos of the project that were ruined by the light, and decides to go visit the office building in the photo that the light seems to be around. Armed with a borrowed Polaroid camera from Ben's studio, she heads to the building to take pictures and see if she finds any proof of the spirit's presence in the building. When she gets there, she goes to the floor where the light has gathered, and takes pictures in the empty office. She has her first encounter, and learns the girl's name Megumi Okina through a picture frame that falls on the ground and shatters. Megumi is in the photo and when looking at it, Jane learns that her husband Ben took the photograph.When she confronts Ben about it, he admits that he and Megumi were involved in a relationship, but that she became obsessive and clingy, despite the fact that her traditional Japanese family did not approve of the pair. If anything, the disapproval made Megumi even more clingy to Ben, who was trying his hardest to balance work and his blossoming relationship. Megumi's father, the main person who did not approve of the pair, dies, and Megumi becomes obsessive and even at one point becomes suicidal. Realizing this is too much for him to handle, Ben quits Megumi. Ben, admitting that he never loved her, gets Adam and Bruno to speak to her about the fact that the relationship is over and that she needs to stop following him around. Jane is upset with that, but decides they have to find Megumi. Ben talks to Bruno, who says that he recently saw Megumi on the street, she was pointing at him.Adam is at his photography studio taking pictures of a prospective model, an Australian hostess that he mentioned at the dinner. He asks her to take off her clothing, except her underwear, and goes to get his camera from a box full of scantily-clad women. We get the impression that his motives at this point are not good at all. He begins taking pictures and starts seeing Megumi through the camera lens. He keeps stopping taking pictures, which begins to irritate the model. He is ready to take another picture, and the next thing we see is that the camera lens has shattered in his eye.Meanwhile, Ben and Jane are at Megumi's home looking for evidence of her location. They find her, seemingly having been dead for a long time, as flies and decay have began, along with bottles of potassium cyanide strewn along the floor. They are still in shock over this discovery when Ben receives a call from Bruno about Adam's accident. Ben says that they will meet Bruno at the hospital.After being at the hospital for a while and Bruno does not turn up, Ben calls his cellphone in an effort to find out when he'll get there. Bruno answers but does not say anything, and as the camera pans out, the audience sees that he is slicing up photographs (into shapes of origami) with a razor blade and his hands are all bloody. Ben tells Bruno's voicemail that they desperately need him at the hospital because Adam didn't make it. Ben and Jane leave the hospital and head to Bruno's home to see if he is there.When they arrive, they find all his picture frames are still on the walls, but the photos are all cut up on the table, and that the television is loud and blaring. Ben begins to look around for him, while Jane examines the photos on the table. She sees Bruno standing at the end of the hall, and it appears he is charging at her. Ben calls out to him, and Bruno runs past Jane (who dives out of the way) and jumps off the balcony of his high-rise and goes crashing onto the concrete. He is dead. Ben is visibly distraught.Ben and Jane have decided to return to New York at this point, when in a voiceover, Ben says that Megumi's funeral will be in a few days, she will be cremated, and after the service, they can return home. When they return home to pack things, Jane opens a Fed-Ex that she has received containing photos of their wedding, and Jane makes the statement, "we aren't going anywhere". Megumi is present in their wedding photos. They decide to leave the apartment and go to a hotel to spend the night.That night, Ben is haunted by images of Megumi in the room, her brushing her hair, her looking at him, her sitting on the floor, her initiating sex with him...all while Jane sleeps. He is very upset and somewhat frantic, and the ghost of Megumi confronts him with a kiss, and Jane wakes to find him choking. She watches him choke and attempts to help him, gets caught by the ghost in a curtain and smashed up against a window which cracks. In her desperation, Jane finally yells, "He didn't love you!" to which Megumi stops. Ben is gasping for air, but alive.At Megumi's funeral, her body is cremated. Ben and Jane watch the process and hold hands. They return to New York, where seemingly all is over. However, this is not the case. Ben is out, seemingly at work, when Jane wants to take a picture of the rose petal shaped heart Ben has left her with a disposable camera. However, the camera is full of ready-to-be-developed pictures. She heads out to start her day and takes the camera with her, seemingly to drop it off at a developer. When she returns home, she has the photos in an envelope. While preparing dinner, she opens the envelope and is shocked by what she sees. In the pictures, of her and Ben frolicking around while still in their wedding clothes, the ghost of Megumi is visibly in the photos, crawling towards the couple and eventually standing near a portrait of Jane that (seemingly) Ben took. Jane looks in Ben's belongings for the camera that he used in Japan, and finds the removable drive in the camera, which she loads into the computer, and is digusted by what she finds.When Ben gets home, he can immediately tell something is wrong with Jane. He asks her what is wrong and she opens the laptop and asks him what the photos are of...and how he could do such a thing. We see the picture of Megumi, with Bruno and Adam, in a compromising position. Ben tells Jane that Megumi was crazy, she was obsessed and she wouldn't stop harassing him. So when Bruno and Adam got involved, Adam suggested giving her some pills that were like sleeping pills but a little stronger, and photographing her in compromising positions that they could use to blackmail her against her prim and proper family to finally leave Ben alone. However, when the situation was happening, Ben took the photos but Adam and Bruno (more than likely drunk themselves) took advantage of Megumi and forced themselves on her. (The audience is led to believe this by the comments they make and the fact that they show the look on Ben's face). Ben admits to Jane that the situation got out of control but absolves himself of blame since he never touched her. Jane is digusted, and realizes that Megumi was trying to warn her of the man she loves, that Megumi did not want to harm her at all.She starts to leave him, telling him that she needs time to think and then recants, saying she needs no time to figure out that he's not the person she thought he was and that she's done. Jane departs, leaving Ben alone in the apartment. Ben takes out a Polaroid camera and begins photographing the apartment looking for Megumi. He yells, "Me and you together forever, is that what you want? You got it!" The pictures show nothing, and in anger, he drops the camera and it takes a photo. He picks up the photo and looks at it, and it shows Megumi is sitting on his shoulders. This explains his "injury" and why his shoulder has been hurting him so and why the nurse weighed him multiple times, his weight was that of 275, the weight of two people. In an effort to rid himself of her once and for all, hooks up a large amount of power to a photography light, which he puts to his neck. The power goes out in the building and we hear Ben's screams.The next scene is in a hospital. A nurse is wheeling a tray of food and drink into a room. We see the patient in the room is Ben, who appears completely catatonic, his head slung over and head closely shaved. The nurse injects his arm with a needle, sets the food down on the table and leaves the room, locking the door behind her. As it closes, we see that the spirit of Megumi is hugging Ben, causing him to be slumped over. | revenge, flashback | train | imdb | In North America, after getting married, the photographer Benjamin Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and his wife Jane (Rachel Taylor) travel to Japan for a job opportunity with Ben's friends Bruno (David Denman) and Adam (John Hensley).
Jane investigates and finds that the victim was Ben's former shy and weird girlfriend Megumi Tanaka (Megumi Okina), who worked as translator for Ben. Later Jane discloses deep and hidden secrets about the relationship of Megumi, Ben and his friends Bruno and Adam.The American version of "Shutter" is a mediocre remake of a great Asian horror movie.
This was a surprisingly good, old fashioned ghost story.I haven't seen the original and I'm not a fanboy, so I didn't have any axes to grind going in.
The cast is very good if somewhat underutilized, the photography and musical scoring are excellent, and there's a plot twist that caught me completely by surprise.Watching the previews you'd think this was the one millionth Asian horror with a vengeful female spirit who has long black hair and dark circles under her eyes.
There's more than that going on here.And, without giving any plot points away, the final shot of the film is going to stay with me for a long, long time.Sure, this isn't the most original piece of work ever.
Shutter (2004) was not a great horror film but it was a competent one.It was entertaining and it had some creepy moments.But,now,we have another unnecessary Hollywood remake.Shutter (2008) is a crap.Simple as that.The ''scary'' moments produced accidental laughs on me.But,in spite of laughing a little bit,this movie enormously bored me.The special effects are pathetic.The actors show zero conviction on their roles.Director Masayuki Ochiai made a mercenary work.The only positive thing I can find in this crap is that the ending from the original film was not changed.Shutter is an unnecessary remake.In summary,this is another crappy remake.Hollywood MUST stop with this remakes..
Shutter is also another "ghost in the machine" story, except this time the machine is a camera.The trouble is there is absolutely nothing scary about this movie .
Director Masayuki Ochiai has failed miserably to achieve anything worth while and it's a film that will fade from the memory very fast indeed.The PG-13 rating says it all, while opening the gates to bored teenagers it will turn hardcore horror aficionados in the other direction.I don't know about you but i want my Horror movies to be 18 rated and nothing less.3 out of 10.
So what Masayuki Ochiai's adaptation essentially becomes is a carbon copy of copy.American photographer Ben Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and his blonde schoolteacher bride Jane (Rachael Taylor) go straight from nuptials to a working honeymoon in Japan, natch, because America just isn't as scary to Americans as Asia is.
It's not dissimilar to what we've already seen in "The Grudge" remakes.Even as Ochiai's direction is comparatively surefooted and patient with the camera choosing to hang on to a scene instead of ludicrously harping on jump-cuts and eyeball-rattling shots that bounce off the wall, the film feels unambitiously stale.
We've all seen too many (Asian) horror movies already in which white-faced spirits spontaneously appear & disappear again, and the mystery is always build up towards a point where the script can't possibly fulfill the audience's anticipations anymore.
If you guys have times, I suggest watching the ORIGINAL.Here' the Youtube's Link.http://youtube.com/watch?v=JLxVRidi3zM Part - - 1/10 (with subtitle) http://youtube.com/watch?v=yByiyD_VK40 - - 1/10 (with subtitle) Both links are the same movie but with different posts.I've watched the remake just few days ago.I quite like something in it.The ending is really funny, after Ben found out why he's been neck ache.The remake gives some credits to the original such as the Name of Jane or itsscore which it is quite the same.Enjoy!.
After fighting several thoughts to walk out on this film I managed to stay until the end,Although it wasn't worth it.What's not bad to say about this, everything is cliché When writing a horror film shouldn't you consider every other horror film of the recent years,This one didn't.You see everything coming.Its not scary,its dumb This Japanese horror film style is dead...It got old quick and this one should be the last.Everything in this film is all to convenient.Finding Spirit photo magazines with the cryptic medium....its goes on an on Horror films are like any other film.They need good stories and strong interesting characters that develop.Many horror films go off their story and simply start trying to scare the audience,almost forgetting the plot lines completely.Thus the film completely falls apart.Horror films need originality badly.
If you go into this version with an open mind, even after seeing the original, then you should still quite enjoy it.This one sticks pretty close to the original in storyline as well, which is a good thing because with it being a remake you sometimes kind of expect them to change things around, and end up ruining it but they don't.
The ironic thing is with that though, is if you've seen the original then you know what to expect at the end so it kind of takes that surprise element away slightly.Anyway, this one felt like it was a bit slower for the first half of the movie that what the original did, but thankfully it picks up enough within the last 30 minutes or so to make up for that.
Shutter is a rather different remake than the usual Japanese to American horror, it has a pace which is just cracking, it's speeds along very fast but smoothly, one thing I dislike is when a film takes too long to get going and it lags but this movie doesn't waste any time in telling the story.
American remakes of Asian film can either be really good or really bad, this is a good one, in lots of ways, the first being the excellent central performance by Rachael Taylor, Australia's newest up and comer.
This film was made a few years and it was before I knew anything about Rachael Taylor but recently I have seen her in quite a bit of stuff and I have to say she has a great screen presence, she is wonderful in Shutter and pretty much everything else she's in.Josh Jackson is pretty standard as the boyfriend with a bit of a secret, I mean his role could have been played by anyone but yeah he's also pretty good.
I am a huge fan of horror movies, believe me I have watched masses, and trust me that this film is not as bad as people claim it to be.
No scares, no jumps, no gripping intrigue or suspense.There is a twist at the end, but it's 'too little too late', by this point i was only watching because i hadn't managed to find a rusty fork to stick in my eyeballs.Don't waste your time on this film, juggling 'rio snappers' would be more frightening..
Thought the two lead characters were very good, especially Rachael think she's stunning but for some reason when they make the American remakes they take that edge off, the little jumps, unexpected scenes and the effectiveness of the main 'scary' character.
...very.American couple moves to Tokyo where they are terrorized by a ghostly Japanese girl who keeps appearing in their photos.I went to see Shutter with absolutely zero expectations and it's probably a good thing I did because I would have likely hated this movie otherwise.
Much like its tailer suggests Shutter is another one of those Japanese supernatural horror films remade for America - very much in vein of The Ring and The Grudge, but not as effectively chilling as either of those movies.
It's basically another formula supernatural horror film that could really use a bigger dose of imagination.But despite all of its predictability, Shutter had a few good points that kept it from being a complete waste.
This reminded me a lot of "One missed call" Okay, here we go.They were both remakes of Japanese horror flicks, they both had Jump moments that don't even seem to phase anyone except a idiots, they both have the same stupid soundtrack that makes you know whats coming and tries(it seems) SO hard to make you feel scared, they both have young attractive women getting scared and you don't feel sorry for them because it has no character development at all, and the list goes on and on and on.Overall, this movie was terrible, do go see it, if you waste your money on this film you will have made a terrible mistake..
From the first dark-room encounter where he finally becomes convinced of the presence of the ghost, the encounter with the ghost in the boardroom which is another stand-out due to the fantastic innovation of the Polaroid camera allowing for some suspense to be had with the waiting for the photo results to come about, and the interaction that happens once the revelation has occurred is really good, and the later attack alone in the apartment with only the flashing camera to provide any light in brief spurts, the sounds of what's going on making it so fun and creepy that works so well due to being quite long and intense, which makes it stand-out a little more than the quick-shot appearances throughout the beginning.
As well, there's an incredibly fun and enjoyable encounter late in the film through an attack at the house, which has a lot of good points about it, from the creepy ghost action to the great setting and what it signifies for what has happened so far, it's a great scene and really makes a great lasting impression.
Storywise this is a decent idea and I'm guessing the original perhaps worked out better, but this is largely overly tame, and for a movie not even 90 mins long it feels very plodding at times, and rather directionless.
I absolutely loved the original Thai horror film, SHUTTER, and I thought that this film might be interesting because of the new setting (Japan) and the presence of a Japanese director to give it some Asian sensibility.
Every major set-piece already happened in SHUTTER, especially the excellent twist ending from that film, so I found this movie bereft of surprise, originality and inspiration.It's well shot, but it feels hollow.
This is a richer cousin of films like "One Missed Call", where Hollywood remakes a successful Asian horror film trying to gather more audiences since there are people in the world who hates reading captions of foreign films, so they film a English version and everybody gets happy (or not which is my case).
Instead of an cell-phone, the ghosts come out of photographs in bizarre moments; spirits ruining the photos taken by Joshua Jackson while enjoying honeymoon with his wife (Rachael Taylor), and also taking photos (that will be ruined too!) for his work making a great advertisement for a big company.Their problem started after accidentally run over a girl in the woods, and it looks like the girl's spirit is chasing them and killing some of their friends.
But the plot twist at the ending, reminding of "Ghost Story" (1981) was amazing, lift up the movie a little bit, but not enough to make a good film.
Fans of the genre should probably give it a look but then again, anyone who has seen more than a few of such films really won't be surprised by how things unravel here.For this spooky adventure we follow photographer Benjamin Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and newlywed wife Jane Shaw (Rachael Taylor) as they travel to Japan for business on account of Ben's new job.
Director Masayuki Ochiai does well to try and cover up much of this detective-mystery tangent in order to conceal, and in turn develop some tension, yet the scripts insistence on giving reasoning too often overwhelms its insistence on telling an interesting, scary story.Main characters Ben and Jane are your typical horror movie newlyweds; both are madly in love, and as such their gradual loss of reality soon contrasts with their early airy nature.
Remaking Japanese horror movies seems to be the latest film-making trend these days and "Shutter" is no exception to the rule.
Very cliché stuff going on here, it's like the director hasn't seen a horror movie for 20 years.That being said, it does start to pick up near the end.
As Shutter started out, I found it to be pretty predictable, but as it went on me and my friend (who at any other movie would most likely be pointing out some horrible mistake made by the directors)found ourselves wrapped up in the plot.
While the movie itself isn't as "scary" as a few people have made it out to be, it still has its intense moments.And while the ending wasn't as surprising as I had hoped (after being won over by the second half of the film), this movie definitely earns a B+ in my book.I recommend you buy this when in comes out on DVD, or at least rent it and see it a few times.Hopefully, you won't be disappointed again in our culture and our never-ending talent for ripping good movies to shreds..
The ghost just don't happen to be evil and try to kill others like some other scary films, there are good reason behind it.
This remake is, however, very well done.All I can say is that this film is recommended for all you Ghost stories fans who enjoy Hollywood more than Japanese cinema, or for you truly devout Horror freaks who'd like to compare this to the original.
As a remake of the original 2004 Thai horror film, newlywed Ben and Jane Shaw have traveled to Tokyo, where photographer Ben is investigating a potentially lucrative job opportunity.
Well, the idea of me liking this movie isn't a bit improbable, because I always seem to never loathe the new surge of Asian horror remakes that have been coming out the last few years.
Overall, if you usually enjoy these PG-13 Asian horror remakes, movies like THE RING and THE GRUDGE, there's no doubt that you'll enjoy this too.
Shutter is another disappointing horror remake from director Masayuki Ochiai who does a decent job with this film but the lack of real scares, suspense, and an original ghost is what weighed down the film the most.
This film was really lacking inventive scares, suspense, and a scary villain who seemed to be just a rip off all the other vengeful woman ghosts who can be found in many other horror movies out there.
There was a little suspense but no real scares fortunately they kept this movie to a trim 85 minutes but after watching it you still feel like that was a total waste of time.
"Shutter" is a remake of a Thai horror film that concerns a couple who start seeing the ghostly image of a young woman.
Though this movie was from a Thai original, it chooses Japan as its setting and, even more than The Grudge, becomes pretty much a Japanese horror movie with Americans.
this movie was mostly boring,with no real scares.plus this genre(remakes of Japanese movies)is getting to be old hat,at least in my mind.i also didn't think the actors put forth a lot of effort.i will admit the ending was a bit creepy,but a horror movie with a creepy ending,does not a complete horror movie make.the rest of the movie was lifeless and bland.having interesting characters with more than one dimension always helps.too bad this movie didn't have them.the storyline isn't too deep,either.i won't say this is the most boring movie i have ever seen,or the worst.it's just that it does nothing to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack.for me,Shutter is a 4/10.
Well, that scene is repeated nearly verbatim here, and amusingly, it doesn't even make sense, as he comes across his wife and it instantly switches gears (and in a second viewing of the scene, I realized they were trying to scare you by putting the ghost girl in different places, but they're laughably inept at even this, not leaving the exposures long enough to even get the effect of the scene).The original Shutter is a Thai film (you can tell by how long the crew's names are), and that far-less-reviled production is set in Bangkok, which would have, if nothing else, at least provided a new and unique locale for this type of film, but the producers of this American remake were stringent in their desire for it to be as formulaic as possible, so not only did they transfer the film to Tokyo, they decided against hiring the original director, choosing to go with a *JAPANESE* J-horror hack.
Well, I didn't see the original and I don't intend to but I enjoyed this movie remake or not.It takes a lot to send a shudder down my spine but there were some genuine scares in this film.
However, the biggest problem I had with this film was that it was difficult to feel much towards the main two characters.Now there is a good reason for this, and I won't spoil things for those who haven't seen the film, but I'll just say there was probably a better way to handle the situation Now on to the spoiler, so stop here if you don't want to know something that happens towards the end.
The only thing fans of the original got right is how dismally bad the remake is.Shutter (2004) would have been a lot of fun in the 1980s, and I can understand why kids and people new to the genre like it so much, but there's not much here for those more experienced in the genre -- Asian horror, or horror in general.
So far the Ring is still the best Asian horror remake so far (can't go terribly wrong when given to Gore Verbinsky).But overall this movie i wouldn't say its bad but just a pass if you have nothing to watch. |
tt1125798 | Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare | On a mission in the Bering Sea, Sergeant "Soap" MacTavish, Captain Price, "Gaz", and several SAS members find a nuclear device onboard a cargo ship. Suddenly, the ship is attacked, and the team evacuate with the cargo manifest, which provides evidence of ties between the Russian Ultranationalist Party and a rebel faction in the Middle East. Russian Ultranationalist Imran Zakhaev, who plans to return his homeland to the times of the Soviet Union, draws international attention away from his plans by funding a coup d'état in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, organized by a local separatist leader named Khaled Al-Asad. The British and American governments, who discover the plot, initiate a police action to stop the uprisings in both regions. After President Al-Fulani of the Middle Eastern country is executed on live television and Al-Asad takes control, the SAS rescue their compromised informant in the Russian Ultranationalist Party, Nikolai.[4]
One section of the game takes place in Prypiat, Ukraine. Several iconic aspects of the abandoned city, such as this square, were recreated in the game.
In an American invasion of the Middle Eastern country, a platoon from the USMC 1st Force Recon, led by Lieutenant Vasquez and Sergeant Paul Jackson, searches for Al-Asad, but only manages to secure a television station broadcasting Al-Asad's propaganda. During the operation, United States Central Command is notified by Seal Team Six of a Russian nuclear weapon nearby, and sends the NEST to disarm it. However, the nuclear device suddenly detonates, leveling most of the city and killing everyone in the area, including Vasquez's squad, whose helicopter had not left the blast radius after coming to the last-minute rescue of a downed helicopter pilot. [4]
The British learn that Al-Asad fled the country before the USMC's invasion. With the help of their informant Nikolai, the SAS finds and interrogates Al-Asad. After learning from him that Zakhaev supplied the nuclear bomb, Captain Price shoots Al-Asad. Price then has a flashback of his mission to eliminate Zakhaev in Prypiat, Ukraine, 15 years earlier. In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zakhaev took advantage of the turmoil to profit from nuclear proliferation and used his new wealth to lure soldiers from the Soviet Army to form his Ultranationalist Party. Price was paired with Captain MacMillan to carry out the black op assassination of Zakhaev. MacMillan spotted Zakhaev while Price fired a sniper rifle, only to end up shooting off Zakhaev's left arm. The two commandos were then pursued, narrowly escaping.[4]
Back in the present, a joint operation, by the SAS regiment under the command of Captain Price, a USMC Force Recon unit led by Staff Sergeant Griggs, and forces from the Russian military led by Sgt. Kamarov, is undertaken to stop Zakhaev. They capture his son Victor to learn of Zakhaev's whereabouts, but before they can question him, Zakhaev's son commits suicide. Zakhaev becomes enraged, blaming Western nations for the death of his son, and plans to retaliate by launching ballistic missiles armed with warheads at the United States. When SAS/USMC operatives arrive at the facility, Zakhaev manages to launch two missiles towards the United States. However, the squad successfully deactivates the missiles and escapes the facility in military trucks, Zakhaev's forces in hot pursuit.[4]
Before the squad can escape across a nearby bridge, it is destroyed by a gunship, leaving them trapped. Zakhaev's forces arrive and engage the remaining members of the strike force. Suddenly, Gaz receives a call from Sergeant Kamarov, informing him that his forces are on their way to help the American and British forces. On the bridge, a gas tanker explodes, incapacitating most soldiers nearby except Griggs, who is shot while trying to pull MacTavish to safety. Zakhaev, along with two of his soldiers, finish off Gaz and other surviving members of the strike force. He then begins to walk towards Soap and Price, but is distracted by the destruction of his gunship and the arrival of a Russian military helicopter. As Zakhaev looks away, Price slides his pistol to Soap, who shoots and kills Zakhaev and his two guards. When Kamarov and his team arrive, MacTavish is evacuated to safety, while a Russian medic attempts to resuscitate Price. MacTavish survives and becomes a captain in the SAS before leading an elite military force in Modern Warfare 2, but Price's ultimate fate is unknown. | violence | train | imdb | This is one of the few games which takes me out of myself (the way a really great movie does) and throws me into the shoes of an SAS soldier or Marine, and has me wondering if I'll make it to the end.I'm not a game reviewer, but these are some things that have earned Infinity Ward high marks in my book with this title: Graphics - As of today (December '07), these are the best visuals a game has to offer, and sometimes I find myself just walking around an area admiring the detail that went into it.
It's fast paced, but not in an unrealistic way - you're on the edge of your seat because there's "hostiles" all around you, and you can't afford the luxury of being bored.Difficulty - I'm glad to see that a higher difficulty here does NOT mean an enemy who takes more shots, but rather one with faster reflexes, sturdier aim, and more strategic grenade-lobbing.Sound effects - I don't know how many people look for good sound effects in a game, but for me, they tend to be a major factor, and I appreciate the satisfyingly diverse sounds of each weapon, or the "ping" grenades make as they bounce towards you, and yes, even the "thup" of hitting your target.Story - About the highest compliment I could give this game is that it plays like a superbly made war drama.
The campaign ends with a dramatic conclusion, and I frankly hope there are never talks of making this franchise into a movie, because Call of Duty 4 goes beyond the limits of what films are capable of.(also, the music is commendable, simply because I generally don't think I'd want much of a soundtrack for realism's sake, but Stephen Barton's work here is beautifully sublime, and sets the mood well).
The game doesn't glorify war, it shows how messed up it can be with many things like, friends dying, see death through the eyes of others, rescue missions, and even an amazing assassination with a .50 caliber Barrett.
You play S.A.S sergent Soap Mactavish, Sergent Paul Jackson of the U.S.M.C and also a very fun one off mission were you go flashback 15 years and play as captain price.The graphics are incredibly detailed and every tiny detail is catered for.The story was a fantastic idea considering how call of duty has jumped from world war 2 to the modern day.Online is where the fun really lies.
There are hundreds of different online games but my favourite is ground war which is basically your team deathmatch but with LOTS more players and it actually feels like a warzone with grenades,explosions and bullets happening all around you.A very deep experience and certainly worth your money, definitely my game of the year..
Never are you so delighted to be ordered around by a guy with a mustache.Graphics: 9/10: Great graphics, with slight flaws in grass and thin layered items.Controls: 10/10: The scoping system is wonderful and I love how you can stab people in the back.Realism: 10/10: The war zones and situations are so life-like in COD4 that you feel yourself simultaneously slashing with the controller as if it was a knife while pressing the mêlée weapon.Difficulty: 9/10: I beat the game on the Recruit difficulty setting, and I had no problem (it was the easiest).
This game is going to be a classic for 100 years, people are going to talk about it in decades...Call of duty 4, Modern warfare 9/10graphics:10 sound:9 feeling:9.
I've only played the online mode at my friends house, and let me tell you, It is by far THE GREATEST WAR GAME AND FIRST PERSON SHOOTER EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES!!!!
First off the visuals are excellent the visuals are truly some of the best.The look of explosions and battle worn areas in the middle east is intense.It's great to just look around(when your not getting shot at) and realize the scope of how much work was put into the game to make it look so good.The sound is great its like they went onto an actual battlefield and recorded everything.Explosions and gunshots sound just so great its probably as best there gonna get for the moment.Voice acting was great the actors did a stand up job sounding like the characters they were.It's always great when a voice actor does a great job and makes the character more believable.Game play is the best Call of Duty game play ever.Nothing was wrong with it unlike Call of Duty 3 which seemed to have physics to have problems as often id get stuck on a tire.Coming off that note the physics and frame rate are excellent and hardly ever falter.The controls in this game were tight and easy to learn.This COD game perfected the throw back grenade function which was first introduced in COD3.The use of a knife as a melee attack was also entertaining and to me was more believable then beating a man to death with a rifle butt.Guns seemed to be as strong as they should be and fired like they should.For once a storyline was attempted that didn't all but just make you want to skip the cut scenes as it was interesting and could draw you in.The one thing i wished there was more of was guns.
Also many times i found myself forced to use an m4 assault carbine and had few chances to use an m-16 which i believe is a better gun.I found it a little odd the British S.A.S. was using the m4 and not the standard British rifle the L85 which was a gun i was really hoping to see.(I only have this problem with the campaign.) Multiplayer leaves nothing to be desired.The multiplayer is excellent its easy to just jump in and play the game and actually be good at it.There is a good variety of weapons on multiplayer and some customization to be done to the weapons.Plenty of match types that people could want or need.All around Call of Duty is the best war game i have ever played and I've played enough of them.I own it for the ps3 and have not experienced many problems with it.Best war game out there and best COD of the series..
I was never a fan of the previous games in the Call of Duty series but I must say that Infinity Ward has created a wonderful game.The first 3 missions give you great idea of what is to come.
However, the game has a top-notch ranking systems which rewards you for good play by giving you extra weapons and perks as well as game modes.The single player game is a little short but I have not come across one as good as Call of Duty 4.
To this day, no other game in the series has given me an experience quite like this, Modern Warfare is probably my second favorite game in the series, right behind Black Ops, the game is surprisingly solid in almost every area, the gameplay feels just right and the game can be pretty challenging at certain levels, but if you play smart, you can actually get on top of almost every situation, the score is great, I specially love the main theme, the story of the game is fairly standard but it works well for this kind of game, ironically this is probably the last CoD game we had that was in any way "realistic".
The game also looks good all this years later and the campaign is filled with memorable set pieces, my favorite part of the game is a stealth section where you are basically playing as a sniper trying to hide from enemies, it was tense and by far the highlight of the game.
Platform: PS3 Setting: Eastern Europe, Russia, Middle East etc.Story: You're part of the military elite (S.A.S.) and fighting terrorists determined to get nuclear weapons.Graphics: Good.Sound: Good.General observations:Not being a lover of first person shooters, I thought I'd give this massively popular franchise a burl.
There are multiple weapons to use, including high tech ones.Good about the game: The training module at the start is brief and gives you a feel for the gameplay.The controls are intuitive...even after I returned to the game after finishing MGS4, it was easy to pick up on the gameplay.The game doesn't waste your time...you can skip the self-promotion slides at the start of the game and in game, if you die, you pretty much resume from where you died...so, generally you don't have to repeat slabs of levels, which I like.I like how your squad waits for you...there are things to collect in the game (which I didn't really care about) and you can roam at your leisure to find them, then meet up with your squad and continue the action.Variety of gameplay...sniper missions, helicopter gunships, missile launches etc.The final moments of the game were cinematic and effective (before the "mile high" mission).Your squad commander looks like Lemmy Kilmister!
So, if you enjoyed some of the unconvetional parts of the game, like shooting big guns from a helicopter using thermal vision, you can replay that again.Bad about the game: Very occasionally you can get lost in the game, not sure what to do next...e.g. in an early sniping mission your commander tells you to come "over here" to snipe...where is "here"?
That looks like a quick and easy option if you want a short FPS fix if you don't have much time.The single player campaign is a good introduction to this genre and you can easily learn the ropes here until you feel ready to tackle what this game was no doubt intended for...online play...where you can expect to be pwned and teabagged by 11 year old boys!
It is in 3rd person view but you can play it like a FPS I'm sure...maybe for most of the game?
Yes this game is really great.This game have best video game scenario ever..That deserves the Game Of The Year 2007..Now 6 years already passed but still have 1.000 more online players..Win 2007 best FPS game.Win 2007 best Multiplayer game.Win 2007 best Action game.Win 2007 best scenario.and more,more..This game more best than all Call of duty series in my opinion...Don't have good graphics maybe but still better than more quality graphics fps game's...
I liked the old call of duty's but bringing it into the 21st century is activision and what a way to bring it.The graphics are truly brilliant with the streets of Iraq and the forests of Russia coming to life.The level that really stands out it "all gillied up" which involves you crawling though the Russian defences and the detail of Chernobyl is truly spectacular it looks so real with the ferris well and swimming pools of priypet.The multi player made me a slave to my living room spending a total of 5 day online trying to be better.A Must Buy!!!!!!!!.
But as well 'Soap', you also get to fight as an American Marine fighting in a urban warfare environment.Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shoot-em-up, with most of the action taking place in war-zones, with the use of automatic weapons, RPGs, javelin rockets, etc...
Wow...what can I say about Call of Duty 4...man no words can describe this but I will tell you something...as for me I'm not much of a fist person shoot game fan but I "like" them...but after playing COD4 it changed everything for me.
Everything about this game is perfectly good...and well done.From the Graphics, game play is very easy, nothing special, but one thing that makes this game a great game is that it captures the character and you...there are times where you feel like you are the main character, and your there in experience...
because there are times when you would see things that only your eyes can see if you are there...and especially when the in game characters come and help you when you are hurt, its like there saying it to you and makes you feel calm...and rescued.
I thought Socom was good and COD$ blows Socom out of the water, and I was a die hard Socom fan.In multi-player mode you can play a series other other games within the COD4 world, such as, Free For All, team death-match, Sabotage, Team Tactical, Cage Match and so on.THe best multi-player FPS game period, for any of the new consoles.
The mission ends with you being executed by Khaled Al-Ased, who was ordered by Imran Zakhaev to kill you.All of these missions lead up to the game, which sees you take control of British SAS operative Sargeant John 'Soap' MacTavish, and United States Marine Corps Sargeant Paul Jackson, each sent to a different theatre of war.The game is primarily played through the eyes of MacTavish in stealth-oriented missions, but occasionally changes to Jackson for all out action missions.This game was definitely the best i have ever played, and i would recommend it to anybody with a PS3, XBOX360, or PC powerful enough to run it..
After playing and learning new information about this failure series installment, it is proved fact that the graphical works in this game are completely made up of pixels and coding.Seeing as that this game sucks, it still remains a huge financial success, due to the public and their petty opinions, that spark the falling of a great video game developer, all because they were fooled by the encouraged usage of the art of repetitive gaming into the continuing production and creation of these sh** worthy games that are destroying this world as we know it.A quick way to summarize Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, is that it is a failure attempt to reunite the series that once popularized the war fighting genre.
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the most amazing game i've ever played.
If your a CoD fanboy, this review is not for you, just vote it down without reading, and move on.I normally play more realistic or story focused shooters, but with most CoD fans saying this is the best one in the series, I thought I'd try it (single-player) with modest expectations.
Like everyone has said, it is easy to pick it up on the easy level and pretty much "finish" the game in a few days of broken play.
It almost goes without saying that the game looks amazing and that HD is a must.Within the levels there are things to collect like laptops to get various fun things and there are also arcade settings where you play for points but ultimately the main reason, two months later, why this game remains a mainstay with me is the online experience.
However with time you can easily get to a reasonable level of playing - you'll always get those who take it really seriously but for me I was soon at a level where I felt I was doing as well as I would expect and occasionally doing better and, like everything, gradually improving my game with experience.In this area, COD4 is near perfect because it is a great game to drop in, play a game and then get on with something else, but it is also the sort of thing that you can play for whole days if the mood takes you.
For me level 55 is enough since it allows me to work on the challenges, keep all my perks etc and just focus on enjoying the game - there is little reason to go on apart from impressing others (hence it called prestige).COD4 is roundly awesome even if all bits have strengths and weaknesses.
Technically superb, tightly plotted, fast-paced and wonderfully cinematic, Call of Duty 4 is one of the best war first-person shooters ever made.The game quickly shows off its qualities: after a brief tutorial we get a great level on a ship, then an amazing credit scene - a steady-cam sequence seen through the eyes of a man dragged through a Middle Eastern city to be executed: a chilling, brilliant moment worthy of Brian De Palma.Call of Duty 4 is a roller-coaster ride.
It's a great and well-designed FPS game and really brings the series to an entirely new level.Campaign - The campaign is short and relatively easy, with few teammates with you, tonnes of enemies ahead of you, and quite a varied and breathtaking set of missions, from stealthy two-man infiltrations to noisy and explosive massive-scale assaults.
What's extremely annoying is the fact that more accomplished players are able to hold better weapons, meaning what whilst more experienced soldiers show off their advanced gadgets, the low newbies who don't know how to play the game are left to deal with weaker guns.
With a mixture of the air strikes, choppers, UAVs, and the fact that it'll take years for an average player to become the top rank ever (after passing the 55th ten times), Multiplayer deserves a 9/10.Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a fantastic game and I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of First-Person Shooter and loves short but epic games.Total Mark: 8/10By HowlingRabbit334.
the game itself is great with multi-player being amazing.the problem with one player is that its actually quite short but when you complete the game you unlock a thing called arcade mode, which you can try to get the highest score possible and getting a high kill streak makes your score go up more and is fun if you like comparing scores with your friends.multi-player is really excellent because of its customizable features being able to choose your primary weapon and side arms and you can add attachments to them.
I have played a few war games like MOH, BHD and JO but none of the previous COD's.
If I had to call a best FPS of all time, Call of Duty 4 would definitely be in my top whatever.This game is relentless, it's powerful and it's pretty, plus it's DAMN fun. |
tt1397280 | Taken 2 | The film opens with a funeral taking place in the small village of Tropoje, Albania. The funeral is attended by the Albanian mafia where several armed men stand over the graves of their fallen brothers. Their leader, Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija), tells them that they will have their revenge, and they will kill Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson).The next scene takes place in Los Angeles where Bryan appears to be working at a car wash, but just wants to buff the car himself. He goes to the home of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) to see their daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). Lenore tells Bryan she is with her boyfriend. Bryan is clearly not thrilled to hear that. He drives over to the boyfriend's house using a GPS he furtively put in Kim's phone. He interrupts their make-out session and has Kim leave so she can continue practicing driving (she is now 18 years old and failed her road test twice already). Kim is not happy that Bryan is still overprotective of her even after three years (since the events of the first film when she was kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers).In Paris, France, the Albanians break into the home of Bryan's friend Jean-Claude and torture him for information on Bryan's whereabouts, but Jean-Claude has no idea. The villains will later discover that Bryan is headed to Istanbul, Turkey, on personal business.The next day, Bryan goes to visit Lenore, only to find her crying because she has been fighting with Stuart, her husband, and as a result, he canceled their planned trip to China. Bryan suggests that she and Kim join him in Istanbul, but Lenore says she doesn't want to impose.Meanwhile, the Albanians arrive in Istanbul via a mountain pass as they await Bryan's arrival. When he gets there, he stops at his hotel and makes a phone call to Lenore. He starts to leave a message, only to be surprised by her and Kim.In his room, Bryan pulls out a trunk full of weapons. Kim and Lenore are staying in the next room. At night, Bryan and Kim take a ride on a boat on the Bostrophes, and Bryan not-so-subtly asks about her boyfriend Jamie (Luke Grimes). He asks if she loves him, but she doesn't know yet. She mentions how Lenore described her relationship with Bryan before having Kim as being "magical."The next day, Bryan and Lenore allow Kim to go off and have fun while they take a ride through the area from a local taxi driver. However, during the ride, Bryan senses danger. He tells the driver to go a certain route and begins telling Lenore to go back to his hotel room to be safe. She gets out of the car and runs away while Bryan takes the car from the driver. He tries calling Kim, but she is swimming in the hotel pool and doesn't hear her phone. Lenore gets trapped and can't make it out. A few Albanian thugs corner Bryan and he immediately begins to beat them up. However, one of them brings Lenore captured. He orders Bryan to drop his gun. He then calls Kim back and informs her that he and her mother are about to be taken. She is scared, but he tells her where to go to be safe because he knows they'll look for her too. After he hangs up, he breaks the phone and they brutally assault him, and then capture him and Lenore.Kim leaves the pool and heads to her room, then walks out the window to the next room where she hides in Bryan's closet before the other thugs come in to find her. Security guards notice them, but the thugs kill them.At the villain's hideout, Bryan is by his wrists using a zip tie to a pipe. While he is alone, he takes out another hidden cellular phone and tries to call his friend Sam (Leland Orser) but gets no answer. He tries Kim again, and she tells him that she's safe. After she gets out of the closet, Bryan tells her to get a grenade and toss it out the window onto a parking garage and to let him hear the explosion so he knows how close she is and where she can find him. He is forced to hang up and hide the device as Murad comes in. Murad shows him pictures of the last film's villains, all of whom died at Bryan's hands. Murad pulls out a picture of Mirko, his son (the one Bryan killed by sticking him with the nails hooked to battery cables, electrocuting him until his heart burst). Bryan says he did what he did because they kidnapped his daughter, but Murad doesn't care. He still intends on making Bryan suffer. He brings in Lenore and cuts her neck, then hangs her upside down with a bag over her head to see how long it takes until the blood in her head is gone. He tells Bryan that once they capture Kim, Murad will sell her the the lowest brothel where she will be used by many men and become nothing but a piece of meat.Bryan manages to free himself and get Lenore down. He calls Kim again and continues telling her where to go by throwing more grenades. He senses she is close and keeps telling her where to go. He breaks a steam pipe and sends steam up a chimney, which he tells Kim to zero in on. Kim drops a gun down the chimney. He escapes from the hideout and starts killing more Albanians in a shootout. Meanwhile, Kim is roof-hopping and is eventually cornered by one thug, who gets shot by Bryan who has escaped. He embraces a terrified Kim and takes her away.They steal a taxicab as Bryan tries to get Lenore back in less than five minutes, which he monitors by setting a timer on Kim's phone. He is too late, and the villains take Lenore away. He gets back to Kim, who is forced to drive the cab through the city away from the villains who give chase in their own cars. Bryan tells her to drive to the American Embassy, and they eventually outrun the villains and crash through a booth after getting shot at. Bryan manages to call Sam again and asks him to contact anyone who can protect them. He tells Kim that the villains are hunting him, and she will be safe in the embassy. He promises he will find her mother.Bryan eventually finds where Murad and his goons have taken Lenore. He storms the complex and continues killing off the bad guys, even getting into a prolonged fistfight with one goon who almost stabs Bryan, but he takes him out quickly and grabs his gun. He finally corners Murad in a small room with the gun. Bryan asks him if he has other sons. Murad says he has two. Bryan knows if he kills Murad, they will seek revenge as well, so he opts to spare Murad's life because he is just tired of all the killing. He sets the gun down and starts to walk out. However, Murad grabs the gun and pulls the trigger as Bryan's back is turned, only to discover the gun is empty. Bryan hands him the bullet he took out, and then shoves Murad´s head into an coat hanger, killing him. He goes over to Lenore, who is lying on the floor unconscious, but she comes to, and they embrace.Three weeks later. Kim is taking her road test, and she passes. Bryan hugs her, and she invites him for a celebration. She takes him and Lenore to an ice cream parlor. The waitress brings four sundaes and in enters Kim's boyfriend Jamie. She asks Bryan if it's okay, and he appears not to be okay with it, but he lightens up and welcomes him to join them. | revenge, murder, violence, flashback | train | imdb | In "Taken 2," it's not as complicated and the stakes don't feel nearly as high.Simply, the Albanians that Mills killed en route to finding his daughter want revenge, so they track him to one of his private security jobs in Istanbul.
As it happens, Kim and her mother, Lenore (Famke Janssen), decide to surprise him by flying to meet him there, though to be fair it's not that obnoxious of a coincidence, as Mills had invited them to come after hearing Lenore's current husband had canceled their family trip to China.During their first full day together in Istanbul, Kim gets the idea to let Bryan and Lenore have some alone time in hopes of rekindling their relationship, but when they go into town they are followed by the Albanians, and despite Mills' best efforts, he and Lenore are taken.The entire setup here is forced — really forced.
It feels as though every single plot point or detail exists solely to create circumstances in which our main characters can get kidnapped, with ample occurrences both inconvenient and convenient to allow for problems and general suspense while also providing enough room for a solution.We already know what Mills is willing to do for his family, so his motivation is identical to the first film, plus we know he's too skilled to stay kidnapped for long.
What's required to compensate for not raising the stakes in terms of both motivation and danger is substantially more creativity, and that's where Besson and Kamen really come up dry.There's one scene early on (as in once the film gets going early on) in which Mills uses Kim to help pinpoint his location in the city, instructing her to set off grenades so he can figure out how far away she is by how long it takes for him to hear the blast.
What you will be treated to however is a cheap, watered down child friendly, completely unrealistic, trashy, knock off 'Rom Com with bullets' B reel, sold purely on the title of "Taken" alone.Huge plot holes dominate the script from start to finish, in its purest form its basically an awful rehash of the first film but 1000 times worse, placing Maggie Grace (Bryan Mills daughter) as the heroine trying to rescue her parents from a load of bungling Albanians (yes they are literally that bad, think of Manuel from Faulty Towers and you have your starting point) .
Now look, I am going to say from the start, I like Liam Neeson, a good solid actor, even if lately his roles seem to be that of the brooding loner, perhaps very understandable considering recent personal circumstances and its a role he plays very well, so no problem with that.
The action relocated to Istanbul could have been potentially very interesting and the basic story, as shown in the trailers, so no spoilers here, is that the family of the men he killed in the first film want their revenge.
It had a very similar tone to what was great about the original Bourne Trilogy.It is everything a fan of the first film would wish for - the speeches, the action, the humour and the brutal efficiency of Liam Neeson's 'Brian Mills'.Enjoyed this very much - a definite for fans of the first film and a must see for anyone else..
Istanbul provides some good locations, both intriguing scenery and gloomy scenery which can also help in taking the movie seriously.Sure, it has it's flaws, and the camera-work is sometimes choppy, but the point is, if you thoroughly enjoyed the first Taken, you should see this one too..
The way people judge movies sucks, and ill be quick and make it simple.Liam Neeson is still a bad ass and a great actor, the story still keeps your attention even if its not as real as the other story.
Retired CIA operative Mills (Liam Neeson) invites his teenage daughter Kim and his ex-wife Lenore, who has separated from her second husband, to spend a couple of days in Istanbul where he is working .
You love the new direction, the twists you could never have seen coming, the depth of the characters, their background, the world they're living in, a leading film in it's own right, something to make you want to watch the other one right away...Unfortunately this isn't one of those types.
What makes me love 'Taken 2' is the fact that it related to the first movie but the only difference was that Kim Mills played by (Maggie Grace) had to return the favour by saving her father from dangerous Albanian mobsters who hailed him and his wife hostage in a secret location.
Taken 2 (loved that they stuck with a simple title for the sequel instead of adding something lame after the two may not be as nearly as great as that film was, but it still is a lot of fun and has Liam Neeson doing what he does best.
I still loved this movie and had a lot of fun despite not being as good as the original.Former CIA agent, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), succeeded in bringing his daughter back after being kidnapped in Europe, leaving dozens of dead bodies behind.
The retired CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) invites his teenage daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), who has separated from her second husband, to spend a couple of days in Istanbul where he is working.Meanwhile, the patriarch of the community of the Albanese gang of human trafficking, Murad Krasniqi (Rade Sherbedgia), seeks revenge for the death of his son and organizes another gang to kidnap Bryan and his family.
Not irredeemably awful and there are worse sequels about (naming them would take up a whole review's worth), but 'Taken 2' was a real waste of reasonable potential, considering that it has the always watchable and often very good to great Liam Neeson as the main star.
Before anybody says anything, am not the sort of person who is always with the general consensus, have been known a fair few times to go against the tide and part of me wanted to do so watching this but the film was just too problematic to enjoy it more and take it for what it was.'Taken 2' is not without good points.
Markos and his gang according to Murad were just doing their job to make a dishonest living in kidnapping and pimping young girls and this crazed mad man US Government Agent Bryan Mills, Liam Neeson, put an end to their lives for doing it.Now sending out this scuzzy gang of assassins Murad plans to do to Millis as well as his wife Lenny, Frankie Janssen, and especially his 17 year old daughter Kim, Maggie Grace, the very worst he can think of.It's in Istanbul not Constantinople Turkey where Mills and his family are on vacation where all the actions in the movie takes place.
Even Mills who's captured and tortured by the group is never really in danger of being killed or murdered in just how gingerly and with extreme care they handle him as well as wife Lenny & daughter Kim. Mills for his part has no trouble dispatching the bad guys Steven Seagal style where they never are even allowed to lay a glove or hand on him in the many fights scenes he has with them in the movie.
BUT.....this movie really isn't very good, it's predictable, the acting is robotic and stiff, the action scenes are almost laughable, Liam Neeson moves like he's an old man with arthritis, the bad guys are so stupid that they don't deserve to live, and yet will all that said this is still kind of a fun movie to watch.
For those of you who also enjoyed the original TAKEN, let me now warn you, this is a hollow shell of a sequel, but as action movies go, this is not a total waste either, thus I rate it a 5 star out of a possible 10..
The answer is inferior direction, no surprises, and too many absurd moments to count.Liam Neeson returns as former CIA-stud Bryan Mills, father to Kim (Maggie Grace) whom he rescued from Albanian sex-traffickers in Paris.
Since the film opens with a mass funeral depicting the burial of all the guys Bryan killed in the first movie, and Rade Serbedzija vows revenge, it comes as little surprise when Bryan and Leonore are "taken".What is surprising is that the filmmakers attempt to turn Maggie Grace into an action hero.
Also, I want to know who was watching the first "Taken" and said, " Man, that was great, but I'd like to see more of his daughter in the action." Maggie Grace, who plays Liam Neeson's daughter Kim, is involved way too much in the story.
After watching the very badass Liam Neeson's new movie, Taken 2, which I was desperately looking forward to because the original was all sorts of fantastic, I have been enlightened in strange ways.
In the original, Taken, the daughter of a retired CIA agent, Bryan Mills (Neeson) is kidnapped by human traffickers and he has to use his "particular set of skills" to save her.
So it's important for villains to do daft things like not kill the good guy after they capture him because they want him to feel pain (*cough*, The Dark Knight Rises, *cough*).But here's the level of daftness of the bad guys in Taken 2.
I got what I wanted and then some.So this film not only offers the tension, the action, the hand-to-hand combat you have come to expect from this guy, it also offers a fantastic car chase with an unlikely driver, in a very nice location, at a great pace, with a fun outcome as well.Of course many of the moments of this movie are outrageous and ridiculous, like having somebody throw grenades around the city, with apparently nobody getting killed, even nobody notifying the police; gratuitous hand-to-hand combat in some very public places, with violent outcomes, and apparently the authorities are very incompetent.
Despite still being entertaining and filled with some clever scenes, Taken 2 never quite reaches the same level as its original.The reason the original Taken worked so well was that Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) was racing against the clock to find his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) in Paris after being kidnapped, giving him a reason to make quick decisions and pushing his boundaries with how far he'd go with violence and morality.
The thing that really makes Taken and Taken 2 work is the nightmare quality to the central character's story, like in a nightmare things keep going wrong and drawing him back into a paranoid state, as if he were being haunted by the obsession of his daughter or loved ones being kidnapped and unable to ever truly relax and live a normal life, that's why the film manages to be truly scary and suspenseful; because we feel what he feels..
Let's just say the result is seriously a lazy rehash with a capital "L".This time around, the story involves the head of the Albanian clan named Murad Krasniqi (Rade Sherbedgia), who vows to avenge Bryan Mills' (Liam Neeson) killing of his son, the head of a human trafficking syndicate who was previously responsible for kidnapping Mills' daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace) in the first movie.
Of course, the rest of the movie won't be focusing solely on Kim to save the day (which I actually thought the filmmakers are bold enough to toy with the formula inside out) but we eventually see Mills break free from capture and uses his same "special set of skills" to overcome the bad guys.The biggest problem about TAKEN 2 is the replacement of the original director Pierre Morel with Olivier Megaton (the man behind the awful TRANSPORTER 3 and the surprisingly entertaining COLOMBIANA).
Even the movie's car chase scene in the middle part feels generic.Liam Neeson remains a saving grace here, but that isn't really saying much.
While the first film director Pierre Morel (a keen cinematographer), provides a sharp and constant edgy look that makes the film such a success, Megaton lacks this crucial ability and in turn moves the camera so often that the audience is unable to focus on the action on display.All in all, "Taken 2" is one of those films that try too hard to follow the same premise, tricks and plot line as the original.
The best sequel to a movie i have said was to be one of my favourite really pulled off for taken 2.The story of the film is that one of the guys brian killed in the first instalment hunts him and everyone around him to get revenge.i thought that it was absolutely brilliant as it still had the action and drama the first had.
Taken 2 is a brilliant movie with a terrific storyline,action,thrills,suspense,cast and characters.Liam Neeson is back again as Bryan Mills,one of his finest roles too date.A lot of critics didn't have positive feedback from the trailers and thought they where making it look obvious that it was a sequel,but I don't think they did that at all,it trys to be its own movie and doesn't copy stuff from the original,something that sequels like Die Hard 2 and The Hangover Part 2 have failed to do.The movie keeps you on your seat from start to finish.Bryan goes on a vacation with Lenore and Kim to Isanbul.But the father of the men who took Bryans daughter several years ago that he killed is looking for revenge and kidnaps Bryan and Lenore,Bryan gets help from Kim to fix things..
Of course they would have to make a sequel to wring some more money out of Taken's fans.A review of a movie sequel which starts outs praising the first installment instead of the new story is most likely not going to be very kind to the unfortunate title which ends in the number 2.
Taken 2 keeps Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, Famke Janssen as his ex-wife Lenore, and the always relentlessly annoying Maggie Grace as his daughter Kim. Rule of thumb - if Maggie Grace is cast in your film, it will probably stink.
We got free tickets to watch this flick when it released in India, given to us by Radio Indigo, and oh boy, we really loved it.The film is sequel to "Taken" and the story is about federal agent Bryan Mills who is targeted by the revengeful relatives of the people he kills in "Taken" while rescuing his daughter from them.
The rest of it is about how and if Bryan is able to tackle his enemies.The film is really fast paced, with cool stunts and car chases, and nail biting thrills from the start to end that will keep you at the edge of your seat.All I didn't like about it were some unnecessary scenes but that was negligible.Watch Taken 2.....you'll like it, as long as you don't keep trying to figure out EVERYTHING that is going on logically.
All i liked about this movie, is Bryan (Liam Neeson)'s instructions to his daughter to find their hideouts was lil bit OK..
Taken 2 is the sequel the highly successful Taken, and stars Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen who reprise their roles as Bryan, Kim and Lenore.
The first half of the film tries to build on the characters of Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), estranged wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).
Another thing which really bugged me was the colour grading; when Bryan was with his family it was nice and bright, but when we were with the villain (Rade Serbedgia), the film had this overly dark grey look to it which just said "HE'S A GOOD GUY AND HE'S A BAD GUY!!!"I wasn't expecting much from director Olivier Megaton, whose only other films, The Transporter 3 and Colombiana, both of which are pretty average.
I wanted to be hooked by Neeson's cold vengeance and wanted to be shouting and egging on Neeson to break some bad guy's neck, but left the cinema feeling pretty disappointed.The first thing I would like to critisise is the chemistry between the characters; I felt very little between Bryan (Liam Neeson) and his wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), and child, Kim (Maggie Grace).
I wanted to watch Taken 2 to feel no sympathy for the bad guys but I felt the opposite!I also didn't like Bryan's style and method of killing in this film; cold, blunt kills.
Into the film and for reasons that don't deliver, Bryan (Liam Neeson), daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), and ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) who's facing a divorce from her current husband, are all in Istanbul to have a good time and unwind from the trauma of Kim's kidnapping.
Liam Neeson is bad-ass as in the first film and action sequences are good again (except the car chases).
Liam Neeson was his usual self as Bryan Mills, Maggie Grace was good as daughter Kim, as was Famke Janssen as wife Lenore.
The past action of the first movie was not met, the crew could have invested in some lighting equipment, it looked like some scenes were filmed by a 5 year old holding a camera, and frankly there were times where I was just left going "what just happened." With all that being said, Liam Neeson had a solid role in my opinion, but it was not enough for me to flop anymore than a generous 5 on this movie.
But if you are watching this for the story, you might find yourself cheated.As for the actors and actresses in the movie, well they all did good jobs with their roles, especially Liam Neeson, which wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
I did not expect Taken 2 to be good as original Taken, but I thought at least I would be satisfied and enjoy my time watching the movie. |
tt0067924 | Vampire Circus | Count Mitterhaus [Robert Tayman] was a vampire, preying on the children of the town of Stetl. With the death of one more child, the people became sufficiently enraged that they stormed the Count's castle and drove a stake through his heart. With his dying breath, Mitterhaus vowed, "Your children will die to give me back my life." Seven villagers went in, four came out -- Professor Albert Mueller (whose wife Anna had become the Count's willing consort), the Burgermeister, Dr Kersh, and Herr Hauser. Just as the castle is consumed in flames, the Count whispers to Anna, "Tell Emil. He will know what to do."Fifteen years later: The town of Stetl is dying, literally. A plague is slowly killing the people, although some believe it is the Count's curse at work. At any rate, neighboring villages, afraid that the plague/curse may spread, have placed roadblocks around Stetl, and they vow to shoot anyone attempting to leave or enter the town. Dr Kersh [Richard Owens] is among those who believes it to be a disease not a curse, and he plans to sneak out of the town and bring back knowledge and medicines from the city. With his son Anton [John Moulder-Brown] acting as a decoy, Dr Kersh manages to get away. Before his father leaves, Anton reminds him to find his girlfriend Dora Mueller [Lynne Frederick], the daughter of Professor Mueller [Laurence Payne] and tell her not to come back. Unbeknown to them, Dora is already planning to sneak through the roadblocks in an attempt to get back to her father and to Anton.Somehow, the Circus of Night manages to make it through the roadblocks. Tricks, performances, dancers, aerialists, wild animals -- the people of Stetl are, at least, to be entertained in their misery. But this is no ordinary circus. Serena [Serena], for example, dances totally nude, except for the tiger stripes on her body, aerialist twins Helga [Lalla Ward] and Heinrich [Robin Sachs] turn into owls as they soar through the air, and when the panther jumps up, he comes down in the body of Emil [Anthony Corlan], who seems smitten with the Burgermeister's daughter Rosa [Christina Paul], and she with him. Emil is a vampire, really Count Mitterhaus's cousin. The ring mistress, known simply as the Gypsy woman, is really Anna Mueller [Domini Blythe], and the twins are her children with the Count. Their purpose in Stetl is not to entertain, but to kill.First to suffer the consequences is the Burgermeister [Thorley Walters] when he is invited to make a special trip through the "Mirror of Life." At first, he is overcome with laughter at the silly distortions in the various mirrors. In the last mirror, however, he sees himself being bitten by the Count, who speaks to him, reminding him of his curse. Schilt [John Bown] and his family are among those who believe that the Count's curse is coming true. Schilt bribes Michael [Skip Martin], the circus dwarf, to lead him, his wife, and his mother out of town. Michael is happy to comply but leaves them stranded just beyond the roadblocks, where they are torn up by the panther. Next to be invited through the Mirror of Life are the Hausers, Jon [Roderick Shaw] and Gustav [Barnaby Shaw]. In the final mirror, they see the twins, Heinrich and Helga, who take them through. The next morning, their bodies are found lying on the ground, drained of blood, with holes in their necks. The Burgermeister, afraid that his daughter will be next, orders that all the circus animals be killed. Herr Hauser [Robin Hunter] shoots the monkey and the tiger, but just as the Burgermeister is about to shoot the panther, he has a heart attack, and Emil disappears. Next is Rosa's turn. Emil leads her to the crypt where the Count's body is being kept. There, Emil bites Rosa and allows her blood to spill on the Count. Emil vows that tonight Professor Mueller's daughter Dora will die, and the Count will live. During the next circus performance, Dora is invited through the Mirror of Life. Anton follows, just in time to see her go through the mirror. Heinrich prepares to bite her neck but is thwarted by the cross around it, and she is cast out of the mirror.Dr Kersh returns to Stetl with the information that the plague is actually a virulent strain of rabies caused by bats. He brings medicines, but he also brings the news that there are vampires in the land and that, in each case where people have been reported killed by vampires, the Circus of Night has stayed for a day or two. It appears that Stetl must rid itself of two plagues, not just one.Following her brush with the vampires, Dora has locked herself in the living quarters of the school where her father teaches. But that doesn't thwart the vampires. Emil gets through an open window on the second floor, changes himself into the panther, and attacks the students, killing every last one. Meanwhile, Heinrich, Helga, and the Gypsy find Dora. The Gypsy removes the cross from Dora's neck, and Heinrich and Helga draw in for the kill. Dora runs to the school chapel where she knocks over a cross that impales Helga and, by twin empathy, the gaping hole also appears in Heinrich's chest. Emil and the Gypsy escape, but the Strongman [David Prowse] breaks into Dora's house and takes her and Gerta Hauser [Elizabeth Seal] to the crypt. Hauser, Mueller, Dr Kersh, and Anton form a brigade of vampire hunters and they storm the circus, killing the Strongman. Hauser sets the Mirrors of Life on fire, but he becomes trapped in the flames and burns to death. The vampire hunters figure that the Count is probably in the crypt, so they head there.Meanwhile, Emil has just finished feasting on Gerta Hauser and turns his attentions to Dora. As he leans forward for the bite, the Gypsy (who has been holding Dora) aka Anna suddenly pushes her daughter to the side, and Emil bites Anna instead. Anton attempts to chase off Emil with a crucifix, but a bat knocks it out of his hand. Suddenly, the other vampire hunters break into the crypt and tussle with Emil. Emil kills off a number of them, but Mueller manages to pull the stake out of the Count's body and uses it to stake Emil. With the stake removed from his chest, the Count wakes up. He goes after Dora, but Anton beheads him with a crossbow. Only Dora, Anton, and Dr Kersh manage to survive the carnage. [Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl] | gothic, cruelty, murder, violence, revenge, sadist | train | imdb | Not sure why 'Vampire Circus' isn't mentioned when people talk about the best Hammer movies, because it certainly deserves to be.
The Strong Man, The Twins Who turn into bats, The Midget Clown and The Panther who turns into a man, The Body Paint Dancers, Um...OK, maybe they are not your usual circus folk, but they sure do make for an interesting and freaky film.
This is part of Hammer Films later output, when they finally figured out they could put nudity in their movies instead of just implied sexuality What you have is sort of a confused mess of a story where a bunch of villagers kill off their Vampire Count, who swears revenge before they blow up his castle.
(One of them played by Doctor Who's Lalla Ward.) So apparently, these villagers don't think anything is strange about a circus showing up and people mysteriously disappearing or dying in their midst.So some nudity, some gore, some nice Hammer stylistic visuals, but lacking the gravitas that Cushing and Christopher Lee usually brought to these things..
Good and original vampire movie from Hammer Film Productions and Rank Organisation.
Enjoyable performance for all casting , Adrienne Corri as a circus ringmaster , she subsequently worked in 'Clockwork orange' ; Anthony Corlan as a panther man , he has a long career as Anthony Higgings ; Thorley Walters , a Hammer usual ; Lynne Frederick who married and inherited to Peter Sellers , though she died early ; David Prowse as a strongman , he posteriorly became famous as Darth Vader's Star Wars .
) and for much of this movie we're treated to some substandard production values typical of Hammer studios in the early 1970s , the circus arena is supposed to be in the open air but is obviously filmed on an interior film set , the editing and special effects are really poor , there's a sequence with villagers being thrashed to death with a rug ( Well that's what it looked like to me ) while the cast are very uneven with John Moulder-Brown as Anton being just about the most unlikely hero I've ever seen in a horror movie .
I don't know if it's because I've seen too many smart ass post modernist American horror flicks recently but a story featuring a Central European village being cut off from the outside world because of plague and its inhabitants being killed one by one by a bunch of vengeful vampires appeals to me more than a self referrential story set in 21st century America .
Since this carnival people are actually vampires (even the animals are vampires and could transforms to human begins!) getting their revenge of their master Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman) got staked in the heart 15 years ago.
In a long pre-credits sequence,the men of Stettel finally summon up the courage to oppose Count MItterhouse.The vampire has gone too far this time,taking schoolteacher Mueller's wife as his lover and,with her help,luring little Jenny Shult to her death.The townsfolk storm Mitterhouse's castle and stake him.The Count swears revenge:"None of you will live.The town of Stettel will die.Your children will die to give me back my life."Fifteen years later,Stettel is afflicted by plague and cordoned off from the rest of the world.The mysterious "Circus of Nights" arrives in town,come to "steal the pennies from dead men's eyes".Having somehow got through the roadblocks,the circus seems to the townsfolk a welcome distraction from their plight.What they don't realize is that this is the Vampire Circus,come to avenge the Count..."Vampire Circus" is one of the strangest and most erotic vampire flicks from Hammer.The film is well-acted and surprisingly sensual.There is a good amount of blood,so I was pleased.The 'circus' theme was well used;the acrobats and dancers were superb,and the clown was pretty creepy.Give this one a look.8 out of 10..
The concept of a high powerful vampire taking revenge on the villagers and their families, through a group of circus vampires and other freaks, who killed him works very compelling, as simple as the story might sound.The movie has a great atmosphere, that is mostly a mysterious one.
The vampires prey on the villagers and try to revive the count.This is a fairly good vampire movie, typical Hammer fare with some nudity, blood and gore, nice colorful sets, and good acting.
David "Darth Vader" Prowse shows off his incredible physique as the circus' silent strongman.Showcasing the kind of sex appeal and gore that would mark later entries in Hammers' filmography, "Vampire Circus" isn't a great shocker, but it certainly is fun.Seven out of 10..
Fifteen years after staking Count Mitterhaus, the vampire that had been preying upon their children, the people of a remote European village suffer once again as a mysterious plague begins to claim their lives.
It eventually transpires that the creepy entertainers, some of whom are vampires, are out to seek revenge for Mitterhaus's death, and ultimately aim to raise the Count from his tomb.A better-than-average offering from Hammer studios, Vampire Circus offers all of their trademark elements—lush visuals, lavish sets and costumes, beautiful women, handsome heroes and Gothic atmosphere to spare—plus quite a bit of blood and gore, and a generous amount of gratuitous nudity from several beautiful babes (although the stunning Lynne Frederick unfortunately remains fully clothed).Director Robert Young ensures that the film is effectively creepy from start to finish, paying special attention to the scenes featuring the bizarre circus folk, which prove to be genuinely freaky (the dwarf, with his evil grin and painted face, is particularly disturbing).
Occasionally the film suffers from some poor special effects, and the odd spot of hammy acting, but this does not detract from one's enjoyment (on the contrary, they actually made the whole experience more fun for me).Best watched at night, with the curtains drawn, lights out, and accompanied by a big box of popcorn, this solidly entertaining vampire yarn is well worth checking out..
Hammer really got their money's worth out of that particular set, as it appears over and over in all their vampire films."Circus" opens nicely, with the locals aghast over the peccadilloes of resident castle-dweller Count Mitterhouse.
It all takes place in what seems like slow motion.A strange take on the vampire mythos from your friends at Hammer, who tried the sex-and-horror thing long before mainstream studios realized that nudity trumped scares.
I don't remember much about Vampire Circus, because at the time, horror movies deeply disturbed me, and I would watch until a scary part and then change the channel.
This one features Domini Blythe as Anna, the vampire's aide in the long prologue; Adrienne Corri as the Gypsy ringmaster; Christine Paul as Rosa, who has the hots for the Count's cousin; Lynne Frederick as the winsomely youthful Dora; and Lalla Ward as the acrobat twin, Helga.No doubt superior later films "Something Wicked this Way Comes" (1983) and "Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" (2009) were influenced by "Vampire Circus."The movie runs 1 hour, 23 minutes and was shot at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.GRADE: C+/B-.
Gory, unabashed, and filled w/ colorful characters, VAMPIRE CIRCUS is another great HAMMER film from the period.
I first saw this movie years ago in a chopped-up edited for television form, although I was recently able to see it in what looks like its complete version.I remember distinctly that Vampire Circus got terrible reviews in the 1970s.
For what it's worth, the script is actually a little better than some other more highly regarded horror films.While it's not the best thing Hammer ever produced, you'll want to see it at least once if you're a fan of those movies..
Some fifteen years later the village is struck down by a deadly plague and is visited by a traveling circus of vampires lead by a gypsy woman (Adrienne Corri) who are out to avenge the death of the Count.
Moreover, if you like this film and 70's Hammer Horror in general, check out 'The Vampire Lovers', 'Lust For A Vampire', 'Twins Of Evil', 'Countess Dracula', 'From Beyond The Grave', and 'Psychomania', they are all great fun..
Having watched VAMPIRE CIRCUS now, it seems like everything about it was done to extremes being one of the most erotic and gory efforts Hammer turned out but that, in itself, does not make it a good film!
15 years later, the village is struck by a plague and more deaths are caused with the sudden arrival of an unusual circus troupe; led by Adrienne Corri, Anthony Corlan (later Higgins he had previously been the young hero of TASTE THE BLOOD OF Dracula [1970]) and Skip Martin (a dwarf), these performers seem to have the ability to metamorphose into animals (which the audience of villagers, apparently, think nothing of!).
A few of the foremost villagers mayor Thorley Walters, schoolteacher Laurence Payne and doctor Richard Owens contrive to organize resistance against both these crisis but, soon, the only two remaining children are John Moulder-Brown (Owens' son) and Lynne Frederick (Payne's daughter).Corlan and Robert Tayman (as the Count) are both overly mannered in their roles, while Corri's twin vampire children are rather ineffective however, the film does offer the afore-mentioned trio of lovely leading ladies.
Other action sequences are, however, well-handled for instance, the messy death of the twins and a lively climax in which, among other things, Martin is tossed against a rock-face (hilariously enough, the villagers repeatedly seem to find him a convenient vessel for venting their wrath!), a vampire bat is set on fire and the all-too-briefly revivified Count is beheaded (by an arrow fired at point-blank range)!While VAMPIRE CIRCUS certainly displays an admirable sense of style throughout (largely through elegant and inventive production design by Scott Macgregror, such as a hall of mirrors being the portal to a cave where the body of the vampire Count has been unnaturally preserved), dramatically it comes across as one incredible muddle reportedly, the film went over-budget and some scenes had to be unceremoniously dropped from the shooting schedule!.
Thankfully, they had one good film left in them, which went back to a period setting, and told a slightly macabre, unconventional vampire story, that is rich in both gore and sexual content.This tale of lust-ridden vampires who gleefully kill children amongst a plague-ridden landscape is surprisingly dark given my previous experience of Hammer's output.
No Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee in sight, and yet Robert Young's "Vampire Circus" of 1972 is, as far as I am concerned, the arguably greatest film ever to come from the glorious Hammer Studios.
Had the Brothers Grimm lived to the time of moving images and made a Horror film, the outcome would have probably been something like "Vampire Circus".
Fifteen Years later a traveling circus come to the village, which is in the meanwhile infested by a mysterious plague, which many of the villagers see as a result of the Count's curse...Count Mitterhaus (played by Robert Tayman) must be one of the most evil Vampires in cinematic history (maybe THE most evil).
So delightful vampire tale from Hammer, unusual and aplying several ellements by this outstanding genre, the black plague made a scary atmosphere in the little village surrounded by neighbors when arrives a little weird Circus, the dance scene is a high point of the picture well choreographed on a naked body painted only, this remarkable sexy scene pay the movie itself, a stunning and bizarre to offer the audience a breathtaking spetacle a priceless piece of real cinema means to be and fine sample how make a cult picture without spend much money using more creativity and feeling a sort of thing that hammer had in large scale!!!!Resume:First watch: 2011 / How many: 2 / Source: DVD: / Rating: 7.25.
One the most vicious, bloody, and downbeat of the Hammer horrors, 1972's Vampire Circus is these days held in relatively high regard by fans, but despite its attempts to differ from the Hammer norm in many respects, it displays the scars of its relatively troubled production quite plainly and is by no means the mini-masterpiece it is often hailed as.Telling the story of a plague-ridden Central European village visited by the Ray Bradbury-influenced Circus of Nights, a vengeance-fuelled carnival troupe of child-murdering, animalistic, and randier-than-normal blood-drinkers, it is both intriguingly offbeat and at the same time very typical of the standard early-1970s' Hammer output in terms of its setting, locations, and visual style.
By 1972, the usual mock-Transylvanian hinterland of castles, inns, cleavage and a ridiculous number of men named 'Hans' as seen in the vast majority of their period horror flicks was practically a parody of itself; though several of the company's later movies attempted to shake things up with some extra violence, nudity, and a much less 'conservative' storyline than had previously been the case, they were still limited by the rigid conventions of their brand of period Gothic, and as such Hammer struggled to move with the times as quickly and easily as they should have, which Vampire Circus illustrates all too well.Everything about the movie, in fact, is a game of two halves.
Internal logic is unclear, as for a village as terrified of the supernatural as this vampire-haunted hamlet professes to be, they have an awful lot of tolerance (at first anyway) for the Circus of Nights, whose performers are visibly capable of genuinely impossible feats like turning into animals before the audience's eyes, but to which this set of dolts just laugh and clap; also, what amounts to a live sex show between a man with a whip and a naked woman painted like a tiger is greeted with quiet acceptance by the assembled throng of parents and children (!), which makes their subsequent pious wittering and gripping of crucifixes when people start turning up dead (a tedious horror cliché at the best of times) appear somewhat out-of-character.The performances are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the OTT.
Robert Young directed this unusual vampire tale set in a 19th century Austrian village where the townspeople storm the castle of Count Mitterhaus, an evil vampire.
15 years later, the village is under quarantine because of a plague, but a traveling circus sneaks through, and at first is welcomed as a much needed diversion, but they will later realize that they are really a troupe of shape-shifting vampires determined to exact the curse, and bring back the Count from the dead with their blood...
At the same time, however, the studio was releasing a number of more imaginative vampire movies, of which Vampire Circus is a prime example.Hammer returns to its Gothic roots here, with the setting a 19th-century Serbian village.
Surrealistic, innovative, slow paced and plenty of creepy moments, "Vampire Circus" ranks among the best of Hammer Films.
The producers were quite right in their unusual approach and managed to bring then a new life to an already tired genre.I haven't seen this movie for years, but I still remember how chilling some of its scenes were, thanks to the ingenuous combination of circus life and some really different bloodsuckers' adventures on the side.I second Celine in asking for this title to be released on video as soon as possible, together with other flicks of that time, like "Twins of Evil" and "Vampire Lovers"..
I mentioned all this because "Vampire Circus" is one of the best examples of this new Hammer film--one with lots of boobies and a distinctly adult flair.
Directed by Robert Young this has to be Hammer's best vampire film.
VAMPIRE CIRCUS Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: MonoMany years after a dying vampire (Robert Tayman) placed a curse on the inhabitants of a small European village, a terrible plague descends on the area, quickly followed by a travelling circus which turns out to be a hotbed of vengeful vampires.Though the production was shut down before fledgling director Robert Young (THE WORLD IS FULL OF MARRIED MEN) could shoot all the footage he needed, this exemplary horror film retains a fairy tale quality unlike anything produced by Hammer before or since.
Robery Tayman's Count Mitterhaus may just be the most fiendish, savage vampire to appear in a Hammer film - and that includes the work of Christopher Lee. Not even the children are safe in Vampire Circus.
I got "Vampire Circus" on an old VHS and was quite impressed.Being a Hammer film we have a well-cast Gothic period piece with (despite some dating of effects etc.) some still shocking moments.Adrienne Corri (whom buffs may remember as Patrick Magee's victimised wife in "A Clockwork Orange") is excellent as the 'Gypsy Woman' who heads the titular circus and is well-backed by Skip Martin (who coincidentally sets fire to Magee in "Masque of Red Death") as rhyming dwarf Michael, Robin Sachs and Lalla Ward (later Dr. Who companion) as acrobatic vamp twins Heinrich and Helga and Dave Prowse (who needs no explanation) as the mute Strongman.Robert Tayman and Anthony Higgins (credited as 'Corlan') as Count Mitterhaus and his cousin Emil make dashing, dishy and vicious vampires.As for 'heroes and heroines' Lawrence Payne is suitably angst-ridden as the maudlin Albert Mueller, Lynne Frederick is a babe as his 'damsel in distress' daughter Dora, Richard Owens as the cynical, though later convinced Dr. Kersh, John Moulder-Brown as his most unlikely hero son Anton.Robin Hunter and Thorley Walters are deserving victims as arrogant Hauser and the pompous Bugermeister and are well-supported by Elizabeth Seal and Mary Wimbush as their long-suffering wives."Vampire Circus" is most shocking in its' portrayal of victimised children, something you couldn't get away with now, and a family mauled to death by Emil in his panther-shape.I'd give it a higher rating if the vamps won!.
It will take the village elders to muster the support they need to rid the town of the plague of vampires that now hold them hostage as they attempt to being Count Mitterhaus back.For a movie made in 1972 the first striking thing is the amount of gore and nudity in the film. |
tt0114214 | The Quick and the Dead | The scene opens with Ellen (Sharon Stone) riding across the prairie toward a town, when an idiot digging multiple holes looking for his gold, shoots at her. She falls off her horse and knocks him out as he checks to see if she is dead. After chaining him to his wagon, she continues into town. A large, single elimination gun fighting tournament is about to begin and she is looking for revenge on the man ( Herod/Gene Hackman) who killed her father. She arrives at the bar/hotel. Ace Hanlon shows off his deck of cards with an ace for every man he has killed. Soon, the saloon comes to life as Scars who just got out of jail, comes back to settle a score. He makes a move on Ellen, and she tells him to take a bath. Scars gets angry and kicks the blind boy's peddling wagon, as he was talking to Ellen. Later at the drafting of the tournament, the saloon owner is to sign up 16 gunfighters. Among them are The Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio), Sgt. Cantrell (Kieth David), Cort, the marksman and odds on favorite (Russell Crowe) though he was signed up against his will. Cort was an outlaw who became a preacher and built a mission. Since he was one of Herod's partners in crime, Herod now wants Cort dead. Also in the contest is Ace Hanlon ( Lance Herrickson), A Swedish Champ. and of course Herod. Anyone can challenge anyone, and each fighter must accept the first challenge. Ellen is challenged by the idiot who was digging for his lost gold. But up first was the Kid and he quickly shot the Swede and the winner is the last standing.The Swede was shot twice and then threw his gun down. Also winning, were Stg. Cantrell, Scars, and Eugene the scumbag. Herod has challenged Ace(because he thinks Ace was hired to kill him) and one of Herod's men challenged Cort. After Rusty, another of Herod's men has beaten Cort up as he was chained to a fountain in the middle of the village. Herod has Cort released so that he can go to the Kid's gun store. Herod gives Cort the cheapest gun in the place. The Kid also has told everyone that Herod was his father. Herod denies that and rubs it in the Kid's face. Then Cort went out to a fight that he refused to be in. But when the clock stuck, only one bullet was fired. Herod's man fell to the ground. Many claimed to be the fastest gun in town, like the Kid, Herod, and Ace, but all knew that Cort was the fastest. Next, Ace is bragging and doing gun tricks. It is time for he and Herod to face each other. Herod proves that Ace has been lying about all of his kills. The clock strikes and Herod blows Ace's right thumb off. Then he shoots Ace's left hand. Then after mocking Ace some more, Herod's shoots him in the chest. Then Ellen wins her first fight with Cort's help. The next day, Herod invites Stg. Cantrel to his home. He tells the Sgt, that he knows that he was the hired hand and not Ace. The Sgt. does not tell him much and the challenge has been issued. Later, Herod changes the rules and now all fights are to the death. Herod takes down Cantrell, and then scolds the crowd for hiring him. Meantime, Eugene the scum bag is heard upstairs molesting a girl. He comes downstairs and brags about it. Ellen attacks him from behind and the two scream at each other until the challenge is made. though it is pouring outside, The two come out firing and Eugene gets his manhood shot off. The rules have changed and the winner is the last alive. Ellen couldn't finish him off, so she returned to the bar. Eugene comes in and shoots her glass. Then Ellen empties her gun into him.Though Herod tells the Kid to quit, that he has proven his point, the Kid stays in and takes down Scars. After buying the smelling oaf deep, the Kid goes to Ellen to talk to her. She was getting ready to leave, even before Cort's second match. He squares off against an Indian who has been shot many times. The Indian claims to be an immortal that can not be killed by a bullet. Cort has only one bullet, so he can't shoot his way out of town. Cort shoots first and drops Spotted Horse. But, the immortal rose to his feet again and started shooting at Cort. the young, blind peddler throws him a bullet and this time Cort finishes it. Ellen who is looking for her father's meets up with the Dr. who was her father's friend. She has been flashing back to the day that Herod had her father hung. There are only 4 left, and The Kid challenges Herod, his father. Ellen finds Cort who is being beaten up by Herod's men, and she frees him at gun point. Then she and Cort make love and a pact. They decided to have Ellen stand down and Cort take Herod in the final. Herod overhears and makes them fight. But first, The Kid gets his shot and hits Herod in the neck but catches one in the gut. Ellen rushes to the Kid's side, only to hear his last words. Then, Cort and Ellen must fight. Cort begs her to shoot him and she won't. So, Cort shoots Ellen because Herod had his men ready to shoot them both, if neither drew. The Dr. pronounces her dead and takes her away before the scavengers of the town can take her possessions.
Then Cort charges Herod who puts a mini gun to his head. Cort is taken away and prepares for their final. The time comes for the final gunfight and Herod is in for surprise. Ellen used red ink to stage her death and the clock tower is loaded with dynamite, and it explodes. The diversion begins and Cort starts picking off Herod's men. As a surprise Ellen shoots Herod and its fatal, where her wound isn't. The last scene shows her riding off and Cort holding her deceased Father's Marshall Star. | comedy, suspenseful, boring, murder, cult, violence, flashback, revenge | train | imdb | null |
tt0084805 | Tootsie | Michael Dorsey is an actor living and working in New York City. Most of his work seems to be on the stage; he is adept at disguises, and has a tendency to tailor his own look at the audition based on what he thinks the director wants. However, he is also very stubborn and willful; for instance, he has one confrontation with a director over whether his character can get up and move center stage for a death scene. Michael storms off the stage and quits the play, even though apparently they are well into rehearsals.Michael lives with his best friend Jeff Slater, an eccentric playwright, and both men earn a living by waiting tables in a restaurant. As the film opens, Jeff and Michael's many friends and associates throw him a surprise birthday party, during which Michael's inability to connect with women becomes obvious. He has the tendency to lie, even about trivial things, to the point where the women see through him and avoid him. When Michael's potential love connection leaves the party with another man, Michael decides to console his neurotic friend Sandy Lester by walking her home. Sandy is nervous about an audition that she has the following day for a soap opera called "Southwest General", Michael coaches her and agrees to walk her to the audition the next day.When they get to the studio, the director refuses to even allow Sandy to read; he says she isn't intimidating enough. When Michael tries to talk to a secretary to get ahold of a friend of his in the cast, he finds out his friend has left the cast to do a Broadway play--a role that Michael's agent, George Fields, had promised for Michael himself. Michael becomes furious and goes straight to George's office and barges in. George humors him at first but then explains to Michael that his reputation as a troublemaker has made him impossible to employ. Even directors who have hired Michael for commercials have found themselves overbudget due to Michael's inability to take direction. Michael questions George about Jeff's play that he's writing; Michael has sent George a copy of it, and George dismisses it as a pointless play that nobody will see. Michael becomes resolved; he will raise the $8000 it will take to produce Jeff's play. George disagrees and tells Michael nobody will hire him.The next thing we see is Michael, walking down a busy New York street, in disguise as a woman. He goes to the audition for "Southwest General" and gives them the bogus name Dorothy Michaels, name dropping George as "her" agent. Dorothy meets the show's producer, Rita Marshall, who takes her in to meet Ron Carlisle, the show's director. Ron sees Dorothy and immediately dismisses her, just as he must have done to Sandy. He tells Dorothy she's not right for the part, but Dorothy presses the issue and asks why. When Ron tells her she's not intimidating enough, Dorothy questions his intentions and becomes visibly angry and loud, scolding Ron and even Rita about wanting to portray powerful women in a negative, unattractive light. Rita seems to take what Dorothy said to heart, and follows her when she storms out, asking her to come back in for a reading. Ron is put off by Dorothy's outburst, but Rita smooths it over by flattering him, telling him Dorothy was impressed with the way he communicated the part to her. Dorothy's audition is impressive, and although Ron says there is something about her that doesn't sit right with him, Rita decides to hire her for the role.Still dressed as Dorothy, Michael goes to the Russian Tea Room, where he knows George will be having lunch, and intercepts him, insinuating himself at George's table and discreetly revealing to George that he is Michael Dorsey in disguise. George is horrified, and even more shocked that Michael managed to land a job as Dorothy. Michael borrows $1000 from George and goes shopping for a new wardrobe.Michael has a discussion with Jeff about his strange new gig. He plans on simply doing the soap opera until he raises the money to do Jeff's play, which is intended as a vehicle for Michael and Sandy. Michael and Jeff both wonder how they'll tell Sandy that they have the money to do the play, without telling her that the producers hired a man in drag instead of her. Michael decides to lie to her, telling her a family member died. Michael and Sandy decide to celebrate by going out to dinner; while Sandy is in the shower, Michael spots a dress she owns and wants to try it on, but after he undresses, Sandy returns unexpectedly. At a loss to explain why he is in his underwear, Michael has sex with Sandy. Afterwards, they both wonder how it will change their friendship; Sandy is pessimistic and says Michael will never call her now, but Michael promises to have dinner with her the following day.At his first day on the job as Dorothy, Michael meets his fellow cast members, including a beautiful woman named Julie Nichols. She plays a nurse on the show, and she also happens to be Ron's girlfriend. Dorothy makes a good impression on everybody, but Michael is shocked when he discovers that Dorothy has a scene where she kisses a lecherous male cast member, played by an older man named John Van Horn. Since Michael does not relish the idea of kissing another man, "Dorothy" ends up changing the scene, hitting John over the head with a folder when he tries to kiss her. Although Ron is incensed, he lets it pass, and this begins the emergence of both Dorothy and the character she is playing as a strong, no-nonsense woman.Dorothy and Julie also begin a friendship. Although Julie sees Dorothy as simply another woman, Dorothy is really Michael, and he is extremely attracted to Julie. A series of mishaps occurs where Michael breaks plans with Sandy in order to spend time with Julie, culminating in an evening when he goes to Julie's apartment as Dorothy in order to discuss work and socialize with her. Dorothy meets Julie's infant daughter, Amy, and discovers that Julie has a fondness for drinking. She seems vaguely unhappy and in search of her own voice, something that keeps her under the spell of Ron. Dorothy sees Ron treating Julie with disrespect, not only cheating on her with other women but constantly talking down to her, clearly not taking her seriously as a person. When Julie mentions that Ron was supposed to show up for dinner one night and stood her up, Michael suddenly remembers Sandy and the dinner she had planned to make at her apartment for the both of them that night. After leaving Julie's, Michael goes home, changes out of his disguise, and goes over to Sandy's. She isn't nearly as furious with him as she should be, and even Michael points this out to her. Sandy accuses him of having an affair, having spotted Dorothy going into Michael's apartment. Michael tells her "Sandy, I'm not having an affair wtih the woman that went into my apartment. It's impossible."As Dorothy, Michael begins to learn about what it means to be a woman, particularly the roles that men may expect women to play. When Ron talks down to Dorothy, she stands up for herself and gives it back to him, which inspires Julie and the other women on the show. Additionally, Dorothy's spunky attitude is a hit with the viewers of "Southwest General", causing the show's ratings to climb and Dorothy to become a minor celebrity.George remains an unwilling accomplice in Michael's deception, perhaps mostly due to the fact that Michael already assocated him with Dorothy by telling everyone he's her agent. He takes Michael to a party one night and they see Julie there with Ron. Michael isn't in disguise, so neither one of them recognizes him as Dorothy. Michael makes an attempt to talk to Julie, but she ignores him, eventually throwing a drink in his face when he makes an off-color remark to her. This adds to Michael's panic about his relationship with Julie; as Dorothy, he is Julie's friend and confidante. As Michael, he doesn't stand a chance with her.As Dorothy's tenure with "Southwest General" is about to end, Julie invites her to come with her to upstate New York, where her widowed father still lives on the farm where Julie grew up. Against Jeff's advice, Michael goes with Julie, maintaining his Dorothy disguise all weekend. Dorothy meets Julie's father, Les, a conservative but kind man who enjoys the laid back life he leads on the farm. Julie tells Dorothy that Les hasn't dated any women since her mother passed away, and it becomes clear that he takes a strong liking to Dorothy. Dorothy manages to politely avoid Les's advances.When they return to New York, the precarious position that Michael is in begins to implode. Rita tells Dorothy that because of her popularity with the viewers, they will be picking up their option to keep her on the show for another season. Michael is very upset to get that news, since he wants to leave the show in order to do Jeff's play, but George tells him there is nothing he can do about it, the studio has the legal option to keep Dorothy on. As Michael is about to go to bed, he gets a frantic call from Julie asking Dorothy if she can come over and sit for Amy while Julie goes out with Ron; Julie has decided to break up with Ron, and she tells Dorothy that she herself is the inspiration for Julie's newfound assertiveness. After a few harrowing hours where Amy refuses to cooperate with Dorothy, Julie returns, despondent about the breakup, and in a moment of vulnerability, she tells Dorothy that she treasures their friendship more than anything, but feels like she wants something she just can't have. In response, Michael leans in and tries to kiss Julie, but Julie of course does not know Dorothy is really a man, and she assumes Dorothy is a lesbian who just made a pass at her. Confused and upset, she is clearly distraught that her new best friend has made a pass at her, when the phone rings. It is Les, and he asks if he can speak to Dorothy, inviting her to a downtown club for drinks and dancing. What Les really does is propose marriage to Dorothy, giving her an engagement ring. Dorothy tells him she needs time to think it over and leaves.Michael returns home by cab and finds John Van Horn waiting outside his apartment for Dorothy. When she refuses to invite him up, he starts singing loudly and attracts the attention of neighbors, so Dorothy invites him up anyway. After making several attempts to seduce Dorothy, John is horrified when Jeff returns home unexpectedly. Embarassed, he leaves. Jeff turns to Michael and says "You slut!" The final strand to unravel is Sandy, who shows up right after, banging on the front door to be let in. Michael hurriedly takes a shower, removing his makeup and Dorothy disguise, and Sandy demands to know why he hasn't been returning her phone calls. Michael attempts to lie to her again, giving her a box of chocolates that Les sent Dorothy, but her forgets there is a note attached. Sandy reads it and it says "Thank you for a wonderful night in front of the fire, Les." Cornered, Michael finally comes clean with Sandy, but all he manages to get out is "I'm in love with another woman" before Sandy plunges into hysteria. Even so, Sandy tells Michael that she could handle the fact that he was in love with another woman, but she does not like being lied to. Michael has already come to the realization that he has been behaving like Ron, rationalizing his lies and callous treatment of women, which may explain why Michael does not have any real relationship with a woman at all.Things come to a head when, the next day at the studio, one of the reels of the show is accidentally destroyed and the cast is forced to do a crucial scene live on the air. Before they go on, Dorothy visits Julie's dressing room. Julie tells Dorothy that she cannot see her anymore. Since Julie now thinks another woman is in love with her, she can't lead Dorothy on by pretending to be friends when she knows Dorothy wants more from her. When they go on the air, Ron and Rita watch nervously, hoping that the scene comes off alright. They are horrified when Dorothy starts veering wildly from the script, taking her character into a long speech about why she came to Southwest General. After concocting a crazy story about disfiguring diseases, exile in foreign countries, and other nonsensical things, Dorothy takes off her wig and reveals herself to be a man underneath, weaving her own real story into that of her character, as if her unmasking was always intended to be part of the Southwest General plot all along. Sandy and Les react in horror, watching the episode from their TV sets, while the cast themselves are shocked to discover that Dorothy is actually a man. Julie walks up to Michael and angrily hits him in the stomach.Some time after the fallout, Michael drives upstate and finds Les in the bar where he likes to hang out, presumably to return the ring and try to make amends. Les is hostile at first, but eventually softens enough to allow Michael to apologize. Michael explains why he took the role as Dorothy, and that he never meant to hurt anybody. Les and Michael eventually lighten up enough to joke about the situation, and Les admits that Michael was good company. Michael tells Les that he is in love with Julie, but Les says Julie never mentions him.The final scene occurs when Michael attempts to see Julie. He waits for her outside the TV studio, but Julie spots him and walks away. Michael chases after her and tries to make small talk with her. Julie tries to avoid him but finally allows him to talk to her. Michael tells Julie what he told Les, that he only did it for the money, and that he couldn't help falling in love with Julie. He also says that he was a better person as Dorothy than he ever was as himself. He asks her to give him a chance, since they were already good friends. Julie admits that she misses Dorothy, but Michael reminds her that he is Dorothy. "I just gotta learn to do it without the dress," he tells her. Julie softens and smiles, playfully asking him if she can borrow one of Dorothy's outfits. In the final shot, they walk down the street together talking and laughing, and after they get about a block away, Julie happily puts her arm around Michael. | cult, entertaining, romantic, queer | train | imdb | Hoffman feels his Dorothy character should be doing specials and giving advice and whatnot, but Pollack reminds him, "You have NOTHING to say to women, Michael." In other words, you're lucky you've gotten away with the stunt up to this point, now you should be looking for a way to get out.Overall Tootsie is wonderful experience.
Michael, an unemployed actor in New York, takes desperate measures by dressing up as a woman called Dorothy Michaels and gets a job at an TV soap opera, where he falls in love with Julie.
Winner of 3 Golden Globes ( Best movie comedy/musical, best actors Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange ) and one Oscar ( Best actress Jessica Lange ), "Tootsie" is a small masterpiece of intelligent comedy, full of emotions, love and interesting observations about the relationship between women and men.-------The situations are deliciously written.
Everything in this baby clicks: A script that is both clever, endearing and realistic in its depiction of the emotional transformation within Michael Dorsey, incredible acting performances (with Dustin Hoffman, Terri Garr and unbilled Bill Murray as standouts) and a great soundtrack that adds volumes to the mood of the film.This is a 10!
Dustin Hoffman is brilliant as Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels.Along with Jessica Lange and Teri Garr and fantastic direction from and co-star Sydney Pollack,this couldn't be any better.It's a great story and well scripted and very funny besides.If you love films you can't not love this one.This is my 2nd favourite film in the world only because ''Some Like it Hot'' is my first choice.Dustin is one of the best actors in the business and continues to be to this day..
Whether it's his unforgettable character in Rainman or Michael Dorsey/Dorthy Michael in this, Dustin is at his best when he plays someone DIFFERENT, someone who is not your average person.This film will make you laugh, that's for sure, but it'll also make you rethink about the things that really make you happy in your life, something too few of us think about...almost never..
I've seen it countless times, and it's still a great watch.Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, an unemployed actor, who can't seem to get along with any director or writer in town.
This is the most witty, hilarious and relaxed movie that so many actors and directors have missed completely when dealing with the whole 'drag' subject.The storyline is a hot tempered and highly opinionated out-of-work actor(Dustin Hoffman) is told by his agent (Sydney Pollack) in all kindness that nobody will hire him.
Sidney Pollack's inspired direction (and those who know Hoffman, know he probably "collaborated" with Pollack)perfectly brought together all the elements of this winning story about an unemployed actor/acting teacher/waiter named Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) who, despite being a wonderful actor, cannot get work as he has earned a reputation for being "difficult." Desperate to earn $8000.00 in order to produce a play that his roommate (Bill Murray) wrote, he dresses in drag and auditions for a role on a soap opera and actually gets the part.
Complications ensue when he falls in love with the soap's leading lady (Jessica Lange), butts head with the soap's creepy director (Dabney Coleman), and has to hide what he's doing from his neurotic friend (Teri Garr, in a performance that should have won her the Oscar)who also auditioned for the soap role he got, a ruse that has the woman convinced Michael is gay.
Jessica Lange is a charming leading lady (though I still think the Best Supporting Actress Oscar should have gone to Garr, not Lange)and even director Pollack makes his scenes count as Michael's agent George Fields.
Dustin Hoffman, at this point in his illustrious career, would hardly seem convincing as a struggling New York City actor who has to beg his agent for work, but his comic desperation here is funny and real at the same time.
Dustin Hoffman is at his peak in the dual role, Jessica Lange is beautiful as Julie, Terri Garr is sweet and loyal as Sandy, and Charles Durning as fantastic as Les, Julie's Dad and Dorothy's suitor.
This weekend, if you feel like having a piece of popcorn entertainment, make it a good run for the money by buying tickets to Sydney Pollack's new film Tootsie, a story about a job that requires the most greed, acting, sorry to anyone who believed it was a gig at a Las Vegas casino.
It is the actors playing the characters in this guilt-ridden fable.In this story we have Oscar winning actor, Dustin Hoffman playing Michael Dorsey, an out of work actor who is getting no slack from his talent agent played by director, Sydney Pollack.
Please, by all means, do not see this movie for its story but for great acting done by Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Sydney Pollack and Bill Murray.
In one Dustin Hoffman's finest roles, he plays a talented actor from New York named Michael Dorsey who is still looking for his big break.
Tootsie (1982) **** (out of 4)Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is an unemployed actor who is told by his agent (Sydney Pollack) that there's no one in the country that will hire him due to his attitude.
Dorsey, seeing this as a challenge, decides to dress as a woman calling herself Dorothy Michaels and gets a job on a soap opera where he strikes up a relationship with one of the stars (Jessica Lange) on the show.
Not only does the "comedy" of a man dressing as a woman work but the film is more than just laughs as it hits on what it means to be an actor struggling to get work but there's also a lot of heart to the film and there's certainly many underline themes dealing with the differences between men and women.There are a lot of great things in this movie but there's no question that the true magic belongs to Hoffman who turns in one of his greatest performances.
I think his performance as the woman is so great that many probably would believe that a real woman was playing her.The supporting cast is wonderful as well with Lange certainly deserving her Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
This is my second favorite on my list of favorite comedies, behind the Marx Brother's film "A Night at the Opera." "Tootsie" is entirely unpredictable and implausible, and watching Dustin Hoffman pull off the act of dressing up as a woman makes me laugh hysterically every time I see it.
Having been told that he will get no work in either New York or Hollywood due to people finding him unmanageable, he takes the drastic step of going for an audition as a woman in order to try and get an acting job.Thus begins the best cross-dressing film of all time.
The script from this point on is superb as Michael Dorsey's alter ego Dorothy Michael's star rises, due to her appearance in a daytime soap, beyond anything that he thought would have been possible, Michael has to contend with both his lives becoming ever more confused as each life imposes restrictions of the other one.Unable to tell the woman he loves how he feels as she thinks he's Dorothy, unable to tell his girlfriend that he has got the role she originally auditioned for, and getting great counselling from his best friend and playwright, superbly brought to life by Bill Murray, who steals every scene he is in, within the film, we are treated to a film that could so easily have wound up in the farce category but manages deftly to avoid it.The rest of the cast in the form of Dabney Coleman, Jessica Lange and Sydney Pollock are great in their roles as Director, object of affection and agent respectively with everyone else in equally splendid form it's a masterclass in acting for anyone wanting to know what it takes to become a great actor.One of the films of the eighties..
Bill Murray nearly steals the movie as Michael's pretentious, decidedly weird friend whose only goal in life is to have people watch his plays and ask, "hey, man
what was that about?" The only acting Oscar went to Jessica Lange (for Best Supporting Actress).
Though her performance in "Tootsie" isn't as compelling as her role in "Frances" (coincidentally, she was nominated for the Best Actress statuette that same year for "Frances"), she really brings a lot of dimension to the typical love interest character.
Other fine well known actors in this movie are Charles Durning, Lynne Thigpen, Sydney Pollack himself Geena Davis in her first movie role and Bill Murray (I had totally forgotten he also was in this movie, until my recent last viewing).The movie was actually nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, which is a real big achievement for a comedy.
Don't get me wrong, he did a good job with this movie and its story but his movies always feel like they are lacking something, mostly in its style and perhaps also pace.All in all this movie surely will become and maybe already is a comedy classic, mainly thanks to the surprising Hoffman and the well written script.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including most of the majors for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in Dustin Hoffman, two Best Supporting Actress nominations for Teri Garr and Jessica Lange in her Oscar winning role and Best Screenplay in addition to Film editing, Cinematography, Music and sound.
There must have been something in the drinking water at around the time of TOOTSIE because Julie Andrews had just played a woman pretending to be a man and here we have DUSTIN Hoffman in the same situation and for the same reason--gainful employment.Anyway, Dustin does a believable job as Dorothy Michaels, the character he invents when it seems his job tryouts are all in vain.
He's a man who seems to attract enemies like flies but when he puts on his Dorothy make-up they're more like moths attracted to a flame.This makes dealing with his girlfriend TERI GARR even more difficult, not to mention the fact that he's smitten with JESSICA LANGE, the soap opera actress who treats him like her best girl friend.With director Sydney Pollack and Bill Murray in supporting roles, TOOTSIE gets by because Dustin's Dorothy character is so appealing and believable.
Struggling and notoriously hard to work with actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) takes on the role of a woman in a daytime television soap opera, basically because he cannot get any more jobs as a male actor due to his reputation.
"Tootsie" is perhaps the premier example of 80s adult comedy at its best, and it's a dynamite film.Dustin Hoffman plays a struggling actor who lands a job on a soap opera under the guise of a tough-talking woman.
1st watched 5/13/2001 - 7 out of 10 (Dir-Sidney Pollack): Well done comedy/drama with excellent performance by Hoffman as the man posing as a woman to get a job as an actor or is it actress.
Dustin Hoffman shows remarkable range as an actor by playing a woman, and he pulls it off big time.Sydney Pollack's film is about an actor named Michael Dorsey who is known for his reputation for being hard to work with.
Tootsie is a great movie with a very well developed storyline and a fantastic cast that succeed in both comedic and dramatic scenes.There are plenty of very funny parts,which is exactly what I expected from a movie were Dustin Hoffman pretends to be a woman to succeed as an actor,but the movie also contains a lot of very sympathetic and dramatic scenes that make us connect and feel for these characters so much more.There is great chemistry between Hoffman and Jessica Lange which is what made this unusual love story so great,you can tell that they loved working together and are both some of the best actors Hollywood has ever been lucky enough to discover.A near perfect mix of both comedy and drama,Tootsie is a very enjoyable movie that I would recommend to anyone looking for either genre.
A desperate unemployed actor gets the role of his dreams and instant fame,but no one knows this new female television star is actually a man.Best Performance: Dustin Hoffman.
What does that glued up magazine clipping say on the inside of Hoffman's apartment door?Can anyone tell me what it says?Soon one has to know.It bugs me every time I watch this movie !!!It has to have some relevant meaning to the point of the movie.Or I would like to think so.And while I'm at it, does that note has some meaning to the acting craft, the director, Bill Murray's roommate character (who seems to offer Dorothy Michael lots of advice each time he's on the screen)..
I have never seen "Ishtar" or "Family Business"- in the case of the former I have been dissuaded by its reputation as one of the great turkeys of all time- but his other three films from the decade, "Tootsie", "Death of a Salesman" and "Rain Man", although very different from one another, are all among his best.Here Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, a New York actor who is finding it difficult to obtain work.
There are, however, also important differences between the two films (quite apart from the fact that Hoffman makes a more convincing woman than does Williams)."Tootsie" is, like "Nine to Five" from two years earlier, a comedy with feminist overtones which satirises male sexism in the workplace.
Nominated for 9 Academy Awards, and winning one for Jessica Lange as Best Supporting Actress, the film is most notably remembered for Dustin Hoffman's outstanding portrayal of Dorthy Michaels, a conservative, masculine looking woman whose no-nonsense approach to life and female discrimination are an inspiration to all women.
Tootsie is a comedy,which goes without saying because AFI ranked it #2 all time in it's top 100 list of best comedy films,but I recall vividly some years ago an interview in which the film's main star,Dustin Hoffman disclosed that the film was never a comedy for him.In fact,he got rather teary eyed,as I recall,as he stated that it was while working on this film that he came to the full realization of what women have had to suffer in the mostly male dominated Hollywood over many generations.This is the film in which Dustin Hoffman showed me that he is an absolute master of his craft and commands ultimate respect,further sealing the deal with Rain Man some years later.It's a great story with a great supporting cast,and I loved especially the interaction between Hoffman and Sydney Pollack.It's classic..
Dustin Hoffman is brilliant in his dual role, for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, portraying both the unemployed male actor, Michael, and the highly successful female TV soap star, Dorothy.This wonderful comedy revolves around an unemployed actor named Michael Dorsey, who disguises himself as a woman, Dorothy Michaels, in order to land a part in a TV soap opera...a role which proves incredibly successful.
Tootsie is one of these all-too rare comedies; it just never stops being funny, no matter how many times you watch it.Hoffman plays a struggling actor who, in desperation, disguises himself as a woman and gets a part in very popular daytime soap.
The frustrated actor, cross-dressing to get a role to raise money to finance a play that no-one is likely to see, and becoming a national icon without anyone catching on - the premise is ludicrous but Hoffman makes it believable, and even makes you sympathize with him along the way.Every scene in this movie works.
There's Sandy (Teri Garr), Michael's girlfriend who doesn't know about his cross-dressing secret; Jeff (Bill Murray), Michael's roommate who's the only one who knows Michael is leading a double life; Julie (Jessica Lange), the popular actress on the soap opera who forms a close friendship with Dorothy and who Michael falls in love with; Les (Charles Durning), Julie's father who falls in love with Dorothy; Ron (Dabney Coleman), the sexist director of the soap; Rita (Doris Belack), the sharp tongued producer of the soap; and John Van Horn (George Gaynes), the womanizing actor of the soap who's crazy about Dorothy too.
There's Sandy (Teri Garr), Michael's girlfriend; Jeff (Bill Murray), Michael's roommate; Julie (Jessica Lange), the popular actress on the soap opera who forms a close friendship with Dorothy who Michael falls in love with; Les (Charles Durning), Julie's father who falls in love with Dorothy; Ron (Dabney Coleman), the sexist director of the soap; Rita (Doris Belack), the sharp tongued producer of the soap; and John Van Horn (George Gaynes), the womanizing actor of the soap who's crazy about Dorothy too.
A movie that combines the considerable talents of Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange (yeah!), Teri Garr, Bill Murray, Charles Durning, Sidney Pollack, Geena Davis, Estelle Getty (don't blink or you'll miss her!), a sparkling, intelligent screenplay and Pollack's flawless direction -- what more could anyone ask for?
Tootsie is one of the most intelligent comedies It is perfectly cast and full of surprises.Plot In A Paragraph: Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey.
Yes he was terrific in that movie, but there has never been one actor who dresses up as a woman and has played a woman to perfection like Dustin Hoffman.
Jessica Lange won the 1982 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role, and Teri Garr was nominated, but it is only really Hoffman and Pollack who actually stand out in this enjoyable and rather well made, but ultimately far off being perfect, or special, film..
First of all, I regard Dustin Hoffman who plays Michael Dorsey as a good actor because he performs as if he were a woman.
A struggling Actor dresses up as a woman in a desperate attempt to get a part.Starring Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray and Jessica Lange.Written by Larry Gelbart, Murray Schisgal and Don Mcguire.Directed by Sydney Pollack.This is a really funny movie!There's not a lot to not like at all. |
tt0077681 | The Hills Have Eyes | The film begins somewhere in the rural southwest USA in a desert ghost town. At the town's sole gas station, called Fred's Oasis, an old man named Fred (John Steadman) is seen packing his truck and drinking alcohol, looking very worried. He frequently glances at the arid and barren landscape around him, and makes continual comments about "them" and what "they" would do to him if they ever found out he was escaping. Suddenly, a ragged and somewhat feral teenage girl turns up. Annoyed, Fred asks the girl at what she is doing there... addressing her as Ruby (Janus Blythe). She offers to trade what she has in her bag for food and the old man refuses. They move into a small cabin to talk and Fred scolds her for what she and "they" have done recently. Ruby says that her family ambushed a group of passing toursts at the nearby closed-down airfield because they were hungry and no one passes by their home anymore. She pleads with Fred to take her away with him, but he mocks her and says she could never live with normal people in an urban enviroment. He demands whether "the pack", in particular someone named Jupiter, knows what she is doing. He warns her of the danger she is in if Jupiter ever knew, and she retorts that her "Pa" would do the same to Fred if he knew he was getting away from town. A noise distracts them and Ruby hides.A large stationwagon pulling a large trailer pulls into the filling station. They make up of Carter family on vacation. They make up of 65-year-old Bob Carter (Russ Grieve) a retired policeman and his homemaker wife Ethel (Virginia Vincent). They are driving the family car accompanied by their twin teenage children Bobby (Robert Houston), and Brenda (Susan Lanier), and eldest daughter Lynne (Dee Wallace), along with Lynne's husband Doug (Martin Speer) and their baby daughter Katy (Brenda Marinoff). They stop at Fred's Oasis for fuel and to allow themselves and the family's German Shepherd dogs, Beauty and Beast, to stretch. Bob asks Fred for directions to the nearby interstate for they are on their way to Californa to visit an old silver mine left behind by the late Bob's father. Fred tells them to be sure and stay on the main road.Later, as the Carter family continue on their way, the road they are traveling on becomes an unpaved dirt road and soon they skid off the road and crash their station wagon (due to what is revealed to be a booby-trap). Bob leaves Bobby a pistol and heads back to Fred's Oasis on foot to get help. Doug heads off in the forward direction hoping to find someone. Ethel, Bobby, Brenda, and Lynne remain behind with the trailer and their car which upon inspection, has a broken axel.When one of the family dogs, Beauty, runs off, Bobby chases after her, only to find the dog dead having been killed and disembolwed by unseen assailants whom are spying on the Carter family from the nearby hills and communicating with each other by walkie-talkies. Bobby returns to the trailer, but keeps the information to himself. Doug returns soon after, telling them that the dirt road led to a dead end and that he found numerous abandoned vehicles in a large crater at the end of the desert road. When Bobby tries to use their CB radio to call for help, they recieve strange responses from the other end of the line.As night falls, Bob has arrived back at the gas station, where Fred attacks him then tells him the origin of the hill people. It turns out that Fred's son, Jupiter, and Jupiter's family of deranged cannibals dwell in the barren wilderness through which the Carters are traveling. They are commanded by Papa Jupiter (James Whitworth), the patriarch of the clan. He was born a mongolid monster and killed his mother, Fred's wife, at childbirth. As a child he was vicious and brutal, killing all the livestock on his father's farm, then eventually murdering his sister. Fred eventually reached a breaking point, attacking his son with a tire iron and leaving him in the wilderness to die. The young Jupiter survived, and began living with a depraved, alcoholic prostitute known as Mama. Together they had three sons, the vicious Mars (Lance Gordon), the balding and hideous thug Pluto (Michael Berryman), and the mentally retarded Mercury (Pete Locke) as well as their abused daughter Ruby. They survive in the desert by stealing from and cannibalizing all who cross their path.Papa Jupiter arrives, beats Fred to death with a crowbar, and takes Bob prisoner. Back at the stranded vehicle, Doug and Lynne are spending the night in the family car while everyone else stays in the large trailer. Bobby gets locked out of the trailer and asks Doug for his set of keys. Bobby does not know that the trailer is locked because Pluto is inside looking through their valuables for food while Ethel and Brenda are asleep in the next room. As Bobby uses the keys to enter the trailer, Papa Jupiter sets Bob ablaze on a stake out in the near distance to create a distraction. Ethel, Lynne, Doug, and Bobby rush to Bob, while Brenda stays in the trailer with the baby. Everyone tries to help extinguish the fire, while Pluto reveals himself in the trailer and attacks Brenda. Mars jumps down from the top of the trailer, goes inside, and rapes Brenda. The rest of the Carters extinguish the fire, but Bob dies shortly after. When Ethel and Lynne return to the trailer Pluto jumps out and runs away. Lynne rushes inside to find Mars taking her baby. She attacks Mars as Ethel steps in and hits him with a broom. Mars pulls out a gun and shoots Ethel in the stomach. Brenda rushes in and throws Lynne a knife, which she uses to stab Mars in the leg until he shoots her in the stomach as well. Pluto returns to abduct the baby for a cannibalistic meal and he flees with Mars. Doug rushes in to find his wife dead and Ethel dies shortly thereafter.Of the extended Carter family, only Brenda, Bobby, Doug and (somewhere) baby Katy remain. Doug sets out to find his baby with the surviving dog Beast's help, while Bobby and Brenda remain behind. Back at the cannibal's lair, Ruby is being made to eat the dead dog Beauty as a punishment for attemping to run away. She is chained outside the cave where the clan lives, and Mama torments her. The men of the clan return to the cave where Mercury is pushed to his death off a hilltop by the Carters' other dog, Beast. Enraged, Papa Jupiter threatens Ruby and vows to avenge his son's death.At dawn the next day, Papa Jupiter and Pluto hurry back to the trailer, vowing to kill the remainder of the Carter family. Doug, meanwhile, spies on the savages' camp. He sees Ruby knock out her Mama and escape with baby Katy into the hills, being followed by Mars who stayed behind to guard Ruby. Doug catches up with Ruby and the baby.Meanwhile, Pluto and Papa Jupiter are on their way to the trailer to kill the rest of the Carter family. Pluto is attacked and incapacitated by Beast. Papa Jupiter runs to the trailer and avoids a trap set by Brenda and Bobby involving the dead Ethel in a lawnchair outside the trailer. They devise another booby-trap, which blows up Papa Jupiter and the trailer up when he tries to break in. Bobby goes to check the burning wreckage and is attacked by the injured and badly burned Papa Jupiter. Brenda attacks him with a hatchet and Bobby shoots him to death, killing him at last.Mars follows Doug and Ruby into the hills. Doug turns to confront his persuer and a brutal fistfight begins with Doug and Mars punching and wrestling each other on the ground. Ruby snares a large rattlesnake nearby and uses it to get it to bite Mars. Taking advantage of the distraction, Doug wrestles Mars' knife away from him and brutally stabbs Mars to death, thus saving the baby. The film ends with a closeup of the distraught Doug, who is still stabbing and kicking the dead body of Mars, as Ruby weeps over her brother's body. | good versus evil, revenge, cult, murder, violence | train | imdb | null |
tt0168122 | Pirates of Silicon Valley | Partially based on the book "Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer" written by Paul Feiberger and Michael Swaine, the director Martyn Burke jump cuts through key moments in time for the two companies in telling the tale of Apple's rise, Steve Jobs' business relationship with Bill Gates, the schism between Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and Apple's fall as Gates out pirates the pirates, and leads Microsoft to dominate the computer industry.From the very beginning of the movie you are given the core of Steve Jobs' (played by Noah Wyle) personality. The open lines are him speaking to the camera and saying, "I don't want you to think of this as just a film - some process of converting electrons and magnetic impulses into shapes and figures and sounds - no. Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing. That's how you have to think of this." His best friend, Steve "the Woz" Wozniak (played by Joey Slotnick), follows this with a narration describing how everything Steve Jobs ever did was something "between a religious experience and some sort of crusade."Both the opening lines and the narration are spoken over the back drop of the filming of Apples 1984 Super Bowl commercial. A commercial that was legendary even before it was aired, and set the standard for all other Super Bowl commercials. Directed by Ridley Scott, newly famous for directing Blade Runner, this commercial introduced Apple's Macintosh computer and, though it has never run again since that Super Bowl spot, few commercials have ever been more influential. It was even named the 1980s' Commercial of the Decade by Advertising Age magazine.The filming of the commercial fades to the actual ad as it opens on a gray network of futuristic tubes connecting non-descript oppressive buildings. Inside the tubes, we see the greyed-out downtrodden masses marching into an auditorium, where they bow before a Big Brother figure preaching from a giant TV screen. Then, from the back of the auditorium, one lone woman, the only object with any color, races down a hallway chased by storm troopers. She runs up to the screen, hurls a hammer and shatters the TV image. The screen explodes and everything flashes to white.The movie then transitions to a stage thirteen years later, where Steve Jobs is just announcing "the business deal that will turn Apple around," to a gathered audience, and introduces the other protagonist in the movie, Bill Gates who is currently being projected, via live feed, to a screen looming over the audience, in a very Big Brother manner, a not-so-subtle portent for events in the movie.The scene cuts to the University of Berkley campus, 1971, amidst a tear gas and students rioting, a young Jobs and Wozniak dash to safety. Once away from the crowd Jobs scornfully says, "Those guys think they're revolutionaries. They're not revolutionaries, we are." Wozniak resumes his narration, relaying that Jobs was never like, "you or me, he always saw things differently, he saw the meaning of the universe."Jobs and Woz's first entrepreneurial scheme was the development and selling of "Blue Boxes", one of the earliest phone line crackers that allowed anybody to call anywhere for free. After almost getting busted Woz decided to try building something that wouldn't land them in jail, a "computer". They have their first taste of fame as a reporter takes a picture of them when it catches on fire.Bill Gates' (played by Anthony Michael Hall) beginnings are just as unassuming. His story starts when he is a Harvard student more interested in poker than classes. However, for Bill and his friend Paul Allen (played by Josh Hopkins), there is one thing more important than poker or even Playboys, and that is, of course, computers. In following an ad in a trade magazine with some fast talking by Bill, and their collective genius, Bill and Paul are hired to start writing a program language for the new ALTAIR computer.At the 1976 Berkley campus, Homebrew Computer Club, Jobs and Woz unveil their latest computer. It is obvious that while it is Wozniak's genius that built the computer, it was Jobs' genius that sells it. During these scenes they reveal Steve Jobs' near obsessive desire to wipe out "the enemy", IBM. However, his dreams of guerrilla warfare victory over IBM, followed by world domination, is all but dashed by Wozniak as he divulges that because of a contract he signed with Hewlett-Packard, anything he invents, they can take. Fortunately the executives at the company do not have the vision of Steve, Woz, or even Bill as they pass on the "home computer" because, "This gadget is for ordinary people, what on earth would ordinary people want with computers?" While that was an initial victory for them, it seemed that bankers and business men had the same opinion and months went by as they were repeatedly turned down for a loan. However, Jobs was undaunted and persevered when venture capitalist Mike Markkula (played by Jeffery Nordling) offered the fledgling Apple Computers a quarter of a million dollars to do something (in Steve Jobs' words) "practically spiritual, about overthrowing a dead culture and dead gods."In Albuquerque, 1976, Bill and Paul had quit Harvard and Bill's fast talking at the computer company MITS (maker of the ALTAIR) earned them a signing bonus and a double in royalties for their BASIC programming language, with that, Microsoft is born. It is during these years in Albuquerque, fueled by his own manic personality that Bill does everything from having a midnight race with bulldozers, to racking up so many speeding tickets that he is arrested and jailed.Stepping away from his revolutionary counterculture style, Steve Jobs shocks his friends by changing into a business suit and shaving the last of his facial hair for the 1977 Computer Fair in San Francisco. Even more shocking to all of them was that Apple Computers Inc. was the star of the Fair. Drawn by belief that "there might be something going on in California," Bill Gates and Paul Allen attended the Fair, where Apple and Microsoft first meet, and, anti-climactically, Steve Jobs completely ignores Bill Gates. Jobs is too enamored with his sudden fame, and describes the experience as "insanely great", words that are used to describe him and his life repeatedly.Following the Computer Fair, sales of the Apple II brought Apple Computers to levels of attention, money, expansion and success that only Jobs could have predicted. However, while Woz seemed overwhelmed by the sudden success, Jobs took to it like a shark to water. Feeling justified in his obsession, there were few lines he wouldn't cross, from verbally abuse enthusiastic employees until they are mute with humiliation, to grilling a potential employee (with his bare feet casually resting on the conference table) about when the potential employee may or may not have lost his virginity, all in service of his grand vision and ego.Steve Jobs' level of self-obsession was put on display by his abject denial that girlfriend was pregnant by him, despite a positive paternity test, and dismissed her so she could go "play mommy". That callous vitriol made even more striking because he himself was orphaned and spent much of his adult life trying to find his real mother. Later on he tracked down his estranged-girlfriend demanding that she not name "their" daughter some weird name and they settled on Lisa. Not coincidently, he later named a series of computers Lisa, but it wasn't until over a decade later that he actually accepted Lisa has his flesh and blood.Bill Gates' own logic defying obsessive needs he revealed after he brought Steve Ballmer (played by John DiMaggio), an old Harvard friend, out to California. He lectured them, "You know how you survive? You make people need you. You survive because you make them need what you have. And then they have nowhere else to go." Declaring to (in mafia style) "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer," he takes Microsoft to go into business with IBM. He convinced the IBM executives that they needed what he had, an operating system, furthermore he told the execs that Microsoft would only license IBM the software, allowing Microsoft to retain ownership of it and could license it to other outfits. Astonishingly, Microsoft didn't even have an operating system at that time, and even more amazing, a deal the execs agreed to because "the profits are in the computers themselves, not this software stuff." And while the others marveled at Bill's brazen declaration, Gates said he knew it would work because, "IBM was successful, and success is a menace. It fools smart people into thinking they can't lose." Another omen for the future of Microsoft and Apple.Steve Jobs heralds in the next series of events by quoting Picasso, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Xerox research engineers had developed the next evolution in computers, not only had they designed software that could display graphics on the computer screen, they had also invented the mouse. Unfortunately, these innovations were so completely distained by short-sighted Xerox executives that they invited Steve Jobs and his research engineers to the Xerox research center and all but handed Apple the next step in computers. Incorporated in the new Apple Lisa, this earned Apple an estimated $100 billion.Now it is time for the two to meet again, Bill Gates, repeating Picasso's quote (incorrectly attributing it to Van Gogh), took his team to the Apple Headquarters, and it is here that the rival obsessions clashed. Steve Jobs maintains the superiority of Apple because Microsoft lacked originality and culture, and his people echoing his line, "It is better to be a pirate, than be in the navy" (better to be a rebel than to be a part of the establishment). Bill then tries to convince Steve that Apple is economically vulnerable and that "Apple needed them, because Apple couldn't match Microsoft's diversity." Only for Steve to stay true to his cause saying, "You can't just have employees anymore. They gotta be into a crusade. It's like art, science, religion, all rolled into one." It was only by feeding into Steve's obsessive hatred of IBM that Bill was able to get the "in" he needed. Microsoft walked out with Apple's Macintosh system just as Apple had walked out with Xerox's system.Further cracks in Steve Jobs' management strategy caused greater rifts. To fuel internal competiveness he manipulated Apple employees into vicious "Mac vs All other Apple platforms, who's was better" rivalry. The strain of 90+ hour work weeks, and days of sleepless programing led to many employees rebelling against Jobs' verbal abuse, even to the point of assaulting him in one scene. By then Woz had had enough. Disturbed by Jobs' manipulations, he left the company he co-founded, and went on to teach computers to school children. Nevertheless, Jobs felt he was righteous and unstoppable, regardless of the pressure he put on everybody, his employees loved him for it, and he rewarded them for their loyalty.At this point Microsoft is desperately trying to cobble together the Windows operating system from pirated Macintosh software. Word of this eventually reached Jobs more than once, but no matter how angry or accusatory Steve became, Bill could always calmly explain away any such fears, weathering any of Steve's tirades meekly, placating Steve into, once again, believing that Microsoft was no threat, a level of manipulation that Steve Ballmer felt was where Bill Gates' true genius lay. Then again, Ballmer felt that Jobs' genius lay in making computers not a business, but a religion, and nothing scared him more.During the penultimate scene of the movie, Steve Jobs introduces an Apple T-shirt wearing Bill Gates as a part of the Apple family to an audience of Apple employees before giving them a sneak preview of the Apple 1984 commercial that was being filmed in the open scene. After the sneak preview, Steve was given concrete proof that Microsoft did replicated software from the Macintosh and when he confronted Bill with it, Gates famously replies with, "You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor - Xerox - who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set. Only when you get there, you realize that I got there first. I got the loot, Steve! And you're yellin'? "That's not fair. I wanted to try to steal it first." You're too late."The end of the movie relates the sad facts that Steve Jobs had disaffected so many of his former best friends that none of them wanted to toast him for his 30th birthday, in fact, three months later Steve Jobs was fired from the company he helped found. He was later re-hired in 1997 and became the architect of the second Apple Microsoft co-endeavor bringing the companies and the movie full circle. | historical | train | imdb | Nevertheless, it manages to capture the essence of how much of modern computing came to be: the cluelessness of Xerox about what its own computer scientists were doing; Steve Jobs' artistic vision at Apple; and Bill Gates' ruthless business practices at Microsoft.
Still, as long as you recognize that the portrayals are negatively slanted, you will be rewarded by witnessing the interplay among the famous triangle: Adele Goldberg (not explicitly named in the movie), the leader of Xerox's research team; Steve Jobs, who ripped her off and incorporated those technologies in the new Macintosh; and Bill Gates, who ripped off Jobs and incorporated those technologies in the newer Windows product.The movie does suffer from several historical inaccuracies.
But portraying it as a success made it simpler to explain why Bill Gates got interested in dealing with Apple at that time.While the movie is long, it would have been even better as a two-day or three-day miniseries.
(It airs in June -- premiere's on Sunday June 20.) It's the story of Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple Computers) and Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft) and their competitive rivalry to dominate the computer industry.
Look for him on the big screen battling aliens any day now.The story is somewhat standard but filled in with cool details that keep it interesting Jobs as a deadbeat Dad; Gates pitching his product to IBM (the IBM guy actually thinks all the money is in the hardware!), and the late-night screaming matches between Jobs and Gates.Here's the thing that just boggles my mind -- these two are pretty average guys especially for their generation.
The story of how Steve Jobs and Bill Gates amassed such wealth and power is an interesting one.Noah Wyle (Jobs) and Anthony Michael Hall (Gates) fit their characters to a T.
It is also unfortunate that there are three main characters all named "Steve." The story is told from the perspective of Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnik), who is portrayed as a gentle head and caring foil to Noah Wyle's brilliant but cruel portrayal of Steve Jobs, Wozniak's Apple co-founder.
I don't know where you can find this film, but if you see it in your local video store and want to know how the computer world was set on end by a guy in his garage and a college dropout then rent this movie..
Put the two together and you've got ENTERPRISE.HOW TO WIN AT BIG BUSINESS: Step #1 - Show them (the customer) that YOU have something that they really can't live without, Step #2 - CAPITALIZE on their weakness(es).The movie is about how Steve [Steven Paul Jobs (2/24/55), Apple Computers; Cofounder, Steven Wozniak] and Bill [William Henry Gates III (10/28/55), Microsoft; Cofounder, Paul Allen] built their respective companies into their own view of what they wanted computers to be and then, in the end, who eventually gobbled-up whom.The high point in the movie, for me at least, was when Bill Gates found himself in jail and the door to his cell was closing in on him (for a traffic violation).In the last few scenes we hear Steve talking to Bill.
"You don't get it, Steve, THAT doesn't matter!" Bill Gates.The movie may have ended, but the STORY goes on ....Rating: 10 out 10 stars.
This movie did a good job of showing the genius of Jobs and Gates, as well as the missed opportunities of major companies like IBM, Hewlett Packard, and of course Xerox.
All in all, a superb bit of acting on the part of Noah Wiley (Steve Jobs) and Anthony Michael Hall (Bill Gates)..
Not since Weird Science and The Breakfast Club have I seen Anthony Michael Hall (Bill Gates) do such a great job acting.
Casting Noah Wyle as the beaten Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computers, was as brilliant as the Hall casting decision.
Gates created Microsoft and licensed an operating for IBM which would become MS-DOS, bought from a small fledging software company in Seattle for $50,000, although Wikipedia's article on the subject states it was $75,000.Then Jobs and his colleagues are brought to the Xerox development center where technicians were creating a computer with graphical interface.
I have appreciated both actors, and have enjoyed TNT films before.While "Pirates" will probably be a good adaptation of the early days of Jobs and Gates and Computers, to get the True Story of the Early Days, search and find the Wonderful Documentary Film "Triumph of the Nerds".
This documentary was filmed about 8 years ago (i think, IMDB may have actual info) and tracks the success of not only Jobs and Gates, but all the 'little people' who supported and suffered along the way.
We get no hint about why the names Apple and Microsoft were chosen (a trivial point, yes, but it would have been a good thing to put in a film about the history of those two companies).
You think you're looking at the early eighties, but the late 90s model Ford Broncos in the background can be very confusing.Pirates of Silicon Valley was a fairly informative look at how Apple and Microsoft came to be, and there were some very interesting looks at what the first personal computers looked like, but the film itself is not nearly as informative as it should be.
It's the story of Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple Computers) and Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft.) I gotta say, I really enjoyed it!
(Basically I don't care who wins, as long as I can see movie trailers online!)First off casting Anthony Michael Hall as the world's biggest geek, Bill Gates, is a total stroke of brilliance.
(That and the fact that they couldn't find a role for Molly Ringwald but that's another story!)The film actually devotes much more time to Noah Wylie as the creepy Steve Jobs.
It was cobbled by IBM in a year to try and combat the march of the Apple II.Jobs is quoted in the film as saying, "Good artists copy.
This movie was confused it seemed to be conflicted as if it did not know for sure if it wanted to be a documentary on the rise of the micro-computer or if it was a tale about the personalities behind the scenes of the major software companies versus BIG BLUE/ IBM the once computer mainframe juggernaught.The movie is a good one but rather schizo in its story telling.
I mean the movie was good and very informative loaded with lovely info.I most love the way it made the young Bill Gates look like a plain grungy old geek who was not all together into cleanliness.
It was nice to see Bill Gates portrayed as human and not god made me like him a little.This movie makes one of the Apple founders look like a serious druggie fruitcake.
All the characters in the movie have been portrayed very accurately and all the actors have done a brilliant job in playing them, especially Noah Wyle for Steve Jobs.
No book, movie or documentary can give you a better insight into the lives of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates than this.
& Microsoft Corp.; the two companies that single-handedly spawned a revolution that went on to change the whole world, Pirates of Silicon Valley offers an insight into the lives of the genius founders of these two revolutionary firms and the differences in their operational methods.Spanning from 1971-1997 and narrated in non-chonological order, Pirates of Silicon Valley is a semi-biographical account of the very people who made the world of technology what it is today, starting with Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak who co-founded Apple Computers in a garage before it became a billion-dollar firm, then moves to show the birth of Microsoft and the rivalry between these two future empires that only helped the computer industry boom.Written & directed by Martyn Burke, Pirates of Silicon Valley begins with the production of the famous 1984 TV commercial, a watershed event in itself, and culminates with the 1997 Macworld Expo where Jobs, after having made his return to the company he co-founded, announces Apple's new alliance with Microsoft.
Interspersed within this story are segments covering the life of Bill Gates, how Microsoft came into existence and its deal with IBM that began its lifelong feud with Apple.The production design team deserves kudos for the set pieces are so wonderfully detailed & refined that they almost qualify as exact replica for the most part, whether its Jobs' home or the garage in which Apple Computers was born or other stuff.
A few depicted events are inaccurate with shifted timelines or details but they are mostly done to enhance the drama, which is nicely captured by its camera, while its non-linear narration keeps its 95 minutes of story interesting for the most part.Coming to the performances, it's the very reason why Pirates of Silicon Valley works so well for the contribution by its cast is immensely convincing and all of them are highly believable in their given roles.
Absolutely nailing the personalities & looks of the characters they play, both Noah Wyle & Anthony Michael Hall leave a lasting impression in their respective roles of Steve Jobs & Bill Gates, while the supporting actors who play the characters of Steve Wozniak, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer & others are no slouch either.But there is...
And in all honesty, the film isn't kind to either of them and places more emphasis on their negative qualities than the talent & vision they possessed.On an overall scale, despite a few artistic license taken to make the drama more immersive, Pirates of Silicon Valley is an enjoyable, entertaining & enlightening TV feature film that tries to bring on screen the history of two companies which forever changed the way we used to think, work & communicate.
Having worked on Windows PC for the major part of my life before switching to Mac some 5 years ago (one of the best decisions I ever made), I'd been wanting to watch this film for a long time and now that I've seen it, the nerd in me is highly satisfied!
Everything I've read and seen of Gates and Jobs in that time is absolutely nailed by Wyle and Hall.But most of all this was clearly a project made by a group of people with a true love of the subject matter.
Very good scenes, one scene in particular I'll never forget its the first time we see the Macintosh, that whole new, minimalist setting - almost sterile, yet fresh surrounding in the scene where Steve Jobs shows it off to Bill Gates, man that's what I remember feeling the first time I saw a Macintosh - this is the future.
The film survived well the almost decade since its making because it has pace, because it focuses on the characters of the founders of Apple and Microsoft and tells well the story of their ascension and of their conflict and because that conflict was really an important step in the hitech saga and remains to a large extent actual until today.
Makes you wonder if he was really like that.Anthony Michael Hall plays Bill Gates as you would expect him: a passively shrewd, brilliant nerd.
Michael Hall was in the countless John Hughes' films from the 80's.Noah Wylie's performance was good; however, I saw a few hints of Dr. John Carter coming through.The story was inviting.
A really great yarn about the two most unlikely personalities to rule the world: Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft.
Noah Wyle is superb as the arrogant Jobs, while Anthony Michael Hall, the former Brat Packer, is somewhat subdued as Gates.I highly recommend it..
For the multitude of people who know of Gates and Microsoft, and Jobs and Apple, but little else, this is a movie great for filling in the missing parts.
The film tried to create sympathetic characters out of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and tell the "inside story" of these two uninteresting personalities.
Great film of an amazing story that just happens to be true!Steve Woz and John Draper have both said how Noah Wyle was EXACTLY like the real Steve Jobs - Amazing!Martyn Burke does another fine job here, after the underrated 'Pentagon Wars'.
But, Noah Wyle (Steven Jobs) and Anthony Michael Hall (Bill Gates) put forth a wonderful effort.
What's important here is this movie's portrayal of Jobs as an abusive hard-driven entrepeneuer (a scene shows him in cutoff shorts and a T-shirt interviewing a prospective employee who's wearing slacks and a tie, and Jobs seems unimpressed) who has a deep-rooted phobia of "corporate business" and Bill Gates (shown as a shrewd businessman who has to "one-up" Jobs every time a new Apple PC product hits the market).
Both actors are quite believable in their roles as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates; but their best contribution to the film is portraying how the inner characters of these two people motivated the successes and failures of both Microsoft and Apple Computer.The film is disappointing for a couple reasons: 1.
The film struggles at balancing the personal subtext of Jobs/Gates with a history of Apple/Microsoft.
Also, there is almost nothing about Gates's personal life outside his company (as with Jobs/Arlene/Woz) except for a humorous moment at a roller rink.Overall, the film is worth seeing - especially for its anecdotal quality and the performances of Wyle and Hall, but don't expect to come away with much..
Steve Wozniak ran a forum about this film, he stood by it as a fairly accurate depiction of it representing the beginning of Apple and Microsoft.I also heard this film had a lot of additional scenes of early childhood some of those scene you could hunt down on youtube showing a young Bill Gates at about the age of 9.I love this film and rewatch it usually once a year, great performances and great at capturing the time period, although it was filmed at the end of the nineties it captures the return of Steve Jobs to Apple perfectly..
Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall did phenomenal jobs, playing Bill Gates and Steve Jobs respectively.
Compare it to the real story that it's based on (The rise and subsequent rivalry of Apple Computer's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates), and you have a movie with very little that is based in reality.Want to know the real story?
The Microsoft of Bill Gates and Paul Allen is a mongrel, culture-less company, while the Apple of fanatic Steve Jobs is a corporate artist.Wyle and Hall give stunning performances, each capturing the essence of their 'characters' in an almost scary way, right down to the funny walk and the (to us the viewers) obvious duplicity of Gates, and the personal aura (some might say madness) of the Apple visionary.
It's a good thing we know bill gates and steve jobs.
steve jobs versus bill gates , absolute the movie didn't show the whole story behind them but over all it was fascinating and interesting .
But, you will find a compelling story of how Steve Jobs (Noah Wylie) and Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall) got started, first as partners, and then as rivals.Both actors do a credible job of presenting the eccentricities of the two giants of the computer world.
Then Gates steals it from Apple for Windows.Jobs was not a very nice person in this film.
I will make this very short: "Great TV movie with outstanding performances by Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall!"I loved watching the "fights" between Steve Jobs (Apple) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) and also showing that Steve Jobs was not always a very human / kind person in his early years makes this movie believable and watchable.Please make a sequel: I wish they would consider making a sequel showing the period from 1997 until now for the world to see what Steve Jobs actually accomplished after returning again to Apple (in 1997) after he was more or less kicked out by the board of directors in 1985!!!.
Anthony Michael Hall was uncanny as Gates, but that was the worst fake-bald head on the actor playing Steve Ballmer that I have ever seen in the history of film..
Anthony Michael Hall and Noah Wyle portray Gates and Jobs (respectively) in ways that make me feel like I've squished a caterpillar in my hand.
Anthony Michael Hall really did a good job as Gates, though I do not think anyone can get Mr. Bill's mannerisms down....
This movie is an overly hyped but fascinating look at two characters central to the development of the personal computer as a modern icon rapidly becoming indispensable to our society: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Unlike most documentaries/dramatizations, which are usually nothing more than a filmed history lesson, 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' achieves something more: you want to keep watching past the first scene.Both Anthony Michael Hall and Noah Wyle put forth good performances and the plot is intriguing, as if it weren't for these two (not so much Gates, as all he did was steal Jobs' idea, who stole it from Xerox), you wouldn't be reading this online review.The movie feels much longer than it is (in this case that's a good thing), and by the time it's near the end, I didn't want it to finish, I didn't even expect it to finish, as it skipped out on most of the 90's.
The main characters are the late Steve Jobs,played excellently an actor known from "E.R" Noah Wyle, and Bill Gates,played wonderfully by an actor known for his nerd roles during the Brat Pack days,Anthony Michael Hall.It was an adaptation of the book,Fire In The Valley.The story centers on this life with Jobs starting the company Apple Computers and Gates starting the software company Microsoft.
It wasn't until the 1990's that Windows was developed enough to compete with the Mac system.There are more stories from the actual employees who worked for Apple at during the time this movie is set. |
tt1623288 | ParaNorman | In the small New England town of Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts, a boy named Norman Babcock is able to speak with the dead, including his late grandmother and various ghosts in town. Unfortunately, almost no one among the living believes his ability is genuine and he is isolated emotionally from his family while being ridiculed and bullied by most of his peers for his seemingly strange abilities.However, Norman makes a friend with Neil Downe, an eccentric overweight boy who is bullied himself and finds Norman's earnest admission as a medium an intriguing part of a kindred spirit. During rehearsal of a school play commemorating the town's witch execution of 300 years ago, Norman has a harrowing vision of the town's past and being pursued as a witch by the town's citizenry. Afterward, the boys are confronted by Norman's estranged and seemingly deranged uncle Mr. Prenderghast who tells his nephew that the vision is a sign that he soon must take up his regular ritual to protect the town.Norman refuses to take him seriously, but soon has another vision during the school play, creating a public spectacle of himself which leads to his embarrassed parents unjustly grounding him. Now completely despondent and isolated, Norman is confronted by the ghost of the recently deceased Prenderghast in the restroom who tells him that the ritual must be performed with a special book before sundown that day, before departing for the afterlife. After some consideration, Norman sets off to Prenderghast's residence to retrieve the book. Believing that Neil would not truly understand his situation, he drives him away. He arrives at the graves of the town's ancestors/founders, including Judge Hopkins, who were supposedly cursed by the witch they condemned, but finds the book is merely a collection of fairy tales.Before Norman can ponder the situation, Alvin, a bully who overheard Norman's encounter in the restroom, intrudes and interferes with the reading until after sundown. With that, a ghostly storm resembling the witch appears in the air while the cursed dead arise and pursue the boys until they meet Norman's sister, Courtney, Neil and his older brother, Mitch, who have come to retrieve Norman. Together, the kids are relentlessly pursued by the zombies into town, but Norman manages to contact a classmate named Salma, who tells them to access the Town Hall's archives for the location of the witch's unmarked grave.As the kids make their way to the Town Hall, the zombies eventually lose them and find themselves confused by modern society and then are beset by the citizenry, who attack them en masse. During the riot, the kids break into the archives but cannot find any information they need. As the mob moves to attack Town Hall, Norman (in frustration) temporarily drives away his companions only for them to be trapped by the mob. However, the Witch storm appears and Norman climbs the Hall's tower to desperately attempt to read the book to stop her, but the witch blasts it with lightning and causes him to fall back down into the archives.Unconscious, Norman has a dream where he learns that the witch was actually Agatha Prenderghast, an innocent little girl of his age who was also a medium, unjustly condemned by the town's superstitious and frightened elite, who were then cursed to reawaken as the undead by Agatha as she was taken for execution. After awakening, Norman encounters the zombies and realizes that all they wanted was to speak with him to ensure he would take up the ritual to minimize the harm of the terrible mistake they made with Agatha. However, Norman decides that this gesture is not enough and resolves to find Agatha's ghost to arrive at a permanent solution.Norman attempts to help the zombies slip away to have them guide him to Agatha's grave, but are cornered by the mob. However, Courtney, who has come to realize her brother's true abilities, heroism and task, confronts the crowd and convinces them to back off. As the witch storm rages ever more destructively, Judge Hopkins guides Norman's family to the grave in a forest. Unfortunately, Agatha's magic separates Norman from the others and he must reach the grave on his own to save the town.Norman finds the grave, and soon confronted by the vengeful spirit of Agatha, interacting with her in the spirit dimension. She tries to drive him away, but Norman resolutely holds his ground, telling her that he understands how she feels as an outcast. As she struggles to drive him away, Norman endures her assault and eventually convinces her that, despite her legitimate grievance, her thirst for vengeance is accomplishing nothing but inflicting more pain and persuades her to stop. Norman tries to convince her that even in the darkest times, there must have been someone who was kind to her. Focusing only on the tragedies and forgetting the good things in her life is what reduced her to a malevolent force devoid of her true identity.Eventually, the girl, nicknamed Aggie, calms down at Norman's eloquence, recalling her true personality and happy memories with her mother. She is able to find a measure of peace, knowing that she is not alone and one person in the town understands her, allowing her to let go and move on to the afterlife. At that resolution, the storm dissipates, and she and the zombies all peacefully fade away. As day breaks, the town cleans up and regards Norman as a hero even when the outside media tries to explain the disturbance as merely a powerful storm.Norman, realizing that he, too, should stop focusing on his memories of being ostracized and pushing others away, accepts Neil's companionship. At the end, Norman watches a horror film with the ghost of his Grandmother again, and his family eagerly joins him. | fantasy, paranormal, horror, clever, revenge, entertaining | train | imdb | I absolutely adore stop motion animation, and I genuinely fell in love with Coraline, LAIKA's previous effort, but the trailers for the film didn't capture my interest in the story in the way I hoped they would and this film also didn't have the benefit of being helmed by the brilliant Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Coraline).
ParaNorman tells a story about a young boy named Norman who has the unusual ability to see and talk to the dead, an ability which has led him to be ostracized by the other members of his community, including his own family.
As beautiful as the animation in Brave was, ParaNorman is easily the most visually impressive film I have seen this year.
I think I still prefer Coraline which definitely benefited from the combination of Neil Gaiman's fantastic story and Henry Selick's experienced hand, but ParaNorman is a truly fantastic film and it's definitely worth a look.
ParaNorman looks like a throwback to the good old campy stop-motion animated films.
Without spending too much time discussing the plot, this movie is essentially a film about a misfit kid who ultimately must save the town that has misunderstood and mistreated him for most of his life.
Can it deliver another new unique vision in this style or will it just end up being another generic animated film?ParaNorman follows a misunderstood boy who is able to speak to the dead.
There are some classic monster movie moments that adults will appreciate as well as some subject matter that is a bit glossed over, but clearly takes a momentary step out of the family film.This is easily not only one of the best stop-motion films to come along in some time; it's one of the best animated films.
ParaNorman delivers in every way filled with comedy, horror, and action all wrapped up in a strange twisted visual tale that you will not soon forget.http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-dallas/bobby-blakey.
Unlike any other animated movie, this one picks a new sort of approach, that would probably entertain both adults and children.The film was shot using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR Camera.
However, to generate all the different faces needed for the characters, the film company Laika used 3D printers.The movie takes place in the creepy town of Blithe Hollow, whose name is a mash up of two other ghost stories, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit(1945) and Washington Irving's The Legend of The Sleepy Hollow(1949).
The movie is a little too horror oriented, but funny and suitable for children nonetheless.The characters are well drawn, so you can understand each of their personalities: you have the nice fat kid called Neil (voiced by Tucker Albrizzi), the usual blonde teen (voiced by Anna Kendrick), the bully (voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and the dumb jock (voiced by Casey Affleck).
The story of ParaNorman seemed a bit like a great-fun tribute to cheesy B-movies with funny characters.
I'd say the final fight is the best of the year, by far.To sum up, ParaNorman is a poetic, sometimes frightening and funny animation movie that everybody has to watch.
I recently watched again, and reviewed here, MONSTER HOUSE, which is, like PARANORMAN, an animated horror movie for kids (actually, both feature as main character a boy who has a fat-and-funny friend).
This is clearly the sort-of little stop-motion film of year (and I said sort-of little since it had a pretty big publicity campaign here in Mexico City) while Tim Burton's upcoming FRANKENWEENIE is like the big and long-awaited one.There is some good news.
The main character Norman is not the classic happy kid as well; you'll love him by just seeing his liking for horror – actually, not every day we have an animated movie that opens like something out of a Grindhouse.
After seeing many low quality animation movies recently, Laika has made a masterpiece with Paranorman.I was anticipating this movie for a long time and it exceeded my expectations at a great extense.
The story is pretty much about a picked on and friendless kid who is becoming the hero of his town when a curse breaks loose in his small New England town.I enjoyed every single minute of this movie trying to see what Laika did differently than other companies could have done.
'PARANORMAN': Three Stars (Out of Five)An Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature Film (of 2012), and one of the better reviewed movies of the year, this stop-motion animated film tells the story of a boy who can communicate with dead people who's called on to save his town from a 300-year old curse.
I have a hard time getting in to animated kid's films like this (especially stop-motion ones).
This movie definitely has it's fair share of both these things but it also has a little more character and emotional depth than most animated films of this type.
It also has been praised (as well as condemned) for having the first openly gay character in a kid's film (which I think is a very good thing).
The movie still has it's flaws and it isn't as cool as critics make it out to be but it is a decent, better than average animated kid's film.Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6yq7kwUUDQ.
His local town is one full of legends and curses and with the help of a few semi-friends Norman is the only who can save it from a (not so) wicked witch.Paranorman isn't quite a kiddie film.
Sure, kids will enjoy the animation and a few of the more obvious physical jokes but the subject matter and tone of the film is a little too grown up.
The film starts off slow, but gradually gets better and it concludes with an epic ending, filled with great animation, effects, and music Writing is fairly strong, some of the jokes don't work, but they are far and in between.Characters are mostly archetypes of characters that have been done before.
The first of three hotly anticipated horror/comedy/stop motion kids films we'll see in the coming weeks and coming three years after Laika's success with Coraline, ParaNorman begins with a flourish which sets it up to be an interesting and funny family film.
Unfortunately it runs out of steam after about fifty minutes when the jokes dry up and the predictable plot takes over from what had been a fun, film which takes a surprisingly candid look at death.The world of ParaNorman is very well animated and in a similar style to Coraline, only this time in colour.
When animation and effects are of the standard of ParaNorman it makes me wonder why stop motion puppets were used in the first place.The opening half especially is littered with witty jokes and references to the likes of Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist and Friday the 13th for the parents while the kids could enjoy sight gags and the odd joke which only the children in the audience found funny.
So in this regard parental guidance is suggested but for teen and adult viewing, it is a fantastic film with perfect blend of storytelling, great messages, emotions and humor.The film is very different from what we've seen and yet so familiar, i say that in a very good way.
There were also references to some films of the horror genre of which i am not a fan but still caught a few.The stop motion animation is very well done and is very lovely.
Good messages to learn, but may need to be explained as it is a subtle plot point, rather than beating you round the head.All in all, a good romp to watch in and around Halloween, a very well voiced movie with beautiful animation.
Well, with some reservation, yes.The first of the new crop of kiddie horror animations (keep an eye out for Hotel Transylvania, and Tim Burton's Frankenweenie), Paranorman is the simple story of Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) a lonely, misunderstood boy with jug ears and the ability to see dead people.
ParaNorman, is a fantastically intricate stop-motion (or "stop-frame" to you film fans in the UK) animated film that follows Norman, a young boy who is more than a little obsessed with the macabre he can actually see and communicate with ghosts.
Instead each non-typical voice in the film gives their character immense depth and emotion.With all the great animation and wonderfully dreary character designs, the story has a real message and this is not just a film to bring in the kids (again this isn't recommended for kids under say 10 at the very least).
It's a bit heavy handed and force-fed but still entirely relate-able.The challenges Norman faces are bound to be understood by most kids which is just one of the ways that the films' story transcends the setting.
All family is in for a good time.Especially if some of you like stop-motion, zombie or B horror movies, or even if you see them just to have fun of them.
The zombies were funny and it's one of the best animated films, it has a very good character development with ghosts flying in the house doing their unfinished work.Norman the kid is really PARANORMAL and strange.
In one of the scenes ParaNorman is watching an old 80s zombie movie and it has a stereotypical female character which makes reference to 80s movies.
mainly because all of the characters are real objects so they naturally look more detailed than a CGI model.To conclude, ParaNorman is an amazing movie that combines humor, horror, violence and even action to make a great film.
Although it is strange for a Zombie themed kids movie to come out so far away from Halloween, this stop-motion film is funny, entertaining, and surprisingly stylistic.
This film is filled with humor and action that references many classic horror movies, and as a result, almost seems ready made for a cult-following.Norman is a strange kid.
The seven men that the witch killed come back from the dead in Zombie form, and Norman, along Neil, their older siblings, and the school bully, run through town trying to stop it all before anyone gets hurt.The film has a stylized feel, much like the movie Gremlins did.
This movie is a real unexpected treat to watch, and it almost creates a new genre with the horror film for kids.
Reviewer @ MediumRaretv.org Basking in the success of their first stop-motion animated feature film Coraline, Laika studios attempts to duplicate that success with its 3-D comedy, ParaNorman.
When the witch of Blithe descends upon the city, her spiritual form is represented by a fiery storm cloud with a diabolical face that is slightly eerie even in 3-D animation.The comedic antis of a capable cast, which includes John Goodman, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Tempestt Bledsoe, further elevates the 3-D comedy, making it a worthwhile watch.The themes of ParaNorman feel a bit repetitive and in your face, but it's still an entertaining film with plenty of laughs for the family..
The story was interesting, but it was presented in a manner that was a tad too heavy on the morales for my liking.It should be said that the voice acting was actually quite good in "ParaNorman", and that did help the movie along a good way.Initially I had perhaps a bit too high expectations for this animation because I like zombies and dark things.
It had the occasional touch of Burton magic similarities here and there, but were nowhere near the angles of Burton's dark, Gothic sense of surrealism.A great animated movie for the kids and young teens, but for adults it doesn't really offer that much, and you'd probably be better off with something in the likes of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" or "Corpse Bride"..
Stop-motion work is very well done; visually, the movie is great (the angry witch scene was quite remarkable).
I would not let my little one watch this as the Zombies and witch would give her nightmares forever.For the older kids and adults there is no gore with the exception of some zombies that look kind of scary but are kind of goofy looking at the same time.This movie does have a lot of death, as the main character can see and talk to ghosts, so that might also be a sensitive topic..
So it's up to him and others to stop both the zombies and the witch from causing mayhem, while also realizing more layers they have.Norman himself just might be one of the best outcasts written for a movie I've seen, as his reasonings for feeling forlorn make sense as only he can see the dead.
Essentially, the original soundtrack was beautifully moving and fun, the characters were casted well, funny scenes, fabulous craftsmanship in the animations and great story!.
The effects in the movie are very well done for a stop motion picture, I actually thinks the effects are better in this film then they were a nightmare before Christmas.
I just watched Paranorman - a film about a boy (called Norman by the way) who can talk to ghosts - and wondered who it was aimed at?
There are tonnes of in-joke references to horror films that, unless you show your five-year-old Halloween and Return of the Living Dead instead of In the Night Garden, they will have no hope of ever picking up on.In these days of 'target audiences' where 'Film A' is meant for women and 'Film B' is meant for children and so on, watching Paranorman made me wonder whether the filmmakers just sat down, made a movie that they liked and never really gave much through to who it was meant for, hoping it would find an audience out there somewhere.
It has loads more heart and character development than other recent 'kids' movies, such as Brave, it looks visually stunning and it's packed full of gags - I just wonder how many children will actually get?
ParaNorman is a very good family animated comedy-horror film.
This movie is well worth watching (even if you only see it once in your life).There are a few hints towards adult references so even if you are not a kid or teen anymore you should get a few laughs out of the film.
The movie is not adult content (rated R) remember it is rated PG so even the kids can watch and enjoy this film.8.5/10.
The language is nothing that they haven't heard before from regular TV programming and some of the more "adult" jokes will just go right over the heads of the younger viewers, so parents don't have to worry about anything their kids aren't supposed to see/hear.This is a very decent, enjoyable family animated movie and is definitely worth a watch..
And the joke at the end goes by so quickly I didn't even realize it until I read some reviews.Altogether 'Paranorman' is a funny and suspenseful flick with a great use of non-computer graphic technology for the characters and some really spooky and gross-out scenes the tween set will enjoy.And somewhere in the story is message for us all..
One of the benefits of this "branching out" has been the rise in the animated horror comedy, right up there with the best of them in recent times is ParaNorman.Norman Babcock is considered to be the weird kid in town, you see he claims to see ghosts.
I know, I'm making little sense, but the animation is capable of scary and funny at the same time.If it's possible for a moment to ignore the technical side, then consider the film's standard themes of accepting people's differences and integrating misfits into the mainstream.
Ah, but it also has the Tim Burton approach to horror (good Tim Burton, of course) where the kid is in a suburbia where some of the adults and the bully teenagers (that is, anyone that isn't Norman or his fat friend Neil), and when the "real" people are faced with the supernatural - in this case a group of zombies who once lived in during those delightful witch trials - they freak out and form a Big Unruly Mob (cue the music!) So far, promising.
What surprised me was that Norman isn't just a goofy kid with a supernatural complex about him, and his parents do care about him (even his sister, after a certain point), but feels the pain of being so alone with his "gift" or "curse" or what- have-you, which he happens to also share with his crazy uncle (John Goodman, so good for the few minutes on screen).They even have the good sense to get a villain who is terrifying, this in the shape of a giant demon-spirit-ghost in the sky that has something to do with the witch trials of the 17th century (the zombies are ex- judges, we learn, who put a girl to death for "seeing' things), and so it's not so simple as to have someone pat to hate.
that is how good ParaNorman is you will love taking your kids to see this once in a life time amazing movie for everyone to enjoy this is one of those movie that you just wish would never end take your kids take everyone to go see the best movie in the whole world this is a great movie for everyone get a ticket everyone to go see the film that will get you cheering loud for this wonderful movie go go go go go see this funny movie that i know you will enjoy .
It manages to come up with hilarious sequences that will leave you in fits of laughter and like all movies for kids this one ends with a good lesson.
Now, Norman and his friends must save the town.Chris Butler wrote and directed this stop-motion animation movie.
This is a well grafted stop motion animated movie that the whole family can enjoy and I personally recommend seeing it. |
tt0080917 | In God We Tru$t | A naive monk, Brother Ambrose (Feldman), is sent by the abbot on a mission to raise $5000 in order to save their monastery from closing. He goes to Hollywood where he encounters a number of eccentric characters. He is at first robbed and later befriended by con artist Dr. Sebastian Melmoth (Boyle), and meets a prostitute named Mary (Lasser) who lets him stay at her apartment. Mary grows to care for Ambrose and seduces him while he is taking a cold shower to try to alleviate his lustful thoughts about her. While he is in Hollywood, he visits several churches including a service at the Church of Divine Profit, performed by the televangelist Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Kaufman) in which he sees the focus of the sermon being a request for money in exchange for salvation. Ambrose is angered by this message and tries to meet a number of times with Thunderbird, being ejected each time.
Dr. Melmoth and Ambrose travel the city in a modified school bus, in which they hold church services for donations. During one service, the brakes of the bus release and the bus rolls downhill into a river. The passengers escape safely in the river and are shown on the local news being baptized by the pair, which catches Thunderbird's attention. He prays to G. O. D. for guidance and it tells him to work with Ambrose to make more money because Ambrose is an innocent and has a clean image.
Thunderbird has his minions kidnap Ambrose and bring him to his office where he outlines a plan for his own brand of church on wheels. He says he will pay Ambrose the $5000 the monastery needs if he assists him. While they are talking, Thunderbird mentions that G. O. D. (Richard Pryor) audibly talks to him when he prays to him and Ambrose is surprised because he himself has never heard from God in this way. Ambrose agrees to work with Thunderbird and they go across the country from town to town holding services in their own bus.
One day at Thunderbird's headquarters, Ambrose overhears Thunderbird praying to G. O. D. in his private chamber and when he hears G. O. D. speak back to him, he is intrigued. When Thunderbird leaves, he sneaks into the chamber and discovers that G. O. D. (General Organizational Directivatator) is a sophisticated master computer, linked to all of Thunderbird's finances and operations. He talks with G. O. D. and reads the Bible to it, giving it morality and a conscience. G. O. D. decides to give all of Thunderbird's money away and tells Ambrose what to do to accomplish this, which results in bags of money being poured out of the office's window. Thunderbird discovers someone has been interfering with the computer and rushes back to headquarters where he tries to capture Ambrose and destroys the computer. Ambrose grabs the paid monastery mortgage certificate from Thunderbird's office and escapes in a chase through the city.
While Mary and Dr. Melmoth look for Ambrose during his escape, she learns that Melmoth is her father that left her family when she was a child, due to a distinctive tattoo she sees on his leg. They eventually find Ambrose and rescue him from the people chasing him.
Ambrose goes back to the monastery and gives the abbot the mortgage certificate, then leaves and marries Mary, who is pregnant from their single night together. The end titles show Melmoth's bus traveling down the road, saying they "all lived happily hereafter". | satire | train | wikipedia | A clear-eyed look at religion in America.
Marty Feldman plays a meek monk who emerges from the monastery he's lived in all his life to get the money needed to save it.
He travels to the big city and meets a number of characters who are obsessed with religion, money, or both.
This movie manages to show devotion, delusion and hypocrisy with clarity and, yes, grace, while providing plenty of laughs.
Blessed are the meek, for they get off easy in this one; the greedy and vicious are not so lucky.
Andy Kaufman's performance as Armageddon T.
Thunderbird is brilliant, chilling, and not to be missed..
Fine satire with Andy Kauffman, Peter Boyle, Louise Lasser, etc..
The late Marty Feldman's most notable directorial effort.
The movie features an exceptional portrayal by Andy Kauffman of the Reverend Armageddon...who sports his blond pompador with great authority.Most notable thing about the movie is the VERY clever writing.
Much of the plot action is over the top slapstick, but sometimes the movie gets very sly and smart...especially when Andy is in the spotlight.Fine funny performances from Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser."The meek shall inherit the earth" "Yeah, but only when the strong are through with it.".
Decent parody of hypocritical religious sects.
Marty Feldman got another chance to write and direct a movie, and this one is a little less funny.
Still, it provides a humorous view of televangelists and other religious organizations in their neverending pursuit of money over spirituality.
Andy Kaufman, as televangelist Armageddon T.
Thunderbird, is simply brilliant (which is not always the word used to describe him) and Feldman, Lasser, and Boyle also provide vivid characterizations.
I enjoyed this film, even though Feldman gave Richard Pryor very little to do and the film runs out of steam near the end.
Nevertheless, there are some big laughs, and any fans of Feldman should enjoy.
Definitely worthwhile renting if you can find it.
Not quite on the level as the equally irreverent "Life of Brian," but is quite good, too.
My rating: 7/10 stars..
Feldman made other films, it's time to realize that.....
-May contain spoilers.Many people only know Marty Feldman as Igor in 1974's "Young Frankenstein".
And, I'll admit, unless one does some research, that's all one can really ever know.
It's a shame that his other stuff, such as this film, has gone more unnoticed.
Anyway..."In God We Tru$t", from what I've heard and read really did horribly at the box office, and the critics just seemed to rip it to shreds!
It's as if they couldn't find anything good about it.
I really enjoyed this film.
Maybe it wasn't well received because to me, in this movie, Feldman doesn't play his usual silly, comic relief based roles.
I mean yes, he's funny in this film, but he has a much more straight role than in his other films, and yeah...he actually acts and emotes.
Also, maybe romantic comedies weren't as big then, who knows?
Or maybe the press just didn't think Marty Feldman had the right to play a serious, or semi-romantic role.
Regardless, I feel that in this film, Feldman gets to showcase his real acting ability, and he's really great in this movie.
And there's great support from the likes of Peter Boyle, Andy Kaufman, Richard Pryor, etc...Looks-wise, Feldman was not the "conventional leading man", but in this film, I feel he makes it work.
His "By the way, I think I love you...do you mind?" is delivered in an absolutely convincing and adorable way...So yes, maybe this film is more a cute, sweet, sort of movie...but why did all of Marty Feldman's films have to be silly, manic, or zany?
I think if anything the fact that he did different things shows his versatility.
The concept of this film, a monk who really doesn't belong in the monastery, having to go out into the imperfect and corrupt world, falling in love with a prostitute, etc...I mean, it's great.
All I can really see that is wrong with it, is simply the fact that unlike most Feldman movies that make one go, "HA HA!" this may make one go..."Awww".Some deep lines too, such as "It may not be the best of all possible worlds but it's the only one we've got" and "Doubts are about the only certainties I have right now." Maybe I'm not with the popular opinion, but I enjoyed it and give it 8/10..
Uneven comedy, but not bad..
This flick (one of the least-seen comedies EVER, I believe) tries to be, at once, a slapstick chase comedy, an offensive religious comedy, a leering sex comedy and an expose of evangelists who exploit the faith of their naive audiences!
The results are uneven, but not horrible.
Apart from the much-mentioned already Andy Kaufman, there is a standout performance by Louise Lasser, as a warm-hearted hooker.
Richard Pryor, as God, is underused, though.
Very funny and biting.
Religious types hate this movie and have tried to bury it with poor ratings.
(Unfortunately, they've largely succeeded.) An example is the Blockbuster 1996 Movie Guide, which gives it one star (out of five) while, for example, giving the over-the-top, outrageously homo-erotic religious pic Ben Hur four-and-a-half stars.Despite all the religious disinformation, this is a very well written, funny film.
Marty Feldman is very good as Brother Ambrose, a painfully innocent monk cast into the devil's playground of L.A.; Peter Boyle is likewise good as Rev. Melmouth, a low-budget Jerry Falwell who takes advantage of Ambrose; and Louise Lasser does her best work since "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" as the heart-of-gold hooker who saves Ambrose from his religiously induced misery (to Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus").In the end, the film does wuss out somewhat (no details -- I don't want to spoil it) -- it is a Hollywood film after all -- but it's still a stinging indictment of religious arrogance and hypocrisy.If you're smart enough to resent the intrusive, authoritarian religious nuts who want to control your life (and everyone else's), you'll probably enjoy this film..
Probably one of the most underrated comedies of its age..
This Feldman production is not the greatest comedy ever made, but Feldman co-wrote, directed, and starred in this Feldman-at-the-Helm vehicle.
It truly showcases his talents as no other movie before it had.
While it does attempt to do too much, the attempt is not a waste.
Feldman merely aimed his sights at Blazing Saddles and made the attempt.
It pokes fun at Christians and all organized religion, the pop-culture of the time, contemporary ideologies, the action-driven cop shows of the age, and itself.
This is one of those wonderful movies which knows it's a movie and never takes itself too seriously.Feldman is Father Ambrose is the outcast of the monastery.
When the archdiocese decides they must have more money from the outside world, or shut its doors, Father Ambrose is chosen to leave the familiar world of hard benches and stone floors, and venture out in search of their salvation.
Ironic in that "salvation" is supposed to be their specialty.There are some wonderful cameos by Richard Pryor as God, Andy Kauffman, and Peter Boyle.Along the way, Ambrose discovers what he's been missing out on all those years cloistered in a hermetic order, and processes new information which enables him to rethink his choice from an informed perspective.
He finds laughter; he finds that while men are corrupt, MAN is decent at heart; and he finds himself.
All in all a very endearing, if dated, work.It rates a 6.6/10 from...the Fiend :..
Original changed for video.
This thing cracks me up.
I saw it on TV when I was a child.
My parents recorded it and it became a staple of my viewing choices while growing up.
I only wish they would have included the original opening title theme, "Good for God".
I was very disappointed when I finally got a new video copy several years ago.
I was poised for my traditional sing-along only to be presented with a new opening title.
If anybody has the ability to see the original, I would recommend it.
Either way, the movie is good for quite a few laughs..
Ignore the IMDb voter average..
As so often, the IMDb voter average is nothing to go by, in terms of seeking quality.
However, in the case of this very funny, even somewhat clever, comedy the 4.6 average is a joke.
The reason for it is obvious: many people who have never seen the movie but heard about it and what it's about decided to hate it without giving it a chance.IGWT is quite an offensive movie to believers, and anyone who is strongly Christian (or of any other religious persuasion) should not only avoid this movie, but pray to his God that He burn all copies of it.Although, the movie mocks the commercialization of religion far more than Christianity itself.As an atheist, I loved this movie and recommend it to all agnostics, other atheists, Christianity-haters, but also Christians who can take a joke.
Provided, of course, that you don't mind raunchy, irreverent humour.Feldman is quite weird playing an ultra-naive do-gooder monk who has never been outside his monastery.
The premise alone makes one curious to see the film.
The supporting cast is very good, too (Boyle, Kaufman, etc.).Obviously not as good as the almost flawless mother of all religion-bashing films, "Life Of Brian", but with plenty of good and wicked gags at the expense of religion.There is criticism that IGWT was just a cashing-in reaction to Monty Python's Jesus movie, but who cares if it was?
There are plenty of movies that support religion, so another (good) comedy that goes in the opposite direction really can't hurt..
ex-post-facto bellybuster.
While I didn't quite know how to take the film the first time I saw it, after viewing it three different times, and letting a lot of time pass, my ripening sense of humor absolutely adored the hilarious jabs at religion - primarily Christianity - in all its contemporary marketing in the U.S. The bumbling monk from the monastery who just isn't in touch with the real world but must learn how to deal with it; the itinerant preacher in a modified flivver with a steeple and amplified speaker driving around "enticing" money from the crowds he can gather on the street; and the glowing puffery of the TV evangelist - who has more evil behind him than the good he portrays to his public.
GREAT HUMOR.
Well acted by Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle and Andy Kaufman.
Contains a very interesting twist..
Decent movie.
A pretty good film,slow moving.
Andy Kaufman steals the show as: Armageddon T Thunderbird a Televangelist.Andy Kaufman rehearsed for this role in London's "Hyde Park" and in New York City..
Bad, very bad.
In all my life, I've only walked out of one film.
It was so horribly stupid, I just couldn't take watching it.
I can't believe that this garbage actually got made.
What kind of a moron would fund this retarded piece of junk?
There is nothing funny, and believe me, I'm the kind of guy that can find comedy in a lot of films that sucked.
But this just was idiotic and insanely stupid.
I can't recommend any portion of it.
I can't recommend any of the acting.
Not one thing was good about it.
I wish I had the minutes of my life I spent watching this tripe.
Marty Feldman and Andy Kaufman have always been funny to me but in this film they simply wasted their time..
Terrible waste of time.
I certainly would be curious to know exactly what it was that the 'positive' reviewers of this bad film were smoking.
I did not see this movie when it first came out in 1980 (thankfully) but i did see it tonight for the first (and last) time on cable.
I kept on wondering if the actors KNEW it was crap during the filming because not one ounce of it was worthwhile or funny.
Not ANY of the actors appearances or performances were memorable or redeeming.
I've always liked Feldman.
His best role was that of Igor in 'Young Frankenstein' A movie that came out in 1974 that i could see many many times over and STILL laugh out loud.
Cant say that for this 'In God We Tru$t' waste of time..
Tedious unfunny rubbish.
Some friends I was with wanted to watch this film so I had to go along with it.
It was an hour and a half of my life I will never get back.
If you like Marty Feldman and/or religious satires, you might get a few laughs or at least the odd smile.
Otherwise forget it.
As I watched the film I was trying to decide what year the film was made.
I thought it was 1968-69 at first but I settled on 1971-72.
So to find it was released in 1980 was a surprise.
The film contains just about every D actor I've never heard of and if I laughed twice during the whole thing I will consider myself very fortunate.
This is very very close to being the worst film I have ever seen in my life..
Marty's Masterpiece!.
'In God We Tru$t or Gimme That Prime Time Religion' ( 1980 ) was one of two movies ( the other being 1977's 'The Last Remake Of Beau Geste' ) written, directed and starring the much-missed British comic genius Marty Feldman.
It opened to a hostile response from critics and public alike, causing Universal to terminate his five-picture contract, plunging him into near-suicidal despair.
With 'Monty Python's Life Of Brian' having opened the year before, and America about to embrace the kind of materialistic values the film makes fun of by putting Ronald Reagan in The White House, its timing was unfortunate.
Marty plays 'Brother Ambrose', one of an order of Trappist monks, who is asked by 'Father Thelonius' ( Wilfrid Hyde-White ) to leave the monastery and go to Los Angeles in search of big-time television evangelist 'Armaggeddon T.Thunderbird' ( Andy Kaufman ), founder of the Church of Divine Profit.
The filthy rich Thunderbird has an office which is a copy of the Oval Office in the White House ( a sign on his desk reads: The Bucks Stop Here ).
He also has regular conversations with 'God' - who turns out to be a computer known as 'General Operational Directorvator' ( voiced by Richard Pryor!
). Brother Ambrose must ask Thunderbird to pay off the monastery's mortgage.
The first person he meets on his epic journey is seedy evangelist 'Dr.Sebastian Melmoth' ( the late Peter Boyle ), who drives a mobile church!
Robbed by the preacher, Ambrose is left destitute.
Until he meets a hooker with a heart of gold called 'Mary' ( Louise Lasser )...This is a clever satire on the commercialisation of religion, in particular those charlatans who shamelessly exploit The Bible to line their pockets.
There is not a jot of difference between Melmoth selling wooden crosses with a toy Christ affixed and Thunderbird urging his followers to hand over all their belongings because 'God is in hospital'.
Mixing satire and slapstick can be a risky business, but here Marty ( and co-writer Chris Allen ) have miraculously pulled it off.
Only occasionally does it get a little heavy-handed, such as Thunderbird's followers screaming "Seek!
Find!" in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from "Sieg Heil!", but it does not harm the film too much.
Feldman gives a delightful performance as the innocent 'Brother Ambrose', and is ably supported by Boyle, Lasser, and Pryor.
I have never been a fan of the late Andy Kaufman, but his performance as the smarmy 'Thunderbird' is simply brilliant.
He gets most of the best lines, including: !"If God had not intended for some people to be poor, then He would not have had The Bible published in paperback!".Funniest moment - during Mass, the brake on Melmoth's mobile church slips, causing it and everyone aboard to go hurtling downhill into a river!
Second funniest moment - the wonderful climax which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'redistribution of wealth'!
Marty's next appearance on the big screen would be in 'Slapstick Of Another Kind' ( 1982 ), based on the Kurt Vonnegut book.
Shortly after completing his scenes in Graham Chapman's ill-fated pirate spoof 'Yellowbeard' ( 1983 ), Marty died from a heart attack.
His 'In God We Trust' co-star Andy Kaufman succumbed to lung cancer a year later.
They may have gone, alas, but the film they made together lives on, and looks funnier with each passing year.
In my view it deserves a major revaluation..
Some lines not yet mentioned.
My memory may be a bit foggy as I haven't seen this movie in a while; so, if I get these wrong please feel free to correct them."Have you been celibate today?" ...
"Yes, 4 times." ...
"Good 5 would have been tantamount." "All great things have 3 initials, IBM, IRS, GOD" "This is the Grand Organizational Directiveator G.O.D." This movie was excellent.
It's hard to imagine anyone not finding anything funny in it.
I can see someone maybe finding it too slapstick at times or being, perhaps, a little upset that it makes fun of televangelists and organized religion; but, they had to know what it would be like going in (the title gives fair warning).
Bottom line, this movie is funny.Btw, does anyone know where I can find this movie?
I want to watch it again. |
tt0308383 | The Human Stain | The opening scene shows a car driven off the icy road.Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) is a professor who has revitalized Athena, a small New England college. During a class discussion he calls two missing students "spooks". He is accused of making a racist epithet, and quits. His resignation is too much for his wife (Phyllis Newman), who has a heart attack.Convinced his wife was murdered by the college, Silk befriends a down-and-out writer named Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinese). Silk and Zuckerman work on a book describing the murder, and Zuckerman comes out of his shell. Eventually, Silk decides the book is not worth it. As he's cleaning up, Silk begins to reminice.When he was in college as a student, the younger Silk (Wentworth Miller) falls in love with Steena Paulsson (Jacinda Barrett). We flash back to the present, and Silk admits he's having an affair with a much younger woman, Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman). He gives her a lift home after being stranded, and she makes a pass at him. After some time together, she reveals that her stepfather molested her, and she left home at 14. Silk also finds out she has a crazy ex-husband, Lester (Ed Harris) who's stalking her. When he introduces her to Zuckerman, she gets angry, but they make up.Lester shows up and tells Silk that Faunia was a bad mother and let her kids die in a fire. She still has their remains, and is troubled about what to do with them. Later, Silk gets a threatening letter, and his lawyer (Clark Gregg) compares him to Achilles, the Greek warrior who brought down Troy for the love of a woman. Silk immediately fires him.We flash back to Silk as a youth, where his boxing instructor (Richard Mawe) wants him to fight for money. It is here we learn Silk is actually black, but since he is very light-skinned, he is often mistaken as a Jew. He sees him with his family, and his father (Harry Lennix) tells him he will be a doctor. His father's death forces Coleman to realize the inequity of race. While enlisting to the Navy, he marks himself as white.Back with Zuckerman, Silk explodes when confronted with the rumors about him and Faunia. He tells Zuckerman that he's not afraid, and insinuates Zuckerman is a coward. Scenes interspersed between past and present show Silk with Steena and Faunia. When he brings Steena home to meet his mother, she is caught off-guard, and cannot accept his race. Coleman becomes a boxer, taking his aggression out on black opponents.He takes Faunia to a classical concert, and finally gets her to stay all night, overcoming her fear of committment. She rages at him for making her feel for him and storms off. She feels guilty for surviving the fire that killed her kids, and confesses to a crow. When Silk returns home, she is back, and apologizes. In the moment, Silk confesses his secret.Driving Faunia home, Lester Farley runs them off them road, and they both die. Lester tells his psychologist (Margo Martindale) that he didn't kill them, even though he planned to. His psychologist believes Lester is delusional.At Coleman's funeral, his black coleague Herb (Ron Canada) finally admits he should have defended Coleman when he was fired. Zuckerman meets a woman, Ernestine (Lizan Mitchell), and she says that she is his Silk's sister. We flash back to Coleman telling his mother that he's getting married to a white woman, and doesn't want to be known as a Negro. His mother says he is trapped.Ernestine tells Zuckerman about how Silk's family divorced him, and is amazed that Coleman didn't reveal his race when charged with racism. Zuckerman decides to write a book, and confronts Lester. His book is called The Human Stain. | revenge, boring, murder, violence, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt0083192 | This House Possessed | This synopsis is too short and may not include the required detailed description of the entire plot. We normally require that synopses be at least 10 lines long.
If you have seen this title, please help us by improving and expanding this synopsis.
Gary needs a vacation from his rock-star career. Sheila is the beautiful nurse he takes along. A super-modern huge redwood, concrete, and glass home is the stage. A home that has a mind all to its own. It can see, hear, and make anything happen. You won't be able to move from your seat from fear that the supernatural effects could be real. Filmed entirely on location in Rancho Santa Fe California and at universal studios; this 1981 NBC movie of the week is a must see. Very rare and difficult to find. Doesn't that make it even better?!! | paranormal | train | imdb | null |
tt1486193 | 5 Days of War | In this intensely human portrayal of courage under fire, acclaimed director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger) combines heart pounding action with real human drama, as he tells the riveting story of a war reporter caught behind enemy lines during the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia. As a nation fights for its very survival, a brave and passionate coalition of international reporters and local Georgians risk their lives to tell the true human cost of military conflict. Filmed for six weeks on location, 5 DAYS OF AUGUST is a riveting, suspenseful portrait of the courage under fire. His spirit broken after an Iraqi ambush in Bagdad takes the life of close friend Miriam Eisner (Heather Graham), American war correspondent, Thomas Anders (Rupert Friend), seeks escape from the ghosts of his past. Rumors of war draw him to a military hot zone in the republic of Georgia, on the eve of a Russian invasion. Reunited with a small, intrepid band of war reporters in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Anders takes his cameraman and fellow road-warrior, Sebastian (Richard Coyle), on the road north, toward the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, just in time to witness a Russian airstrike on the peaceful village of Vaziani. While Russian bombs rain down, Anders and Sebastian boldly document the devastation, then shuttle survivors to a military hospital in Gori, with the help of a brave and beautiful, Georgian school teacher, named Tatia (Emmanuelle Chriqui). Unable to break his story through the noise of Russian propaganda and a world distracted by the Olympics in China, Anders and Sebastian race back to the battle zone to help a desperate Tatia find her missing family. Caught in the crossfire of full-scale combat and witness to the murder of civilians in another Russian assault, Anders records the evidence that will shock the world. But before he can act, Anders is captured, along with Sebastian and Tatia, by the architects of these atrocities, the ruthless Colonel Demidov (Rade Serbedjiza) and his mercenary killer, Daniil (Mikko Nousiainen). Just when all seems lost they are rescued in a daring raid by a Georgian soldier, Captain Rezo (Johnathon Schaech). Anders and his friends, including the world-weary Dutchman (Val Kilmer), must stand and fight for their freedom and their cause in a final battle in the city of Gori. Ultimately, while President Saakashvilli (Andy Garcia) seeks help from his allies, Anders faces one last test of courage as he strives to save Tatias life by sacrificing everything but the truth. | violence, murder | train | imdb | The War between Georgia and South Ossetia/Russia in August of 2008 would seem to be a great background to a well-plotted, carefully crafted film that captures all the intrigue of the Caucasus.
5 Days of War is a twisted train wreck of special effects laden action and blatant propaganda with a parade of terrible acting.
About 40 minutes into the film I realized I was watching a $20,000,000 piece of pro-Georgian anti-Russian propaganda.
Special effects are strong, location looks beautiful but the storyline and fact every major character is played by an American or British actor and not native Georgians/Russians is thoughtless and insulting (insulted again).
As the movie admits, truth is the first casualty of war propaganda films ...
Directed by Renny Harlin and financed by the Georgian government, this drama is a Russian-bashing screed about the 2008 South Ossetia war and the events leading to it.
The movie revolves around the experiences of two news reporters Thomas Anders (Rupert Friend) and Sebastian Ganz (Richard Coyle) who accept an assignment in Tbilisi, Georgia, a year after their previous assignment together in Iraq ended badly: the two men were rescued by a Georgian military unit in that country after their car was ambushed by militants.
Anders and Ganz's noses for news (and trouble) get them fired upon while watching a wedding at a rural Georgian inn, avoiding capture while witnessing and filming atrocities by Russian troops who have invaded the country, and ending up as prisoners of a Russian general (Rade Serbedzija).
The plot's emphasis on safeguarding the memory stick that holds Ganz's images and the Russians' attempt to destroy it leaves no room for character development with the result that Anders, Ganz and their fellow journalists end up perpetuating old World War Two stereotypes about Russian soldiers torturing and killing people, raping women and torching farms and properties with flamethrowers.
(Such stereotypes admittedly are based on fact: Soviet soldiers did act barbarically towards German civilians in the 1940s, partly as a result of the debased culture in the Soviet armed forces that arose after the purges of high-ranking military officers in the 1930s as ordered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Georgian native - what irony.) As the movie carries on, hackneyed plot twists appear: Tatia's family is riven apart by internal betrayal, Ganz is threatened with torture by the Russian general's sadistic enforcer (Nikko Mousiainen), an attempt to broadcast Ganz's images fails when the reporters are targeted by a Russian helicopter, and Ganz is hurt in the helicopter attack.
Andy Garcia as Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili gives the best performance, endowing his character with a dignity the real person probably doesn't deserve: before the 2008 war, Saakashvili had been criticised for the use of brutal police force against protesters in an anti-government demonstration, and for declaring a state of emergency and suppressing press freedoms as a result of the protests, in November 2007.
A church used as a refuge gives the film crew opportunities to photograph pictures of religious icons and the wedding scene featured early in the movie gives a little insight into Georgian customs, traditional dress styles and folk dances.
Curiously there are no native Georgian actors in the film's major and minor acting roles; Georgians are present only as extras.By lapsing into an action-movie rut the film fails to give a near-accurate portrayal of the work news journalists do and the problems they face in unusual and intense situations where disinformation, propaganda and fear replace speech and press freedoms.
The Georgian armed forces are portrayed as decent and heroic, the Russians as cruel, barbaric and even criminal: in truth, both sides were guilty of over-reaction to provocation with Georgia attacking South Ossetia first with heavy firepower and both Georgians and Russians alike committing grave war crimes.
This is in fact a propaganda movie, so much so it uses the actual Georgian Army as "actors" for this film and using only Georgians as sources for the script.But with that aside, can it be considered a good movie regardless of it's fictional re-writing of history?
Sadly this is also no, it has direct to DVD written all over it, If it hadn't been filmed in Georgia, using Georgian soldiers giving it a authentic look it would have nothing standing this movie up.I'll end this on a quote from Anna Neistat who works for "amnesty international" "This film portrays Russians and Ossetians as barbaric beasts and Georgians as peace angels." I couldn't sum it up any better Anna..
But as this scene fades into the next it appears the film changed director to one who watched to much A team and any 1960's World war II film.For a film that purports to be a vision of real life events the director could not have got it more wrong.
Andy Garcia does his best Borat impression while the most shocking element of all is how much Val Kilmer has let himself go.If you want to watch a brutal, raw and realistic film on the horrors of war, watch the first scene and then turn your TV off.
So pick it up from bargain bin, but don't expect too much.6 stars I give are for 2 reasons: Awesome camera work (it felt like live action at places) and the fact that despite being incredibly dumb, this movie IS entertaining...
but a primitive story is too much of one-sided pro-Georgian propaganda.Good Georgians, bad Russians and nothing in the middle.
WEll, some people saying that this movie is propaganda and captured by anti-Russian federation but, I'm from Georgia from that little country.
However, the whole idea of the movie is too plain "Georgians are good, and Russians are bad"...
Georgian president gave the order to slaughter "his own people" on the night before Olympic games started:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8281990.stmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Ossetia_warWatch the classics "Saving Private Ryan", "Tears of the sun", "We were soldiers"...P.S.: the scene with wedding is well described here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/02/afghanistan.lukeharding.
Persuading people the wrong way.Georgia and Russia both committed several atrocities in the time of the war.
The film makes it look like Georgia was minding its own business and the big, bad Russians just decided to blow the hell out of everything Georgian.
Anders meets a young Georgia woman named Tatia (Chriqui) and another reporter named Sebastian (Coyle) where they must learn to survive during the war.It seems 5 Days of War is less concerned with actuality and being an informative piece of work, and instead tries to be a gritty action film.
Alas, nothing but utter silence followed by increasing restlessness and dreariness.At the very end, the film goes sentimental and right before the end credits we see many people who've lost relatives in the five day war between the feuding countries holding pictures of their loved ones and honoring them respectably.
Think about it; you watch an empty, mundane war film that is absent of emotional elements only to be tested for tears one more time before the credits role showing people who have lost their loved ones in the same event.
Many movies have been made about many wars and we all know that most likely none of them portrayed the exact true events.
I found this picture to be a rather good action film, very authentic from the "War" point of view.
Thats whats happened, the People in crowed are REAL people in the film that survived the war, The WEDDING SEEN was based on True Story and reporters dies in this war.Andy Garcia was Awesome in his role.
All who studied thoroughly history of Russian-Georgian war would find movie to be not just good, but absolutely needed as even now Russian Federation continues to do everything possible to hide what they did to Georgia in 2008.
I personally think that these people still live in bunkers that were built in the era of the cold war, which ended 20 years as.The first phrase namely "the war is suffering Pravda" has no relation to the reality and does not apply to any version of Georgia either the U.S. or Russia, there was a need to focus attention on the fact that all Russian villains, namely to kill the innocent, to shoot through kneecap grandmothers, and stealing children 3 wheeled Bicycle with microwaves and TVs from the seventies.I never Saw the Army of Russia which would entirely consisted of Vakhabites, and walked in jeans, well this is probably one of the most small discrepancies...The Russians Bombed the wedding, of course, comes from weddings all evil, and they have a strategic importance.Who am I to challenge the opinion of creators who made the film to justify the actions of Georgia and the U.S. TroopsThe film is created with one aim, hatred, and development of Russophobia those who have watched it.
"We came here to cover a war, if we don't get a story this will all unfold unseen." This is an emotional and sometimes tense movie about reporters in Georgia during the war with Russia.
The movie is definitely pro-Georgia.While this is the story that I heard, I figure that to the people in the battlegrounds, there was no difference between the Georgian and Russian armies.
No not really, nobody reads these reviews anyway , but this movie is a real credit to Harlin,,,hes come a long way from Ford Fairlaine....and long kiss goodnight (despite the special effects Goodnight had,, also applause for Sam jack,,)Harlin shows us, his image, direction, emotion and meanings plus factual situations left unexplored of a powerful nation.
Movie is good with all actions and special effects, part about refugees is true and of course its true that Russians are wrong in this war starting from 1989, they started this war to punish Georgia for wanting independence from USSR and since than every 3-5 years Russians are killing Georgians inside Georgian territory.
Unfortunately even here you feel strong work of Russian propagandists writing clear lies about this conflict and over criticizing this movie, same time they already made not one, several movies with much more propaganda and very poor quality in every way.
It looked like a commercial for some travel agency, with only "Visit Georgia" message missing from the scene and was most tasteless thing I've ever seen in a film.
It looked like a commercial for some travel agency, with only "Visit Georgia" message missing from the scene and was most tasteless thing I've ever seen in a film.
For a war movie, this was one of the best I've seen in regards to story and special effects.
Movie starting with Russians attacked,But reality it was different and it changed whole history about this war,Expected more than killing scenes from this movie, something historical and cause of the war something, but whole movie is showing massacre and all time blaming Russian side without proof and reason ...Better read some documentary instead watching this movie, movie should be replaced - Israeli and Palestine if director wanted to show about terrorism Better suite the story of movie.Really don't understand how it has got 5points vote, may be all Georgians gave 10points for the movie but all knows it's totally different from history and that 5points is just a waste of time for the audience to suggesting this horrible movie....
Based on true events, this intense film is a vivid account of a renegade American journalist, his cameraman and a local woman caught behind enemy lines, and determined to not only survive, but tell the world what was happening, during the swift but devastating 5-day war between Russian and the Georgian Republic in 2008.Best thing Renny has done for years.
The story line contains romance, good character development and plenty of action, but the stark reality of war maintains a dominant impact throughout the film.
This story gives the viewer some insight into the Georgian perspective of events regardless of how the Russian military sees it.War is just horrific regardless of right or wrong..
Heather Graham and Val Kilmer don't have substantial material to work with (specially Graham, whose screen-time isn't any longer than two or three minutes), while Andy García made me laugh with his ridiculous Russian accent.In conclusion, 5 Days of War is worthy of a slight recommendation, because it didn't bore me and the action scenes are good.
A Nutshell Review: 5 Days of War. Five Days of August has been renamed Five Days of War outside of Georgia (despite the print at the start of the end credits proudly displaying the former), undoubtedly capitalizing on its predominant war fighting segments to help market the film, based upon real incidents that took place during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War during the said period in which parts of Georgia got occupied by the Russians, shrewdly planned during the time when the rest of the world was distracted by the Beijing Olympics.
As with most openings this segment was important to establish character motivations, to showcase and set the audience expectations that no stops will be pulled to feature military hardware, as well as to touch upon its political subplot that while Georgia had joined and volunteered to the USA's coalition of the willing in the Iraqi campaign, the reverse isn't so true when Georgia herself required help from the West in which she's trying to align herself to, irking the Russians whose waning influence had triggered an invasion in August 2008 (or so the film will have it put).With a potential war brewing, Anders and Sebastian find their way to Georgia, and as the trailer would have outlined the plot already, get caught up in a wedding and picked up some locals including Tatia (Emmanuelle Chriqui in a role to look pretty and contribute nothing more), getting some incriminating footage from the spoils of war and the inhumane crimes against humanity committed by Russian mercenaries contracted for handsome sums to lead the invasion, and spend the entire second half of the film protecting the yet to be uploaded evidence on a memory card.
Not to mention soldiers and crack forces too, with an incredibly lean and thin platoon supporting our protagonists from point to point, appearing when called upon for plot conveniences which took the shine off a narrative, making the second half of the film very much like a standard war action flick with one side seen to be winning little skirmishes.
It's very obvious propaganda through and through.Still it served up enough to play out like an average war film, highlighted with a fairly wobbly focus on journalists and the risk and sacrifices they have to go through in order to bring the best coverage from conflict zones.
5 DAYS OF WAR is a disturbing film on many levels; it takes us into the bowels of an active war zone sharing the bloody ravenous hunger of war and the effects on the citizens of the invaded country, it is raw in its depiction of what happens to non-combatant journalists who are embedded to document the truth, and it is embarrassing how little the outside world knew of this brief but devastating war between Russia and Georgia in 2008 a war concomitant with the Olympic Games in Beijing, China so hungrily observed by the media.
The other is an excellent Action War Movie that is about Journalists embedded deep in the Horror.The Film is excellent, engaging, exciting and has its Heart in the right place.
One of the most Russophobic films in recent years was called into being by just another coil of confrontation between the Russian under empire and the Western superpower lead largely by the US, which started just from the Russian-Georgian war and is at its peak right now, when the army of the vast Ukraine, rather than of tiny Georgia, is serving its purpose.
We Russians dislike such a film as 'war crimes' and 'mercenraries' are considered to be bad things and working for 'Russophobic propaganda', to be public enemy.
The Georgian Army was outgunned and outmanned, and none of us knew exactly how to handle it.This movie was shot in current day Georgia and follows several newsmen through their initial exploration, their capture, their final yielding to overwhelming force, and their release by a philosophical mercenary leader, Rade Serbedzija, who gives one of the best performances in the film.
As story came down to a purelly propaganda movie(Georgian been the true Freedom fighters,and not mass murders of their own peoples or South Ossetians.
For the normal viewer this may not matter much, but the action scenes are well (sometimes too well) choreographed.Now as for the film's handling of its source material (the 2008 Georgia- Russia war over South Ossetia and Abkhazia), make no mistake about it, this is a textbook example of propaganda film.
Some of the more obvious propaganda shots do tend to take away from the film a bit (people getting gunned down in classic slow motion), but all in all, if you realize what you are watching....So, take it for what it is, a very loose patriotic Georgian "interpretation" of the 2008 war.
Yet this time those personal connections are lost along the way, giving way to the political aspect of the story.The Georgians that were close to the conflict will feel emotional towards the movie and will relate in some way.
This movie is a 113- minute long insult to everyone portrayed in it - the population of South Ossetia, Russians, Georgians, the militaries of both countries, the EU, the NATO and the viewer.
Given the poor quality of the acting and writing I'd doubt anyone on both sides of the war will appreciate this movie - it may even be very offensive to some on both the Russian and Georgian sides.There's even cheesier music to go along with everything.
But it is strictly out of place in a war movie, and Harlin makes it feel more like a video game.
Now another action film director has made a bad war movie.
Right from the get-go the main focus of this movie was to make the US-supported Georgia look like angels while the Russians and Ossetians were basically "blood-thirsty beasts". |
tt0033723 | Hold That Ghost | Chuck Murray (Bud Abbott) and Ferdie Jones (Lou Costello), gas station attendants, aspire to better jobs waiting tables at Chez Glamour, a high-class nightclub, where Ted Lewis and The Andrews Sisters perform. However, Chuck and Ferdie cause a ruckus and wind up back at the gas station. Gangster "Moose" Mattson (William B. Davidson) brings his car in for servicing, and Chuck and Ferdie are caught inside the vehicle when the gangster speeds off to escape the police. During the chase shots are exchanged, and the gangster is killed by gunfire. However, through a strange clause in his will--which says that whoever is with him when he dies will get whatever he owns--Chuck and Ferdie inherit his rural nightspot, the Forrester's Club. Mattson had also given a cryptic clue about a hidden stash of money, stating that he always kept it "in his head," but its existence and location remained a mystery.
Charlie Smith, an associate of Mattson's crooked attorney, arranges to accompany the boys on a freelance bus to the rundown "club". The boys are unaware that Smith (Marc Lawrence) is a member of Moose's gang and has come along to secretly look for the money. The unscrupulous bus driver, however, abandons them and three other passengers--a doctor, a radio actress and a waitress--at the club during a heavy rainstorm.
As the night progresses, strange things happen. Smith disappears while searching the basement, and his corpse turns up unexpectedly several times. The water in the tavern is undrinkable. Ferdie's bedroom turns out to be rigged with hidden gambling equipment. The girls are scared by what appears to be a ghost. Two detectives show up but vanish soon after starting to investigate. Chuck and the doctor decide to search for the detectives while Ferdie examines a map to find the quickest route back to town. However, the candles on the table move mysteriously and scare Ferdie.
Ferdie eventually finds Moose's treasure hidden inside the stuffed moose head over the fireplace. Members of the gang (including the so-called detectives) appear and demand the money, leading to a chase through the building. Ferdie scares them off by making the sound of a police siren. The boys plan to fix up the club, and the doctor announces that the water they drank last night has therapeutic properties and Ferdie and Chuck should transform the club into a health resort and hire Ted Lewis and The Andrews Sisters to headline. As it turns out, the maitre d' who fired them at the start of the film (Mischa Auer) now works for them as a waiter. | comedy, murder | train | wikipedia | I've seen it maybe 10 times now over the decades with no loss of pleasure.It has Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters as pleasant musical bookends to what has previously been described as a Ghosts & Gangsters tale.
This combination of haunted house scares and A&C slapstick works terrifically, for several reasons--the supporting cast is first-rate, and Joan Davis proved to be the best comic foil Costello ever had, their scenes together sparkle and their chemistry is undeniable; the boys' timing, always a marvel, has seldom been better; and, as in their best film, "A&C Meet Frankenstein," the spooky elements are played exactly that way, and not for laughs, and it works as well as it did in that film.
The boys showcase some of their classic routines, Joan Davis is a joy to watch, the Andrews Sisters' songs don't slow things down ("Aurora" is actually a bright, catchy little number); all combine to make this one of the best Abbott & Costello films.
Universal, the home of horror, seemed the natural place for ghostly antics, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a dull moment in the movie.Joan Davis was a wonderful actress and seemed to have found her natural partner in Lou. The two had same great moments together with perhaps the 'Blue Danube' sequence being the funniest.
Since the crook's loot is supposed to be hidden there--it comes complete with ghosts, a bad reputation and cryptic clues--their trip there to take possession of their property proves to be a very lively adventure.Before this portion of the narrative, there is quite a bit of fun in a nightclub, involving the Andrews Sisters, a curious "Me and My Shadow" Number with legendary Ted Lewis and a truly black partner, the Ted lewis orchestra and much more.
The other passengers along for the fun ride to the new property include Richard Carlson, very good as a science specialist incredibly oblivious to the admiration and the extreme physical charms of Evelyn Ankers, hilarious Joan Davis as a perfect foil for the lead duo and the others, plus durable bad guy Marc Lawrence, hilarious Mischa Auer, Shemp Howard, Russell Hicks as the gangster's lawyer and William Davidson as Moose Matson the gangster.
This B/W classic would undoubtedly have been an expensive color production later on; but in any case, the money is found, the mystery is solved, the ghosts are mostly explained, lovers are united and the laughs generated by this delightful entertainment remain in the mind--as I and other viewers of this very funny film have testified-for years to come.
This is a very funny early Abbott and Costello comedy that mixes crooks and ghosts, as Bud and Lou inherit a "haunted" roadhouse from a gangster who may or may not have stashed away a fortune somewhere on the premises.
That not withstanding, I highly recommend watching which ever version you can find of this funny and well made classic.Though some more critical viewers may find many of the gags passé and/or corny in this day age, when it was released it was well received by movie goers and critics alike in such notable newspapers of the day as the New York Times and Motion Picture Herald.Those of us young and/or old who can appreciate the type of comedy that originated during a more innocent era, should be happily delighted with this classic comedic gem from the '40s..
(In the Navy-and Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne's participation in it-would be hastily filmed while this haunted house comedy would be temporarily halted.) Because of their spots, they don't interrupt the flow of the comedy which includes such classic bits like the "Moving Candle", "Changing Room", and Lou's ad-libs with a stuffed moose's head.
All in all, Hold That Ghost is a most enjoyable Abbott & Costello movie with great contributions from Joan Davis..
It's nice to catch a break from the two recent "service films" that Bud and Lou made this time, as they go from army and navy men to playing two domestic, unsuccessful waiters-turned-gas station attendants.
What they didn't count on, however, is that the deceased had some scheming friends who are also hungry for the dough.HOLD THAT GHOST is often considered close to the best film from Bud and Lou, but I'm not sure I would take it quite that far.
It is a good, solid, comedy/spook show that plays on the old tried and true "haunted house" theme; and once more the boys are in top form to deliver the funnies as Abbott keeps trying to calm a very nervous Costello down as he encounters everything from dead bodies to ghosts to revolving rooms to moving candles.
There's Richard Carlson as a timid scientist who's oblivious to the longing advances of the pretty Evelyn Ankers (from THE WOLF MAN), and the stand-out antics of Joan Davis, who's really an asset as she plays a "professional radio screamer" who's got some great moments with Lou Costello, including the aforementioned "moving candle" bit, and a charming little dance duet.Oh yes, and the Andrews Sisters are back for a third time, but this time they're only used at the start and finish.
Wonderful supporting cast that includes lovely Evelyn Ankers, Richard Carlson, Mischa Auer, Shemp Howard and the hilarious Joan Davis.
This is a great comedy that I think everybody can enjoy, even if you're new to Abbott and Costello films..
This is one of the best Abbott and Costello movie because it has great comedy in it the story line is good the actors are good in it the acting is good in it everything is good in it and it also one of bud Abbott and Lou Costello's first movies and it is just great so I'm sure that you will not be disappointed with hold that ghost.
HOLD THAT GHOST (Universal, 1941), directed by Arthur Lubin, features the studio's ever popular comedy team of Abbott and Costello (in their third starring roles) in a true and tried formula of a haunted house theme.
Breaking away from army duty as BUCK PRIVATES and Naval reserves from IN THE NAVY, HOLD THAT GHOST ranks one of their more successful features of the period, cleverly mixing comedy with suspense along with classic routines associated with Abbott and Costello, some that would be repeated again, notably for their other spectacularly comedy in 1948 where they meet "Frankenstein." The story opens at the Chez Glamour as Chuck Murray (Bud Abbott) and Ferdinand "Ferdie" Jones (Lou Costello), gas station attendants, are seen earning extra money as relief waiters.
Stranded for the night, strange things begin to occur: Charlie Smith disappears during his search for the Manston money later to be found bound, gagged and dead in a closet; the arrival and mysterious disappearance of a couple of phony detectives, who, earlier came in out of the rain; a mysterious figure covered in a white sheet roaming through secret panels, and spooky noises leading some, namely Ferdie, to believe the house to be haunted.Abbott and Costello are in fine form here, with Costello displaying his comedic talent during several of his frightening moments, with familiar stock underscoring heard many times in Universal thrillers through most the 1940s.
Richard Carlson, the intellectual professor of research, and Evelyn Ankers, the future scream queen of Universal horror of the 1940s, each play it straight to perfection as the secondary romantic couple.Although it's unlikely for a "haunted house" themed comedy to find time for musical numbers, the tunes and night club sequences were actually added in after filming was completed.
Even without the early nightclub portion, the Andrews Sisters, Ted Lewis and Mischa Auer are seen before the finish.A favorite amongst Abbott and Costello fans, HOLD THAT GHOST (what ghost?) which aired on numerous cable channels over the years as The Comedy Channel (late 1980s), American Movie Classics (2001) and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: September 18, 2015).
Ted Lewis sings his theme song of When My Baby Smiles At Me and the Andrews Sisters do Aurora another song identified with them back in the day.Hold That Ghost is not as funny as the two previous service comedy films but it's still pretty good and hopefully the viewer will get to see the whole thing and not have to wait to get the VHS version of it to do so..
This is an Abbott & Costello laugh romp that ranks at the top with their "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein." The choice of supporting comic actors (Mischa Auer, Shemp Howard in a very tiny bit part, and the always hilarious Joan Davis) help to give this film its hilarity.
The plot centers around strange goings-on in a haunted hotel, with everyone playing it for laughs, even Richard Carlson, who was probably just drying off between takes from all-time Universal classic, "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." Some truly fine comedy acting..
Not that these first two are not funny--they're hilarious--but HOLD THAT GHOST has the most unbroken comedy of and Bud and Lou outing in the early part of their career.
Everyone is thus forced to stay the night at the eerie old hotel, which is filled with cobwebs, candles, sinister gangsters, and perhaps a ghost or two!Thus the stage is set for the first, and, outside of ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, the best, of Bud and Lou's chillingly hilarious horror-comedies.
The scenes with Joan Davis are particularly funny, as well as Costello's reactions inside the house.This film was made immediately following "Buck Privates," but was held up for release until another service comedy ("In The Navy") could be released.
A very good comedy with a superb supporting cast: Joan Davis, Mischa Auer, Evelyn Ankers (Queen of the Screamers), The Andrews Sisters and Ted Lewis.
Great Fun. Hold That Ghost (1941) *** (out of 4) Chuck Murray (Bud Abbott) and Ferdinand Jones (Lou Costello) are gas station workers when they accidentally end up in the back seat of a car driven by a gangster.
This possession is a broken down hotel, which might be haunted and could also contain a large sum of money.HOLD THAT GHOST isn't nearly as popular as some of Abbott and Costello's "Meet" horror films but it's funny to see that many of the best gags that would appear in those films were actually done here first.
If you're a fan of the duo or horror spoofs in general then you're going to enjoy this film as there are a great number of good jokes as well as a great cast.There are many funny moments throughout including a wonderful bit dealing with the candle.
Ted Lewis and the Andrew Sisters also appear at the start and end of the picture but these scenes were added after the original production wrapped.HOLD THAT GHOST has a few dry moments throughout its running time but there's no question that there are enough gags that work to make it worth viewing.
Bud and Lou are very good here and we get strong support from Davis, Richard Carlson, Shemp Howard and Evelyn Ankers who would soon become the Queen of Universal's monster movies..
The formats are similar, as we have a haunted house (in this movie it is a road house), a mystery (where is something & why are all these ghosts appearing to try & stop our heroes from finding it?), the bad guys (motive), the good guys(Bud&Lou versus Shaggy & Scooby?), & some music(Lennon Sisters versus Rock Music from Don Kirshner) to make things move along the way.
Lots of crazy, funny antics ensue with Lou running and screaming for Chuck(Bud), seeing candles move, having his hat removed, and trying to upstage Joan Davis at every turn.
While the motion picture industry gave her little more than occasional character roles, Joan Davis would go on considerable 1950s television fame with the series "I Married Joan," and her broad comic style is a perfect match for the Abbott and Costello brand of comedy--and when she pairs with Lou Costello to dance "The Blue Danube" the result is pure magic.There is also a brief cameo by "Stooge" Shemp Howard.
HOLD THAT GHOST also offers a few musical moments, and film fans will find them particularly interesting, for they give a glimpse of the now-forgotten Ted Lewis performing his classic "Me and My Shadow" routine and early footage of The Andrews Sisters, who perform the seldom heard "Sleepy Serenade" and "Aurora." It's all in good fun, but while mildly amusing this really isn't one of Abbott and Costello's more memorable films.
But when the murderers arrive
he is the first one dead.While Joan Davis, Evelyn Ankers, and Richard Carlson help the show along as great supporting characters, this laugh-a-minute, pee-in-your-pants comedy is one of the best of Abbott and Costello's Comedy Thrillers.
That's a kid's game!Costello: Not the way I play it!And of course, Lou's dance with Joan Davis, which in my opinion is the funniest gag in the entirety of the film.
I would even go as far as saying "Hold That Ghost" is better than the later & more legendary "Meet Frankenstein" movie.I wonder if it's mere coincidence that my 2 favorite Bud and Lou features are both "Scare Comedies"--meaning Lou Costello was given ample room to display his great scare reactions, such as the classic "moving candle" routine or the great "changing rooms" scene.
Watching those 2 together in this film, it only baffles me that Joan wasn't brought back for more A & C pictures.If you like Abbott and Costello, then you will definitely enjoy "Ghost" and it's not bogged down with too many of the singing and dancing numbers which would weigh down some of their earlier features.10 stars.
Abbott & Costello by now a huge draw found more fame by doing the old dark house style film, a good back up cast helps the boys to keep running on full gas throughout the picture..
Abbott & Costello play gas station attendants Chuck Murray & Ferdinand Jones, who inherit the Forrester's Club, an old disused lodge after the gangster they are with(Moose Matson) dies.
The best cast of all their films as well, and the musical numbers of both Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters are actually not out of place for once; in fact they are pretty good!
This was one of THE biggest money-makers for A&C...and, rightfully so!I must repectfully disagree with the other reviewer -- being an Andrews Sisters & Ted Lewis fan, it was GREAT seeing them as living, human people....as opposed to scratchy voices on an old 78 rpm record!This film contains many "classic" A&C bits....the famous "moving candle", Costello drinking the water, using his tie!
It stars Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Richard Carlson, Joan Davis, Mischa Auer, Evelyn Ankers, and Marc Lawrence.
The Andrews Sisters are slightly less intolerable, but neither act adds anything to the plot.Also working at the nightclub are relief waiters Chuck (Bud Abbott) and Ferdie (Lou Costello), who are quickly fired for unprofessional behaviour but who soon find jobs at a service station (that, for some strange reason, seems to be named after it's newest employees).
As he dies, the gangster drops his last will and testament that stipulates that those who are with him when he croaks will be his beneficiaries, which leaves Chuck and Ferdie the proud new owners of a dilapidated inn.Travelling to inspect their inheritence on a stormy night, the inn's proud new owners find themselves providing shelter for several other travellers (played by Richard Carlson, Marc Lawrence, Joan Davis and Evelyn Ankers), unaware that Moose Matson's thugs are also in the building searching for their boss's hidden fortune.This set up allows for lots of routine haunted house shenanigans, complete with creepy cobwebby corridors, secret rooms and hidden dangers, and for its stars to run through their comedic routines, both slapstick and verbal, Abbot the stoic straight man and Costello the nervous bumbling fool.
Even Costello's much touted dance scene with Joan Davis left me distinctly unimpressed.The lovely Evelyn Ankers is the film's one shining light amidst all of the gloomy old dark house nonsense: extremely easy on the eye, her radiance makes up somewhat for the weak humour and predictability of the script.The film closes with the good guys finding the hidden fortune.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello bicker and shout at each other throughout this tepid haunted house comedy.
Good supporting cast includes the Andrews Sisters, Richard Carlson and Joan Davis.
HOLD THAT GHOST (1941) *** Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Joan Davis.
Hold that ghost (1941)Abbott and Costello, in their prime, inherit supposedly haunted house.
The film style differs somewhat from the military based films in that Abbott and Costello stay away from the skit routines and go more for the sight gags and one liners.In the story, Chuck Murray (Bud) and Ferdie Jones (Lou) inherit an abandoned inn from mobster Moose Matson; as stated in the will, they were with Moose at the time of his demise.
All of this serves as the basic premise for Bud and Lou to deliver their zany antics in what turns out to be a haunted house, replete with a dead body, levitating candles and observing ghosts.Adding to the fun of the film is Joan Davis, a wonderful foil for Lou's character who has just the right blend of good looks and snappy attitude.
As always, The Andrews Sisters are delightfully entertaining, though not as animated as in the Service films.After 1941's "Hold That Ghost", Abbott and Costello didn't venture into another horror type film until 1948's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", possibly their best comedy and my personal favorite by the boys.
The original ending was dumped (Bud and Lou run a posh sanitarium for the very rich, with Joan Davis as the staff dietitian) in favor of a musical finale and the nightclub prologue was added so that the film could showcase the Andrews Sisters as well as Ted Lewis.COMMENT: One of Abbott and Costello's finest achievements, this unusual story offers plenty of laughs, gags, japes and fun. |
tt0424095 | Flushed Away | Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) is an upper class pet rat who makes his home in a posh Kensington flat. While his owners are away on holiday, Roddy plays around the house. A common sewer rat named Sid (Shane Richie) comes spewing out of the sink and decides to stay, especially as England are playing against Germany in the World Cup final. Roddy schemes to get rid of Sid by luring him into the "jacuzzi", which is actually the toilet. Sid isn't fooled at all and instead throws Roddy in and flushes him away into the sewer. There, Roddy discovers a city resembling London made out of various bits of junk, and meets Rita Malone (Kate Winslet), an enterprising scavenger rat who works the drains in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Rita despises Roddy initially, but ends up taking him along, while her arch enemy The Toad (Ian McKellen) sends his rat henchmen, Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), after her because she had stolen back her father's prized ruby a long time ago. The Toad loathes all rodents to the point of hateful obsession. He plans to have them frozen with liquid nitrogen inside an icemaker. The pair escape, and Rita takes a unique electrical cable that, unknown to everyone but the Toad, is required to control the floodgates.
Roddy finds that the ruby is a fake and breaks it in front of Rita, enraging her, for she cannot now get the money she needs for her large family. Roddy offers her a real ruby if she takes him back to Kensington. Accepting the offer, the pair first stop to visit her family before setting off. During Roddy's stay, he overhears a conversation that causes him to think that Rita had double-crossed him, so he steals the Jammy Dodger. When Rita catches up to him, she is able to clear up the misunderstanding. The pair evade Spike and Whitey pursuing in a remote-controlled toy boat, with Thimblenose Ted and others on eggbeater jet skis. During this scene, Roddy and Rita share a quick love moment. Incensed at his minions’ repeated failures, The Toad sends for his French cousin; an infamous, if somewhat laid back, mercenary known as Le Frog (Jean Reno). During this scene, it is revealed that The Toad was once Prince Charles' pet, but was replaced by a pet rat, and subsequently flushed down a toilet. Le Frog and his subordinates intercept the duo and retrieve the cable, but Roddy and Rita use a plastic bag to lift themselves out of the sewer (snatching away the cable during the ascent) and get Roddy home, though the Jammy Dodger is destroyed.
Back home, Roddy pays Rita the promised ruby and an emerald, then proceeds to show her around his house. She at first believes he has family in the home, but noticing his cage, she realises he's a pet. Roddy tries to pass Sid off as his brother, but Sid and Rita know each other. Rita tries to persuade Roddy to come with her, but he is too proud to admit that he is lonely. By now, they have fallen in love but have not told each other their feelings. She departs, both of them broken-hearted, but is soon captured by The Toad. Talking to Sid about half-time, Roddy pieces together The Toad's plan: to open the gates during halftime of the World Cup, when all the humans will most likely be using their toilets, causing a great flood and drowning the rats and their underground city in sewage. He can then use the depopulated city as a home for his own tadpole offspring. He gives Sid his cushy position and has him flush him back to the sewers to find Rita and save the city. Together, they defeat The Toad and freeze the wave of sewage generated by the flushing of countless toilets during half-time with liquid nitrogen before it drowns the entire rat population.
Rita and Roddy build the Jammy Dodger Mark Two and set off in her with Rita's entire brood. A newspaper article reveals England had lost on penalties. Later while the credits start, Roddy's former owner Tabitha comes back with a new pet cat, which scares Sid. | psychedelic, entertaining, romantic | train | wikipedia | Maybe it did, to begin with, and the start is just a tad slow, but it soon picks up speed and the jokes, verbal and visual, just keep coming.Like the best family films, Flushed Away appeals to audiences of all ages, but the very young might find it a bit long.
(How often do you find references to Kafka in an animated feature, after all?) What I liked best about this movie was that Aardman stayed true to its roots of making stop-motion films.
Hugh Jackman is everywhere these days, from reprising his iconic Wolverine role in summer blockbuster X3, to starring twice alongside Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen's Scoop and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, and now, just lending his voice to a lead character in the animated film Flushed Away, co-starring his summer blockbuster star Sir Ian McKellen.
Yes, this is produced by the same studio, Aardman Animations, in association with Dreamworks, and it is no wonder that the animation, although computer generated, maintained a very clay like look and feel, as well as character designs bearing similar resemblance in style to W&G.The story is simple enough, yet adequately satisfying by the time the end credits roll.
Supporting or interfering in his quest are characters like Rita (Kate Winslet), The Toad (Ian McKellen), French Le Frog (Jean Reno), and rat minions Whitey (Bill Nighy) and Spike (Andy Serkis).
It doesn't take long before both Roddy and Rita are wanted by the whole frog mob
When movies like Cars or Over the Hedge get more and more photo realistic, Flushed Away puts an emphasis on fun and visual comedy.
The story is fresh and funny and leads to a nice finale involving an important soccer match.What makes Flushed Away succeed for sure are all the great characters.
Though Aardman Animations don't make a huge load of movies, at least what they do make is bloody good, and this lived up to the high reputations it set itself.This film was so much more than just rats getting flushed down toilets - it was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen.
FLUSHED AWAY (2006) is an adventure tale about a pet rat from a posh London neighborhood who is flushed out of his home and into the sewers, where he discovers a thriving rat city.Hugh Jackman voices Roddy, the rat from "up top" who doesn't realize how lonely he is until he gets a taste of life in the outside world.
Roddy hopes Rita can help him get home, but his bumbling gets her into trouble with the sinister Toad (voiced deliciously by Sir Ian McKellen).FLUSHED AWAY is a film from the British-based Aardman Studios (of Wallace & Gromit fame).
Released through Dreamworks Animation, it is a rare foray for Aardman into the realm of feature-length computer animation, which is stylized to approximate the studio's signature stop-motion aesthetic (particularly with the staccato mouth movements).The animation in the opening scene at Roddy's house seems well below the industry standard, surprisingly poor for a major studio release in 2006, but the film looks better once the action moves to the sewers.Any shortcomings in the animation are easily overlooked because the film is so creative and so much fun.
(The mime gag is comedic genius.) The singing slugs provide well-timed comic relief, and are much funnier (in an oddball way) than the popular comic relief minions of DESPICABLE ME (2010).Very much a British film, the action is set in London around the hoopla of the soccer World Cup. The Toad has a collection of Royal Family memorabilia and even has a tragic personal history with Prince Charles.
The full implications of the premise are glossed over to make for a more stomachable film, though there are a couple gross-out gags that the filmmakers couldn't pass up.With so many wonderful characters (in addition to those mentioned, Andy Serkis and an almost unrecognizable Bill Nighy voice the Toad's odd couple rat henchmen to hilarious effect), some truly great character animation (the Toad and the bouncy frogs in particular), such a brilliant sense of humor, and an adventure story that is both exciting and full of heart, FLUSHED AWAY is an entertaining flick.
The main reason being is because it is British, and we all know that British comedy is far more witty, intelligent and funnier than American humor.Flushed Away centers around a rat named Roddy (voice by Hugh Jackman) who is a pet to a very wealthy family in Kensington.
Sid takes the opportunity to flush Roddy down the toilet, leaving him stranded in Ratropolis, an underground sewer city.Roddy soon gets caught up in the life of Rita the rat (voice by Kate Winslet) and an amusing love/hate relationship ensues.Flushed Away is made by Aardman who brought us Wallace and Gromit, and DreamWorks who brought us the Shrek films, it's no wonder the film is so hilarious.
You wondered at first if the story would run out of steam & fall flat, like Austin Powers: Goldmember, but the hectic pace kept going strong with both action & comedy at full throttle the whole way.When you have tripe like "Happy Feet" which follow the same tired old clichés over & over again, cloyingly sweet with fake sentiment, this film is a refreshing change.Finally, again for the UK fans, note that Dick Clement & Ian LeFrenais helped with the script have been one of the main stays of comedy writing in the UK for over 4 decades (The Likely Lads/Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads, Porridge/Going Straight, Not Only...But Also, The Dick Emery Show, The Tracy Ullman Show etc etc)Also note that owners of the last Ardmaaan DVD (The Curse of the Wererabbit) got a glimpse of Flushed Away, where the characters of Roddy & Rita were clearly identified as rats.
As he is searching for a way home, he meets Rita, a rat who runs a river boat, and gets caught in her run from The Toad.If you like Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, you will love it.It is wacky and silly, but great.
This animated film about a rich but lonely rat named Roddy (Hugh Jackman) who gets flushed down the toilet by a sewer rat and ends up finding love and saving the rat world while trying to make his way back home had odd British and American flavors not completely weaved together.
An American Animated Action film with British wit, it tried and had a few stand out bits, but wasn't memorable in the end.This movie is like trifle, made with jello cake.
Flushed Away sees Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman Animation (in cohorts with Dreamworks) making the transition from plasticene stop-motion to CGI in order to tell the tale of Roddy, a pampered pet rat who struggles to cope with sewer life after being flushed down a toilet.Unfortunately, although the plasticene quirkiness of Nick Park's style is digitally emulated to some degree of success, the film is ultimately let down by a weak plot, charmless characters, a rushed approach to the storytelling, and a distinct lack of decent laughs.
Even the singing slugs, the best things in the film, aren't entirely original, being highly reminiscent of the three musical mice from Babe.The comedy mainly consists of toilet humour and visual gags, with references to many other films thrown in for good measure, but everything is so scatter-shot that much of these jokes will be missed on the first (and probably only, if the viewer has any sense) viewing.Considering Flushed Away has come from the combined talents that gave us the brilliant Curse Of The Wererabbit and the mighty Shrek, one can only come away feeling very disappointed indeed..
The voice acting and animation are first rate, but more attention to the script would have meant a lot here.Hugh Jackman (Roddy), Kate Winslet (lovely Rita), Sir Ian McKellan (The evil Toad), Jean Reno (Le Frog) and especially Bill Nighy (Whitey) are all excellent as mice and frogs/toads.
Where Wallace and Gromit's humor was mined from the charm of its characters and the quirk of its story, Flushed Away steals laughs from unexpected sound bytes and witty inside jokes with the adults.
While the animation was great and the movie had terrific laughs and fun moments, Flushed Away seemed like just another typical computer animation flick.Rody is an indoor pet rat that is pampered like crazy, he's used to his life of luxury.
Aardman, the company that created Chicken Run, and Wallace and Gromit, comes with a new film, which is bursting with originality and clever ideas all around, but with some lagging humor and a few overplayed jokes, it doesn't quite feel the same as when it was clay.The story is about a rodent named Roddy (Hugh Jackman) who finds that when the cats are away, the mice will play, and having fun has never been so good, until a fat rat Sid (Shane Richie) intrudes, and sends Roddy flushed away.
Now that Roddy has experienced the good life, he learns how down and dirty the world beneath him is, and falls accidentally into a plot with a female rodent Rita (Kate Winslet) an evil Toad (Sir Ian Mckellen) and a journey home that will prove to be difficult, but friendship will lead the way.The movie is all in all fantastic, it's simple, easy to look at and overall fun.
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Bill Nygh, Jean Reno.Aardman animation has a reputation for making great movies and shorts (Wallace and Grommit, Chicken Run) and this movie was no exception.
He must join forces with Rita (voice of Kate Winslet), skipper of a garbage scow, to evade the minions of amphibian underworld kingpin The Toad (voice of Sir Ian McKellen)."Flushed Away" is both a verbal and a visual delight, with an engaging, consistently amusing script and those wonderful, unique Aardman character designs.
While Flushed Away may be more forgetful than Aardman's previous work, you will enjoy the ride while it lasts, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good family film.
I was a bit hesitant at first, when seeing Flushed Away last night, but I found it clearly bested anything animated I've seen for quite a while, on par with Finding Nemo, actually!The story develops well, the actors chosen for the English voices are among my favourites, and there is little to comment when it comes to the animation - amazingly close to clay figures, and very Aardman!
The jokes are extremely visual, which isn't cheap i don't think, i think its fantastic, and music was a big input to the comedy factor of this film.The characters were great, with lovely little fill in ones like the slugs, the french frogs, and more.
It has Aardman's trademark British Humor and something unlike Aardman films: Computer animation and stop animation fused together.The Basic Overview: Roddy (Hugh Jackman, also in Happy Feet), a handsome mouse living in a penthouse, but with no real friends, is repulsed when a sewer rat named Sid intrudes into his home and when Roddy tries to flush him back, Sid gets the last laugh and Roddy is "Flushed Away" into a sewer town where a young lady mouse named Rita (Kate Winslet) captains the Jammy Dodger and lives with her many siblings, parents and Grandmother (Who is an avid fan of Tom Jones).
In this regard, Flushed Away fills the bill more than adequately.First, Aardman is known for the wonderful claymation work done in Wallace and Gromit as well as Chicken Run. This world, done in CGI, in far more complex - but with a good story, the mechanism of telling should not matter - and the story here is quite good, and the movie moves at a very fast clip, only slowing on occasion.Good humor bits - poking at the national stereotypes - British and French primarily - as well as the slugs, who provide excellent comic relief as well as sound effects.Overall, a nice film is you need a break - I don't know if it's suitable for the very young ones, but preteens and early teenagers should LOVE it, and any adults who happen by as well..
In addition to 'What's New Pussycat?,' other highlights of the soundtrack were 'Dancing By Myself' by Billy Idol and Generation X, the backing track of Jet's 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl?' that plays as Roddy makes his way to the sewer, 'Bohemian Like You' by Dandy Warhols and, of course, the brief musical numbers by the singing slugs, especially 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and 'Mr Lonely.' I also enjoyed spotting the pop culture references to James Bond (Roddy watching a fictional Bond-style movie called 'Die Again Tomorrow'), 'Finding Nemo' (the fish asking Roddy if he's seen his dad) and 'Mary Poppins' (a female rat selling fly food in a similar manner to the bird lady).Overall, this may not be Dreamworks's or Aardman's best but it has an original story, a suitable title, some clever links, a rocking soundtrack and some funny moments.
you will really love this film.what a riot it was.it's from Dreamworks and Aardman Entertainment,the same people behind Wallace and Gromit.it's hysterically funny and fast paced and exciting.i loved Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of The Wererabbit,but i thought this movie was even funnier.it's a bit more risqué with the humour,which adults will pick up on,and kids will of course love it.a lot of the humour is very cheeky.there is a bit of rude,and crude humour here.not only is the film funny,it also looks very good,technically.the choice of actors for the voices was brilliant.the whole thing is just so well done.for me,Flushed Away is a 10/10.
'Flushed Away (2006),' a CGI-animated film, was the result of a collaboration between Dreamworks Animation and Aardman Animations, whose previous successes include 'Chicken Run (2000)' and the various 'Wallace and Gromit' adventures.
The film concerns the underground adventures of urbane pet rat Roddy St. James (voiced by Hugh Jackman), who is flushed down the toilet and must battle countless hurdles to return to the lonely home that he loves.
After fatefully meeting a vivacious female rat, Rita Malone (Kate Winslet), the two rodents decide to help each other succeed in their respective goals, but only if they can escape the clutches of the wicked Toad (Ian McKellen) and his witless cronies (including Andy Serkis and Bill Nighy, as well as Jean Reno as a French mercenary ninja frog).Though the animators have done a good job at crafting the characters to resemble stop-motion models, I can't deny that much of the charm of Aardman's previous films is unfortunately lost.
FLUSHED AWAY (2006) *** (VOICES OF: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Shane Richie, Kathy Burke, David Suchet, Miriam Margolyes) Fun and funny animated comedy about a pampered pet rat named Roddy (Jackman having a ball) who is literally flushed down the family toilet and discovers a subterranean world populated by all forms of vermin including the tomboy-ish Rita (Winslet also excelling at pleasing herself), a scavenger who is attempting to help her extended nuclear family's debt to the villainous underworld kingpin , The Toad (McKellen, relishingly good) and his henchmen Whitey and Spike (Nighy and Serkis, respectively).
there is so much to recommend about this film.From the opening scenes in which Hugh Jackman finally gets to play James Bond through to the chase sequences in the underground waterways of London Flushed Away represents the love,energy and British wit of Aardman animation.There are a number of moments which caused this adult reviewer to laugh out loud..including singing snails, Sir Ian McKellen's homage to Larry Grayson and a French mime artist on a cellphone..literally.The cast are all excellent with Hugh Jackman almost recognisable as the voice of Roddy and Jean Reno displaying comic talents that I would never have guessed at ( especially after the Pink Panther).There are so many jokes and ideas tucked away that you need to see the movie at least twice to take them all in.Genius.
this was a wonderful film about a lonely but content pet rat (voiced by Hugh Jackman) who gets flushed down the toilet of his posh Kensington home, only to find love and his true identity in the British sewers.
Flushed Away is a great animated film.
Flushed Away is a film made by Aardaman and is distributed by DreamWorks Animation and features the voices of Hugh Jackman,Kate Winslet and Shane Richie.
yet Roddy, after meeting Rita's large welfare family, feels the strange need to help her out in return, and maybe he isn't as happy living "up top" as he thought he was...Okay, the title is Flushed Away, and the film involves sewers, so of course there's some mild crude humor but nothing that makes it too rude to enjoy.
Nearly every character has something to like about them, there are various funny moments that don't rely on gross jokes to be entertaining, and the animation, especially of the rat-populated sewer London, obviously took a lot of work.
This story goes that a rat called Roddy has his house invaded by another rat and is flushed away down the toilet and there he meets the girl of his dreams,singing slugs,an evil frog,a ninja French frog and lots more humorous characters.
Roddy tries to trick the sewer rat into the toilet, but instead he himself is 'flushed away', and soon finds himself in an underworld of little critters that looks like a miniature recreation of London above the ground.There he soon meets Kate Winslet voicing Rita, who owns a cool little boat.
But it's all good anyway.At the end of the day, even if Flushed Away seems a bit shorter or rushed compared to other animated features, you've got to see it for what it is: A film that's filled with color and genuine love a rarity in movies these days..
Its best asset is sewer rat/boat captain, Rita (Played by Kate Winselt), who, IMO, should have been the movie's main character instead of Roddy (Hugh Jackman). |
tt0064073 | Beatrice Cenci | Italy, 1599. The entire Cenci family awaits their fates on the morning of their execution for murder. Frequent flashbacks show reason why.Four years earlier: Francesco Cenci (George Wilson) is a rich landowner and nobleman, but is hated by everyone, including his entire family. He's a vicious, conniving, cynical tyrant of the household and a domestic abuser to his wife and children. He also has made numerous enemies within the close-knit halls of the Catholic Church and the state. Francesco's beautiful teenage daughter, Beatrice (Adrienne Laurussa), confides in her mother that intends to take the cloth and enter a convent, as much to escape from her father as for spiritual reasons. When Francesco hears about this, he is enraged and reacts by imprisoning Beatrice in the bowels of the Cenci castle, observing that there is little difference between dungeon and cloister.Flashing forward back to the present, it is announced that the Cenci patriarch has been killed in a fall from the battlements, an accident which looks suspiciously like murder. Suspicion closes around Beatrice's lover Olimpio (Tomas Milian), who is taken into custody and brutally tortured for information about the slaying.Flashing back in time, Beatrice is released from her father's dungeon after nearly a year in solitary confinment by Francesco to celebrate news that her two older brothers where killed in war. Beatrice defies the atmosphere the revelry demanded by her abrasive and callous father and attends the party wearing a black funeral dress. A little later, Francisco confronts Beatrice in an upstairs bedroom, and the specter of incest emerges. Beatrice's father drunkenly rips off his daughters black dress and stands swaying over her, dripping sweat into Beatrices exposed midriff. It is finally revealed the motive for Francesco's death: he was raping his grieving daughter.Beatrice changes drastically after this horror. She coerces her besotted servant, Olimpio, with sexual favors, and embroils him in her desire for revenge. Olimpio is told to seek the assistantce of the local bandit, Catalano (Pedro Sanchez) to exact revenge on her father. Olimpio is not told for what reason he is planning the murder; it is enough for him that his lady lover requires it. When the time comes as Francesco Cenci sleeps, the bandit ducks out, revealing that he is a killer "in reputation only." Olimpio, with a knife raised to stab Francesco, also suddenly backs out saying that he cannot stomach the task of killing. In desperation, Beatrice snatches the knife from Olimpio, and does the deed herself, stabbing her father in the eye, while Olimpio restrains the waking victim before he expires.Beatrice is vengefully aglow, but Olimpio is stricken with guilt, and wipes his bloody hands on the bedstead. Beatrice calls in her stepmother to help her clean up the mess and gets her little brother (Antonio Casagrande) to help her carry the dead Francesco onto the ramparts of the castle to throw him off to make it look like an accident. Beatrice uses their silent compliance to ensure future denials.Flashing forward back to the present, the whole Cenci family is implicated in the murder either as participants or accessories and under Church law, they are condemned to death. The bandit Catalano is murdered by soldiers when he attempts to escape after he attempts to kill one soldier on horseback and in return, is lanced to death. Cardinal Lanciani (Raymond Pellegrin) attempts to wring a statement implicated Beatrice from Olimpio, who has been repeatedly tortured to extract his confession about the Cenci family's involvment. But Olimpio maintains Beatrice's innocence in the crime until he dies from his wounds. The planned execution begins causing great unrest among the people of Rome who feel that Beatrice was justified in killing her father who besmirched her honor. The Pope decides to absolve Beatrice Cenci of her sins but only after she is beheaded along with the rest of her family. He belives that an absolution will clear the air by making Beatrice a martyr. This horrendous duplicity exposed, the movie ends as Beatrice and the rest of her family are led out of their cells into the prison courtyard for their execution. | murder, flashback | train | imdb | Fulci's Best Non Horror Movie.
A terrificly executed period piece from the Godfather of Gore, Beatrice Cenci(1969) is a masterpiece of tragic beauty.
This movie is a contradiction to the accusation of Fulci as a misogynist from his later films.
Adrienne LaRussa does a nice job in conveying the almost gentle nature of the female protagonist.
George Wilson as the father does a good job in portraying someone truly evil.
Cries of death to the director were shouted in a theatre due to the film's anti-catholic nature.The Catholic church is presented in the film with absolute disdain.
In fact, they are seen as greedy and hypocritical.
Beatrice Cenci(1969), along with The Witchfinder General(1968) are probably the best films dealing with the late middle ages.
The direction is nearly perfect, and the story is well done.
The film revolves around a labyrinth of flashbacks in the style of Reservoir Dogs(1992).
The main source of influence seems to been The play version of The Cenci by Artoud, Antonin as well as the five act play by Percelly Shelly.There are two films that Beatrice Cenci(1969) compares with.
One film is Don't Torture A Duckling(1972) which also deals with Catholic repression.
Another film is The Devil's Honey(1986) which deals deals with a woman's urge to be an independant woman.
Beatrice Cenci(1969) is not only overlooked by Fulci supporters but by Fulci distractors as well.
This movie shows that Fulci was capable of more ambigious and personal films then the many ones that he direct in his career(Its too bad as he had the talent that would have made him one of the best directors of his generation in Italy)..
A simple soldier shouldn't be too suspicious..
Those expecting a typical horror movie will be disappointed, as the horror depicted here is the Catholic Church's use of torture in the Middle Ages, and their greed.
Fulci doesn't flinch from presenting the evil that was the church in that time.Those who do not like period pieces may find this film dull, but Fulci does a great job producing a work that is both beautiful and interesting.Adrienne Larussa was beautiful and did a very good job as the title character.
Her father, played by Georges Wilson, was an evil man who kept her locked up.
Wilson does a very good job portraying someone you really want to see die.You have to love a strong determined woman.
Even in the face of torture by the church, she remained strong.Definitely not a movie for faithful Catholics..
Flesh and blood.
I do not go much for Fulci's horror movies which remain very inferior,IMHO, to those of his Italian colleagues (Dario Argento and Mario Bava).But this one ,by keeping the horror sequences to the minimum (the tortures scenes do not last long fortunately),is eminently commendable.The cast includes two French actors :one of them ,Georges Wilson ,a very earnest stage thespian ,and the father of Lambert Wilson,is very unexpected here ,and his part of the violent perverse noble who rejoices cause two of his sons are dead so he won't have to feed them anymore and who imprisons his daughter in a dungeon is quite impressive .The other French actor is Raymond Pellegrin in a supporting role.Adrienne Larusso is incredibly beautiful as Beatrice Cenci and Thomas Milian gives a restrained effective performance.The plot is not easy to catch up with ,because the director blends present and past without the traditional codes .No transition most of the time.Besides ,there are many characters ,and many of them are underwritten (Beatrice's brother for instance)It's a film of blood and fury,the monsters are everywhere :Francesco Cenci is terrifying but so is the Holy Office whose goal is to appropriate the Cenci's fortune.Like this?try these....Flesh and blood (Paul Verhoeven,1985)The devils (Ken Russel,1970)La monaca di Monza (ERIPRANDO Visconti,1968).
Fulci's jab at the Catholic Church Part One. This is further evidence that Lucio Fulci was a man of many talents before becoming bitter at diminishing budgets and the pigeonholing of his skills into gory horror.
Here, Fulci gives us a historical drama about the corruption of the Catholic church (and not for the last time!) as well as the hypocrisy of Roman nobility, It's gory and horrible too, but in a dramatic, historical way!Beatrice Cenci is the daughter of Francesco Cenci, a Roman nobleman whom we first see feeding a man to a pack of dogs.
He's a nasty bastard all right, and has done something to offend the current Pope and now has to make amends by giving up a third of his wealth.
His children all hate him, even Beatrice, who has petitioned the Pope behind his back in order to enter the church as a nun.
This breaks the heart of her lover, Vassal Tomas Milian, but he still remains loyal and goes with her wishes.
However, while celebrating the death by smallpox of his two eldest sons(!), Francesco finds out about Beatrice wanting to join the church and arranges instead to keep her captive in the basement of his tower until he dies
which seems to happen almost immediately after he says that.
As the film jumps back and forth on the timeline, we don't get to see what happened right away, which allows the Catholic Church to hire medieval Colombo to sort the mystery out!
Should that be D'catolic choich?Yes, the film is gory and full of violence and torture, but I think this only goes to show how awful human beings actually are and how corrupt the Catholic Church were back then.
Folks are put on racks, burned with tongs, and one character foreshadows many a future Fulci film by having a huge nail rammed into his eye.
That said, the film is not cheap looking and it's all deadly serious.
Everything looks exactly like a Fulci film too – no matter how cheap his films became in the late eighties, they still retained that certain look.
Tomas Milian stands out here as the repressed, subdued servant which had me worrying if he would ever do his 'covered in filth, screaming' bit (it happens about an hour in).
It's depressing stuff, but it's also interesting to see these directors working in different fields.
I'm not watching any of his comedies however, although I do like the title The Senator Liked Woman's Bottoms..
Interesting for Fulci fans but that's about it!.
Lucio Fulci.
Just hearing the name will make most cult cinema fans think of blood and gore - and for good reason since the great director was responsible for some of the best gory highlights ever made, and for that reason; he's just about the last director you would expect to make a period drama.
Fulci did have a varied career, making films in many of Italy's most famous genres, from westerns and Polizi flicks to Giallo and the blood and gore films with which he made his name...however, it would seem that period dramas were not his thing as Beatrice Cenci will not feature in my list of favourite Fulci flicks!
The plot is actually a decent base for a film and is set in 16th Century Italy.
The title character, Beatrice Cenci, is the daughter of a rich landowner named Francesco Cenci.
Francesco is a cruel man who keeps his daughter locked up in a room and tortures her.
Naturally, she's not best pleased at this arrangement and since she's not the only one who dislikes her father, she doesn't have a hard time getting some other people to help her murder him.I have to admit, part of the reason why I didn't like this film is because I'm not a fan of period dramas.
Naturally, my only reason for watching this is because I'm a big Fulci fan and I'll watch anything that the director's name is attached to, even if it is something from a genre I have no love for.
Even though I found the film rather dull, I do have to admire the great director's work on it.
He may be best known for his gore flicks, but Fulci's talent came out best in his earlier films and here he creates a great atmosphere and manages to pull good performances out of his cast.
Aside from Fulci at the helm, this film also features another great cult luminary in an early role, in the form of the always watchable Tomas Milian.
He is joined by Adrienne Larussa who takes the title role and does a good job with it.
Despite the fact that this is a departure from what Fulci is best known for, it's not completely devoid of the elements that won him his fan base as the film does feature some rather nasty torture scenes.
Overall, I can respect the craftsmanship on this film but I won't pretend to like it!
Recommended to hardcore Fulci fans only..
One of Lucio Fulci's most underrated and unjustly neglected films.
Lucio Fulci achieved his greatest enduring cult popularity with his gruesome and moody horror splatter pictures, but was actually a much more versatile and accomplished director than he usually gets credit for being.
This historical drama stands out as a sterling example of Fulci's remarkable cinematic talents: Lavishly mounted on a substantial budget, it manages to be genuinely poignant and gripping without ever becoming too sappy or melodramatic.
Fulci handles the stark and unsentimental telling of this shocking real life tragedy with admirable skill and assurance; he delivers a thoroughly convincing and unromantic evocation of the harsh 16th century period setting along with a properly grim'n'gritty atmosphere and trademark startling moments of brutal violence and sadistic torture.
Adrienne Larussa gives a strong and touching performance as Beatrice Cenci, a gentle, yet proud and resilient teenager who plotted with her faithful servant lover Olimpio (the always excellent Tomas Milian) to kill her cruel and abusive nobleman father Don Francesco Cenci (superbly played to the hateful hilt by Georges Wilson).
Mavie is likewise sound as Beatrice's long-suffering stepmother Lucrezia and Ignazio Spalla contributes an amusing turn as gross fat slob bandit Catalano.
Erco Menczer's sumptuous cinematography gives the movie an impressively lush and expansive look.
The grand and melodic score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino and Silvano Spadaccino rates as another major asset.
But it's Fulci's inspired direction and the bold vehement anti-Catholic stance that really brings a certain raw and direct power to the film.
Well worth seeing. |
tt0066450 | They Call Me Mister Tibbs! | A prostitute is yelling a man (the murderer is unseen), suddenly he chokes her and hits her on the head with the vase. The jainitor (Mealie) discovers the body and reports to the landlord, Rice Weedon.Det. Lieut. Virgil Tibbs of the San Francisco homicide squad receives an anonymous phone call (Rice Weedon) accusing his close friend, community activist Rev. Logan Sharpe, of murdering a prostitute, Joy Sturges. The detective questions the clergyman, who admits having visited the victim to bestow pastoral counsel. Other suspects include Rice Weedon, a landlord, pimp, and drug dealer, and Woody Garfield, the victim's protector. Tibbs believe Weedon is the prostitute murderer because his suspicion when he shoots in self-defense doing the chase. Again confronted by Tibbs, Sharpe confesses his guilt, revealing that the prostitute had mocked his sexual prowess, and begging Tibbs to defer arrest until after a referendum on a community control issue Sharpe supports. When the officer refuses, the activist throws himself under a passing truck. | neo noir, murder, blaxploitation, melodrama | train | imdb | null |
tt2043757 | 2-Headed Shark Attack | A group of friends wakeboarding are attacked and eaten by a two-headed shark. Later, a group of 23 people are sailing on a ship, called the Sea King, led by professor and captain Franklin Babish, his co-captain Laura, and his wife, Anne, when the ship hits a dead shark, killed by a two-headed one. The dead shark becomes lodged and stuck in the ship’s propeller. Soon after, the two-headed shark attacks and eats it, damaging the ship, breaking the radio antenna, preventing Laura from calling for help, and causing the ship to take on water.
Kate notices an island nearby and Franklin decides to search for scrap metal there to help repair the ship. Laura drives the ship closer to the island, and Franklin with the students travel to it, while Anne, Laura, Han, and Dikilla remain on the ship. Franklin and the students set out on the search and explore the island. Laura enters the water to repair the ship, but is attacked and ripped apart by the shark. Franklin and the students find an abandoned village and continue their search.
Kirk convinces Haley and Alison to go swimming with him and they enter the water, only to be eaten by the shark. Kate tells Kirsten she is afraid of water due to bad experience with the shark. Kirsten thought it was funny that she's afraid of water yet she was on a ship. After this Kate and Kirsten became friends. The group finds two speedboats and decides to fix them. The island begins to collapse and sink into the ocean and an earthquake hits. Franklin falls and injures his leg. Dana takes off her shirt and wraps his leg around. Jeff and Mike take Franklin to the ship where Anne tends to him. Han, and Dikilla discover Laura's remains in the water and try to warn the others. Jeff and Mike also discover Laura's hand in the water before the shark attacks them and bites off Jeff's arm. They attempt to swim back to the ship, but both are ultimately eaten.
Kate, Dana, Kirsten, and Paul manage to fix the boats, while Cole, Ryan, Jamie, and Alex find a gasoline to fuel them. They then jump in one of the boats and drive away, prompting Kate, Paul, and Dana to follow them in the other boat. Franklin and Anne try to warn them about the shark. The boats race each other until the shark attacks Cole's boat, causing Ryan to fall into the water. The shark plays with him and tears him apart. Paul realizes the shark is drawn to Cole's boat as it has a bigger engine. Cole jumps off the boat, leaving Jamie and Alex behind. Shark capsizes their boat and eats them both. Kate, Dana, Paul, and Cole reach the island, and Kate furiously confronts and hits Cole for letting Jamie, Ryan and Alex die.
Anne, Franklin, Han, and Dikilla abandon the ship and arrive at the island. Another earthquake hits and the group realizes that the island is sinking. Now that it is more urgent to escape, the group decides to hook up a generator to metal poles and place them in the water to distract the shark with electricity while Kate and Cole travel to the ship and repair it. The plan works until the shark attacks the poles, knocks Han and Dikilla into the water and then eats them before going to the ship. Kate fixes the ship, and Cole drives away without her. Kate swims back to the island. The shark attacks the ship, causing it to sink and send out a distress signal. Cole attempts to escape on a lifeboat, but the shark attacks and eats him anyway as his cell phone's ringing attracted it.
The group panics, as the island continues to sink, and the water closes in around them, prompting everyone to run for their lives. Kristen and Dana become separated from the group, and end up on the dock where the shark jumps out from water and kills and eats them as well. Franklin and Anne too become separated from the group and see a tsunami with a shark inside it coming at the island. They realize that they cannot escape, and are killed by the shark and tsunami as it hits the island, leaving the survivors with very little land. They take shelter in the chapel, but the shark breaks in and eats Lyndsey, Michelle, Liza, and Ethan.
Kate, Paul, and Kirsten escape the chapel, find the gas barrel, and decide to make a last ditch attempt to kill the shark by rigging up the barrel as an explosive. Kate swims out to lure the shark to the barrel, cuts her hand, and drips blood in the water. Shark attacks her and Kate repeatedly stabs it while Paul and Kirsten try to light the fuse, but it won't catch. Kirsten then takes the barrel and swims out with it, pounding on the metal, trying to lure the shark away from Kate and Paul. The shark takes off after her, attacks and begins chewing her up. Kirsten explodes the barrel, killing herself and taking out one of the shark's heads.
Now one-headed shark survives the explosion and turns on Kate and Paul again. Kate notices one of the speedboats nearby, turns it on, and jumps off as the boat heads out to sea, attracting the shark. The shark takes off after the boat and attacks it. The boat explodes, and finally kills the shark (similar to the shark death in Jaws). Kate and Paul crawl out of the water on the remaining part of the island as a helicopter responding to a distress call then comes to save them – the only two survivors of a group of 23. | absurd, psychedelic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0317219 | Cars | The movie begins with two announcers, Bob Cutlass (voice of Bob Costas) and Darrell Cartrip (Darrell Waltrip) preparing for the opening of the Dinoco 400, the final race in the Piston Cup Series, the most famous and prestigious race in the United States. So far this racing season, three racers have emerged as the most likely candidates for the Piston Cup Championship, all three of them tied for the season point's lead-* #43 Strip Weathers, AKA "The King" (Richard Petty; modeled after one of the Petty's real 1970 Plymouth Superbirds), a longtime racing veteran who already has seven Piston Cups to his credit and is rumored to be retiring at the end of the current season.*#86 Chick Hicks, another veteran racer (a 1980s Buick Regal, voiced by Michael Keaton) and a longtime "second banana;" he's spent his entire racing career coming in second behind The King.*#95 Lightning McQueen, a rookie (standard stock car, voiced by Owen Wilson) This is his first year in the racing circuit and his performance has been nothing short of incredible. Speculation is that he might be the first driver to win the Piston Cup, Rookie of the Year, and Dinoco sponsorship in one sweep.Now, the final race of the season- to decide the winner of the Piston Cup- is about to begin!As the race proceeds, Hicks (who is clearly willing to do anything to succeed) sideswipes another car- causing the inevitable multicar pileup. Lightning is barely able to dart through the wreckage and keep up with the lead cars. Then, to cement his hold on the lead, McQueen stays out on the lead lap while everyone else pits. The commentators mention that McQueen has recently fired his third crew chief, offering the explanation that Lightning prefers to work alone.Throughout the race, Lightning refuses to make complete pit stops- taking only a few seconds each lap to refuel. The strategy backfires on the last lap when his tires explode. McQueen makes a valiant effort to get across the line first, but the race ends in an absolute dead heat.Reporters interview Lightning while the judges argue over the result. McQueen repeats again that he is a "one-man show." His pit crew, fed up with Lightning's shoddy treatment, quit in the middle of the interview. Chick and Lightning trade insults until The King comes over to have a word with Lightning. The King tells McQueen that his talent is extraordinary, but his attitude is stupid- Lightning can't win without a good team behind him. Lightning's idea of a good team is Dinoco, the most prestigious sponsor on the racing circuit (and The Kings' current sponsor; Lightning is certain that if he wins the Piston Cup he will be offered the chance at a Dinoco sponsorship.)An announcement regarding the outcome of the race comes over the loudspeakers. Officials declare that a tiebreaker race (between Chick, Lightning and The King) will be held in California next week to determine the championship.Lightning meets with his transporter, Mack (a 1980 Mack Super-Liner truck, voiced by John Ratzenberger) after the announcement. Mack reminds McQueen that he needs to make a personal appearance for his sponsor, Rust-Eze. Lightning films a commercial for Rust-Eze and talks to a group of rusted out vehicles brought to the personal appearance by Rusty & Dusty, heads of the company (voiced by Car Talk hosts and brothers Tom & Ray Magliozzi respectively). McQueen forcibly puts on a good face for the crowd but is obviously unhappy working for a small-time group.On the road with Mack, Lightning is desperate to be the first competitor to arrive at California. He refuses to let Mack stop off and rest, forcing him to drive on through the night. While on Interstate 40, Mack is confronted by a gang of street racers while he is drowsy, who force him onto the shoulder. The vibration from the rumble strips (designed to alert drowsy drivers that they are drifting off the road) accidentally causes a Lightning figurine to land on the button that opens the back door of the truck, and causes the sleeping Lightning to fall out. Lightning, terrified about being lost, desperately rushes to try and find Mack but ends up leaving the highway at the next exit and following a semi that he thinks is Mack but turns out to be a Peterbilt, who rudely tells McQueen to turn on his headlights.While Lightning is speeding, he gets lost in the dark country roads. He passes a police car (Michael Wallis) waiting in a speed trap, who pulls out and chases after Lightning. Lightning pedals for it when he hears the police car backfiring (thinking he is being shot at). Lightning loses control, spinning wildly and becoming entangled in several power lines. He tears through a small town and ends up shredding a large gash down the main street before finally coming to a stop in front of the Sheriff.The next morning, Mack arrives at the track alone and a huge manhunt begins to try and find Lightning McQueen.Lightning wakes up in an impound lot strapped with a parking boot and confronted by a rusted tow truck named Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). Mater tells Lightning that he is in the town of Radiator Springs, a spot just off old U.S. Route 66. The Sheriff shows up to take Lightning to court for his actions.The other citizens of Radiator Springs- Fillmore (George Carlin), who owns a shop selling his own organic fuel; Luigi (Tony Shalhoub) and Guido (Guido Quaroni), who run a tire shop; Ramone (Cheech Marin), who runs a paint and body shop; Flo (Jenifer Lewis), who runs a gas station/cafe; Sarge (Paul Dooley), a Humvee who sells surplus; Lizzie (Katherine Helmond), an antiques dealer; and Red (Joe Ranft), the town's fire truck - have all turned out to demand punishment for Lightning's reckless driving, which caused a large amount of damage to the town.The town's physician and judge, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), arrives to try McQueen's case. At first, Doc is ready to impose serious hard time on the culprit but upon getting a close look at Lightning orders him thrown out of town. A female interrupts the judge's rulings, and Lightning is immediately smitten. But the newcomer, Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt), a 2002 Porsche 911, is the town's attorney. Sally persuades Doc to sentence Lightning to community service and repair the damage to the road. Doc relents, telling Lightning that he will be set free once the road is finished (which at his estimate should take five days).When Mater brings out Bessie, a massive asphalt paving machine, Lightning makes a break for it as soon as his parking boot is undone, leaving Mater to quip that he should have undone the boot after Lightning was hooked up. But Lightning only makes it a few miles out of town before he breaks down. Sally & the Sheriff catch up with him and laugh at his attempt, explaining that they have siphoned Lightning's gas tank.The townsfolk watch as Lightning begins repaving the road. Lightning tries to convince them of his fame in the hopes of being set free. He almost convinces Luigi by mentioning his status as a racecar, but Luigi loses interest soon after when it turns out he only cares about meeting a real Formula One racecar.Lightning, remembering the deal (he goes free when the road is done) hauls the paving machine at full throttle, running down the road and creating an uneven and bumpy finish. The townspeople are insulted by his attitude and his work. Doc challenges Lightning to a race- if Lightning wins, he goes off free. If Doc wins, Lightning has to scape off the current layer of pavement and do the road all over again. Lightning accepts, not seeing the Doc as a threat.At a dirt course on the outskirts, Lightning rockets off the starting line, but Doc doesn't even move. As he speeds into the first turn of the course, Lightning's tires fail on the dirt and he crashes. Doc wins by default. Lightning reluctantly turns to work at scraping up the pavement, grumbling the whole time. Several of the townsfolk offer Lightning their services (Luigi sells tires, Fillmore supplies organic fuel, Ramone offers custom paintjobs, etc.) but Lightning is too frustrated with his situation to accept anything from them.By the next morning, Doc finds that the road is about 1/3 finished. Doc meets with the Sheriff, who confirms that Lightning ran out of asphalt while working and spent the rest of the night trying to make the turn that caused him to wreck the day before. Doc confronts Lightning, suggesting that he "turn right to go left." Lightning, extremely skeptical, tries it, but it backfires and sends him back over the edge of the cliff.Lightning resumes repaving the road when he suffers a slow leak in one tire. Guido begins to fix it, and Luigi explains that Guido dreams of working at a real racetrack pit stop. Sally, impressed by Lightning's work and his effect on the town, offers Lightning a place at the Cozy Cone motel rather than another night at the impound. Lightning can't resist the opportunity to refuse.The Sheriff places Mater in charge of watching Lightning for the next night. Mater takes McQueen out to a remote field, where they go tractor-tipping, which involves creeping up to a tractor while it is sleeping, then startling it, which causes the tractor to rear up on its back wheels. Mater gives a demonstration of it, but is unable to tip more than one tractor at a time. Lightning revs his engine and causes every single tractor to tip over. They are almost caught by Frank, the huge threshing machine who oversees the tractors, and have to speed away.On the way back to town, Mater shows off his skills as "world's best backwards driver" - a talent that stuns Lightning. Mater proclaims Lightning to be his "best friend," and Lightning seems to be genuinely touched by the affection.The next morning, Lightning waits at Doc's garage to get his daily gas ration. While waiting, he wanders into a dusty workshop belonging to Doc and finds several Piston Cup trophies on the floor, and racing memorabilia. A newspaper on the floor answers Lightning's question- Doc is actually the legendary Hudson Hornet, a legendary racecar who still holds the record for most wins in a single season (27 in 1952 alone). But Doc refuses to talk about his racing career. To him, the trophies are "just a bunch of empty cups."Sally takes Lightning on a tour of the surrounding landmarks and explains the history of the town. Route 66 used to be the main transportation road, and Radiator Springs was once a famous stop along U.S. Route 66. Radiator Springs was bypassed when Interstate 40 was constructed in favor of saving ten minutes of travel time. Now the once thriving town is floundering; almost nobody comes through there anymore.Unfortunately, Lightning and Mater's actions of the previous night cause trouble when the tractors start stampeding through the town. As he helps round them back up, Lightning spots Doc on the race course outside of town. Doc speeds through, easily making the turn Lightning couldn't. McQueen confronts Doc about his racing and why (if he's so talented) Doc didn't continue his racing career.Doc finally comes clean: He didn't quit, but the organization forced him into retirement after a terrible wreck forced him to sit out an entire season. When he had the chance to return, the sponsors passed him over to a hotshot rookie just like McQueen.The next day everyone wakes up to find the road has been finished. Lightning now has his chance to leave, but instead chooses to stay behind and accept the services of the townsfolk - including new fuel from Fillmore, tires from Luigi and a new paint scheme from Ramone. As the town celebrates into the night over the completion of their new road, a swarm of reporters and media vehicles swarm in to reclaim McQueen. Before he can explain anything or talk to any of the townsfolk, Lightning is loaded back onto Mack and sent off to California. Sally learns that Doc was the one who alerted the media to Lightning's location and is furious at his actions.Lightning arrives in California and begins preparing for the big race, with Mack serving as his pit crew. The King and Chick Hicks get off to a decent start, but Lightning's memories of Sally and his time in Radiator Springs are interfering with his performance and cause him to lose time.As McQueen tries to pull himself together, Doc's voice comes out on McQueen's radio. He and most of the other Radiator Springs residents have come to encourage Lightning and serve as his pit crew, with Doc serving as crew chief and decked out in his old paint scheme. Cameras in the crowd spot Doc and recognize the legendary Hudson Hornet has come out of retirement.Lightning rockets out of the pit area, desperate to catch up to the others. As the laps wind down, Chick makes contact with Lightning and causes him to spin out. But moments later, Chick is surprised when Lightning zooms passes him, driving backwards. Hicks then tries to force McQueen off the road-causing Lightning to blow a tire. Guido prepares for Lightning's arrival, then completes the fastest pit stop in Piston Cup history by speed-changing all four tires in under four seconds single-handed, shocking the forklifts on Chick's pit crew such that they drop their mustache-shaped grilles. Guido proudly tells off Chick's crew saying "Peet stop!"The three racers are down to the last lap as Lightning pulls into first place. Chick smashes Lightning once again, sending him careening off the track. Lightning, however, takes the lead by turning his tires hard to the right while sliding left and reclaims the lead position.Chick, in a desperate attempt to win, sideswipes The King, sending him flipping multiple times through the air and landing, heavily battered and damaged on the infield. Lightning screeches to a halt when he sees the King's state, remembering what happened to Doc. Since Lightning stopped just before the finish line, Chick Hicks speeds across for first place. Lightning goes back and pushes the King the rest of the way to the finish line, letting the famous competitor finish his last race with dignity. Lightning tells the King that the Piston is "Just an empty cup," echoing Doc's sentiments.Chick Hicks is given the Piston Cup. However, he is jeered and taunted by the crowd for his actions, making it a hollow victory at best.Meanwhile, Lightning is cheered and congratulated for his act of good sportsmanship. Tex, head of the Dinoco company, offers Lightning a sponsorship because of his fine job. Lightning considers, but decides to stay with Rust-Eze because they gave him his big chance.Guido and Luigi are dumbfounded when an actual Ferrari shows up at their store, because McQueen said it is the best place in the world to get tires. Lightning McQueen moves back to Radiator Springs and decides to place his headquarters in the town, making the location famous once more and having the maps redrawn as "Historic Route 66."A series of scenes during the credits show what happens to Radiator Springs afterwards:* Flo's V8 café is seen full of customers, while customers try Ramone's body art.* A museum of Doc Hudson's racing days opens. We see The King and his wife (who is appropriately voiced by the late Lynda Petty), as well as fellow racecar Junior (voiced by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and modeled after Earnhardt's #8 Chevrolet Monte Carlo) in there.*Sarge opens a boot camp for off-road vehicles (who have never been off-road), and orders a Hummer who protests about getting dirty to drop and give him 20 miles.*In a touch of poetic justice, the street racers who were responsible for McQueen's dilemma are caught by Sheriff speeding near Radiator Springs. They are locked into an impound lot and are sentenced to towing Bessie.*The Radiator Springs Drive-In Movie Theater opens, and shows car versions of popular Pixar movies, including Toy Car Story, Monster Trucks, Inc., and A Bug's Life. The in-joke shown is that Mack is praising Hamm the piggy truck, the Abominable Snowplow, and P.T. Flea - all of whom are voiced by John Ratzenburger, like Mack. When Mack realizes this, he wonders what kind of cut-rate production this is to reuse his voice. | comedy, sentimental, clever, flashback, entertaining, prank | train | imdb | And along with those characters and personalities comes a story which yes, contains a well-traveled theme, but it comes with so much charm that even Grouchy McKilljoy's hard little heart can't help but be warmed.Don't worry if you're not a racing fan; I assure you it's not a requirement to enjoy the movie.
Well, yeah, it doesn't have the sophistication and cleverness of "The Incredibles," nor the universal appeal of both "Toy Stories" and "Finding Nemo." And I have to admit that the idea of animated cars was the least riveting as far as Pixar film premises are concerned.
But as with its predecessors, beneath those excellently rendered 3D images is the soul that sets Pixar apart from what has become of most animated films nowadays.Up-and-coming rookie race car Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), is about to win the prestigious Piston Cup. The championship ends with Lightning finishing in a tie with legendary "The King" (Richard Petty), who is in his final race, and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton); thus, a tie-breaking race is set in California.But a road mishap leads Lightning to the forgotten town of Radiator Springs, a part of what was once Route 66, a place that once basked in glory, but has since been thrust into oblivion.
There he meets an array of other cars - including Doc Hudson (Paul Newman!), Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), and Sally (Bonnie Hunt) - who teach him that "life isn't about the destination but about the journey." First of all, Pixar's animation is first-rate.
Somehow, it's like watching NASCAR on IMAX again, albeit minus the über-big screen and the 3-D effect.But what's really nice about this film is how director John Lasseter and the writers effectively tell the story and how they pump up the visual feast with humor and sincere emotions.
Granted, when it comes to the standards set by previous Pixar films, it isn't quite up there with it's predecessors; but considering how lofty the bar has reached and the mediocrity that has become of the genre in general, "Cars" more than gets the job done.As for the voice cast, Wilson brings that sort of cockiness to the protagonist of the story and it fits with his smug humor.
You'll love them this time, as they tie back to prior Pixar movies, in a car sort of way.
In that regard, the movie deserves a 10.The voicing of the characters, done by A-list actors (Paul Newman among them, in his last acting role before passing away), is extremely good, very charming and effective, as the viewer really feels that the voices match the cars' personality and bring a big cozy feeling to the movie.However, all of this is not enough to save the movie, which suffers from an absurd point of departure, stereotypical script and characters/role models, and a childish storyline feeling in general.
I found this movie to be enjoyable enough: Even when it is true that it wasn't at the same level than some of previous Pixar films (Such as "Toy Story" and "The Incredibles") it was a good film anyway, with an entertaining story and likable characters.Despite the strangeness of the premise of a world inhabited by living cars, the execution is fairly convincing, with a neat character development and many funny and heartwarming moments.Without being perfect, it managed to be something totally worth-watching from beginning to end, and in many ways this could be easily considered one of the best animated films from the year 2006 (Which was a terrible year, in my opinion) 7.5/10.
I guess that's why I ended up liking it so much."Cars" is the story of a cocky, arrogant and very ambitious young racer named Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) who has become the new sensation in the racing circuit.
Without knowing how to return to the Highway and forced to repair the damage caused by his arrival, McQueen will discover the simple way of life of this quiet town and its inhabitants.Visually, the film is perfect; the computer animation has reached a point where it seems that the only limit is to create a human being, and I bet that Pixar is not too far from it.
However, credit must go to the writers, who have crafted a movie that will keep the kids interested even when it is not a laugh riot."Cars" may not be have a multi-awarded script or even an original plot, but it has a lot of heart, and it shows how much Lasseter and Ranft cared for the story.
As Pixar, Blue Sky and DreamWorks continue to tick off the list of cute cuddly animals to make films about, director John Lasseter and Joe Ranft (the latter sadly and ironically died in a car crash last year) brings us a story about cars in incongruous human setting.
He is sentenced to community service in the seedy little nowhere-town and, predictably, here the arrogant McQueen learns the true meaning of friends.For a movie about fast-paced vehicles, 'Cars' starts slowly and keeps in this lane for far too long.
'Cars' is possibly Pixar's greatest feat in animation, but its weakest jab at story and entertainment.Although Paul Newman brings perfect charisma to his bitter-and-doomed-but-good-old-mentor character, none of the other cars shine.
Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Keaton, Tony Shalhoub and John Ratzenberger also give solid turns in their roles.Overall, Cars is my least favourite of the Pixar movies but for the animation and voice acting especially, not to mention the race sequences it is well worth watching.
However, this was NOT the case in "Cars".Prior to viewing, I expected a below-standard Pixar production that was good but not great, however I could not have been more wrong.I'll begin with the visual and audio utilisation - the animation is (as you'd expect from Pixar), tremendous on every level - wonderful scenery and character models ensure this is an aesthetic treat.
The way in which Disney and Pixar make us feel empathy for animated vehicles is intelligent and a fine achievement.Overall, this is one of my favourite films of all time, and it is, in my view, able to compete with any other piece of cinema, from "Casablanca" to "Shrek"; the magic of Disney, alongside the high production values of Pixar, in accordance with the sheer brilliance of this movie, ensures that it is a must-see for anybody.
I would've loved it as a kid, and plan to share it with mine some day, but as an adult I'd rather throw in Toy Story or The Incredibles.Revised thoughts, nearly three years later:My boys are absolutely bonkers for Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater right now, but had never actually seen the movie.
The 2 hours races by, and afterwards you are left with the satisfaction of having just seen something quite unique and surreal.It's a kids film of course, so there is little need to point out the predictable story elements - which exist in Cars more so than previous Pixar films such as The Incredibles.
I had no idea where the plot would lead, but figured a Pixar film was a good bet.The film was marvelously rendered; several times I could have sworn I was watching real film footage instead of animation, especially scenes showing passing landscapes.The characters were also cleverly drawn, with subtle touches viewers might or might not notice, such as goatees, mustaches, horns, and udders (I'll say no more about that - you'll have to find out for yourself) represented by various car or tractor parts.Finally, the "Monument Valley" sort of landscape where the majority of the story takes place was a car lover's dream, where you could pick out parts of Tuckers, Deusenbergs, Packards, and Rolls Royces, carburetor filters, hood ornaments, and other automotive goodies.Even if you're not a motor-head, the story is heartwarming, the characters are entertaining, and the humor keeps coming at you at all levels - kids to adults.
This has always been the key to Pixar's comic genius and "Cars" continues this great tradition.Plus, the tractor tipping scene is one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in a VERY long time..
I liked it, felt it was a nice move from Pixar to get "Shawshank" like with the characters, a nostalgia nod to yesteryear and we get to spend time in the company of Doc Hudson, voiced poignantly by legend Paul Newman.How you find that middle section may determine how much you enjoy Cars, but rest assured that even if you find it too talky, too slow, what bookends it is pretty darn great anyway.
People say that this is one of Pixar's most disappointing movies, but after watching it I could not understand why this movie was getting a lot of criticism.The story focuses on a race car named Lightning Mcqueen whose dream is to race and win the Piston Cup. He's rather arrogant and does not have friends because of his unlikeable personality.
Although the film is a little slow during the middle, I feel it is necessary for the development of all the characters and to show the story of Radiator Springs.Pixar's Cars is a very enjoyable film with plenty of laughs and an emotional scene in which I couldn't help but shed a tear.
Took my 2 kids to see this yesterday and I laughed, cried, and was moved by the lessons taught in this movie, while the kids loved it from a kid's perspective, cool cars that talk with lots of color and a story they could relate to as kids.Let's see if the Academy has enough chutzpah to finally award an animated movie as best picture.The story teaches you about friendship, greed, vanity, empathy, getting old, respecting elders, loving your kids, and loving yourself to know when to do the right thing.I'm buying this when it comes out on DVD.
The main character is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a rookie race car with dreams of winning the Piston Cup. When he is on his way to the big race in California, he gets sidetracked in a little town called Radiator Springs, along Route 66.
The story is filled with colorful characters, from Mater, a rusty good ol' boy tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, to Doc Hudson, the town judge/mechanic, and former Piston Cup champion, voiced by Paul Newman.
While I love Finding Nemo to death, the rest of Pixar's films are kids movies.
This year, it's "Cars," and like many other Pixar movies in recent years ("Monsters Inc.," "Finding Nemo," and "The Incredibles," to name a few), it has every Pixar element to offer - a great big-name voice cast of stars from varied backgrounds and the cast voice characters that best match their personas, colorful, cheery animation, and a story that evokes emotions.
We hope that Pixar, whether sided with Disney or not, just gets more hits flying.In "Cars," the main character is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a self-absorbed red racing car that after departing a big NASCAR race, travels the legendary Route 66 and gets stuck in a small, forgotten town called Radiator Springs.
I recommend this movie for anyone who loves a good story line and great animations!.
They's taken us - happily - into the realm of toys, bugs, monsters, fish, and superheroes, those masterful storytellers and technical wizards at Pixar Animation Studios ("The Incredibles," "A Bug's Life," "Finding Nemo," "Monsters, Inc."), and Academy Award-winning director John Lasseter ("Toy Story," "Toy Story 2," "A Bug's Life").In their latest endeavor, the team hits the road with a fast-paced comedy adventure set inside the world of automobiles, the aptly-titled, "Cars." Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson), a hotshot rookie Mustang driven to succeed, discovers that life is about the journey, not the finish line, when he finds himself unexpectedly detoured in the sleepy Route 66 town of Radiator Springs.During the film's opening scene, an exciting NASCAR race that is as thrilling to watch as it is to wonder at its creative technology, McQueen battles beloved veteran, The King (Richard Petty) and obnoxious cheater, Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton).
The surprise outcome results in a special winner-take-all contest in California.On route across the country to the big Piston Cup Championship in Los Angeles to compete against the two seasoned pros, McQueen gets accidentally stranded (by his idiot driver, Mac, Pixar voice-over veteran John Ratzenberger), but gets to know the town's offbeat characters - including prosecuting attorney, Sally (a snazzy 2002 Porsche voiced by Bonnie Hunt), the town judge, Doc Hudson (a 1951 Hudson Hornet with a mysterious past, voiced by Paul Newman), and the goofy, drawling Mater (a rusty but trusty tow truck voiced by Larry The Cable Guy) - who help him realize that there are more important things than trophies, fame and sponsorship.But before he learns this lesson, McQueen, who has wrecked the town's only street, is sentenced to repave the thoroughfare - and he is not happy about it.
Lightning McQueen has to work hard and finds friendship and love in the simple locals, changing its values during his stay in the small town and becoming a true winner.In the cute "Cars" the world is inhabited by automobiles and there is a great message about the meaning of friendship in the wild contemporary competitive world.
I wondered how Pixar could take the concept of talking cars into an entertaining film and original story and characters, especially considering the studio's standards.Though the new Pixar film is not "better" than its other features, Cars is definitely up to par with the rest of the classics, delivering yet again a complete package of stunning visuals, a great story, and memorable characters.Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, is a hot shot racecar that needs to make it to California to make it to a big race and fulfill his childhood dreams of winning the Piston Cup. However, a series of unfortunate events lead him to the beat up town of Radiator Springs.
Though the town doesn't look like much, it is actually full of an assortment of charming citizens that take great pride in the place they lived in all their lives, its people (cars rather) and its history.In Radiator Springs, the hotshot McQueen learns lessons about the different aspects of life he has taken for granted, among other things: like how to have a good time at a night out with Mater, a rusty tow truck voiced by Larry "the Cable Guy" (Git R Done!).Pixar pulled it off.
From the beginning fun-filled race to the great ending, Cars is a technical achievement, visually appealing, and also contains a great message, one that does not seem forced unlike other animated movies.
As a matter of fact, this is perhaps the best animated movie since Finding Nemo three years ago.Cars focuses on Lightning McQueen, who is a fast-talking, cocky, arrogant, independent rookie whose first year in racing has proved to be a very successful one.
The animation is so real that there were times when I wondered if they mixed in live action shots.I love the way the movie mixes the super-fast culture of stock car racing with the culture of a sleepy town which has become forgotten because a freeway was built nearby, taking all of the traffic away from the town and letting entropy take its course.
I would love to see (or at least hear) more of him, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of range at this point.I think that the most important thing that makes this movie good, besides the animation and wonderful performances, is that there is depth to just about all of the characters.
The animation is really nice, like the detail on each individual car and the scenery, the music by Randy Newman is unforgettable, (There's a reason it won the Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production.) and the way the characters start to grow on you is what makes this film so loved.
While the humbling of hot-rod hot-shot Lightning Mcqueen (Wilson in one of his most convincing roles) and subsequent homage to mid west America may not have been pieced together in the most convincing of manners, Cars will still sweep excited children into it's blazing introduction, mellow out with it's sweet and funny character interaction and race past the finish line in a blaze of feel good family entertainment from the highest, visually animated order..
First, despite some great action sequences in the first half-hour or so, the story doesn't really get going, and I found it a little harder to get into this little universe than I did for, say, Monsters Inc. Have patience, though, because the story has a lot of heart to it, and the characters really do "come to life" as the story goes on.The only other "flaw" is that the rendering of Pixar's movies is getting so good that they hardly look animated anymore.
Once again Pixar has come up with a gem, a non conventional take on a coming of age story that needs more exposure.Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is a self-centered, up and coming race car poised to become the first rookie winner of the coveted Piston Cup, but gets side-tracked in Radiator Springs and learns a life lesson.
A very well written script, lively animation especially the Interstate roads,the car characters, the cute Porsche, good dialogs make this movie worth watching for all adults.
Admire the shimmering metallic paint of the cars, the NASCAR-like race at the opening of the film is as exciting as in any recent action flick, and the great palette of colors throughout the movie, mostly visualized through the landscapes and little town of Radiator Springs. |
tt0102216 | King Ralph | The entire royal family of the United Kingdom is electrocuted in a freak accident while posing for a family photograph. Sir Cedric Willingham (Peter O'Toole) leads a search for any surviving heirs to whom to pass the crown. A researcher finally locates a living heir named Ralph Jones (John Goodman), an American.
In Las Vegas, Ralph, an easygoing slob, works as a lounge singer and piano player in a casino. Ralph is informed that he is now king; his grandfather, the first Duke of Warren, engaged in an affair with a hotel maid while visiting the United States. Since his father and grandfather have died, Ralph is the only surviving heir.
Ralph is flown to London, where he meets Willingham and begins a long period of instruction intended to turn him into a proper monarch. He is schooled in English history and culture and shown a variety of English dishes.
Shortly after his arrival, Ralph goes to a strip club, meeting exotic dancer Miranda Greene (Camille Coduri). When she is unable to perform topless, Ralph meets her backstage. She is skeptical of his claim to be king, but Ralph proposes that if he can prove he is, Miranda will go on a date with him, and his appearance on the news proves his claim.
Lord Percival Graves (John Hurt), Prime Minister Geoffrey Hale (James Villiers), and Willingham meet to discuss Ralph's selection as King. Graves is opposed to having an American on the throne, and proposes to declare the ruling family line at an end and replace it with the House of Stuart. As Graves is the patriarch of the Stuarts, he would thus become King. Hale states that Ralph has royal blood, and that the country will have to accept him unless Ralph commits a grievous error. Graves decides to use Miranda to embarrass Ralph and remove him from the throne. Offered money to maneuver Ralph into a compromising position, Miranda accepts. She and Ralph begin falling in love. Miranda returns the money to Graves, but Graves already has pictures of them. To protect Ralph, Miranda severs the relationship.
Despite Ralph's reluctance to accept British culture and his ineptness in formal affairs, he makes a positive impression on King Mulambon (Rudolph Walker) of Zambezi during the latter's state visit. The two monarchs share their concerns about the role of leadership they have assumed and the economic interests of their nations. Ralph accumulates a small but loyal following.
Ralph's staff arrange for him to marry Princess Anna (Joely Richardson) of Finland; Ralph receives her and her parents on a state visit. Graves has photos of Miranda and Ralph passed around at the royal ball, which, along with Ralph's wild rendition of "Good Golly Miss Molly" on a harpsichord, ruin any chances of a Royal marriage and causes a Finnish company to award a coveted contract to the Japanese. Having failed to realize that the role of King comes with certain expectations, and that he cannot rely on his charm or blue-collar background, Ralph accepts a stern rebuke from Willingham and endeavors to set things right. Miranda confesses to Ralph her role in the scandal. Ralph develops suspicions about his circumstances, and learns that Willingham is another heir to the throne and had refused the role.
Ralph addresses Parliament. He apologizes for his recent actions and informs Parliament that he has worked out a deal with the King of Zambezi that will create British jobs. He then reveals that Graves has been sabotaging his succession to the throne and has him arrested for violating the Treason Act of 1702. Finally, he tells the British people that he believes they deserve a better monarch. Ralph announces that he will abdicate and reveals that Willingham will succeed him.
Willingham becomes King Cedric I and decides to fulfil Ralph's legacy as a great king. Ralph pursues his relationship with Miranda, along with his dreams of being a rock star. Ralph bids goodbye to his friends and his newly discovered relative. King Cedric appoints Ralph the third Duke of Warren, with a lucrative annual salary, a palace in the country and a state-of-the-art recording studio. Some years later, Miranda, now Duchess of Warren, sits with her and Ralph's son Baby Ralph II who is the heir to the throne, watching her husband perform with his musical group, Ralph and the Dukettes. | comedy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0490204 | Reign Over Me | When the Twin Towers went down in 2001, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) lost everything important in his life. Five years have passed since Charlie's wife and daughters died, and now the once-successful and sociable man has become a withdrawn shadow of his former self. He does not discuss his loss, causing his in-laws to worry for his sanity, believing that he has struck the tragedy from his mind.
When fate brings Charlie and his former college roommate Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) together once again on a Manhattan street corner, Alan is shocked to see just how far his old friend has fallen. Charlie's hair is long and he wears a headset constantly to let music drown out the upsetting memories of his wife and children.
Though on the surface it would appear that Alan, a successful dentist, has it all, the pressures of a family and career have been weighing heavily on him. At a pivotal moment when Charlie and Alan both need a trusted friend, the restorative power of a rekindled friendship provides a lifeline needed to move forward.
Alan endeavors to bring Charlie out of his shell by convincing him to see a therapist (Liv Tyler). Charlie is barely communicative, however, ending every session after only a couple of minutes. His therapist says he needs to tell the story about his family to someone eventually. Charlie soon tells Alan his tragic story, but afterwards tries to commit suicide by cop and ends up in a sanitarium.
Legal proceedings commence, Judge David Raines (Donald Sutherland) must determine whether to commit Charlie to psychiatric care against his will. The judge leaves the decision to Charlie's in-laws, asking them to think of what their daughter would want for Charlie. He approaches his in-laws in the lobby of the courthouse, stating that he does not carry pictures nor discuss his family because he sees them every day, in the faces of people walking down the street. They decide that he should not be committed; instead, Charlie moves to a new apartment, leaving behind the painful memories associated with his former home. At the end of the film, Alan visits Charlie for the day and his wife calls and tells him "I love you and just want you to come home." | comedy, dramatic, violence, flashback, insanity, melodrama, inspiring, romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1717229 | The Unforgiving | [From film's own website]Rex Dobson (Ryan Macquet) and Alice Edmonds (Claire Opperman) find themselves stranded alongside the R106, a freeway just outside Johannesburg. Waiting for help, they are abducted by a masked madman who does unthinkable things to them. Both survive, but wish they hadnt. As their stories unfold, it is clear that the truth of what happened that fateful day is far worse than anyone could imagine.Investigating the crime is Detective James Hirsch (Michael Thompson), a police officer who is used to doing things his own way. The two survivors are thrown into separate interrogation cells and Hirsch questions them relentlessly about the details surrounding the events they describe.What follows is a brutal account of what happened to the two survivors. Told in an unconventional narrative structure, The Unforgiving tosses and turns between points of view and characters as the film builds to its horrifying climax.Rex retells the story of how he found himself in an abandoned, rural farm house, chained by his ankle to a large slab of concrete. After numerous attempts at escaping, he is beaten to a pulp by his masked assailant and chained to a wall in an old barn. Time passes and he slowly regains consciousness to find that he is not alone anymore. Vincent Davies (Craig Hawks) is in a frantic state as he's also been tied up. The two play each other off as they try to figure out exactly what is going on. However, just as they begin to make some headway, their masked tormentor returns, injecting them with heroin and dragging Rex to a dilapidated compound. Tied and gagged, Rex is forced to make a phone call.Meanwhile, in a chlorine-green interrogation room, Alice reluctantly remembers what happened to her. The last thing she can recall is having a plastic bag pulled over her face as her attacker attempts to suffocate her. After a series of brutal blows to her face, Alice is left clinging on to life. Through the bloodied plastic bag she sees her assailant walking away. She manages to get to her feet, and desperately uses what little energy she has left to try to run away. But she does not manage to escape. Instead, she is caught again and savagely raped.As Hirsch tries to figure out the events of what happened that day, different truths emerge. Is Alice's morphine addiction hampering her perspective? Is Rex hiding something behind his cocky yet traumatised exterior? Has the search for the killer become too personal for Hirsch? And where does Vincent fit into the sequence of events? How are these four different characters connected? | violence, plot twist | train | imdb | Fair effort.
I have no what the budget of this film was but I'm guessing it's pretty darn low.
A pity this was completely ignored on its theatrical run out here considering it's an okay-ish little suspenser.
It's not really a horror film - at no point is the film ever truly disturbing and this, essentially, is my main problem with it.I think it was marketed as a balls out gore to the wall horror film and it just isn't.
You can't compare something done on this budgetary level to something like a "saw" or a HOSTEL.
The characters are very underwritten, the dialogue pretty dodgy containing way too many clichés for my taste, some of the performances are a bit flat and there just isn't any real gore.If you're out to make a gore film you have to show the gore - you can't just splash blood in someone's face, grade the $hit out of your picture (overdone in my humble opinion) and use way too many closeups to the point of the viewer saying - okay so where the %uck are we?
If you have a needle - show it going in - don't imply it.
You're marketing the film as an all out bloodbath but then all you're doing is teasing the audience.The editing is tricksy and needn't be so.
The script is tired and somewhat cliché ridden - we've seen it all before with more money and done better, but, and this is a big BUT, for a South African film this is leaps and bounds ahead of most of the crap that litters our screens.At least these kids tried to make a halfway decent movie.
At least they've produced something very flawed but also watchable at the same time and they deserve a tip of the hat for that.
Well done for taking the time and at least trying to make a good movie guys...and for that they deserve a solid six out of ten at least.Long live South African genre films may there be many more to come!
Long live the new flesh!.
Interesting & Clever Film made on a Shoestring Budget.
The first half an hour of the film feels like a SAW rip off, but the film shoots off in a very different and exciting direction in the second act.
The film uses a very novel way of telling the victims' stories, and this keeps you engaged as it builds to a bloody climax.
The film uses the idea that the audience thinks they are watching a SAW or HOSTEL and flips those expectations on its head.The film is inspiring to see what you can get away with on a very limited budget, and I'm not talking about Hollywood limited budget, I'm talking about bare knuckle, no budget filmmaking.The film won't win any Oscars, but I am interested to see what these guys can do given even a B Grade straight to DVD American Budget.The cinematography is very original and the editing is outstanding.
The script could be a little more original but the actors cover the flaws in the script with decent performances..
Given the current genre of Horror movies out there i watched this movie with out any lofty expectations and almost purely based on the reviews of the many others who seemed to have a favorable opinion of it.
Add the fact that the budget used to make this film was minuscule and i truly felt that i was about to be hoodwinked.
I was locked in from beginning to end and was very pleasantly surprised.
Definitely one of the more suspenseful horror movies i have seen in a while.
Now having said that, this is the kind of movie that requires your full attention and while the movie provides enough interest to captivate most viewers, I admit i had to watch it again after seeing the ending.
I did so without hesitation though because it was an enjoyable enough of a movie to do so.
I don't know anything about making films but i would think something has to be said about a director and a cast that can make such a decent film with so little.
Easily worth watching!.
The South African answer to SAW and HOSTEL..
Two survivors of a brutal attack by a masked man are interrogated by a police detective, the survivors both tell their account of grisly events more shocking than anyone could've imagined.Unlike with other films that I'll just simply buy I decided to rent THE UNFORGIVING before buying it, this being a South African production shot on a shoe string budget I had to find out first whether or not this film was a professional job or did it look like it was shot with a cell phone camera.When it got started I was pleasantly surprised by how well the film actually looked, the storyline itself immediately established the mood, set up the tone and maintained a steady pace throughout, it even at times came off as a SAW rip off but at a certain stage it started turning the whole concept on its head and went towards a more intriguing and exciting direction and at latter stages it seemed to merely reference SAW but it never at any time felt like a rip off.The acting was very good considering this is practically a first time cast, the actors all did a very good job for them to be considered for future projects.Also unlike both SAW and HOSTEL its not an all out gore fest, its actually pretty tame in the gore department, its more content with the plot than with gore but I can honestly say the climax is pretty intense.Overall, THE UNFORGIVING can stand tall alongside SAW and HOSTEL as one of the best known films of its genre..
Not Bad, yet...(small spoilers, no give-aways).
Being a South African, i was excited to support this movie so i rented it from my local store.
I know of budget constraints and all other challenges facing a local production, but i do feel the dialogue could have been done better, as well as the acting, it felt too South African soap opera-ish (ala Sevende Laan), the actors were not convincing at all especially the cop and the villain.
As there were only 4 actors in this movie, that should tell you something.
There were too may plot holes, escape for the victims could have been easily achieved.
The worst line in the movie for me was "...the clock face may tell you what time it is, but i think its time for you to start telling me the truth".
Some improbabilities, being able to limp off after having your knee cap drilled through, having your head smashed (really hard) into tar numerous times (consecutively) and still surviving (no brain damage) and still be able to run around as if nothing happened, being stabbed twice and not dying after hours of bleeding(not to mention bleeding form other orifices as well).
The worst part for me though was the music and its timing (or lack off), there was no build up, everything was all loud all of the time, no silence before the big "ta-da", just continuous synths and strings and big bass, sometimes even drowning out the dialogue, you have to use music as if its a character in the movie.
And lastly the HD camera work (doccie style) was a lil too erratic, with heavy music and a vibrating pic, things got a bit nauseous.
The twist in the movie had a bit of redeeming quality, but because of the above mentioned personal issues with the movie, i was zoned out before it even happened.
Can't wait for your next effort though, with constructive feedback (nudge, nudge...) i am sure it gonna be off the chain..
I'm not sure what movie other reviewers were watching here...ten star reviews??????
crazy or what??????
this was just rubbish!
this was just rubbish!
If this is ten stars then what do you give great movies like saw or hostel?
I tried to stay interested but I was bored...very bored...I did like saw...7 or 8 stars easy...and I love films that follow suit...so what if its already been done...long as its good then why not...but this just ain't...the camera just wants to give me a headache!
I mean zoom out for fu@ks sake!
I couldn't see anything!
It just felt like it was one scene all the way through...a nice bit of blood...but no more so than that...I simply could not recommend this...sorry...Maybe i'm missing something here with this one...mmmmmmmmm...but i don't think so...could have been a good film...just ain't....
Not what you think..
If you can find this movie you have to watch it.
I was lucky enough to watch it on the cinema and I can tell you I was really impressed.This is a great example of no budget filmmaking.
I would love to see these guys working on bigger films - I think they would really kick some ass!This movie was made for no money, but the filmmakers use this to their advantage.
Using cleverly created scenes where you see everything in Close-up- Alastair Orr creates a sense of confusion and disorientation, with a narrative that tosses between different points of views and times.
You never really know what is going on until the end, where it all comes together very nicely.
This is a gem of a little film - even if the gem is painted black..
Cheap torture porn.
THE UNFORGIVING is a cheap, digital torture porn indie flick from South Africa.
Half of it is shot in extreme close up with lots of motion blur designed to give any right-minded viewer a headache.
Another nail in the coffin is the rubbish editing that takes place throughout.
The police procedural plotting feels like mere padding while the rest is nothing more than a lame-o SAW copy..
Not a bad little movie..
I don't know what I was expecting when I watched this for the first time.
Do not expect a slasher/bloody/gory/saw type of film.
It is more avant garde than anything else, and a lot of people aren't going to understand it - but isn't that the thing with violence?
It's never clear cut is it?
The movie uses a very strange way of telling the story, I don't want to give too much away, but it deals with flashbacks and flashforwards in the same time line.
I've heard the film cost R40K to make, that is 1/3 of paranormal activity - so the film is rough around the edges, it's far from polished.
The acting is good, Michael Thompson (The Detective) is great throughout.I have noticed that this film has some International Distribution which is great for a little film like this.Some people are going to hate this film, but the filmmakers haven't gone out to change the world or prove a point, they've just made a little film that is very interesting to watch, and if you view it under those terms, you are in for a treat. |
tt1307068 | Seeking a Friend for the End of the World | A broadcast announces that a seventy mile wide asteroid nicknamed 'Matilda' is on a collision course with Earth and that a last-ditch effort to destroy it has failed. The world has three weeks until impact, at which time all of humanity will be wiped out. Dodge Petersen (Steve Carell) and his wife, Linda (Nancy Carell), listen to the announcement (voice of Brad Morris) from their car radio at the side of the road. Seconds later, and without saying a word to him, Linda flees the vehicle.The next day, Dodge returns to a near empty workplace where he sells insurance. While everyone around him has reacted differently to the impending doom by either indulging in drugs or engaging in guilt-free sex, Dodge's life remains the same. Even the absence of his wife cannot shake the stagnant predictability of it. His housekeeper, Elsa (Tonita Castro), continues to show up at his apartment to clean despite Dodge's insistence that there is no further need to do so.After attending a friend's party, Dodge returns home and reminisces about his high school sweetheart, Olivia. He then notices his neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) crying on the fire escape. She admits to him that she has just ended her relationship with her boyfriend Owen (Adam Brody) because he caused her to miss the last flight to England to see her family. Returning to her apartment, Penny gives Dodge a handful of mail she received for him but kept forgetting to deliver - indirectly telling him that Linda was having an affair.Dodge storms off into the night, guzzling cough syrup and Windex in an attempt to kill himself. The next morning, however, he regains consciousness and finds a note on his sweater reading "Sorry" accompanied by a dog (Aleister) tethered to his foot. He takes Sorry home and opens the rest of his mail where he is surprised to find a letter from Olivia. That night, a riot breaks out nearby. When a brick is thrown through his window, Dodge grabs Sorry and heads to Penny's apartment, urging she and Owen to leave with him. Penny rushes to grab her record collection and she and Owen follow him downstairs and outside to Penny's car...that has been boxed in by other cars. Owen steps out to give Penny guidance but impatiently berates her for what he sees as poor driving. Irritated and with the rioters quickly approaching, Penny slams on the gas, knocking the car in front of her out of the way and abandoning Owen. She tells a bewildered Dodge that Owen will be fine - as we see Owen pick up and throw a rock as he gets swept up in the riot.They drive out of town to avoid the riots, and Dodge tells Penny that, if she can drive him to find his high school sweetheart, he will take her to someone who can fly her to England to see her family. She agrees, however the car runs out of gas and Dodge and Penny are left to walk. Frustrated by the situation, Dodge snaps at Penny for failing to give him his mail in a timely manner, seeing that it would have given him all the time he needed to find Olivia. Feeling guilty for 'ruining his life', Penny hails an oncoming vehicle to take them to their respective destinations. The kindly trucker (William Petersen) picks them up and regales the couple with his life story. During a pit stop, Penny exits the truck and the trucker confronts Dodge on 'how he's going to do it'. He makes light of Dodge's confusion and is about to explain that he's hired an assassin to have himself killed. No sooner has he said this, when a bullet smashes through the front windshield and hits the trucker cleanly through the neck. Dodge watches as the assassin's car speeds off.Dodge and Penny bury the trucker and decide to take his truck further on...however they neglected to take the car keys out of the man's pocket, so they have to dig him up to get the keys. On the road again, they find a restaurant by the name of Friendsy's which appears to be alive with patrons. Hungry, Dodge and Penny enter and find the place buzzing with optimism and good cheer. Their host, Darcy T.J. Miller), cheerfully takes them to their table where Penny fibs that it's Dodge's birthday. The entire staff celebrates and Penny and Dodge are given inventive drinks and dishes, including a burger with a donut as a bun. After everyone sings the Friendsy's Birthday Song to Dodge, he get birthday kisses from the waitresses. Then so does Penny. As one of the waitresses drops to her knees under the table, Penny and Dodge run from the restaurant as everyone gets even friskier, including Darcy and waitress Katie (Gillian Jacobs).Penny and Dodge make it, laughing, to the truck and, on the spur of the moment, begin to make out and have sex. As they drive off, Dodge regrets his actions with a woman so young (Penny admits she's only 28) but she tells him it was merely end-of-the-world, casual sex. Soon after, they are pulled over by a policeman (Bob Stephenson), only when Dodge insists as Penny would rather try to outrun him. The officer demands to see Penny's license and registration despite her eloquent explanation to their predicament. When she admits that she has none of the required paperwork, the two are locked up in a holding cell at the station. The next morning, they are found by another officer (Jim O'Heir) who sympathetically releases them, cursing his subordinate for taking his quota too seriously. He gives them a lift to Camden where Penny's ex-boyfriend lives. He is named Speck (Derek Luke), a muscular, young military man who shows Penny and Dodge his titanium-walled shelter beneath his house. It is stocked with 6 month's worth of food and enough entertainment to last a lifetime. Speck is confident that his shelter will provide safety to survive the apocalypse for he and a few close friends. Penny notices a satellite phone, and Speck offers to let her call her family. While she is tearfully reunited with her parents and siblings over the phone, Speck bluntly tells Dodge that his company is no longer needed. Penny can stay, but he has to go. They need a healthy, young female to restart the human race.Penny requests from Speck one of his smart cars so that she can drive Dodge to where he needs to go. Speck agrees and makes her promise to return. Penny and Dodge track down Olivia's last known residence but the house is empty. Penny forces their entry and they find the home devoid of any inhabitants but stocked with food. They stay overnight and Penny plays some of her records on an old player they find. She also finds a letter from Olivia to her parents inside a kitchen drawer and sadly presents it to Dodge. Dodge says that the return address is not too far away. The next morning, they drive out to the house where Dodge walks up to the door alone before quickly returning to the car and driving off. Confused, Penny asks what happened. Dodge tells her that it appeared Olivia was home but he simply left her a letter on the doorstep.As they drive away, they nearly collide with a stream of couples and families crossing the road and making their way to a nearby beach. Dodge and Penny take Sorry and follow the assembly to the water's edge where each person is baptized under the hot sun. Standing on the shore, Dodge and Penny kiss, reaffirming their feelings for each other and, as the sun sets, they join the other people as they light bonfires and spend the waning hours playing music and socializing. Dodge teaches Penny how to play the harmonica before they return to the car.They continue on to Somerset County and stop at an isolated house. Dodge brings Penny to the door and they greet Frank (Martin Sheen) who recognizes Dodge and lets them in. He then reveals himself to be Dodge's estranged father, whom Dodge has not seen in twenty-five years. Penny is overwhelmed to meet him. While Penny freshens up before dinner, Dodge and Frank have a mild argument over Frank's absence in Dodge's life. Frank apologizes and, they reconcile.They all share a meal together and catch up on the time lost. After Penny falls asleep, Dodge carefully carries her outside where Frank is waiting in his plane to take her to England. Dodge rests her in the cockpit and gives her his harmonica as a keepsake, gingerly kissing her on the forehead and whispering that she is the love of his life. Dodge then shuts the door, nods to his father, and watches the plane fly away.He returns home to find Elsa in his apartment cleaning and she cheerily greets him. He angrily yells at her, telling her to go home to her family but, after seeing her confusion and despondence, apologizes for his outburst and tells her to forget it. She asks if she will see him the next week and leaves. Dodge turns on the television where the news anchorman (Mark Moses) announces that 'Matilda' is due to arrive prematurely and that only sixteen hours remain until impact. The anchorman thanks his audience for their attention before leaving to go home to his family, a statement that touches Dodge.Dodge goes to Penny's apartment and lies down on the floor, listening to her records before the power goes out. When he gets up, he finds Penny standing in the dark living room and she asks him how he could have left her. He admits that it was a stupid thing to do before they tearfully embrace. Shortly after, they lie in bed and Dodge asks Penny why she didn't go to her family. She tells him that her parents are romantics and will understand why she couldn't leave without Dodge. They talk about how things might have been between them if they'd known each other longer and Penny begins to panic as time grows short. Dodge calmly asks about her childhood and Penny tells him of her siblings and late sister, Patricia, as the first boom of impact sounds. Penny begins to cry and tells Dodge she's scared and wishes they could have saved each other. Dodge assures her that they did and smiles warmly at her. Penny smiles back, unafraid, as the screen brightens to white - then fades to black. | dark, comedy, depressing, clever, romantic, sentimental | train | imdb | In "Seeking A Friend for the End of the World", what's amazing is just how long that calm lasts.Throughout the first part of this film, you can't help but wonder, as you watch, how you would react if you heard nonchalant reports on radio and TV about a 70-mile wide asteroid heading for Earth and destroying life as we know it.
Well, "Seeking A Friend For The End of the World" takes you in one direction you think you're going, and then often makes a sharp left when you least expect it.
The movie is also funnier than the title suggests, has some startling moments I never saw coming nor expected, and keeps you watching for many reasons.Is there a love story between Dodge and Penny?
Like the recent "Salmon Fishing In The Yemen" (2012), you find yourself unsure if the two main characters should fall in love, or if there is at least a little attraction, or if it really makes any difference.There are other things you wonder while watching this movie.
To give you a quick synopsis, our protagonist, Dodge, teams up with the overly optimistic and happy-go-lucky Penny, a fellow apartment complex resident, to travel to his high school sweetheart's house to tie loose ends before the world comes to an apocalyptic close.Steve Carell truly nailed his performance.
Watching an American picture about the end of the world and finding that there is no concentration on things blowing up and exploding came as a welcome relief if not a surprise.This film is a little gem of a black comedy with some drama and romanticism thrown in.I only recognised two or three faces - but everyone of the players is good and the two leads are superb.
"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" turned out to be a very beautiful and emotional movie, with just a pinch of great comedy added to spice it up.The story is about the end of days approaching as an asteroid is bound for Earth, and will destroy the planet upon impact.
Dodge (played by Steve Carell) finds himself abandoned by his wife upon this news and tries to go on with his life for the last 21 days before the world comes to end.
Their journey proves to be more than life changing.The storyline for "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" was really great, and bizarre wonderful in a weird way.
As was Keira Knightley, and their chemistry on the screen was just sizzling.The movie also boasts some rather great cameo appearances, all of whom really helped adding to the movie, by actors and actresses such as Rob Corddry, Patton Oswalt, William Petersen and, of course, Martin Sheen."Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" is a definite to-watch-movie for any movie aficionado, because it is very beautiful and moving in many ways.
I remember thinking at the end of 2005's War of the Worlds, "I wish they had spent more time focusing on humanity." The human experience of facing the end of life is so complex and so unique to every individual, and Director Loren Scafaria succeeds in showing the despair, decadence, and delusions that people would definitely be wrapped up in were this to occur in real life.Carrell is brilliant as usual with his effortless self-effacing humor.
The way the low-key almost matter-of-fact radio and television announcers give us snippets of information about Armageddon spiced with little gems of mundanes like "don't forget to change the clocks" hours before the end of the world really call the tone of this wonderful film.
I saw this with my mom and even though I felt certain she would have liked the odd mixture of super dark comedy with somewhat typical "steve carell is lovesick" brand romantic comedy (which the film threatens to become in the last half but somehow manages to starve off somewhat) but she did not care for it at all calling it way too depressing, and that not even the sweetness could hide the sourness of that first half.
(Her immediate words after the end credits came up were "well that was cheerful Matthew, thanks for dragging me to this one") I on the other hand quite enjoyed how completely and totally dark that first half hour is, and how the flashes of darkness that pop up throughout the film as it goes on the more conventional Lovelorn Steve Carrell falls in love path manage to bring the film tonally back in line with that first half hour, so that even when the film turns into a somewhat off beat romantic comedy--the tone at least remains consistent.
(and if you don't think he does a great job here---see his monologue in the jail cell a little over an hour in--that is one heartbreaking monologue and he's wonderful delivering it in his own quiet way.) Its not a perfect film, but whatever flaws you can throw at it---the storyline's not the most well thought out, things seem to happen and then not happen as if on cue--how does Carrell manage to end up back at his apt and finding it in one piece after badly needing to leave it lest he be destroyed along with it???) whatever flaws you can throw at it i think can be met with a shrug and a dismissal if only because Carrell, Knightley, and that dark, bittersweet tone more than compensate for any scratches along the way.
There are millions of different answers, my answer is to be with my girlfriend/significant other, both of us would go on a trip and have a good time while with each other.I really like how the film is set up it almost reminds me a bit of the underrated 80's gem "Miricle Mile" which was also about a couple facing the final minutes on Earth while trying to survive the chaos.
The fact the world will end doesn't even faze him because literally doesn't have much of a life but worst of all no one.One of my favorite actresses (and whom I think is fraking hot in my book anyway) Keira Knightly is just great what's interesting is that this is kinda the first comedy she in and she is surprisingly funny.
Which makes this all the more sad because you care so much you don't want both of them to die, you don't want the world to end, but there's nothing you can do about it.If there is a lesson in this film it's simply "Carpe Diem" translation Seaze the Day. Whatever you want to do the most in life, do it now because no of us have as much time as we think.
"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" brings doomsday into romantic comedy territory and the resulting story has all kinds of notes, from humorous to romantic to downright dramatic.It's a mess of moods fitting of the apocalypse, even if we prefer our films to be more uniform in their genres.
Lorene Scafaria (writer of "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist") tries to stitch them all together in her directorial debut, and while the seams could be less apparent, "Seeking a Friend" makes solid patchwork of some strong individual scenes and performances.Who better to lead a film about literally hopeless romance than Steve Carell, whose character Dodge watches as his wife (a cameo by Carell's actual wife, Nancy) bolts from the car and runs away forever as soon as Earth's prognosis hits the radio.
Thus begins Act I, the comedy portion of the film.Scafaria does a conscientious job imagining how affluent 40-somethings as well as other types would react knowing the world was set to end in three weeks time.
As a whole, it offers film's most realistic look to date at how normal people would behave in this situation, yet as the romantic and dramatic elements build, some character motivations and feelings come into question, even though the actors are so convincing.Boiled down, "Seeking a Friend" offers a true change of pace for the genre led by two strong actors you'd never expect to work together.
There reaches a very specific point, however, at which Seeking a Friend for the End of the World finally morphs into the affecting drama promised by the setup, and the movie subsequently becomes more and more engrossing in the build-up to its emotionally-wrenching finale - with the irresistibly romantic bent of Dodge and Penny's relationship ensuring that the film, in the end, makes a far more pronounced impact on the viewer than one might have reasonably expected.I must admit I am a fan of both Carell and Knightly.
'SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)Steve Carell and Keira Knightley are kind of oddly matched for this romantic comedy disaster film.
The performances are all topnotch (Corddry is absolutely hilarious in his scene stealing small role) and despite Carell and Knightley seeming like an odd romantic pairing they actually have quite a bit of chemistry, which is the main driving force to the film (like with all good romances).
After having just watched this terribly disappointing movie(all the way to the end) I feel compelled to say that it has taken(i.e., stolen) many of its key ideas & characters from one of my favorite films of the last 15 years: Last Night(1998) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156729/ and watered it all down with a rather sappy treatment of what was otherwise great material.
Granted that this film didn't really exhaust a huge budget, it did enough to present the last three weeks of mankind, both the good aspects, and the worst of it.And Lorene Scafaria does it through the use of two primary characters in Steve Carell's Dodge and Keira Knightley's Penny, two neighbours who didn't know of each other's existence, until all hell breaks loose, and through chance, discover that they can click.
Dodge's wife Linda (Nancy Carell, Steve's real life wife) decided to just literally run away when all hope is lost, and leaves Dodge in quite the dejected state, not knowing why his marriage vows didn't last through to the end, and reminisces about his high school sweetheart who actually got away.
What I liked about it is that it didn't try to be deliberately funny, but humour comes and exists only because that's probably the most light hearted manner to approach known annihilation given a preparatory lead time.I had enjoyed the films that Steve Carell had starred in, but I especially enjoy the more dramatic characters he portrays, such as the titular character in Dan in Real Life, or even Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Scafaria's tale evolved from its premise, exploring mortality and morality, before scoping it down to a more intimate portrait about two strangers who find friendship and love, and thankfully these two actors made it oh so believable, and sweet, although there were times, given the script, that the mid-section felt bogged down by its conversations.Still, it's that aged old reminder about never leaving behind regrets that's wrapped around by the narrative, and the finale really sledgehammered emotions through with the introduction of Martin Sheen's character, that one will inevitably tear as it reaches its conclusion, coupled with that final parting by Mark Moses' television anchorman who pops up at random scenes as a checkpoint within those 3 weeks.
It avoids all the cliché and whimsical takes on the disaster movies of the '90's and keeps the story centered in character development.I was moved repeatedly by a wonderful story and perfectly placed diagetic music by such genius musicians such as Scott Walker and Burt Bacharach.This is a must see, ignore all morons who only possess an I.Q. only sufficient to appreciate Anchor Man (though I love that movie) or a Michael Bay film (I can't say anything positive about Bay); these people will roundly hate it because it is actually original and intelligently written.
"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" is a movie with an intriguing title and two great lead couple, Steve Carell and the gorgeous and talented Keira Knightley.
The film opens with Dodge (Steve Carell) and his wife discovering that the last efforts to save earth from an impending meteor have failed and that the world will end in three weeks.
While I have no issue with the high concept plot of the film, character actions that make no sense (such as why people are still showing up to work when the world is about to end) make it hard to get sucked into the film or care about any character other than Dodge.All in all, the film falls closer to the Dan in Real Life side of things than Little Miss Sunshine..
I did not care who ended up with who at the end of the world, because I knew I would not want to be anywhere near Keira Knightley's annoying flaky character or the miserable Steve Carell.At the end of the film I was still struggling to decide its genre as neither its comedic, dramatic nor romantic aspects were strong enough to warrant the label.
Looking away from the screen for a five minutes you could return either to the same conversation you lost interest in or have missed most of a scene with a new set of characters who, rather than add background to the story, merely prolonged the agony.In short, the only reason I stayed to the end was because I hoped the film would show the characters being graphically blown to pieces by the meteor..
I think Carrell brought this movie down.I would have spent more time on what people do in the face of doom and make the two characters come together through a series of funny moments dodging idiots and thrill seekers as the asteroid approaches.
Steve Carell plays once again a serious role of a depressed guy as he did in Little Miss Sunshine, this time with a good reason, the world is about to end.
I'm not a huge Steve Carell doing comedy fan but I did like him in Crazy Stupid Love, and he was quite likable in this as he's better as this sort of character, I think.
I have mixed feelings about Keira Knightley; she is a great actress but I find her facial expressions and mannerisms annoying but there were portions of acting genius on her part in this.This is about an impending meteor strike on the earth, which will end the world, and how everyone deals with it namely Dodge (Carell) and Penny (Knightley).
but then you realize that the character chosen to be the lead is a sad loser, a no personality coward douche, well, the whole idea of the movie becomes a ghost, and you end up watching a boring story about a really annoying and pathetic guy living some kind of undeserved redemption with a hot girl that inexplicably joins this dull man on a ridiculous search...
Seeing as the movie starts like this, I was prepared for a hell of a ride but I was shocked at the sudden change in pace in the second and third act.Steve Carrell does an appropriate job at representing a somewhat sad guy who really doesn't care too much about his own happiness and Keira does a much better job with emotions for a messy girl who has to live the end of the world alone.
Characters behave very normally the majority of the time and they don't seemed shocked, at least not up until the last moment and that for me, takes away a lot of important aspects of the circumstances they are in that could gone a lot better.The movie really slows down in the second act, up to the point of being somewhat repetitive and the dialog is way too much for something as important as the end of the world.
It turns from an end of the world movie to just a "road movie" for the vast majority of the time.Director seems to get a lot more attention to dialog than emotions and images, so, for me, this takes a lot away from my personal interest.See, I don't consider dialog that important in a movie, because images, expressions and looks, they tend to represent a much more important aspect of emotions between characters, something the director does not want or does not know how to properly show.There are a couple of some very special moments, funny enough, they worked because they stop talking...
But in it's execution in this film felt hollow and wooden.The story goes the world will end in 3 weeks, and Dodge (played by Steve Carrell) wife has left him and his ditsy neighbor (Keira Knightley) has just handed him a letter form the girl that got away.
the story was hampered by a plot device involving Knightley's character certain sleeping habits that were only used at certain appropriate or for the characters inappropriate times.The film does give us a slightly humorous look at the final days before a possible worlds end.
I think the best part is the movie's way of making the end of the world seem to real.
They know the day of their death and are trying to make it a good one.Now, if you, like me, were just a bit more inclined to watch the film because of the apocalyptic ending, just don't.
So when I saw he was one of the two major actors in Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World I had already wondered if this movie was worth a trip.
She wants to see her family again and he has the opportunity to rekindle the spark with the love of his life decades after they parted.Seeking a Friend for the End of the World succeeds because of a smooth, thoughtful and at times funny screenplay, by Lorene Scafaria, that has been directed sensitively (Scafaria again) and performed by an excellent cast led by Steve Carell and Keira Knightley.
I don't think I've ever seen a movie quite like this before, a comedy about the end of the world? |
tt2802144 | Kingsman: The Secret Service | In the year 1997, a helicopter flies into a compound in the Middle East. Four men apprehend a terrorist leader and tie him to a chair. One of the men, Harry Hart, a.k.a. Galahad (Colin Firth), threatens to shoot the terrorist until he gives him answers. The terrorist lifts his head to reveal a grenade pin in his mouth. Harry's comrade Lee (Jonno Davies) jumps on the terrorist and covers the explosion, sacrificing himself to save his partners. Harry's other two partners, Merlin (Mark Strong) and Lancelot (Jack Davenport), remove their masks. After noting Lee's sacrifice, Harry welcomes Lancelot into the Kingsman agency.Harry visits Lee's wife Michelle (Samantha Womack) to inform her of her husband's death. He gives her a medal of valor in Lee's honor, with a phone number on the back. If she ever needs a favor, she's to call the number and use the phrase "oxfords, not brogues" to let him know it's her. Michelle rejects the medal. Harry then goes over to Lee's young son Gary, a.k.a. Eggsy (Alex Nikolov). He hands him the medal.Seventeen years later in a chalet in Argentina, Professor James Arnold (Mark Hamill), an expert on climate change, is being held captive by a group of thugs. There is a knock at the door. One thug answers it while pulling out his pistol and finds Lancelot. Lancelot shoots the thug before the thug can shoot him and dramatically fights and kills the rest of the thugs before helping himself to a drink. He's interrupted by another knock at the door. When he opens it, Lancelot is sliced down the middle by a woman with bladed prosthetic legs, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella). She cuts Arnold's bonds with her blade-legs, and hurries to cover all the dead bodies with towels and tablecloths, explaining to Arnold that her employer is squeamish, before opening the door to admit the boss: tech billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson). Valentine and Gazelle take Arnold with them when they go.Back in London, Harry goes to a tailor shop that is a front for the Kingsman headquarters. He meets with Merlin and their superior Arthur (Michael Caine). At a virtual meeting of all the Kingsmen (eight plus Arthur), they toast Lancelot and each member is tasked with proposing a new member to replace him. Arthur tells Harry that those involved in Lancelot's death also had ties to incidents in Uganda and Chechnya. Harry refers to what is evidently an old disagreement with Arthur about the type of person they want to recruit; Harry says the world is changing and calls Arthur a snob.We catch up with Eggsy (now played by Taron Egerton), now in his early 20's, living with his distraught and co-dependent mother and her abusive new husband Dean (Geoff Bell), along with Eggsy's baby sister. They live in a ratty flat and are financially insecure. Eggsy goes to the pub with two friends, where they spot Dean's group of goons. The goons bully Eggsy and his friends into leaving. Outside, Eggsy reveals to his friends that he stole the goon's car keys. They take his shiny new yellow sports car, do some donuts when he runs out and yells at them, and drive off, only to come across the police. In the ensuing car chase, Eggsy drives the car backwards through heavy traffic while his friends taunt the coppers until he hits another car. He tells his friends to run for it and distracts the police by ramming their car.Eggsy is detained at the police station. He refuses to give up his friends' names despite the threat of 18 months in prison. Allowed one phone call, he takes out the medal he wears around his neck and calls the number on the back, identifying himself. The person on the other end of the phone says that he has the wrong number. Just in time, Eggsy remembers the phrase "oxfords, not brogues." The voice on the phone says, "Your complaint has been duly noted," and moments later, Eggsy is free to go.Harry introduces himself to Eggsy in front of the station. The two go to the pub and discuss Eggsy's rather undistinguished record, which Harry seems to know all about: Eggsy showed great promise as a gymnast but gave it up. He also dropped out of the marines. There was some involvement with drugs and petty crime, and he's currently unemployed. Harry makes his disappointment clear. Eggsy calls Harry a snob in his turn, pointing out that people make decisions for good reasons -- he left the marines because his mum freaked out at the thought of losing him the way she lost his father -- and jobs aren't easy to come by.Harry offers to help, emphasizing his debt to Eggsy's father, but Eggsy declines just as Dean's goons approach to make more trouble. Harry calmly tells them to leave, but the lead goon is rude to him and tells HIM to leave. Harry walks to the front door and locks it, stating, "Manners maketh man." With the hook of his umbrella, he grabs a mug and swings it at the lead thug, hitting him in the head. Then he makes short work of the others, and even makes some of them beat each other, to Eggsy's surprise. He pats Eggsy on the shoulder and leaves him after being assured that Eggsy won't tell anyone about Harry or what he's just seen.Eggsy returns home, and Dean violently confronts him over what Eggsy did with his mate's car. Michelle tries to intervene, but is shoved aside. Harry overhears the struggle through a mic that he placed on Eggsy's shoulder. Harry speaks into it and tells Dean to let Eggsy go or he will report Dean's various crimes to the authorities. Eggsy runs out of the flat and evades Dean's goons yet again.Eggsy goes to the tailor shop that Harry mentioned to him. He finds Harry, who proposes the Kingsman candidacy to Eggsy. Eggsy decides he's got nothing to lose and joins Harry as they go underground. On the way down, Harry explains that the Kingsmen are an independent secret service, beholden to no government and thus above politics. They were founded after World War I, when many rich families whose heirs died in the trenches looked for a cause to leave their fortunes to and found it in the Kingsmen. Harry and Eggsy board a small shuttle that takes them to meet the other recruits, who are gathered in the stately home that serves as the Kingsmen's center of operations and development. (The filming location was Wrotham Park in Hertfordshire.) The recruits are housed together in a barracks that has toilets, showers, and beds in one room. Eggsy is quickly befriended by a girl named Roxy (Sophie Cookson). He gets teased by a boy named Charlie (Edward Holcroft) and his buddies, who are quick to notice and remark, insultingly, on the class difference between Eggsy and all the others.Meanwhile, Valentine has taken a gruesome posthumous photograph of the bisected Lancelot, with Lancelot's face sewn back together like a baseball, to Washington DC. Valentine is complaining that the CIA and FBI have no clue as to who this agent is or why he was involved in anti-Valentine activities. As the camera pans back, it becomes apparent that Valentine is filling in the US President on his plans for a final resolution of the humans as virus problem--and the US President is going to go along with it!The Kingsmen notice that Professor Arnold is no longer missing, so Harry finds him in a lecture hall and tries to make him say who held him captive. Arnold yells in pain, then his head explodes. Two goons enter the building, forcing Harry to detonate a hand grenade before jumping out the window. He is slightly caught in the explosion and is left in a coma. Valentine learns of Arnold's death and decides to investigate who is looking into them.As the recruits are sleeping, the barracks starts to fill with water. Everyone but Eggsy swims to the toilets to run shower hoses down them -- there's air in every toilet on the other side of the drain trap. Eggsy tries to pull the door open but he can't. He then swims to the mirror and smashes it, releasing the water into the next room where Merlin was overseeing them. Although he commends Roxy and Charlie for getting to the air in the pipes and Eggsy for the mirror, Merlin says everyone failed because they didn't use proper teamwork and lost a recruit. The camera cuts back to the barracks where the drenched body of Amelia (Fiona Hampton) lies on a bed.Meanwhile, Valentine and Gazelle meet with Swedish Crown Princess Tilde (Hanna Alström) and the Swedish Prime Minister (Bjørn Floberg) over dinner, where Valentine proposes his plan for controlling climate change. The PM is on board, but Tilde thinks Valentine is crazy. She leaves the dining room and calls her bodyguards. Gazelle runs out and kills the guards with her prosthetic legs, taking Tilde captive.As the next step in their training, each recruit must train a puppy. Eggsy chooses a small pug, thinking it's a bulldog. The dog doesn't properly listen to him at first, but he becomes attached to it and names it JB (after the 24 TV series character Jack Bauer).After Harry recovers, he, Merlin, and Eggsy learn that Prof. Arnold had a chip implanted in his neck that made his head explode. The Swedish PM has the same implant, with a similar scar under his ear. Merlin traces this back to Valentine. Eggsy comments that Valentine is a genius, and he shows Harry and Merlin a video of Valentine's latest announcement. He is set to distribute free SIM cards around the world: he's offering free cell phone service and free internet for everyone, forever. (He doesn't explain why and apparently no one asks.) Valentine is also suspected in the disappearances of numerous world leaders and some celebrities (including Iggy Azalea).Harry goes undercover to Valentine's estate to investigate Valentine's plans. Gazelle wheels out a fancy dining cart. Lifting the silver cover, she reveals McDonald hamburgers, which they eat paired with very expensive wine. They discuss their admiration for James Bond movies, but Harry doesn't get much information other than seeing one of Valentine's aides carry a pamphlet for a hate group church in Kentucky.The recruits are down to six: Eggsy, Roxy, Charlie, and three of Charlie's friends. Their next assignment involves jumping out of a plane and landing as close as possible to a target on the ground. Roxy hates heights and gets encouragement from Eggsy. After they leave the plane, Merlin announces that one of them has no parachute and they need to figure out what to do.Panicking, one recruit opens his chute too early. Eggsy has everyone join hands before pulling each others' chutes. When only he and Roxy are left, they pull Roxy's chute at 300 feet (very late) while Eggsy holds on for dear life. Eggsy and Roxy land exactly on the target. Merlin commends Charlie, who was close, but fails the others and sends them home. Eggsy complains to Merlin about being singled out to be the sacrificial lamb, asking if he's more expendable than the others. Merlin tells him to get rid of the chip on his shoulder and releases Eggsy's parachute -- it turns out Merlin was fibbing about the missing parachute.Eggsy meets Harry at the Kingsman tailor shop, where Eggsy will be fitted for a bespoke (custom-tailored) suit. Harry calls it "the modern gentleman's armor," not only because of the social benefits it confers, but because Kingsman suits are bulletproof. Learning that dressing room one is in use, he takes Eggsy into dressing room three containing a hidden room filled with the modern gentleman's armaments: umbrellas like Harry's that conceal both a firearm and a bulletproof shield, as well as hand grenades that look like cigarette lighters, pens that trigger a poison, signet rings that deliver 50,000-volt shocks, and pairs of shoes (oxfords and brogues -- Harry takes a moment to explain the difference) with poison-tipped blades. When they return to the front of the shop Valentine and Gazelle walk out of dressing room one; Valentine was being fitted for a morning suit because he's been invited to the queen's box at Ascot. After a tense exchange, Valentine leaves in search of a hat, and Harry leaves Eggsy in the tailor's care.On their next assignment, Eggsy, Roxy, and Charlie are sent to seduce a young woman at a nightclub. Shortly after each delivers their line, all three are drugged by an interrogator. Eggsy wakes up to find himself tied to train tracks in a dark tunnel. The interrogator tries to get Eggsy to tell him about the Kingsmen and Harry, but Eggsy refuses to talk. The train runs over him, but Eggsy is dropped into a little hole and isn't hurt. Harry emerges and tells him he and Roxy passed this test. They watch Charlie taking his test, but he refuses to die for the Kingsmen and he is sent home.As part of their last test, Arthur and Merlin take Eggsy and Roxy into separate rooms and tell each to shoot their dog. Eggsy fails to do so, but a gunshot can be heard from Roxy's room. Arthur sends Eggsy home. Eggsy takes Arthur's car and drives back home, disappointed. He hugs his mother but then sees she has a black eye. Furious, he goes by the pub to find Dean. Eggsy is set to fight him until the car drives itself to Harry's place. He is disappointed with Eggsy for failing his test (not to mention stealing Arthur's car), and reveals that the gun had a blank in it. He also reveals that Amelia never drowned and that she works with the Kingsmen in Berlin. Roxy, having passed every test, becomes the new Lancelot.Harry goes to Kentucky to attend a service at the hate group church. He hasn't heard much of the bigoted preacher's nasty sermon before he gets up to leave. Across the street, Valentine and Gazelle prepare to activate a signal built into Valentine's free SIM cards; they want to see how many people in the church will be affected. The signal goes live and causes everyone, including Harry, to go into a berserk rage and attack each other. Harry shoots several people in the head, as well as violently stabbing, bludgeoning, impaling, and blowing up anyone who comes near him, until he is the only survivor. Eggsy, Merlin, and Arthur watch from their respective locations.Outside, Harry finds Valentine and Gazelle waiting for him. Valentine explains that the signal from the SIM cards triggers aggression and represses inhibitions. He says that in the kind of old movie they both used to love, this would be the point where the villain explains his evil plan and the hero makes a clever escape. He says this isn't that kind of movie, then he then takes out a gun and shoots Harry in the head, killing him. Eggsy screams in horror, while Valentine is appalled at having killed someone.Eggsy goes back to the tailor shop to meet with Arthur. Arthur mentions that Harry recorded Valentine's confession, which has been passed along to the authorities. (In other words, the Kingsmen aren't going after Valentine.) When he offers Eggsy a drink in Harry's honor, Eggsy notices that Arthur has an implant scar under his ear. Arthur was swayed by Valentine when he proposed his plan of mass murder; we flash back to a scene where Valentine explains to Arthur that humanity is like a virus infecting the planet, and just as your body develops a fever when you're fighting a virus, the earth is heating up. Only drastic action will prevent total annihilation ("either the virus kills the host, or the host kills the virus"). That drastic action, Valentine says, is to cull the earth's population, and he has a plan. Back in the present, Arthur toasts Harry, and he and Eggsy drink. Arthur takes out his pen to activate the poison that he put in Eggsy's drink, only to find himself dying. Eggsy switched the drinks moments earlier, having distracting Arthur by asking him if the paintings on the wall were of former Kingsmen. Arthur dies on the table.Eggsy goes to Merlin and Roxy with the information he's just received, and they head off to thwart Valentine's plan. Roxy is sent into the upper atmosphere, lifted by two giant balloons, to launch a missile at one of Valentine's satellites. Merlin and Eggsy board a private plane to infiltrate Valentine's mountain base, where he's hosting a party for everyone involved in his plan. Eggsy, wearing the bespoke suit Harry had made for him, poses as Arthur and uses his invitation to get inside. When he reaches the party, he orders a gin martini, "stirred for 10 seconds while glancing in the direction of an unopened bottle of vermouth."Roxy gets within range of the satellite, but one balloon bursts as she reaches the edge of the atmosphere. She manages to launch the missile just before the other balloon bursts, sending her plummeting back to the ground. Spinning wildly, she deploys her chute and lands safely.Back at the party, Merlin reminds Eggsy that he needs to find a network and get him online. Glancing around, Eggsy notices the Swedish PM on a laptop and prepares to apprehend him. After some chit chat, Eggsy tranquilizes him and gives Merlin the access he needs. Eggsy is about to leave when Charlie shows up and holds Eggsy with a knife to his throat, alerting Valentine that there's a spy. Eggsy electrocutes Charlie with the ring on his finger then runs back to the plane while evading and shooting through Valentine's gunmen.Meanwhile, Roxy's missile hits Valentine's satellite and delays the broadcast of the berserker signal. Eggsy gets back to the plane just as Merlin's program finishes running a system analysis of Valentine's security. Merlin informs him that they can't leave just yet as he's unable to hack into the biometric security system. Instead he needs Eggsy to get back to the party and make sure Valentine's hand never touches his desk.Hearing that it'll take an hour or two to get his satellite back up, Valentine piggybacks off one of his cohorts' satellites and moves it into position to reconnect the chain. Realizing this from the plane, Merlin informs Eggsy of the time crunch, and warns him that Valentine's got a present for him. After taking out multiple gunmen, Eggsy is finally surrounded and unable to deal with the number of people closing in on him. Backing up into a cell door, he tells Merlin that he's fucked. Looking out of the cockpit of his plane, Merlin returns "As am I," as gunmen wheel an anti-aircraft machine up. Coming to terms with his end, Eggsy calls Rox and asks her for a favor: to call his mom and have her protect herself and her baby from others, and to tell her he loves her.Moments before Valentine's troops attack, Eggsy asks Merlin if he can activate the implants that were of no use to them earlier. Merlin grins and sets about doing so, much to Valentine's horror. After Merlin triggers the implants, a symphony of fireworks begins, with guests' heads popping off in colorful explosions in time to the music. Every participant in Valentine's plan is killed aside from Valentine himself, and Gazelle.Following that spectacle, Merlin and Eggsy celebrate their small win before Eggsy hears banging and angry remarks coming from the door behind him. Opening the small window, he sees Swedish Crown Princess Tilde, who asks if he can get her out. He replies asking for a kiss, saying he's always wanted to kiss a princess. She returns that she'd give him more than just a kiss if he does. Before he can open the door, Valentine taunts Eggsy, saying that the plan is still in motion as he's still alive.Valentine turns the signal on, and shots from around the world show people turning aggressive and fighting starting with Eggsy's mum, who was just instructed by Roxy to lock the baby in the bathroom and throw away the key. Merlin tells him to get a move on, as Valentine has started the signal. Looking into the cell, Eggsy says, "Sorry, love. Gotta save the world." Princess Tilde tells him "If you save the world, We can do it in the a------" and Eggsy matter-of-factly responds that he'll "be right back."Eggsy manages to get back in range of Valentine and Gazelle's control center. He shoots at them, momentarily taking Valentine's hand off the scanner and stopping the signal. Gazelle bursts through the glass and tries to kill Eggsy. The two fight and finally jump at each other. Gazelle attempts to cut Eggsy with her legs, but Eggsy poisons Gazelle by knicking her with the blade in his shoe. He then pulls off one of her legs and hurls it at Valentine's back, impaling him. Thus, every signal is deactivated for good. Merlin and Roxy congratulate Eggsy for saving the world.Eggsy walks up to the dying Valentine, who asks if this is the part where he says a really bad pun. Eggsy tells him, just as Valentine told Harry before killing him: "This ain't that kind of movie." After watching Valentine die, Eggsy grabs a bottle of champagne with two glasses, and runs back to Princess Tilde's cell. Unable to open the door, he asks Merlin for help and Merlin tells him the code for the lock. Eggsy enters to a bent over princess.The closing credits begin, but we cut to Michelle and Dean in the pub. Eggsy enters, dressed in his bespoke suit. He tells Michelle that his new job has given him benefits, including a house; he invites Michelle, and pointedly not Dean, to live there with him. Dean, with his goons around him, responds with threats. Eggsy locks the front door and says what Harry once said -- "Manners maketh man." As Harry did before him, he grabs a glass mug with his umbrella hook and throws it at Dean's face. He then faces the other goons and, with a grin, repeats another line of Harry's: "Are we going to stand around, or are we going to fight?" | comedy, murder, cult, violence, flashback, action, comic, brainwashing, revenge | train | imdb | 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' was being shown just around the corner from where I live, and because I loved two of director Matthew Vaughn's previous films, 'Layer Cake' and 'Kick-Ass', I naturally took the chance to see it.
I don't know, maybe Matthew Vaughn has read that interview too and saw the potential, because 'Kingsman' is pretty much that: An ultra violent, funny, crazy, foul-mouthed James Bond film (with a little bit of 'Men in Black' and 'Mission Impossible' thrown in).
Needless to say, I was thrilled.But it's also a fantastic action film with an amazing cast (Oscar winners Colin Firth and Michael Caine, plus Sam Jackson AND Mark Hamill) and spectacular, over-the-top fight-scenes that in some instances even rival films like 'The Raid' for their sheer visceral intensity.
Matthew Vaughn has become renowned for taking on action-comedy projects, for instance 'Kick-Ass' (which is still stronger than this but only just), and along the way has kept that feel-good British aspect to it that makes our greatest secret agent (James Bond) such an icon.
OK, Bond is kind of cool (I hated the last two, though), but now we finally got a film that takes spy movies to the next level.
Not since 'District 9' have I had that feeling during the watching of a film like "this movie just does everything right" (by which I mean of course: it plays exactly to MY taste).
Compared to this film, every James Bond movie released after 'Licence to Kill' looks like a snore-fest.
Colin Firth's aloofness was crowned with a kick-ass bite, Samuel Jackson brings his role back to old fashion comedy, strongly supported by Mark Strong and Michael Caine.
007 meets Kick-Ass. Kingsman: The Secret Service marks the third film in a row that director Matthew Vaughn has adapted from a comic book background.
Where Vaughn's vision lies, and so-far proved by his former comic adapted films is that they draw a clean balance to where drama and serious character development ends, and cartoonish humour meets, leaving a unique entertainment that stands out.Based on the comic by Mark Millar (who also created Kick-Ass), the film sees a young – no better way to put it – chav, called Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin (Taron Egerton), taken under the wing of Harry Hart (Colin Firth), a spy for her majesty's secret service.
Jackson); an ego- centric - Steve Jobs-type - billionaire madman (with a lisp), who hates the sight of blood – yet holds a vision of mass biological warfare.Licenced to thrill, Kingsman' is almost a love-letter to the James Bond films – but not too far as a parody, like Austin Powers - but more a homage to the franchise - a 007 meets Kick-Ass, of sorts.
At a point, Colin Firth's character, Harry, even mocks the thought by saying 'give me a far-fetched, theoretical plot any day
'Fans of Bond and Kick-Ass are certain to love it, as through rollercoasters of action, comedy and espionage, comes a bucket of winks, references and nods to the world of spy movies.
Just like the colourful, gadget ridden Bond films of the 1960's, Kingsman is very fun to watch, with 'wham, bam, thank-you ma'am' style of mayhem, one- liners and bonkers soundtrack crazed all over it.The comic the film was based on was already hugely entertaining – in fact, probably the best we have read.
Littered with Millar's creative quirkiness and with Vaughn's auteur film-making, has left a stylized-spectacle of ultra-violence.Portraying the lead character of 'Eggsy', Taron Egerton (also in this month's Testament of Youth), proves to be an outstanding newcomer as he brings the character to life with an energizing vibe of a comparing ethic of chav lifestyle vs.
I'm happy to say that Kingsman is probably the most fun I will have in a cinema screen this year.As I've already said Spy films get compared to James Bond, so let's begin with that shall we?
The best example of this I can give is in the opening sequence of the film, there is a glass of whisky, a lot of people die and there isn't a drop of said whiskey spilt, and at that moment Kingsman sticks two fingers up at the past and says "we're the future" and from that second onwards Kingsman is its own movie.
Kingsman has so many pro's to it that you can easily overlook the minor short comings, because in the end the film has a baddie who has blades for legs, I mean who doesn't love that?What I like most about Kingsman is that even with all its madness it still manages to have some kind of heart; the entire movie is kind of a think piece on class war and the importance of legacy.
He steals every scene he is in, and his action sequences are the best ones in the film, but I'll get to that later.Newcomer Taron Egerton plays the new recruit Eggsy, a rebel with a lot of heart and dedication to his family and friends.
Egerton makes him instantly likable as the lead and spawns the right emotions to help the audience almost instantly know his feelings and the tone of the film.The story overall is a typical formulaic spy plot, though Vaughn adds some more contemporary and ideological elements and twists (that have taken popularity with superhero films lately) into it to make the film more different and exciting from the stereotype James Bond films.Overall, Kingsman: The Secret Service is a roller coaster of a film, that seems to pick up and slow down at the perfect moments.
The way the creators put a different spin on the superhero genre in Kick-Ass, was very much how they put a spin on the Spy movie genre in Kingsman: The Secret Service.
The movie is about a young teenager from London called "Eggsy" who is chosen by a professional agent from a super secret organisation who call themselves the "Kingsmen" to go through the deadliest "job interview" to be the next Kingsman spy.That said I must say I was not disappointed.
After watching this movie Daniel Craig better take notes because there is a new agent on the block and that is "Eggsy'.That being said Kingsman: The Secret Service is the best movie of 2015 so far.
This time the villain that the agency has to stop is Samuel E, Jackshon ,who is a billionaire Eco-terrorist who has as goal to kill a respectable present of the world population, something like the Nick Fury turns bad and he is hilarious!As for the action, is extreme well choreograph, the stunts, the gore, the kills are so well make that is like the comic book ,tha this series is based came to life.
Everyone from Austin Power to Borne and the granddaddy of them all (possible that is true;)) James Bond are mentioned both as role model and poking fun to some of the plots holes that they have in their stories.The dialogues are also very well written (I suspect Tarantino has put his hands in to that) and the changing between the polite British tone and the ripped fire cursing made me laugh my ass off.
The great result must be from the fact that everyone must had a blush working their and it was apparent to the way the characters were reacting to their environment (bonus fact to work their ,you could work beside Mark Hamil himself!).In the end is a enjoyable spy film ,with elements of spoof films of old and I recommended to all, just make sure that in the company you don't have a person with a wick stomach, did I mention the gore?
Having really enjoyed/loved 'X Men: First Class' and 'Kick Ass' and being someone who likes a lot of the actors, 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' did seem really intriguing.There was the intrepidation of whether it would balance the violence and humour well, whether the violence would feel too much or whether the humour would leave a bad taste in the mouth.
It sends up the spy genre (primarily James Bond), very like 'Kick Ass did with comic books, and does so brilliantly.'Kingsman: The Secret Service' is stylishly and audaciously made, with slick visual effects, very imaginative camera work and editing in the action scenes that gives the film an almost operatic grandeur (like in the fight scene in the church), very cool gadgets, richly coloured lighting and audacious production design.
Not just achieving the right balance of humour and violence (injecting much needed fun into a genre that has become increasingly serious over the years) and keeping the story absorbing and the characters interesting, but standing out in particular were how he properly allows the audience to properly take in what is happening in the action, without jumping around incoherently or being static, and the huge amount of work that he even puts into the little things like with the opening credits.The film's script is deliciously irreverent, sometimes raunchy, unrelentingly vulgar and very witty, with a plethora of laugh-out-loud funny to hilarious moments.
The film does deal with the twist well, it could easily have been out-of-place, clichéd or overly silly but it's actually a lot of fun with a touch of humanity injected.'Kingsman: The Secret Service' contains some very memorable characters, including a hench-woman with legs that can kill.
That is not to dispute Michael Caine, who is more than dependable as a somewhat ambiguous sort of character, and Mark Strong who has a knack of making even weak material interesting, or Sophie Cookson, very fetching though in a slightly underwritten role, and Sofia Boutella who nobody wants to mess with.If there is something that lets 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' down it is the ending with the anal sex.
They try to compensate lack of quality humor with endless profanities.None of the characters is really attractive except for Firth's and only to some extent.This is for teenagers who use to watch all these horror movies with people cut to pieces and whatnot.Crap like this deserves minus 3 stars..
Having built high expectations from an almost 10 out of 10 IMDb rating and portrayed as a great spy thriller in the reviews we went to watch the movie but were extremely and totally disappointed and disgusted with everything in the movie.
Wow,this movie started off good.There was a good story with the son joining the secret Kingsmen just like his father, then stopping someone who wants to cause chaos in the world.
The difference between the IMDb rating and Metascore should tell you enough.I see between 50 and 100 movies per year and this is the worst one I have seen in quite a few years.I cannot believe how such a good cast on paper can deliver such a poor performance.
just saying...The film itself: Is what I have called in the past a "bumblebee" movie in that on paper it should not work, but wow in real life it does.The ultimate iteration of the 1960s pseudo spy thrillers (OUR MAN FLINT) with the perennially overexposed Sam Jackson doing yet another variation of his character in UNBREAKABLE and in fact he did a better job in the earlier film.Yet the production values are so sharp, so superb, so technically perfect that, with a tight script and great acting, the whole thing works a treat and may possibly be one of the most entertaining films of the decade.
it has great action and enthralling heroes and villains alike yet, in the mix of all of it, the movie doesn't take itself to seriously.If you have not taken the time to get to a theater to see this I highly recommend you do.
It is funny, violent, irreverent, violent in a Tarantino sort of way, punny, action wrought with gratuitous violence, oh so wrong, perfectly scripted, amazingly executed (save, I don't know why the lisp), and absolutely NOT what you would expect from a British film of this genre.
This movie takes the genre and put it in a more modern respectfulness but funny, uncensored and violent way.It twists and distorts the usual clichés in a timely and funny shape, it uses very funny villains, amazing fight bloody hilarious scenes and no stop action.
A bizarre chapter in the otherwise distinguished careers of Colin Firth, Samuel Jackson, and Michael Caine.This felt like two movies -- the first 60 minutes or so coming off as a James Bond wannabee film, albeit not gaining much momentum.
Other cringe-worthy moments include Samuel Jackson's exaggerated and offensive speech impediment, and an amputee antagonist who uses her prosthetic razor-sharp extremities to slice ginsu-like through a cast of extras with stomach-turning graphic effect.All this may attract and intrigue a certain (and large) percentage of the movie-going public.
The film focuses on younger characters, so it feels like a movie for young people.
It's violent, with some surprisingly fresh martial arts and a cool choice of music to go with it!Kingsman: The Secret Service is different to your usual run of the mill spy movie.
With an absolutely enthralling story, that goes beyond just taking the mick out of spy movie clichés, brilliant performances, epic special effects, massively exciting action and absolutely stunning direction, this is a film that lets you be entertained to the max.I'll start with what I thought was the most amazing part of this whole movie: the action.
As we've seen in Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, director Matthew Vaughn knows how to make a properly exciting action sequence, but I've never seen him do it to the extent seen here.Some of the battles in this film go on for up to 5-10 minutes, and whilst I expected that seeing all that violence for so long would be tiring and boring, I was absolutely exhilarated by absolutely every action sequence here, thanks to Vaughn's stunning direction, using the shaky cam to add to the grittiness but still making it clear as day as to what's happening, as well as some fantastic songs to accompany all the action kicking off.But it's not just the action that makes this film so good, the story is absolutely spellbinding too.
The first half has very little to do with being a parody, and is on its own an interesting and of course hugely entertaining plot, introducing the wide variety of characters in a unique way and grabbing your attention right from the off.Of course, the whole movie is a comedy as well as an action-packed thrill-ride, and it doesn't disappoint on that front either.
Jackson does a great job as the insane Bond villain, helped by a scary but still entertaining performance by Sofia Boutella as the Oddjob-ish evil sidekick.Overall, there's no escaping the fact that is one of the most entertaining and exhilarating films you'll see all year, filled with stunning action, direction, performances, plot and comedy, and that's why it gets a 9.2 out of 10 from me.www.themadmovieman.com.
previews for this film even made it seem like a good family movie..but it's rated R..
Most of what little plot exists was just an excuse to put more extreme violence on the screen.I was tempted to give this film a higher score, like 2 or 3 out of ten, because of Samuel Jackson's character.
I have never seen acting as bad as Samuel L Jackson's acting in this movie and I also have no idea why people like Michael Caine agreed to be in this rubbish.This film has been totally overrated by the media and has had ridiculous blanket advertising in most UK cinemas.
The Plot.Based upon the acclaimed comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn, Kingsman: The Secret Service.It tells the story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra- competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.I WANTED to like this movie.But it's derivative, predictable and actually insults your intelligence.One major problem is that the Brits are trying to make an American movie.
I do not recommend this at all, I have such a hard time picking out a movie that I like, that a director made his best possible film: thought about his actors not looking bad for being in his film.i think I'm putting ethics on the movie makers, I should stop doing that..
This is not surprising given the film is based, as was Kick-Ass, on a new comic book series by Mark Millar (this time with Dave Gibbons).Colin Firth plays Harry Hart (aka Galahad) a member of a secret spy network called Kingsman.
This is by far one of the dumbest movie I've seen in the last couple of years.Extremely violent just to be violent, totally cliché plot with some completely ridiculous scenes- blowing up the heads of all the "bad" politicians or the main character going to have sex with Swedish princes after his main "battle"...
It was.Overall the film manages to have the right balance of comedy and over- the-top action movie violence.
Mark Hamill, Michael Caine, Samuel Jackson, Colin Firth among others both pay homage to the Bond style thriller while introducing new elements (Jackson's particular performance is hilarious.) Watching in the theater was surprisingly enjoyable because, not in spite of, the other audience members that made obvious comments during some action sequences but were stunningly silent in others.
Kingsman like Kick Ass is a action packed and comedic film from X-men first class director Matthew Vaughn.
The film has been marketed in a way which well respected actors such as Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson, and Michael Caine are all involved in a comedy / adventure film, which is true, however anyone that has seen Kick Ass will know what is going to happen.
Kingsman: The Secret Service is the most typical Mark Millar/Matthew Vaughn movie you'll ever get.
The movie is very original, there truly is not, nor do I think there ever will be, a film quite like it. |
tt0045699 | Donovan's Brain | The movie opens with the credits and the title over a train approaching and stopping at a station. Sitting in a car, waiting for her husband, is Janice Cory (Nancy Reagan, credited as Nancy Davis). Dr. Patrick J. Cory (Lew Ayres) has just arrived on the train. They drive home to a remote spot outside of town in Green Valley. Cory brought a monkey home, and Janice is concerned because it is cold. They walk in the house and Cory calls for his alcoholic assistant, Dr. Frank Schratt (Gene Evans). He is passed out in front of the fireplace. Cory tells his wife to put on some coffee, he needs Schratt's assistance and sober. Janice brings the monkey into the lab. Cory and Schratt are already there and washing up. Their goal is to extract the monkey's brain and keep it alive; four previous attempts on older subjects were failures. In a large fish tank they place the monkey brain. They hook it up to various support equipment, but initially there is no activity. They increase the voltage and a strong alpha wave appears and remains steady. Janice starts taking notes as her husband dictates details of the procedure. The phone rings, it is the chief ranger asking for Dr. Cory's help. There has been an airplane crash. Some of the passengers may still be alive.At the crash scene, Cory meets the ranger and some other men. They carry the body away from the smoking wreckage on a stretcher. He examines the man and says he'll never make it to a hospital. Chief Tuttle (James Anderson credited as Kyle James) suggests they take him to Cory's house. His house has a lab with a fully equipped Operating Room. Cory thinks the chances are slim, but worth it. At the house, the men carry the body directly to the lab. Tuttle informs Cory, "If you pull him through Doc you'll be set for life. That's Warren H. Donovan. He's supposed to be worth a hundred million." Donovan is in very bad shape, both legs gone and his chest is crushed. Cory and Schratt operate but his pulse stops. Cory asks Schratt to make out the death certificate. Schratt is a practicing physician, but Tuttle has it out for him. He called for Schratt at the hospital, but Schratt was at the Cory home and drunk. Tuttle has an ulterior motive for his hostility towards Schratt; he wants his brother to have Schratt's job at the hospital. Cory walks away from the operating table and gets an idea. He checks and finds alpha waves present on the recently deceased Mr. Donovan. He talks Frank Schratt into helping him remove Donovan's brain. Frank and Janice are horrified. Janice points out that it is against the law, and he could lose his medical license.Now a human brain occupies the fish tank in the lab. Cory explains his goal, "If this brain lives, maybe we can discover how it thinks." Schratt finishes his drink and leaves for home. Schratt returns a few days later to drop off some chemicals, and collect Dr. Cory. They have to go to town and see the hospital administrator, Higgins (Stapleton Kent) and Webster (Peter Adams). Cory is there to vouch for Schratt's professional competency. Higgins seems to be satisfied and tells Cory that Donovan's son and daughter are waiting to see him. Dr. Cory assures Donovan's children, Chloe (Lisa Howard) and Tom (Michael Colgan) that everything possible was done for their father. They ask about any communication he may have made or if any papers were found with his body. Cory then meets with the press. He is asked about Tuttle's brother replacing Schratt at the hospital. As he is leaving, Herbie Yocum (Steve Brodie) introduces himself. He is a freelance photographer. He is following Donovan's death. He wants to get a photo of the operating table. He already visited the morgue and noticed that Donovan had stitches in his head, even though the plane crash injuries did not involve his head. Suspecting Yocum knows more than he admits, Cory reluctantly agrees to Yocum's unusual and ghoulish request. Yocum takes his pictures of the table and another of the tank with Donovan's brain.The brain is starting to respond to outside stimuli. By the seventh day, the brain is growing and absorbing nutrients. Cory suggests they give the brain a voice, so they can hear it anywhere in the house. Schratt returns to the Cory home with a suitcase. He was fired from the hospital and will live with the Cory's full time. Cory wants to research Donovan's life. He wants to try telepathy to communicate with the brain. Frank and Janice think this is a very foolish and unproductive use of his time. The research yields a very unflattering picture of W.H. Donovan. He was a very unpleasant and unscrupulous individual; even his children hated the man. He was a tax cheat and the IRS had an ongoing case against him. That was his focus of attention when he was involved in the plane crash.Cory goes into the lab to check on the brain. A few hours later Cory is still there. The brain in the tank is pulsating. Cory's left hand begins to twitch. He sits at his desk and begins to write something with his left hand, then falls asleep. Dr. Schratt returns the next morning from fishing. Janice, still in her robe, complains that her husband never came to bed. Cory picks up some papers and asks, "Did you write this?" The note states, "get to N. Fuller, WH Donovan." Janice and Frank deny knowledge. Cory get up and bolts from the room with the note in hand. In the living room he looks for a sample of Donovan's handwriting and signature. He finds a magazine article and compares the two--they match.Cory tries to find out who this N. Fuller is. He drives into town, but even at that distance, the brain calls him home. Cory is now walking with a limp and rubbing his side as Donovan did in life. The brain falls asleep and Cory returns to normal. Janice and Frank try to convince Cory he's being drawn in a little too far with his experiment. Cory is then repossessed and orders a taxi and charters a private plane. He flies to Los Angeles and checks into a hotel and bumps into Yocum and brushes him off. He stops at a bank and tries to make a large withdrawal of cash. Yocum is watching him from outside. The teller directs him to the bank manager, Mr. MacNish (John Hamilton), who asks for identification. Since the customers account was always accessed by mail, MacNish has no way to verify things. Cory withdraws $27,000 and leaves the bank. MacNish immediately calls the Treasury Department to report. Cory's next stop is the Aloe Supply Company. He orders scientific equipment and pays cash and orders it delivered to his home back in Green Valley. He stops at a tailor and orders six suits and demands one be available by morning. He orders a fabric that was the favorite of Donovan. As usual, Yocum is outside watching each transaction.At the law offices of Fuller, Barton & Fuller, Cory pays a visit and asks for Nathaniel Fuller. He is told Fuller will be tied up until after lunch. After an exchange with the secretary and Fuller over the intercom, Fuller (Victor Sutherland) reluctantly agrees to see Cory. Cory convinces Fuller to get Donovan's "Washington Advisor" to meet under threat of blackmail--something about endorsed checks. Yocum is still following Cory around town and follows him back to the hotel.Two treasury agents, Mr. Smith (Paul Hoffman) and Brooke (Harland Warde) pay Cory a vist in his hotel room. He refuses to answer their questions. When they threaten to have him arrested, he throws them out. Yocum enters as the treasury agents leave. He shows Cory an article he wrote on Donovan's brain, clearly blackmail. Cory returns to Green Valley by private plane late that afternoon.Janice and Frank examine the brain. Cory comes in still possessed as Donovan. The brain falls asleep and Cory returns to himself. Frank tells Cory that he thinks the brain was reading his mind and knew he meant it harm. The equipment he ordered as Donovan arrives. He got an automatic feeder, good for a year; amplifiers for increasing the brains output; temperature control, and a generator for uninterrupted power.The next morning, Frank goes to the garage and tries to force the lock on the new power supply. The brain wakes Cory and sends him out to stop Schratt. Cory attacks Schratt, but Janice breaks it up. Cory flies back to the city and makes a list of banks, bank balances, and assumed names of the account holders. The Washington Advisor (Tom Powers) and Fuller keep their appointment with Cory. Cory discusses Donovan's tax problem. The advisor tells Cory he has already spoken to the Attorney General about the situation and since Donovan is dead, so is the problem. Cory disagrees and tells him the $250,000 will be paid in cash and the arrangements will continue as usual. The meeting ends and the two men leave. What they don't realize is that Cory recorded the entire exchange on tape. Cory nearly collapses and puts in a call to his wife, but the long distance lines are busy. He records his message to his wife at the end of the exchange with the two men. He tells his wife he is finding it harder to resist Donovan's influence, and may not return to be himself again. He tells her his plan to use the lightning rod on the house.Cory leaves the hotel and takes a cab. He is followed. He exits the cab and is hit by a truck. He is taken to a local hospital. Back at the lab, Frank notes that the brain hasn't rested for over 30 hours. It is growing larger in size in the fish tank. Janice visits Cory in the hospital. Dr. Crane (William Cottrell) briefs Janice and tells her Cory has a mild concussion and a bruised leg. The medical staff is surprised at how well he tolerates pain. Cory, as himself, tells Janice he is afraid. Donovan takes back over and Cory tells Janice to get out and go back home. Janice calls Frank at tells him to turn down the voltage to the brain by 10 microvolts. She wants to know when the brain falls asleep so she can talk to Dr. Pat Cory as himself. The brain won't allow Frank to adjust the machine.The Donovan children and Fuller pay Cory a visit in his hospital room. They tell Cory they want to cooperate with the government on the back tax issue. Cory as Donovan is furious, and cuts them off financially and throws them out of his room. Yocum pays him visit a bit later. He wants another "advance" of $2000. Cory sends him to the house for a few more pictures then calls Frank to give him instructions to leave Yocum in the lab alone with the brain. Yocum arrives at the house and in the lab the brain hypnotizes him. He exits the house like a zombie. Schratt sees him leave, but just goes back to napping in the living room. Yocum drives away but nods off behind the wheel and crashes and burns his car. One blackmailer down.Cory, as Donovan, leaves the hospital. Janice had been napping in the waiting area, but she sees him limp away. He cashes a number of checks and gathers the blackmail funds in cash. He gives Fuller the cash. He warns Fuller, "A fatal accident will occur to anyone who stands in my way." Cory now sees Janice and Frank as standing in his way. Janice and Frank discuss a plan to eliminate the brain. He wants Jan to distract Cory, get him angry, so he can put a bullet in the brain. A storm approaches as Cory arrives home. He agrees to take a walk with his wife, limping like Donovan. Jan has it out with Donovan. As Donovan, Cory attacks his wife while Schratt pumps a couple of bullets into the brain. The brain has Schratt turn the gun on himself. Cory and Janice find Schratt in the lab on the floor. A bolt of lightning strikes the house and blows out the equipment supporting the brain. The brain catches fire and is destroyed.Later, the Treasury agents come to collect Cory. Brooke tells Janice that Dr. Pat Cory's fate is up to both the medical board and whether or not he is indicted. Frank managed to survive and goes with Cory and the Treasury agents. We close with them driving away from the house. | murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0814022 | Bangkok Dangerous | Joe (Cage) is a professional freelance contract killer who works strictly by the rules; never socializing outside his work, staying secluded in quiet spots, never interacting or meeting with his handlers and always leaving on time without a trace. He usually hires young pickpockets or small-time criminals as his local help, whom he usually murders after the end of the job to prevent any identification. He uses multiple aliases and also has middlemen between him and his handlers. He also carries a watch to perform a hit in specific time and correctly visualizes his every target.
After completing a hit in Prague and killing his current help, Joe travels to Bangkok for an assignment to assassinate four people for notorious Bangkok crime boss Surat, whom he never meets. Joe occasionally provides insight via voiceover narration throughout the film. He hires a local Thai pickpocket named Kong, who has simple English knowledge, as his go-between in Bangkok, a condition of the contract being that the gang will never meet Joe. Contracts from the Bangkok gangsters are passed to Kong one by one via a nightclub dancer, Aom. Joe's first execution in Bangkok is done on motorcycle; when the target car stops at a red light, Joe kills all the occupants with a machine pistol.
Kong retrieves information about the second target, again via Aom, and the pair become friendlier with every contact. Before Joe executes his mission, Kong informs him of the target, Pramod Juntasa, another notorious gang lord and Surat's rival crime boss who acts as sex trafficker, buying young girls from impoverished parents and selling them after sex deals. Joe sneaks into the target's penthouse and drowns him in his pool. Unsatisfied with Kong's assistance, Joe contemplates killing him, but after a brief confrontation when Kong is ambushed by local gangsters regarding a briefcase containing information files of Surat's/Joe's targets, he instead decides to act as Kong's mentor and trains him for self-defense.
Midway through the movie, Joe meets Fon, a deaf-mute pharmacist, with whom he becomes intrigued after a brief consultation. Joe later returns to the pharmacy to invite Fon out for dinner. Soon after Joe falls for Fon and meets her mother. The affair is cut short when he shoots and kills two assailants in Fon's presence. Blood splatters on Fon, and she runs off, trembling and traumatized by the violent deaths. Feeling betrayed, Fon cannot forgive Joe and ends their relationship.
Before the third kill, the gang attempts to identify Joe, and he warns them off. For the third execution that takes place at the Damnoen Saduak floating market, Kong assists Joe. The kill does not go as planned, and the target, a playboy and a criminal underworld associate, nearly gets away but Joe manages to catch and assassinate him. Before beginning his last mission Joe visits Fon, presumably to say goodbye. She initially ignores him but as Joe begins to drive away she runs after his car.
His fourth target is the Prime Minister of Thailand, who is revered by many. Joe is about to make the kill when he has second thoughts, is spotted, and escapes through a panicking crowd. Meanwhile, the gang has abducted Aom and Kong with plans to execute them. Joe, now a target, is attacked at his house by four of Surat's henchmen. He uses explosives to take them out and is faced with the choice of rescuing Kong or leaving the country unharmed. Joe decides to rescue Kong, so he sets off to the gang's headquarters with one of the half-alive attackers.
Joe goes to the gang's headquarters, kills most of the gang including Surat's underboss/bodyguard (who is blown into half by explosives), and saves Kong and Aom. The fearful gang leader flees to his car with three other accomplices. Joe spots him and shoots the gang members, then gets into the back seat with Surat. As the police arrive at the location, Joe realizes he has only one bullet. He puts his head adjacent to Surat's, puts the gun up to his temple and pulls the trigger, killing himself and Surat.
=== Alternate ending ===
An alternate ending to the theatrical version shows that before Joe kills himself in the original version, Kong steals a police car and comes to his rescue. He kills Surat and runs to the stolen car (although he is shot once in the arm). After eluding the police officers, they hide in a neighborhood a few meters away from Surat's headquarters. As locals come out to investigate the commotion, Kong reveals that Joe is the man who killed Surat. They help him recuperate while one local remarks that Surat was a very bad man, adding that his death marks an end to his crimes and atrocities in their place (with the words "it's good that he is dead") Kong then takes Joe to a boatman and gives him his passports, so that he may flee the country. Joe thanks Kong for his assistance, and gives him a bank account number with "a bonus", stating that he was a good student. Joe then departs, with the camera focused on Kong (from Joe's perspective, similar to the original ending). | philosophical, violence, neo noir, murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | I, myself, understood the idea, but saw no reason in remaking the Thai movie that had the same idea and add almost nothing to it other than production costs.Bottom line: sad-good-assassin story, with no twist.
We know this is the prototypic pitch of every thriller in its type, yet we still pay the full price of a cinema ticket because the film stars Nicolas Cage and we'll probably see a lot of spectacular action and virulent gunfire.
In the original, the hit man was a deaf-mute but since Nicolas Cage is far too expensive to have him shut up the whole time, they made his love interest a deaf-mute instead.
Its about making a movie that entertains, and IMHO they have achieved that.OK, some of the shooting sequences were a bit dodgy and the narration descended into the cliché on occasions but overall I rate this film better then most action films I have seen in recent months.Cage is solid in his role and so is his side kick.
Joe takes his skills and decide to use it by the people, who hired him for the work.Directed by the Pang Brothers (The Messengers) made an lively action-thriller with some good scenes and excellent locations.
"Bangkok Dangerous" isn't a great flick but it's fairly fast paced with some stylishly photography action sequences and a few good moments.
This is a movie for people who just want to see some good solid action and good entertainment.When i first saw the grade on IMDb i was a bit skeptical, but after seeing the movie i was quite satisfied with it.Sure, it is quite predictable and the acting is not ground breaking.
Meanwhile , the killer falls in love with a deaf-mute (in the first version this handicap is borne by the murderous) pharmacist (enjoyable Charlie Young) and he shares brief moments of happiness .This detailed study about an assassin and a youth he trains is an exciting movie with a great visual style .
It looks like it will be garbage just from the video cover: a half interested Nicolas Cage in damn-ridiculous hair (basically a Muppet called and wants its body back), and with a premise that sounds just like it is, a remake of an action movie from years back.
At first, yes, it may look like he's bored, or wooden, or both in the character of "Joe" the hit-man who has his four rules and, naturally, breaks at least a few of them during the run time of the movie in Bangkok (i.e. be anonymous, don't make connections with people you don't know, and know when to quit), but this gives way to something else.
And for good reason, since he's not a "people person" really.That is until Joe meets 'Kong', who is a guy he hires for work but then takes on as his pupil (as the narration dutifully and unnecessarily tells us, because he sees something in Kong), and then also a romantic interest in a deaf-mute girl who works at a pharmacy.
Cage's acting was exactly what I expected and the location filming lent a very accurate air of realism.There is a story being told here so the movie does move between intense action and quieter moments.If you dislike remakes of films in general then I suppose this may not appeal to you.
But when Kong is abducted by Surat (Nirattisai Kaljaruek), who had hired Joe for the assignment in Bangkok, he is forced to betray Joe. But the hit man decides to rescue Kong in his last job."Bangkok Dangerous" is an action movie by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang with the nihilist story of a professional killer.
A jarring, neurotic affair with underdeveloped promise and too many flaws to capitalise on such greater features, Bangkok Dangerous is a two headed monster, one of which is far easier on the eyes than the other.Following impeccable and high-end contract hit-man Joe (Nicolas Cage), the focus of Bangkok Dangerous is simple; a man who lives by 4 rules which dictate how to do his job with precision and success, Joe is also one ridden with loneliness, unable to create relationships with anyone for fear of breaching his security.
The romance isn't as potent as one might hope, but given that Bangkok Dangerous isn't exactly a movie likely to pander to the whims of romantics, such casual development is forgivable.What isn't quite as forgivable however lies in two other subplots which too often distract and take up too much time from the two characters in the story that we care for.
Every time I had to sit through such moments I couldn't help but think of what could have be shown on screen between Joe and his love interest, instead of the perplexing and inane "romance" that was in front of me.Reinforcing the central motif of the film's sporadic and mixed bag nature though is its aesthetic design which often complements the movie's biggest and most poignant moments- action and character orientated.
It's a statement in itself that Bangkok Dangerous, a film that will most likely attract those looking for explosions and gun fights, will no doubt leave such audiences underwhelmed by the mediocre action, and unfulfilled by a distinct lack of focus on such.
It really isn't worth seeing unless you're some hardcore Nicolas Cage fan, and you thought Ghost Rider wasn't a big steamy pile.It only gets away with 2* because there really are a lot of movies out there that are way worse.
I liked the Thai action film Bangkok Dangerous (1999).It was not a great movie,but it was entertaining,it had well done action scenes and it had also had the exotic "taste" the movies from that country usually have.Now,we have the crappy remake of that competent film.Bangkok Dangerous (2008) is a very bad action film which bored me very much.For one sight,the action scenes are badly filmed.They do not produce even the minimum level of excitement or emotion,so I did not care for what happened in them.One of the elements which had worked pretty well in the original film,was to make the main character a mute guy because that had helped to increase the dramatic complexity of the character.I thought it was a mistake to give him voice in this movie because,like that,the character completely lacks of complexity.Plus,I did not like Nicolas Cage's performance.I usually like his work,but on this movie he was unnatural and forced and I could never feel his emotional connexion with his love interest.Besides,the violence in this movie is completely insipid,so it never provoked impact on me.Bangkok Dangerous (2008) is another bad remake which committed the fatal mistake of boring me very much.Instead of watching this crappy remake,I suggest you to see the original film..
Nick Cage has shown to be a flexible actor with a wide range of movies showing his talents to adapt to a character in any given film.
Cage is playing on auto-pilot, not trying anything impressive and the rest of the cast is just running along on the same pace and that doesn't do the trick.This is a remake of a Thai film and although I've not seen that one yet I highly recommend everyone to watch that one instead.
The same thing happens here but it's the girl, Fon (Charlie Yeung) who is mute, not Joe. Since this more expensive film is noisier than the original Bangkok Dangerous, I missed the moments of intense silence it had.
The fact that such laziness is peddled by directors actually from that part of the world only because they want to earn some coin, is pretty mercenary.It feels like the perfect example of how artists can strip their original work of anything that may have made it personal or innovative, stick a big-name star in the middle of the resultant mess and gain some quick and undeserved attention from a wider market.Hit-man Nicolas Cage is slick and dangerous.
But when an American film is guilty of the same practice it really doesn't sit right and spoils the entire picture.Well, that and the fact that someone gave Nic Cage the lead role (Nic Cage, probably, seeing as how he co-produced).Cage is a slightly off-centre, slightly dishevelled hit-man, in Bangkok for an assignment, who forsakes his usual practice of using some street punk to do his running around for him then killing them when the job's done when he realises that young hustler Kong possesses both the speed of mind and body and street-smarts to be a worthy apprentice.
Other than that, it is good with the thrilling music.Overall: It is not bad for a Pang brothers movie as we all know that they did their specific genre, horror, good but if it is directed by some other big-action directors, it will be disappointing.
every one plays well.I agree with this cut comment you know, i've been watching a lot of fresh movies lately, especially action ones because i really love the genre (i just never grow up i guess).
This softening of his rules makes him happy for once, but at the same time the nature of his work means that any looseness is a dangerous thing.Like everyone else, I went to see this film figured that, although not great, it'll probably deliver some good action sequences within an obvious plot.
Now, I know this is not the case and I have added the original to my rental list to see for myself if this had been done better before, but here the Pang's have no fluidity, no thrills, no nothing even the cinematography seems to miss the "gritty urban" feel it is aiming for an ends up just being murky to no benefit.The Bangkok Dangerous remake is a poor film.
i had a lot of expectations from this movie as cage is the hero but it completely disappointed me.coming to the story i did not get why he had an attachment with that local guy just because he told him that the elephants nose pointing downwards is not good and coming to the actress,i don't understand why director decided to make the actress deaf and dump,the scenes between both of them are a torture,if he decided to make her deaf and dump then he would have made the scenes between both of them either romantic or touching but the scenes are neither touching nor romantic,coming to story its predictable throughout,action scenes are below average and last but not the least the cages acting is also dump.overall its not worth watching.
While you are watching what you considered a 'New' film, like " Bangkok Dangerous" you get interested and half way through, you get the feeling 'you've seen this movie' before.
Here you are watching Nicolas Cage as an experienced and well seasoned hit man and he is teaching a young man (Shahkrit Yamnarm) how to be an assassin when your memory informs you, the last time you saw someone doing the same thing, it was called " The mechanic." Well in this film, Cage reveals specific new rules to his trade and adds a touching romance when he falls for a beautiful deaf mute girl (Panward Hemmanee).
I am giving it two stars because I do not want it to be #1 from either end, as in "it is so bad that even in a Worst Movie competition it would take the second place".There are several reviews explaining in detail why it is bad - too dark, slow, stupid "love" scenes, no dialog for extensive periods of time, supposedly skilled hit-man unable to hit target.
The character Joe(Nicolas Cage) is one lonely guy, cause in the business of being a professional hit-man, his life as been like living in a suitcase.
This wouldn't have been a great movie even with a more suiting actor, but Cage's lackluster performance and haggard look didn't do Bangkok Dangerous any favors.Mostly this movie felt to me like one of those films where nobody was really trying.
This is basically a bigger budget film leaning more to the western audiences compared to the original and the hit-man played by Nicolas Cage isn't deaf this time around.
If your a fan of Nicolas Cage, and especially him being in a action movie with a bit of drama, I guess this is worth a look.5/10.
or just a mixed bag of beans (mixture being assembled with the ones you like and the ones you absolutely loathe).This movie has a few nice action set pieces, they alone might warrant a 5/10, but I won't do that in this case, because the "story" holding this together and especially the "performance" by Cage do not warrant that.
The directors have done some good work and better movies, as is true with Cage.
What goes from there will surprise absolutely nobody watching.This film should have been a lot better than it was; after all, the Pang Brothers are known for their innovative style, so you'd expect at least decent action sequences.
The film as a whole seems to be content to go through the motions and it does feel like it's missing its soul.Cage (who sleepwalks through the part, incidentally) takes time out from his hit-man duties to romance a shop assistant, and boy, did they go wrong with this particular sub-plot.
All this film needed was a little imagination or some good direction to rise from an average movie to one that could have been much better.
Nicolas Cage's stars in this remake of the hit 1999 classic "Bangkok Dangerous" a film that while entertaining with some impressive stunts ultimately doesn't offer anything new beyond it's presentation.Joe, or stale-acting- wooden- performance-laden-cardboard-cutout-hero of the story is a hit-man (sound familiar) takes a trip down to Southeast Asia to do some good 'ol fashioned killing for some nameless party that the audience knows nothing about.
I guess I can mark today as Remake day, having to watch two movies which are adaptations or updates to their original, both of which have Asian origins, though one I will be going in blind given that I've not watched its predecessor.I've only caught the DVD of the Pang Brothers' Bangkok Dangerous, arguably their breakthrough film about a deaf mute hit-man, which made audiences round the world sit up and take notice of their talent in crafting gritty stories.
Unfortunately, whatever that made Bangkok Dangerous unique the first time round, got thrown out of the window for tried and tested, and therefore safer and predictable fare, that this one looked no more than a bland, generic action movie.One of the chief aspects of the original that was junked, and that was probably a bad call, was with the mute hit-man now being your typical usual hit-man, joining the ranks of thousands already out there in cinema.
I thought the Pang Brothers' story, and the original movie, steered very clear from trying to resemble your typical Hong Kong / Hollywood action flick, and wanted to stamp their own authority in their take on the action-hit-man genre.
Tell me if you're not seen something like that before, and they should have thrown in some doves for good measure too.Nicholas Cage as Joe (in a little name reversal from the original) came at a time where his star wasn't fading that fast, yet.
good script writing nice romantic side and of course will performed action scenes and amazing acting from cage i like this one ,,recommend to see for sure impressive end of story as the same of the beginning thank u ,,,,, i believe this flick had being really underrated sometimes i agree with people...that we all expect more from someone we admire like cage ,,,, but if you see the movie you will understand why i rate it better that couple of cage recent movies ......
Boring action film from the usually dynamic Pang Brothers and star Nic Cage.
Joe (Nicolas Cage) is a professional hit man looking for a final job.
With "Bangkok Dangerous," Hong Kong's Pang Brothers breathed new life into an old story with a remake of their own 2000 film of the same title.
While the earlier film was entirely Asian, the brothers hired American film star Nicholas Cage and reworked the original characters and story for the remake.
A relatively short film, "Bangkok Dangerous" should satisfy Cage fans and those seeking a fast-paced action movie, who can overlook flaws in the script and character development..
i was disappointed in this Nicolas cage vehicle.i had hoped it would be a good action adventure movie.instead,it's more of a drama,with very little action.there is really nothing new here.plus,it's a bit too bleak for my tastes.and it's pretty slow.but,at least we got to see some of Thailand.the music is quite good,and the movie has nice visual style.there isn't a lot more positive i can think of.Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chung directed this,which is a remake of their 2000 Asian version of this movie.i haven't checked out the original yet,so i can't compare the two.Nic Cage is convincing here playing a very dark character,although he doesn't have a lot to work with.However Shakrit Yamnarn is much more effective in a supporting role.overall,Bangkok Dangerous rates a 5.5/10.
There used to be a time when watching movies starring Nicolas Cage was actually kind of an event.
I enjoyed kicking back and watching Nic Cage do an action movie like this.
I feel sorry for people that actually paid to watch this.I watched my brother's DVD of it.I can honestly say that it's the worst film I've seen for quite some time.Stupid, rubbish plot and story.Bad camera work and direction.Poor action scenes.Completely and utterly forgettable acting Completely and utterly cheesy and as for the deaf and dumb "girlfriend parts",why?
Nicholas Cage plays an assassin who wants to get out of the business for good and he accepts a last job in Bangkok.And like in every assassin story he falls in love with a girl he meets in a store and later takes on a student.The action was not spectacular nor was the acting. |
tt0177858 | Im Juli | The film begins on a hot summer day on a country road. A man stops by the side of the road and watches a solar eclipse. When it is over, he opens his trunk and sprays bug spray on the dead body he has inside. A hitchhiker then comes up behind him to ask for a ride but is instead hit by the man's car. The driver decides to come back and pick up the hitchhiker's body from the road. The drivers name is Isa (Mehmet Kurtulus) and he is heading to Turkey. He finds out the hitchhiker's name is Daniel (Moritz Bleibtrau), who is a student teacher on his way to Turkey also to find a girl and the flashback of his love story begins.Daniel first meets Juli (Christiane Paul) when she calls him over to her stand on the street in Hamburg where she sells jewelry. She sells him an ancient Mayan ring with a sun on it and tells him that it will lead him to the woman who will bring him true happiness. She also invites him to a party that night.Daniel goes to the party and sees a girl with a picture of a sun on her shirt. She asks him if he knows of a cheap place to stay for the night. He finds out her name is Melek (Idil Üner), a Turkish name. As they leave the party, Juli sees them and one sees that she has a picture of a sun on her dress.Melek stays at Daniel's apartment and takes her to the airport the next day. He cries as she leaves for Istanbul, thinking that they were meant to be together.Juli decides to hitchhike and go wherever the first car to pick her up is going. Daniel is the first person to stop and she hops in the car with him. He tells her he's heading to Istanbul because the ring she sold him worked and he's found the girl of his dreams. She tells him that she's also going to Istanbul.The car they are driving breaks down in Bavaria and they have to share a bed that night in a tiny motel. The next morning, they argue about which route they should take to get to Turkey. A truck driver named Leo going to Budapest picks them up. They stop at a bar and Daniel waits outside while the other two go in and have a beer. Juli tells Leo that she wishes Daniel would fight for her. Leo asks Juli to dance with him and begins grabbing her inappropriately. Juli yells for Daniel who comes in and saves Juli.Juli and Daniel take a boat on the Danube and smoke weed, which makes them float in the air. Juli asks Daniel what he is going to say when he finds the girl he's after. He doesn't know and she gives him a declaration of love to say to her.They wake up on the boat the next morning and the crew throws Daniel overboard, separating he and Juli. Daniel finds land and a girl driving a beat-up van picks him up. She takes him to a bar to get some food and drugs his soda. Daniel soon finds himself in the girl's van again and still under drugs. The girl starts to sensually manipulate Daniel's bodily movements and steals his sun ring.Daniel wakes up surrounded by barrels of hay and is shot at by a farmer. He finds out he is in Budapest and goes to a street market where he sees the girl selling his sun ring. He grabs it from the stand and runs with a merchant on his tail, giving the girl a chance to steal from another merchant. She also runs and Daniel eventually hops onto the roof of the temptress's van, commencing a chase. The chase ends after Daniel and the girl driving the van evade the pursuing merchant and are stopped by the police. Daniel escapes with the van without the police seeing him as the girl is arrested.Daniel comes to the border of Romania, but soon realizes that the temptress stole his passport and the guard won't let him cross. Just then, Juli comes out of a bathroom right across the border. They tell the border guard they are married so that he can join her in Romania. She wants Daniel to repeat the love speech she told him earlier, but he can't remember it. He promises Juli that he will learn it. The border guard makes them give him the van Daniel was driving as a gift.Daniel and Juli steal a car from a repair shop and travel through Romania, taking photos of everything they see and do. Daniel knows he cannot get to Bulgaria without a passport and tries to jump his car over a small river to get around crossing the official border. The car sinks and they are again without transportation. Daniel tells Juli that it's all her fault that he has gotten into all these messes and hasn't gotten to Istanbul yet. That night, while Daniels asleep, Juli hitchhikes again. Daniel wakes up and sees the solar eclipse, bringing the story back to the point when he is picked up by Isa.Isa and Daniel pull up to the border of Turkey at this point, but a guard finds the corpse in the trunk and the two are arrested. Isa explains to Daniel that the corpse is his uncle from Turkey who died while visiting his family in Germany. Daniel silently escapes from jail and Isa is able to explain why he had a body in the trunk and is let off as soon as he gets his uncle's birth certificate.Daniel waits in a café for a bus to Istanbul, when he runs into Melek. Melek says she has to take something to the border and Daniel realizes that Melek is actually Isa's girlfriend and that she's bringing him his uncle's birth certificate.Daniel arrives in Istanbul and finds Juli waiting for him. He recites the speech she told him to say and they kiss. They hitchhike together and are picked up by Isa and Melek. As Juli gets into the car, Daniel sees the sun tattoo on her back for the first time. | romantic, psychedelic, entertaining | train | imdb | Part romantic comedy and part road picture, the story is full of twists and delights as it takes you on a ride across Europe, switching languages as we go - German, English, Bulgarian, Turkish.
The audiences here at the film festival loved it and it was a near-miss for audience favorite (right behind another more serious German film), but this is quite an achievement for a film that's just light entertainment.Hopefully, this film will find greater distribution, and encourage it's filmmakers to make more movies.
In fact, it's one of the best things that we have seen from that country in a while, which proves that when a talent like Mr. Akin is at the helm, one must rush to see whatever he decides to present for us.In fact, the beginning of the film is kind of disorienting.
Right after he has been left behind, we meet him again in different circumstances as he is teaching math to a group of inattentive students who are preparing for their summer vacations.Daniel, after meeting Juli, buys a Mayan sun ring that she promises will let him meet a woman who will have a ring to match his, that same night, and that woman will be his true love.
The only problem is that in taking to the road, Daniel discovers himself and gets to meet his true love at the end.The film is made more enjoyable by Mortiz Bleibtreu's work in it.
Lovely Idil Uner is seen as Melek and Mehmet Kurtulus is Isa and Branke Katic plays Luna.The film is a road movie that shows some beautiful European countryside and byways as the trip progresses from Germany to its end in Istanbul.
I haven't seen a film that makes me feel this good for a long time.
I saw couple of German films that directed by young directors (some of them second generation Turkish ones) lately.
In the film we see a variety of eccentric (Luna), free spirited (Juli), boring (Daniel), dull (the guardians at the Romanian and Turkish borders) people.
Its competitors where among other excellent films "Love is a bitch", "Girl on the bridge", "Girl of your dreams", "Her eyes", "Mifunes song".The movie is a sort of feel-good road movie through the Balkans.
It tells the rather simple story of a young, intelligent man (Moritz Bleibtreu) who doesn't realize that the woman of his dreams (a dread-locked Christiane Paul) is right next to him.
(And maybe they wouldn't have done it even with this script - director Fatih Akin is from Turkey!) Bleibtreu, who had a wonderful bit-part as a dumb, tarantinesque killer in "Knockin' on Heaven's door" is very appealing here, but it is the tall and beautiful Christiane Paul (from "Das Leben ist eine Baustelle"/Life is under construction), who delivers the emotional knockout punches.
There are so many great scenes: Daniel and Juli getting stoned and singing "Blue Moon", Luna (played incredibly sexy by Branka Katic) laughing crazily during the chase through Budapest or the photos of Romania (who took those when both Daniel and Juli are in the picture?)But you better don't scrutinize the logic too closely and while the dialogue also could have been more inspired and witty (as in Fatih Akin's first film "Kurz und schmerzlos"), "Im Juli" more than makes up for it with great characters, inventive cinematography (especially in the hallucinating scenes), a wonderful soundtrack and the rarely seen locations of SouthEastEurope.
All those meetings and coincidences looked a little unbelievable first time, but now I think everything makes sense if we see the story as an allegory
meaningful but at the same time light and funny.The playfulness of the script might perhaps make some miss the message of the movie, but the message actually is there and is a strong one.
After the sun comes out again it looks like dark gets out of Daniel's mind and the sun shows him the right way this time: that Juli was the one he had been searching all along.
The whole journey changes Daniel incredibly much as with her sun amulet, Juli learns him to do the same as her: trust faith and go on searching for happiness.
The ending was really perfect: all the 4 characters' roads coming together and Daniel finally seeing the ultimate proof that he had found what he was looking for.What I enjoyed about the movie is that although the message is a serious one, the story is so light and everything goes on really fast and surprising.
All the actors, playing the Turkish guy, Luna or the officer at the Romanian border, looked they were really enjoying their roles and brought most of the movie's humour: great, subtle and nothing Hollywood like.All in all, I thought it was a really enjoyable movie, so different from the usual productions we get from Hollywood.
Moritz Bleibtreu (one of my favorite german actors) plays Daniel, a young secondary school teacher in Hamburg.
A chaotic trip through southern Europe begins...A romantic road movie with young and talented actors.
It was really surprising to see Moritz Bleibtreu drinking Turkish tea in the Turkish border, it was really amazing to see A+ acting from Turkish actors, it was really a NEW thing to watch a superior road trip movie..and the list goes on.
If you want to leave the theatre with a smiling face, I suggest you to see this movie.The acting, image transitions, script, story narration and editing are just a few must see parts of Im Juli.
This German movie is everything a road trip movie should be: fun, surprising, unabashedly romantic, filled with well-developed characters and plot twists interesting enough to hold one's attention throughout.
If this is true, then both Christiane and Moritz Bleibtreu (who plays Daniel Bannier) do a marvelous job of seducing the audience, both are very likable and by the second reel you are cheering for them to be together.The plot has the basic framework of a road movie/romantic comedy.
He is disappointed that she is meeting someone who she might be in love with, but after they part ways he decides to go to Istanbul and meet her under the bridge on the night of her meeting with this other man.Meanwhile Juli, having seen Daniel and Melek together becomes depressed and decides to leave the city.
Along the way, Juli falls even further in love with Daniel even though he is on a quest to meet another woman.
As they make their way, the usual kinds of twists and turns that one expects in a comedic road movie crop up: the car breaks down, they lose all their money and are forced to depend on the kindness of a quirky bunch of characters to complete their journey.
As he loosens his hold his heart also opens to Juli, and when she leaves him to complete his odyssey alone (an act of unselfish love, and an indicator that Juli is learning lessons herself), he finally realizes that the girl he truly wanted was with him all the while.Near the end of his trek he runs into the very girl he is going to Istanbul to meet and finds her very happy to see him.
I'll leave you to find out the rest, but rest assured there will be no unhappy ending here.As Hollywood tries to come up with increasingly improbable scenarios to breathe new life into the romantic comedy, German director Faith Akin follows a familiar path and allows the heart of these characters to draw us into the story.
The exotic places they travel through becomes a separate character as well, and Akin allows the beauty and mystery of these locals to seduce as much as the main characters do.The charm of this movie is in the reminder that humans the world over feel the same excitement and happiness when falling in love.
After a somewhat wooden start in Hamburg, the movie unfolds in a very endearing way while the main characters travel to Istanbul.
I came across Faith Akin's movie "Im Juli" /("In July") by pure chance and the fact that it had Moritz Bleibtreu (from "Run Lola Run" fame) in it made it appeal to me since I liked Moritz in previous other movies.The movie tells the story of a young teacher (Moritz) who thinks he had met the love of his life in a Turkish girl and follows her to Istanbul/Turkey.
At the same time his real true love, Juli (Christiane Paul) travels with him, saves him and silently tries to win his heart over.In the end everything finds it's solution and climax beneath the Posporus bridge in Istanbul - the meeting point.The movie is well paced, doesn't have big special effects, but tells a wonderful story.
Daniel & Juli travel to Istanbul to meet their "Sun" meeting & losing each other along the way.
I personally love most of the movies Moritz Bleibtreu movies but Juli played by Christiane Paul totally sets the mysterious free spirited feeling throughout the movie.
Faith Akin is one of the best and brightest directorial voices working in Europe today, and while this early film isn't quite as strong as his more recent masterpieces, it's still a sweet, funny and worthwhile love story.
On the surface it's a very familiar romantic comedy plot – the misadventures of guy searching for girl he thinks he loves, while missing the fact that the perfect girl is right beside him.
Controversial German-Turkish filmmaker Faith Akin followed the critical success of his debut feature "Short Sharp Shock" and cemented his popular appeal with this cute rom-com that takes its protagonists from downtown Hamburg to the banks of the Bosporus in Istanbul that proved a successful sophomore feature.Prolific German actor Moritz Bleibtreu makes a likable lead and generates great chemistry with the über-cute Christiane Paul as his sometime love interest whilst excellent support comes from the charming Mehmet Kurtulus at the head of a quirky supporting cast that includes the ephemeral İdil Üner, the insane Branka Katić and a brief appearance from Akin himself.The accomplished filmmaker employs all the standard clichés in this run-of-the-mill road movie that is lifted to a whole new level by a diverse and talented cast and crew who put there passion for film-making onto the screen in a way that has long since deserted the Hollywood factory.Hey, we got a long way to go, man..
Also, it seemed relatively easy to determine WHO the main character would fall in love with in the end of the film after only shortly after the movie began.
The acting and pacing were excellent and although you had a strong idea where the movie would end, the actually journey there took a lot of surprising twists and turns.
A wonderfully fresh and fun film which is sometimes sassy and sometimes capricious, this warmly romantic road trip pic will keep you guessing from moment to moment as the protags take a journey through Europe and the process of falling in love.
Director Faith Akin is ahead of his time in his 2000 film Im Juli in that he successfully portrays the ideals of a cosmopolitan Europe before the European Union was in existence.
His dramatic film captures the essence of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism and raises questions of Heimat and belongingness through the love story of straightedge Daniel and free-spirited Juli.
Daniel and Juli's decision to stay in Turkey at the end of the film raises the idea of Heimat fluidity and whether a Heimat can change, a question a transnational director such as Akin has most likely faced himself.The fact that Im Juli was released before the installment of the European Union and Euro is not one to be taken lightly.
We also see that our main character is able to be changed, something unique to epic theatre – Daniel starts the movie as a rigid and rather boring man, yet at the end we see that he has become both adventurous and willing to gather new experiences, almost becoming, in many respects, similar to Juli.
Im Juli,as a Faith Akin production,it must be seen by the people who question that "how to find right person".This film shows us that a girl or boy who we never think to date could be most special person in the world.In the other words,in contrast to Daniel looking for love in far away,Romeo or Juliet may be close as a car seat.Daniel goes thousands of kilometers for the sake of love that he believe her as right person.The ring that Juli sold to Daniel is the sign of Juli's hope for love to him.But this expectation disappears in front of the bar that Juli hope to see Daniel there.Certainly She sees him there but with a girl who let the story starts.The facts that based on characters Melek,Daniel,Juli and İsa are significant.No comment more,just watch it without hesitating....
As Romantic comedies goes, "Im Juli" is one of the better I've ever seen, rating up there together with Serendipity, Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry met Sally.The major difference though, is that the story is happening not i America, but from Berlin through Europe and finally under the Bosporus Bridge i Istanbul.All the happenings and situations tend to be almost hilariously funny.
Film is a German production but the director of the movie is a Turk.
At the beginning of the movie I don't like the films opening way but at the end I am happy about Film shooting way of Faith AKIN They gave their cultural knowledge to film.
young Turkish director Fatih Akýn made a nice, entertaining and warm film about love and destiny...i liked the plot but more then that, i really loved the way Akýn expressed all kind of feelings in a very natural way..cinematography and nice editing impressed me..it is a nice road movie with a good plot, good directing and good acting..
In a few words Im Juli is a good road film I think..
A romantic story happened in July,about a girl named also July,seeking his love towards Daniel Bannier(Moritz Bleibtreu) who was a school teacher and get the feeling at the first sight.July sold her strange ring to Daniel in order praying for a love and blessing herself falling in love with Daniel.Each of us has the expectation on a romantic story could actually occurs to ourselves,like Daniel and July,even along with sharing the identical experience with the actors.Faith Akin cite a flashback as a beginning to take the audience into the movie,but filled with a little unbelievable coincidence.Daniel is a normal school teacher,but the things changed after met Melek(Idil Üner),who would come back to Turkey soon.Daniel was attracted by her and decided to go to Turkey to meet her again with a strong emotion begun with the destination from Hamburg to Istanbul.July love Daniel very much that makes the reason for becoming his travel accompanier.Faith Akin reasonably arranged the long story between Daniel and July through the whole episode.We can easily get the conclusion of the Romance pix,both actor being a couple in the end,but the point of this kind of movie is the process,Faith Akin delivers his story by making an unbelievable trip across several borders that helps to pave the way for the couples,that's an another excellent and novel tactic used in the romance movie.I generally accept it.Rating(7/10).
This Film is the evidence that a Road Movie in Europe can be as exciting as in US.
It's in German with subtitles (if your lucky)..although reading the dialogue can be a chore and distracting....for a good movie you do get into the swing of things and soon enough you begin to appreciate the original language as tone, inflections, whispering is conveyed as it was meant to.Moritz Bleibtreu is "Daniel Bannier" who is a young, sensitive, kind teacher in training in Hamburg, Germany.
But, I don't think there was enough romance in the film either.There are many road movies where two people fall in love, including American films like "The Sure Thing," which is how it should be done.
Maybe, this is a culture thing, though again, I saw various European films, and liked them.This simply isn't that good.
Moritz Bleibtreu (of 'Lola Rennt') is the boy-next-door; Christiane Paul is the smart July who's in love with him and, quite unknowingly, makes him do a cross-country through eastern Europe; Mehmet Kurtulus as Isa, the mysterious stranger, has the most imposing presence of all; and there's also Birol Ünel (Cahit of 'Gegen Die Wand') as an eccentric character in an underground restaurant where our hero nearly succumbs to the charms of the sexy Luna (played by Branka Katic).Overall, IM JULI is a great film.
Fate lands Daniel, in a borrowed car, at her feet, and the trek to Istanbul has begun, as Juli sees this as a chance to get Daniel to fall in love with her.
Although Juli learned his real intension, she still would like to accompany him to Istanbul because she did not want to give up.What happened on the journey was very interesting.
If you are careful, you will not let your true love slip away.An enchanting romantic movie.
Solid German road movie, good love story.
"Im Juli." (don't forget the full stop) is an early Faith Akin film starring two young German actors Moritz Bleibtreu and Christiane Paul, both still under 30 years old.
Bleibtreu won the German Film Award for his work here and in "Das Experiment".
On a side-note, somehow I always felt that Juli would not be attracted to a nice looking guy like Bleibtreu's character.
Thats why you can be surprised all the time.If you want to have a sweet trip from Hamburg to Istanbul, give this movie a try!.
Very funny and romantic road movie.
please watch this very funny and romantic German-Turkish road movie.
It will be good after watch unnatural Hollywood movies with similar scripts .Moritz Bleibtreu ...
Juli ( I loved her after I watched movie. |
tt0345551 | Latter Days | Elder Aaron Davis, a young Mormon from Pocatello, Idaho, is sent to Los Angeles with three other missionaries to spread the Mormon faith. They move into an apartment next to openly gay party boy Christian Markelli and his roommate Julie, an aspiring singer. Christian and Julie work as waiters at Lila's, a trendy restaurant owned by retired actress Lila Montagne.
Christian makes a bet with his co-workers that he can seduce one of the Mormons, and soon realizes that Aaron, the most inexperienced missionary, is a closeted homosexual. Aaron and Christian become acquainted after several encounters in the apartment complex. When Christian accidentally cuts himself on a metal hose reel and faints, Aaron helps him indoors and cleans his wound. Christian attempts to seduce Aaron, but the hesitant Mormon becomes upset by Christian's remark that sex "doesn't have to mean anything." Aaron accuses him of being shallow and walks out. Worried that Aaron is correct, Christian joins Project Angel Food, delivering meals to people with AIDS.
Aaron's fellow missionary, Paul Ryder, has a cycling accident. Returning to his apartment, a distraught Aaron encounters Christian, who tries to comfort him with a hug. Both men are overwhelmed by their feelings and end up kissing, failing to notice the return of Aaron's roommates. Aaron is sent home in disgrace, leading Christian to confront Ryder, who is angry that Christian corrupted Aaron for no reason. Christian admits that he initially just wanted to win a bet, but says "it's not about that" anymore. Recognizing Christian's distress, Ryder tells him that Aaron's flight has a five-hour layover in Salt Lake City.
Christian finds Aaron standing in the snow outside the airport terminal. Christian confesses his love, and despite his misgivings, Aaron admits his own feelings of love. With all flights canceled due to a snowstorm, Christian and Aaron spend an intimate night in a motel. When Christian awakes, he finds Aaron gone. Aaron's pocket watch, a family heirloom, has been left behind. Christian returns to Los Angeles. In Idaho, Aaron is excommunicated by the church elders, led by his own father, Farron, who is the stake president. Aaron is rejected by his father and scolded by his mother, who tells him that he needs to pray for forgiveness. When Aaron suggests that he might be gay, his mother slaps him. Overwhelmed by despair, Aaron attempts suicide. He is subsequently sent by his parents to a treatment facility to be cured of his homosexuality.
Christian is desperate to find Aaron and locates his home address and phone number. Aaron's mother informs him that "Thanks to you, my son took a razor to his wrists; thanks to you I have lost my son." Believing that Aaron is dead, Christian spends the next few days thinking continually about Aaron. Julie discovers an entry about Christian's feelings in his cellphone journal and uses it as the basis for her new song. Christian travels to the Davis home in Idaho, where he tearfully returns Aaron's watch to his mother. During an encounter with Julie, she hesitantly shows him her new video, which upsets Christian, realizing that part of the lyrics came from his personal journal without his consent. Julie tells Christian that she hoped something good would come from it.
In the treatment facility, Aaron hears a female voice singing and investigates. He discovers a music video playing on television, the song performed by Julie. The video prompts Aaron to return to Los Angeles in search of Christian. Upon arriving at Christian's apartment, Aaron is heartbroken when a stranger answers the door. Thinking that Christian has returned to his party boy ways and moved on, and having nowhere else to go, Aaron makes his way to Lila's restaurant, having befriended the owner while on missionary work after her life partner died. Christian, who happens to be working there, comes out and is overjoyed to see Aaron alive. They reconcile and later celebrate Thanksgiving with Christian's co-workers. Lila tells everyone that, no matter what, they will always have "a place at my table, and a place in my heart". | romantic | train | wikipedia | I'm not going to go into my entire life story here, but I will tell you that i'm a straight person, so it may seem a little odd that I'd like to watch this movie.
I know what it's like to be shunned from the people you've grown up with, not exactly how aaron does, but I have a definite feeling and this movie went straight to my heart.
You would think that the Church would offer some time of assistance to those of us who have/do stuggle with being gay--but the sad reality is that you are cut off just like the movie depicted and sadly, cut off from your family and shamed within the community.
Trust me, its better to see this unfold in a movie than to have lived it.While it may be steeped in stereotype and clichés, as many critics have suggested, Latter Days manages to expose many shallow traits among the major elements in this story: organized religion, gay culture and even Hollywood itself (I love how Cox portrayed L.A. as an additional "character" in the movie).I thought that the acting was terrific, especially Sandvoss as Aaron Davis.
More importantly, Latter Days affirms the profound joy and genuine love gay people do discover with one another.The storyline in short, a closeted Mormon Missionary from Idaho, Aaron Davis, moves to LA where he ends up living next door to a hot swinging gay boy, Christian, who has all the depth of reality TV.
I doubt that there is a gay or bi-man alive who can see this movie and not fall in love with Sandvoss' character, Aaron Davis.
Sandvoss is totally believable as a sensitive, loving, spiritual person whose humanity is profoundly more life affirming than his religious mentors or the sophisticated freethinking idealists of West LA.The plot and its various twists sometimes come off as a bit far fetched.
I love so much about this movie: the music, the cinematography, the acting, the story, and all the Mormon clichés.
Jay Cox, the cast and the crew for such a brilliant production.Yesterday I watched "Latter Days" for the first time.At first I thought it might be similar to the movie "Priest", which I liked very much for showing a gay priest out of the closet.
But "Priest", maybe due to its restrict Catholic Ideological notions, didn't supply my spectator's needs by revealing a profound sad end."Latter Days", on the other hand, broke that concept (and some other ones as well, such as the Mormon's principles); presenting a tender and cheerful story, leading it to a happy and emotive end, and yet arousing a feeling of God's blessing and hope.
I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes astoundingly beautiful gay love stories!.
This sitcom-sounding set-up leads to a $50 bet made among the restaurant wait staff to see if Christian can bed Aaron, obviously leading to complications that look anything but promising to either the characters or the viewer.Fortunately, the film improves marginally once the two get together, even though the evolution of their relationship is inevitable according to the conventions set forth by Cox. What is intriguing at this point is that Aaron's self-acceptance as a gay man is not as automatically liberating as one would expect.
The movie resonates most when it deals directly with the restricted attitudes of the Mormon Church as embodied most viscerally by Aaron's mother and when Christian comes to accept his own lifestyle limitations.
These two, very different, young men become friends, and in the process, affect each other's outlook which, in turn, sets up an inevitable clash between gay and Mormon cultures.That is the premise of "Latter Days", a 2003 film, written and directed by C.Jay Cox, himself a former Mormon missionary.
Even when I thought I could foresee something coming, I was surprised by how it actually came about.Not many movies make me laugh knowingly at real gay dialogue and then bring a tear to my eye when I feel the characters' pain.
Mary Kay Place, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock form the Sun) and Erik Palladino (ER) all do a fine job with minimal screen-time.The leads, which so many complain are not gay in real life, do a wonderful job portraying what Ernie says are `average guys' who are gay; in other words, not flamers or such.
They just didn't allow enough time for proper character development.Please I recommend everyone to formulate their own opinions but if you want a quality film that will actually resound with you, watch "Beautiful Thing", "Get Real" or "Shelter"...I cried to "Beautiful Thing" ha ha.
At least that is the message of this thoughtful and well made comedy-drama.The contemporary portrayal of gay characters in films tend to be either the too-good-to-be-true best buddies, found in films like THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION, MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING and AS GOOD AS IT GETS, or the simplistic, sex-obsessed hedonists in films like LOVE!
The two come together via one of the lamest of movie gimmicks: Christian hopes to win a $50 bet by seducing the amiable, yet deeply religious Aaron.The film is fairly predictable and relies on a few too many coincidences (though the term miracle is dropped a time or two).
The always wonderful Jacqueline Bisset as Christian's employer and mother figure provides the film with a degree of dignity, while Mary Kaye Place, as Aaron's distraught mother,is honest in a different direction as she reveals the pain of a parent who sees her son's homosexuality as both a personal failure and a social embarrassment.
I honestly thought that Independent Gay Film had moved past some of these things by the mid-90s but evidently they still lurk, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting movie goer who dares to have a brain.
It's takes a classic plot of opposites attracts, using the characters of Christian, a waiter with a passion for partying and men, and Aaron, a young Mormon missionary away from his family for the first time and struggling with his sexuality.
I hope that the next time I am so moved by a film I will not a couple of hours later feel that I have somehow been cheated as a gay man by straight men once again screwing up my emotions..
Other characters are either too good to be true (Jacqueline Bisset) or just flat-out unbelievable (the singer/songwriter roommate with the horrible voice).It's been pointed out that Mormons are depicted as barely less than Nazi-like monsters in this film, an easy, simplistic resort to make points.
And the excellent Erik Palladino is nearly unrecognizable as an AIDS sufferer who allows Christian some personal insight.LATTER DAYS can be added to the list of awful gay fantasies like BIG EDEN or LOVE!
While not a ground breaking gay romance like "Brokeback Mountain," "Latter Days" is an entertaining love story that is greatly enhanced by its talented boyish lead, Steve Sandvoss.
As the secretive restaurant owner, the still-beautiful Jacqueline Bisset makes a welcome appearance and provides a nurturing mother figure that contrasts with Aaron's intolerant unforgiving mother, who is played by Mary Kay Place.Whether or not the Mormon Church is as harsh as portrayed in the movie, the unyielding parents and church elders make ideal villains, especially for gay audiences who view religious extremism as the enemy of tolerance.
Although the film's visuals are too slick, and the sets are lit like a television episode, the flaws fade as the story develops and viewers fall in love with both Aaron and Sandvoss..
And I was in for a surprise: I liked it.The plot revolves around two exact opposites insecure Mormon missionary Aaron Davis (newcomer Steve Sandvoss) and gay party animal Christian Markelli (Wes Ramsey, ABC's "Guiding Light" and the failed sitcom "Luis") - who meet after Aaron moves into the apartment across from Christian's with some other missionaries.
Aaron, who has finally disclosed his feelings and longing for Christian, is shipped back to his BEYOND disapproving family and Christian begins a search for the one who got away that captured his heart...Like I said, I had never heard of this film and if I didn't end up getting free passes for this, I probably wouldn't have seen it.
Besides Sandvoss and Ramsey (whom I believe both have big futures before them), the cast includes Jacqueline Bisset as a sympathetic restaurant owner, Mary Kay Place as Aaron's once loving, now bitter and unforgiving mother (though at times, mainly because of the way she looked, I was reminded of Piper Laurie's over the top Oscar nominated performance from Carrie), Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Aaron's homophobic missionary partner, Amber Benson as one of Christian's friends, and Erik Palladino as a dying AIDS victim that Christian befriends.The music is the other best thing about it.
i don't know how this movie has a rating of over seven on IMDb movies much better than this like dream boy have a rating of 6.1i had high hopes from this movie but the quality of this movie, the low standard of acting was shocking , given the overall rating.the nudity in this movie doesn't help either as it all looks so fake there are no emotions and i could not feel anything for the characters please do not go by the overall rating of this movie and give it a pass there are much better movies to be watched.
The premise of Latter Days would seem like something interesting to watch, but sadly the film turns out to be poorly written, poorly made, and performed by the actors at only a level that a low-quality movie will allow.
A pretty good script, great acting from two unknown leads who will become household names, and although I'm a fan of Ms Bisset, I thought she put in the worst performance of her career (in one particular scene at least).This film could have been great, but it falls short.
There is something authentic, even if the movie began simply and I really wasn't excepted this.I am from Switzerland, and I could tell you that's things aren't really different here, I still think that's life is no about judging other for what they are, so if you are Mormon that's good, if you are Gay that's good.
He doesn't have a huge role, but I was delighted to see Rob McElhenney as a young Mormon missionary--he's one of the dissolute crew from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn't get much of a chance to break out of the strictures of his character, and I find it very, very difficult to believe that a homophobic Mormon missionary would actually be so free and easy about using words like "homo" and "fag." That would have to be pretty unusual.The best part of the movie is definitely Steve Sandvoss, not just because he does a good job of embodying the role of a basically innocent missionary struggling through the situations in which he finds himself, but also because Sandvoss is so insanely, insanely beautiful.A lot of the action and situations seem rather forced dramatically, but this film is definitely worth watching.
Aaron's screen time is nil toward the end of the movie, so we are left wondering if the love interest is mutual between Christian and Aaron.On the surface, the movie seems to perpetuate the stereotypes that Mormons and homosexuals are out to recruit other people to their cause.
In the end, Christian, the shallow gay guy, gives meaning to his life, and Aaron, the Mormon, takes a more liberal view of the world.
Forget the sexual orientation of the main characters and just watch the film; you will see a really good love story between two completely believable characters.
Cox WAS a Mormon missionary and he WAS gay and he DID come out, much like Aaron does in the film.
And a few scenes needed trimming (but the great acting holds your attention during those long parts).This movie has quickly moved up on my Top Ten Best Gay Flicks list and I'm sure you won't find it hard to add it there either.
It had mixed reactions from the critics when it was released in 2003/4 and barely broke even on the production costs, yet it garnered many awards from various lesbian and gay film festivals from all over the world.Briefly Latter Days is the love story of Aaron Davis, played by Steve Sandvoss and Christian Markelli acted by Wes Ramsey who come from different sides of the religious tracks, so much so that it might as well be different worlds.
However, when the film was sent to me by my oldest and best (gay) friend, I decided to watch it anyway.My own parents never ever broached the subject of homosexuality and were spared a large part of my "secret life" as I moved out at 17, but to this day I am utterly sure that they would never EVER have behaved so deplorably and "unchristianly" as poor Aaron's parents do when he is found out and sent home.
In the beginning of the film leaving Pocatello (just some doodah pudknocker from Pocatello - Judy Garland was born in a trunk in the Princess Theatre in Pocatello, at least in "A Star Is Born") he is his mom's "baby" - when he comes back she can not even bring herself to look at him, much less touch him or offer him comfort in any way (a rather ungrateful role for the lovely Mary Kay Place).In fact, in this film there is only one single gracious character role and it has been put into the ever capable and beautiful hands of Jacqueline Bisset who also gets to deliver most of the best punch lines in that impeccable British accent of hers.If the ordeal, which Aaron is being put through after having been ex-communicated, is anywhere near-realistic (and I deduct as much from some of the comments), I am appalled and horrified.I am sorry, but judging by some of these comments, the Mormon religion seems to be incredibly bigoted and left back in another century - do they still burn witches at the stake in Utah ??
The story of a gay party boy romancing a Mormon missionary could easily have degenerated into the worst kind of B-movie melodrama.
True life and True love are not easy and this great film shows all the warts of characters along with their good natures with excellent performances for all the actors.
C. Jay Cox (who also wrote Sweet Home Alabama) brings us a touching, heartwarming love story about Aaron, a closeted Mormon missionary, played by the handsome and endearing Steve Sandvoss, who falls for a West Hollywood, pretty boy, Christian, Wes Ramsey, while spreading the gospel in and around 'Sodom and Gommorah', Los Angeles.
It's too bad that there wasn't a theatrical as well as a director's cut of this film as this could've made a great mainstream movie and should be seen by everyone.Unfortunately, it never made it to most theaters most likely due to the fact of the nudity, gay sex, and a couple of surreal sexual scenes.
A perfect date movie!The film also features some great supporting roles with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (kid from Third Rock from the Sun) as one of his missionary brethren, Jacqueline Bisset, owner of 'Lila's', a restaurant where Christian and his friends work and hang out, Mary Kay Place, Aaron's mother, and Rebekah Jordan, who gives a terrific performance as Christian's best friend and confident.
In the first few minutes of the film when Elder Aaron Davis -- the young Mormon on the mission, superbly played by newcomer Steve Sandvoss -- is in a cab on his way to his new home there is a person with a placard by the side of the road with the inscription `Entering Hell.' It may be true.It turns out that Elder Davis' next door neighbor is a very attractive gay party animal named Christian.
How's that for irony?Christian works as a waiter at one of those trendy LA bistros named `Lila's' -- owned by Lila Montagne -- the superb Jacqueline Bisset who has one of the best lines in the whole film; she is talking to Aaron when she says `Your church doesn't like alcohol or homosexuals.
Can't imagine Heaven without both.'After having many doors slammed in their faces Elder Davis and his mission partner, Elder Paul Ryder -- brilliantly acted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Third Rock from the Sun) -- encounter Lila who needs a sympathetic ear.As Lila says at one point `I don't believe in coincidence.'Eric Palladino (ER) is unrecognizable as an AIDS patient -- you will not believe it is he.Through a series of twists of fate Christian discovers that Aaron is the man he has been waiting for and goes to great lengths to ensure that they will be together.Mary Kay Place is the Mother From Hell to Aaron -- she is at her most unsympathetic best.There are many plot twists and turns and quite a bit of suspense when you are uncertain of the fate of Aaron.But the film does end on a satisfying note.I saw this film with a friend that just happens to be a gay Mormon -- and while the Mormon Church no longer excommunicates people for their sexual orientation -- most of the rest of the situation was pretty much true to life.This is an excellent film with superb music that helps to develop the story and move the plot to a final conclusion.You really should see it..
The actors portraying Christian and Aaron are so great and spot on with their performances, they really made me feel like they truly loved one another.
I just purchased it and watched it and found it to be a very emotional movie.I used to be a Mormon for 20 years and then was ex-communicated for being gay.
All you have to do is like a good, old-fashioned (or maybe not) love story.I'm waiting for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it again (and again)..
While this movie may not be the next best gay film I absolutely loved it.
Whether you've ever been mormon or not; whether you're gay or straight; I think everyone will find something of value in this movie.. |
tt0119365 | Incognito | Harry Donovan (Jason Patric) is a talented and enterprising painter who takes in large amounts of cash for his expert forgeries of old masters he produces for clients. Keeping a low profile he is disconnected with his own artistic capabilities and his drive to produce the fake work of old masters is in part an ignoring of his own inner purpose. His father (Rod Steiger), from the Ash Can school is aging and castigates Harry for not following his own artistic merits to follow through on his plan to have his own show with a respectable gallery. However, Harry is disappointed once again, and a gallery rejects to give an exhibition with his paintings. The father is sick with age, he also tried to become a painter, but is not famous.Harry meets up with a group of gallery owners lead by Alastair Davis (Thomas Lockyer) who is seeking an old master to sell for a high price. With Turley (Ian Richardson), Tom Agachi (Togo Igawa) and Iain (Simon Chandler) to raise the funding they go to Harry and offer him $500,000 for a forgery of a Rembrandt. During his research for a lost master Harry discovers a Rembrandt from 350 years ago when it was being transported from Rotterdam to Spain and begins recreating in specific detail the lost painting down to using materials that have been out of use for centuries. During his activities in Paris, Harry meets a young and endearing woman Prof. Marieke van den Broeck (Irène Jacob) who initially introduces herself as a student but in fact is a professor and an authority on Rembrandt. She and Harry are taken with each other and sleep together before Harry leaves for Amsterdam to fabricate his masterpiece. Harry -who told her that he was an art professor- wanted to see her again on another date, but she refuses and remains elusive. The clerk of the hostel where Marieke is staying sees them making love. Marieke also leave a not on her pillow saying "You've been wonderful."The process is tiresome: the pigments, the canvas, the frame... everything has to be perfect. After completing the canvas Harry brings it to Spain for Alastair and his retinue but the art dealers decline to pay Harry the money until they have established from art experts that the painting is real. The critics are attracted by being offered the information that it's a Díaz de la Peña painting which has just been found. Marieke is the most important critic, as she belongs to the board for Rembrandt authentifications, and she is the only one who says that she doesn't believe it's a true Rembrandt. It could have been done by one of his alumni. When Alastair decides to sell the painting at auction Harry disagrees and takes the painting with him. Obviously, the rest disagree with him, but Harry threatens them with Alistair's own gun.Although Harry fires the gun, he doesn't kill anyone. However, when the police go after him, he is accused of killing Agachi. He kidnaps Marieke, who is outraged because Harry has lied to her. As a pursuit ensues across the French, and English borders Harry and Marieke handcuffed together learn many things about each other. Marieke is accused of being an accomplice of Harry, while Alastair tries to get his hands on the fake Rembrandt again. Marieke and Harry argue about what art is, the outrageous quantities of money paid for paintings of dead paintors who died in abject poverty.Harry can't sell his fake Rembrandt. The murder frightens everybody. Two thugs finally accept to pay 100,000 in cash, but they are just Alastair's men trying to get it for free. Harry fights one of them. When Harry gets in touch with one of his contacts, the police is waiting there. Harry runs away, and throws the painting into a garden fire. However, the painting survives.Harry is judged. He says that he painted the fake Rembrandt, but nobody believes him. Only Marieke says that it's a fake. However, she's discredited in front of the jury because of her love/sex relationship with Harry. From gaol, Harry tries to contact his own father, who doesn't want Harry to worry about him. Harrys' father knew about his illegal business, but he never judged him, although he tried to encourage Harry to paint his own works. Alastair visits Harry on jail, and tells him harsh and cruelly that his father has died of a weak heart.Marieke tells Iain that he should be careful, as Alastair Davies may decide to get rid of him as he got rid of Tom Agachi. Eventually, Harry's barrister arranges the final proof: Harry will paint another copy in front of the jury. The judge accepts, although Harry finally is unable to do it - the eyes of his father - his inspiration for the blind eyes of Rembrandt's father - prevents him to go on living making cons.Everything is going bad for Harry. Iain is the last witness. He confesses that Alastair Davies killed Tom Agachi. Alastair goes frantic and threatens to kill him. The judge holds Alastair in contempt, and sends him to jail without bail until a new judgement is set. Iain keeps the painting.Harry is freed, but it's Iain who gets the fake Rembrandt. He sells it to a hotel chain in Hong Kong. However, Harry has not said his last word: he tells Juan del Campo (Ricardo Montez) that he's been cheated. The Spanish government considers the Rembrandt part of Spain's national patrimony, so they have the right to pay the money it was auctioned for and take it to Spain. Because of Juan's ownership, the money will go to him. His lawyer tells Iain this when he's celebrating the great success of selling the fake Rembrandt as a true painting, in his luxurious gallery. They can't do anything about it.The del Campo family wants to share with Harry Donovan some of his rightfully-theirs money. After taxes, there are 600 million pesetas for the family, and they give a part to Harry Donovan.He tries to locate Marieke. He also tries to paint his own materials. The first one is a portrait of Marieke. She finally arrives to look at the painting.Harry Donovan and Marieke kiss passionately. | neo noir, murder | train | imdb | A relatively unknown movie, I bumped onto it as it was shown on the TV: I started viewing it hoping it to be at least watchable, and I was pleasantly surprised to realize that in fact it was really good.The story is about a highly talented arts forger (Patrick), who agrees to paint a fake Rembrandt picture for $500,000.
However, things get complicated when a girl he sleeps with (Jacob) happens to be one of the experts to judge its authenticity, and she gives the painting thumbs down.
As if this were not enough, his employers change their tune with him, and this is when everything turns rather sour...Jason Patrick is really good in his role; so good in fact, that I re-aligned my overall rating for him completely after this movie (it wasn't that high before that, as you can imagine).
Irene Jacob is also good as his girlfriend, while Rod Steiger plays a small role but still manages to remind us of his grand standing.
All in all, a surprisingly good film: 8/10..
I have seen this movie more times than any other.
There is something unusual about this movie: you like it but can not really figure out what exactly makes you feel that way.
The movie lets you roam around the inner circles of art and forgery.
Probably all this adds up to make it a movie that one enjoys watching, any time, all the time..
A bit of a pleasant surprise (considering its lack of theatrical release in the NY area), Incognito is a fairly involving drama/thriller involving a disturbed artist who's gotten so entangled in the underworld of art forgery he's never formed an identity of his own...he does a great Rembrandt, but Irene Jacob spots it as a fake, which both infuriates and attracts him...a murder occurs and the pursuit is on, with him trying to clear his name and trying to become a "real" artist...Patric is a little too brooding and pouty, making him hard to like for much of the film (C.
Depp could make him a much more sympathetic "bad" boy), but beautiful location work (widescreen, too -- I saw the laserdisc -- on video it's probably a mess) and the lovely & talented Ms. Jacob make it a surprisingly unique experience...check it out..
Yes, the production values of INCOGNITO (especially the gauzy photography) smack of "B" Level production, this film shines for a few reasons, most notably the peek into the world of Art, Art History and Art Forgery.
Anyone who considers themselves curious about both Rembrandt, his place in the art world, and the art world's place in history will enjoy this movie.
This movie's depiction of the steps in the creation of a counterfeit masterpiece are possibly the best half-hour of film I've ever seen.
Especially good are the performances of Rod Steiger, Jason Patric and Irene Jacob..
It's Different, But Like The Fake Painting You Know It Could Be Better.
Although sometimes way too slow-moving and not as involving as it should have been, this film was almost a "keeper" in my collection.The story was different, and I liked it, about an artist producing a fake Rembrandt.
Jason Patric, an interesting and underrated actor, played the role on the con 'artist,' so to speak.
She was likable, unlike Patric's character.There are some interesting moments in this film, particularly for those who love art.
Its dialogue on the true meaning of great art is truly interesting, even if simplistic (but not relative to most films out there).I thought Patric was pretty good, but it's the script itself that does most of the work.The scenery and imagery is also fantastic..
The cooperation of editing and screenplay is very good, it made me feel like watching some James Bond movies ...
I also loved the pace of this pleasantly surprising film, it flew with no significant faults.
I've watched this movie four times so far and would watch it again tonight to share it with someone special.
My wife never watches a movie more than once but has viewed this one three times.
Her comment was that there is something about this movie that makes you want to see it again.They should have eliminated the scene with the telephone booth because the lock on the outside of the booth made no sense at all.
My recommendation is that you buy the movie instead of renting it because you will want to watch it again and again.
Well, not technically sound all the way through, but for 2am on HBO, this is quite a good little movie.
Patric seems a little lost, and the whole thing with his father isn't done very well, but Jacob is always nice to watch, and there were enough interesting parts and nice shots, to keep one's attention.
this movie takes drama, thrills, and even art to a completely new level.
i cannot believe this movie hasn't won the most awards in the history of film.
"You don't like people," says Marieke to Harry Donovan, challenging him to name one counter-example.
The angry-but-brilliant artist is a cliché, but Jason Patric makes it work.
His character finds some sort of healing in his rendering his father into a fake Rembrandt he makes in the movie, at the same time melding his relationship to his father into his own psyche.
I would like to have seen more art and art commentary in this movie, but you can learn a lot from it..
This is slightly better than a good TV movie.
The grand art forgery swindle game is interesting, but Jason Patrick is rather irritating with his big mouth and surly attitude toward everyone, sort of like the tempermental artist, and it gets a bit tiresome.
The plot has a few good twists, and if you're not expecting the world it's an Ok flick.
The story about a an art forger who fakes a Rembrandt picture is a quite good one, and was a relieving difference from most other B-thrillers.
Although I doubt that the way he fakes the painting is possible in real life, it was very well made for this film.
That doesn't matter much here, because it's the story that makes this a pretty good movie.
The film takes place in Europe, something I liked for a change..
How good the movie can be???.
Incognito is the best movie ever!!!only 4 movies are almost that good,after dark,my sweet,sliver,bridget jones`s diary and road trip...so this movie was just amazing!!!how somebody can do and act something like that?i think Jason Patric was WONDERFUL!!!!!and when that art what Harry Donovan had made of Rembrandt"blind man" went to the museum...oh my god!!
Both Emmanuelle Beart and Jacob should stick with French scripts that draw upon their prodigious acting talent, rather than exploit them as female 'scenery.' English is not the medium for Irene to accomplish this, as all her ability apparently is funneled into pronouncing the words correctly.
Acceptable Art Forgery thriller Starring Jason Patric.
Harry Donovan is an art forger who paints fake Rembrandt picture for $500,000.
The girl he meets & gets into bed with in Paris, Marieke turns out to be an arts expert.
I knew this was going going to be a class A film but it does give a good the peek into the world of Art, Art History & Art Forgery.
Anyone who considers themselves curious about Rembr&t, his place in the art world, & the art world's place in history will enjoy this movie.
There are some interesting moments in this film, particularly for those who love art.
Jordan Katz's screenplay is full of authoritative, fascinating facts about how art is variously made, copied, authenticated & exposed as fake.
'Incognito' could serve as a handy tool for teaching courses in the detection of art forgery.
Directed by John Badham, a Hollywood hack with a decent commercial track record (Saturday Night Fever, Short Circuit, War Games, Stakeout) Jason Patrick is really good in his role Patric is believable in his role as a suffering artist & skillfully shifts from unlikable to sympathetic.
; Irene Jacob is also good as his girlfriend (she is known for her films with Krzysztof Kieslowski) Rod Steiger plays a small role but still has the staying power of the great actor we know.
The romance with Jacobs, who plays, Marieke van den Broeck, reminds us of a "39 Steps" Hitchcock kind of way.
The European locales (Dutch, Spanish,Parisian) are very much like paintings & the director & cinematographer did a good job here.
The movie looked pretty poor on my big screen HDTV.
than- for the right way to translate an art thief story in a romantic thriller with inspired new details.
short, a film who use Rembrandt in wise manner and who has the art to propose to a large target a simple, fascinating and seductive story of love, art and secrets who can change everything..
This film has a great story line and acting.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE BEAUTIFUL:.
Tragically uneven, INCOGNITO features beautiful European scenery..and an engaging look into the world of fine art.As a suspense thriller, it offers as many twists and turns as the viewer can handle, but repeatedly slows and stumbles through underdeveloped sub-plots, and shallow performances by the main characters.
Irene Jacob is a wonderful actress, as witnessed in the two Kieslowski movies, but can't deliver the vague Prof.
As for the storyline featuring Rod Steiger, and his relationship with his son (Patric), it starts slow, before totally petering out all together.Interesting and beautiful as a travelogue, it's worth the rent if you stick with it to the end..
I thought "Incognito" was an excellent movie, a slightly offbeat thriller that keeps you guessing till the very end.An artist who specializes in forgeries is approached with an offer he can't resist -- paint a 'lost' Old Master.
Talented *and* smart!The artist is played by the sexy Jason Patric.
Entertaining when it stuck to the world of art forgery.
This film was entertaining and fast-moving when it dealt with the world of art forgery.
The scenes depicting how a brilliant forger (Jason Patric) created a "lost Rembrandt" were amazing -- I loved how he bought black-market 160-year-old lead white paint so its radioactive half-life would be down to zero.
Rod Steiger was completely wasted as Patric's ailing father, a minor character who doesn't even rate an on-camera scene in the second half of the film.
The most real thing about this film was forgery, oddly enough, and it was Incognito's saving grace..
Art forgery cloned into a James Bond" movie, with an utterly bad script.
To think that a judge and jury would sit "spellbound" for hours on end watching Jason Patric paint a "masterpiece" in an afternoon is beyond ridiculous.
And speaking of Jason Patric, his character is so unlikable that the only one to sympathize with is the long suffering audience.
Rod Steiger is totally wasted, and so was my hour and forty eight minutes, watching this total nonsense.
THE WORLD OF ART AND LARCENY...I liked it....
I was too far away from the remote control late one night and ended up watching the beginning of a cheap looking HBO movie.
Thank goodness it turned into an interesting movie, the rest of the film was spent clothed.Looking at the other comments, I'm disappointed that more didn't realize that the art was the show.
An English language foreign intrigue film, "Incognito" sticks Jason Patric in the spotlight as a forger of classical paintings with an attitude who is consigned to paint a Rembrandt while having to juggle pigments and palettes, father/son issues, a lovely art expert (Jacob), a bunch of art dealer/fences, a murder, and eventually a court of law.
Though Patric's limited acting ability is evident throughout, there is sufficient material in this film to make it interesting if not engrossing.
You'll get to see how a forgery might be done, some good European shooting locations, and Jacob topless while the film examines issues with some depth such as why a forger can't make a legit buck when he paints better than the old master he's forging, etc.
Probably a more worthy film than its obvious absence of accolades would suggest, "Incognito" should prove and enjoyable watch for fans of the players and anyone with an interest in classical painting.
Well, I was surprised, this film ain't that bad.
I wasn't expecting much but by the end, I quite enjoyed it.Badham's direction is fair, he didn't always make good use of the frame and show off the European cities.
The acting isn't bad, quite good actually.
Jason Patric produces a worthy performance here.
The female lead is pretty good, the French certainly produce some terrific actresses.The plot does feature a few problems, but still, a lot of it ain't bad.
The film wasn't always running at a consistent pace and a few scenes were rushed.
a film about art.
a film about Rembrandt in a special style.
short - a clever film with elements of art history, thriller, crumbs of Hitchcock and full of beautiful images.
because action near love, art near chase, conspiracies near industry of fake masterpieces, delicate homage to Rembrand near need to survive and, a beautiful couple are ingredients for everyone..
Intriguing glimpses of the art world make this a not bad time-waster.
What makes this film interesting are some fascinating looks at the art world.
The detailed reconstruction of an art forgery.
The superbly photographed English coutryside and the beautiful Irene Jacob (doing what she has to do in an undemanding role).Jason Patric is miscast as the art forger and there is some hammy overacting by Thomas Lockyer as the arch villain.
The plot degenerates into a pseudo Hitchcockian chase and all ends in a trial scene with a rather contrived plot twist.All in all the film does try to be different and has a pleasant look about it..
It is a well acted movie, especially by Irene Jacob, but even Jason Patric does a an OK job.
For example, in the beginning Harry (Jason Patric) is seen running from the police on TV.
I can understand the lock to be on the inside (Harry's side) but on the outside?!Yet if you'd like to see a well structured, yet flawed thriller, see "Incognito".
It's one of those British crime dramas in which people walk around in Saville Row suits, visit Paris and Spain at will, and drive Jaguars -- and the plot centers around a fake Rembrandt painted by Jason Patric, who is double crossed by a couple of co-conspirators and aided by art expert Irene Jacob.The sociologist Dean Maccannel, in his book "The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class", has a delightful anecdote about a group of young American tourists in the Louvre or the Prado or someplace, noticing that a number of paintings were designated as having been executed by P.
Ignotus's work, rushing from hanging to hanging, exclaiming, "Oh, here's another one by Ignotus!" This has nothing to do with the movie unless I want to squeeze it in by saying that I was reminded of Maccannel's story by an argument the fakers are having near the beginning of the film.
The production of this fake has taken a long time and Patric has not signed it as Rembrandt van Rijn.
The others (who are supposed to be art experts) want him to sign it so they can be sure they'll palm it off as the real thing.
But Patric knows (as they should) that not every artist signs every one of his works, Rembrandt included.
(I think Michelangelo signed only one of his works, La Pieta, although flamboyantly.) It's kind of interesting to watch Patric fake the painting.
The rest of the movie -- with the thieves and murderers in pursuit of Patric and Jacobs -- is kind of routine, with one or two scenes very redolent of Hitchcock.
It simply doesn't seem too original and hasn't much in the way of sparkle.Except for Irene Jacob, the art expert who falls for Jason Patric for reasons that escape me because he looks quite ordinary.
Badham, the director, is tasteful enough to have her disrobe on camera.The film ends in a trial which is pretty tense and enjoyable, although not in the slightest believable.
On trial for murder, Patric has a chance to prove his innocence by reproducing the faked Rembrandt in court, which he can do in a jiffy.
In London, Harry Donovan (Jason Patric) is arrested for the murder of a Rembrandt owner.
Harry is an art forger in NYC struggling to get his own work noticed.
He goes to Amsterdam to study Rembrandt and decides to fake a lost picture.
However it turns out that she is the pre-eminent Rembrandt expert and she is the only one who won't authenticate his picture.The movie is solid for the first half.
Then the movie suggests that Harry killed the Japanese guy.
The movie should show the bad guy killing the Japanese dude after Harry leaves right at that point.
Once the courtroom scene starts, the movie stops making sense..
This movie has art forgery, romance and evasion from the law.
It is the type of movie that I should like, but after a promising start, it fails to deliver very well on any of the themes.The forgery aspect is handled fairly well, although the writers seem not to have heard of diffraction spectroscopy or any of the other post-xray methods in use which would probably have detected the forgery without difficulty.
DeMille once observed when a plot hole was pointed out to him, nobody will notice if you keep the movie going, because "you can't see the teeth on a buzzsaw." That is only true, however, when the saw is turned on and the teeth are in motion.In this film, the romance never feels right, and only serves to slow down the action. |
tt2103281 | Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | In this sequel to 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes', almost a decade has passed since the outbreak of the ALZ-113 virus which then spread across the globe. The human population has mostly died off from the virus and from violence, while the ape population has thrived and grown. A montage of news reports is shown on a globe crisscrossed with red lines, with footage of escalating violence among humans that has also contributed to the chaos.Caesar (Andy Serkis), the chimpanzee leader of the apes, is in the trees of Muir Woods, north of San Francisco, with his fellow simians. His lieutenant Koba (Toby Kebbell) keeps an eye out, then alerts Caesar (through sign language) when a large herd of deer comes stampeding through the forest. The apes run after them for the hunt, trapping some of them. Caesar's son Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) goes after a wounded deer, but is suddenly attacked by a bear. Blue Eyes gets wounded as the bear claws his chest, and Caesar jumps in to help his son. Caesar is outmatched and calls for Koba. Koba jumps onto the bear and kills it with his spear. Caesar thanks Koba for his help and tells his son to think before he acts.The apes return to their sanctuary in the Muir Woods. They have established homes and even an educational system led by Caesar's trusted orangutan friend Maurice (Karin Konoval). Caesar goes to his home to tend to his sick wife Cornelia (Judy Greer). She gives birth to a baby ape. Caesar brings Blue Eyes forth to meet his new brother. Afterwards, Caesar finds Maurice, telling him that he is amazed by how far they have come as a group over the years. Maurice asks him if he still thinks of humans. Caesar admits that sometimes he does.Blue Eyes and his friend Ash (Larramie Doc Shaw), son of Rocket (Terry Notary), are walking through the woods when a human named Carver (Kirk Acevedo) encounters them. Carver draws his gun defensively, and he shoots Ash. The gunshot alerts the other apes, as well as the humans that Carver is traveling with, led by a man named Malcolm (Jason Clarke). The apes run through the woods to confront the humans. Caesar commands them to go. Malcolm's son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) drops his bag and is forced to leave it behind.Caesar sends Koba and two other chimps to follow the humans.Malcolm and the humans return to their area in the ruins of San Francisco, reporting to their leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) on the group of apes and Caesar's ability to speak. The humans' goal is to gain access to a nearby hydroelectric dam and activate it in order to supply their community with enough limited power to last them for a little while longer. Meanwhile, Caesar gathers his apes and rides into the city on their horses to face the humans. Caesar declares that the apes do not want war, but they will fight back if they must. They also return Alex's bag to him, and Caesar tells the humans to never return to their forest sanctuary.Dreyfus addresses the humans, riling them up and fueling their distrust for the apes and their anger for what has happened. He speaks to Malcolm afterwards, who tells Dreyfus that if he is given enough time, he can convince the apes to let him get to the dam and take out the blockage to generate power. Dreyfus agrees and gives Malcolm three days to complete this task. Malcolm prepares himself to go out with a few humans. His wife Ellie (Keri Russell), a nurse, volunteers to go with him, but he wants her to stay home with Alex. Alex overhears and decides to join his father.Malcolm and his group travel back to the woods, leaving him to enter the sanctuary by himself. He is captured by gorillas and taken before Caesar. Malcolm explains that he means no harm and only wants to get to the dam. He shows Caesar and the apes the facility with the power systems to prove it to them. Caesar allows Malcolm to carry through with the task, but first he and the others must hand over their guns. The apes break the guns apart. Koba approaches Caesar and expresses his distrust for humans, having been experimented on in the Gen-Sys labs, leaving him with multiple scars. He also doesn't seem to approve of Caesar's affection for the humans. Caesar, however, sees this as a chance to make peace with the humans.The humans set up a camp in the woods. One human, Foster (Jon Eyez), points out that what makes the apes stronger is that they don't require power in the same way that humans do, since they can adapt to their surroundings more easily. Carver also addresses Malcolm and Ellie, as they have each lost someone close to them from the virus (Malcolm's first wife and Ellie's daughter).Caesar and the other apes prepare for another hunt, but Koba is nowhere to be found. He has taken two other apes into the city where they come across the humans in their compound using their firearms, essentially discovering their supply of weapons to use against the apes. Koba comes across two men, pretending to be a playful chimp, blowing raspberries and hooting. The two men order him to leave, still seeing him as a threat. Koba turns and leaves, his characteristic snarl returning to his face.Malcolm, Carver, and Foster work in the dam to remove the blockage. They successfully blow it out but the blast temporarily traps them. Carver's leg is also wounded. Ellie is able to convince the apes to help dig the humans out of the rubble. They return to camp for Ellie to treat him, while some apes, including Caesar, come by. Caesar's baby son goes over to the humans. Ellie and Alex immediately take a shine to him, finding him adorable. Carver is less welcoming. When the little ape comes over to a box containing a gun, Carver reacts on instinct and seizes the weapon, aiming it at the apes. Caesar grabs the gun from him and whacks him with it, furious. Malcolm calms Caesar down, and the ape throws the gun into the river. He orders the humans to leave. However, Malcolm and Ellie find Caesar as he tends to Cornelia, who is very sick and weak. Ellie offers to aid her with their antibiotics. Caesar gives them one day to stay to help his wife. Foster forcefully takes Carver back to the truck and leaves him there, taking the truck's keys so Carver can't run off.The humans return to the dam to finish their job. Koba comes back after warning the other apes of the humans' weapons supply and nearly attacks Alex. Malcolm protects him, but Maurice steps in and defends both humans. Koba angrily tells Caesar that he believes Caesar loves the humans more than he does the apes. Enraged, Caesar attacks Koba, beating his face until he decides he cannot kill him -- one of the apes' guiding principles, seen on Maurice's teaching wall is that no ape will ever kill another ape. Koba extends his hand to Caesar for forgiveness. Caesar accepts.Koba returns to the compound to find the same two men sharing a drink. He once again plays up the silly chimp act, entertaining the two men. They hand him their bottle for Koba to drink from, but he spits it out. With their attention diverted, Koba grabs one of their rifles and kills the two men. He leaves with the rifle, then later finds Carver sitting in the van. Koba pulls him out through the window and beats him to death.By nightfall, Malcolm and his group have successfully reactivated the generator and are able to play music. Caesar guides Malcolm and the others to a higher level to show them the lights going up in the city. Cornelia has also gotten better. Just when everything looks fine, Koba appears with the rifle. Only Caesar sees him mere seconds before Koba shoots him. Caesar falls from the tree to the ground. Koba flees, leaving only the rifle and Carver's cap, which Blue Eyes comes across. Maurice tells Malcolm, Ellie, and Alex to run as the other apes become frightened and wild. Koba convinces them all that humans have shot and killed Caesar. He rounds up all the males and charges into the city, as Malcolm and his family are forced to hide.The humans are celebrating the return of their power by dancing. Dreyfus retreats to his private quarters to check his iPad and see pictures of his wife and two sons, who have since been lost to the virus. He breaks down into tears at the sight of them. He then goes to the control room where another man is trying to get contact through the radio. Suddenly, Koba and his gorilla/chimp army ride into the compound to lay siege to the humans. Dreyfus gathers a group of armed men to stand over the gates to fire at the apes. He grabs a rocket launcher and manages to hit several targets, killing a few apes. Koba manages to charge with his apes through the gates and break their wall down.By daybreak, Koba and his followers have taken humans as prisoners, declaring that they now know what it feels like to be caged. They find two humans, one of which is swinging a post at the apes, which Koba grabs from him. He orders Ash to use it on the man, but Ash shows mercy and says Caesar wouldn't want this. In response, Koba grabs Ash and drags him to a balcony and hurls him over to his death. Meanwhile, Malcolm and his family find Caesar, alive but weakened. They take him away and he leads them to his old home where he was raised by humans. They begin to try and treat his wounds, just as the apes run through the city, now armed with the humans' guns. The apes that refused to follow Koba have been locked in a bus. Blue Eyes sees Maurice, who tells him to protect himself.Ellie wants to operate on Caesar but needs medical supplies. Malcolm offers to go back to the city via the subway system and get the supplies, narrowly escaping being killed by apes with machine guns. He eventually hides in a room, only to encounter Blue Eyes, who holds his gun up to Malcolm, but cannot bring himself to shoot him. Malcolm tells him that his father is still alive, leading him to Caesar. Blue Eyes sees the bullet wound and growls at the humans, but Caesar tells him this was Koba's doing. Blue Eyes tells his father that his mother and brother are safe for now, but Koba is amassing more followers due to their fear, and he also tells Caesar that Koba killed Ash, causing Blue Eyes to weep.At night, Caesar goes to the attic and finds an old camera with a video of him as a young chimp with his human owner, the late Will Rodman (James Franco in archive footage), teaching him. Malcolm comes up and asks Caesar who that is. He responds that he was a good man, just like Malcolm.Maurice and the other trapped apes break free from their bus and break the humans out. They find Caesar and tell them about Koba's plan to get the female apes and young ones to join him, including Cornelia and their newborn. Together, along with Malcolm, they head out to stop Koba.Koba and his followers have gathered at the top of a tower, while Dreyfus and two other men have recently made contact with the military and loaded the tower with C4 explosives to take the apes down. While Caesar and his friends go to face Koba, Malcolm encounters Dreyfus and the men, and draws his rifle to stop them and convince them not to go to war with the apes. Dreyfus refuses to relent, saying he is about to save the human race. He grabs the detonator and pushes the button, causing an explosion that kills him and the two men, as well as any apes within the tower, but Malcolm escapes the blast. At the top of the tower, Caesar comes face-to-face with Koba, still wielding his rifle. Koba once again tries to rally the apes, claiming that together, they are strong. Caesar fights his former ally, while the other apes stand by for Caesar. In the chaos, Koba takes his gun back and begins to shoot at the apes. Caesar dives in and tackles Koba, knocking him off a ledge. As he hangs on for his life, he looks up at Caesar, who pulls Koba's arm up. Koba tells him, "Ape not kill ape." Caesar looks him down and replies, "You are not ape." With that, he drops Koba and allows him to fall to his death.The free and surviving apes, including Caesar's family, come up to the tower to reunite as a group. Malcolm goes up to find Caesar and warn him about the incoming military reinforcements that would threaten his family and start a war. Caesar says that an ape has already started a war, and that Malcolm must go and protect his own family. The two of them acknowledge their friendship, but also the fact that the chance for peace is gone. Malcolm slips away, leaving Caesar to stand over the apes, who all bow down to him once again.At the end of the closing credits, the sound of howling apes and the scraping of rubble can be heard. | suspenseful, realism, murder, violence, action, revenge, sentimental | train | imdb | null |
tt1392190 | Mad Max: Fury Road | Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) explains in a voice-over narration that he was once a cop and road warrior and is now trekking through post-apocalyptic Australia, running from haunting thoughts of his dead wife and child and other people he's failed to save. As he stands on a ridge looking around, a two-headed lizard crawls near Max and he stomps on it before eating it. He drives off and is quickly pursued by a group of scavengers called the War Boys, who are all pale and covered in blisters due to radiation sickness. They chase Max through the desert and cause him to crash before they capture him.The War Boys take Max to their lair in the Citadel, a system of caves in a very tall mesa. They shave his head and face. They tattoo his back with a notice saying he is a universal blood donor (Type O negative) because they intend to use him as a blood supply. They cover the lower part of his face with a trident-shaped iron muzzle. Max is nearly branded with an image of a skull engulfed in fire but he breaks free and runs from the War Boys. The chase through the caves shows that the Citadel is extensive and has an ample water supply. As he runs, Max continues to see images of the dead before he makes it to an exit high above the ground. He jumps out and latches onto a swinging hook, but he keeps swinging back toward the War Boys and they manage to pull him back into the tunnel.In the Citadel, there is a large community of survivors lorded over by the leader of the War Boys, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played the villain Toecutter in the original Mad Max film). Joe wears a grotesque face mask made of horse teeth set in a large pair of jaws, with air hoses attached to a bellows system on his back to help him breathe (his lungs are damaged). As he addresses a crowd on the ground below the Citadel, he supplies the people with some water, making everyone go crazy and fight for it once Joe shuts it off after a few seconds. He warns the people not to become addicted to water so that they do not go mad over its absence. Joe then sends his commander Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) out in a huge war rig to collect fuel from Gas Town, with an escort of War Boys in smaller vehicles. Furiosa has a metal prosthesis in place of her lower left arm and hand.On the road, Furiosa diverts from the path to Gas Town (glimpsed as a distant group of oil refineries) and heads east. Joe is alerted to the change and runs to the locked chambers where he keeps his five wives (young women chosen to breed his children). They're all gone, and writing on the walls says "Our children will not be warlords" and "Who killed the world?" An old woman tells Joe that he cannot own a human. Furiosa is taking the women away from Joe, prompting him to rally the War Boys and go after her. All the War Boys are eager to join the chase, but one called Nux (Nicholas Hoult) is so weak that he needs a "blood bank" -- which means Max goes along for the ride, chained to Nux and connected to the driver via a central line transfusion tube. The War Boys believe that Immortan Joe can deliver them to the gates of Valhalla, so Nux is willing to risk death.The War Boys ride after Furiosa's war rig, which is attacked by another desert tribe, the Buzzards. Nux straps Max to the hood of his car like the figurehead on a ship and eagerly chases Furiosa alongside the others. They attempt to get close to the rig, but Furiosa shakes most of them off. Nux gets close to the rig as Max attempts to break free. Furiosa drives toward a huge oncoming sand storm. Nux continues to chase her, even as they head into treacherous sand tornadoes. A few War Boys get killed in the storm, while Nux and Max are spun out of control and they crash.Max awakens to find himself still chained to an unconscious Nux and still wearing his muzzle. He grabs a shotgun and tries to shoot off Nux's wrist, but the gun misfires. He walks around the rig to see five beautiful women -- the Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton), and the Dag (Abbey Lee) -- cleaning themselves with a hose and removing their chastity belts with bolt cutters. Angharad is nine months pregnant with Joe's child, and Dag is also carrying his baby. Max points the shotgun at the women and demands the hose. He drinks, then tells them to use the cutters to break off his chain. Dag tries to but cannot break it. Furiosa sees in the distance that Joe has gathered reinforcements from the other towns that supply gas and ammunition to the Citadel. The approaching forces are led by the People Eater (John Howard) and the Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter). Max and Furiosa fight as he tries to break the chain that ties him to Nux. Nux wakes up and helps Max fight Furiosa, who is assisted by the other women. Nux cuts the chain and Max tries to take the rig for himself. However, it stalls because Furiosa installed a kill switch and only she knows how to keep it going. Max lets her back on the rig but he doesn't want to take the rest of the women. Furiosa insists that they come along, as she is guiding them to a location she calls the Green Place. When Furiosa explains that Joe's "gratitude" toward Max will probably be a slow, painful death, Max gives in and as they ride off in the war rig, Nux sneaks on board.Furiosa drives the rig into a canyon where she has an arrangement with a group of biker bandits: they'll close the pass behind her with a rockfall to foil her pursuers in exchange for 3000 gallons of fuel, which she's towing in a trailer. She teaches Max the sequence of switches to throw to defeat the kill switch, then asks his name. He doesn't want to tell her, so she says "When I yell fool, drive out of here fast." They spot Joe and his forces closing in. Furiosa gets out and shouts to the bikers that she's brought the 3000 gallons of fuel, as agreed, and she'll detach the trailer. One of the bikers complains that she said there would be a few pursuers, but there are three large parties. Furiosa, dodging to put the rig between herself and the bikers, yells Fool! and manages, between bullets, to climb back on as Max drives the rig away. Though she never did detach the fuel trailer, the the bikers blow up the overpass, temporarily halting Joe's pursuit.Immortan Joe, in his large-wheeled, off-road vehicle, is able to climb over the rockfall. Another chase ensues through the desert. (During this part of the chase, Max removes his mask using a metal file Furiosa gave him.) The War Boys keep trying to overtake the rig while Joe is catching up. He attempts to shoot at the rig until Angharad steps out as a human shield, and Joe cannot do a thing without hurting his potential son. Nux attempts to help Joe, who sprays chrome paint on Nux's mouth with the promise of bringing him to the gates of Valhalla if Nux succeeds. Almost immediately, Nux loses his gun in front of Joe, who continues driving with disappointment. Angharad tries climbing back to the front of the rig, but she falls off and is run over by Joe's car. The women tell Max to turn back, but when he tells Furiosa that Angharad went under the wheels, Furiosa says they must keep going. The others cry for Angharad.Nux slips back into the rig with the promise of helping the women evade Joe. He lies on the floor, distraught that he has failed Joe yet again and has lost his chance of joining his personal army. Capable consoles him. At the front, Furiosa tells Max of the Green Place and how she was taken from it as a child.As they continue driving through the night, the rig gets stuck in a big mud hole. The Bullet Farmer is not far behind them. Max shoots at him but misses, and then Furiosa gets a clean shot, taking out the Bullet Farmer's lights and blinding him.Meanwhile, Joe's lieutenant the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson) takes Angharad's body, as she is near death, and he cuts the baby out of her stomach. The baby is dead too, but he tells Joe that it was a boy. Joe tells his adult son Rictus (Nathan Jones) that he had a brother. Rictus screams proudly. The women continue trying to get the rig out of the mud while Max goes out to face the Bullet Farmer himself. He returns with the Bullet Farmer's blood on his face, along with a nice supply of guns and ammo.In the morning, the rig comes up to a tower where a naked woman, the Valkyrie (Megan Gale), is screaming for help. Max thinks it's a trap, but Furiosa steps out and tells the Valkyrie her mother's name and her affiliation with this clan. The Valkyrie climbs down the tower and puts on a robe. More older women, the Vuvalini, emerge. The eldest, Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer), recognizes Furiosa. Furiosa tells them that she is taking the women from the Citadel to the Green Place, but Keeper of the Seeds informs her that the muddy swamp they passed through was the Green Place, and has long since become uninhabitable. Furiosa walks into the sand and falls on her knees, screaming in despair. The Vuvalini agree to help the women from the Citadel ride across the salt flats (the dried up ocean) in search of a home. Max, still haunted by the images of his wife and child, decides to help the women go back to the Citadel since Joe's greenery and water supply are currently unguarded. They also plan to trap Joe and his army in the canyons.The whole group rides back in the direction of the Citadel. Joe sees them with his telescope, knowing full-well what their plan is. He gathers his army and gives chase. The Vuvalini help fight back. The Valkyrie shoots at the War Boys while defending one of her own until she is run over. Max and Furiosa kill some of the War Boys, while Max gets Joe to kill the People Eater by using him as a human shield. Keeper of the Seeds is also killed when one of the War Boys cuts her neck. Toast is captured by Joe and held hostage. Furiosa is stabbed on Joe's vehicle and gets weaker as Joe and Rictus gain momentum. Toast distracts Joe long enough to give Furiosa an opportunity to hook Joe's mask onto the wheels of his car. She growls, "Remember me?" to him as the wheels rip the mask and Joe's face off, killing him. The rig then heads toward the canyon, with Rictus still trying to kill the group. The women get off safely while Nux says goodbye to Capable and swerves against the canyon, sacrificing himself to kill Rictus and collapse the overpass to put an end to Joe's army.On the way back to the Citadel, Furiosa's lungs nearly collapse. Max punches a small hole in her side to give her air. She starts to lose consciousness, and Max gives her a transfusion of his own blood. He tells her his name as she closes her eyes.The group arrives at the Citadel. Max presents the people with Joe's mouthless corpse, making everyone cheer. They rip Joe's corpse apart and feed off him. The water supply is brought out, giving the people as much water as they need. Furiosa rises and apparently becomes the new leader. She and Max acknowledge each other with respect once more before he slips away into the crowd to continue down his own path. | comedy, murder, violence, flashback, good versus evil, insanity, revenge, sadist | train | imdb | When I wrote this review 3 years ago I had no idea how many people hate this movie and they are preferring Mad Max 3 over this film.
I got an rated R bloody action film that I wanted in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Mad Max: Fury Road is my second favorite film in the franchise and this movie did it right and it correct that third film that it failed been an good action film.
It has action, high explosive and Tom Hardy been a real Mad Max unlike Mel Gibson was in Thunderdome.
I love this film much more than Mad Max because sometimes the original is very boring and the film has so much Drama in it and less Action than it is in Fury Road.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 post-apocalyptic action film directed and produced by George Miller, and written by Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris.
This movie is an amazing addition of the Mad Max stories, it is definitely a great chase movie, it has all the action and enjoyment to keep the viewer entertained, with the acting and visuals to show the real madness of the wasteland that the movie is set in..
'Mad Max: Fury Road' is ridiculous in all the right ways.For those who have seen the original films and loved them, you'll fall in love all over again with this film.
Yes, the film does fill 80% of its run-time with action sequences, but it never gets in the way of the humanity between these characters that Miller has brought to life.
And it's glorious to behold thanks to the use of practical effects, incredible stunt work and stunning cinematography.'Mad Max: Fury Road' has set a new standard for action films.
Since the days of 'Die Hard' and 'Terminator', the action genre has turned into a repetitive, over-the-top array of films trying too hard to create entertaining sequences that instead look too cheesy due to bad composition or an overuse of CGI, of course along the way we have had some fine exceptions in the style of 'Casino Royale' and 'The Dark Knight', but certain directors *cough* Michael Bay...
It has been 30 years since the release of 'Beyond Thunderdome' back in 1985, and George Miller decided to return to the directorial chair for a Mad Max reboot, and my God, he truly is a mastermind of action.
After creating the epic scale of an action film in the form of 'Mad Max: The Road Warrior' it was going to be hard to live up to the previous films in the franchise, but Miller didn't just do that, he excelled at it and instead beat his previous films.
With Tom Hardy as the new face of Max and Namibia as the new backdrop for post- apocalyptic Australia, 'Fury Road' is an exhilarating action fest that goes beyond its boundaries in creating what might just be one of the greatest action films ever made.
Mad Max Fury Road: A statement to embarrass and destroy all other movies in the action genre.
Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, is George Miller's attempt to reignite his long dormant Mad Max franchise...and my god does he ever.
George Miller single handedly delivers our saving grace with Fury Road on the back of a spike covered oil rig with a blind zombie playing a fire breathing electric guitar.Max is a man of few words, but Tom Hardy's talent for portraying strong, silent characters shines through in a gruff but sympathetic performance.
Whether it's one of the explosive car sequences, or one of the smaller emotional moments, Mad Max: Fury Road refuses to let up on tension for one second.There's a reason this movie is sitting at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Mad Max Fury Road is George Miller's return to the franchise he started way back in 1979 with Mad Max. I will start by saying this movie was absolutely batsh** insane.
Much of it is dedicated to the back story of Furiousa (Charlize Theron) who effortlessly delivers an Oscar worthy performance by mixing brawn with emotion for her internally wounded character.Nicholas Hoult's Nux, who provides one of the best lines of the film: "It's a lovely day!" at the midst of a crazy thunderstorm consisting tornadoes consisting cars consisting mad humans.
actions.Finally, Tom Hardy's delivers a subtle performance as Mad Max. For a character whose name is slapped largely in the film poster, he receives barely a page of dialogue minus a monologue at the start.
Considering the fact that he wears a Bane-like (see the parallel) mask throughout much of the film, it is surprising how powerful his performance actually is.One musical masterpiece act in the movie comes in the form of the guy the mask furiously shredding a flame-throwing electric guitar while dangling above a mobile wall of speakers that roars through the desert.
'Mad Max: Fury Road' is the 4th installment in mastermind, George Miller's insane post apocalyptic journey.
Overall Rating: 4.5 stars Cinematic value: 4.5 stars Big questions value: 4 stars Family value: 2 stars (This film has a mature rating due to the violence, take this into consideration before viewing)We have not seen Max Rockastansky (Tom Hardy) on movie screens in 30 years.
After watching a film like Mad Max : Fury Road it might be worth reading through Revelation.
The shock is so great that even if you're familiar with the universe, it may take you a while to swallow everything, to get all the visual clues, to try to understand what is happening and how you can believe and embrace such a ludicrous world, but once you do, and you will, Fury Road takes you in an exhilarating ride.With a minimal plot and as little dialog as possible, Mad Max is a triumph on visual storytelling.
You'll be stunned by the action, but ultimately, left wondering what it all means - and suddenly Fury Road doesn't look that mad anymore.Ultimately, the most surprising thing about Fury Road is that Max is still there, as silent as ever, but its Furiosa, beautifully played by Charlize Theron who owns this brutal and glorious extravaganza..
Mad Max: Fury Road is, hands down, one of the best action movies I've ever seen.
It takes viewers on what is literally a non-stop ride through the desert, racing all the way to the end.I haven't watched any other Mad Max movies, but there's no need to watch the other three before watching Fury Road; everything still makes sense.
But there's a mob of in upwards of fifty vehicles behind them, hunting them down, led by the sinister Imortan Joe.Action movies are often slowed down by exposition and dialogue, and it's here that Mad Max: Fury Road excels.
Mad Max doesn't waste its time trying to explain every little detail, and it doesn't need to; the viewers just accept the absurdity of what's going on, letting us focus on the action.
The actual action itself is so good; there's just so much, and the combat methods of both the attackers and defenders is so unique.The thing with Mad Max: Fury Road, is that it'll probably be the most unique action film you ever see.
Just enjoy the action!Mad Max: Fury Road is an amazing action movie.
Absolute rubbish, there is no story, no acting and it is an altogether pathetic attempt at entertainment...the main actors have submitted an incredibly wooden performance with Tom Hardy doing a merely token bit part that seems to require nothing but stupid looks and constant confusion, and Charlize Theron attempting to unsuccessfully convey some semblance of acting ability.Good grief, who are they aiming this rubbish at...two year olds?
After This, any action movie is nothing ,don't waste your time after now trying to watch any action movie because after this i think no more action ,the best action movie of all time, but its so weird that you will never imagine your self the hero of the movie , this movie makes you feel how beautiful life we are living now ,i think the movie have a hidden massage in it and makes you know that hope is not for living with hope is also for dieing with ,it takes you from the first to the end ,and i think tom hardy is the best choice to be the new "max" after i go home i can't stop thinking of it ,and from now am waiting for the next amazing mad max am sure there will be another part of this ,George Miller this is a MasterPiece.
You've just won another golden ticket to the chocolate factory.Mad Max: Fury Road opens this summer as one of the best movies I have seen in the past decade.
Awesome acting, amazing action, a Mad Max film for the history books.
In a post-apocalyptic world where oil is the desire of Immortan Joe (evil comes to life from Hugh Keays-Byrne), but water holds the real power, Max (embodied perfectly by Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (exquisitely played by Charlize Theron) must team up to escape.
You think in seeing an action film, the character development won't be there, but George Miller brings you into the world perfectly and allows characters to say only the things, which are absolutely needed to tell the story.
The clever use of minimal CGI means everything looks fantastic.It stays true to the Mad Max theme with an element of cheesiness which is vital for this kind of movie to stay brutal but stop it getting too dark.There are strange contraptions, men on poles, mutated cliché characters preserved from the old world.
I won't even talk about characters here.So, unlike those films, Mad Max: Fury Road does it all right, instead of CGI-filled action sequences we have ACTUAL stunts, this obviously, whether if consciously or unconsciously make the action look far better, also, unlike all those other modern action movies, we actually KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING, it's not just focusing on character each time and basically confusing us and not showing the entire battlefield so it may have the feel it is an actual fight- sequence, no, this film actually makes us know constantly what's on our back, sides and front.Of course I need to also address the unique post-apocalyptic atmosphere in this film, the music also fits rather perfectly.
After watching Fury Road I can safely conclude that not only will the film be welcomed by a majority of people craving a good action- packed popcorn flick, this new movie will effectively change the action-adventure game for the better.The story begins with Max (Hardy) being chased by a group of crazed goons across the desert in his signature Interceptor car.
Who hasn't watched any of the Mad Max movies, he can be ashamed of himself, because those are one of the most lovable action pieces of all time.
Action doesn't stop, it is all paced, and just when you think that action stopped, it is just so audience can take a moment of rest just so it can take a adrenaline rush few seconds later.I have absolutely nothing else to add, I have enjoyed this film very much, and I hope that many directors will look up on George Millers style of shooting a movie, which is not just a fun way to take, but also very interesting and attractive.
Mostly because (through no fault of their own) the time it was filmed (watching 80s movies now is cringeworthy), the lack of funding for good props and effects, and (probably because it was the start of his career) Mel Gibson's terrible acting ability.
Mad Max: Fury Road, the newest from George Miller was a film i never had much interest in.
Everybody in this film does a really good job, Tom Hardy's Australian accent wasn't the best i have heard but he doesn't say a great deal, most of the dialogue does come from Theron's Furiosa and she really adds a moral contrast to his performance and they play well of each other, in fact this as much her film as it is Hardy's which i was worried about being called "Mad Max" and all, but it doesn't bring the film down by a single notch.Now earlier on i mentioned that the film's plot isn't a very strong one.
At first he seems insane, like our villain Immortal Joe (not the Toecutter), but you do get to know him and you do in fact feel for his character and even have sympathy for him and want him to succeed at points.By the end of the film, all the non stop action sequences that are thrown at us might seem too much, but they really aren't.
Tom Hardy is as badass if not more than Mel Gibson (like i said though, i haven't seem all the Mad Max films) and Charlize Theron with the rest of the supporting cast do this film justice.
no real storyline, mad max is relegated to the background most of the movie, its just one big pile of disappointing excrement.It seems like they were too lazy to actually write a story for the movie so they just picked a bunch of characters kinda suitable to the mad max theme and put them in a nice action packed chase scene and thought it a done deal....everyone that worked on this so-called movie should be ashamed of themselves for ruining such a great movie franchise..
One of the strong points of the old Mad Max movies is how they slowed down to give you a chance to take in the world you was in and get to know the characters.
George Miller's masterpiece Mad Max:Fury Road will definitely create tension and will leave on on the theater sweating and with no words as how epic this film was.
120 minutes of vehicular carnage and craziness, this movie has all aspects it needed to be."Fury Road" is a beautifully realized vision of the post-apocalyptic future, filmed in Namibia but looking like it was another world.
Mad Max: Fury Road is that rare example of a film that understands what it is so well that it forgoes flaws ...this is a perfect movie.Now I understand that's a bold statement, and I also know it's only my opinion, but it's something I thought long and hard about after walking out of the theater, still recovering from the 2 hour thrill ride I had just been on.
The music may the key ingredients in the mix as Junkie XL delivers a soundtrack full of thundering drums, epic violins and shredding electric guitar, a soundtrack that had my heart racing a million miles an hour and gazing at the screen in disbelief as cars and bodies flew through a sandstorm in slow motion.The fact that CGI was kept to a minimum makes the film feel even more satisfying, like we payed to see high octane action where cars crash into one another and people perform death defying stunts ...and we get what we pay for as close to 90% of what you're seeing is real.I could gush over this film for hours but I'd like to say that if nothing else, Mad Max: Fury Road gave me the feeling of being a kid again and seeing a blockbuster for the first time.
George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road.
This remake to Road Warrior is the best classic epic Post-Apocalyptic Action Science Fiction film in the Mad Max Franchise .
That's what watching Mad Max: Fury Road feels like.
This film is an absolute blast to watch, a nonstop thrill ride every bit as mad and as furious as the title suggests.Despite being played by Tom Hardy instead of Mel Gibson, this Max Rockatansky is the same character as we saw in the other three films.
Charlize Theron is great as the absolute badass Furiosa, and makes a for a wonderful action team with Hardy's Max. The best performance in the film is by Nicholas Hoult as Nux, one of the War Boys with a special connection to Max and a difficult choice to make.
Hugh Keays-Byrne, a Miller regular who played the villain in the original Mad Max, returns in Fury Road as the evil Immortan Joe (a different character, mind you), and his presence is commanding and intimidating.I cannot recommend this film highly enough.
Like films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard, The Terminator, and the earlier Mad Max films before it, Fury Road is an action classic, and in my opinion the current titleholder of greatest action movie ever.
It's a total insult to great movies like the original Mad Max and Road Warrior.
It did not seem to have much of a story line, other than the never ending car chase across the desert.For me, it was really Charlize Theron's movie, with Tom Hardy co-staring as Max. It was a flat performance that I was glad to see the end of.It was good to see a scattering of Australian actors in the cast and some of the old cars.
George Miller's MAD MAX films are an extention of this .
Overall mad max fury road was was a crazy fun, non-stop action movie with great character development.
If your a fan of mad max or just a fan of action movies, you need to see this..
Very little happens outside of the vehicle and this leads to a monotonous viewing experience with a less than impressive final act.I watch many films time and again; I would not watch Mad Max Fury Road again..
The best thing about Fury Road is that Mel Gibson chose not to repeat his role as Mad Max. And if you have some spare time and decide to waste a couple of hours on this so-called movie, you'd understand why his decision was right.The story of Fury Road fits one simple sentence: Sort-of introduction, action sequence, the end. |
tt2105044 | V/H/S | The film is presented as an anthology of short horror films, built into a frame narrative which acts as its own short horror film. Each short film is linked together with the concept of found footage (each segment is from the VHS tapes found in the room).
=== Tape 56/frame narrative ===
Directed by Adam Wingard
The frame narrative focuses on a criminal gang who film their exploits, which include smashing the walls and windows of an abandoned house and sexually assaulting a woman in a parking lot. An anonymous source offers them a large sum of money to break into a house and steal a single VHS videotape. The gang is eager to expand their criminal enterprises, and accept the task.
Entering the house, the criminals find an old man sitting dead in front of several television sets playing white noise. Feeling free to roam the house, they discover hundreds of unmarked VHS tapes, and set about collecting them all to ensure that they retrieve the right one. One of the criminals stays behind in the TV room with the dead body to watch the "Amateur Night" tape left in the VCR. The contents of this tape and the four subsequent ones comprise the bulk of the film, with the action cutting back to the criminals' efforts between each short. As the frame narrative progresses, the gang encounters a strange figure moving around the basement, which appears to be the old man. Glimpses of the TV room demonstrate that, unknown to the criminals, the man's body disappears at one point only to reappear in the exact position. Similarly, the criminals return to the TV room to find that the first viewer has disappeared, prompting another of the criminals to continue watching the tapes himself. After the "The Sick Thing that happened to Emily when she was Younger" segment ends, the gang's leader returns to the TV room to discover that he is the only person left, and that the old man's body is gone.
Searching the rooms upstairs, he finds the decapitated remains of one of the criminals, and is subsequently attacked by the old man, who is now a zombie. The leader flees downstairs, where he falls and is killed by the other figure seen walking around the basement, which seems to be a monster. The frame narrative ends with the camera left in the TV room picking up the sound of the VCR starting the "10/31/98" tape by itself.
=== Amateur Night ===
Directed by David Bruckner
Shane, Patrick, and Clint are three friends who have rented a motel room to fulfill Shane's intent of bringing women back for sex; Clint's glasses have been outfitted with a hidden camera that will allow them to turn their planned encounter into an amateur porn video. While the three men are bar-hopping, Clint encounters a mysterious young woman, Lily, who acts aloof and says little other than "I like you."
In addition to picking up Lily, the men also succeed in convincing another young woman, Lisa, to return to their motel with them. Lisa passes out as Shane attempts to initiate sex and Patrick, laughing, discourages him from continuing. Lily continues awkwardly coming on to Clint, but a dejected Shane comes on to Lily instead, oblivious to the scales visible on her feet as he undresses her. Lily appears responsive, pushing Shane onto his back and then beginning to undress Clint, seemingly beginning a threesome. Overwhelmed, Clint goes to the bathroom; Patrick disrobes and attempts to take Clint's place, but Lily has made it clear that she dislikes Patrick.
Moments later, Patrick bursts into the bathroom claiming Lily bit him. When they approach Shane, Lily sprouts fangs, attacks and kills him. Clint and Patrick hide in the bathroom until Patrick, still nude, arms himself with a shower curtain rod and returns to the room. Clint tries to wake Lisa and Patrick attempts to fight Lily but she subdues him, drinks his blood and rips off his genitals. Clint escapes, but ends up falling down a stairwell and breaks his wrist in the process. Lily catches up to Clint, but instead of attacking, she attempts fellatio. Finding Clint unaroused, she crawls over to a corner and cries softly, which gets louder, then turns into a horrific growl. Clint flees, begging bystanders for help, but he is suddenly lifted into the sky by Lily, who has transformed into a winged creature. This reveals that she's a succubus, who was on the hunt. The glasses fall off Clint's face and hit the ground before the video cuts out.
=== Second Honeymoon ===
Directed by Ti West
A married couple, Sam and Stephanie, travel to Arizona for their second honeymoon. They visit a Wild West-themed attraction where Stephanie receives a prediction from a mechanical fortune teller, which claims that she will soon be reunited with a loved one. That evening (off camera), a woman comes to Sam and Stephanie's motel room and awkwardly tries to convince Sam to give her a ride the next day. In the middle of the night, while the couple are asleep, someone breaks into the room, turns on the camcorder and films touching Stephanie's buttocks with a switchblade. The intruder then steals $100 from Sam's wallet and dips his toothbrush in the toilet. The next day, on their way to visit the Grand Canyon, Sam notices the missing money and accuses Stephanie of taking it, but she assumes he is joking. That night, someone enters the room again and stabs Sam in the neck with their switchblade, filming him as he chokes on his own blood and dies. The camera then shows the killer, the woman from earlier, cleaning the blade while she and Stephanie kiss passionately. The recording cuts to Stephanie asking her lover if she has erased the footage.
=== Tuesday the 17th ===
Directed by Glenn McQuaid
Three friends—Joey, Spider, and Samantha—accompany their new friend, Wendy, on a camping trip. Joey films the group as Wendy leads them through the woods, occasionally mentioning 'accidents' that took the lives of her friends. When scanning certain areas, images of mutilated bodies appear in the film. Wendy then tells them that a murderer killed her friends during a camping trip here the previous year, but the group laughs it off as a joke. Spider and Samantha leave the group and are killed by a human-like figure with a red head obscured in tracking errors (identified in the credits as "The Glitch").
At the lake, Wendy tells Joey she lured all three of them to the grounds to use as bait so she can find and kill the mysterious force. Wendy reveals that she had been to this lake before where a killer had slaughtered all her friends and she was the only survivor. She notes that the police did not believe her when she said the killer could be in two places at once. The entity walks up behind Joey and slits his throat.
Wendy runs away, luring the figure into two easily escaped booby traps and is cut by it in the second one. She films the entity close up, but it continues to be obscured by the tracking error. Wendy continues to run through the woods, she finds Joey in his death throes. After he dies, the figure approaches Wendy and a final trap impales it. Wendy gloats at it and walks away but when she turns around, it is gone; it reappears in a tree and jumps down, beats her with the camera, then kills her, subsequently eviscerating her, then inhabiting her body.
=== The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger ===
Directed by Joe Swanberg
This segment is shown through computer video chats. Emily talks to her boyfriend James, a trainee doctor, about a strange bump on her arm and how it reminds her of an accident she had when she was younger. After witnessing a small, childlike entity rush into her room and slam the door shut, Emily believes her apartment is haunted. Her landlord claims that no children have ever lived in the apartment, but Emily is unconvinced. During her next video chat with James, an increasingly frantic Emily digs into her arm with a scalpel to find out what the bump is, but James urges her to stop before the wound becomes infected.
Emily attempts to contact the being, but it knocks her out. James quickly appears in her apartment and surgically removes an alien fetus from Emily's torso. Aliens are using Emily as an incubator for alien/human hybrids, and James has been working for them and removing the fetuses for some time. The aliens erase Emily's memory, and James mentions that the arm bump is a tracking device. In their next chat, a badly injured Emily believes she sustained her injuries after wandering into traffic in a fugue state. She reveals that the doctor James recommended has diagnosed her as schizoaffective, and tearfully says that James deserves a better, more normal girlfriend. He assures Emily that she is the only person he wants to be with, but once their chat ends he begins a new chat with a different woman who has the same bump on her arm and also believes James is her boyfriend, showing that the aliens are using more than one person as an incubator.
=== 10/31/98 ===
Written and directed by Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez & Chad Villella)
It's Halloween 1998. Chad, Matt, Tyler, and Paul (dressed in Halloween costumes as the Unabomber, a pirate, a teddy bear implanted with a nanny cam, and a Marine, respectively) head out to a Halloween party at a friend's house, only to end up at the wrong place. Sneaking inside, they begin to experience paranormal phenomena and decide they are at a haunted house and have fun with it. In the attic they find several men gathered around a young woman whom they've suspended from the rafters, apparently performing an exorcism. The men are chanting "cast you down", and the boys exuberantly join in, "cast him down". One of the men reacts angrily to their presence and physically assaults the young woman. More violent, overtly threatening paranormal phenomena then begin to occur and the boys initially flee before realizing they should try to rescue the girl. Returning to the attic, the boys work to untie her and get her to safety, as the house itself comes to life with poltergeist phenomena and ghostly arms rising from the walls and the floors to claim the lives of the woman's captors.
Exiting through the basement, the boys pile into their car with the girl and drive away. The car abruptly stops and the girl disappears, reappearing in the street before them and walking away amid a flock of birds before they realize that they've stopped on train tracks. The boys attempt to get out of the car as the train approaches, but the doors are locked. The screen starts to flicker with static and the train smashes into the car off-camera, presumably killing all inside.
During the end credits, clips from Tape 56 are shown.
=== Alternative Ending To 10/31/98 ===
A joke ending was shot in one-take by Radio Silence in which the doors are unlocked and the boys get out just before the train smashes into their car. The boys walk away and talk about how much fun they had and what a crazy night it was as the train hits the car and it explodes behind them. | paranormal, violence, horror, murder, prank | train | wikipedia | Listen, the only way to truly enjoy a horror film is in a large, pitch black room with deafening surround sound and a group of people just as scared as you are.
Some of the segments are better than others (trust me, you'll know which ones) but overall, V/H/S is one of the most imaginative, jolting, riveting, heart-beating-outside-of-your-chest-because-its-so-intense horror films of recent time.
It's bloody, it's scary, it's haunting, and if you're anything like me, you'll know it scared you when it's 1:43 in the morning and the only thing you can do to make yourself fall asleep, is to review the film on IMDb..
Some things work better depending on the way you view these things, but also, what works with one person, will not work with another, everybody is different.With that out of the way, let me honestly try to convince you that my small review on this film is mainly based on its merits, and not just what I enjoy personally.I think the credit is due to the effort that went behind making this film, because even though each of the video tapes the guys find and watch are very strange and hard to swallow, they have genuinely tried hard to convey a sense of realism.
Each of the five found tapes start off innocently enough like home movies, but each one reveals shocking footage of something strange or unravels into a horrifying ordeal.
The movie manages to throw 5 of these 'money shots' at the viewer without the need to tell any real story, build any of the characters or introduce their personality's to the audience.
The horror anthology has a chequered history, some are bad but saved by one great segment, others boast a couple of genuine creepers but are undone by one instalment so bad it tarnishes the film forever.
The usual problems are evident here, a couple of great stories are surrounded by mediocre ones, but at least there is something for everyone, with most bases covered, but that in itself is a problem, all horror fans have preferences, it's a big ask to expect a fan of stalk and slash to love a story about a winged harpy!Then there is the issue of the found footage format, here recorded on actual VHS.
The former is a cautionary tale of frat boys out for sex who get more than they bargained for when they take home the mysterious Lily, the latter an eerie tale unfolded via Skype communication as Emily appears to be a victim of a haunting whilst chatting to her doctor boyfriend.However, if you ask another fan of the film what stories they feel standout, you may just get two different answers.
Half the time, you'll feel like you're watching some stranger's home movie collection.
We have scenes that make NO SENSE in regards to how it ended up on a VHS tape, uninspired concepts, terrible camera work, and just terrible writing.Here is another Paranormal Activity: TONS of hype, great press and reviews, but underneath all of that is a really uniquely awful film.
In any case, V/H/S is a collection of short "found footage" horror films produced by Brad Miska, the man behind bloody-disgusting.com.
Those who easily get queasy from constant "swingcam" footage, will be particularly pleased with the inclusion of this one.The other segments are: Second Honeymoon (Ti West) - A couple's vacation is compromised by a mysterious nocturnal intruder.Tuesday the 17th (Glenn McQuaid) - A young woman is not honest about her intentions when she brings her friends out to a secluded spot in the woods where several murders once occurred.10/31/98 (Radio Silence) - Friends set off for a party dressed up in lame Halloween costumes, but instead of arriving at their intended destination, they find themselves in a demoniacally haunted house at the absolute worst time possible.and the wraparound...
Released early on demand, after it's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, "V/H/S" is a horror movie told through the "already tired" aspect of found-footage material, shown from the perspective of a hand-held camera.
Now, there are times when this movie follows almost every horror cliché in the book, and although this movie is supposed to be portrayed as a "found-footage" feature, the camera movements are a little too shaky.
If this is, were horror movies are going it is a travesty.This is only my opinion of what I thought of this film.
Probably the most wasted hour and a bit of my whole life - this film would work fine if it picked 1 of the story lines.the synopsis is deceiving and I was so disappointed I almost stopped watching it.Really purely on special effects(Which are mediocre at best) and intrigue (Namely, 'Surely this film has to get better?'), it has nothing going for it!I am a massive fan of the genre of Horror dating back from the 1970s upwards, I'll admit many of the new horrors really lack something these days and tend to go more for the 'scare' or 'graphic' factors, this film is 7, maybe 10 (In honesty I stopped counting through boredom) short films with a sub plot.
I watch a lot of horror movies and that was probably the worst one I have ever seen.Movie is split into couple different stories - guys loot some dead perv basement, got his VHS tapes collection and start watching it.
It is important to note before watching this movie, there is little fear factor; the people were most likely getting ill because it contains an insurmountable amount of flash/strobe effects (not sure if that is what the film industry calls it,) but this effect can cause seizures in people who are prone to them from epilepsy, or any neurological issues.
I love the handy cam style genre (a la Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity) however this film tried to hard to make it look "real" that the constant shaking of camera made me feel motion sickness most of the movie.
And after a while -- we don't care.If your movie has to rely on this overused "trick" of shaky camera and whirling motion you're covering something up, like a lack of a story (professional directing) and solid character development.
Please...don't waste any of your time on this piece of crap.The "short" stories are about 20 minutes each, but they drag on so that it feels like they're an hour.
Was waiting for that big A-Ha moment - that never came.If you did not like Blair Witch you will not like this.Last part got pretty interesting but not enough to save this film.Some creepy stuff that got me excited but the ending peters out.Kept wondering - are we going for supernatural?
All you need to know about this film is it looks like a bunch of dumb hipsters tried to make a herky jerky POV home video movie.
If they're handing out money to kids who don't know how to make a remotely scary movie, please send some my way, I could have come up with a better 5 shorts in 10 minutes.There is no plot, it's hardly scary, the dialogue was seemingly written by a high school freshman who basically wrote it to see his first boobs, and saggy ones at that.Do YOURSELF a huge favor and do not subject 2 hours of your life to this!
It seemed like a too eager found footage film wanting to appear as real as possible but failing in the attempt since a child wouldn't hold the camera that unsteady.
I would have been livid if I had paid money for this joke of a movie.Note: I am a huge fan of horror, so please do not think my review comes from a lack of knowledge of the genre.Now, as for this film directly - it was more than clear that the target audience was males 15 - 25 due to the ridiculous amount of boobs, and the ridiculous amount of men around that age behaving like idiots.
The stories contained could probable have actually been good and scary but 85% of the film is shot in low, low lighting with quick cuts that blur the images to the point of getting a headache.
It has got no point in it, no sense, no creativity..no anything...wannabe scary clips randomly mixed together..the result, a so called "horror" movie, which didn't scare me a single time.
Each story was something i have seen many times before in other horror movies but executed much worse.
If you read this thinking you want to watch this crap, consider yourself lucky, because you were just convinced to watch something else.There is no plot whatsoever, just a bunch of short stories, or short films about bizarre murders that happen for no reason at all.
Plot holes however, are in great abundance (much much too many for stories of such short length).The movie gets its 2 stars for the same # of reasons broken down here:_the first segment (imagine Cloverfield with a vampire) shows promise & is very well put together._ Ti West (a director who continues to receive critical & fan praise despite making long, meandering & brutally dull movies) is thankfully forced to get to the point of his story.
While the stories are fairly standard, I'd argue that this is one of the best executions of found footage to ever come from the horror genre, with dynamic, realistic and non overwhelming cinematography and logical justifications for why the characters would bother to have cameras.
As nonsensical as that sounds, it provides a good explanation to what you are going to watch in the following 90 minutes: shaky hand-held horror.V/H/S presents five "spooky" tapes (not including the beginning and the end) which at best make you twitch because they rely almost exclusively on jump scares.
So, the characters play the tapes, while we the audience watches what they see on the tapes.The film is a found footage anthology in which different directors and writers tackled each segment.
I initially got excited about that, but my cynical side took that claim with a huge grain of salt.After seeing it three times now, I can honestly say V/H/S is not only one of the best horror films to come out in years, but one of the scariest as well.
If you're a horror fan, especially one who's been waiting for a good found footage film, V/H/S is a must-see..
Don't watch this film it is a massive waste of time and energy, get yourself down to Blockbuster and hire yourself a good horror film like Chainsaw massacre, Saw, Hostel, Aliens etc..
I just finished watching V/H/S, and it did surprise me.The movie tells a story about a bunch of guys, going into a creepy house, looking for a special VHS.
But the nice thing about anthologies is that if one of the stories isn't very good, you only have to wait a few minutes before another one starts.This movie did noting to me!!
Don't get me wrong, some of the short stories were a bit frightening, but personally I don't like movies that are filmed like this.
Don't get me wrong, some of the short stories were a bit frightening, but personally I don't like movies that are filmed like this.
The concept of this movie is pretty good just poorly executed with time-consuming dialogue that is truly not needed.Of the "stories" the third one was my favorite.
I appeal to everyone who doesn't like horror movies - STOP REVIEWING AND RATING THEM.
It may just be the humble opinion of one lousy and insignificant horror fanatic, but personally I think that found footage movies are the ideal format for aspiring directors that are untalented and largely incompetent, but nevertheless want to persist in entering the film industry.
Mind-numbing and migraine-inducing horror anthology involving several stories (all filmed via home movie cameras) wrapped around a small group of miscreants (themselves filmed on home movie cameras as well) who have been hired by an unknown character to steal a certain VHS tape.
I love the special effects here and honestly, if that happened to me in that house, I would be screaming and running too.All and all, this is a very good found footage film.
In fact, as separate entries, the stories are more like 'fragments' of more complete films, and some of these with an abrupt ending, actually come off as a little movie that has run out of ideas and just ends, which caused confusion and frustration for me.Now, if you want graphic gore, nudity, sexual content and wall-to-wall profanity, then you'll like this.
There's a lot of found footage type movies coming out, no plot, no original ideas and nothing to contribute to the genre but a couple of cheap scares.
If you want that kind of review, read the others.Ill sum this up by NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE!The idea behind this is very interesting and if it was pulled off properly, it could have been a great horror flick, but it wasn't, so its not good.
I think all the individuals involved with this film were high as hell, because, again, NOTHING MAKES SENSE!!I will say that of all the different "tapes", the one that i liked the best was the last one.Do yourself a favor and don't pay to see this.
Some of the premises were actually very original and I probably would've enjoyed watching one of those films more, however the plot of this movie, and how it is sloppily woven together just didn't make sense.
But the truth is - people are conditioned to expect very specific things in horror - and when a movie deviates from that, many are left confused.This is not a great film.
I've seen a lot of shitty films, but I don't think I've ever had to actually talk myself into watching one through to the end like this.
OK, so the overarching storyline of watching people watch movies is pretty nonsensical and the way the filmmakers incorporate the VHS aspect into these little horror shorts is, at times, quite far-fetched, but due to some very intriguing visuals (which will have many audiences completely baffled as to how certain effects were accomplished) and two borderline scary but quite entertaining story lines, "V/H/S" is worth checking out; even though it is so hit and miss, it can only be defined as slightly above average, at best .Since this is not your traditional narrative, the following is a mini synopsis of each short: 1.
But that rather cool, film geek aspect is quickly forgotten, as audiences are plunged headfirst into an aggressively vulgar horror story, reminding us all as to why the shaky camera/found footage genre is on life support.3.
The third story (or the second tape played) from acclaimed Indie-horror director Ti West, is essentially the first film worth paying attention too.
Adam Wingard, Ti West, David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and the YouTube sensation Radio Silence have all come together to create "V/H/S", which simultaneously resurrects the anthology film with gusto, places itself among the scariest of scary movies, and makes the found footage genre more legit than it has ever been.Set in the narrative framework of a group of villainous hoodlums with a v/h/s camcorder, we follow them into a house during a "job" to steal a precious v/h/s tape for a mysterious third party.
It worked out successful because they combined it with a classic horror sub-genre; the horror anthology genre, that basically is being a movie with a bunch of short and individual segments, each often featuring their own story and characters, like this movie does as well.
It's always a sort of a problem that these type of movies often featuring 1 or 2 truly good and successful short stories and the rest is being just average, or even below that level.
I mean, it's sort of ridicules once you start paying attention to it, as to how much stuff got filmed by the characters in this movie.
But that's just something that is an integrated part of the found footage genre and something you more or less have to take for granted, when watching a movie like this.
Most people won't be troubled by this though and will just have a good time watching this, like I, for most part, did as well.In my opinion nothing more and nothing less but an enjoyable and fine modern take on the anthology horror sub-genre.
Personally, I'm bored by found-footage horror films, which this is.
I don't like found-footage films but this is a really good one.
I love horror movies, but this one was not worth the watch.
Most of the stories were poorly written, filmed with a wobbly camera with distortion effects that doesn't even look like real distortion.
I generally like "found footage" horror movies.
If you like hand-held camera horror movies, it's worth watching after all..
Watchin all three game me a little idea of the story that's underneath all the events but I still don't get it which makes me want to watch them again.Last thing I liked about the films was the unfamiliar actors.
There are a couple of scenes that almost threw me out of the movie, but I'm glad I continued to watch.I think the team put most of the film's budget into the last short and it shows.
5.5/1010/31/98 - Although I had said "Amateur Night" is the best segment, this one is by far the most effective as a horror film.
V/H/S is the first anthology horror film I've seen and it's the movie that made me interested in the sub-genre, even though I've checked that many films like these (I'll keep the review short, because I don't want to spoil what the short films are about).Positives: From the 6 short films 3 were really awesome, though the other ones weren't so bad.
V/H/S is a great low-budget found-footage horror film, that from BAD 1 to EXCELLENT 6 I give VERY GOOD 5.25.. |
tt0052993 | Last Train from Gun Hill | An attractive American Indian woman and her young son are in a wagon, passing through a secluded, wooded area. They nervously pass by two dismounted, shiftless cowboys who are killing time by guzzling whiskey. The woman glances apprehensively over her shoulder as the two men mount up and follow along. As the men draw even with the buggy, they begin harassing the woman, asking her to stop and have a drink with them. She picks up a buggy whip and lashes one of the cowboys, Rick Belden (Earl Holliman), across the face, then whips her horse into a dead run. With the drunken cowboys in hot pursuit, the speeding wagon careens over onto its side and throws the woman and boy out. The woman frantically orders the boy to flee as the leering cowboys strip off her clothes and assault her. The boy takes one of the cowboys' horses and escapes. He gallops into the nearby town where his dad, Marshal Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas) is busy entertaining some local urchins with tall tales from the "old days." Morgan rushes out into the street to meet the distraught boy, who can't verbalize what just took place. Morgan mounts up on the horse with his son and races back in the direction of the overturned wagon. Morgan discovers the nude body of his wife, who has been raped and murdered. He tearfully recovers her body and returns to the waiting horse, when he notices that the animal carries a beautiful silver-trimmed saddle emblazoned with the initials "CB." Morgan recognizes the initials.Later that same day, Rick Belden is drinking whiskey at a saloon in the town of Gun Hill. One of the saloon girls notices the deep cut on his face from the whiplash he received earlier. She teases him, saying that it does her good to see him getting scratched for a change. Belden slaps her to the floor and drunkenly confronts the startled saloon patrons who object to his behavior. Before anything worse can take place, a ranch hand named Beero (Brad Dexter) enters the saloon and tells young Belden that his father wants to see him immediately. It seems that the hotheaded Rick took something of his father's without permission. The men return to the Belden ranch where Rick is confronted about the missing saddle by his father, Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn). Rick lies and claims that their horses were stolen along with the valuable saddle. When his father notices the deep laceration on his son's face, he beams proudly and makes light of it. Beero sarcastically remarks that Rick would do better to fight with men. An offended Craig Belden goads his weakling son into fighting Beero and defending the Belden family name. Rick tries to beg off, but Craig insists. Beero easily fends off the hapless Rick, knocking him to the floor twice before Craig stops the fight. Craig Belden is revealed to be a tough, self-made and ruthless patriarch whose blind tolerance of his son's outrageous behavior has already ruined the boy.Having identified the fancy saddle, Marshal Morgan explains to his deceased wife's Indian father that he and Craig Belden are old friends. The old man wants revenge, and Morgan vows to get it. He then boards the train to Gun Hill to return the saddle and ask Belden which of his men were involved in his wife's murder. On the train, he meets a woman named Linda (Carolyn Jones). She recognizes the saddle and warns him about Craig Belden and his powerful influence in Gun Hill. When the train arrives, Beero is waiting to take Linda straight to Belden's ranch. She declines and checks into a hotel instead. When Morgan steps off the train with the saddle, Beero confronts him. Morgan tells him to let Belden know he is coming. Morgan hires a rig and starts out for the Belden ranch. Beero has already ridden ahead and warned Belden that someone is on the way with his saddle. An enraged Belden arrives at the ranch house and is shocked to encounter his old friend Matt Morgan. They drink to old times and Belden discloses that although he has become prosperous, he lost his wife nine years ago. Now it is just him and his son. Morgan inquires how the saddle had gotten lost and Belden tells him that his son Rick and a friend named Lee Smithers had passed through Pawley (Marshal Morgan's town) a few days ago. He explains that they were drinking in a saloon on Sunday when someone stole their horses and saddles. Morgan tells him that his wife was murdered that same day, and that one of the murderers was using Belden's silver saddle. Belden offers to help in any way he can and asks Morgan how we will be able to identify the killers. Morgan explains that his nine-year-old son had been present that day, and that he had witnessed his mother lashing one of the men's cheek open to the bone. A sudden look of recognition crosses Belden's face, and Morgan sees it. He accuses Belden's son of the crime, explaining that neither of the town's saloons are open on Sunday, making Rick Belden a liar. Belden nervously tries to deny his son's involvement and warns Morgan to leave Rick alone and get out of town at once. Morgan replies that he will be on the last train out of Gun Hill at 9 PM, but that Rick and his friend will be going with him to stand trial.Back in town, Morgan gets no cooperation from the citizens of Gun Hill. They are terrified of Craig Belden, who owns half the town. The corrupt sheriff makes it clear that he won't help.Belden confronts his son and Lee, telling them just who it was that they killed. They claim that the death of Morgan's wife was an accident, and then dismiss her as "just an Indian squaw." Belden angrily banishes Lee from his ranch and warns Rick that Matt Morgan is no one to trifle with. Rick protests that he isn't afraid and rashly insists on going into town. Craig Belden insists that he take Beero and another man along.Morgan searches the town for Rick, but runs into immediate resistance. One of three men seated in front of a saloon remarks that he wouldn't arrest any man for killing an Indian; they would pay him a bounty instead. Morgan knocks him out with a forearm to the jaw. The other two men decline to test him. In the saloon, a friendly bartender warns him to leave Rick alone. The only person willing to help Morgan is former saloon girl (and Craig Belden's erstwhile mistress) Linda. She advises Morgan to look for Rick in the saloon across the street. Morgan stealthily climbs up the side of the building and sneaks in the window of an upstairs bedroom, where a startled saloon girl is sleeping. Simultaneously, Rick interrupts his card game and heads upstairs to pay a visit to the girl. Morgan gets the jump on him and knocks him out cold with the butt of his gun. He heaves Rick across his shoulder and starts down the stairs, gun drawn. Two saloon employees go for their shotguns before Morgan shoots them down. He orders Rick's cardplaying friends into a store room, but one of them ducks behind a table to fight back. Morgan fires through the table and wounds him, then locks everyone up in the store room. Out on the street, he runs into the corrupt sheriff, who doesn't challenge him but tells him he will never get away with it. Morgan goes into a hotel and forcibly coerces the reluctant manager into giving him a room. He handcuffs Rick to the bed and settles in to wait on the 9 o'clock train.Belden soon arrives with twenty men and tries to reason with Morgan. When it becomes obvious that Morgan is serious about putting Rick on the train, Belden orders his men to open fire through the windows of Morgan's hotel room. Shots rain in from the surrounding rooftops, but Morgan returns fire and kills two of Belden's men. He also shoves the bed holding Rick in front of one window, limiting Belden's options. Belden is afraid to rush the room and possibly wound his son.Belden enters the saloon and confronts Linda about not returning to his ranch. It is revealed that she has been away at a hospital recovering from a beating administered by Craig Belden. She complains that Rick constantly makes up lies about her, fueling Craig's jealousy. She asks Belden if he is finally willing to marry her, but he admits that Rick is the obstacle. She knows that Belden will always choose his son over her. On a saloon bet, Linda walks over to her hotel and goes up to the room where Morgan is holding Rick. He admits her to the room and quietly asks for her help. He needs a shotgun to make good on his escape plan. Undecided about helping him, Linda returns to the saloon and encounters a drunken Lee Smithers, who callously admits to raping and killing Morgan's wife. Linda throws her drink in his face and storms out. She notices a shotgun behind the bar.As dusk falls, Belden decides on a desperate move. He tells Morgan he is coming up to talk, man to man. Morgan agrees, but the unarmed Belden arranges for two of his gunmen to trail him up the stairs. While Morgan is distracted by his conversation with Belden, the two men creep down the hallway. One of them makes a noise and Morgan reacts just in the nick of time, shooting one of them and driving the other back down the stairs. Belden throws something at Morgan but misses. An angry Morgan drives him from the room.In the meantime, Linda slips behind the saloon bar and retrieves the shotgun, hiding it under her shawl. She takes it to Morgan, knowing she will pay a steep price. As Morgan calculates a way to get Rick to the train platform, Lee Smithers sets fire to the rear of the hotel, hoping to drive Morgan into the open. Morgan is forced to unshackle Rick from the bed, and a fierce struggle over the shotgun ensues. Morgan wins the battle, and as the hotel burns down Morgan handcuffs himself to Rick and descends the stairs with the sawed-off, double-barrelled shotgun pressed under Rick's chin. Belden and his men are stymied. Morgan warns that if one shot is fired he will decapitate Rick with the shotgun. Morgan and Rick mount a buckboard and start slowly toward the train platform. Belden, his gunmen, and Lee Smithers trail the wagon slowly down the street, waiting for an opening.Just as the train pulls in, Morgan shrewdly eases the wagon across the tracks in front of the train, separating himself and his prisoner from the rest of the crowd. Only Smithers is on the same side of the tracks as Morgan and Rick. Running out of time, Smithers makes his move. He taunts Morgan, daring the lawman to draw against him. Smithers finally pulls his gun and fires at Morgan, striking Rick Belden instead. Morgan lowers the shotgun and discharges a full load of buckshot into Smithers just before Rick falls from the wagon, mortally wounded. Still bound to his prisoner, Morgan falls with him. He unlocks the handcuffs and wearily walks away to board the train. Craig Belden runs around the train to discover his dead son on the ground. He grieves over him for a few moments before angrily calling out to Matt Morgan. Morgan tells Belden that it is over. There is nothing more to fight about. But Belden demands satisfaction. The two men square off, but Morgan stipulates that he won't draw first. Belden obliges, pulling his revolver before Morgan guns him down. As Belden dies, he asks Morgan for the name of his young son, Petey. With his last breath, he admonishes Morgan to "raise him right." The train pulls out with Morgan on board as Linda grieves over the fallen Craig Belden. | violence, revenge, murder, storytelling | train | imdb | Last Train from Gun Hill has the star power to help back up a storyline that is, on the surface, seemingly too straightforward: a Marshall (Kirk Douglas) finds that his wife has been killed.
When he finds out that it is the son of a cattle baron (Anthony Quinn), despite his old friendship with the baron, he decides to bring the son to justice, holding him by gunpoint in the town hotel until the train comes to take them off to jail- while the baron has his men outside with their guns poised.
But more impressive in the script, and through John Sturges's steadfast professionalism, is how there's the tension between law and the personal, the immediate draw of a gun draw to solve anything, and the bitterness of real vengeance (watch Douglas's Marshall tell Rick about how he'll be the only one to hear his own brain cry out as he hangs dying, perfectly acted).Although it's likely that Douglas and Sturges were in or made better westerns, this is the kind of work that doesn't age in much a way that cheapens the questions poised or the invigorating style.
Granted, when a big fire ends up happening, it looks very much like it's on a sound-stage and without a whole lot of suspense (save for the typical but strong 'who will get the gun first' moment between the Marshall and Rick in the bedroom), but it's the ambiance of the characters, the dread over this dangerous mix of volatile father and townsman- a better than average Quinn without being too hammy- and a good man driven to vengeance in bad-ass Douglas, and the determined woman (Carolyn Jones) that makes it so compelling.
There's even a slight feeling of unpredictability in the situation- in a town where reputation trumps what is good and decent, but also where emotions run high as can be, the stakes are high for chance.By the very end it feels like it should be more formulaic, and there are bits where the dialog does come off as brawny ol' western genre jargon (look simply at some of the quotes on the IMDb page as example).
In the opening, a brutal rape and murder occur; director John Sturges and the performers relay very effectively what happens, it's the horror in your mind.Kirk Douglas stars, and he is riveting.
After Douglas goes to Gun Hill, he sees old friend Anthony Quinn
watch how Douglas and Mr. Quinn play their first scene and you'll see how good these two actors are.You always have to suspend disbelief in film watching, and a western is a little different.
After the movie went on, I decided to just accept that like I accept the rules you accept when you watch a western.Besides, Quinn and Holliman are far to good to replace.
Ms. Jones showed she should have been given more good film roles.So many westerns try build this suspense -- "Last Train from Gun Hill" should have you shaking in your cowboy boots.
********* Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) John Sturges ~ Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman.
It has a strong cast headed by Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn and holds your attention from start to finish.Two cowboys, Rick Beldon (Earl Holliman) and Lee Smithers (Brian G.
Her son escapes, steals Rick's horse and rides to town to tell his father, who happens to be town marshal Matt Morgan (Douglas).Morgan distraught over his wife's horrible death, recognizes the saddle on Rick's horse as that of an old friend Craig Beldon (Quinn).
Morgan manages to capture Rick and......As in other Sturges westerns there is plenty of action, excellent photography and solid direction all leading up to a climatic gunfight.Also in the cast are Brad Dexter and Bing Russell as Beldon's top henchmen and Walter Sande as the town sheriff.
He goes on to find the men who did it to the town of Gun Hill and finds out that the other of the men is the son of his old friend (Anthony Quinn).
In Last Train From Gunhill, there is no possibility of compromise between the characters, no easy resolution:Craig Beldon (Anthony Quinn): `This is my son you're talking about.'Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas): `No, Craig.
Unfortunately, the situation will not allow it.The other characters are well drawn too, including the sheriff who insists on `taking the long view'; the viscous son Rick who the viewer cannot help but feel some sympathy for because he is so dominated by the father, swept along in his wake; and the reckless ranchhand Lee, who is loyal to the son and not the father.The acting is great all around, particularly from Carolyn Jones, Quinn, and Douglas, the pairing of which was excellent.
When I think of these films the eyes of Trintignant in the final scene of The Great Silence come to mind, or the way, in this film, that Douglas yells the name of his wife or Quinn, at the train station, yells that of his son.
John Sturges a number of the best movies ever made - The Great Escape, The Gunfight at O.K. Corral, the Magnificent Seven, and here is a great movie he made that doesn't get mentioned with the all-time greats as it should.Kirk Douglas is outstanding as the uncompromising sheriff on a mission of revenge when his Native American wife is killed by the spoiled son of a lifelong friend.
Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas) and Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn) are old friends who went on different career paths.
This turbulent adventure-drama is set against the rich,violent tapestry of Gun Hill.All the vast grandeur of the Southwest shown as never before possible with the greatness,the glory,the fury story of the untamed town.It's an exciting drama-vengeance with all the thrill and action of the Old West.It begins when the spouse of Sheriff Matt Morgan(Kirk Douglas)is raped and killed.Staunch Morgan aware the clue left, a signed saddle that belongs to Craig Belden(Anthony Quinn), an old partner but is nowadays a cattle baron in Gun Hill.Belden recognises his own son Rick(Earl Holliman)like one of the killers whom he refuse to hand over.Each owed the other his life and this was the moment of reckoning.The son is a captive hostage by obstinate Morgan at the mercy of the West's most notorious marshal-revenger.The sheriff living by the old rules-driven by vendetta-dueling to the death for have justice.He's surrounded in the town of the desperate and the damned ,where the baron cattle and the fastest gun owned everything.Morgan is determined to leave the town with murder suspect Rick and every single beating second the tension grows greater.This is a magnificent Western with a trigger-taut drama of the strangest friendship and posterior confrontation between a West's most upright lawman and its deadliest baron cattle.A story enormous in scope and unusual in concept.It's incomparably played by the greatest who ever into action : Kirk Douglas with a first rate performance though sometimes overdone and excessive melodramatic inclination and Anthony Quinn also gives a fine acting,they were two towering box office stars of the time.Besides extraordinary support cast,Earl Holliman as the son,he was one of the ¨sons of Katie Elder¨;Brad Dexter as Belden's hoodlum,he was one of the¨Magnificent seven¨ ; Brian G.
Hutton,as the son's companion ,posteriorly become successful director with¨The Kelly's heroes and When the eagles dare¨.It's filmed in glimmer Technicolor and Vistavision by Charles Lang.Evocative and appropriate musical score by the classic Dimitri Tiomkin.Dalton Trumbo wrote the script,the original story and signed by an inexistent Les Crutchfield but he was in the black list.The movie is produced by Hal Wallis,Paul Nathan and Bryna production,owner by Kirk Douglas.The motion picture is magnificently directed By John Sturges,author of various classic Western:Escape from Fort Bravo,Gunfight at the OK Corral,The law and Jake Wade,Magnificent seven, among others..
A classic movie with fine performances by Kirk Douglas & Anthony Quinn.A little bit of six degree trivia- the omnipresent Val Avery appears as the bartender screentesting for the same role in Nevada Smith.What great acting- to see rich characters finding their tough, most brutal instinct, but tempered by thoughts of an orphaned son (Douglas) or a dead wife(Quinn).
This movie can rightly be called a top western film.The Red Indian wife of a Marshall is raped and murdered and the main culprit is the son of a land baron.
That is what happens to Morgan (Douglas) and Belden (Quinn), when Belden's son (Holliman) commits a barbaric act of murder and rape, the victim being Morgan's wife.
In Last Train From Gun Hill a determined Kirk Douglas walks the line between justice and vengeance as a US Marshall who vows to leave the town of Gun Hill with the sniveling kid who raped and murdered his wife, despite the fact that the whole place is virtually owned by Anthony Quinn, the father of the killer!Direction, performances, and cinematography are all top-notch.This has a tense no-nonsense script with great dialog, lots of neat touches, and an exciting nail-biting climax, all very satisfying.
I am usually a huge fan of John Sturges directed films, love Bad Day at Black Rock and The Great Escape, but Kirk Douglas' overacting hurts some here.
Anthony Quinn does a good job in his role, which I think was a little underwritten.The best thing about Sturges movies is that they are never too long, and I don't know of any Hollywood director who built tension as well as he did.
This is not my favorite Western, but it's in my list of top 10.However, I would not put Kirk Douglas' and Anthony Quinn's other Western movie Gunfight at the OK Corral on this list, as this famous fight has been beaten like a dead horse!
Kirk Douglas was pretty good as the marshal, and Anthony Quinn played his role excellently, especially when his character was supposed to be nervous and hiding something.
The punk's father (Anthony Quinn) is a great shot in a nearby town, he looks like he is above the law and it's a old friend of the Sheriff.
It was one early western DVD release around 2003 and l got my copy right way,this movie l'd watched in 1981 on TV and the possibility to have it eternally amazed me,this solid and tense western have all elements to make a good picture,a strong reason to make justice even against his best friend...a fine supporting casting and a pretty woman who decided to do a right choice...suspenseful and remarkable western compatible the High Noon!
Kirk Douglas plays Marshal Matt Morgan, whose wife is attacked and murdered by Rick Belden(Earl Holliman) who turns out to be the son of an old friend(played by Anthony Quinn) Rick had left his distinctive saddle behind, and Matt goes to visit the senior Belden, who is happy to see him, until he learns the reason for the visit.
Being a rich cattleman now, he practically owns the town, and after Matt arrests Rick, takes measures to prevent his son being tried and likely hanged, no matter the cost...Exciting and well-acted film also has first-rate direction from John Sturges, and a good supporting performance from Carolyn Jones as Linda, the sympathetic(and cynical) woman who is also fed up with the corrupt Belden family.
If you consider the basic plot summary - murder, revenge, Marshall who is friends with cattle baron whose son is part of the problem, one man against them all - you might think that this would be a cookie cutter western.But it rises above the pack with the calibre of the acting, the subtle differences in the story and the quality of the production.Douglas is in fine form - physically and in talent.
In this western masterpiece, Kirk Douglas plays a sheriff who seeks vengeance against the men who murdered his wife.
His friend, played beautifully by Anthony Quinn, owns the town and will do everything in his power to make sure Douglas doesn't get on the last train from Gun Hill..
A super director, John Sturges; two macho leading men, Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn; plus a very interesting story makes for a better than your typical western.
Long time friend, Craig Belden(Quinn)is a rich land baron/rancher/town owner that must defend the actions of his young and restless son played by Earl Holliman.Also in the cast are the alluring Carolyn Jones and Brian G.
The Strong Acting from Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn with the Radiant Beauty of Carolyn Jones Cannot Save Another Clunker from Sturges and His Bland Direction.There is Some Tension from the Script, Borrowed from and Almost Identical to Other Recent Movies of the Era, the Shallow and By the Numbers Style of So Many Fifties Westerns Renders the Suspense Somewhat Anemic.The First Act is the Best and it All Goes Down (Gun) Hill From There.
The picture ends with the once close friends squaring up to each other in a climactic and inevitable fateful shootout.With more than a nod to Delmer Daves' "3.10 To Yuma" (the real one made in 1957) LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL is a splendid well structured dramatic western with equally splendid performances from Douglas and Quinn.
Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn) is a powerful cattle-rancher, the richest of Gunhill, simply the Boss...His son Rick (Earl Holliman) is weak, coward, a punk kid who just raped and killed Catherine Morgan (Ziva Rodann), a beautiful Indian woman ignoring that she is the wife of Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas) the Marshall of the town...From a costly elegant saddle, Matt recognized that the rapist-killer of his wife is close to reach...
He decides to take the train to Gun Hill to see an old friend, Craig Belden, asking for help...The tragic moment of the film is when Craig (Quinn) realized that the murderer is his own son Rick...
The thing I like best about this western in which not a moment is wasted or boring, is the way John Sturges with minimal dialog shows the conflicts of the two leads.Because family issues are involved, I think a lot of non-western movie fans can and will appreciate what is happening in Last Train from Gun Hill.
Those are universal themes Sturges is dealing with.In the supporting cast I have to single out Earl Holliman as Quinn's spoiled son and Carolyn Jones, former love interest of Quinn who's got her own agenda working.The whole town of Gun Hill is against Douglas making the return train with the men he's seeking.
Although the stars are Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones has interesting part as a beautiful woman who helps the hero..
Russian composer Dimitri Tiomkin provides "Last Train from Gun Hill" with another one of his brilliant, evocative orchestral scores that enlivens the drama.The stalwart hero, Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral"), serves as marshal in the peaceful town of Pauley.
The wife is raped and murdered by Earl Holliman, the son of a land owner (Anthony Quinn) who controls a huge ranch a couple of towns over.
It's a very good performance.Although Anthony Quinn had been making movies for over 20 years, when he made this film he was yet to hit his stride as a confident leading actor.
Its a thriller, it's a story of friendship and a story of loyalty and revenge.Kirk Douglas plays Morgan a Marshall of a quite town, who's life is shattered when two roaming thugs rape and murder his wife, while his son watched helplessly.
Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn do well in this rather over looked Western from acclaimed director John Sturges.
"Last Train from Gun Hill" is a snarl - fest for Douglas and Quinn as they circle each other like dogs,seeking a weakness.Having never knowingly underacted they provide John Sturges with a rousing two - hander round which to build up his movie.
The casting is good, but with could have been better with another actor in as Greg Beldon- not that Anthony Quinn is not a powerful figure, but I'm not sure he fits as the father of the spineless Earl Holliman.John Sturges had made Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 2 years earlier, and that film had carved into stone the legacy of Western justice against the outlaws of the land.
The two outstanding veteran actors are very much alike in their character portrayals: Anthony Quinn, who plays Craig Belden, the rich owner of the town of Gun Hill, is a good friend to Sheriff Matt Morgan(Kirk Douglas) from Pawnee, OK, and has been his friend for years, until Morgan must take Craig's son Rick back to Pawnee because he has raped Belden's Indian wife, and lets Belden know that he must take Rick back.
Marshal Matt Morgan's Native American wife is raped and murdered.Two drunken cowboys are behind the deed.Matt seeks for revenge.He finds out the other cowboy is the son of his old friend, Craig Belden.Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) is directed by John Sturges and produced by Hal B.
Wallis.There is a great cast in this movie, starting with Kirk Douglas as Matt Morgan.This terrific actor turns 95 today, which is a very respectable age.I congratulate the man, who has done many, many roles in his career.Anthony Quinn makes a great co-star to Kirk, playing Craig Belden.Earl Hollimann makes a great villain as the son Rick.Brian G.
OK, so you have this town Marshal (Kirk Douglas) who's wife is raped and killed, so he goes after the bad guy's who it turns out that one of them is the son of he best friend (Anthony Quinn) from year gone by that he hasn't seen in a long time.
Should be a great story right, well, you haven't heard the punch line yet.I will just cut to the chase and tell you, it's all about Douglas getting Quinn's son on a train back to the marshals town to stand trial.
Kirk Douglas is a Marshall whose wife is murdered by 2 sons of a close friend played by Anthony Quinn. |
tt0058150 | Goldfinger | The pre-title teaser sequence shows Bond emerging from the water in a Latin American country. His mission is to destroy the operations of a drug lord, who deals heroin to finance revolutions. Bond infiltrates the man's secret lab and lays out a large quantity of C4 explosive with a timer. Shortly after he meets his contact in a nearby bar, the bomb explodes, destroying much of the drug lord's base of operations. Bond's contact tells him his flight to Miami is confirmed and Bond follows an exotic dancer (his lover on the mission) to her dressing room. Bond takes off his shoulder holster and pistol and kisses the woman. A man emerges from behind an armoire and attacks Bond, who holds the woman up as a shield. He struggles briefly with the henchman and throws him into the bathtub. The man seizes Bond's gun, prompting Bond to throw an electric heater in the water-filled tub, electrocuting the man. Bond leaves, plainly disgusted with the woman who betrayed him.Bond's CIA contact, Felix Leiter, finds the agent in Miami Beach on respite. He informs Bond that M had charged him with a new mission; the observation of a man named Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger), an international jeweler who is suspected of smuggling. Bond charms his way into Goldfinger's hotel room and finds Jill Masterson, Goldfinger's mistress, watching him play cards through a set of binoculars. From her vantage point, Jill can see Goldfinger's opponent's hand and can relay instructions to Goldfinger, allowing him to cheat and win. Bond disrupts Jill's spying, telling Goldfinger that the Miami Beach police department would arrest him if they found out his scheme. He also orders Goldfinger to begin losing gradually to his opponent.Bond invites Jill back to his own hotel room where they spend the afternoon and evening together. While Bond retrieves another bottle of champagne, he is hit from behind and falls unconscious. (A shadow on the wall shows a bulky figure wearing a brimmed hat.) When Bond awakes, he finds that Jill has been murdered; her entire body has been covered in gold paint and she has died of skin suffocation. Bond calls Leiter immediately to report the incident.Bond reports back to London, meeting with M, who is largely disappointed at the turn of events. He threatens to replace Bond on the mission with 008, however, Bond reassures his boss that he can complete the mission himself. M orders Bond to attend a dinner meeting with a representative from the British Office of Finance to learn more about Goldfinger. As it turns out, the tycoon is a legitimate jeweler and thereby permitted to trade and refine gold legally around the world, yet his means of transporting his gold internationally remains unknown and Bond's mission is to prove if Goldfinger is smuggling his gold illegally. Bond suggests that he and his adversary meet socially and that he'll need some sort of bait to entice Goldfinger. The representative suggests a gold bar smelted by the Nazis during World War II.Bond makes a brief visit to the lab of his weapons specialist, Q, who provides him with two tracking devices and a new car, a 1964 Aston Martin DB5. The car comes equipped with a tracking screen for the bugs that were given to Bond as well as a formidable weapons system (machine guns, oil slick, smokescreen, passenger ejector seat, & tire slashers) as well as bulletproof glass and revolving license plates.Bond meets Goldfinger at a country club and joins him in a game. The two play to the 17th hole and, when Goldfinger suggests that Bond did not merely want to meet to play golf. Bond offers the Nazi gold bar to Goldfinger as a prize for winning the game. While playing the next hole, Bond discovers that, like cards, Goldfinger cheats at golf as well, finding a loose ball in the rough, planted there by Goldfinger's caddy, Oddjob, a large Korean man in a suit and bowler hat. On the next green, Bond switches Goldfinger's ball for the one he found. They play to the last green and Goldfinger seemingly wins the match until Bond points out that he played the wrong ball. As a result, Goldfinger loses the match and any chance of obtaining the gold bar Bond had offered. While his car is being packed up by Oddjob, Bond plants the larger tracker in the car and settles up with Goldfinger for his winnings. Goldfinger warns Bond to stay out of his affairs and orders Oddjob to demonstrate his favorite weapon, his blade-rimmed bowler hat, which he uses to decapitate a nearby marble statue. Goldfinger leaves for the airport, having his car loaded into a cargo plane and boarding it himself for Geneva, Switzerland.Bond follows Goldfinger to Geneva, and while observing him from a mountain switchback above, is nearly hit by a shot from a nearby assassin. Bond pursues the assassin, forcing her off the road with the tire slashers mounted on his car. Not realizing that Bond caused the damage to her car, the driver asks Bond to drive her to the nearest auto garage. Bond notices that she's carrying a wooden case with the initials TM. She tells him they are a set of ice skates. Bond leaves her at the garage and continues his tracking of Goldfinger. He arrives at an industrial plant owned by Goldfinger. Hiding in the forested hills above the plant, he infiltrates the facility at night and overhears an conversation between Goldfinger and a Chinese associate where Goldfinger explains his gold smuggling operation: specific parts of his Roll Royce are solid 18 karat gold, which are smelted at the plant. Bond also hears Goldfinger mention something called "Operation Grand Slam." As he leaves the grounds, he sees someone nearby wielding a rifle. He wrestles with the person, discovering it is the woman who seemingly attempted to assassinate Bond earlier. It turns out she is Jill Masterson's sister, Tilly, who wants to kill Goldfinger and had tried unsuccessfully earlier on the mountain road, the same shot that nearly hit Bond. During their struggle, Tilly sets off a tripwire, summoning Goldfinger's security guards to their location. Bond is able to dispatch several guards with his cars weapons system, however, he is captured and Tilly is killed by Oddjob.Bond awakes in Goldfinger's laboratory, strapped to a table. Goldfinger has his operatives activate a giant laser which threatens to cut Bond in half from his crotch upwards. Bond tries to inform Goldfinger that he has full details of his plans and that he'll be replaced by another 00 agent if he dies. Goldfinger, however, does not plan to torture Bond for information, just to kill him. Bond plays his last card, saying that he knows of Operation Grand Slam, as does 008. Goldfinger realizes that he should keep Bond alive so word of his plan doesn't leak.Bond is flown from Geneva to Goldfinger's stud farm near Fort Knox, Kentucky. On the plane, he meets Goldfinger's personal pilot, Pussy Galore, whom makes a point of informing Bond that she is a lesbian and "immune" to his charms. When they land, a small squadron of planes lands; they are all female pilots trained by Galore herself. At Goldfinger's ranch, Goldfinger meets with several organized crime associates, telling them of his plan; he will rob the gold depositories at Fort Knox. The gangsters, who had helped Goldfinger smuggle the equipment and personnel needed for the operation into the United States, scoff at his plan, saying the area is too heavily fortified by the United States military. Goldfinger explains to them that his plan will involve using a nerve gas, Delta 9, to pacify the troops stationed nearby. The remainder of Ft. Knox' defenses will then be systematically defeated. Bond, escaping from his holding cell, writes a note describing the operation, while standing underneath one of the models used by Goldfinger in his presentation. He is discovered by Pussy Galore, who takes him to Goldfinger. As they leave the area underneath the model, one of Goldfinger's men releases Delta 9 into the room with the gangsters, killing them all.Outside, one of the gangsters, Mr Solo, is preparing to leave with his fee, $1 million in pure gold, deeming Goldfinger's plan too audacious. As he leaves, Bond slips the note and his smaller tracking device into Solo's pocket. Solo is driven to the airport by Oddjob. On the way, Oddjob deliberately passes the airport exit and turns off on a side road. He kills Solo and drives the car to a nearby auto wrecking yard where it is compacted with Solo's body. Oddjob returns to Goldfinger's ranch with the compacted car where Goldfinger comments, to Bond's dismay, that he needs to retrieve his gold from it.Bond meets again with Goldfinger and begins to discuss Grand Slam, citing the fact that removing $15 billion in bullion from Fort Knox would be logistically impossible, taking several days. The plan would fail quickly when the United States armed forces would move in and stop the operation. Goldfinger counters by saying he has no plans to actually steal the gold from the depository; he will detonate a small nuclear bomb inside the vault area. Bond surmises that the entire gold supply of the United States will become radioactive for decades and therefore useless. Bond also predicts that the resulting financial meltdown of the United States economy will force other nations to buy gold from Goldfinger himself, substantially increasing the tycoon's wealth. Pussy Galore meets Bond an takes him on an impromptu tour of the ranch. In a nearby barn, the two match judo moves on each other until Bond is able to gain the upper hand and seduce Pussy.The next morning, Galore's flight squadron sprays the Delta 9 gas over the area surrounding Ft. Knox, pacifying all the troops and population of the area. Goldfinger's ground force, including Bond and Oddjob, move in and easily penetrate the immediate defenses of the fort and move into the vault area. The bomb arrives on a helicopter and is moved into the vault, where Bond is handcuffed to it. However, the gas sprayed by Galore's pilots was a ruse; during their tryst, Bond had somehow been able to convince Pussy to switch the canisters for something harmless. The armed forces of the area move in and surround Goldfinger and his crew, starting a furious battle. Goldfinger closes the vault door, trapping Bond, Oddjob and one of his henchmen inside. Bond manages to retrieve the key for his cuffs from the man after Oddjob kills him and battles with Oddjob directly. Bond is little match for Oddjob himself, but is able to retrieve Oddjob's deadly hat. Throwing it at Oddjob, he misses and it becomes embedded in a nearby set of bars. As Oddjob grabs it to take it out, Bond touches the bars with a severed electrical cable, electrocuting Oddjob, who falls dead. Outside, Goldfinger escapes by killing several guards in the guise of a US Army Colonel and flies off in Galore's helicopter.Bond races to the bomb, trying desperately to disarm it. The US army enters the vault, lead by Leiter. One of the men with Leiter shuts the bomb off easily; the timer on the bomb clearly reads 007. Bond is scheduled to fly to the White House for a personal meeting with the President. While on the private jet to Washington, Goldfinger emerges, pointing a (golden) pistol at Bond. He tells Bond that he intends to kill the agent and fly the plane to Cuba. Bond asks where Pussy is, distracting Goldfinger, and attacking him to seize the gun. As they struggle, the gun goes off, blowing out a window, causing the plane to depressurize. Goldfinger is sucked outside and the plane plummets. Watching on a radar screen, Felix and the Air Force see a blip coming off the plane's radar signature. A search party is sent out, one that fails to notice a parachute nearby. Pussy begins waving to the helicopter but Bond grabs her, covering them with the parachute, cheekily saying they don't need to be rescued at that moment. | suspenseful, murder, cult, action, humor, revenge | train | imdb | The car Aston Martin DB5 James Bond 007 was driving was so cool, it has so many accessories it was beautiful to watch it.Investigating a gold magnate's smuggling, James Bond uncovers a plot to contaminate the Fort Knox gold reserve.This movie has so much impact it is well acted it has great brilliant plot.Gert Fröbe R.I.P was brilliant and excellent as Goldfinger the original villain.
Oddjob and Jaws are two great Bond villains.Honor Blackman is the first of a long line of James Bond females with patently sexual names And ho could ever forget Shirley Eaton's introduction in the film?
Even killing Oddjob at the end is ultimately meaningless as he's still trapped in the vault with a bomb he can't disarm until the Army rescues him.Goldfinger is a 1964 British spy film and the third instalment in the James Bond series to be produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.
The film also stars Honor Blackman as Bond girl Pussy Galore and Gert Fröbe as the title character Auric Goldfinger, along with Shirley Eaton as the iconic Bond girl Jill Masterson.
Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and was the first of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton.10/10 Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved me has such a great villains and they are both in my top 10 James Bond favorite films.
It is quintessential James Bond 007 action cult classic film I love this movie to death it is my number one favorite Sean Connery's James Bond 007 film..
As well, John Barry's scores from the Connery films are finding their way into the ears of a new generation through pop music as snippets from his soundtracks are sampled by such artists as Robbie Williams, Mono and Curve, to name a few.But if by some fluke you read this and you haven't seen "Goldfinger" yet, do yourself right and acquaint yourself with the real James Bond.
(He was introduced in From Russia with Love, the second film in the series, where he was credited as Major Boothroyd, and given little screen time.) It was also the first to truly setup the suave nature of 007, the tongue-in-cheek humor (absent in the first movie, Dr. No), the far-fetched gadgetry (including fast cars, this one being an Aston-Martin) and, arguably, the first of the series to feature the famous line, "Bond, James Bond," as a 007 catchphrase, versus a mere line of dialogue.
The following shots is one of the only sequences in James Bond history where the iconic character actually seems fairly worried that fate may be playing a deadly hand.Released in 1964, forty years later it stands as one of the most risqué Bond films to date.
Best of all, it has great characters that all of us who first saw it years ago still remember: "Auric Goldfinger," Oddjob,." and - of course - "Pussy Galore," one of the all-time great names in the history of film!The story moves fast without overdoing the action.
Dr No and From Russia with Love had both been successful, but Goldfinger outperformed both at the Box Office, and in the process laid down the guidelines for nearly every Bond film that has followed since.There is undoubtedly much to admire about the film, not least the memorable Shirley Bassey theme song, still one of the best.
Goldfinger is one of the great Bond villains, played with real bonhomie by Gert Frobe, who succeeds in making him a more fleshed-out character than many of the one-dimensional baddies of later films.
Personally I like the tougher films in the franchise the best, especially From Russia with Love, but Goldfinger is the most enjoyable Bond film of its kind, and deserves its classic status..
It starts with a shocking electrocution and then into the classic saucy gold credits before the scene is set with Goldfinger himself.Bond, played by dashing Sean Connery for the third time, has to find out what unpleasant gold-smuggling chap named Auric Goldfinger is up to and put a stop to it.
Favourite bits from so many: short-lived girlfriend Shirley Eaton going for gold; polished Bond being dismissive of the brandy at the Bank Of England much to M's pleb puzzlement; the debut of the special Aston Martin and Q's workshop; the narky golf match between Bond and Goldfinger; Bond's close but rather unnecessary laser shave at Goldfinger's HQ; his various encounters with feisty Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman); the gangster with the pressing engagement; and Shirley Bassey's title song was by miles the best Bond song ever.The whole film is still a joy, maybe improbable and even ludicrous at times yet I watched it rapt all these years later.
"This is GOLD Mr Bond!" "Lovely sport!" "Oh, he had a pressing engagement," "You don't look like the sort of girl should be ditched!" and the quintessential "I never joke about my work 007" Gert Frobe's villainous Goldfinger has never been improved upon and Harold Sakata's bad-guy Oddjob simply never equalled.GOLDFINGER had everything.
Sean Connery's third go around as James Bond has become the quisessential James Bond Flick and for good reason..from the catch opening chorus by Shirley Bassey and the intro pretty lady decked out in gold to oddjob's hat and the name of the bond girl Pussy Galore..What else could one ask for?
It set records at that time as the fastest-grossing film in history (making back it's $3,000,000 production cost in a mere 2 weeks, on only 67 screens), spawned the first massive 007 merchandising 'blitz' (with everything from jigsaw puzzles, dolls, and lunchboxes, to shoes and cologne, and even Aston Martin DB5 automobiles offered as 'collectibles'), launched a whole new genre of 'spy thrillers' to TV and film (with the debut of the Ian Fleming-approved TV series, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." in America, and the increased popularity "Danger Man" and "The Avengers" would enjoy in Britain), and gave the franchise it's first worldwide #1 hit song, sung by Shirley Bassey.
His 'right-hand man', Oddjob, played by Hawaiian wrestler Harold Sakata, became the prototype of every subsequent villainous henchman; silent, nearly invulnerable, with an evil grin and a steel-edged bowler hat he would toss that could cut the head off a marble statue.Bond's women were never sexier; Shirley Eaton, 27, created a sensation in a 5-minute appearance as 'Jill Masterson', who betrays Goldfinger for a tryst with 007, and ends up a nude corpse covered in gold paint; and 27-year old "Avengers" alumni Honor Blackman, as the lesbian pilot 'Pussy Galore' (yes, the name DID cause problems with American censors), who discovers the joys of male lovers after Bond pins her in a fight.
Sean Connery, at 34, was simply irresistible in his third outing as 007!Director Guy Hamilton, making his first Bond movie, said that the character of 007 only needed a 'push' to become a Superman, and he provided it, by increasing the humor and ever-present gadgets, most memorably the prototype Aston Martin DB5, complete with armor plating, machine-gun turrets, rotating license plates, and an ejector seat.Unforgettable moments abound, from the "shocking" pre-title sequence, to the golf match between Goldfinger and Bond (introducing Connery to the sport that would become his lifelong passion), to the famous laser torture scene ("Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE!"), to the climactic fight between Bond and Oddjob (during which Connery was actually injured, and Sakata burned his hand, badly).007 author Ian Fleming passed away during production, after a last visit to the Pinewood set (although the story takes place in Florida, Switzerland, and Kentucky, nearly all of the film was shot in England).
NO and THUNDERBALL, the best of the Sean Connery as James Bond movies.The story is simply one of the best for a Bond movie, the movie is full of action sequences, the acting is great, and the theme song by Shirley Bassey is just a delight to hear at.
Sean Connery is great as always, Honor Blackman and Shirley Eaton are very SEXY and perfect for their roles, and Gert Frobe is a perfect villain!In the end, a masterpiece and one of the best movies ever in the James Bond franchise!.
Personally, I have the bizarre habit of ranking my favorite Bond movies based on the evil- factor and charisma of the villains, and thus "Goldfinger" is quite high up there thanks to the sublime roles of Gert Fröbe as the titular character and Harold Sakata as Oddjob, his silent but deadly henchman who pulverizes golf balls with his bare hands and throws around his killer-hat of steel.
There are so many great scenes in this film that tickle me every time, when Bond outsmarts Goldfinger on the golf course, the Pussy Galore flying circus scenes, the scenes where the Mob bosses are eventually snuffed out, the Lincoln crushing scene because it's so outrageous to have crushed a new car, and the scene where Goldfinger gets pulled thru the plane's broken window to his demise, and many others.
The classic theme as sung by the still great Shirley Bassey is a "10"!!(I saw her perform recently in Atlantic City NJ and she is awesome!..only odd thing is she did every Bond theme she recorded except "Goldfinger"..not sure why.) I have always enjoyed this film upon repeat viewings thru the years and always looked forward to it's occasional showing on Sunday night on ABC network in the years before video players were a common household item.
For example, in "Dr. No", Bond kills a man with a bow and arrow and says, "I think he got the point.""Goldfinger" became the second-highest grossing film of 1964 behind "My Fair Lady" and is probably one of the two best Connery/Bond films, the other "From Russia with Love".
(This couldn't happen today since international markets constantly track the price of gold.) James Bond (Sean Connery), Agent 007, is sent on a mission to find out about Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe).
Of course, due credit must also be given to Sean Connery who contributed his most assured Bond yet.Taking over from Terence Young, who directed the first two films, Guy Hamilton upped the ante with some highly memorable set-pieces.
IMO, Sean Connery hit his absolute peak as Bond in the next film, "Thunderball", but this is his second-best performance; for those who think that he can't play the "emotional" Bond, his often neglected scene with M should be enough proof of the opposite.
Especially those who think Sean Connery is the best and only man whoever should have played 007.Certainly the most dangerous opponent Bond ever faced was Odd Job, who was Auric Goldfinger's bodyguard and all around assassin.
The Democrats had a field day spoofing the title song that Shirley Bassey made such a hit from.Without the Goldwater reference, Goldfinger is still a great action film, one of the best of Bond..
Ian Fleming's Agent 007 James Bond (Sean Connery) is out this time to foil the nefarious plot of Auric Goldinger (Gert Frobe), a gold magnate out to contaminate the U.S. gold reserve at Fort Knox.
There was also a lot a double entendres and witticisms in this one; certainly something that the Daniel Craig Bond lacks.Gert Fröbe was a formidable villain as Auric Goldfinger; Honor Blackman was great as the lesbian seduced by Bond (They couldn't play that up in 1964); and Shirley Eaton looked fabulous in gold.You have to watch them all to get the full flavor.
Honor Blackman is truly one of the all-time great "Bond girls." And of course, nobody does it better than Sean Connery as James Bond himself.In 'Goldfinger,' Bond must try to stop yet another highly-financed psychopath.
The Masterson sisters are in the film only briefly, with Jill, of course, being painted with gold in a classic image.Auric Goldfinger is one of the best Bond villains ever, and is played with panache by Gert Frobe.
It's great fun as agent 007, otherwise known as James Bond (Sean Connery), goes up against gold-loving Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) in the classic 1960s spy-action film with techno-gadgets galore, and Pussy too, breathtaking locations in Europe, and a plot that alternates danger with sexy playfulness.Part of the appeal is the casting of Connery who melds into the role of Bond seemingly without effort, physically sleek and agile, casual and confident, resourceful, and virtually indestructible.
This Film Has It All. I am a fan of Roger Moore's interpretation of 007 James Bond but I do feel I must give a lot of credit to Sean Connery for his excellent portrayal of Bond in Goldfinger.
In my opinion Goldfinger is one of the best films of the Connery era and is certainly superior to Dr. No and From Russia With Love.Bond fans will love this movie.
Gert Fröbe displays pleasing range as the insane antagonist, contrasting Harold Sakata's bone dry henchman.John Barry's music and the general sound of the film ooze metallic-ness and gold-ness, and this theme pays off nicely in the end game.This is the movie people think of when they say that the Sean Connery movies were the best, and I recommend it to anyone who has only seen more recent ones and is ambivalent about the whole series.8 out of 10.
I know it's not very unique to single out GOLDFINGER as "the one" that really solidified Sean Connery as the #1 actor for the role, and as "the one that set the template for future Bond films to come".
"Goldfinger" walks that fine line and turns in one of the better installments of the series.For a basic plot summary, "Goldfinger" sees James Bond (Sean Connery) come up against Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), a business tycoon obsessed with gold with designs on completely destroying the world's economy for his own personal gain.This movie works so well because it does all the intangible things perfectly.
In this film, the third in the franchise, British secret agent must investigate the operations of Auric Goldfinger, a greedy millionaire who plans a terrorist attack on the US gold reserves in Fort Knox.This film is surely one of the most cherished by fans of the franchise, featuring Sean Connery as Bond, Bernard Lee (as M), Lois Maxwell (as Miss Moneypenny) and Desmond Llewelyn (as Q).
It also brought about memorable Bond villains to the series such as Oddjob, Pussy Galore, and of course the character of Goldfinger.
Frankly, although I know Connery leaves the franchise eventually, I think he should have left prior to this installment.It's fun, but it's not all that it's made out to be.Goldfinger is a classic in the venue of Bond films, and if you have never seen it, I recommend it, even though it is not among my personal favorites.It rates a 7.6/10 from...the Fiend :..
Bond's next mission takes him to Fort Knox, where Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) and his henchman are planning to raid Fort Knox, to the expense of the World's economy.Bond's mission to save the world is one somewhat thrilling ride as he dodges the killer hat of lead henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata), wrestle with ace pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and show-off in the classic and gadget-equipped Bondmobile, the Ashton Martin.
It gives me the impression that the newer generation of Bond fans, accustomed to the fast-paced action of the Daniel Craig era, might have a harder time appreciating GOLDFINGER (and a lot of the Connery films).As a villain, Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) is one of the best.
Sean Connery, the first and most exciting of all actors to play James Bond, stars in this wonderful action film alongside Shirley Eaton and Honor Blackman, two extremely beautiful Bond Girls.
My mom looked over at her right as the name "Pussy Galore" was spoken, and got a kick out of the girl's horrified expression.Anyway, everyone knows the story: James Bond (Sean Connery) has to stop kingpin Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) from taking over Ft. Knox.
We have been treated to Odd Job (Sakata instantly becoming a Bond villain legend), that laser, the DB5 and its tricks, the delicious Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore (still an awesome name today and still sounding like a character from a Carry On movie), the golf match, Shirley Eaton's golden girl and the ticking time bomb finale played out during the chaotic scenes involving Ken Adam's brilliantly designed version of Fort Knox.Bond staples also serve the production well, the title sequence is neatly strung together as scenes from the movie play out over a writhing golden girl, who was model Margaret Nolan and who briefly appears in the film as Dink.
The direction is sly, the cinematography is stylish, the locations are stunning and I can never get enough of the theme song sung by Shirley Bassey.The script is sophisticated and humorous, while James Bond is still his suave and charismatic self, Pussy Galore is fabulously sexy and Auric Goldfinger himself ties with Blofeld as the best Bond villain, and a deliciously bizarre one he is too, being obsessed with gold and everything.Other than the theme song and Goldfinger, the action is what makes this film.
(Connery also did one of the worst Bond movies, Thunderball.) Goldfinger is the best of the series for one reason: he does spy things.
This was also the first film to have licensed merchandise with an Aston Martin DB5 released by Corgi toy cars.Bond Girls Honor Blackman plays Pussy Galore Shirley Eaton plays Jill Masterson The Enemy Auric Goldfinger is played by Gert Frobe.Summery Bond is sent to investigate Goldfinger's gold smuggling and uncovers a plot to attack Fort Knox.
Sean Connery as James Bond, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, Gert Frobe as Auric Goldfinger, and Shirly Eaton as Jill Masterson give superb performances as they were nominated for many awards.
Sean Connery reprises his role for the third time as super spy James Bond, and in this movie he had achieved cinematic gold.The plot, as like the novels, is trimmed down by screenwriters, but somehow it works better in this one as the pace in increased in the film. |
tt0107711 | Nowhere to Run | Sam Gillen (Van Damme) is a convict who gets sprung from Federal custody somewhere in the Midwest by his bank-robbing partner. In their last heist, Sam's partner killed a bank guard, and Sam took the rap for it. Sam's partner gets killed in the break, forcing Sam to go it alone in search of the loot, which is buried on the property of a farm inhabited by Clydie Anderson (Arquette), the widowed mother of two kids named Mike "Mookie" Anderson and Bree Anderson.Attempting to sneak into Clydie's house and "borrow" some salt for a campfire-broiled steak, Sam catches sight of Clydie taking a shower. The next morning, Sam is spotted bathing outdoors by Mookie. After saving Clydie, Mookie, and Bree from a trio of intruding thugs, Sam discovers that Clydie is holding out from selling her place to property developer Franklin Hale, who fears that he will be put out of business if he doesn't get Clydie's land so he can develop on it.Sam decides to hang around, sleeping first in Clydie's barn and then in her bed while repairing her late husband's Triumph motorcycle. And Hale hires an intimidation expert named Dunston, to force Clydie into selling her land. Secretly on Hale's payroll is corrupt sheriff Lonnie Cole, a sometime lover of Clydie.A jealous Lonnie discovers Sam's true identity and threatens to expose him if he doesn't leave. Not wanting to place Clydie in additional danger for helping a fugitive, Sam decides to leave, only to find that Hale has already blown the whistle on him in an attempt to get him out of the way. After evading police chasing him in cars, land rovers, helicopters, and on motorcycles and horseback, Sam returns to save Clydie from Dunston and Hale, who are planning to burn down her house.After fighting off the bad guys and getting Hale caught holding a gun to Clydie's head, he decides to turn himself in, rather than run away. He promises to be back to live with them. | cult, revenge, violence | train | imdb | null |
tt0291337 | Max Payne | On a cold stormy winter night, an N.Y.P.D helicopter flys over the Hudson River towards the city, Two police cars drive to where the helicopter is heading: The Aesir Corporation Head-Quarters. A man is standing on the ledge with a sniper rifle in his hand, looking down on the nightmare that changed his life... His name is Max Payne.Max is a detective with the N.Y.P.D., Three years prior to the present, Max and his DEA friend, Alex Balder are talking in his office, Alex offers him an oppritunity to join the DEA but Max declines, choosing his family before work. On his way home, Max sees all the children playing on a hot summer evening. When Max enters his house, he calls out to his wife but there's no answer. Max walks through the entry way and notices a black "V" with a syringe going through it painted on the wall. The phone rings and Max answers, instructing the caller to dial 911, she hangs up. Max hears screaming and noises upstairs, When he reaches the top, two gun shots go off and his wife is screaming. When Max tries to go through the doorway in the bathroom but it's barricaded. Max decides to go through the baby's room but two men come out and Max kills them, He enters the room and sees his baby girl dead, on the floor. Max gains access to his bedroom and his wife is lying dead on their bed. As a result in loosing his family, Max decides to join the DEA where he goes on an undercover assignment to infiltrate the mafia.It is now present day and a winter storm has just began. Max is at a diner waiting to hear from his partner "B.B" who instructs him to meet with Alex at the Roscoe Street subway station. Max gets off the train and finds a dead security guard in a room, Max gets back to the platform and two mobsters are waiting for the next train to come. Max kills them and makes his way to the lower level of the Subway. Once their, Max seeks a "subway personnel" room and enters. He saves a technician from being killed off by a mobster. The technician takes Max to the upper level where he can call for help in the security office. The guard is killed and Max takes out the mobsters in the room. Max turns on an unused inspection car and uses it to go down a dark tunnel leading him to a closed off 1940's subway station. Once he gets there he feels a rumble and everything begins to shake for a couple of seconds. Max goes through the station until he finds a giant hole in the wall leading to the vault of the Roscoe Bank. A group of mobsters planned to take a large sum of money along with "Aesir Corporation" bonds. Max also finds some detonators on a table. He takes them and finds a door rigged with explosives. Max uses the detonators and the doors blows off it's hinges. Alex runs to a locked gate and Max meets up with him. Max tells Alex that it was a bank job and it was Jack Lupino's men. Before Alex can make another plan, he is shot to death in front of Max's eyes. With nothing to do to save his friend, Max leaves the subway and heads for Lupino's hotel.While sitting at the bar waiting for Lupino to show up, Max is greeted by the Finito brothers, Lupino's enforcers. They discover Max is a cop and try to kill him in their office, but Max is able to kill both of them. Before leaving the office, Max finds a letter to the Finito's written by Vinnie Gognitti, underboss to Don Angelo Punchinello. The letter explains that a "V" deal is going down at the hotel and the Finito's along with Chicago mobster Rico Meurte are to see the deal through. Max finds Meurte's room number written on the letter and he heads to his room. On the way, Max hears a newscast on the radio explaining he is wanted for the murder of Alex Balder. Max reaches Rico Meurte's room and finds a letter written by Don Punchinello asking him to back up the deal as a major favor repaid to him. Max heads down to the basement of the hotel making his way to the entry-hall.On his way their, Max seeks a hooker's hotel room with a diary entry recently written in her book. Max finds the room where the deal is taking place and kills the mobsters inside. Max finds a case of Valkyr on the table along with $5,000 in dirty money. Max goes to the bar and finds Rico Meurte getting a blow-job by the hooker, Candy Dawn. Max kills the both of them as they open fire on him. Before leaving the hotel, Max seeks a switchboard in the reception area, he overhears a conversation between a dying Meurte and Vinny Gognitti, the mafia is now aware Max is out and to be ready for anything.As Max leaves the hotel, a bomb goes off in one of Lupino's tenament buildings and a black volkswagon drives down the road, Max sees the man riding shot-gun is Vladimir Lem, the head of the russian mob and enemy of Don Punchinello. Max goes to the recently destroyed tenament building and looks for Vinnie Gognitti. Making his way through the building, a pay-phone rings and Max answers. The caller reveals himself as Alfred Woden and tells Max the police are on their way. Max guns it through what's left of the building until he reaches Gognitti's office. Gognitti grabs his gun and fires off a shot at Max and Max dodges and shoots Gognitti in the chest. Gognitt's men try to kill Max but don't succeed. Max chases Gognitti on foot over rooftops and alley ways until Gognitti reaches a dead end and Max fires another shot at him. Max interrogates Gognitti on where to find Jack Lupino and Gognitti gives up and tells Max he's at Ragna Rock, a gothic night club owned by Lupino.Max drives to Ragna Rock and takes on the mobsters hiding out in the club. Max gathers clues as to discover Lupino's true form. He finds a book that is about the world coming to an end, and over hears conversations of mobsters explaining Lupino's violent behavior. Max reaches the backstage area leading to Lupino's hideout. Max finds a letter with bloody fingerprints on them addressed to Lupino from Punchinello telling him to get his act together or "The Trio" will pay him a visit. Max reliazes the Trio is the Don's most violent infamous henchmen. Max finds papers on Lupino's table with lists of demons and dark gods of the underworld, along with a journal entry of a dark sermon Lupino preaches. Max finally meets Lupino eye to eye and is ready for a final showdown. Lupino is loaded with Valkyr and is functioning unstably. Max is able to kill him and unloads clips of ammo into the body for the murder of his family. A woman comes out from the curtains and draws a gun at Max.Max aims back and learns the woman is Mona Sax, the twin sister of Lisa Punchinello, Don Punchinello's wife. Mona tells Max that it was Punchinello who had Alex killed and not Lupino. Max and Mona lower their guns and she offer him and drink. Max downs the whisky and passes out on the floor.After Max has a horrible dream showing him killing his wife, he wakes up tied to a chair with a man holding a baseball bat. The man introduces himself as Frankie "The Bat" Niagra. With no way to escape, Max gets Niagra irratated with a remark about his name, as a result Max is hit across the head three times with the bat. Frankie remarks that he's gonna take a break and get something to drink. After he leaves, Max breaks free out of the chair and goes through the basement looking for his weapons to continue his quest. Max reaches the first floor of the hotel and makes his way to the bar where Frankie is. The bar had been taped off and secured. Before Max continues to the bar, he overhears a mobster talking on the phone regarding Mona and The Trio. Max kills the man and hears a radio broadcast explaining his body was found by "reliable sources" and finds a note written to Frankie by Punchinello to take care of him good. Max goes to the bar and sees Frankie having a beer. They go through a fierce gun fight with Frankie having his last swing at bat for good. Max leaves the hotel and sees that he's being tailed by Vladimir. Max gets an offer from Vladimir in return that he'll get help going after Punchinello, Max hears him out.Vladimir's cargo ship "Charon" is taken under siege by Boris Dime, working for Punchinello. The ship is loaded with guns, ammo and hardware. If Max can retake the ship and take out Dime, the guns are his and he'll be ready for the fight against Punchinello and his men. Max agrees to the offer and they drive to the docks where the ship is located. Max goes through the dock killing off any of Dime's crew until he reaches the ship. When Max boards the ship, Punchinello calls for Dime on the phone in the ship. Max answers and suggests they should get together for a talk which infuriates Punchinello. Max goes to the lower deck of the ship and finds Dime waiting for him armed with a shotgun. Max kills him and goes to the Stock room and takes all the ammo and guns he needs. He then meets up with Vladimir who offers to help him but Max declines his request.While walking down a street. Max spots a pay-phone and calls Punchinello who wants to have a meeting. Punchinello tells Max to meet with him at his restaurant in one hour. Max gets to the restaurant but no ones there. A match is thrown onto the floor of the restaurant and the place is engulfed in flames, trapping Max inside. He goes through the back ways towards the kitchen until he reaches the sewer entrance and escapes to the street. Vladimir picks him up and drops him off at the Punchinello Manor.Max arrives at the Manor, and makes his way to the basement entrance in the back. The door had already been unlocked and Max thinks Mona is there. He then finds a room with a body on the table with a knife through his chest. Max makes his way to the kitchen where Pilot Providence, third member of the trio and his men are waiting for Max. He sucessfully kills them all and continues through the Manor. Max reaches the entry way and finds the second member of the trio, Joe "Dead-Pan" Salem waiting for him, Max kills him and heads for Punchinello's bedroom. Max sees the body of a woman on Punchinello's bed, He is unable to tell whether it's Mona or her sister because the body was badily tortured. Leaving the bedroom, Max answers a ringing telephone. The caller is Alfred Woden who warns Max that a helicopter has landed on the Manor grounds and that he must escape. Max isn't leaving until he finds Punchinello. However Vince Minonauno, first and last member of the Trio tries to kill Max but is unsucessful. Max hears Punchinello on the phone in his locked office begging for help. Max kicks down the door and Punchinello begs him not to kill him. Suddenly three suited men carrying assualt rifles enters Punchinello's office and kills Punchinello while Max fights off the hitmen. Max leaves the Don's office but runs into a group of suited men aiming their rifles at him. A women walks by the men and shows Max a syringe full of Valkyr and injects him with it until he falls down unconsious.The men and their leader leave after commanding them "Take Me to Cold Steel!" Max has another horrible dream, even worse than the last one. When he wakes up, Max is sick and throws up and is finally able to climb back to his feet. Max remembers the women's last words before storming out of the manor, and remember's Cold Steel being a factory outside New York. Max drives out there to find out whats going on. He infiltrates the factory dodging fire from patrolling guards. The women's men take over the base and initate the Self-Destruct protocol. With nothing more to go on, Max finds a computer explaining "Project Valhalla". The project was a top-secret operation to save Aesir Corporation during the Gulf War. Max's research shows that the project was involved in the use of Valkyr and went through three phases. The last phase was to be iniated at his home address, three years ago. Max also remembers his wife telling him that she found files under the name Valhalla while working at the D.A's office. With the self-destruct countdown winding down fast, Max is able to escape and heads back to the city.Max goes to an all night diner drinking coffee to replenish his energy when he gets a call from "B.B" to meet him at the Choir Communications garage at 2:30 AM.Max takes the time reliaze that with the murder of Alex and the frame-up that it had to been an inside job. Max shows up seeing "B.B" waiting for him, and Max accuses him of being a corrupt cop who sold out Alex and had him killed. B.B's car drives fastly towards Max as he dodges the car. B.B gets in the car and tries to escape the garage. His men go after Max and a long fire fight goes on in the garage. Max reaches the fourth level of the garage and B.B's car crashes into a van, leaving B.B and Max to have a final standoff. Max kills B.B and then answers a ringing pay-phone. The caller is once again Alfred Woden who instructs Max to meet him at the Asguard Building right away.Max arrives and sees Alfred Woden waiting for him. They enter the building and Woden introduces Max to "The Inner Circle". Woden tells Max that they can help him with unknown information about the Valhalla project and how they want to exploit the project's evidence to the government. While the meeting continues. Woden shows Max a picture of the woman at the Punchinello Manor known as "Nicole Horne" the CEO founder of Aesir Corporation and the leader of the Valhalla project. Woden makes a deal with Max that if he takes Horne out, the charges against him will be dropped. Suddenly Horne's men storm in and kill the members of The Inner Circle. Max escapes through a window and fights his way towards the security office where on a video monitor, he sees Alfred Woden stand up after supposidly being dead. Max heads to Woden's office and finds a video tape on the desk. The tape came from Nicole Horne showing Candy Dawn with Woden. Max takes it for blackmail against Woden if the deal was back-fired. After a big gun battle in the building's lobby, Max escapes.While driving around the city, Max builds up his rage and gets ready for what he has to do. He finally drives to Aesir Corporation Towers and begins the last part of his mission. Max runs into Mona in an elevator guns pointed at each other. Horne comes over the loudspeaker and instructs Mona to kill Max. She refuses and decides to team up with Max when suddenly, Horne's men show up and kill Mona. Max retailiates and kills them all. After Max call for the elevator and it comes down, Mona's body has vanished with only blood laying on the floor. Max takes the elevator up to the penthouse where Horne's hiding. While in the elevator, Max loads his weapons and takes the time to think about his wife and daughter before making the kill. The elevator doors open on the floor and Horne is looking out the window with a gun in her hands waiting for Max. She orders another group of men to take him out while she makes a run for it. Max takes them out and then a helicopter shows up and sweeps the floor, missing Max. Max makes his way up towards the top floors of the building until he finds Horne at the top of the stairs of the roof. She throws a grenade at him to stop him from coming after her. Max reaches the roof and sees Horne getting into the helicopter behind a locked gate. With less than a minute before take-off, Max must think of a way to kill her before she escapes, Max sees that the large antenna of the building has snapped two cables because of the harsh stormy winds. With the other two cables holding it up, Max shoots out the cables with a sniper rifle. The Antenna becomes loose and Max shoots it down with a grenade launcher. The Antenna snaps off the roof and comes crashing down on the helicopter. The platform the helicopter was resting on falls apart and Horne and the helicopter come falling down forty-five stories to the ground below. Max stands at the edge looking down at the wreckage with a grin look on his face as SWAT members surround him.A police helicopter circles the roof and is instructed to drop his weapons and surrender. Max is taken into custody and before being pushed into a police car, he sees Alfred Woden standing in the crowd of on-lookers with a smug grin on his face as Max is pushed into the car. Max grins in the same manor. | revenge, suspenseful, neo noir, murder, violence | train | imdb | Max Payne is like a tribute to such Hollywood action icons, such as The Matrix (1999) and director John Woo. This is one of the best video games I have played in a long time.
Never in a video game have I seen such good graphics, great dialogue, and intense action.At best, a game like Max Payne runs like a television marathon series.
The game is separated into three chapters with at least seven parts each, including the amazing graphic novels.The game has a promising premise: DEA agent Max Payne is framed for the murder of his partner, Alex Balder, during a robbery in a New York subway station.
For Payne, it's going to be a long night in New York, during the city's snowstorm blizzard of the century.Max Payne is a dark video game, and the title hero is also the narrator of the story, and while Payne doesn't seem confident in his storytelling, at times, he provides humor during the narration.
may be responsible for his family's death.Payne must also battle a trail of mobsters, security agents, and black ops operatives, who all want him dead.What makes Max Payne a great video game is the graphics, which uses New York locations we've probably never seen before, such as a run-down night club called Ragna Rock, and an old seaport.There is even a great chase sequence where Payne chases a mobster from buildings to a construction site, and to the rooftops of New York apartment buildings (Not in that order).Payne is also given a cache of weapons, such as handguns, grenade launchers, and machine guns.
There is even a feature known as bullet time (reminiscent of the action styles seen in the John Woo movies), in which Max is able to slow down time and get a better advantage over his enemies.
And if you're a hardcore John Woo fan, you'll notice that Payne is also able to do that familiar double handgun leap in the air.And while Max Payne is such a good game, it does have its minimal flaws, which is its lack of character variety; the mobsters (who resemble Joe Pesci wise-guys), and agents all look essentially the same.
The style by which the story is told graphic comic strip narrated by the hard-boiled Payne is also perfect and adds much to the game's style an atmosphere.The much-hyped slow motion aspect of the game is simply the icing on the cake.
This helps retain the gritty realism the makers were striving for."Max Payne" is derivate of a lot of works and is quite clichéd, but it is executed with style, atmosphere and an immense level of game-making professionalism that makes it an experience unlike any other.
With a great plot to follow, shown with comic graphic novels, realistic gritty surroundings, bullet time-a slow-mo matrix kind of effect- and weapons, revenge and more, MAX PAYNE delivers to the hard core gamers out there.
If you like games such as Grand Theft Auto 3, you'll love Max Payne .
MP is a super-cool actiontitle that uses the so-called bullet-time effect to create extremely stylish shoot-outs where the main character Max Payne constantly dives into bloody gun-fights.
From the involving story, the terrific direction, and awesome action and game-play this one has it all.Max Payne is a cop infiltrating a drug ring and just about everything goes wrong.
The graphics and story just place you in the moment and you push through the gauntlet of pain and bad guys with sympathies for the character.There are a few limitations, this is a game after all, like the bad guys have basically one tactic, and some of the action scenes are way over the top, but hey...
The year is 2001 the world trade centers are attacked and diney releases some crappy movies but what caught the eye of every video gamer was a small company called Remedy interactive that had just released Max Payne.
With its sharp graphics Noir storyline and Graphic novel comic to advance the story, and it is the very first game to implement bullet time.
And before you say "heh they stole that from the matrix" The Matrix was released in 1999 Max payne was in development since 1996.{for a side note John Woo is the man who invented bullet time} Now for the story: Max Payne the average Nypd cop is having the time of his life hes young Married has a beautiful baby girl and has a well paying and fairly easy job.
There is also many great one liners in hear examples: "Vinnie Gotti the man I've bin killing to see" "I put a few more bullets in his head to make sure he stayed that way" The body count in the game though is ridiculously high not that it makes it worse {it makes it better} but i estimate that you kill over 500 people in this.
So in closing if you like Third Person Shooters,Noir Films,Violence,Bullet time and one hell of a story check out Max Payne you wont regret it.
I'd suggest him to give up acting and start a new career in the PC games industry :)I just can't wait for Max Payne 2!.
It has great gameplay, long replay value, nice graphics, and everything else a gamer who likes a shooting game or even if you have played a shooting game in your life you will love this game.
While the plot of the game feels good enough for any film-noir it is the unique atmosphere that separates it from the rest.While most people will probably remember the game for the revolutionary bullet-time that allows the protagonist to move in glorious slow motion, there is I must say a whole lot more to the game.Take for instance the movie references; The code for a passageway is "John Woo" while at a certain point Max dryly comments before attempting to take out some terrorists: "I played Chow Yun Fat..." Max Payne also has an awareness of itself in the game, whereby he accounts that "I feel like being in a computer game..."All in all I must say that Max Payne is the greatest film-noir game and you surely must try it to experience it!.
Basically, the graphics are fantastic; I've never seen better in a PC game.But that's not all that makes Max Payne so remarkable.
The story is really intriguing, and I think calling it cliched is missing the point; it's supposed to have that film noir, crime novel feeling, and it pulls it off creatively through the graphic novel scenes that pop up throughout the game.
Max Payne uses the better aspects of movies (ie plot twists, character depth) to set it apart from the thousands of other "shoot 'em up" games out there.
With tons of intertextuality, humor and great voice-acting (unlike Hitman for example) it developed into a story unlike I had never experienced neither in a computer game, a movie or a TV-series before...Way to go Remedy!
This game puts you in the shoes of Max Payne, a New York undercover cop who lost his wife and kids to some gangsters high on a new drug called "V", so he decides to go undercover.
If some still thinks that computer games are just for fun that means full of nothing,here stands one of the best piece of art of this generation.I am not afraid including 'MAX PAYNE' into art because if cinema is an art, this is standing above most of it.
'MAX PAYNE' uses the film-noir genre.Even in the scenes of action,you can feel the sadness of the hero.The music is so strong and the 'bullet-time' technical makes the action scenes more than just firing guns,shooting bullets.With the screenplay,this technical holds this piece of work into the level of cinema.
Speaking of screenplay,it's very suitable for this kind of games.It can be short but the details like playing Payne's nightmare make it easier to build a connection between you and the hero.The time is short but it leaves a taste in your mouth that will make you wait till the second one.Also it's not hard to play comparing with the most of these kind of games.The enemies are not so tough but most of the time you're dealing with 2 or 3 of them and the places you play make it harder for you.Besides there are a lot of surprises so after every man you kill you have to save the game.And the controls are easy to play and make sudden moves.
The screenplay is also so successful about creating a strong character.'MAX PAYNE' is a anti-hero film-noir classic.He is a cop who lost his family in the hands of killers and after a couple of years in a investigation he finds some evidences going back to the death of his family.So we find ourselves in the middle of a conspiracy.Also until the end of the game we learn some points of his past and will reflect into his future;second game.In addition in some points it builds a connection with the player that a movie can do hardly.And also there are plenty of dialogs and speeches you can't forget.
Writing about this one,I really feel like I'm writing about a film.It feels like they planned and put it into the game world as thinking like they're shooting a movie.With its second part it becomes more complicated and seems like it will be a series whose parts will be connected to each other.And I think we should see 'MAX PAYNE' in the big screen but in the hands of masters.It will be a huge classic.What am I saying?
This game has great graphics and a plot line like the best Hollywood actionmovie you've ever seen.
And ever since Matrix I have screamed after a game that uses "bullet time" - and Max Payne does!
Max Payne is a framed cop after finding the people who had one night killed his loved ones, nows he's out for revenge...
Max Payne the action/crime video game is by far the best game i have played ever!I picked up this game after I played the demo and soon after that I went out and bought it!The best part about this game is that you can put it in slow motion and do some wicked tricks.The game follows a great plot line as well,Max Payne is about a man whose wife and baby have been killed by some men on a drug named "Valkyr" and now filled with rage Max Payne must now try to find the people who was behind it all.With stunning graphics and wicked gameplay Max Payne is a great game.
Rated M for Violence,Blood,Language and Some Sexual Content.I thought that 2001 was a great year for video games we had Grand Theft Auto 3(I have not played it but I did play Vice City and San Andreas and both were excellent).There was Halo one of the best first person shooter games in recent years and then we have Max Payne.An excellent video game with great graphics,awesome gameplay and a good story.Max Payne is a gritty crime story about a cop who seeks revenge against the thugs who murdered his wife and child while also being framed for the murder of his friend.He must find and get revenge on the people who killed his family and clear his name.Max Payne introduces something new in a video game.That is Bullettime.Most of us saw the movie The Matrix which invented bullettime.Bullettime is basically a slow motion gun battle.In Max Payne you can kill people in slow motion.Max Payne is a very fun and good game with great graphics and gameplay and a good story to back the game up.Max Payne 2 The Fall Of Max Payne in my opinion is just as good as this one.10/10.
Compared to Max Payne 3, this game is quite better.
Of course, Max Payne 3 has multi-player, better graphics and all new story, but this Max Payne has a very good story, very nice game-play for those years, and more!
"Max Payne" can be described as an interactive cinematic action noir graphic novel.
Max Payne's formula is so downright perfect, that no game to this day has nailed the "bullet-time" style game-play on the same level (except its sequel); "Enter the Matrix" was shallow at best, and the recent "Stranglehold" is absent of any thought level design choices, making it the shooter equivalent of a "hack and slash".Games don't get any better than "Max Payne", its smart narrative, audacious aesthetic and its perfect game-play all come together in one solid game.
if any of the person who have not yet played this game try to play at least once in your life and this game will sure fulfill you and you will feel like "keanu reeves" of matrix or you will feel yourself like the one of the best action film maker john woo.
This game has a good story, which draws you in, and make you feel more for the evergoing journey of Max Payne.
And on top of this, we have a splendid gameplay, graphics (for its time), and story that can involve anyone to the Max ;).Max Payne was a groundbreaking game.
Max Payne is to this day one of the best video games I have ever played, I always see myself coming back to it from time to time, I never get tired of it.
A lot of people know Max Payne as the game that perfected bullet time in games but the game achieved much more than that, this game has some of the best storytelling I have ever seen in the medium, Sam Lake did a brilliant job writing the story of this game.
The gameplay is also extremely addictive, not just because of the bullet time mechanic, but also because of the shooting mechanics, they're a lot of fun, I also love the cinematics, they're done with comic book panels, making the game feel like a hybrid between a video game and a graphic novel, I also just love the neo-noir tone and style of the game, all this elements made Max Payne a game easy to identify and it has become one of the best examples of how games can tell truly amazing stories, sometimes even better than movies.
The game-play, style, story, voice acting, all out of this world and is up there with the likes of Metal Gear Solid and The Last Of UsMax Payne, a fugitive cop on the run who has been framed for the murder of his partner and is trying to track down the people responsible for the death of his family and has to take on the worst of the criminal underworld of New York in order to do it.
It's tragic, it's a compelling mystery story, a great psychological thriller about a man who may or not be insane in the case of Max as well as being a great revenge action game Gameplay is also very exciting, shooting people in slow motion never gets old, you'd think it would've but the game find ways to keep things fresh with the brilliant level design.
If you love Film Noir, if you love John Woo movies, if you like comics then you owe it to yourself to play this gameIf you're gonna play this game, PC version all the way.
That's the only gripe I have with this game; other than that, Max Payne is one of the best action games I've ever had the pleasure of playing for the first time in years.
If you want a game that blends Hong Kong action with a gritty storyline with excellent graphics, then Max Payne is the game to get..
Rockstar really knew what they were doing when they made this awesome action shooter game.The premise of the game follows max payne as he sets out to find answers to the drug Valkaer V and kill anyone in his way, By that I mean you get to kill a lot of people in this game which is more than 600!
This is one of my favorite games, non-stop action and bloody shootouts.....like a John Woo movie !The first time i played Max Payne, it was on PS2, i borrowed the game from a friend, but a few months later, i bought a low-budget version on for PC, i can't say the differences between the PS2 version and PC, i played the PS2 version like 5 years ago.Max Payne had something new in action games, you can use the "bullet time", basically you go "slow motion" and you can dodge bullets, after Max Payne was released, many other game studios tried to capitalize the success of Max Payne by creating other games with this feature."Cutscenes" are replaced with "graphic novel" sequences, that's cool and stylish.
The voice acting is great, nothing much to say about it.Even if the game is full of action, there is a lot of plot development, with many characters to discover.If you get "tired" of this game, you can download tons of mods, total conversions and new levels (at least with the PC version).It's a must play, highly recommended !.
The fact about Max Payne is that it is original than most games and offers a unique gameplay and the guns almost feel different and yet so perfect.
Good film-noir action game, but way too hard and too repetitive game-play.
The game has you controlling Max Payne, an ex-cop with good cause to seek revenge.
I've played quite a few video games in my lifetime, but none have grabbed me half as much as the Max Payne games.
This game has to offer a good story like in Alan Wake and also a much better game play than Alan Wake could have ever offered.The Story: Max Payne's family gets murdered by druggies, Three years later he is transferred to the DEA and gets framed for murder for one of his friends named Alex Balder. |
tt0310775 | Boksuneun naui geot | Ryu is a deaf-mute man working in a factory. His ailing sister is in desperate need of a kidney transplant, but Ryu's is not a match. After he is laid off from his job, Ryu takes his severance money and contacts a black market organ dealer to exchange one of his kidneys for one that his sister can use. The dealers disappear after taking Ryu's kidney and money. Three weeks later, Ryu learns from his doctor that a donor has been found, but he is unable to afford the operation.
To raise money for the operation, Yeong-mi, Ryu's radical anarchist girlfriend, suggests kidnapping the daughter of an executive that fired Ryu. They kidnap Yu-sun, the young daughter of Dong-jin. The girl stays with Ryu's sister, who believes Ryu is merely babysitting her. Ryu and Yeong-mi successfully collect the ransom from Dong-jin. However, Ryu's sister discovers the plan and commits suicide to stop being a burden to him.
Ryu takes Yu-sun and his sister's body to a suburban riverbed they used to frequent as children, and begins to bury her. Distracted by the burial and unable to hear, Ryu is unaware when Yu-sun slips into the river, and she drowns.
As Dong-jin mourns his daughter, he hires an investigator to find her kidnappers. Dong-jin finds Yeong-mi and tortures her. She apologizes for Yu-sun's death, but warns Dong-jin that her friends (a terrorist group) will kill him if she dies. Unfazed by the threats, Dong-jin electrocutes her. Meanwhile, Ryu locates and murders the organ dealers. He returns to Yeong-mi's apartment and sees the police removing her corpse.
Ryu and Dong-jin wait at each other's residence in an attempt to kill the other. Ryu, the first to return home, is knocked unconscious by a booby trap created by Dong-jin. He then takes Ryu to the riverbed where his daughter died, slashes his Achilles tendons and waits for Ryu to bleed to death.
After dismembering Ryu's corpse, Dong-jin begins digging a hole, when a group of men arrive. After surrounding and stabbing Dong-jin, one man pins a note to his chest with a knife. The note reveals them to be Yeong-mi's friends. The group leave Dong-jin dying next to the bloody tools and bags containing Ryu's body parts. | comedy, dark, neo noir, murder, psychological, violence, absurd, revenge | train | wikipedia | You'll wince a great deal during this movie, that's for damn sure.Park Chan-wook directs with such beautifully composed images that are far from the the garish MTV-style action/thriller movies produced in Hollywood these days.
I know absolutely NOTHING about Chan-wook Park, but after watching 'Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance' I would put him straight at the top of my most promising new directors list.
When one acts out of vengeance one seeks only to hurt, and when people start hurting each other because they're hurt themselves, everybody ends up hurting and nobody really gains anything.I think that's the main message Park Chan-Wook wants us to take away from SYMPATHY FOR MR.
I can't think of any other film that's quite like it, though at times I likened the experience to that of watching certain Takashi Miike movies.
Actually, Kim Ki-Duk's movies are probably the closest point of reference, though Park Chan-Wook's film is smarter.SYMPATHY FOR MR.
I loved everything about it, the acting, the story, again I had no Idea where it was going, I say again because I have mentioned this point in previous reviews, Asian films kick ass because they don't pander to focus groups or near sighted Hollywood suits, they take you places you either have no Idea where your going or take you places where you may feel the need to turn back but can't.The relationships in this film are so pure, so real and beautiful, especially between the little girl and her captures.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is, simply put, the best film I have seen all year.Chan-wook Park's mastery of cinematic language is stunning.
Hence, Chan Wook-Park being able to bring truly personal movies, that he has control over 100% to out big screens, with out any producer BS, proving that film makers CAN make what they want, if they have the courage and heart!This movie will never be liked by many, as many may find it deceiving, how such a pretty looking movie can turn out to be so brutal and attack there moral sense, but hey, if they don't want to be challenged they can stay home and watch the far more violent "Bad Boys 2"...Roll one Sympathy for Mrs. Vengance...
Possibly to aid the ever growing genre of dramatically pragmatic films, bravely dealing with real life stories in a bold and sometimes unseen fashion.What made Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance all that much visceral was the fact that there was no pleasant music to tranquilize the painful story and beautify the scenery, nor was there any stylish before-and-after fight facial expressions and catchy lines to make the whole experience seem out of this world and cool.
Both the action and reaction of each character seemed to be traveling at such fast speed that rarely gave you time to over-analyze their motives and directions, which ultimately helped the story to signify the depth and restlessness of each person on a mission to get their revenge.Audiences are always mercilessly expressing their distraught over revenge flicks for one reason or another, so if you still have any room and temptation left to see a serious and sophisticated side of revenge then I can't recommend a better film, by a better director, to take you on the hybrid journey of pain, retribution and more pain..
This moral ambiguity prevents us from any simplistic moralising, and as we watch good people doing bad things we really have to question the meaning behind the title 'Sympathy For Mr Vengeance'.
After seeing the movie such questions were prominent in my mind, and I think that a film that sticks with you like this cannot be regarded as an average attempt.There was an amount of violence in the film, but I did not find it as shocking as I had expected, and I have seen far worse.
Instead the violence built on the already prominent themes, making me wince at times but also aiding me in coming to terms with what the film was trying to say.Overall this movie is a great study of revenge and its effects on the soul.
However, a tragedy happens, generating revenge and a series of acts of violence."Boksuneun Naui Geot" is the first movie of the Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy and also excellent.
I also enjoyed Chan-Wook Park's OLDBOY - but SYMPATHY is definitely the better film.
Coming to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance after watching Park Chan-Wook's later, better known films like OLDBOY, I'm once again blown away by his sheer ability as a director.
The movie is touching and extreme in every meaning of the expression.I really liked the second part named "Oldboy" of the trilogy that begins with this movie and ends ultimately with "Lady Vengeance" though all the three movies can be seen as single films as they show us three different casts and story lines that are only bound by the vengeance topic but I must admit that I prefer this first part to the shocking, calm and intriguing "Oldboy" because this movie has maybe a little bit less atmosphere but is really surprising the whole time long and something completely new for an entire genre by connecting the drama and thriller universe truly together for the very first time.
It's a bit surprising for me that not only the same filmmaker behind the intense and impactive thriller Oldboy made Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (claimed to be the first in the director's loose vengeance trilogy, with 'Lady Vengeance' ending it), but that this was the film made right before it.
In a way I'm reminded of something Tarantino once said in an interview, talking about how a member of an audience for the most part while watching a film has a kind of umbilical chord to what's going on with the story and the characters.
But even in a film like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeage, where director Chan-Wook Park has a cinematographer like Byeong-il Kim making such amazing images, if the story and characters disconnect at some point, it becomes a bore.
Which is a shame considering its not like this throughout the whole film; the first half hour had a set-up that wasn't too confusing, with an entertaining bit or two, but...then there's a point where the main story takes its turn, and it never recovers.
I confess I found so many things I like in Chan-wook Park's directive style after watching Oldboy 6 months ago, a later film than Mr. Vengeance.
As part of his Vengeance trilogy, of course it has a lot of tie-ins with Oldboy (and I'm assuming Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, which I haven't seen yet), but as it's own work I love it's overall unredeeming outlook on vengeance.Vigilantism is one of those little things I'm personally interested in, and this movie works as something like a family blood feud without the family.
Dong-jin sets out to hunt them down and take revenge, while Ryu plans the same on those he blames for his sister's suicide.I didn't know really what to expect from this film but I had heard some good things about it and had been one of many UK cinema goers who had enjoyed the majority of Korean hits that Tartan Cinema had brought to the UK over the course of 2003.
Despite me being at fault for that at other times, here I found it hard to take much from this film and it really made it hard work to watch, far less enjoy!The lack of characters was a big problem as I know it would have been better if I could have cared.
The `horror' that everyone talks about is not really there - it has the odd moment of gore but a) it isn't actually that gory and b) without the emotional involvement with the characters, I was never going to be totally affected by what happen to them.Overall, I watched this film with a blank sheet and have to report that I didn't take a great deal from it.
I have not watched one Korean film that has disappointed me, and director Chan-wook Park gives us one here that is fantastic.
In a different light, his girlfriend gets tortured and killed, but gets revenge also as part of a great ending where another gets his revenge and then his punishment.A lot of revenge here in a movie that may be hard for some to watch, but Asian films tend to go places where others do not dare, and we get a realistic slice of life that is glossed over with Hollywood's current preoccupation with flatulence jokes and juvenile humor.You might guess that I will be looking for more of Chan-wook Park's work..
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Park Chan Wook's first movie in his Vengeance trilogy, is a brutal tale of love, death and revenge.
Unlike Anything You Will Ever See. As a huge fan of Chan-wook Park's most widely acclaimed film Oldboy, I can tell you that nothing, NOTHING can prepare you for Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
As dark, powerful, and mesmerizing as Oldboy is, this film is on such a different level of tragedy and pure human drama that is absolutely unshakable.I cannot reveal the plot, because watching the story unfold is something unbelievable.
Telling the story of a deaf mute searching for a kidney for his dying sister, 'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance' is an entirely new experience in the revenge department.
This is something I have never seen before but it works really well as you soon start sympathising with all the characters involved.It's a film that doesn't want to glamorise revenge or violence and believe me, it doesn't.
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, although completely different, and a good film in it's own right, is often left in the shadow of it's more successful counterparts.It's not a perfect film, at times it feels like a four hour film has been edited in half and your watching it in parts, the poor subtitles don't help, and certainly doesn't do the script any justice.But what this film does hold is everything we have come to expect from these sort of films, an unknown direction, confusion, clever plot twists, and random comedy thrown in.
As you would expect from Chan-wook Park this is a strange film.The film starts of with quite a bit of humour, some of it very dark, and with odd slapstick as we see the protagonist as not being exactly bright.Unlike his later film which kept the humour even as the plot progressed and became darker in this one the humour vanishes once things start to go wrong.The acting is excellent, Ha-kyun Shin and Kang-ho Song are superb particularly as things become more and more emotionally charged.The violence is well timed and with one exception not very gruesome.The plot does jump at times, skipping events and showing you the outcome, and that leaves you a bit disconcerted until you realise what must have happened, I found that a little annoying as it does leave you playing catch-up a couple of times.The film gives you no clear villain or hero, you can fell sympathy for everyone involved and understand their motives.The pace is good, and there are several twists and surprises towards the end.It's better than Lady Vengeance but not as good as Oldboy or Thirst..
Within the basic story there's exposition of some big subjects: the impossibility of true justice, the fact that what human rights you have mostly depend on where you happen to be born, and the sad truth that many of us value money more than human life.As I said I like that Chan-wook applies a twisted touch to the story, but I also think that he goes a little overboard with these elements.
I think the film would've felt more cohesive & convincing if the slightly twisted & the more somber parts had been more evenly dispersed throughout the story.But all in all, Chan-wook Park still manage to tell an original & difficult story in a way that is much more impressive than depressive.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance tries hard to be the be-all-end-all vengeance film by taking the plot to a point where every character wants to kill someone.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance never once stoops to clichés like those, but makes you care for characters by their actual, you know, character.All I can say about my final opinion is it was a great movie, but it played it way too safe.
Shot cleverly and with intent to brutally hammer home his point, Park Chan Wook tells the tale of an ever increasing series of revenge that like all good tragedies makes its point.Baffling is the attitude of those that criticise one of the bravest films of the modern age.
Sympathy is not a gore-fest, I recall two, three scenes at most which could be described as squeamish, yet this begs the question, 'and your problem is?' As with all things in cinema justification is paramount, and Park Chan Wook is an intelligent director who does not deal in spoon-feeding audiences reasoning, he provides the viewer with enough information to formulate ones own conclusions.
Park Chan Wook is a craftsman and the little moments where Ryu is not wearing any protective ear wear in the factory, or the moments where the screen cuts to a translation of what was saying in the style of a 1920s silent movie are hard hitting and emotive.
Perhaps I'd put it a shade behind "Lady Vengeance" in terms of quality, but head and shoulders above "Oldboy." I continue to look forward to seeing Park's development as a film director over the coming years..
Some skillful scenes of murder action emerges without shying away of showing the violence within the human condition, yet avoiding the trap of glorifying the torturing acts, where Director Chan-wook Park shows taste and respect for the audiovisual art form of motion pictures, which already peaked with his international breakthrough picture "Oldboy" (2003) the year after.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC).
I'm afraid that very few of my hip and flowery fellow reviewers would fall in line and agree with my assessment of 'Sympathy For Mr Vengeance', but I just don't feel right about this film...Yeah, Park is so courageous to bring such brutal frankness in such beautiful and inspirational film work, with such talented directorial technique, that he just must be a genius.But this is my review and assessment, and if my art-house loving colleagues don't agree, then I certainly support their right to disagree with me along with their right to view this kind of work the way they want.This is a film about average-Joe working-class Korean citizens running around carving each other up and spilling enough blood to make 'Goodfellas' look like a nursery rhyme.
The first chapter of the Vengeance trilogy is a very stylistically filmed and layered movie with themes of revenge, loss, betrayal & guilt very nicely captured on camera by director Chan Wook Park.
The performance and the way of filming put us within the scene.The sequence of events brings a revenge full of violence, blood and pain.And it happens to ordinary people, different from other films about revenge.Almost every one loses in this movie, except those who attended..
46 years-old South Korean director Chan-wook Park decided, back in 2002, to film three separated pictures that shared the same themes: violence, salvation, and mainly, revenge.
But the first movie of Park's trilogy, 'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance' comes real close to be as good as 'Oldboy', but being much better than 'Sympathy for lady Vengeance'.'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance' follows the story of Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin).
An overall great cast, that works nice as an ensemble.If you've watched 'Oldboy' or any other Chan-wook Park flick, and then stumble across this movie, you're definitely gonna realize that 'Oldboy' and 'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance' are from the same director.
The movie has all elements that a Chan-wook park movie needs and served sort like of a preparation for 'Oldboy', widely regarded as to be the best of the trilogy.
Chan-wook Park delivers another stunning piece of cinematography.Sympathy for Mr Vengeance follows the story of Park-Dong jin, played brilliantly by Kang-Ho Song, whose daughter is kidnapped with terrible consequences.Once again, following in the trait of Mr Park's style, this film has twists and turns galore, a fair old helping of violence, stunning acting from everyone and a simply amazing story-line.You will be immersed, hooked, shocked, saddened and completely blown away.And the result will leave you breathless and in admiration of the genius that is Chan-wook Park..
Of course, right after watching the trailers accompanying the DVD, I became interested in the first part of Park Chan-wook's "revenge trilogy", that being Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
Chan-wook's dwindling shots work in this instance, but on the whole, really only make for the film to be and feel longer than it has to be.Shin is excellent as the tormented and naive Ryu. He nails this character down perfectly, and is excellent in every scene he shows up in.
Chan-Wook Park's sensational 'vengeance' trilogy has been a refreshing piece of viewing, Oldboy was a film I had to grab my friends and say "watch this it's amazing".
Chan-wook Park is one of my favorite Korean directors and this is my second favorite in his vengeance trilogy.
The first installment of director Chan-Wook Park's eventual "Vengeance Trilogy", Boksuneun naui Geot brought attention to his work, allowing for the greater audiences both national and international who came to see its successors.Deaf and dumb, Ryu has given up his education to earn money for a kidney transplant desperately needed by his sister, his own blood type not a match.
After watching Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, JSA, Thirst and Oldboy numerous times I was a little skeptical about this movie.
In the end, does everyone get their revenge?Chan-wook would have you believe so, but he's more interested in generating sympathy for each character, as everyone is a victim in their own way, even the criminals (hence the title Sympathy For Mr.Vengeance). |
tt0413267 | Shrek the Third | Harold has fallen ill and his ogre son-in-law Shrek and daughter Fiona are next in line to be king and queen. Shrek declines, insisting that an ogre as king is a bad idea and that there has to be someone else for the job. With his final few breaths, the king tells Shrek that there is one other heir who can become the new King of Far Far Away: his nephew, Arthur. Shrek sets out to find this new king, along with Donkey and Puss in Boots. As they're sailing off, Fiona runs to the dock and announces to Shrek that he's going to be a father. Shocked, Shrek begins to have nightmares about his future children on the journey to Worcestershire Academy, where they eventually discover that "Artie," who is an academy student, is a loser picked on by the other students - even the nerds. Artie is initially thrilled to be the new king, and excited to be on his way to the throne, until Donkey and Puss inadvertently scare him by talking about things like plague and famine. Panicked, Artie tries to take control of the ship and ends up crashing it on an island where they meet Artie's retired wizard teacher, Merlin.Meanwhile, Prince Charming has gone to the Poison Apple Bar, where he encounters a slew of fairy tale villains including Captain Hook, the Wicked Queen, Polyphemus, Rumpelstiltskin, Little Red Riding Hood, Mabel the Ugly Stepsister, the Headless Horseman, Stromboli the Puppet Master, and an assortment of black knights, dwarves, trees, and witches. Although they initially despise Charming, he persuades them to join him in a fight for their "happily ever after". The villains feel their side of the story has never been told and now is the time to do it. Charming and the other villains invade the kingdom and pillage for a time before attacking the castle, disrupting Fiona's baby shower. They capture all of Shrek's fairy tale friends (Gingerbread Man, Pinocchio, The Big Bad Wolf (a cross between the Three little pigs and Little Red Riding Hood's wolf), The Three Blind Mice and The Three Little Pigs, Dragon, and Donkey and Dragon's children. Fiona and Lilian try to escape through an underground passage, along with Doris the Ugly Stepsister, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel; the ladies are captured, however, when Rapunzel betrays them and leads them into a trap. They learn that she is in love with Charming, who plans to make her his queen once he claims the throne.Captain Hook and some of his pirates track Shrek and company to Merlin's island, where they attempt to capture Shrek and kill the others. Shrek and Artie tag-team them effectively, however, and send the villains running, but not before Hook mentions "King Charming" and the takeover of Far Far Away. Concerned for his wife and their child, Shrek urges Artie to return to the safety of Worcestershire; Artie, however, has other ideas. He cons Merlin into coming out of retirement long enough to use his magic and send them all back to Far Far Away; the spell works, but accidentally causes Puss and Donkey to switch bodies because they were touching each other. They find that Charming is bent on revenge against Shrek for 'stealing' his "happily ever after," and plans to kill Shrek in a play later that night. Charming's men arrive shortly, but another clever ruse by Artie tricks the knights into not taking them into custody. They then break into the castle, where play rehearsal and set design are in full swing, but Charming is not good at rehearsing. In Charming's dressing room, Shrek menaces Charming but Charming is able to summon his men, who burst in and take the four captive.Charming prepares to decapitate Artie. In an effort to save him, Shrek tells Charming that Artie was just a patsy to take his place as King of Far Far Away. Charming believes Shrek and decides not to kill the boy. Artie, who had just been growing to trust Shrek, is crushed by this and runs away. Donkey and Puss are thrown into the tower with Fiona and the other ladies, where Fiona is growing frustrated with the other princesses and their lack of initiative. Queen Lilian grows fed up when Snow White calls her an old lady, and successfully smashes the stone wall of the prison by head butting the walls. While the women launch a rescue mission for Shrek, who is being held captive elsewhere, Donkey and Puss work to free Gingy, Pinocchio, the wolf and pigs, Dragon, and the Dronkey. As they prepare to enter the castle and join the ladies, they encounter Artie, and Puss and Donkey explain to him that Shrek lied so Charming wouldn't kill him. Artie seems hesitant to believe them.As the kingdom watches, Charming stages a theatrical performance in which he heroically rides to the rescue of Rapunzel in her (fake) tower and sings, somewhat badly. To Charming's profound annoyance, the chained Shrek wins the audience's support by ridiculing his singing and acting. Just as Charming is about to kill Shrek, Fiona and her friends, along with Puss, Donkey and the Fairy Tale characters, leap onto the stage to confront the villains. It goes awry, however, as the villains largely outnumber the heroes and take them prisoner again. In the nick of time, Artie arrives and convinces the villains to stop and turn over a new leaf, proving himself to possess effective leadership skills. He says a word of wisdom-"Just because somepeople treat you like a loser, it dosen't mean you are one. The thing that matters most is what you think of yourself. If there is something you really want or someone you really want to be then you are standing in your own way." The villains drop their weapons and release their captives. Charming, furious at having been thwarted by this boy, lunges for him with his sword. Shrek blocks the blow and appears to take it in his own chest, leading Charming to exult; the attack missed, however, and the sword is lodged harmlessly under Shrek's arm. Shrek informs Charming that he needs to keep looking for his own happily ever after, "because I'm not giving up mine." Dragon slyly knocks over Rapunzel's tower, which lands on Charming, and the crowd cheers. Charming's crown is sent rolling across the stage by the impact and is caught by Artie. Shrek tells him that the throne is his if he wants it, but it is his decision to make. Artie lifts the crown toward the audience, who cheer him loudly, then sets it on his own head. While the kingdom celebrates their new monarch, Merlin appears and restores Puss and Donkey to their proper bodies, though their tails remain switched.As Far Far Away is left in the capable hands of young King Arthur, Shrek retires with Fiona to their swamp, having three ogre babies. | cult, fantasy, satire, comedy, violence | train | imdb | This installment of Shrek is so unlike the first two in terms of energy and humor that its almost like one of those cheesy made-for-TV or straight-to-video versions that the studios make just to cash in on the popularity of a title.The movie slogs through a story about Shrek and Fiona having to replace the deceased frog king unless they can find another heir.
Overall, this movie was not that bad, but it needed to be much better to be worthy to stand on the same level as the first two Shrek films..
But, the trailer looked great and the stories have worked so far, my mom and I saw the premier show today and while the movie has great laughs, there seemed to be something lacking in the Shrek world.
Shrek, Puss, and Donkey go to find Artie, but there is one more problem going on, Prince Charming wants his kingdom of Far Far Away back like it was promised to him and he will go through anything to get it back.
Yeah, this film is full of energetic characters and some visually dazzling scenes, but it's not as funny, entertaining, or as great as the last two films.If you've seen the trailer, that's probably all the good jokes that they got in the film.
The action scenes were good, not great, but the story just doesn't interest me.And the Shrek and Fiona spark isn't as much there as it were in the previous two films.
It wasn't the best movie that I've seen, but it was still a great movie.I loved how they brought back Antonio Banderaz as Puss In Boots, and I think he was my favourite in this movie, besides the lovable ogre Shrek.
Needless to say, it definitely tickled my funny bone.The story in this movie is very good, like I said it has it's hilarious moments and some tender ones as well.
For some franchises, the pain starts already in the second (Men in Black comes to mind, or Analyze That), when really nothing is added to an original (and initially surprising) premise, and it is merely milked for what it's worth, with usually sad results.I don't think that was the case with Shrek 2, and neither is it with The Third---the writers still find enough interesting and original ideas to weave into the story, they use the old characters to good effect and add interesting new characters to provide some novelty.
The dialog is up to the (high) standards of its two predecessors, and the animation is stunning.All in all, even though it won't set new standards for animated features like the original Shrek might have, Shrek the Third is an entertaining movie that delivers what it promises---a good time with the titular hero and his friends (and family), nothing more, but also nothing less..
Unfortunately, Puss in Boots doesn't have the chance to do nearly as well as he did the second film, but still has the same good personality (possibly a little more Spanish!).The new characters are very well done.
I have gotten all I wanted out of the overall storyline, I'm happy with the way things are for the characters now, and I don't mind that the third journey had to replace the "insert joke every few seconds"-mentality of Shrek 2 with a bit more storytelling.
Let Shrek, Donkey or Puss do the talking, dude.As far as I'm concerned, Shrek 3 was an unnecessary sequel that still worked for me with some good humour and the characters being as charming as ever.
it is a outstanding movie if you like the Shrek movies than you will love this amazing movie it is fantastic it is a movie that you will be talking about for a long time i never saw a movie like this before it is a hoot it is a movie that you don't want to miss it is one of the best movies ever you will laugh out loud when you see this awesome movie i never saw a movie like this before you will like it a lot it is one of the best you and your kids will go crazy over this wonderful movie you will say now that was a great movie go see this masterpiece of a movie today i never saw a movie like this before you will go crazy over Shrek The Third i never thought it was going to yes this good before but it is a outstanding movie you will say now that was funny go see this movie today you won't be sorry after you see this wonderful movie it is a two thumbs up movie i say this is one of the best movies ever made go buy or rent this awesome movie today it is outstanding have a great day.
Meanwhile, the envious and ambitious Prince Charming joins the villains of the fairy tales plotting a coup d'état to become the new king."Shrek the Third" is very funny, having a great message in the end and completely underrated in IMDb. There are many unfair reviews and I really do not understand what these users have seen to dislike in this animation.
If you see this, u'll understand and you will WANT to see the first and second shrek movie.I also liked that they included other fairy tale figures example: snow white, Rapunzel, Cinderella and many more!I'm telling you, this movie is really good and i'll sure you , you will love it so give it a chance!
That, coupled with the horrid reviews submitted by the "professional" critics, I really expected something so convoluted and largely unfunny, as to make this nigh unwatchable.What I got, was a beautiful story, charming characters, top notch animation, chases, escapes, announcements, voyages, captures, deceits, death, birth, King Arthur, the second ugly stepsister (of Cinderella), true love (of course), and a wonderful execution of the story.I was quite surprised, actually, with the high level of comedic and animation quality and large level of entertainment derived from this work.
It literally was the same movie the third time, and instead of infusing it with tons of fun and pop culture references like the second Shrek did, it just relied on its plot and genre convention to further it.
(ex star wars, lotr, matrix?).2)Based on legendary characters and their adventures, these are somewhat more difficult but can always work by changing the plot every time (ex Indiana Jones,die hard,rush hour, ANACONDA, load of B movies like TREMORS).3)comic book and video game sequels (self explanatory).4)Exploitation sequels these are the toughest to handle and are as difficult to understand as the title I've given them.Based on the concept of extracting the maximum from a one off concept the got much bigger than anticipated, the original succeeded on multiple factors (Story, character, plot, concept, big action scene etc) which makes making sequels difficult but still lucrative.
(Ex SHREK, potc, SPEED,ice age, JURRASIC PARK (multitype but the 3rd and maybe 4th fit here).This being an exploitation sequel the movie is quite clear.1)ONly some characters were developed in the original so way to much extra billing has been given to people that were once only side jokes (the loads of fairytale people).2)The plot is razor thin and weak and the very base on which the first one was made (spoof of the fairy tales) is now lost.3)The jokes are getting stale (how many ugly ogre, farting and gingerbread jokes can you have?).4)They had enough content for 1 movie they pulled of a very good second one, that kind of confidence is not good.5)Demographics take the front seat, adults, teens, fans, children, blacks, whites, etc etc everyone has been taken into account.Still this movie has its plus points.1)The main characters are still hilarious and you have lots of funny moments especially from Donkey and Puss in boots who are the stars of the film.2)The fatherhood track is really really funny.3)Chilren really seemed to really enjoy this movie although the demographically pleasing content is clearly unsuitable for children.4)The movie is short and sweet and really funny in pieces, if a dozen teasers were made they would all be funny.IT HAS BEEN BROADLY ACCEPTED THAT I HAVE THE MENTAL AGE OF A 12 YR OLD AND ME NOT FINDING THE SPARK IN A MOVIE MADE FOR MY AGE GROUP IS A PROBLEM.The complete package is ordinary at best except if watched with children which pushes it up-to good or even very good.Watch only if your a fan OR in a very good mood and "SEQUEL PREPARED".Keep low expectations and you may just meet or exceed them.-s typical exploitation sequel, LACKS THE SPARK, many jokes are stale.+/-s puss in boots and donkey given major billing (i like them).+s funny in pieces (though not as good as a whole), SUPERB GRAPHICS, short and sweet, VERY GOOD FOR CHILDREN.total 5/10 ( just fell below expectations (after factoring in sequel), with children and correct company may even reach a 7).PS ANS TO MY QUESTION HOW MANY GINGERBREAD FARTING ETC JOKES CAN YOU HAVE?
It wasn't funny, the storyline was boring and it lacked the humour the original Shrek movies excelled at.
When Fiona, Her mother:Quenn Lillian (Voiced by Julia Andrews), Cinderella (Voiced by Amy Sedaris), Doris (Voiced by Larry King), Sleeping Beauty (Voiced by Cheri Oteri) and Snow White (Voiced by Amy Poehler) are also in danger for their lives.Made by first-time filmmaker:Chris Miller with Co-Director:Raman Hui made an amusing comedy to the second sequel to the hugely popular "Shrek" films with superb computer animation design.
So we all know about Shrek (Mike Myers), Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), talkative Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and swashbuckling Puss N Boots (Antonio Banderas) and all the happy things that will happen to them at the end of the movie.
The late great film critic Gene Siskel quoted, "Is the movie more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" Well, let them have lunch!In "Shrek 2," we also got to know King Harold (John Cleese) and Queen Lillian (Julie Andrews), Fiona's parents.
Then for good measure we get Saturday Night Live and Secondy City comics Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Sedaris as fairy tale heroines who also have nothing else to do but look good and act like Charlie's Angels (starring Cameron Diaz) in the showdown to rescue Shrek and save Far,Far Away from a takeover by the arrogant Prince Charming.
While Fiona, Queen Mom Lillian (Julie Andrews), and the rest of the female court attempt to ward off the ambitious yet juvenile Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), who has recruited the greatest fairy-tale villainy to his cause, the guys' latest "whirlwind adventure" brings them into contact with the proposed heir apparent-- classic high school loser Artie (Justin Timberlake).If you fell in love with the mock product-placement rampant in the second film, or suffer from a short attention span, it's probably best you wait on this one.
The story of Shrek the Third (2007) is not quite as good as the first or second films but the comical lines and visual comedy is still right up there with the first two movies.Some of the new characters are not quite as enduring and memorable in Shrek 3 but they are quite likable and entertaining.The animation in this 3rd installment of the film series is still awesome.All I can really say is I enjoyed this 3rd film.
Shrek The Third is a fantastic movie with a very well developed storyline,a very impressive voice cast and brilliant characters.It is without a doubt my least favourite of all the Shrek movies,the story just isn't as good and more that the jokes miss more often this time around,but its still a great animated movie for the whole family to enjoy,and like the other two there are plenty of jokes for younger and older members of the family to laugh at.If your a fan of the first two Shrek's,you will definitely be disappointed by Shrek the Third,but you will will still laugh and enjoy very much.After the death of Fionas father,Harold,he wants Shrek to take his place as king of Far Far Away,but Shrek wants to return to his old swamp along with a pregnant Fiona,so Shrek,Donkey and Puss In Boots go to go in search of Fionas cousin Arthur (voiced by Justin Timberlake),but a Prince Charming seeking revenge gets in the way..
There aren't as many outright belly-laughs as in the peerless first "Shrek", you feel that Shrek and Fiona are more bit-players in their own movie (I can't believe I'm humanising animated characters!) and occasionally you're made to wait for the next really good joke (Eric Idle's Merlin and Justin Timberlake's Arthur don't exactly leap off the page/screen either), so yes, this outing of the not-so-jolly green giant, may not be as good as its predecessors but that's down to the lack of surprise at revisiting these stock characters and, heck, they were mighty good predecessors!.
But a huge part of humor feels like being stuck in given "Shrek world", unfortunately because this world can be bigger, and it's really underused.Characters could virtually be put into any fairy tale atmosphere, and we could meet some fresh new heroes, but all we get as a plot line is something like tooo abstract war between everyone who's good and everyone who's evil.
The script feels like it was written by copying large portions of other movies and adding a few sad gags and pathetic attempts at slapstick humor.Visually, the film is mostly the best looking of the three, with some very detailed scenes and characters and the occasional (seemingly random) photo-realistic object.
As we last left out heroes, Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) are back to living with royalty in the kingdom of Far Far Away, now with pals Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) and Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and family.Now if that's a handful, wait till the story moves forward with Shrek and the faithful buddies going on a mission to seek out an heir to the throne, Artie/Arthur (Justin Timberlake), who certainly doesn't bring the sexy back to the crown, and you must watch this as once again the filmmakers turn on their creativity and cunningness to develop a character (and other characters) in ways you'd never expect them to behave.
Which is what most audiences would have enjoyed with the previous films, though this time round, there seemed to be a line drawn on the ground not to overdo the references to pop culture, sight gags and rounds of puns.And the villainous Prince Charming is back, with ambitions to be King Charming, and here's where the story fell a bit short, as it adapted from the other animated movie Happily N'ever After, where the bad guys who always seem to have their luck run out, group together and forcefully take over the kingdom.
The story did feel at times to drag along, especially with Shrek playing surrogate father of sorts, and its trying real hard in attempts to weave in some feel good, moral messages, slowing down the pace, and at one point, tried to go back to its zany ways with some inane happenings, as if a sudden jolt of a reminder not to bore with preachy stuff.Perhaps Shrek 3 might have lost some of its charm, but it definitely is miles ahead of the poorly animated Legend of the Sea. It's a no brainer which animated movie to watch this school holidays..
The plot goes something like this: When his new father-in-law, King Harold falls ill, Shrek is looked at as the heir to the land of Far, Far Away.
One character I didn't like was Artie voiced by Justin Timberlake, he is the annoying, bratty, and stupid prince who just gets on your nerves.The animation is excellent as always, and for every two bad jokes, there was one good one a school pep rally tells you to "Just Say Nay".
Even the regular funny guys like Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots has now lost some of their charm.
Most of them are good and funny just like the rest of the characters in this movie.
Each movie has a beautiful message at the end..and this one I think tops them all...Believe in yourself...The movie is really good with some really good laughs..like the scene where Prince Charming asks the "puppet" " Where is Shrek ?
And while the Shrek movies are not the most mordant of modern animated cartoons, the film explores, albeit in comic vein, the question of what makes us act the way we do and does not divide its characters into absolute categories of black-and-white (with the exception of the only true villain, who, entertainingly, is Prince Charming!).
I have been watching the third installments of three major franchises, Spiderman, Pirates, and Shrek, they all sucked!!!The last time we had a good third act was with Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith truly improved Lucas's mediocre Episodes I and II.I'm not counting The Return of the King, because as Peter Jackson said, it's all a very big over 9 hour film divided in three, and besides the literary work was there since the 50's.But it's a real disappointment that all of the above movies turned out so bad, Spiderman and Spiderman 2 were good films, filled with action, drama, comedy, tragedy, and triumph, but 3 was just too much coming and going without getting anywhere.
It is pretty like the previous Shrek movies, with more characters.
These visits were nice but not nearly as exciting since I already knew the outcome of the stories.Shrek the 3rd (2007) is a movie that brings back characters I know and love from the previous two films.
It was still funny, and still had half a tank of movie magic gasoline--not a full tank like the first Shrek possessed, but half--good enough to make a decent and enjoyable film, but not nearly enough to quite match up to the original.And now, sure enough, as every successful movie must have, a second sequel. |
tt0118799 | La vita è bella | In 1939 in the Kingdom of Italy, Guido Orefice is a young Jewish man who arrives to work in the city where his uncle Eliseo operates a restaurant. Guido is comical and sharp and falls in love with a girl named Dora. Later, he sees her again in the city where she is a teacher and set to be engaged to a rich but arrogant man, a local government official with whom Guido has regular run-ins. Guido sets up many "coincidental" incidents to show his interest in Dora. Finally Dora sees Guido's affection and promise and gives in against her better judgement. He steals her from her engagement party on a horse, humiliating her fiancé and mother. They are later married and have a son, Giosuè and own a book store.
When World War II breaks out, Guido, his uncle and Giosuè are seized on Giosuè's birthday. They and many other Jews are forced onto a train and taken to a concentration camp. After confronting a guard about her husband and son and being told there is no mistake, Dora volunteers to get on the train in order to be close to her family. However, as men and women are separated in the camp, Dora and Guido never see each other during the internment. Guido pulls off stunts, such as using the camp's loudspeaker to send messages—symbolic or literal—to Dora to assure her that he and their son are safe. Eliseo is executed in a gas chamber shortly after their arrival. Giosuè barely avoids being gassed himself as he hates to take baths and showers and did not follow the other children when they had been ordered to enter the gas chambers.
In the camp, Guido hides their true situation from his son. Guido explains to Giosuè that the camp is a complicated game in which he must perform the tasks Guido gives him. Each of the tasks will earn them points and whoever gets to one thousand points first will win a tank. He tells him that if he cries, complains that he wants his mother, or says that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn extra points. Giosuè is at times reluctant to go along with the game, but Guido convinces him each time to continue.
Guido maintains this story right until the end when, in the chaos of shutting down the camp as the Allied forces approach, he tells his son to stay in a box until everybody has left, this being the final competition before the tank is his. Guido goes to find Dora, but he is caught by a German soldier. An officer makes the decision to execute Guido, who is led off by the soldier. While he is walking to his death, Guido passes by Giosuè one last time, still in character and playing the game. He winks at Giosuè and Giosuè winks back as Guido is led away to be shot. The next morning, Giosuè emerges from the sweat-box, just as a U.S. Army unit led by a Sherman tank arrives and the camp is liberated. The prisoners travel to safety, accompanied by the Americans. Giosuè soon spots Dora in the procession leaving the camp and are reunited. Later, as a man, Giosuè realizes his father's story of sacrifice for his family. | comedy, whimsical, cute, melodrama, romantic, entertaining, sentimental | train | wikipedia | The movie showed the cruelty of life and yet managed to shed some light and insight into the beauty of love and life in general.I urge anyone who has not seen La Vita è bella to go out there and watch it.
I feel sorry for people who refuse to watch a movie like Life Is Beautiful just because it is a foreign film.
The way he ties together little strand in the film to create comedy elements shows a great writing ability, and a mastery of timing when it comes to their execution on screen.
Various incidents related to the rise of anti-semitism and fascism in Italy show that there are sinister forces at work which come to the fore in the second segment.Guido (Benigni) moves events on from Tuscany in 1939 to the last year of the war in a concentration camp.
Comic moments are still present, that involving Guido's translation of the rules of the camp is particularly notable, but it becomes somewhat more difficult to laugh when we consider the gravity of what is going on.The emphasis begins shifts, and we realise that this is a film about human spirit above all else.
However, this film avoids the tendency of Hollywood to go far over the top in emotional and credibility terms.Benigni shines like a lantern throughout the picture, showing that he is a talent, not only in comedy terms, that far outshines his peers.
I've also seen people review this movie and say that it made light of the Holocaust, which was of course a dark point in history.
'Life is beautiful' as the name goes is about a Jewish man, who falls in love with a non-Jewish lady, marries her, has a kid and who is then taken as a prisoner in a concentration camp along with his wife and kid.
Life Is Beautiful takes the premise that love and hope can survive the most trying of conditions, in this case a Nazi concentration camp.
It concerns upon Guido (Roberto Benigni, a magnificent rubber-faced funny man), a Jewish man who has a wonderful romance with the help of his humour, but must use that same quality to protect his son in a Nazi death camp .
Guido fabricates an elaborated game to convince his child that the whole ordeal is an endurance proof to be won with prizes forthcoming , as it turns out to be a special contest to win a tank.This is a story about love , war and sacrifice , well starred and directed by Roberto Benigni who develops a fire-line between comedy and tragedy .
Furthermore , it won Academy Award to Foreign film and of course to Benigni ; Roberto Benigni's Oscar for best actor marked only the second time that an actor had directed himself in an Academy Award winning performance , the other was Laurence Olivier for Hamlet .
There are a small handful of reviewers who are lambasting this film , crying phrases like "unrealistic and contrived" , "emotionally manipulative" and most risibly "an insult to the memory of the victims of the holocaust".Id like to address such interpretations.In the latter day audiences search for films bereft of cliché, derivativeness and lack of independence there seems to be a counterintuitive rationale that if a film cannot be explicated and stand up to analysis from every myriad aspect of possible critique, then it lacks worth or merit , taken as a piece of work in its own right.It should be suggested that the intent of the film is so clear,the aims of the film so evidently manifest, that to brand the film unrealistic and then carp on with minor details regarding obvious inconsistencies, is to not be able to see the film for what it very plainly proclaims itself to be.This film NEVER tries to be realistic in the modern sense of film critique, this film freely admits to being contrived, this film unashamedly focuses on the characters at the expense of portraying an historically accurate reality.For the whining reviewers to not see this, is either an example of disingenuous folly or plain hard-heartedness.The film is driven by ideals, of romance and of selflessness.This film clearly asks the watcher to suspend belief, to enter into its fantasy, to embrace the human emotion as elucidated through the characters.Not only is this film NOT an insult to anybody who has ever been persecuted (Jew,Chilean,African,Russian,Japanese,Chinese,Cambodian - the list of persecution goes on), rather it heightens empathy for such people in this plight ,through the use of poignancy.Its intent is NEVER to trivialise such.Yes the uniforms aren't dirty enough , yes Guido takes ridiculous risks,yes the likelihood that the German guards knew some Italian are apparent but the question is - given the context of the presentation - do those niggling details matter ?
Surely the film is engaging the viewer on an emotive level,evoking empathy for the individual case,for the desperation that sees a father moved to unthinkable extremes in an attempt to prolong the life of his son.Thus - surely , Guido's actions should not and never were intended to be 'realistic' but rather he is - to our despairing eyes ,simply pathetic ie he is evoking pity.How any discerning fair minded person could honestly and objectively brand this film as disrespectful and hateful because of comedic elements, is missing the point by oceans.This film is about the individual circumstance and thus the slapstick and ingenious way we are drawn into knowing the characters and the way we are immersed in the burgeoning love story of the small boys' parents, necessitates the audience to empathise,to engage,to feel.The by-play between father and son is to look at innocence personified,the bitter sweet forgoing of self in a seemingly doomed essay at escaping the impending inevitable spiral into oblivion.I think Life is Beautiful is an important work that might demand a rethinking of priorities by hard hearted critiques , who may have to shed that veneer of bloody-minded nitpicking and, to wit, see the forest for the trees.Of course the film is flawed,what film attempting such a tight balancing act between comedy and poignancy isn't?
(The movie numbers a grand total of one effective dramatic moment, which is Benigni's artfully handled last scene.)The lowest point in recent Academy Awards history is when Roberto Benigni won best actor for this film (he was up against Nick Nolte, Ian McKellen, Edward Norton and Tom Hanks, all in career-best performances, for god's sake!).If you feel such a strong need to be manipulated that you don't care that the guy doing the manipulating is a shallow egotist, then this movie will suit you just fine..
Admitively, I'm not a big fan of Benigni and I don't consider his kind of humour as even remotely funny, but what makes this exercise such a truly unbearable experience is that good old Roberto chooses the Holocaust of all things as a gloomy backdrop to make himself shine all the more.Its always a big risk if the same person directs, writes and plays the lead and to my knowledge only Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Vincent Gallo and Woddy Allen can get away with it.
What makes it all the more annoying is, that most of the people fall for it, as was evident in the cinema when I watched the film.So in order to make himself look good he writes a script that places himself in the middle of some very mean and nasty Nazis.
For example the weird habit of swapping hats with this other person at any possible occasion will serve its purpose later on in the film :) I liked this intelligent and highly entertaining way of bonding the story together.
Credit must also be given to its shameless sentimentality, bad jokes, shoddy plot, and the flagrant narcissism of its "creators".And to my fellow reviewers who maintain that this is not a film about the Holocaust but rather the importance of familial love, I should like to say two things: One, you're confusing the film's theme with its subject, and two, if Benigni didn't want to make a movie about the Holocaust then perhaps he shouldn't have SITUATED HIS STORY IN A NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP!!.
This movie is the most banal and manipulative sort of crowd pleaser, the sort that assumes the crowd is composed entirely of idiots, but because it nominally concerns the holocaust otherwise intelligent people are unwilling to call the movies cynical little game for what it is, fearing the -"What you didn't like 'Life is Beautiful?!' No don't say anything else you don't have a soul," or the more common, "Well go back to your Jerry Bruckheimer movies." Well in all honesty that's an insult to Mr. Bruckheimer.
Everyone chalks in "Life is Beautiful" as their art movie of the month and ignores better movies on the holocaust like "The Ogre," "Invincible," or "Heimat.".
it is the best film that I have seen so far and i like to see it more and more.as matter of fact life is beautiful and we should know it is worthy and we should try for the best life.in my opinion the actor , actress and the child are the best and fantastic.
The realism of the movie is not its strong point, but then again it is not supposed to be; this helps in bringing the audiences to a state of mind away from reality, focusing on the feelings generated by forgetting about all external events and developments of the war.
The realism of the movie is not its strong point, but then again it is not supposed to be; this helps in bringing the audiences to a state of mind away from reality, focusing on the feelings generated by forgetting about all external events and developments of the war.
Life is really beautiful as you watch Guido's relentless efforts to make a lovely exciting experience of the concentration camp to his son.
Life is really beautiful as you watch Guido's relentless efforts to make a lovely exciting experience of the concentration camp to his son.
Strangely enough, less than a year later, Benigni was directing his own Holocaust comedy movie!
In "Life Is Beautiful," however, Roberto Benigni's character Guido is Jewish only because the film announces that he is.
As time goes on and the Holocaust becomes a thing of history, and as less survivors are alive to remember the travesty that mankind let occur, Benigni is being praised for making a film that DOES trivialize some very serious subject matter.
I think maybe people like to hear themselves say aloud that they loved a movie with subtitles..
This movie asks us to laugh at the events transpiring on screen, but not to feel or understand any of the horrors.Benigni would have done his film a lot of good had he given us more of a feeling of how the people's lives were in terror.
Instead, he merely laughs everything off, giving us the feeling that even he's not taking his subject matter too seriously.So, in the end we are left with a movie that trivializes the Holocaust - and people should be ashamed that they think so highly of it..
Not only is it appallingly badly directed and boring; not only is the humor and so-called acting amateurish at best; this film is trying to make some points about the Holocaust that are utter lies!Anyone with even a minimal understanding of the Holocaust would have to first of all discount ANY movie which purports to make the subject into a comedy, of all things.
If you want to see a quality comedy about the holocaust, try Radu Mihaileanu's (a romanian director) 'Train of Life'('Train de Vie'), which is some million times better(it was written before Benigni's film(and filmed before, I think), and the script was read by Benigni's producer, who should have produced but didn't, and might as well have 'inspired' Benigni, if you see what I mean.
I saw this "thing" (it doesn't deserve to be called a film) when it was released and I was absolutely dumbstruck at the favorable reaction it received; I continued to be amazed when it actually was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and actually won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor for Benigni.This movie sounds only wrong notes from beginning to end.
Perhaps the Holocaust has become too far removed in history to allow modern audiences (especially American ones) to realize that it has been wildly mythologized and horribly distorted in this trash.Those who "just loved" this movie -- as well as the members of the Academy who nominated it for Best Picture, etc.
Sorry, most people seem to like this movie but I thought the idea of fantasy somehow making the holocaust more bearable to be offensive.
If you think "Life is Beautiful" is sweet or uplifting, I invite you to watch "The Last Days," the Spielberg-produced documentary of Holocaust survivors, or even to see "Schindler's List" again.
Like "Il Postino", "Life is Beautiful" is another mediocre Italian-movie-for-export.
I know little about the acting career of Roberto Benigni but I was told by a famous film tutor ( Who`s Jewish by the way ) that Benigni plays more or less the same character in every single film he appears in and I have no doubt this is true And after seeing his performance as Guido in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and seeing Benigni clamber over several rows of seats to accept the Oscar as best actor I can`t help thinking Benigni is unable to play ANY character that ISN`T Roberto Benigni This film is about the holocaust - The greatest example of mans inhumanity to man - and that`s why it`s undeservedly well regarded .
Not praising LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL or indeed any holocaust movie is not anti semetism.
La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful) is without a doubt one of the most incredible movies I have ever seen, in any language!
This movie is not only about the Holocaust.It is about surviving in a hostile world, that goes past hostile into crazy, with only wit and humor as a weapon.It is about shielding the child you love more than life itself from realizing the unimaginable horrors surrounding it.It is about letting your child inside loose in "normal" life and protecting you children from hostility and harm in an "abnormal" life.It is about sacrificing oneself for the ones you love.Roberto Benigni made me laugh and cry at the same time.
Knowing what is there is quite enough.This movie made me think about all the people who did not survive the Holocaust.
But the fact that a film detailing, humorously, with the 20th Century's greatest tragedy won the Oscar accolades it did is enough evidence of its true worth.It starts simply enough, with Benigni as the humble paesan who marries, has a kid, enjoys the good life in pre-war Italy.
His book "Man's Search for Meaning" (at least the second half of his book) came to life in Guido's character (Roberto Benigni).
This strategy proved especially beneficial for his 5 year old son, Giorgio.The film is very upbeat and loving, especially in it's first hour which makes no mention of the holocaust or prison camps.
Any person who thought Life Is Beautiful was a misrepresentation of the Holocaust better rethink the whole point of the wonderful movie..
Actually, if I want to laugh my head out, I'd rather watch Mister Bean instead.But sorry, I don't think Benigni can compare to Chaplin, and if you compare this film with "The Great Dictator", sorry again, it falls short.
Well, maybe a tad, but I can really see why people like this movie.So what didn't make this film perfect?
Though I will say that Benigni's tribute to comedy greats like Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx was inspired.The film changes tone to a more poignant, compelling and harrowing second half, that I think was much needed.
The "hero" makes the great self sacrifice at the end but life was too easy in this movie.I didn't find the humor to be uplifting or awe inspiring ie: Chaplin and/or Keaton.And, of course, the world media went ga ga again.
It doesn't work as a comedy: first of all because Benigni is just annoying (yeah, I used to love some of his movies once too.
For those who say it is not a true depiction of the nazi camp, then I say that they are right but this is not meant to be a film just about the harshness of the holocaust, but a film primarily about Roberto Benigni's relationship with his son.
No other filmmaker did something like "Life is beautiful" in the past: the Holocaust, humour and a lovely story in the same film.
"Life is beautiful" doesn't want to represent the Holocaust, and IMHO this is a Good Thing.BTW, I'm Italian and Benigni here is a superstar; you see him everywhere on TV.
But because of the great second part of the film, I would recommend Life is Beautiful..
Of course he got two Oscars (1 for actor, 1 for best foreign film.) This was the story of a Father who is protecting his son in Nazi's Death camp, by being creative!
In this way, the film sometimes reminded me of Hogan's Heroes, with a Jewish man in place of the American soldiers- with the Nazis being the butt of jokes and generally being outsmarted by Bennini.But to say this piece is a fairy tale or a comedy far from the truth, while it is true that the movie never really approaches the real horror of a concentration camp- that is not to say that it is a happy movie.
To me, La Vita é bella is the best film ever that shows in a very subtle way how the war destroys people's lives, and at the same time proves that the life remains really beautiful..
I sobbed my way through the last ten minutes, then rewound the movie, sat down, and hugged my bewildered dog and cried for another twenty minutes.Life is Beautiful is an unforgettable film.
Roberto Benigni's acting, through comedic and dramatic moments, is spectacular.Watch this movie. |
tt0176269 | Universal Soldier: The Return | Seven years after the events in the first film, Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), now an ordinary human after having had his cybernetic implants removed, is a technical expert who is working for the US government with his partner Maggie (Kiana Tom), who has been through countless hours of combat training with him, in order to refine and perfect the UniSol program in an effort to make a new, stronger breed of soldier that is more sophisticated and intelligent to reduce the use of normal, human soldiers in the battlefield. All of the new UniSols, which are faster and stronger than the original UniSols, are connected through an artificially intelligent computer system called S.E.T.H. (Self-Evolving Thought Helix).
When S.E.T.H. discovers that the Universal Soldier program is scheduled to be shut down because of budget cuts, it takes action to protect itself. Killing those who try to shut off its power, and unleashing a platoon of super soldiers, led by the musclebound Romeo (Bill Goldberg), S.E.T.H. spares Devereaux, only because Devereaux has the secret code that is needed to deactivate a built-in program that will shut S.E.T.H. down in a matter of hours. With the help of Squid (Brent Hinkley), a rogue cyberpunk, S.E.T.H. is able to put its program in a UniSol which Squid made superior to any of the newer models (Michael Jai White). A team of four UniSols massacre the troops stationed outside the premises. Luc goes in later with a team of soldiers, but most of them are killed.
Not only must Luc contend with ambitious reporter Erin Young (Heidi Schanz), who will not leave his side, but he must also contend with General Radford (Daniel von Bargen) who wants to take extreme measures to stop S.E.T.H.. S.E.T.H. has arranged Romeo to kidnap Luc's injured 13-year-old daughter Hillary (Karis Paige Bryant), killing Maggie in the process.
However, Luc is the only person who can rescue Hillary, because Luc knows firsthand how a UniSol thinks, feels, and fights. Luc infiltrates the UniSol building, but finds Maggie, now revived as one of the UniSols. S.E.T.H is able to figure out the code itself, decides to kill Luc and raise Hillary as a daughter, who it has healed using UniSol technology. During the fight Luc covers S.E.T.H. in liquid nitrogen then shatters S.E.T.H.'s frozen body. Luc and Hillary leave the lab and head towards the exist, but find Romeo waiting for Luc. Luc then engages into a final fight with Romeo, which ends when Maggie finally rebels against the UniSols by shooting Romeo, and allows Luc and Hillary to get out of the building on time. However, the bomb that General Radford had placed was deactivated by S.E.T.H.. As Romeo and the platoon of UniSols start to march out for battle, Luc fires at the explosive charge blowing up the building, killing all the UniSols and their laboratory. | cult, violence, romantic | train | wikipedia | I don't know about you all, but I rented this movie to see Van Damme trade punches with the 290 pound Goldberg and Michael Jai White while uttering dozens of slightly pathetic/slightly amusing one liners at every conceivable opportunity, and I got just what I asked for =)If you don't like it...
tough.Go rent "The Piano" or "Lawn Dogs" if you want real movies, but if you just want Van Damme brawling with big guys plus some shots of pretty girls, this is just what the doctor ordered.One of my favourites..
Van Damme does his usual best which aint much, Jai White is good as Seth but the scene stealer is the cheesy but lovable Bill Goldberg.
This film is so ridiculously bad that it ends up being funny and quite enjoyable.If you like cheesy low budget action flicks that doesn't take itself too seriously then this is worth a laugh or two!
I like Van Dammes movies and Universal soldier was one of my favorites(along with Blood sport and Hard target).
Although it doesn't make much sense it is a good action film with some great fight scenes especially ones with Goldburg, and the final showdown.
I was hoping that Romeo or another soldier would take her out.Fourth plot problem, Kiana Tom, Van Damme's butt-kicking sidekick at the beginning of the movie, is left on the sidelines for most of the movie.
Original ¨Universal soldier¨ was followed by this ¨Universal soldier : the return¨ with a good cast as Jean-Claude Van Damme , Michael Jai White , Heidi Schanz , Xander Berkeley and Justin Lazard ; however , subsequently Universal Soldier films ignore the events of The Return and outright contradict it in a number of ways ; while still an official entry, it is no longer considered part of the series canon .
Although former "UniSol" Luc Deveraux (Jean Claude Van Damm , also producer) and other staff members as Xander Berkeley playing Dr. Dylan Cotner and Daniel Von Bargen as General Radford , all of them attempt to prevent the revolt .
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Michael Jai White have some scenes together at an impressive fighting .
New sequel titled ¨Universal soldier : day of reckoning¨(2012) by John Hyams with Scott Adkins , Andrei 'The Pit Bull' Arlovski , Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme , but here they have not scenes together .
Jean-Claude van Damme has to fight an almost invincible computer and his universal soldiers..
There are really only 3 reasons to watch this: Michael Jai White has some quality screen time; Kiana Tom is quite gorgeous except for her dismal second incarnation, and this film has the most hilariously gratuitous T & A sequence since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder hid out in the poledancing club in Stir Crazy.Actually I quite like Van Damme - he makes martial arts look attainable.
The formula isn't Van Damme's alone but he's certainly the most prolific of the action movie stars.
Personally, I don't think there was a script, I think they just hooked Van Damme up with Michael Jai White (anyone remember "Spawn"?) and Bill Goldberg and said, "you guys are basically gonna kick the crap out of each other and we'll try to incorporate some kind of plot line into all the violence".
But if you can look past a silly plot and horrible acting, you will find a great no holds-barred action movie that boasts some incredible fights and lots of explosions and gratuitous deaths.
i love van damme and i think he has a lot of potential, give him a 100 million dollars film and a director like michael bay, and watch how he captures the screen and the whole holywood.
it was also nice to see bil goldberg's humor as a big hard-ass unisol being kick-assed by van damme in various parts of the movie.
Whether if these goods please your taste is another problem, but if you like films with lots of fights, explosions, heavy metal, Bill Goldberg and some gun hardware this could be a good one to watch with your friends on a rainy Saturday night.Nothing special, but there are definitely worse movies around...
Goldberg was ok in this movie much better than I expected though, and Michael Jai White was actually very good, man he can fight, good moves.
Overall this movie was good to go see if u are a die hard Van Damme fan or Universal Soldier fan, however the ending stank, it was the worst part of the movie, other than that, it wasn't a bad flick..
The first movie was just boring and had bad (and too little) action, but that's not the case with "Universal Soldier: The Return".
I must say when I first saw this movie I'd only seen bits of the first one and hadn't seen the 2nd or 3rd which are made for TV, so didn't really get the overall plot although I knew this one basically follows on from the 1st as it features Van Damme whilst the 2nd and 3rd don't, so I thought thats good enough for me.Anyway, I sat down and watched it and must say I was very, very impressed.
The film is so riddled with mindless action sequences and inane character motives it is comparable to watching someone play a conventional video game in which the player must shoot down as many bad guys as possible before the time limit runs out.
One of the soldiers is Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who is helping to train a new breed of these combat weapons.
Universal Soldier: The Return is a good action packed sequel film that casts Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bill Goldberg, Michael Jai White, Heidi Schanz, Xander Berkeley, Kiana Tom, and Daniel von Bargen.
If you like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bill Goldberg, Michael Jai White, and the rest of the cast I've mentioned above and exciting non-stop action films then I Strongly recommend this film!.
Worth watching if you like van damme films.I give this one 7/10..
BATMAN BEYOND TV series),so this one will be appreciated by it's followers.I for one go for this type of combo and hope more like these are released.But if one is like most people out there who do not like precition and to the point Testosterone Hong Kong/Tokyo style martial-art choreography mixed in with loud/fast energetic cyber rock or cyber rock type background music blasting away while all mixed into the weird sci-fi story flow (and a dash of comic humor here and there too),do not,I repeat,do not expect to like this one as it is only for a TARGET AUDIENCE.I am surprised this movie made it thru the big screen circuit.This type formula movies are usually only for straight to video and cable TV markets where they rake in a lot of profits later on.May be Van Damme's second best movie (after Universal Soldier) as of this writing.I hope he makes more movies of better quality.I like his new mature/hardened look in this movie.......
Two of the things that I look for in a good movie are the special effects and lots of action.
One of the best action scenes in the movie is at the end when Van Damne is fight Seth, the leader of Unisols.
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN does not have to requistite b-movie fun that saved the other Van Damme pictures from utter unwatchability.This sequel is essentially a low budget action movie trying to imitate a high budget action movie and failing.
Some of the fight scenes are good, but they can't redeem the failings in script, direction, photography, casting, score, performances, etc.Van Damme plays the same character he did in the first film, now helping the military to train the newest line of cyborg/zombie soldiers.
The action is all confined and the film is under-populated.UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN is a useless and boring waste of resources that even Van Damme is better than.
Whilst movie critics will probably poke holes in the storyline of Universal Soldier: The Return, the story line is personally not what I go to see a Van Damme film for.
I go to see a Van Damme film for the Martial Arts sequences, which is something Van Damme performs better than anyone else has done on the big screen since Bruce Lee. Universal Soldier: The Return certainly does not disappoint in this area, Van Damme goes back to doing what he does best which is of course kicking.
Universal Soldier: The Return combines the best of both era's of Van Damme films, it has the budget of Timecop with the type of Martial Arts scenes you would see in Wrong Bet (Lionheart).
The fight scene w/Van Damme & Michael Jai White was nicely shot, well paced & exciting.
I saw this w/my girlfriend, & she hates action films but she liked this movie(especially White) & so did the sold out crowd we watched it with.
Van Damme still knows how to kick ass and all his fans will enjoy this movie after the bad 'Legionnaire' and 'Double Team'.
Universal Soldier 1 was a really entertaining movie that became a classic action movie that most hold in high regard (Action movie fans) but Van Damme hits rock bottom (Like Knock Off wasn't bad enough) This is a horrible movie that needs to be shunned.No Stars (Out Of four).
I'm not a fan of Van Damme but the only thing I can say about this movie is that it sure is better than the first Universal Soldier !!!
Anyway as I was saying I actually liked this movie for two reasons:1- The fight at the end between Micheal Jai White and Van Damme.
These arcade action game movies seem to be getting worse as Jean-Claude Van Damme ages.
So, it was just a matter of time before the Van Damme series would make one.This one is a sequel to the 1992 film in which Luc Deveraux is brought back to life after being killed in Vietnam.
Maybe these are supposed to be comedies in modern times, without any funny or clever writing.Van Damme's female interest in this film is filled by Heidi Schanz who plays a TV reporter, Erin.
I'm always down for a fun cheesy movie even when it hilariously bad but this time the sequel for the Van Damme hit "Universal Soldier" tile The Return make my eyes rolling because it the most pointless movie in the franchise.Van Damme got no reason to comeback at Deveraux after all the hardship he been through in the first one and although the movie somewhat got the answer to why he chose to return to the Uni Sol program as the supervisor but I think it just a lame excuse to draw more fan of him to see this movie cause they think Michael Jai White name after the flop of Spawn is no good.I also don't think White is the main villain when almost entirely movie runtime is Deveraux try do deal this Romeo guy who I think must be very famous cause he still around even the movie about to end.It is no surprise that Uni Sol: The Return is a flop but it still worth a watch if you a hardcore 90s action movies fan.
We have Jean-Claude Van Damme reprising his role as Luc Deveraux and he is the protagonist of the film.
The action is very simple if you think Van Damme films generally are pretty poor then this won't win you over.
Why did the bosses on the movie company when some guy came by and asked them for some money to do a movie with cocaine-brain Jean-Claude Van Damme- with no story, bad actors, a wrestler and some badly staged action sequences, just told him to get lost..
Before I rented this I was a bit weary seeing as JCVD'S last couple of films hadn't been too good (desert heat,the quest etc) and also WCW's Bill Goldberg I'm not a fan of wrestling and wrestlers aren't renowned for their acting ability but being a Van Damme fan I had to rent it.
The fight scene with Michael Jay White and Van Damme was so bad I almost cried.
I actually liked the first Universal Soldier, and I generally like Van Damme movies.
I was expecting better acting by Van Damme himself but looks like he was once again the one who made the movie into a kid's film.The plot and action was rather mundane and was systematic as you could predict what was gonna happen scene after scene.
They'll have fun on the action-scenes and buy van damme-toys...(like Star Wars...)3/10, because of nice fights.
Nudity and skin thrown in just because..not a bad thing..."We need to find a internet terminal..Strip Bars have Them!!"And this movie is perfect for playing Spot the Rip-off, and Spot the Plot Hole....oh boy!All in all a great laugh out loud Time, but for gods sake only $5 matinee, don't pay $8.50...it aint as funny if you pay over 5 bucks.Oh yeah, anyone know why its called The Return?There were two made for TV sequels II and III!!!!....Did anyone see em?..Thats what I thought..
Maybe it's all the acting background he's received in whatever stupid wrestling federation he's from...The rest of the movie leaves you shaking your head thinking, "I'm sure some little 12-boys would like to see that again, but is that REALLY your target audience?" The fight sequences between Michael Jai White, and Van Damme are unexciting, and inordinately slow.
If White's character is supposed to have a body 5 times faster, stronger than a normal human, then why does he decide to block Van Damme's slow lazy kick with his face?This movie is so riddled with inaccuracies and plot holes that it makes an episode of Kung-Fu, the Legend Continues look good.
"Do we have to make this film?!"...." well we kinda promised Van Damme...." So they hand a really bad stunt director a book of all the worst movie cliches known to man kind and production begins..
Jean-Claude Van Damme had a strict policy not to make any sequels, but after 7.years later, he decide to make the sequel to the Universal Soldier, which he did make this film and it was his last movie released in the movie theater until JCVD (2008).
Very fast paced, lots of action, cool fights, good soundtrack, and Van Damme acting with a smile on his face.
I like my Universal Soldier films to have Van Damme kicking ass, and smiling at the same time.
There are much worse Van Damme flicks than Universal Soldier: The Return and much worse action movies as well.
Jean-Claude Van Damme returns as Luc Deveraux, the former Universal Soldier who now trains others of his kind.
I don't understand why so many people are against this movie,it was just as good as the first one.not only that this one has a lot more action,the acting was pretty good and the pacing was good also.the fight scenes were nicely choreographed and the effects were nicely doneIf you liked the original then you're gonna love this trust me.Jean Claude van damne was great in his resuming role as luc deveraux Michael jai White was great also in his role as the main villainGoldberg was OK in his role as one of the villains,it was a start for himall in all good movie its worth a watch..
That is what you will get when you watch "Universal Soldier: The Return." With Jean Claude Van Damme (spelling?) taking center stage in this nonstop action thrill ride, you know you'll be on the edge of your seat when you are watching a movie like this!
That's right; any movie with action stars like Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and others put out the best in your action entertainment.Despite what people really think about "Universal Soldier: The Return," I am giving this a 10 out of 10 rating.
Universal Soldier was one of Jean Claude Van Damme's biggest hits.So a sequel would be a natural order to happen.But 7 years later?And a sequel so underwhelming that it makes Uwe Bolls efforts look good.But what a cast!JC Van Damme along with Michael Jai White,Bill Goldberg,Kiana Tom,Xander Berkley,and Daniel Von Bergen;All do what they can in a poorly scripted,directed,and conceived follow-up to one of the best action flicks of the 90's.Van Damme is looking better.White is an imposing villain.Goldberg is the comic relief here.There are a couple of good set ups.But they are predictable,totally-telegraphed, and undone by by over-loud metal songs.There is little or totally no exposition given to Luc's character or what it is like to have come back from the dead and the psychological effects.Now that is what it should have been like instead of the by the numbers paint job of a movie we see before us.If you liked the first skip this at all costs..
This is as pretty good van Damme movie, regarding his last efforts.
The action though is good, plus the film is funny at times and the plot is OK.
Bill Goldberg was also great as a soldier and funny because of how bad he acts and how he always get's hurt by Van Damme.
I don't think any movie of Van Damme's will ever beat Universal Soldier but u never know.
Especially the last fight between Van Damme and Jai White is surprisingly good.So a 10 out of 10, then?
Also, the fight scenes (with the exception of the Van Damme/Jai White-fight) are over way too quickly and are surprisingly tame for a film like this.
The best Jean- Claude Van Damme and Action Film.
All people liked the film and were surprised of Jean-Claude Van Damme.Go and see it!You will be surprised, too.
"Universal Soldier: The Return" was the last Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle to get a substantial theatrical release.
Was it the return of Jean-Claude Van Damme as Luc Deveraux? |
tt0482572 | Pride and Glory | Opens with a Football game where the NYPD are playing. Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) is the main player and gets the word from the coach to do everything to keep their lead - they are up 14-10. He tells the team he believes in them all and they can do it. Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) sits by Megan Egan (Lake Bell) and watches the game with Francis Tierney Jr (Noah Emmerich), his brother. They win and there is cheering all around, but Francis Jr. gets a call that a bunch of men from his Division (Francis is the CO) got killed, four officers down.Francis Jr. and Ray run to the scene and in a shabby apartment there are bodies everywhere. By the door, by the window, everything is a mess. An officer is taken out of the apartment on a stretcher as Jimmy runs in from the football game and looks at all the dead cops and starts getting angry and then locks himself into a bathroom, crying and breaking the mirror. He's very, very upset. Francis Sr. (Jon Voight) is at the scene as well, being some bigshot in the department (although it's not 100% clear what is role is) and makes orders all around.In the hospital, Ray and Jimmy are sitting there and the officer who was taken in dies. You can hear the wailing of the wife. It was a friend of everyone, it appears.Ray goes into the bathroom and starts popping some prescription pills. Francis Sr. (his father) comes in and looks at his son and tells him he should apply to be on the task force to investigate the murders of the men. Ray mentions he isn't ready and his father disagrees, saying the dead man would have done it for him, why wouldn't he do it. Ray tries to demur again citing an old incident making him go into missing person's division, but his father will have none of it and in the end strongarms him into joining the task force.Cut to the alley where everything happened. Ray and a fellow task force officer look up the window and know whoever the shooter was, got shot and then ran out. They follow the blood and it stops, so the guy must have gotten into a car, but they don't know anything more. They find a cell phone in the snow. They have gotten some handouts of six prime suspects. An officer comes over and asks if anyone speaks Spanish because they have a kid who might have seen something. Ray says he speaks some and they go into a small convenience store where a man is yelling things in Spanish (note, most Spanish is not subtitled in the movie.) Ray tells him to calm down and get out of his face and gets the wife to take him to the kid.The kid is sleeping on a couch and is woken up when Ray comes in. Ray asks him some questions and they find out from the kid that the shooter was bleeding from his stomach, he looks scared and when he is shown the pictures, they find out his name is Angel Tezo (Ramon Rodriguez) When Ray asks what color the car was, they are told it was a white, four door car, a cab car, but not a yellow one.Cut to the car, it's abandoned in some green, non-industrial area. Jimmy, Kenny (Shea Whigham), Sandy (John Ortiz) and Eddie (Frank Grillo) are all checking out the car. Apparently this was a deal gone very bad. They were trying to kill Tezo and get some money, but everything went bad and Tezo got away, killed their people and took the money. And he killed the driver. They set out to find and kill Tezo because he can finger all of them and he knows they are out to kill him. They talk about drugs, payoff money and hits - obviously dirty cops. First, they torch the car and everything inside it.Cut to Tezo getting a doctor to sew up his gut wound in some safehouse while some of his cronies count up the money. Tezo obviously has a temper and yells at the doctor a lot. When the doctor is done, they hand him some money, but Tezo's girl hands Tezo a potato and Tezo puts it on his gun and while kissing her, shoots the doctor using the potato as a silencer.Ray is sitting on his houseboat, looking at the crime scene photos and sees something strange in a photo. One of the men who was killed didn't have bootlaces or a belt on, so why were they there? He makes some calls, but doesn't come up with much.It's Christmas (the next day) and Ray goes up to a townhouse and puts his hand out to knock, but then just drops off a small gift on the porch instead. As he leaves, the door opens and it's Ray's wife. They are obviously estranged and it is revealed they are one month away from divorce. They've apparently had a lot of difficulties and while they both care for each other, she can't go through it anymore and they part sadly.Eddie and Sandy go to a convenience store and get everyone out and pistol whip the cashier until he tells them some information (and admits he knows) about Tezo. The man is given 24 hours to get information or they'll kill him. Eddie shows how unstable he is when he puts a gun to the man's head and fires it, but it's empty. They then pop the register and take all his money as well.Francis Jr's wife Abby (Jennifer Ehle) is sitting on the bed, she has a bald head and looks very sick. She takes some pills and Francis comes out, asking her if she wants to do this party. She says she wouldn't miss it for anything. Downstairs there is a lot of cooking going on, Francis Sr. is very drunk and the kids are running around wanting to open presents. Upstairs, Francis Jr. gives Abby a ring saying he will love her forever and Abby almost starts crying. They go downstairs as Jimmy and his wife and family come in and everyone begins opening presents.At the dinner table, Francis Sr. is very drunk and starts overpraising Ray saying he was always the brains, and would soon be an investigator and his daughter, Megan had a huge heart and she became a nurse. He doesn't say much about Francis Jr or about Jimmy (son-in-law.) It becomes very strange and awkward at the table and it goes pretty quiet. Francis and Jimmy have a quiet talk in the hall about what is going on. Jimmy says he'll have it under control. Francis is very worried about what is going on and Jimmy isn't giving him any information.There is another shooting at the house where we first saw Tezo. The men look out and see cops and then there is blood splattering. Cut to Ray looking around and seeing they were all shot execution style. Tezo's girlfriend, who we saw give him the potato, is there and Ray squeezes her (they talk in Spanish) and she eventually reveals (after Ray threatens to take her kid away) Tezo was tipped off by a guy called Sandy in the police department. Ray says nothing to the detectives on the scene about the information and walks out.There is a large funeral procession for the dead officers and Francis Jr. has a large roll as the CO. After it is done, Ray catches up to him and starts grilling him on what might be going on in his Division. His brother starts to take offense and they get into a heated conversation when Ray says Tezo's girl dropped the name Sandy and he's a police officer. Tezo's phone was called by people outside, so someone knew about the bust the four men were doing. Ray asks him if there is anyone who goes by that nickname in his department. Francis Jr. looks shady and denies there is anyone. Ray and Francis Jr. part ways, with both being unhappy at each other.Francis Sr. meets Ray on the boat and asks what happened with him and his brother. Ray explains what he thinks might be going on and his father says to sit on it and see what really happens before stirring up a mess, after all you have to protect your own. Ray obviously doesn't like it, but his father orders him and Ray reluctantly agrees.Francis Jr. confronts Sandy in the police showers and kicks everyone else out. Sandy, in turn, starts crying and feeling very remorseful. He tells Francis Jr. that Jimmy has been doing drug dealing and tons of planned executions and that he wanted Tezo dead so he could start working with Casado (Rick Gonzalez). Francis is shocked when he hears his brother-in-law is doing all that. Sandy said he thought Francis knew everything, everyone knew about it. Francis Jr. tells Sandy to give up his badge and gun immediately and never to say anything or come by again or he'd cut his pension too. Sandy tells Francis Jr. the force is all he has, Francis Jr. says Sandy doesn't have that anymore. End shot with Sandy crying on the shower floor.Abby is sitting and look at her children and starts crying, because she's dying and she's going to leave them. She hears the car pull up. Francis Jr. is sitting the car and is upset, not moving for a while as his wife tries to stop crying upstairs.Jimmy and his wife are playing with the kids. They're having fun. They bring the kids in and show a foozball table and a huge TV. The doorbell rings and a gangbanger looking person is at the door asking for Jimmy. Jimmy comes up and orders the guy out back. Jimmy's wife is very nervous about what is going on.The man is Casado and he's upset with Jimmy not keeping up his part of the deal to kill Tezo. He asks if Jimmy is slipping and Jimmy ends up pinning him to a wall, saying he's going to take care of it and threatens Casado if he ever comes near his place or family again.Jimmy calls his crew and they find out Tezo's right hand man is in town and they bust down the door and break up their dinner. They throw the man to the floor and beat him, but he won't say where Tezo is. Finally, they push his wife down and take his infant, holding it against the ironing board. Jimmy tells Kenny to call in a child services call for baby with a disfigured face. He takes the hot iron and starts to move it closer to the child's face. The mother screams for the man to tell him what the police want to know. Eventually, he reveals where Tezo is and Jimmy leaves, giving the baby back to the mother, unharmed.Ray tracks down one of his old CIs, a junkie, and after taking his stash and destroying some of it, his stoolie tells him where Tezo is.Ray calls in the location and tells the task force to get there. When he arrives outside the building, he starts scoping it out, but hears some gunshots. He calls for backup and starts going up the stairs, scared tenants are pointing him upwards. Finally he gets to the floor and sees a dead body and hears some screaming and yelling. Ray looks to find Tezo in a bathtub with Jimmy standing over him, shoving a nightstick down his throat. Ray yells at all of them and pulls the nightstick out of the man's throat and says he's still alive and to get help. Jimmy pulls Ray's gun out of Ray's holster and shoots Tezo three times in the chest. He hands the gun back and says Ray will say he was first on scene and shot the bastard who killed four cops. Ray asks if he's insane, and Jimmy pushes him against a wall and says they're all cops, so just go with the story.Ray and Francis Jr. are outside Ray's boathouse and Ray is very upset, telling Francis what happened and asking him why Francis lied about knowing Sandy. Francis asks what Ray is going to do and Ray doesn't say much, wanting to get the blood off him and walks to the boathouse.Francis Jr. is pouring a bath for his wife and Abby can tell he's upset. She asks him what's going on and he's silent. She begs him not to start with this now. Francis Jr. says he's in really deep and doesn't know what to do and he's scared. Abby looks shocked (and very sick) and asks if there is any way to make it right. Francis Jr. says no way. It won't bring everything he's worked for crumbling down. Abby replies she knows he's a good man and she trusts him and trusts him with her children. She wants him to continue to be a good man for them. Francis Jr. replies he has Abby's back.Cut to a large office, a newspaper room. There are all sorts of theories going around and the fact Tezo's mouth was busted in and apparently there were splinters in his throat is circulating. This is big news. A call comes in for a reporter and he takes it, a man wants to meet. They meet in the rain and cold in a parking lot and the person who called in was a very disheveled looking Sandy. The reporter hides a tape recorder under his seat and tells Sandy no recording devices are around when Sandy gets into the back seat of his car. Sandy doesn't mention names but says 'everyone' is on it. They sold their shields to the highest bidder. They killed people, dealt drugs and took payouts. He wanted to be a good cop, to protect and serve and to have pride in his job and in the blue uniform. But it all turned bad. The reporter tries to tell Sandy he can make a story out of this, get the truth out, but Sandy puts a white cloth over his head and shoots himself, splattering blood on the rear windshield.Press conference and the police are pinning the 'vigilante' problem on the four officers already dead and Sandy. Francis Jr. is confronted by Francis Sr. who asks his son how much he knew. Francis Jr. replies he knew enough. His father expresses huge distaste and starts chiding his son when Francis Jr. breaks in that his father must have had a time where push came to shove. His father replies he never took a payout and his son looks shocked saying he never, ever took money either. He then leaves, saying he has things to do, leaving his father looking distraught.Ray picks up some street vendor food and wanders around some less than reputable part of NYC. A person is tailing him. Ray walks a bit more and then confronts the tail. It's the reporter. The reporter says he knows what happened and implies Ray is a pretty good cop. However, he knew Ray lied in a case a few years back to protect other cops (this is what is being referred to at the beginning when Ray had a small breakdown.) He tells Ray he just wants the truth to come out about the people in his older brother's division, not bring Ray down. Ray leaves, very angry and upset.In a bar, Francis Jr comes in looking for Jimmy and they go into the men's room. Francis Jr. asks Jimmy what the hell is going on and Jimmy says he's doing what Francis Jr told him to. The collars are up, the crime is down. Francis Jr. says he knows that, and he never minded if Jimmy had to pad his income a little, but this was totally out of hand. He also says if Jimmy thinks Ray is going to just turn over and lie to the IAB (Internal Affairs Bureau) he's wrong. Ray wouldn't do something like that. Jimmy tries to give Francis Jr. a bunch of money saying it was 'his part of all the takes', but Francis Jr. just stares at the money and then leaves. Jimmy sees things crumbling and looks distraught.Ray gets woken up in his boathouse with a call saying he needs to give his statement to the IAB. Ray doesn't want to, he thought he had more time, but he goes in. There are tons of reporters outside as well as protesters who learned Tezo was brutalized, teeth were found in his stomach and a lot of other nasty things. Ray and the IAB all shake hands, the men obviously respect him a lot. When asked what happened, Ray pauses for a long time and tells them this isn't going to go how they want it to. He says he was not the one who shot Tezo, but won't say who it was who shot him. He then respectfully declines (over and over) to make any further statement. It's the only way he can be true to himself and to the department.Francis Sr. is seeing video of Jimmy saying Ray killed Tezo and is lying. Another high up person in the department is saying all these other officers are willing to testify that is exactly how it happened. Ray is being set up and Francis Sr. says his son wouldn't ever have killed anyone like that. He walks out of the office where he's watching the videos.Ray and Francis Sr. have a fight about what Ray should do now. It vacillates a lot, but Francis Sr. just wants the department not to take a fall. Ray is still burnt up about the lie he was told to tell by his father to save the department years ago and refuses to do it again. He can't. Francis Sr's wife even comes in, but is driven out with yells from her husband. Francis Sr. is on his way to ordering Ray to lie about what happened and follow Jimmy's original story when Francis Jr. comes in and tells his father to stop. He is going to tell everything he knows about the corruption in his division (which he started) and will work with Ray to clear everything up. First, they are going to find Jimmy. Jimmy is in a bar called Irish Eyes and Francis Jr and Ray head there.Kenny and Eddie are in a car driving. Eddie says he needs some money, but Kenny says they need to lay low, citing Jimmy told them to. Eddie says that doesn't pay his rent and goes into the convenience store and tries to rob it again. He gets shot. People start looking around and some gangbangers start noticing the ruckus. Kenny runs in and sees a man holding something and shoots him, but it's just a cell phone. Kenny starts to panic, knowing he has a serious problem now. Some of the gang members who are very upset about the police murders which have been hitting the press, start to smash up the car and throw things at the store. Kenny locks the store and tries to get out, but the police at the back exit too. He holes up and uses the owner as a hostage.Francis Jr. gets the call about Kenny and Ray says he'll take care of Jimmy and Francis Jr. needs to take care of the Kenny / hostage situation. Kenny is frantically calling Jimmy, asking how to get out of the mess. It's implied Jimmy isn't answering his phone. Francis Jr. goes up to the door and talks Kenny down and gets him to open up the door, saying he just wants to help.Francis Sr. gets a call from an officer who is looking for Ray to arrest him. Francis Sr. says (honestly) Ray isn't there even though his car is outside. The detective/officer asks to come in, Francis Sr. refuses.Jimmy is sitting at the bar, looking at pictures of his wife and kids, drinking and depressed. Ray comes in, flashes his badge and orders everyone out. Ray says they are going to make things right, holding a gun on Jimmy and tells him to put his gun on the bar. They both put their gun, badges and cuffs on the bar and prepare to duke it out, with whoever wins, taking the other one in. They fight, knocking down tables and chairs and flinging each other onto the bar, scattering Jimmy's photos of his family. Finally, they land on a pool table and things are looking rough for Ray until he grabs the cue ball and beans Jimmy twice with it. Jimmy falls to the ground, dazed and Ray falls with him, hurt, but better off.Francis Jr has talked Kenny down and gets him out of the store and into a car and away. Meanwhile the whole neighbourhood is up in arms because of the police problems. One of the ringleaders who is getting everyone riled up is Tezo's right hand man who almost got his kid burnt up by Jimmy. When they see Kenny get taken away, the crowd starts to disperse, but is still pretty angry.Ray has Jimmy in cuffs and is taking him to where the standoff was happening (just a few blocks away) when the crowd starts coming towards him. They want Jimmy. The Tezo right hand man REALLY wants him. They pull Jimmy away from Ray and hold Ray, not having a beef with him. Jimmy looks towards Ray and tells him to tell his wife he loves her. They have armed Jimmy with a baseball bat and the other man has a crowbar. Jimmy realizes it is the end and drops the baseball bat. The man lams him over the head with the crowbar and Ray is screaming and struggling and they punch him one to shut him up and then all beat Jimmy into a pulp.Ray staggers to the hostage scene which is winding down. Francis Jr., while talking to a superior, sees him and walks away to tend to his brother. Music plays over the words, but it is obvious Ray is telling his brother what happened with Jimmy. They get into a car and drive off.Ray, Francis Jr and Francis Sr are all in full dress uniform in a car, pulling up to a courthouse. There are reporters everywhere. They all look at each other and get out of the car together, all three going up the stairs, into the courthouse and in the reflection of the revolving door the final shots are of them shaking the hands of the prosecutors/investigator/bigwigs and then presumably going in to testify. | violence, murder | train | imdb | Voight is believable and realistic as the patriarch of the family of cops and the chief, trying to keep his family in order as he thinks it should be.Despite the inspired performances of the main characters, however, Pride and Glory falls short due to awkward pacing, pointlessly convoluted side-stories revealed in equally pointless scenes, and a general lack of focus.
It's the kind of American movie you don't see anymore, a throwback to the big themes and dramatic tone of the 1950s, when Elia Kazan was making movies like "East of Eden" and "On the Waterfront," and Arthur Miller was writing plays like "Death of a Salesman" and "All My Sons." Family, honor, corruption, right and wrong, fathers and sons--these are the kinds of issues that director/co-writer Gavin O'Connor is taking on in "Pride and Glory," and in doing so he's made a timeless film.
Sincere without being sentimental (much like "Miracle," O'Connor's last effort), "Pride and Glory" gets elbow deep in a corruption scandal that threatens to crack the blue wall of the NYPD and destroy the Tierney family legacy (patriarch Jon Voight, sons Ed Norton and Noah Emmerich, and outlaw brother-in-law Colin Farrell, who has never been better).
From the first scenes of Pride and Glory we see a lot of tragedy,shouts,rage and violence.But,for a long time,none of those elements could emotionally connect with me.And when the main conflict is finally defined,the movie already got a little bit tiring.Pride and Glory is not a bad movie,but I just found it to be mediocre,and I cannot deny that the excellent performances from Edward Norton,Colin Farrell and Jon Voight make this movie seem to be better than what it really is.The weakest element from this film is that it is full of elements we have already seen on many other cop flicks.Some examples are slow motion funerals,private lives which are ruined by the tension of work and the grey morality some cops have.It may seem as a stupid complain,but I found the constant use of the "F" word as a negative element.That does not offend or scandalize me,but it is used with so much frequency that it finishes distracting us from the story.In other words,there comes a moment in which the use of that word stops being realistic for becoming in the version of "New York reality" from co-screenwriters Joe Carnahan and Gavin O'Connor (who was also the director).Besides,the screenplay makes too many turns for getting to the final point we have guessed much before.Pride and Glory is not a bad movie and I can give a slight recommendation to it,because in general it did not bore me.But the final experience is absolutely forgettable..
We've seen a million crooked cop movies, I think we're still looking for one that really stands out, but Pride and Glory holds itself well and is watchable.Jimmy is a narc who does pretty much all the dirty work when it comes to busting in on drug dealers, hookers, murderers, rapists, etc.
But one of the policemen that he suspects is his brother in-law who does the best he can to justify all that he is doing.Pride and Glory is a very good story, I'd say though to wait for the rental, but I'm warning you there are some really intense scenes, Colin goes really far in one scene with a baby, I'm a person who has seen every disturbing film known to man, and this scene had my hands over my eyes.
Ed and Colin work well together and are a great duo, Pride and Glory is a good movie, just needs a little more editing.7/10.
It all builds up to a devastating battle between family and friends, loyalty and justice, truth and honour.As any one who's glanced at the trivia section (or Empire Magazine!) will already know, work on Pride and Glory was scheduled to begin as far back as 2001, but owing to America's characteristically patriotic respect for NY cops who risked their lives to save lives that fateful day, any suggestion of corruption amongst them was deemed, well, unpatriotic and it's been left till seven years later for the film to come out.
Also on the plus side are strong, solid performances from leading men Norton and Farrell, not to mention Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich as the other honest, well meaning father/son cop team caught up in the middle of the corrupt shenanigans as everyone else.
Pride & Glory, starring Norton & Farrell, isn't anything revolutionary in the genre but takes a generally strong storyline and adds some good acting.Story revolves around a group of cops (led by Farrell) up to their necks in trouble after their corrupt scams have backfired on them, and to cover their backs they need to tread deeper into the mire.
I could not think of someone who handles complex characters better than Ed Norton and his ability to do that with what might seem like no effort is magical, Colin Farrell on the other hand was equally entertaining with his out look as a police officer.
It hearkens back to the old days when the true value of a movie was in its plot and acting, not a bunch of sci-fi Hollywood special effects.I actually watched it at the Chicago International Film Festival with the director Gavin O'Connor present for a Q&A session at the end of the show.
If there's any value to be gleaned from Pride and Glory it's that even movies built around a pairing of top tier actors with a strong supporting cast can be miserable failures if the story isn't up to snuff.Ed Norton and Colin Farrell play two New York City cops at the center of this tepid tale of corruption and murder.
When a crew of officers are found shot in a botched raid on a crack house, the force puts a full court press on finding the gunman, and hands the reigns of the investigating task force to Tierney.Director and co-screenwriter Gavin O'Connor wastes little time in establishing that the killer was part of a slimy corruption ring involving criminal gangs and cops, however he quickly lifts the veil off the mystery by revealing the identities of the officers on the take, forcing the story to simply go through the motions leading up to the inevitable and all too predictable climax.Norton and Farrell both turn in strong performances, as do Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich as Tierney's father and brother respectively, and if a movie was judged on acting alone, Pride and Glory would be in the top shelf.
Thankfully the iron never touches the babies flesh, but Farrell keeps it about a half an inch away from the baby's face, so you know it's burning the poor kid.It's a extremely unpleasant scene in what has, by this point, proved to be an aggressively lugubrious police procedural.Pride and Glory is drenched in such a suffocating, doom-filled atmosphere that it leaves you feeling depressed when it's over.
He plays Ray Tierney, a sad-eyed New York City cop with a "troubled past" who spends much of his time working on missing persons cases.However, after four cops end up dead in a drug bust, Ray is called to investigate by his high-ranking police officer father, Francis Tierney, Sr.
(Noah Emmerich) and his hot-headed brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell).What little plot there is is padded out with clichéd side stories involving Francis Jr.'s cancer striken wife (Jennifer Ehle) and Ray trying to work things out with his long suffering wife (Carmen Ejogo).This is all stuff we've seen in a dozen of other movies, done with a lot more energy, humor, and conviction than it is here.Take for instance last year's grossly underrated cop thriller We Own the Night.
That movie, while far from a perfect film, at least had some bitingly intense action scenes and a trio of actors who were able to convince you that they were a family.Pride and Glory has none of these things.
The scene involving the infant is bad enough, there is another particularly stomach turning scene where Jimmy and a couple of his goons were shoving what looked like a lead pipe down one suspects throat.Pride and Glory sat on the shelves for a few years because of its depiction of crooked cops in a post-9/11 New York City.
Good Cop Bad Cop Badass Cop. Gavin O'Connor's 'Pride and Glory' is a well-made, dark, gritty, urban film that looks into corruption within the police force.
In addition, he has extracted some fine performances from his principle cast that includes Jon Voight, Edward Norton, Noah Emmerich and especially Colin Farrell (this is easily one of the best works of his career).
Pride and Glory (2008) is a decent cop drama that despite having a great cast is far from a good movie.
Carnahan, along with director Gavin O'Connor (Miracle), wrote the script and the two each add their own intense little touches but the movie as a whole just doesn't quite get there.Ed Norton plays Ray, the brother of Francis (Noah Emerich) and brother-in-law of Jimmy (Colin Farrell).
Director Gavin O'Connor uses his hand-held camera and shoots the movie in a dreary, cold looking blue which gives the movie some texture and realism, and Carnahan likes to throw the F-bomb around a lot and make things bloody but all this can only go so far.The movie does have scenes that brim with high intensity and emotional effectiveness and that has everything to do with a solid cast.
And a surprise is Noah Emerich, known mainly for supporting performances, most notably "The Truman Show", does strong work here as Ray's brother."Pride and Glory" has tension and good performances but it's not quite as gritty and electrifying as this year's "Street Kings" and you can tell it wants to be taken seriously but a "been there, seen that" feel coupled by a really disappointing ending make it hard to recommend.
Bad cops rot the whole fruit and undermine the very pinnings of society -- no matter the reasons for their corruption.Here, what made the movie shine was the performances, by all four main leads, but especially Ed Norton and Noah Emmerich.
Colin Farrell was pretty good, as was Jon Voight, but then so were Robert Duvall and Mark Wahlberg in "We Own The Night," but neither did they shine.It's a classic bad-cop, tangled-messy-crime-scene, one-guy-uncovers-the-truth and what-will-he-do kind of story.
Gavin O'Connor's new release, "Pride and Glory," is a violent story about the NYPD that begs the question, "How moral are today's police departments?""Pride and Glory" is a drama-filled story that follows the Tierney family as they try to fulfill their role, to serve and protect, and survive in the Big Apple.
Edward Norton plays the role of 'good cop' Ray Tierney, Emmerich's younger brother, who has obviously been through some traumatic event in the field that has forced him to accept a desk job with the NYPD.
Voight, who plays the role of the drunk, ex-cop father, wants nothing more than for his family to emerge from the rubble with pride and glory intact.Upon seeing this film, the viewer is thrust into the world of New York gang heat and dirty cops.
An absolutely brilliant performance from Edward Norton and a great job by Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich, and Jon Voight, showed me that this movie was not well worth, not only my $9, but awards for individual performances and possibly best picture.If you enjoyed The Departed, American Gangster, etc.
It just isn't an interesting movie, in a genre that is so over exploited.A fantastic cast including Farell and Norton as well as many well-known supporting artists (and a less than terrific performance by John Voight) fail to make this film worth watching.The performances are well above average but the movie has no substance and just seems like a pointless story that we've all seen before in many different forms.Rather go see Body of Lies..
It is really refreshing to see every member of the cast and crew give their best to a project and the results speak for themselves.Sterling performances aside, Pride and Glorys script (co written by Narc writer/director Joe Carnahan) is also extremely effective, slowly unfurling a dense and dark tale of power, greed and the dramatic effects which come from being a family of cops.
With a 7/10 rating on IMDb, I was expecting something pretty entertaining but instead, you are delivered to a cliché good versus bad cop story with family relationships to kill most of the screen time.
But I guess cop thrillers don't tend to give too much room for acting talents.Colin Farrell: 2 Stars Like Norton, he wasn't quite able to shine through in this movie, though there was a little spark left there.Jon Voight: 3 Stars Voight seemed to make the best of a fairly basic role, and must be commended on his performance.
Pride and Glory starring Colin Farrell and Ed Norton is a take on a typical NYPD good-cop-bad cop film with a plot that resembles several old television shows.
Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) is looking into a corruption scandal that involves his brother in law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) but this threatens to embroil his father and brothers who or previously have worked for the police.The film is cliché ridden, silly (just check out the two bad cops that rob stores) and unoriginal.
The ending I feel is a particular let down not because it's necessary that bad, just doesn't lead up to the promise of the beginning of the film, which I feel stops the film from being a classic.The acting for the film was fantastic, especially, Norton and Farrell who played their characters particularly well indeed.The setting is also perfect for this dark crime thriller and is definitely a strong point for the film.Overall I feel the film is certainly worth a watch if you like crime films, you just might be disappointed with the end of the film..
Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) is his brother-in-law who leads a group of corrupted cops.It's a gritty crime drama with lots of top notch acting talents.
The last thing you want to uncover is the truth." Everyone's morality is on the line when Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) investigates a case and uncovers the terrifying truth about a torturous corruption scandal involving his brother-in-law Jimmy Eagan (Colin Farrell).
As with any movie though, there are a few ridiculously out of place scenes like the whole thing in the bar, but in the end, these problems are few and far between and hardly detract from the overall quality of the film.Pride and Glory would be one of my personal favorite films of all-time had it not been for the bluntly obvious problem of the camera-work.
Edward Norton and Colin Farrell are as good as ever, with strong support from Jon Voight as the father of the brothers and also a cop.
There were some scenes within the film which weren't necessary, the ones including Noahs wife, they felt forced and didn't really hit home all they did was add to the running time of the film.If you want to see a gritty, urban NYPDesque film I highly recommend Ben Afflecks 'Gone Baby Gone', fortunately for us all Ben Affleck is 10fold better behind the camera than he is infront of it along with the aid of his younger brother and a supporting cast I thought 'Gone Baby Gone' was brilliant.'Pride and Glory' has been compared to 'We On The Night' and I admit that much is true but not just because they deliver the clichéd, family-cop drama but because they both miss the target it was aiming for..
In Pride and Glory, Ray Tierney (Norton) and Jimmy Egan (Farrell) are brothers-in-law whose Tierney family has a retired police chief father Francis Tierney, Sr., (Jon Voight) and his other son Frances Jr.
Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich, and the late Jon Voight, these guys have played cop roles before but this movie just impressed me in unexpected ways.
Pride and Glory is a very good police thriller with a very interesting story and a very well developed plot about A gritty and emotional portrait of the New York City Police Department, the film follows a multi-generational police family whose moral code is tested when one of two sons on the force investigates an incendiary case involving his older brother and brother-in-law.
The movie has a very good cast, Edward Norton in the role of Ray Tierney gives us a very decent performance.
Colin Farrel as Jimmy Egan, shows us that he actually knows how to act, Jon Voight very convincing as always and Noah Emmerich also with a good acting job as Edward Norton's character brother Francis.
Papa Cop Never Took Anything but the Paycheck Cut by the City.This is an Actors Movie with Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight, and Noah Emmerich All Giving it 100%.
I managed to watch pride and glory , and my god i got a true pleasure satisfaction and happiness.The movie contained Great acting done by Edward Norton and Collin Farrell and all they other actors .Great story to describe what really does go in U.S with cops .
But slowly Ray begins to discover a link back to his cop brother in law Jimmy (Colin Farrell), and the rabbit hole goes down a lot further with possible involvement back to his own family, together with opening up a Pandora's Box that implicates almost everyone in the precinct.Unfortunately this is not an investigative drama per se, because like Confession of Pain, it decides to show all its hand 30 minutes into the movie, and you'll know who are those responsible, together with who is indirectly guilty within the force.
Night isn't a bad movie but Pride and Glory is just better.This film is another film that deals with police corruption in the NYPD. |
tt0103002 | Subspecies | Three scholars -- two Americans (Michelle [Laura Mae Tate] and Lillian [Michelle McBride]) and native Transylvanian Mara [Irina Movila] -- arrive at historic Pledmar Fortress in Pledmar, Transylvania where they have obtained permission to reside while studying Transylvanian folklore. One legend has it that, some 500 years ago, a handful of peasants from Vlad Tepes' army barricaded themselves in the fortress against the Turks. When food and water was gone and the peasants ventured from the fortress, they found dead Turks with bloody throats, victims of vampires. A second legend tells about the presentation of the bloodstone, a stone from which drips the blood of saints and keeps vampires alive, keeps the vampires from biting any resident of Pledmar.The upcoming Festival of the Undead is held each year to celebrate the night that the vampires saved the people of Pledmar. In fact, the peasants believe that vampire King Vladislav Valescu still lives nearby in Castle Vladislav. But they're wrong. Unbeknown to the villagers, King Vladislav has just been murdered by his firstborn son, the evil Radu [Anders Hove], who has taken the bloodstone as his birthright and created four subspecies to do his bidding. The king's secondborn, Stefan [Michael Watson], summoned back by his father before his death, is residing at the Fortress under cover as a zoologist studying nighttime animals in and around Pledmar. Michelle and Stefan meet and are attracted to each other.On their first day in Pledmar, the girls visit the castle. It is locked but Lillian attempts to break in by feeling through the door for a lock. Unfortunately (or fortunately), she cuts herself on a nail and the girls go off for aid just as Radu answers the door. The next day, tired after a day of interviewing gypsies, the girls fall asleep outside the castle. When they awake, it is almost dark and they take a shortcut back to the Fortress. As night overtakes them, they realize that they are being followed. Before Radu can attack, however, they run into Stefan who sees them safely back and then returns to the castle where he finds his murdered father and is attacked by his evil brother. While Stefan stumbles back to the Fortress, Radu finds Lillian and sucks blood from her arm. Just as Radu prepares to drink from her neck, Stefan makes it back to the Fortress and opens her door in time to interrupt. Stefan pursues Radu back to the castle but the dawning sun almost kills him.Lillian falls ill. Michelle and Mara attend the Festival of the Undead where they photograph the villagers, all wearing masks and dancing in a cemetery. A white horse is made to jump over fresh graves. Any grave over which the horse will not jump is said to be the grave of a vampire who is promptly dug up, staked and his or her heart boiled. Michelle is pleased to see Stefan there; the two share their first kiss. Radu is also there. When Michelle leaves the festival to check on Lillian, Radu abducts Mara. Lillian dies of "blood poisoning." To protect her body from mutilation by the villagers, Karl and Michelle bury Lillian in the cemetery at the castle ruins. Then they look for Radu's coffin, but it is empty. That night, Lillian awakens and joins Radu. When Stefan wakes, he takes Michelle and Karl to a church for safe-keeping then goes looking for Mara whom he finds in chains at the castle. Before he can free her, however, Stefan is netted by the subspecies.Lillian comes calling to Michelle at the church. Michelle goes out to her and is abducted, taken to the castle, and placed in chains with Mara. Michelle manages to break the chains away from the wall. She frees Mara who turns vampire and turns on Michelle. Mara, Lillian and Radu take Michelle to Stefan who is also being held in chains. Radu plans to desecrate Michelle in front of Stefan. Just as Radu bites her neck, Karl arrives. He stops Radu, shoots rosary beads into Mara, and frees who stakes Radu with a firey pole and cuts off his head. Lillian is eventually impaled on a chandelier, and Karl cuts off her head. Stefan retrieves the bloodstone and, at Michelle's request ("Make me like you, Stefan. There's no other hope for me."), Stefan turns Michelle vampire, and they sleep together in Stefan's coffin. Meanwhile, Radu's head, lying on the floor, is approached by his subspecies. [Full Synopsis by BJ Kuehl] | cult, violence | train | imdb | bad brother as the vampire sons of old King Vlad - handsome, noble, boring Stefan and hideous, jealous, scheming, fascinating Radu - battle over the rights to their inheritance.
I wish the movie said more about its nature and history.) Into the middle of this gory sibling squabble wander the obligatory clueless bunch of cute American students, doing a research project on local folklore, and we're off to the races.Has its weak spots, especially the awkward animation and matting-in of Radu's tiny demon servants, but its energy, enthusiasm and imaginative ideas - such as the "shadow transit" by which the vampires travel, and the reptilian relish of Anders Hove's performance as Radu - easily carry it over these gaps.
Add in some gore and nudity for the high-school crowd, and the pleasure of seeing a vampire film actually shot in Romania and using its wonderful medieval locations so central to Western vampire lore, and you have a thoroughly capable and enjoyable little horror film.
Yet people today, thanks to genre rapists like Anne Rice, would rather watch vampires gallivanting about like a bunch of aristocratic Sallys.The film centers around two college girls from America (Laura Tate and the curvaceous Michelle McBride) who visit their foreign exchange student friend from school (Irina Movila) in her native Romania.
Radu has slain the father, a cameo by horror legend Angus Scrimm, thus acquiring the wrath of his good vampire brother Stefan(Michael Watson).The only drawback to this film is the lowsy swordplay, but how can Anders Hove be expected to handle a sword with foot long fingers.A vampire film done right, restoring the fiendishness to the vampire legend.Take notes Anne Rice!!.
Having killed their father the Vampire King, Radu now sets his sights on Stefan, Stefan's new mortal girlfriend Michelle and her two pretty friends, and the all-powerful Bloodstone.Okay, the scenery is beautiful, and it should be as it was shot on location in Transyl-fricken-vania for gosh sakes.
It's original, it's fun, and Radu is one of the best vampires I've seen in a long time...much more fun than the stiff, tragic, whining Undead brats that endlessly grace the horror screens these days.
"Subspecies," like many other horror films, gets a raw deal on IMDb. The majority of movie-watchers have a hearty contempt for horror, and when they occasionally rent horror films, they either want to laugh at them or cringe at excessively gory scenes.
The film's Romanian setting is virtually unique (I believe it was the first American movie made in that country, post-Communism), and the locations, both interior and exterior, are beautiful.
To risk damning with faint praise...it could be a lot dumber.Fans of the more gruesome aspects of horror will no doubt get a kick out of the blood-drooling vampire villain, Radu.
He's pretty effective in this movie - powerful, with a memorable raspy voice - but I like him better in the sequels, when actor Anders Hove gives a more self-parodying, campy performance.
As of now, the only sequel I have seen to this movie is Part IV, which I have to say is almost better than this original.I give it 10 / 10Fans of Horror Movies like this should Check out Puppet Master, Slumber Party Massacre, Skinned Alive, Sleep Away Camp, and other Full Moon Pictures flicks.
What makes Subspecies a superior effort for anyone claiming to be a Vampire fanatic,on the other hand,is obvious: The Vampire Himself is Romanian,the story is set in Transylvania (the scenes filmed on location are more than convincing),and the atmosphere is not based on any "action-packed" chases or expensive orchestral music.Radu Himself is the source of the atmosphere...
In short,if ,like me,you 're fascinated with Vampires and feel that their appearance as well as the setting should be sinister and dark,there's no better place to look in than in a Subspecies movie...
Indeed the Picture isn't a big budget production, but it is absolutely worth seeing.OK there are some faults (especially the Names of the Castle and the Locations) in this movie, but such mistakes are typically and are almost in every Horror Movie.The scenery fits perfect to the story and is close to reality,I can say that honest, because I visit them once when I was in Romania in my Vacations.In my opinion this is the Best Part of the Subspecies Series..
I didn't, and still don't know about the story line with the "Subspecies(the little demons)" Radu's Minions, but they were very well done.
Three lesbian students have come to study local folklore, but find themselves drawn into the vampires legends at just the wrong time: Vladislav has been killed.Who can say anything bad about a film featuring a cameo from Angus Scrimm?
(Maybe I am wrong, but this is probably the first film to feature rosary beads being fired from a gun.) Aside from vampires and blood, you get a share of nudity (gratuitous, but welcome) and I had to notice the excellent score from the composers (not sure who deserves credit, but those involved include Stuart Brotman, Richard Kosinski, William Levine, Michael Portis and John Zeretzka).
Radu kills his father in order to obtain the bloodstone, a powerful relic that "bleeds the blood of saints." Centuries later, two American college girls, Michelle (Lara Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), meet up with their European friend, Mara (Irina Movila), in Romania to research the local culture.
Stefan develops a relationship with Michelle, but the superstitions that the girls were researching become all too real when their blood is sought by the evil Radu.Subspecies was shot on location of Romania (reportedly the first American film to do so after the fall of communism), which adds immense production value.
BUT; the acting is fine enough, the locations are fantastic, the atmosphere in the film is great and it might just have one of the greatest movie vampires ever in the evil and grotesque Radu.
The acting was sub-par with the exception of Anders Hove (Radu) who made for a rather terrifying looking vampire.
Director Ted Nicolaou who also created the other three parts of this classic series, Bloodstone: Subspecies 2 1993, Bloodlust: Subspecies 3 1994 and Subspecies 4: Bloodstorm 1998 has created another gem in Subspecies.It stars Anders Hove who was also in the other three parts of this classic series, Bloodstone: Subspecies 2, Bloodlust: Subspecies 3 and Subspecies 4: Bloodstorm.Also starring is Angus Scrimm who was also in other classic flicks, Phantasm 2 1988, The Never Dead 1979 and was the narrator in Wishmaster 1997.It also stars Irina Movila.I enjoyed the Gothic atmosphere, animation and the look of the vampire.If you enjoyed this as much as I did then check out other classic vampire flicks, 30 Days of Night 2007, Blade 2 2002, Blood for Dracula 1974, Daughters of Darkness 1971, Daybreakers 2009, Dracula 1992, Dracula 2000 2000, Desert Vampires 2001, Fright Night 1985, From Dusk Till Dawn 1996, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money 1999, Frostbiten 2006, Dracula 1958, The Living Dead Girl 1982, Near Dark 1987, Night Watch 2004, Perfect Creature 2006, Underworld 2003, Underworld: Evolution 2006, Vampire Circus 1972, Vampires 1998, The Lost Boys 1987, Suck 2009, Underworld: Awakening 2012, Livid 2011, What We Do in the Shadows 2014, We Are the Night 2010, Afflicted 2013 and Van Helsing 2004..
Frightfully original and bewilderingly entertaining tale of Radu, an evil vampire played by Greenland (in the Kingdom of Denmark) actor Anders Hove.
Radu has slain his father (Scrimm) thus resulting in the wrath of his good vampire brother Stefan ('General Hospital's' Michael Watson).Truly original story and sharp direction by Full Moon regular Ted Nicolaou (who admits that when Charles Band asked him to direct, in Romania, he thought it was some kind of scam).
Eerie music score and cruel Minions (small red creatures that help Radu - originally played by real local people but they were so passionate in the roles that it didn't work and David Allen's fantastical animation had to be used instead) make this an all round entertaining film..
An effective enough vampire tale from Charles Band's Full Moon productions, this has the benefit of being shot on location in Romania, which gives it the kind of truly "stuck in the past", atmospheric feeling inherent to such European locales.
Anders Hove plays the incredibly creepy main character Radu, an animal like vampire highly reminiscent of Max Schreck's Count Orlok, with striking long fingered hands.
It's hard to feel much sympathy for the three girls - Mara (Irina Movila), Michele (Laura Mae Tate), and Lillian (Michelle McBride) - as they often act pretty senseless (then again, many horror movies would play out quite differently if they didn't have such characters).
Full Moon Entertainment isn't exactly well known for high quality horror; but from the few of their films that I've seen, I have to say that they're actually not as bad as their reputation suggests and although Subspecies certainly isn't completely successful and has its fair share of problems; it's actually a decent old-style vampire flick that will surely be appreciated by fans of the genre.
Lead actor Anders Hove cuts an amusing figure as the central vampire and looks like he took the wrong turn on the way to some crusty old rock concert; although he does at least deliver a decent performance that is very in keeping with the rest of the film.
In "Subspecies", Charles Band and Ted Nicolau give us two very different types of vampires in the same film, cleverly aiming to a broader audience: on the one hand, we have Stefan, a vampire that is not at all intimidating and, on the contrary, is portrayed as sweet, loving, delicate and, as one would expect, very good looking.
While Stefan is a necessary character for the story, his presence is probably more appealing to "Twilight" fans, rather than horror lovers.In "Subspecies", the story opens in a Romanian castle, with an intense confrontation between Radu, a horribly grotesque vampire and his father, King Vladislav (portrayed by Angus Scrimm from the "Phantasm" franchise).
Though this is still a horror flick about blood-thirsty vampires in Romania, romance manages to claw its way into the story, where the impossibly good looking Stefan and the devastatingly gorgeous Michelle fall in love (ugh!
Stefan and Radu will have to battle head to head in an epic confrontation that will define, not only the girls' fate, but also the entire village's.The cinematography in "Subspecies" is very artistic, while not being too all over the place and distracting, which is something that happens in certain films where the ominous photography and lighting work steal the attention from the story (not necessarily a bad thing per se, but I find that this is more appropriate for a music video or a short experimental film).
A vampire flick that was actually shot in Romania is not something that we get very frequently and one of the main reasons why people are delighted with "Subspecies" and its following sequels.
With the quietness, the beautiful eerie atmosphere, the gloomy ruins, the gorgeous forsaken landscapes, the majestic castles (yes, real castles!) and the local actors speaking in their actual native Romanian from time to time, Ted Nicolau manages to make us feel like we are visiting Romania with the three girls.
Here, the vampires are nasty little creatures that kill because they need the blood and decide to make a deal with the mortals, choosing pragmatism over an unnecessary war, which makes Radu and his evil nature stand out from the rest of his kind.
The subspecies creatures, which originate from Radu's blood, were done with CGI, which looks incredibly fake and cheap, like it belongs in a bad video game.
Radu's gigantic claw-like hands are simply too distracting, not only because of their size, but also because of the artificial look (in one scene, one of the fake hands even sort of falls off).Leaving aside my few complaints with it, and, less than perfect as it is, "Subspecies" is a very fun movie and I honestly didn't think I was going to enjoy it so much, but I think it's safe to say that it managed to claw its way into my all time favorites.
The other real issue is the low-budget feel that doesn't really let this one get any kind of really intense feel with its overall appearance since there's not a whole lot of blood and gore and the make-up effects are inconsistent which drags the look of the film down somewhat.
However, even in a sea of so many vampire flicks, Full Moon Entertainment's 1991 "Subspecies" manages to stick out, largely due to one reason: This is the film that introduced us to the character of evil vampire Radu!
The movie opens with Radu (Anders Hove) coming back to his native Romania to confront his father, Vampire King Vladislav (the late, great Angus Scrimm) for banishing him from inheriting the throne and the all powerful bloodstone, a stone that holds the blood of all the saints and which allows vampires the ability to survive without feeding on humans.
Soon enough, they discover another stranger is in their midst, the mysterious Stefan (Michael Watson) who just happens to be the good vampire brother of Radu, and who takes an instant liking to Michelle and she to him.
But above all, what makes "Subspecies" as good as it is would be the terrific performance of Anders Hove as Radu.
With his crackling voice, creepy demeanor, and evil zeal, Hove makes Radu the center point of the whole Subspecies series, despite the fact that the original intention was to make Stefan's and Michelle's love story the main focus.
The acting in the movie was quite good and the special effects impressive; especially given the film's meager budget.
A few years ago, while I was renting some movies, I came across Subspecies 4, ended up watching it and actually kind of liking it, we need a good vampire gore flick that doesn't hold back.
I think because this was the type of horror film I have been looking for, I've been looking for a good cheesy scare for a long time and Subspecies filled that spot.
Evil vampire Radu (Anders Hove) duels it out with his good brother after he befriends some women that his evil brother takes a liking to and over control of a bloodstone Radu killed to gain control of from King Vladislav (Angus Scrimm), who just happened to be their father.
Film has some interesting ideas, good effects, and atmospheric feel, but terrible acting and some rather obvious flaws.
I watched the original Subspecies movie last night and something evoked the need to comment on this film.
The bloodstone is a holy grail of sorts for Vampires and it bleeds the blood of saints, which give the vampire who drinks it an ultimate High.The fight for the Bloodstone takes an unexpected turn when 3 College Students turn up in the Brothers' territory on a school trip and Stefan has to protect them from his brothers Lusts.Like, I said, I went into this film not expecting much at all but it was one of the best low budget movies I have ever seen.
The sets and locations (Romania I think, been a while since I've seen it) are very nice and the music score did the film justice.Most of the acting was adequate, but its Anders Hove as the evil radu that steals the movie (and all the subsequent Sequels).
Another scene in the script, that can be confirmed from the original trailer shows Stefan drinking blood from a wolf, or actually in the trailer you see him coming up with blood on his chin.This movie gets a 9 because it's one from my childhood and I have fond memories attached to the characters; even though my favorite characters were Stefan and Michelle I think Anders Hove's Radu is pure feeling-evocative acting, so much feeling in his work there..
His firstborn son Radu (Anders Hove) comes in, confronts him and kills him.Three college students, Michelle (Laura Tate), Lillian (Michelle McBride), and their foreign exchange student friend Mara (Irina Movila) travel to Transylvania to study the local folklore and, by chance, run into the ancient evil vampire Radu Vladislas.Definitely recommended for people who love vampires and B-movies.
This 1991 horror film stars Anders Hove, Laura Tate, Michael Watson and Angus Scrimm.
I recommend this good vampire/horror flick..
The usual suspects, but, while this fails as a horror film to be scary, at least it passes the time in a dumb but enjoyable way.Anders Hove plays the lead vampire and is clad in Nosferatu-inspired makeup, complete with deathly pale face and incredibly long fingers.
There they rent rooms in a hotel & become curious about the mysterious ruins of a nearby castle, it turns out that a powerful & evil Vampire named Radu (Anders Hove) lives there who has stolen the Bloodstone from his father King Vladislav (Angus Scrimm).
Michele & Stefan decide to team up & rid the world of the evil Radu...Directed by Ted Nicolaou this film seems to be quite highly regarded amongst genre fans & while it's not terrible I certainly wouldn't call it very good & I could't really see anything much to get excited about.
Subspecies is a rather slow going film, not that much actually happens & while it does try to stay close to certain classic Vampire lore there's all this nonsense about a Bloodstone & some little monsters that grow from the tips of Radu's severed fingers for some reason.
There's a little bit of style here on occasion with a few scene reminding heavily of the original Nosferatu (1922) in particular the bit showing Radu's shadow coming down the stair with his long claw like fingernails standing out.Subspecies is a film that many seem to like for reasons I don't quite see, I thought it was throughly average at best & overall rather dull. |
tt1703199 | Grave Encounters | Jerry Hartfield, the producer of Grave Encounters, a famous ghost investigation television series, explains that Grave Encounters was cancelled in 2003 after the fifth episode, when the cast and crew, along with the footage for episode six, mysteriously went missing. The footage was finally recovered in 2010 and brought to Hartfield. In it, the show's host Lance Preston, along with occult specialist Sasha Parker, surveillance operator Matt White, cameraman T.C. Gibson, and fake medium Houston Grey, investigate the abandoned fictional mental asylum Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where many instances of paranormal activity have been reported since its closure.
After taking a tour of the hospital, the crew begin an overnight surveillance campaign while locking themselves inside. At first, everything is quiet, but soon, strange phenomena begin to occur, such as odd noises, doors automatically slamming shut, and (unseen to anyone but the audience) a wheelchair moving on its own. After recording a haunting where an invisible entity moves Sasha's hair, the group decides to finish their filming and wait for 6 AM when the caretaker will let them out.
However, Matt disappears while retrieving the wall cameras, and the crew is unable to radio him. Now becoming uneasy and with the caretaker nowhere to be seen, the crew eventually attempt to break down the exit doors, only to discover that the exit mysteriously loops back into another hallway, and they have no way of leaving the building. Lance soon realizes that the sun has not risen, and it is still night outside, despite their cellphone clocks showing that it is well past mid-morning.
The group attempts to find an alternate exit, including a fire escape from the roof that T.C had seen while filming the exterior, but to no avail, as the building seemingly changes around them, creating dead ends and false exits. While the group is sleeping again, someone scratches the word "HELLO" into Sasha's back. After the group encounters a young woman in a hospital gown whose face demonically distorts, Houston is separated and killed by an invisible force while stumbling around in the dark. His death is recorded by one of the wall cameras. While resting, the remaining crew awakens, only to discover that they have somehow been fitted with hospital identification bracelets.
Lance, Sasha, and T.C. eventually find Matt in a room, wearing a hospital gown and mentally unstable. As the group leaves the room, T.C. tries to bring Matt with them, but is attacked by a demonic being who drags him into a blood-filled bathtub in which they both disappear. With Matt in tow, Lance and Sasha find an elevator, and Lance goes alone to find something to wedge to elevator door open. After taking a pipe from an old hospital gurney he encounters a demonic patient. Lance panics, flees to the elevator, and pries the elevator door open. He is then attacked by the patient, but Sasha rescues him.
Meanwhile, Matt commits suicide by jumping down the elevator shaft. After climbing down a ladder in the shaft to the underground tunnels of the hospital, Sasha becomes violently ill and starts coughing up blood. The two stop to rest, and while they sleep, Sasha is covered by a strange mist and disappears. Lance alone wanders down the seemingly endless corridors as his mental health spirals downward, feeding on rats to survive.
Eventually, Lance encounters a door that appears seemingly out of nowhere, which leads to the secret operating room of Dr. Arthur Friedkin, who had performed unethical experiments on Collingwood's patients. There, he finds evidence of satanic rituals and black magic being performed on the patients. Lance then discovers a small sacrificial altar on the floor, after which he is attacked by Friedkin, who drags him away as he screams, before the camera cuts out. The camera is turned back on, showing Lance alive, though his eye is bleeding from a lobotomy done by Friedkin. He states to the camera, "He said I'm all better now...I can finally go home. For Grave Encounters...Lance Preston signing off." The screen then cuts to black. | paranormal, insanity, cult, horror | train | wikipedia | And because I know there are a lot of people out there who still have to see it, I will not spoil anything, which makes it a bit harder to review the movie at this time, but I'll give it my best.I loved the beginning of the movie, especially as a 'ghosthunters' and 'ghost adventures' fan.
If you're going to watch a movie about ghost hunters, of course you can expect slamming doors and stuff like that, I don't think one of my previous reviewers are very honest about that and I actually wonder what YOU were expecting.
Metaforically speaking: keeping ghosts invisible is usually scarier.Overall, I was greatly entertained, this was the first movie to seriously scare me while watching in over a decade, which says something coming from a die-hard horror fan (check my history).
The premise is very similar to something like House On Haunted Hill, people go into a house, or in this case a mental asylum to investigate paranormal happenings and things get nasty.Grave Encounters isn't original in any way, while watching it I was thinking "oh I've seen that happen in this movie or that movie" , it seems to have taken a lot of factors from a lot of other paranormal horror movies and rolled them all into one which I thought was excellent, the fact that it's not overly original isn't a bad thing at all, Hollywood isn't well known for it's originality, it uses formulas that have worked well before in a non direct wAy. The pacing of the scares is great, it's slowly built up so that its more intense when there finally is a genuine scare, I hate when horror movies just have cheap scares just to try and keep people interested, this movie builds tension so well, I was in the edge of my seat most of the time.
The asylum where the film is set is terrifying, the whole place just has an overwhelming sense of dread, it's the last place I would ever want to spend the night.The acting is rather decent, except for a few times when the lead male had me cringing, the dude who plays the "psychic" is awesome, he brought a little bit of a comic edge which was nice.So yeah, not the most original horror film but it still delivers genuine thrills, if you're a horror fan I doubt you'll see a better paranormal horror this year.
Every time when this found footage stuff becomes popular again a whole flood of uncreative films like this were made to make money out of the hype.While "Troll Hunter" is doing a great job with his fresh idea "Grave Encounters" is just boring.
If Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity had a mentally handicapped love child this movie would be it.Right from the beginning you get the feeling that this movie is going to be sub par even by low budget film standards.
From shaky camera work, with unneeded zooms, during interviews by a supposedly professional cameraman to more than silly looking "archive" footage of the mental hospital should have been clues to stop watching the movie and do something more worthwhile like watch the grass grow.
And, a more than predictable ending.This movie lacks everything that a low budget horror needs to have in order to be good = originality and believable acting.
The setting of the movie, mental hospital, opens up a lot of possibilities that could have made for a much better / scarier movie than this turned out to be, even on a shoe string budget.Do not waste your time if you are looking for something original or scary unless you have never seen Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, then you might find this to be, at best, half decent but, because of the acting, I doubt it..
Well while I class myself as a horror fanatic, and an avid lover of the 'Paranormal Activity' franchise, 'Grave Encounters' is woefully low on frights and everything the movie entails is really bog standard!Sean Rogerson plays leading character Lance Preston with the realism of a talking donkey, i.e. not very well.
He and his inexperienced crew of actors look far more suited to a parody than a seriously toned horror; B-Movies available on the web have a cast that can give this horrifically dreadful collection a run for their money!So without the assistance of a solidly structured cast at their disposal, The Vicious Brothers had already condemned their movie to failure however there are many other aspects which didn't do the duo any favours.Firstly, the hand-held camera routine isn't original anymore and despite it weaving it's magic for the Paranormal Activity collection and The Blair Witch Project, it backfires horribly here.
With every passing minute the clichés become endless; scares can be predicted as the duration tailors off into it's climax.Also, the CGI used in certain scenes to try and emphasise the fear factor is so shockingly bad it is laughable.The Vicious Brothers are supposed to originate goosebumps on our shivering arms with the idea that Lance Preston and his film crew are supposedly going to endure the longest night of their lives in an ancient, abandoned mental institution.
I was and am disappointed , not a very good movie by any standards and to compare it with the likes of The Blair Witch Project which was the original found footage film , it doesn't hold a candle to it in no way shape or form except that maybe it was dark ...
I went into watching this film reading the likes of "Scariest Film Since The Ring" and was really looking forward to it but I have to say that it failed to deliver in my opinion.The film starts off and for the first 30 minutes I thought maybe it was a comedy and not a horror, a comedy in the lines of the types of films like scary movie because I honesty thought I was watching a spoof of 'Ghost Adventures', the lead actor was trying to be Zak Bagans, his grammar and everything was copied from 'Ghost Adventures' from X cams to lock-down.I stuck with it thinking maybe once we go lights out things will improve but I am sorry to say that they did not and as for scary, this was not!
Generally I Am Not Into writing reviews No Matter How Good the Movie Is.But This Movie really deserves My review.The day I saw the Trailer I had a High expectation from this Movie and Thankfully It does lived up to it.The story revolves around Lance Preston and the crew of "Grave Encounters", a ghost-hunting reality television show, are shooting an episode inside the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where unexplained phenomena has been reported for years.
They soon begin to question their own sanity, slipping deeper and deeper into the depths of madness, ultimately discovering the truth behind the hospital's dark past and taping what turns out to be their final episode.After a Long Long time I saw scary Movie Like Grave Encounters in Hollywood.Hats off to The Vicious Brothers for making this Possible.They succeed to scare the living daylights out of the viewers.I have Guts to say Grave Encounters is better and more dangerous than Rec. I Loved it More than Rec. Rec Zombies can be Killed with Bullets But How would you be able to Kill someone who is Not Visible to you?
The way the movie escalates the terror, suspense and intensity was unrelenting and I have never had to cover my eyes as much or be sleepless after watching a horror movie since I saw the first Paranormal Activity and though Paranormal Activity was more effective with its scares this one was a heart pounding frightfest with ghoulish ghosts and activity around every corner as though you feel like you're right there with them in a never ending haunted house ride.
Overall this definitely deserves a wide release as it's one of the scariest, entertaining horror movie of 2011 and sure it doesn't have originality on its side and ends on a predictable but still chilling note but I got to tell you Grave Encounters will get under your skin and it gives me another reason why I love the found footage horror movies so much because they're involving and terrifyingly raw which makes most of them unforgettable.
The acting was so shoddy that this film is anything but scary.The story is lame, tried and tested before without as much as a hint of effort.The vicious brothers have come up with one of the most unoriginal stories (locked in a haunted asylum - yawn) splashed on some 'found footage' theme - which seems more about the fact that any other format would be financially not possible - and sent it out into the world as something marginally entertaining.
I really wanted to like it, I had just finished watching v/h/s which was really refreshing and I went on a last minute decision when I saw a review from a "hardcore" horror enthusiasts that this movie was great.
when i first saw the rating and the reviews i thought it was going to be the best horror movie ever but it wasn't it tells the story of fake ghost hunters who enters a mad house that turns to be hunted the place was creepy but the thing is that they didn't focus on showing more scary figures just 2 and the people kept running through the entire movie also seeing such a movie from only one point of view( the film was showed through the hunters camera) wasn't that good there were too many details hidden like did people came to search for them ?
Believing that not enough horror films built with "actual footage" have been made, The Vicious Brothers decided to join the movement directing the movie Grave Encounters, whose repetitive scenes and hugely boring development are the main elements which make it crappy, and one of the worst pseudo-documentaries I have seen.The screenplay lacks of any interesting elements, and it foists us with endless scenes of screams, frantic camera and confusing images of long corridors where nothing happens.
The Vicious Brothers tried to provoke suspense with the "home video" trick, and needless to say that they couldn't achieve it, while the characters are so irritating that I was glad when they started to get killed.In conclusion, Grave Encounters is a pathetic "horror" film with bad performances, confusing direction and a very poorly written screenplay.
It began as a parody, leaned towards an actually scary "found footage" film, and then became a supernaturally stupid farce whose second act, I can only hope, will undergo massive revisions and editing before hitting mainstream audiences.So save your time and save your money; rent Paranormal Activity 1, Paranormal Entity and House on Haunted Hill for better scares, done with stories that don't suddenly change personalities in the middle of the movie.Then again, this movie did take place in a mental institution...
It took way to long to get going and once it did nothing really happened.This movie is about a film crew who are making a show about them hunting for ghosts in "haunted" places.
The fact that this film didn't make me flinch once makes me curious to watch the paranormal movies again, to see if I had just been super stoned at the time.The premise for Grave Encounters is clever enough.
Hell, even the actors were convincing (asides from 'Matt'), which leads me to place the blame on the directors, who I hope in the future will be able to truly follow through on creating a scary movie (to their credit, the ALMOST had it here).Honestly, the whole time I was watching this movie I was thinking back to 'As above, So below', one of the few found-footage films after Paranormal Activity that got it right, and achieved true scares and suspense.
We all do it, you know, play movies in the background while we are doing other things around the home - this is not even worth doing that.After watching the film, you have to wonder how many family, friends and actors from the flicks actually rate these things online.First, the "found footage" films typically follow the same script, so taking that into account with a grain of salt.
Fine performances meet tight scripting delivered in cinema verite style and the shocks they keep them coming until the last frame.The premise is simple - reality show footage found - bla bla bla - seen it all before, done it all before but never with so much style.Kudos to the effects guys on this one too - stunning work - what so many sometimes fail to realise is that making a "reality" horror film is often far more challenging than making a "narrative" based one.Being a complete horror junkie it takes a lot to get me scared, but I have to say there's something about seeing night vision apparitions all too convincing done on shaky "handycam" styled footage that managed to get deep under my skin and stay with me for a good few hours afterwards.For those of you who want some real scares watch this one with the sound way up and the lights way down.
After compiling footage from a supposedly-missing film crew, the exploits of them filming in a haunted, abandoned asylum reveal their encounters with the supernatural still living there and their struggle to get away.Overall this one was an absolutely enjoyable effort which has a lot of great things going for it and not too much holding it down.
Grave Encounters might put you through some few dreadful moments but it ends up being a dull disappointment.A crew of a ghost-hunting tv show scouts an abandoned mental asylum and proceeds to get locked inside to try to capture any paranormal activity.
I love good haunted house films, and Grave Encounters looked like a good pick, but it ended up a big letdown as it's terribly overdone, and the excess of everything just feels like a horror comedy (a genre that I definitely do not appreciate).It starts as a mockumentary, a style that is as overexploited as it gets, but I didn't find this annoying -even if it somehow spoils the story a little bit, it sets the gloomy and ill fate atmosphere right from the beginning.
The movie is based on the "found footage" that they recorded during their stay at an abandoned mental asylum said to be haunted.What follows is more or less what you would expect from a premise like that, but -here's the good news- the film makers add some very nice surprises along the way, making it not quite the typical haunted house story.
Kudos to the film makers for the choice of location and the setting, decoration, lighting and all the technical elements, as the place is really the kind of place you wouldn't want to spend one minute at, let alone a whole night, like Lance Preston and his crew.Now, the bad news: for some reason, the makers decided that all that was not good enough, and the movie takes a different turn during the second half and very especially for the last 40 minutes or so.
When a group of Skeptics found the real one, they quickly morphed into a group of believers That may be my personal tag line for this filmWithout revealing lot of spoilers I can only say, of all the many films which already attempted the impression of "found footage" -- Grave Encounters is still considered not strong enough to scare us But if we're one of those type who is always looking for or have this kind of thirst for this type of horror-thriller, one with the likes of the first Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Last Exorcism and so on ...
Most importantly, unlike a lot of found footage type films, Grave Encounters is actually scary and I found the demon/ghost imagery very creepy!
Late night, lights out and sound all the way up is the way to go if you want to enjoy yourself with Grave Encounters!I'd give Grave Encounters a solid 7/10 because, while it could have been better, it spent at least an hour building up the scares and I didn't love the ending, my overall feeling is that this is a scary, jumpy horror that I would definitely watch again..
I have to fast forward for most of the part and it was a yawn-fest.There are some scary moments in the movie, but you feel like you want to laugh over it (particularly when there is a ghost coming out from the bathtub, I was LMFAO...ROFL).By the end I had watched the movie in half of its running time and this movie is a hybrid of Blair witch project, Paranormal activity and House on the haunted hill.
It is one of the best and scariest movies in horror of the 2000s, beats Paranormal Activity by a long shot.It starts off well, establishes the characters and has a fantastic 'behind-the-scenes' feel to the footage.
Found footage films should be close to reality, because they try to be confused with "this really happened", Grave Encounter is great in it's plot, but far to fantastic to be believable so, that really takes away the involvement for me.Gamers out there will probably feel disappointed, the movie remind me of the game Outlast SO MUCH, not only by the camera work (you will remember the game) but also because of the Mental Asylum, even when they are really close to each other the game was actually 10 times scarier than this movie was.Please, don't get me wrong, the movie is just fine and has it's merits, but if you liked the concept and want to be really scared, playing the game Outlast is far more rewarding than seeing this one..
So if you are looking for some cheap scares, you should definitely watch Grave Encounters, but if you are looking for a movie to add to your top 10 favorites, you should not waste time on this.Helix - horrible reviews. |
tt0210070 | Ginger Snaps | In a small suburban neighborhood, a mother finds her dog's mutilated body strung across the lawn. Meanwhile, a slideshow of Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle) creating staged deaths for a school project plays in their classroom. Their teacher and the school's guidance counselor, Mr. Wayne, (Peter Keleghan) demands to see them after class. Later, they smoke cigarettes and play "Search and Destroy" on the school's game field, dissing people they dislike, and imagining how they may die. Trina Sinclair's (Danielle Hampton) friend overhears Brigitte describing Trina's character and death, and tells Trina. The sisters notice this, and Ginger tells Brigitte she will "cover her" in the game. However, as Ginger is distracted, Trina pushes Brigitte into the remains of a dog, a victim of the Beast of Bailey Downs, a wild animal which has been killing pet dogs. Together, Brigitte and Ginger decide to kidnap Trina's dog that night, and imply that the Beast of Bailey Downs killed it.They set out and find the mutilated corpse of another dog. They decide to take it with them to convince Trina it is actually her dog, but, as they pick it up, a leg comes off in Brigitte's hand. Brigitte notices blood on Ginger, thinking it is from the dog, but it proves to be from Ginger's first period. The Beast of Bailey Downs attacks, and drags her into the woods screaming. Brigitte rescues Ginger. As the sisters flee, they narrowly escape being hit by an approaching van driven by Sam (Kris Lemche), which hits and kills the Beast. Brigitte finds Ginger's wounds are already healing and begs her to go to a hospital. Ginger refuses, as she does not want their mother (Mimi Rogers) to find out. After a few days, Ginger begins to grow hair from her wounds, sprouts a tail and menstruates heavily. A rift forms between the sisters after Ginger smokes marijuana with Jason, and aggressively pursues him. Ignoring Brigitte's warnings, she has unprotected sex with Jason, then kills a neighbour's dog.Frightened by what is happening to Ginger, Brigitte turns to Sam. Agreeing the Beast of Bailey Downs is a lycanthrope, he suggests a pure silver ring may cure Ginger. Brigitte persuades Ginger to have her navel pierced using the ring, but it is ineffective.Later, Trina goes to the Fitzgerald house claiming Ginger kidnapped her dog. As Ginger and Trina fight, Trina slips, hitting her head on the corner of the kitchen counter, and dies. The sisters panic, narrowly avoiding their parents seeing them as they put the body in the freezer, explaining the blood to be part of another series of death photos for the school project. Brigitte later accidentally breaks off two of Trina's fingers trying to get the corpse from the freezer. As they take Trina's body to bury it, they lose the fingers. Brigitte tells Ginger she cannot go out anymore, but Ginger remains defiant.On the pretence that Brigitte is the one "changing" instead of Ginger, they visit Sam, who suggests a monkshood solution for Ginger's illness; and informs them that the monkshood grows everywhere, however it only grows during spring. Ginger angrily tells him that they have no time, and accuses him of just wanting to have sex with Brigitte before storming out.On Halloween, Brigitte takes her mother's monkshood, which was purchased from a craft store, and asks Sam to make the cure. Sam warns her asks if it is for Ginger. Brigitte admits the truth, and promises to go to the Greenhouse Bash party.While trying to track down Ginger, Brigitte is attacked by Jason (whom Ginger infected through unprotected sex) and she defends herself by using the cure on him. She witnesses his immediate change in behavior, which proves the cure's success.Ginger returns to school looking for Jason. As Brigitte arrives, a message on the PA asks her to go to the Guidance office. She knocks, and is dragged inside by Ginger who has killed the counselor. Brigitte calms Ginger down, and goes to find cleaning supplies, but returns to see the janitor with his throat torn open. He survives, though infected, until Brigitte says he should have gotten help, which incites Ginger to disembowel him with her hand.The sisters' mother discovers Trina's corpse, and goes looking for her daughters. While she is looking for her daughters, she sees Brigitte running, and picks her up. As she drives Brigitte to the Greenhouse Bash, she tells her that she will burn the house down by letting it fill up with gas then lighting a match to erase evidence of Trina's death, and their escape. Brigitte arrives to find Sam rejecting Ginger's advances. As he approaches Ginger, she breaks his arm. In despair, Brigitte infects herself as Sam pleads with her not to. As the sisters leave, Sam knocks Ginger out with a shovel. Brigitte and Sam then take her back to the Fitzgerald house in his van, and prepare more of the cure for Ginger.Ginger fully transforms into a werewolf on the way home and escapes the van. Afraid, and unaware she has transformed, Sam and Brigitte hide in the pantry, and he makes the solution. As he goes to find Ginger, Ginger-Wolf mutilates Sam. Brigitte picks up the dropped syringe, and follows the blood trail downstairs. She tries to drink Sam's blood in an attempt to calm Ginger-Wolf, but chokes on it. Ginger-Wolf senses Brigitte's insincerity and kills Sam in front of her, then leaps at Brigitte. As Ginger-Wolf stalks Brigitte through the basement, Brigitte returns to the room where they grew up, finding the knife that Ginger had been using to remove her tail. Brigitte holds the cure in one hand and the knife in the other. Brigitte is told to leave but refuses, only to infuriate Ginger-Wolf, resulting in Ginger-Wolf lunging at Brigitte who stabs her with the knife, instead of the cure. As the movie ends, Brigitte lays her head upon Ginger-Wolf, sobbing, listening until its breathing finally stops. | comedy, gothic, murder, violence, cult, satire | train | imdb | 'Ginger Snaps', while not totally perfect, is one of the freshest horror movies I've seen in ages, and one of the best werewolf movies of recent years.
The teens act and talk like REAL PEOPLE, and the honesty about sex, drugs and puberty is rarely seen in contemporary movies, horror or otherwise.
Although Isabelle is the "Ginger" of the title and she is soo damned good, it is Perkins as Brigitte that commands respect for her effort.The Fitzgerald sisters with their fascination for 'staged horror' find themselves very much on the outer in the school social hierarchy.
I would personally nudge it up to a 7.5 but thats neither here nor there.Why it received such limited theatrical release worldwide I cannot begin to imagine, but the production teams behind SCREAM, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID...., CABIN FEVER, TCM, DOG SOLDIERS and myriad other clones, should take a long hard look at this and find out HOW to make (and stage) a horror film with pretty much no money!I would have considered that $19.95 for the dvd was money well spent!.
With Ginger on her period already she is upset about the various changes happening to her body but it is apparent to Brigitte that the changes occurring to Ginger are more sinister and she tries to find a solution.Despite the fact that the title is far too clever and silly for the film it announces this is actually a very strong teen horror.
The best playing comes from Isabelle and Perkins- the former especially giving a really good performance that makes the script alive.Overall this was a very pleasant surprise - a good teen horror movie.
I respect well-made modern horror films, but I yearn for the olden days when horror implied something a little more than just blood-'n-guts-type serial killer movies with unbeatable foes battling virgins and non-virgins in ridiculous situations.Yes, real horror films are truly hard to find nowadays, which is why "Ginger Snaps" -- a modestly-scaled Canadian werewolf movie -- succeeds as more than just another crude bit-by-a-werewolf-soon-you're-a-killer-man-beast movie.
Over the years, with unflattering productions such as "Wolf" (1994), the legend and actual horror of werewolfs has decreased and the images of the beasts have turned into some sort of cute, cuddly dog figures."Ginger Snaps" is one of the darkest werewolf films made, and one of the most realistic, too.
I'm so happy that I watched this brilliant gem of a horror movie two days ago.In those politically correct times where idiotic MTV-oriented teen slashers and comedies are made in the US,it is really good to see such original film like "Ginger Snaps".Why?Because it has some excellent suspense sequences and a rather high amount of blood and gore.The werewolf is really cool looking,the acting by two lead girls(Emily Perkins,Katharine Isabelle)is excellent and the direction is well-handled."Ginger Snaps" is a pure horror film,that is to be taken seriously.I think it ranks up there with Daniel Attias "Silver Bullet" and Joe Dante's "The Howling".10 out of 10-a perfect film for the jilted generation!.
In fact, so lovingly does the film recreate the world of two Gothic sisters (including their hopeless mother, who wants them to be normal and happy in a way that doesn't help anyone) that becoming a werewolf seems like nothing more than a natural extension to the growing pains of a disturbed teenager.
The monster looks a bit plastic-y but the film is really about the sisters, and both roles are admirably filled by two capable but very different young starlets.Perkins is compelling as the awkward, introverted class nerd, and Isabelle magnificent as the slightly scary, sexy, ex-nerd who turns into a real man-eater.
The outcast teenager sisters Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle) are very connected and have a weird pact of death between them.
While her mother believes that the menstruation is causing her changes of attitude, Brigitte seeks the cure with the local drug dealer Sam (Kris Lemche)."Ginger Snaps" is one of the best movies of werewolf ever.
This is the third time that I watch this movie, now on DVD, and I like the approach of the dramatic story, using the usual change of behavior of a teenager after her first period in parallel to a werewolf attack.
My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Possuída" ("Possessed") My previous review of 24 May 2005: Gore, Weird and Original Horror Movie Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle) are very connected sisters and very weird and morbid persons, having a great attraction with death.
Sooner Brigitte sees that she is right and tries to save her sister from the terrible fate.The first time I saw "Ginger Snaps", I did not like it, since I found the story too bloody and with an open end.
Today I have just watched it for the second time because I bought the DVD with the sequence, and now I found "Ginger Snaps" a gore, weird and original horror movie.
It is a very violent werewolf film, having two excellent lead actresses with great performances, Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle.
Grim horror story about two strange sisters--Brigette (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle).
Intelligent and gruesome black comedy isn't your ordinary werewolf flick, which may be why it's the best werewolf movie we've seen in quite some time.Misfit teen struggles to save her sister, who was bitten by a monstrous wolf and now is having some alarming side-effects.What sets Ginger Snaps a part from your average teen horror flick is the outstanding characterizations that Walton and Fawcett's well-scripted story produces.
I like to think of it more as a coming of age movie, it just so happens that while coming of age, the lead happened to be bitten by a werewolf.Ginger and Brigitte are two socially backwards sisters with a fascination with blood and death.
From then her personality and appearance changes, she blames it on her period whilst Brigitte believes her sister is becoming a werewolf.The concept sounds absolutely ridiculous but the dark, subtly twisted and almost camp way the story is told makes it so fun to watch.
The school nurse is hilariously chirpy whilst delivering a graphic and disturbing description of the menstrual cycle whereas more tense scenes, such as the demise of Trina in the kitchen, are more heavy.Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle shot right up my favourite actresses list with this film with their raw and miserable performances.If you like your Rob Zombie horror porn slashers then you will be disappointed with this.
Gothy, antisocial and obsessed with images of death, twisted sisters Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) and Bridget (Emily Perkins) are toughing out their teens in high school hell in deepest darkest Canadian suburbia.
Death obsessed Goths who get their kicks creating mocked "murders" for school projects, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are social misfits who just can't fit in, and have created a suicide pact to murder themselves by age 16 should they still be stuck in their droll, painfully boring life.
The movie opens with a pretty graphic scene of a dog that's been torn to pieces by some strange animal, and then fades pretty quickly into the story of the two Fitzgerald sisters - Ginger and Bridgette.
It happens gradually (and actually begins almost immediately after Ginger is attacked), which heightens the sense of dread, with not everything waiting for the next full moon (the lunar cycle obviously, in the context of the movie, mirroring Ginger's menstrual cycle.) As Ginger and Bridgette, Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins were bang-on perfect, capturing the characters superbly.
The movie is filled with assorted other quirky characters as well (maybe a few too many, and maybe some of those were a bit too quirky, which every now and then makes an otherwise frightening or funny movie fall into a bit of ridiculousness, although that doesn't weaken the overall story too much.) It's quite graphic at times, although nothing seemed gratuitous, and the last scenes of the movie, with Bridgette hunting Ginger down in the house, are really quite creepy and finally offer a look at a very unique looking and scary werewolf.This is extremely well done, and deserves to be considered as one of the better modern horror movies.
Ginger Snaps is quite possibly the best horror film of all time with the subtext of embracing your true persona and adapting to an ever changing life as it surrounds you..
Ginger Snaps is one of the best revisionist horror movies I've seen - if you liked "Ravenous" you'll enjoy this.
Like all the best horror films, the true subject of fear is very real - the earthquake effect of sexual maturity on teenagers, girls in this case, and the disruption of sibling relationships by differing levels of sexual maturity.
Jason, and as horror fans surely you remember Emily Perkins, who plays Brigitte, from her role as Beverly Marsh in 'It.' Anyway, Perkins does a great job as the outcast disgusted with people in general, although her constant look of antipathy on a face always half covered with hair tends to get a little old.
It's hard to accept as a protagonist someone who is constantly sneering at the world.What I really liked about the movie was the way it tied in Ginger's transformation with the raging hormones that tend to impact the lives of teenagers at right about that time of life.
Thus it is more understandable why the two sisters have developed such a bond, which is unusually close even for twins (which they are not).There is one point in the movie, after having been attacked, scratched and bitten, I think, by the neighborhood werewolf, Ginger starts to grow hair out of the huge claw-wounds on her shoulder, and in one scene finds herself talking to the school nurse, who explains to her about changes in her body, such as hair where there was no hair before.
I was not that impressed with the lycanthrope at the end of the movie, but I loved how much it was kept off screen for more than the first hour, just like Spielberg kept that shark out of Jaws completely for a good portion of the film.
I like to think that, like Spielberg, director John Fawcett knew that he had something mediocre in the effects department, if only because a living, breathing, bleeding werewolf is not the easiest thing to come up with on what must have been a less than extensive budget.It really is surprising that Ginger Snaps is able to deal almost exclusively with teens and their budding sexuality and not come off as another exploitive teen horror movie, but it succeeds because the movie is well written, directed, and performed by everyone involved.
Plus there are stretches of time where you don't care for any characters and just wish the whole film had ended early.Bah.A little too much like "An American Werewolf in Paris," except "Ginger Snaps" happily did not make the same error of relying on computer generated images.
John Fawcett, the director of "Ginger Snaps", presents a horror film that shows a lot of originality.
"Ginger Snaps" is recommended for a mature audience since there are some graphic scenes that will stay forever with younger, and more impressionable minds.Highly recommended for fans of horror movies!.
'Ginger Snaps' has both the genuinely creepy moments of the classic monster film and a searching look at the personal terrors of being a social outcast, or the uncontrollable changes of puberty.
Their relationship is put to the extreme test when Ginger is bitten by a werewolf and slowly begins to change.You can go back to 1941's THE WOLF MAN and hear from boys who saw that film and thought about the puberty angle.
The idea of sisters having to deal with this "change" on top of one of them becoming a werewolf makes for a very good gem.GINGER SNAPS pretty much came out of nowhere and become a good little hit across the globe.
But truth be told, then what was shown was quite good, and Ginger's gradual transformation was nicely done, especially the part about the tail.One of the best things about "Ginger Snaps" was without a doubt the acting performances by Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle.
Ginger Snaps is a low budget Canadian horror film that also has a subtext of growing up and puberty.Bridgette (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) are two sisters who are very close and have fascination about death.
Writer Karen Walton has given this film a feminist twist and a lot of it is due to the bond between the two sisters and Bridgette wanting to save Ginger out of that love.Director John Fawcett goes for a more realistic portrayal of High School life and more honest representation of family relationships when children hit adolescent.
The scenes of the two girls lamenting their high-school situation, how they're concerned with that project of life-like death photographs of themselves or the utterly bland and boring school-yard meandering are not that exciting and really make it hard to care all that much about the girls or their condition in the first half and really makes it hard to buy into this one as a horror movie at times.
Ginger Snaps is about two outcast sisters who have a run in with a werewolf, one is infected and their relationship is put to the test.The film relied upon the performances of the two lead actresses, and they did really well, their characters felt real, they really did great, the supporting cast didn't disappoint either, it's really surprising to see a lower budget movie with a mostly unknown cast done so well, but everyone did their jobs well, it's just all around well made.They didn't need to rely on special effects as this film was more about the characters then the werewolf itself, once the werewolf is in fully formed the special effects are good, though I'm not a fan of the design of the creature they still did a good job.Just an all around well made movie makes for a good watch..
When Brigitte's sister Ginger gets attacked by a mysterious creature and starts to change into a werewolf, but all the adults around them think she is just experiencing puberty.It has all the makings of an independent movie, the lack of CGI helps with that.
In fact, Ginger looks a little scary and menacing in some later scenes.Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle are both brilliant in their own ways as the sisters.
We fear them, but also pity them.In the Canadian werewolf movie "Ginger Snaps," it is through the character of 15-year-old Bridgette, played brilliantly by Emily Perkins, that we learn to fear and pity the fate of her older sister Ginger, played by Katherine Isabelle.Ginger's been attacked in the woods and is gradually becoming a werewolf.
It is a horror movie with enough connection to real life to stir your emotions and thoughts for days, and with characters that soak into your heart and stay there.At its core Ginger Snaps is actually a more complex story than it appears, it is about the meaning of devotion, and its failure.
They're outcasts at school, and they hate everyone.When Ginger is bitten by a werewolf in a playground at night, things begin to take a nasty turn for the worst as she begins to slowly mutate over the following month into Brigitte's worst nightmare."Ginger Snaps" is totally self aware, and the two leads (Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins) knock it out of the park in their roles as the demented Fitzgerald sisters.
There is a story line involving two sisters who encounter a werewolf near their suburban home one night, and how they deal with the changes one of them undergoes after being bit, but in the midst of some very tense scenes, someone says something that makes you burst out laughing.Ginger and her younger sister, Bridgett, played by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins, are disenchanted with suburban life and fantasize endlessly about running away or killing themselves.
The father is silent and hardly there at all.The film is about teen alienation, told through a conventional horror story line - girl gets bit by werewolf, begins turning into one, sister tries to help her out.
Ginger Snaps is definitely one of the best horror movies to come out in a long time.
The two sisters in the movie, played by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins, are played so well that they actually seem like real people (which is something you don't usually see in a horror movie).
Ginger Snaps is absolutely one of the best horror movies of the year!!
It masquerades itself as a horror movie, but really, the horror element is just a metaphor for female puberty, the pangs of growing-up and the loss of innocence.If you enjoy pastiches like "An American werewolf in London", only a bit gorier and tighter, you will have a good time with 'Ginger snaps' .
Katharine Isabelle pulls off a convincing performance as ginger a girl who is bitten by a wearwolf one night before things start going weird as her sister brigitte played by Emily Perkins who also does a great job with her character tries to cope with what is happening to her sister.
GINGER SNAPS brilliantly uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty, satirizing everything from horror films to teen coming-of-age movies, STD's, family relationships, etc., in the process.
Ginger Snaps is a fine werewolf horror film concerning two teen sisters.
Continuing to review werewolf movies in chronological order, I'm now at 2000 with this, an independently-made movie from Canada being the tale of two teen sisters-Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and her one-year younger one Brigitte (Emily Perkins).
Ginger's sister Brigette (Emily Perkins) is outstanding as she tries to save her sister.Mimi Rogers is excellent as their mother and really added to the humor of this film.It's a must-see for werewolf fans..
Ginger snaps A good film about puberty. |
tt0089003 | Death Wish 3 | Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has come back to New York City after being banned since the events of the first film to visit his Korean War buddy Charley (Francis Drake), who is attacked by a gang in his East New York apartment. The neighbors hear the commotion and call the police. Paul arrives and Charley collapses dead in his arms. The police arrest Paul for the murder. At the police station, Inspector Richard Shriker (Ed Lauter) recognizes Paul as "Mr. Vigilante". Shriker lays down the law before Paul is taken to a holding cell. In the same cell is Manny Fraker (Gavan O'Herlihy), leader of the gang who killed Charley. He and Paul fight. When he is released, Manny threatens Paul. The police receive daily reports about the increased rate of crime. Shriker offers a deal to Paul: he can kill all the punks he wants, as long as he informs Shriker of any gang activity he hears about so the police can get a bust and make news.
Paul moves into Charley's apartment in a gang-turf war zone. The building is populated by elderly tenants terrified of Manny's gang. They include Bennett Cross (Martin Balsam), a World War II veteran and Charley’s buddy; Mr. and Mrs. Kaprov, an elderly Jewish couple; and a young Hispanic couple, Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez) and his wife Maria (Marina Sirtis). After a few violent muggings, Paul buys a used car as bait. When two gang members try to break into the car, Paul shoots them with a Colt Cobra. Paul twice protects Maria from the gang, but is unable to save her a third time. She is assaulted and raped, later dying in hospital from her injuries.
Kersey orders a new gun, a Wildey hunting pistol. He spends the afternoon with Bennett handloading ammunition for it. He then tests the gun when The Giggler (Kirk Taylor) steals his Nikon camera. Paul is applauded by the neighborhood as Shriker and the police take the credit. Kersey also throws a gang member off a roof. Public defender Kathryn Davis (Deborah Raffin) is moving out of the city and Kersey offers to take her to dinner. While waiting in his car, Kathryn is knocked unconscious by Manny and the car is pushed into oncoming traffic. It slams into another car and explodes, killing Kathryn.
Shriker places Kersey under protective custody, fearing he is in too deep. After Bennett's taxi shop is blown up, he tries to get even but his gun jams. The gang cripples Bennett. Kersey is taken by Shriker to the hospital, where he escapes after Bennett tells him where to find a machine gun. Kersey and Rodriguez collect weapons. They proceed to mow down many of the criminals before running out of ammo. Other neighbors begin fighting back as Manny sends in reinforcements.
Shriker decides to help and he and Kersey take down much of the gang together. Kersey goes back to the apartment to collect more ammo, but Manny finds him there. Shriker arrives and shoots Manny, who falls to the floor, apparently dead. Shriker is wounded in the arm. As Kersey calls for an ambulance, Manny rises (he was wearing a bulletproof vest) and turns his gun on the two men. As Shriker distracts him, Kersey uses a mail-ordered M72 LAW rocket launcher to obliterate Manny. What remains of the gang rush to the scene and see Manny's smoldering remains. One of the other gang members attempts to retaliate, but Manny's girlfriend stops him. Surrounded by the angry crowds of neighbors, the gang realizes they've lost and flee the scene. As the neighbors cheer in celebration and with police sirens in the distance, Shriker gives Kersey a head start. Kersey gives a look of appreciation and takes off. | revenge, cult, neo noir, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | Death Wish 3 is the year of Rambo one of my all time favorite classic action films from Charles Bronson and it is really underrated.
This movie it is not for everyone it is more for action junkies like my self it is for fun and entertaining.To you, this is underrated misunderstood prototypical "good" action movie -- intense, violent gang war on a streets perfectly executed, original action, shown to the tune of a forgettable and occasionally insulting story.This movie was filmed the same year as Rambo: First Blood Part II and honestly Charles Bronson is Rambo in the urban jungle defending innocents on the street and fight evil in New York City.
Death Wish 3.1985 sequel, Paul Kersey, aka "The Vigilante", finds himself battling street punks in order to bring peace back to a once quiet New York neighborhood.
Despite the New York setting, the film was actually made in England.It's blisteringly fast paced, brutally violent, the characters from the cops to the punks to the citizens do over-the-top, unrealistically illegal things that they would all be arrested for in real life but go unnoticed in the world of the film, and the whole movie has a go-for-broke feel.I love The character development Paul Kersey is a hero in this movie helps, defends old people and week people who can't defend them self's.Kersey buys an ice cream to a kid, he shots and fights off the rapists twice in this movie.
Ed Lauter as Richard Shriker is a good cop who becomes Charles Bronson's alley.The script and the plot is alright and there is plenty action we have a lot of guns and automatic weapons and they are been used well.Paul Kersey and his neighbor Rodriguez use a Browning M1919 machine gun to kill several gang members before it runs out of ammo.
Both the Browning 1919 and MG42 belonged to Kersey's late Korean War buddy Charley, who apparently acquired the weapons during his stint in the Military.Paul Kersey's (Charles Bronson) uses Wildey Hunter with an 8" barrel in the movie (in real life, the gun was Bronson's personal pistol).I love the music score by Jimmy Page and I really love all the characters in here.10.
years ago I wrote Murphy's Law is Charles Bronson best movie but my personal favorite Charles Bronson movie will always be Death Wish 3.Michael Winner did really good job directing his third and final Death Wish movie.Paul Kersey uses a rocket launcher M72 LAW and blows Fraker in to pieces and bringing justice to the streets once again.Death Wish 3 is a 1985 American action film starring Charles Bronson as vigilante killer Paul Kersey and is the third film in the Death Wish film series.
In what other film can you see Ed Lauter take out Alex Winter in order to get Charles Bronson's back, a troubled gang leader seemingly calling a hotline to summon neo-nazi bikers to come to his aid, and nimble Broadway dancers wearing mesh halter-tops posing as street punks, all laid down to a soundtrack written by none other than Jimmy Page.
And while there is a fair amount of mayhem, DEATH WISH 3 is not that awful of an effort, particularly for fans of the series and its star.This time out, aging Charlie's Paul Kersey is let loose by a police chief desperate to clean up a rough part of New York City.
When a tenant of his apartment building sees Kersey setting up a booby trap, for instance, the vigilante lightheartedly says he's "thinning the herd." A line only Bronson can truly make work.So you see, the key to enjoying DEATH WISH 3 is to accept it for what it is.
The great Kersey (Charles Bronson), ignoring advice to lay low for a while (like ten years!), relocates his trigger finger and bad attitude to New York City.A long sequence where Kersey runs the streets shooting at everything in sight redefines this as a crazy modern Western.
Just to remind you, the movie is so bad and unintentionally funny (watching the film again, it'd make sense if the filmmakers were going for laughs) that if you haven't seen it, you need to.I'll leave you to ponder this one scene and decide for yourselves whether or not this movie is for you or not: Gang bikers come down the street.
I do so love the violence when the East New York neighborhood awakes and throws off the rule of punks.After roaming the streets of New York in the first film and going back to Los Angeles in the second, Charles Bronson as the legendary urban vigilante Paul Kersey returns to New York to visit an old friend who is found murdered.
This is by far and way the best of the Death Wish series.The directing is superb, (particularly the scene with Charles and Ed Lauter patrolling the streets shooting punks to a funky 70's soundtrack.)Winner builds up just the right amount of tension, action, humour and emotion at exactly the right moments.
He stalks the slums of L.A. and takes the law into his own hands, searching vengeance on crooks, hoodlums, muggers, making the neighborhood safer.This new outing contains suspense, noisy action-packed, gun-play and lots of violence.Bronson with his usual stoic acting displays amount of weapons arsenal such as a special Magnum, greatest than ¨Harry the Dirty¨ and a machine gun killing nasties.Furthermore, appear as secondary casting, Alex Winter(Adventures of Bill and Ted) as a heinous hoodlum and Marina Sirtis( Star Trek) as a young women submitted to a brutal rape.
So many scenes just make you go 'huh?' Not much makes sense.There are no developed scenes just constant cuts between such things as gruesome murders, gratuitous rapes, pointless violence or shots of Kersey (Bronson) building up his gigantic arsenal.These key weapon-accumulation scenes are Death Wish 3's equivalent of Rocky building up his muscles and one almost expects to hear "getting strong now" being sung in the background.
Too many examples of both to be mentioned here, but you can find many in other reviews.The absurd cast consists of: A bald and bitter cop, the main villain Manny Fraker who sports a weird and ridiculous haircut, a thief called the Giggler, and various gang members who look like extras from fame.Add to that awful 80s music, a laughable and unconvincing romance and a ludicrous final urban massacre with a stupendous body count and you have one the great unintentionally funny films ever made and is worth watching in that light.The violent 15 minute climax, in particular, with Kersey strafing the streets with his huge machine gun while his vengeful Latino sidekick feeds in the bullets in, is a joy to behold.
Of course, Death Wish 3 still basically a revenge flick featuring Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, an oddly charismatic architect turned vigilante taking out hordes of theatrical punks, but Winner expands on the previous films here, bringing in allusions to other genres and films, and giving Death Wish 3 added thematic and emotional dimensions.One of the new dimensions may have been somewhat unintentional, but it's one of my favorite modes, so it worked extremely well for me--an absurdist humor that stems from the context of all three Death Wish films as a continual story.
The Mad Max films (1979 and 1981) also seem to have been an influence, and Aliens (1986) was to expand its plot in a similar way the following year.To make the war-like scope of Death Wish 3 believable, Winner also makes the smart move of putting the head of police, Richard S.
The movie revolves around Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) and his return to New York City after ten years away from both it and his daunting past.
**SPOILERS** Paul Kersey, Charles Bronson, travels to the East New York section of Brooklyn NY to see an old army buddy of his Charly, Francis Drake, only to find him dying from a beating he got from a gang of thugs for not paying them their weekly protection money.
In the most ferocious and explosive "Death Wish" movie of them all Paul Kersey, who for some reason calls himself Paul Kimble in this film, takes on an entire army of New York street gangs in the burnt-out and devastated battleground of East New York with an arsenal that has just about everything, short of nuclear weapons.
Paul and his friends and neighbors, as well as the cops, take on the massive hoards of New York street gangs with everything from nail-boards to sticks and stones to heavy machine guns and anti-tank and armor piercing rocket launchers.The final confrontation in the movie has head gang leader Fraker at first surviving a barrage of bullets from Paul's .38 police special, by wearing a bullet-proof vest, getting pulverized into smatterings by a blast from Paul's bazooka.
The rocket launching bazooka that Paul used to pulverize the startled Faker was a WMD, weapon of mass destruction, powerful enough to take down a giant B52 bomber!Charles Bronson as the big city vigilante Paul Kersey showed again, like he did in his two previous "Death Wish" films, that when you mess with him and those dear and near to him you've opened the very gates of Hell on yourself..
its the fan favorite of the series and its not hard to see why, The First 2 Death Wish films were serious in Tone with some minor hints of black humor, But Death Wish 3 on the other hand takes the series into another Direction, they really camp it up and Turn the Action up to 11 an make it a more traditional Action Film in the style of films like RAMBO and COMMANDO, and it wasn't really surprising that the film went in this direction, as it was made in 1985 and during that time, films like COMMANDO and RAMBO were very popular, and me also being a fan of those kinds films, i found Death Wish 3 to be an Extremely Fun movie.The Plot involves Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) Returning to his original home city of New York to Visit an old Army Buddy, when he arrives at his Buddys Apartment he finds him beaten to death, The Police burst into the Apartment and arrest Kersey suspecting him as the murderer, however the police Chief (Ed Lauter) recognizes Kersey as the one man army from years before, and grants him freedom under the condition that he helps him eradicate all the gangs who terrorize the Neighbourhood where Kersey's Friend was killed.Now, the Plot of the film is very Far-fetched and the Dialogue is Cheesy and Sadly Charles Bronson Doesn't really give the best acting performance in this Installment.
However the film is entertaining thanks to Incredible Action scenes in the last half hour and a lot of funny moments, and some of the Supporting Cast is likable the Chief( Ed Lauter) and another Friend of Kersey's (Martin Balsam) give decent performances, and the Villain played by (Gavin O' Herlihy) Is truly evil in that 80s street punk leader kind of way.
However what truly impresses me is Charles Bronson's Physical Work, At 64 years old during the making of this film ,He really seems to have no problems Running Around with a giant machine gun as well as Jumping off and Climbing up Fire escapes, and another good thing is there's not as many rape scenes in this film as in the 2nd film, that doesn't mean there isn't any but they are not as Gratuitous as they were in the 2nd film, And Finnally the Score By Jimmy Page is as Cool as ever.Obviously you cannot take Death Wish 3 Seriously, its popcorn entertainment at its finest, So Sit back and Switch off your brain and you'll have a hoot with this film.OVERALL: 7/10.
Vigilante Paul Kersey (Bronson) is back on the streets once again, dispensing his own form of justice to a whole plethora of punks, robbers, rapists and murderers.WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD This time round, Kersey is blackmailed by local constitutional rights violator Richard S Shriker (Ed 'monkey' Lauter in a career best performance) into administering some after hours justice, outside of the federal court system.The action centres on a run down neighbourhood, where gang leader Manny Fraker, recently released from jail, steps up his crime-wave on the long suffering residents.
Sometimes these kinds of films work, IE, Troma movies...but watching Martin Balsam and Charles Bronson slum it up like this is painful....What's even funnier is I pulled up IMDb to see what other people said and it actually scores a 4.1/10???
Michael Winner (who directed the previous two entries) and Charles Bronson (again reprising his role as architect Paul Kersey) are the names that technically defined this type of movie, but this time out there's an ominously present apathy and indifference that bleeds through the screen and into your brain.
"Death Wish 3" plays like 5 crumpled, coffee-stained pages of script ideas somehow inflated to a feature-length film, and it shows: from the underdeveloped, unnecessary, and absurdly contrived romantic subplot to the faint supporting cast to the final reel, in which Bronson mows down a seemingly endless parade of scum (bodies are propelled backward by gunfire; stuntmen fall off roofs), it's as if everyone sighed and said "I give up!" before the cameras even started rolling.
Kersey decided to set the war with Franker and his gang.I accepted that Death Wish III was one of the most straightedge and extreme violence action film which I had seen from the past.
If you like Charles Bronson and want to see him bust up some punks and like to see great revenge films with great action then watch Death Wish!.
He definitely deserved a bigger career.So despite a star like Bronson, and a great supporting cast including O'Herlihy, Lauter, the very pretty Deborah Raffin and even Martin Balsam (who was in On The Waterfront and 12 Angry Men, remember) what makes this such a "so bad, it's good" kind of movie?
In death wish 3 the Apocalyptic gritty streets of New York City is a battleground for street creeps & psycho gangs & they are terrorising a big old tenement building in a really rough & rundown neighbourhood & no one will help these poor old folks until PAUL KERSEY (Bronson) shows up to visit a friend who has been killed by those creeps.
part 3 is ultra violent & full of fun & absolutely crazy with ridiculous dialogue & character interactions but it's still so much FUN & that's because BRONSON is such a great screen presence & is perfect in the role of paul kersey & has NEVER been more fun,So yeah ever since watching this late at night & absolutely loving the craziness of part 3 i adore it so much as i grew up on 80s Action & this is like the Schwarzenegger classic Commando it's that action packed!!!
The opening credits are barely over before Charley is murdered by gang members and Paul is arrested as the prime suspect.Death Wish 3 is one of those classics that you can watch with a group of friends and just laugh through the entire movie at all the wonderful moments it has to offer.Below are just a few things you'll learn while watching this superb piece of movie-making: 1.
Death Wish 3 (1985): Paul Kersey is back in New York City (filmed in England) to visit an old army buddy who happens to live in one of the most toughest parts of the city.
Death Wish 3 (1985) 92 minutes 18 - for graphic violence and a sexual scene Plot - Architect/vigilante Paul Kersey arrives back in New York City and is forcibly recruited by a crooked police detective to fight street crime caused by a large gang terrorizing the neighbourhood's.
I think I can almost stop right there when discussing this film whichis a definitive improvement over the previous film death wish 2 which exploitative garbage at its worst this isn't a great movie either but there's a lot more depth to the story and generally serviceable performances buy the cast especially Charles Bronson who is suitably adequate as the title character Paul kersey and Ed lauther as a grumpy no-nonsense police officer who assists kersey in battling the street gang who lead by suitably terrifying maniac played by Gavan O'Herlihy as manny Faker and preposterous but fun choreographed action scenes especially the heart wrenching finale which left me on the very edge of my seat until the very end .
Charles Bronson is back as Paul Kersey and this time he's planning on cleaning up all of New York City's gangs of thugs.For me, this is where the film series spins in a different direction completely.
Instead of Paul Kersey (Bronson) just seeking revenge for the death of his wife (Death Wish) and the death of his daughter (Death Wish II) - now he's more of an action hero who is cleaning up all of New York City's gangs that have grown more violent since the first two films.
Charles Bronson/Paul Kersey is back, and this time he's taken up the gun once more to avenge his one-dimensional girlfriend who was murdered by the hands of a vicious street gang.Now that the plot's out of the way, the good: Bronson returns; the action scenes are arguably the best of the series; the villains are nasty; rape is minimal-to-non-existent; the acting is bad, but on a fun level and not a cringeworthy level; it doesn't pretend to be what it isn't.
i had already seen the first two death wish movies but liked this one out of all of them just because it's great to see someone like charles bronson who was well into his sixties at the time of the film.
Excellent acting of Bronson, one of the though guy´s in the movie world this is the best movie of the sequel of death wish, Paul Kersey is a "cool" avenger/punisher, a very good GUN ----> Caracther of Bronson if great for this kind of movies, if you like a good action film this is the one, some scenes are very comic, a fan of Bronson, don´t bother with the classification, watch it.. |
tt0064160 | Cherry, Harry & Raquel! | The film begins with a monotone narration about the developing evil of marijuana in modern society and the need for vigilance in stopping the actions of the "pushers" and the "smugglers."
Harry, a small town border sheriff, lives at the site of a defunct silver mine with his girlfriend Cherry, an Englishwoman who works as a nurse. The blonde Raquel (Larissa Ely) is a writer and works to sexually pleasure the local men for the enjoyment of it. Cherry and Raquel are intrigued with meeting each other, but Harry prevents this meeting as he feels that the idea of two women having sex is "un-American."
Harry and his Mexican-American associate Enrique, work for local politician Mr. Franklin (Frank Bolger) in an operation in which they divert marijuana through the border. Mr. Franklin informs Harry that their associate "Apache" has gone into business for himself and must be eliminated (killed). Harry summons Enrique (who is in bed with Raquel) and they go to the desert to look for Apache in order to carry out their plan. They fail and Apache gets away and manages to steal Harry's jeep.
Frustrated with repeated failures to kill Apache, Mr. Franklin calls Harry to tell him he is taking too long and that now Enrique also needs to be killed because he knows too much. They set Enrique up to deliver drugs to the mine where Harry will kill him. En route to the mine, however, Enrique is killed in the desert by Apache who brutally runs him down with Harry's jeep. When Raquel arrives at the hospital where Mr. Franklin is staying to sexually service him, she finds he also has been murdered by Apache.
Raquel is in the hospital recovering from the shock of finding Mr. Franklin dead. Her assigned care nurse turns out to be Cherry. When Cherry enters her room for nursing duties, Raquel produces a small case containing marijuana cigarettes. They share a couple of joints, then dance naked together and have a sexual experience.
Meanwhile, Harry is alone at the mine, still waiting for Enrique. Apache shows up instead, driving up in Harry's jeep and taunting him with the horn. Harry comes out shooting and they trade multiple gunshots. Finally, after each having been shot several times, Harry drops dead and Apache falls dead on top of him while Cherry and Raquel continue to have sex in the hospital. | pornographic, psychedelic, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | Like "Supervixens," the film is a swiftly paced excursion into sex and violence.
The story takes place in the Nevada desert
Frank Bolger is a conspicuous man in the community who also happens to run a drug-smuggling ring on the side
The local sheriff is in on it, acting as his hit man.After a hot scene with one of the local women, Bolger orders the sheriff to eliminate the Apache (John Milo), an Indian who has been cutting into their marijuana sales...
The sheriff reluctantly agrees, takes the boss's woman home, and relieves his frustrations on her before trying to carry the Indian away
Meyer does indeed have a fascination for very richly gifted women, and this film is no exception
The scene where Bolger talks the nurse into giving him a body massage is a classic erotic tease
Also, Meyer has very cleverly juxtaposed a sensual lesbian scene against a bloody battle between the sheriff and the Indian
But much of the sex is unmotivated
Meyer cuts so quickly, however, that it is more of a lack of respect tease than an exploitive treatment of sex
Larissa Ely (Raquel) is wonderful as the steamy, sweaty, desert young woman
Linda Ashton (Cherry) is delightful as the sexy nurse, but Charles Napier steals the show as the violent, explosive, cruel of a sheriff.
Meyer near the "top" of his form.
It makes one wonder about the footage (half the film) that the processing lab irretrievably lost.
Too bad too because although Meyer improvised by reshooting footage of huge-breasted Uschi Digard (and who can argue with that?), I'd be willing to bet that the lost footage was even better.
Not that I don't have anything at all against Uschi (I don't), but I get the distinct impression the missing footage would have even been more erotic.
If the missing footage is anything like the most erotic scene in the movie - the seduction of the Franklin Bolger character by the nurse = it would have blown the audience right out of their seats.
The jump cuts featuring Uschi are nice to look at but without any substance they cannot be put into proper perspective as relative to the film.
Charles Napier is fine as the corrupt sheriff (he plays bad guys extremely well) but it is the amply endowed women in the cast that steal the show..
Meyer shot a movie and lost half of it.
Russ Meyer is a genius at cutting films.
And from other examples of his work you can tell he had the whole multi, jump cut vision in his head.
Shooting plenty of coverage to get the whole hyper-active, ceaselessly interesting story told.
But Cherry, Harry and Raquel was completely shot when the lab ruined over half the footage.
Meyer was forced to improvise and Uschi Digart became the scene padding "Muse".
The afterword narration becomes a completely overboard retelling of the whole movie.
But for all those sad concessions to losing whatever Meyer might have made of this story, it's one of my favorites.
Charles Napier absolutely rules.
Meyer's kinetic film cutting was far ahead of it's time.
The climactic final shoot out is just bloody and macho and totally hilarious stuff..
One of my favorite Russ Meyer films.
Harry Sledge (Charles Napier) is a small-town sheriff who doubles as a drug runner for an old, rich pervert.
He gets involved with the old man's woman, plus another big-breasted girl.
The film features typical great dialogue, masterful editing, photography and wonderful sex scenes.
It also has some great action scenes and is surprisingly bloody.
Charles Napier gives one of his best performances.
I'm sorry to say my least favourite Russ Meyer movie.
Contains full frontal Charles Napier!.
Try as I might I can never get as enthused about 'Cherry, Harry and Raquel!' as much as I am about nearly every other Russ Meyer movie I've seen.
It starts off well enough with an impassioned plea against censorship superimposed over a background montage which includes two buxom babes rubbing their breasts together.
It looks like it is going to be Meyer at his most outrageous, but sadly it gets very dull very quickly.
The script is just simply not up to Meyer's usual high standards, either plot-wise or dialogue-wise.
It's co-written by Meyer with Tom Wolfe, though don't get excited it's not THE Tom Wolfe of 'Electric Kool Aid Acid Test' fame.
Anyway, legendary tough guy character actor Charles Napier plays Harry, a corrupt sheriff involved in the smuggling of "the mind bending narcotic" marijuana.
His partner is played by another Meyer regular, the fabulous Franklin Bolger.
Napier and Bolger almost single-handedly salvage this mediocre movie, which almost comes to a standstill every time Cherry (Linda Ashton) and Raquel (Larissa Ely) are on screen.
This was their first and last Meyer movie, and it's no mystery why, they just aren't up to the standards set by Tura Satana, Haji, Erica Gavin or Kitten Natividad.
If anyone of those actresses were substituted for Ashton or Ely this movie might have really sizzled.
Another legendary Meyer babe Uschi Digard IS on hand for naked dancing and posing against the desert locations, which is very striking and memorable, but Uschi, Napier and Bolger aren't really enough for me.
I still find this one a great disappointment.
I would only recommend it to a diehard Meyer fan.
Others looking for an introduction into his astonishing oeuvre would be better to start with 'Faster Pussycat!
Kill!', 'Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls', or 'Supervixens' (which may or may not be a sequel of sorts to this one, as Charles Napier plays a violent cop called Harry in both movies).
All three of those are utterly brilliant and are among Meyer's best work..
Begins and ends with a diatribe against our society that is ANYTHING but erotic!.
Sex and violence in a desert town as sheriff Harry (Charles Napier) gets involved in bushwhacking and murder.
More breasts and bloodshed from Russ Meyer, with minimal plotting interrupted by staccato clips of naked women frolicking in the dunes.
It's obviously a bad picture, but it does have Napier and he's worth watching in just about anything.
I loved Pauline Kael's assessment of his rock-solid stature in her review of "Citizen's Band" (she called him "an erotic Steve Canyon").
He has criss-cross scars on his face and a smile that has a maniacal bend (like Nicholson's Joker without make-up) and his sex scene with Raquel--or is that Cherry?--in the sand is really something to see (and one of the few times the film is not chopped up to provide deeper meaning in the subtext).
Cherry, Harry & Raquel: A black mark on Meyers record.
To all the critics who consider Meyers work near porn I always say this, he essentially makes Carry On style movies and but adds boobs to keep peoples attention.Granted they aren't as funny as the Carry On classics but they do have their own special charm once you get past the gratuitous usage of a certain pair of popular lady parts.Sadly this particular Meyer film lacks any laughs at all, is short on charm and with the exception of the always excellent Napier even the cast falls flatter than a flat thing on the flattest day of it's life flattened by an electrified flattening machine.
Not suggesting at all that I watched Russ Meyers movies as a youngster for any nefarious reasons but now into adulthood the mere sight of a nipple does not make me jump up and down, whistle and bang my head with a frying pan repeatedly looney toon style..
An uncharacteristic disappointment from Russ Meyer.
Russ Meyer's career got raunchier as it went on and his 'more serious' early films as well as his comical later efforts both have their plus points.
Cherry, Harry & Raquel comes almost in-between the two sides of Meyer's career and almost feels like a dress rehearsal for the likes of Up and Supervixens, as we get all the raunchiness of Meyer's latter day films but it's incredibly poorly strung together and unfortunately, unlike the later efforts, the result is a film that has a handful of interesting scenes, as well as a bucket load of rubbish and boring ones.
At times it feels like Meyer shot a load of footage and just stuck it together.
As the title suggests, the plot focuses on three main characters - unsurprisingly called Cherry, Harry and Raquel.
Harry is a police sheriff with a sideline in drug smuggling, and a local apache has got wind of this, leading Harry to track him down.
Harry also has an eventful love life, with no less than two luscious and buxom beauties to choose from - there's Raquel, a prostitute, and Cherry; a nurse.Despite not being among his best work, Cherry, Harry and Raquel does feature Meyer's trademark style.
We've got plenty of sex and nudity, as well as some fairly vicious violence, some good dialogue and Meyer's trademark fast editing.
Most of the film takes place in the desert and this provides a good setting for the movie, and also helps to give the film it's most memorable moments - namely, Uschi Digard posing naked against desert backdrops.
This is the first Russ Meyer film to star Charles Napier - the memorable actor who would go on to steal the show in Meyer's 1975 masterpiece Supervixens.
He's not as good here as he was in Supervixens; but the performance is something of a landmark as Napier was one of the first men to do a full frontal nude scene.
Naturally, Meyer doesn't let his audience down with his choice of actresses; Larissa Ely and Linda Ashton are both great (especially unclothed) and their screen time together is one of the best moments of the film.
Meyer often tried to give his films a point and it usually serves only in making his films sillier and more bizarre - and that is the case here too; although the ending monologue will provide some laughs.
Overall, this is probably the worst Russ Meyer flick I've seen so far and despite some positive elements - there really isn't much to recommend it for..
Hilarious Russ Meyer flick shot in the desert with big-breasted babes,lots of car chases and illogical inserts of naked women.
Charles Napier is fun as corrupt sheriff running drugs for his boss,slimy Franklin Bolger with the help of nasty Enrique,the Mexican sidekick.
Everyone is having sex,Franklin with Racquel,Harry with Racquel,Enrique with Racque,Harry with his girlfriend Cherry,Cherry with Franklin,Cherry with Racquel,all set to Russ Meyer's endless cutting back and forth with scenes that make no sense at all.
Racquel is supposedly the town hussy,living with Enrique,but she likes Harry and his girlfriend.
There's lots of simulated sex,bare bottoms and boobs,a quick frontal shot Of Charles Napier,and lots of gory violence.
The plot is hard to follow but twist ending pulls it all together,or does it?
A true laugh-fest because everyone takes it seriously although the viewer is laughing their heads off by the time it's through..
Dear Russ Meyer, your film had some great erotic scenes.
The lesbian scene with Linda Ashton and Larissa Ely was particularly impressive.
I cannot believe Linda Ashton did not act in more movies.
What an enormous waste of talent.Charles Napier is another great square jawed all-American hero/villain.
Frank Bolger is a terrific actor.
He was as entertaining as the naked ladies.
Bert Santos role must rank as one of the funniest by a Mexican in American cinema.A lot of reviewers on IMDb were praising the editing.
The film was almost cut like a music video with the main plot interspersed with scenes of men and women cavorting naked.
The monologue at the end- I am not sure what that was all about.
But this was great erotic entertainment.
But this was great erotic entertainment.
Thanks Russ.Best Regards, Pimpin..
The Toys Of Our Time.
This movie was co-written, produced, and directed by the legendary Russ Meyer.
Harry (Charles Napier) is a small town sheriff.
He lives with his girlfriend Cherry (Linda Ashton), who works as a nurse.
Harry's associate Enrique (Bert Santos) is sleeping with his girlfriend Raquel (Larissa Ely), who works as a prostitute.
Harry and Enrique are in the employ of the old, corrupt Mr. Franklin (Frank Bolger).
Mr. Franklin informs Harry that another associate named Apache (John Milo) has gone into business for himself, and must be killed.
Apache avoids the ambush Harry and Enrique had set up for him.
Later, Apache steals Harry's jeep, then runs over and kills Enrique.
When Raquel arrives at the hospital where Mr. Franklin is staying to sexually service him, she finds that he has been killed by Apache.
Raquel stays in the hospital, recovering from the shock of finding Mr. Franklin dead.
Her nurse Cherry takes care of her, which includes having sex with her.
Harry: "I don't like women messing around with women.
It's un-American." Uschi Digard, as a supporting character named Soul, runs around naked in various settings, without advancing the plot.
Looking at Uschi when she was in her prime is worth the price of the movie.
As for the movie's characters, the narrator accurately states that they're "superficial in their makeup, but so necessary to our way of life.".
RM's Psychedelic surrealist film.
Uschi Digard looks like the 50 foot woman in this film.
She is the 'Lost Soul' of the film.
Dancing and bouncing through out the desert in nothing but thigh high patine leather booths and a chain around her waste.
She interprets the convoluted plot about a corrupt sheriff who smuggles pot through the Mexican boarder into the USA.
This film has three introductions.
The first is a script about freedom of choice and speech that scrolls over a lightening fast montage of Uschi bouncing around.
The montage is so kinetic that the words of freedom of choice become obsolete...
Intro number two is a bold narration about the evils of marijuana corrupting the minds of today's (1969) thrill seeking, turned on-generation.
The third intro is the film's opening credits...
RUSS MEYER'S CHERRY & HARRY & RAQUEL.
A blonde woman and a young man are seen driving in the desert.
They stop the car and begin fornicating next to the sand and brush and cacti while the psychedelic song, "Toys of Our Time," blasts on the soundtrack.
The film ends with the narrator giving the audience a moral road map of the characters.
SPOILER: The VERY end of the film reveals that the whole plot has been the novel or story of a female author.
The film alludes that the said author is carrying on an incestuous relationship with her brother.
A great pot head film!.
From Tom,Dick and Harry To Cherry,Harry & Raquel!.
With having recently gotten back from a week long mountain climbing holiday,I decided to kick start my movie viewing by taking a look at auteur film makers Russ Meyer's last ever "Soap Opera" film.The plot:Taking advantage of a growing thirst in the black market for marijuana,a local politician called Mr.Franklyn decides to use his powers to sort out a deal with small time sheriff Harry and police officer Enrique which allows for the drug to be illegally driven through the boarder.Initially enjoying the fruits of their success,with the politician getting very friendly with a number of the small town women,Franklyn is caught by surprise,when Enrique announces that he is leaving the partnership,and going into business for himself.Fearing that Enrique is going to unleash all of the details about their dirty partnership,Franklyn quickly arranges a secret meeting with the loyal,but dimwitted sheriff Harry.Pulling Harry's focus away from his long-legged girlfriend just about long enough for him to get a grasp of the potential threat that Enrique is to their business,Franklyn orders Harry to go on a hunt for Enrique,so that he is stopped from giving anyone a whiff of the illegal activates which have been taking place in the town.Agreeing to Franklyn's demand,Harry soon begins to discover that tracking down Enrique may be much more difficult than originally expected.View on the film:For what would be the final title in co-writer/ (along with Tom McGowan) co-producer/co-editor (along with Richard S.
Brummer)/cinematography/director Russ Meyer's overlooked "Soap Opera" era,Meyer and McGowan appear to be largely focus on the visual aspect of the movie.Meyer and McGowan's focus on the visual side,sadly leads to some of the great whip smart exchanges that Harry and Franklyn have with each other being ones which don't deliver the full sparks that they seem to promise,due to Meyer and McGowan giving the movie a plot,which despite one or two good sharp turns (including an unexpected murder) never feels that it is building to a dramatic,natural conclusion.Whilst the screenplay sadly fails to light up in the way that it initially appears,Russ Meyer and co-editor Richard S.
Brummer reveal an astonishing eye on making the movie one which marks the beginning of a new era for Meyer,and the end of another.Giving the film a delightfully surreal atmosphere,Meyer separates the main sections of the films plot with a number of snappy,and off-beat dream like severance's,which thanks to the sharp editing of Meyer and Brummer helps to give the movie a surprisingly colourful Fantasy element.Rubbing abrasively against the Fantasy element,Meyer also gives the movie a strong Film Noir mood,with Meyer showing the desert based town to be one where morals can be brought at any price,which along with allowing Meyer to display the most amount of flesh that he had ever exposed in a vivid manner.Along with the Noirish side,Meyer also show a tough,aggressive Horror edge,thanks to the scenes of Harry closely chasing after Enrique having a chilling Supernatural feel about them,with Meyer also letting bright red blood flow for the first time in any of his movies,as Franklyn and Harry begin to wonder about how far they will have to go to keep their business partnership from fading into a puff of smoke. |
tt0450345 | The Wicker Man | Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) journeys to the remote Hebridean island Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Rowan Morrison (Gerry Cowper), about whom he has received an anonymous letter. Howie, a devout Christian, is disturbed to find the islanders paying homage to the pagan Celtic gods of their ancestors. They copulate openly in the fields, include children as part of the May Day celebrations, teach children of the phallic association of the maypole, and place toads in their mouths to cure sore throats. The Islanders, including Rowan's mother (Irene Sunters), appear to be attempting to thwart his investigation by claiming that Rowan never existed.
While staying at the Green Man Inn, Howie notices a series of photographs celebrating the annual harvest, each featuring a young girl as the May Queen. The photograph of the most recent celebration is suspiciously missing; the landlord (Lindsay Kemp) tells him it was broken. The landlord's beautiful daughter, Willow (Britt Ekland), attempts to seduce Howie, but he refuses her advances.
After seeing Rowan's burial plot, Howie meets the island's leader, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), grandson of a Victorian agronomist, to obtain permission for an exhumation. Lord Summerisle explains that his grandfather developed strains of fruit trees that would prosper in Scotland's climate, and encouraged the belief that old gods would use the new strains to bring prosperity to the island. Over the next several generations, the island's inhabitants fully embraced the pagan religion.
Howie finds the missing harvest photograph, showing Rowan standing amidst empty boxes. His research reveals that when there is a poor harvest, the islanders make a human sacrifice to ensure that the next will be bountiful. He comes to the conclusion that Rowan is alive and has been chosen for sacrifice. During the May Day celebration, Howie knocks out and ties up the innkeeper so he can steal his costume and mask (that of Punch, the fool) and infiltrate the parade. When it seems the villagers are about to sacrifice Rowan, he cuts her free and flees with her into a cave. On exiting it, they are intercepted by the islanders, to whom Rowan happily returns.
Lord Summerisle tells Howie that Rowan is not the intended sacrifice — Howie himself is. He fits their gods' four requirements: he came of his own free will, with "the power of a king" (by representing the Law), is a virgin, and is a fool. Defiant, Howie loudly warns Lord Summerisle and the islanders that the fruit-tree strains are failing permanently and that the villagers will turn on him (Lord Summerisle) and sacrifice him next summer when the next harvest fails as well; Summerisle angrily insists that the sacrifice of the "willing, king-like, virgin fool" will be accepted and that the next harvest will not fail. The villagers force Howie inside a giant wicker man statue, set it ablaze and surround it, singing the Middle English folk song "Sumer Is Icumen In." Inside the wicker man, a terrified Howie recites Psalm 23, and prays to Christ. He curses the islanders as he burns to death. The wicker man collapses in flames, revealing the setting sun. | revenge, cult, murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | I haven't seen the original, but just wanted to drop a quick note to anyone who happens to scroll down this far: Wicker Man is the worst movie I've seen this year.
If you're reading this, there's probably a good chance you may have seen a YouTube video that has become very popular: a collection of "highlights" from the movie, including Cage running around in a bear suit, and of course, the infamous "AAGHH!!
I have no doubt that I was seeing a suffering man up there but it was Nicholas Cage fully aware of the fact that he was in the worst movie of his entire career..
The original, as campy as it looks compared to today's standards, has a lot to be proud of in the 1982 remake with Kurt Russell (my all time favorite horror movie).
"The Stepford Wives" anyone?) Classic symptoms from men who are afraid of what may happen if women got their sh*t together and were truly equal citizens.The problem with the man-hating female society is that it makes uninteresting movie viewing and creates unintentional humor when Cage starts knocking women out.
Anyone not aware of the 1973 original British Lion movie ' The Wicker Man' would,no doubt, have left the cinema with the impression 'Poor' and 'Peurile'.As a devotee of the original I left with the impression Purely Poor.From the grim reality of haggle toothed inbreds drawing the force of law and order into a web of paganistic barbaric ritual on a remote Scottish island, named Summerisle(the original) to a near Amazon-ic colony off the Maine coast of the US, named Summersisle, the remake hardly hits the spot.This is, quite sadly, a case of what 'could' have been a classic remake of a classic being tampered with to cater for a simple minded public.
Save your time and money!!!Nicgolas Cage was biking down hills, swimming in murky water and rolling down hills while being attacked by bees but yet his suit was still perfectly pressed and shirt crisp white until the very last scene.Although a good cast with Ellen Bernstein and Cage the acting was just as unbelievable as the movie itself.
But unlike the original, which the weirdness in that adds to the film's strange qualities about it, this one does weirdness in such a way that makes it enjoyable to watch, just not in the way the director intended.So the plot, a cop troubled with the death of a mother and child via truck that he was partly responsible for, he is sent a letter by an ex-girlfriend that reports her missing child on the island she lives (kind of outside his jurisdiction, really) that may or may not be his.
It was a pointless remake of a classic British film starring Nicholas Cage and re set in the States.The first question I find myself asking is why did I watch this?
On a Sunday night.The Original film is slowburn with a quirky offbeat kinda feel.With a remake, all of the unknown plot points and twists from the first film would be apparent to the audience, so surely the impact would need to be replaced and the tension built through another means?Wells sadly in this film having Nic Cage run around punching women in the face whilst dressed as a bear is about as tense as it gets.Yes, that's right - he punches women whilst dressed as a bear.Dear me.Avoid..
In the case of the 2006 remake of the 1972 cult classic The Wicker Man however, it made me think that this new Wickerman is about as scary as the South Park character, Scuzzlebut, the friendly forest monster with TV's Patrick Duffy for a leg and a celery stalk for an arm who's favorite hobby is weaving wicker baskets.3 years ago a friend of mine in Hollywood told me that he heard that Nicolas Cage was going to do a remake of the film.
Like many of the countless Hollywood remakes we have been inundated with lately this feels like we are watching 4th graders on a playground "playing Wickerman".The original film takes place on a remote Scottish Isle where a Scottish police officer is lured there to find a missing young girl named Rowan Morrison.
Nicolas Cage's character had me in stitches in so many places, because his acting in this movie is SO bad its hilarious!
In the recent vogue of remaking movies at a fair clip, writer-director Neil Labute has decided to turn his eye to the early 1970s minor cult classic The Wicker Man. The original has developed a following over the years and is generally well regarded.
While not a terrible film, The Wicker Man is nevertheless not great by any imagination, occasionally sliding into the realm of unintentional self-parody.The film opens on police officer Edward Malus (Nicholas Cage), a motorcycle cop who is witness to a horrific traffic accident involving a young girl and her mother.
After some investigation, Malus becomes more and more convinced that not only is Rowan still on the island, but she may be the eventual subject of a ritualistic sacrifice to the naturalistic gods the people worship.The Wicker Man falls apart in a number of different ways, but no more detrimental than in the performance of Nicholas Cage.
A few of its "revelations" are so difficult to swallow that it is hard to even believe the whole of the structure of the film.Even so, The Wicker Man has a sometimes atmospheric setting , there are some occasional bits of creepiness and the ending will most likely leave you a bit taken aback.
Being a life time horror movie fan, and having (obviously) seen the original, I was interested to see what this new school would bring to the story.
I think that the important thing to remember here is that it's a movie- a brief distraction from real life whose purpose is to entertain- NOT a commentary on paganism.This "remake" actually manages to stand on it's own as a new entry into the horror archives.
The rest of the cast didn't do any better, and the direction was formulaic; a *big* mistake in a remake of one of the most original and seminal films of the seventies.Anthony Shaffer and Robin Hardy can rest easy, this turkey won't be remembered for more than five minutes, and only that long because of how truly awful it is..
Neil La Bute should hang his head in shame for this remake of the 1973 cult film The Wicker Man. While I've not seen all of the original Anthony Shaffer scripted film starring Christopher Lee (I can't remember it very well, but certain images and the overall manic Scottish-folk aspect stick out in my mind), I could imagine it at least being a somewhat original story.
This new version, however, is cluttered with boring procedural business that is made all the more yawn-like (or befuddling, take your pick) by how Nicolas Cage's character- a cop who has no jurisdiction in this enclave of SummerIsle he's at- bungles from one place to the next looking for a little girl.And what does Neil LaBute do to make it more accessible to audience's today, those who might have found the original film too Scottish or weird or done practically as a witch-gazing musical?
cruel, kind of, which apparently has been running around in LaBute's catalog of work (while not as strong in Nurse Betty, In the Company of Men has been charged with it).One might consider it too ridiculous to seriously critique as nothing more than a below-average Hollywood-ized remake of another movie that fans hold so dear the only way to pay it tribute is to spend millions on a piece of quality, mediocre BS.
So much of this is just procedural crap, stuff of asking boring questions and boring (or just befuddling) scenes of inquiry or 'wacky' peril involving the bees, which by the (alternate) ending becomes the whole reason to see the movie.Certainly it's not for Cage, who doesn't even have the good graces to make it an awesomely-bad ride like he did with Ghost Rider.
Even if you're not familiar with the original Wicker Man, this is poor stuff.I don't think Nicholas Cage is much of an actor at the best of times, but here he is really plumbing the depths.
The Wicker Man. There has been a lot of talk around this movie, most of all about its famous scenes with Nicolas Cage at his worst.
So he goes to Summersilse looking for his ex-girlfriend's daughter, but not everything is as it seems...The director for this film apparently wanted to give it a melancholy and deep touch, but he fails miserably and instead the movie just seems boring.
Nicolas Cage delivers a few hilariously bad lines to save the movie from being rated worse.
The acting in this film, staggers along without confidence or the vaguest amount of skill, it's a sad sight really.Anyway he plays a copper who pulls over a mother and young daughter to the side of the road, after he steps away from the car and looks back a huge truck comes and smashes into the front of it for no reason (I say no reason because, this truck must've been driving NEXT to the road AND going the wrong way) Cage immediately runs to the back of the car and begins smashing away at the rear window to save the completely unharmed and surprisingly apathetic looking young child.
Later on he's lying in bed and has a flash-back, but not of the little girl in the car who was killed, but of the same girl in the ferry being killed by his own daydream!The original Wicker Man is an incredible film (as are the two songs based on it) and remake really is an abomination.
I've always liked Nicolas Cage as an actor, but he has made some terrible movies this year; this being by far the worst one (yet...).I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone who wants to watch an intense story-gripping thriller.
I watched this movie because I like Nicolas Cage and well, I found it strange and completely pointless...
Nick Cage wearing a bear suit and decking an old lady has to be the funniest thing I've ever seen, not to mention the line 'Killing me won't bring back your God Damn honey!' I think the whole audience was holding it's side from lauging so hard.
The remake of The Wicker Man is as bad as the original is good.
As a remake it was all wrong, with the themes and style of the original film completely destroyed.However, more than that, just taken by itself as a modern horror/thriller movie it's awful.
It's bad enough wasting two hours of your life, but it's far worse when those two hours seem like ten.By the time I had started on my second bottle of red wine I began to laugh at some of the ridiculous scenes towards the end of the movie.
This movie is Neil LaBute's first thriller ever and maybe he should leave it this way because this film is at no time at all even the slightest bit thrilling.
The music also sometime seems incredibly inappropriate, even laughable.So if you can stand the bad parts of this movie, and enjoy it as it should be watched, you may find yourself a "Wicker Man" fan.
This film doesn't just do a bad job of retelling the original story it takes everything that was good about it and replaces it with a witless and disjointed story.Nicolas Cage is well cast as a man addicted to some kind of over the counter drugs.
Watching Nicolas Cage mumble his way through the script is quite painful at times, like seeing an elderly dog trying to chase a postman on arthritic legs and not understanding why he can't quite do it anymore.The original story was quite chilling but here it's all kind of a joke.
The worst film I have ever seen, actually worse than Spawn.I won't bother going into the story line, but needless to say, you will wish that you never wasted your time or money on this title.Seriously, if you ever want to take heed of a stranger's views, start now.
Don't put yourself or your friends through the torture of what will put you in a bad mood for days.My reasons for this are the following; the storyline is poor, acting was mediocre, had potential but was wasted with the poorest of endings.And by poor I mean really poor, this is what put the nail in the coffin.I haven't actually seen the original, but from the other reviews I think that may be worth watching, so looking forward to getting that.
Also there is a constant flashback throughout the movie of the car accident in the first sense of the film but at the end of the flick I couldn't quite see the connection to the other events that go on.I also find it totally unbelievable that Cage starts the investigation on the island all by himself.
I kept waiting for this movie to save itself somehow, but it all just became too predictable, and there wasn't enough done to paint the 'baddies' of the film in a truly menacing or deeply sinister light, surprising indeed given what the actual plot turns out to be -- I never really felt intimidated by them; I just thought they were odd.It wasn't the fault of the actors or actresses who all gave wonderful performances (although Nicolas Cage is somewhat controversial in this regard according to the forums for this film, I have always enjoyed watching him, though this one wasn't one of his best films).
Instead, I lay blame to the screenwriter and the editor - sometimes no matter how much talent you have working on a project, if an editor pieces a film together poorly, there's nothing that can save it, and that's what seems to have happened in this case, which also explains why viewers feel much is missing from the film.It's worth a look on DVD, perhaps, at least because the plot is somewhat interesting for a good part of the movie.
It is only a reason for Hollywood to show that they want to ruin a perfectly good film because they had no part in it being made.The second failing was if they were not going to change the plot, to give it a slightly different twist and to make it 'new', what point is there on watching it.
I absolutely hated the original version of THE WICKER MAN down to the absolute ridiculous plot holes but to give Neil LaBute credit he does at least try to bring credibility to this remake by setting up the story via a policeman receiving a letter from a woman he knew at the community he grew up in many years ago .
Compare this to the completely idiotic way the story is set up in the original and some respect to also trying to rid the original screenplay of its other plot holes like confining the number of crop failures to a mere one in this version I'm afraid that there will be no more praise for LaBute in this short review because managing to salvage something out of a remake of a very poor film is like trying to find something bad to say about Adolph Hitler because this is still a very tedious , poor thriller .
It is made even more so by the fact that it has no reason to be, in that it cannot blame a lack of a budget on such things as bad costumes or acting."The Wicker Man" very well might be the winner of the "Worst Movie I Have Ever Seen" contest.
i generally do not do these comment things on sites but i feel that i must speak up on behalf of the original Wicker Man. don't be put off by this remake, it may not be as good but the original is really very good and definitely worth the attention of both movie buffs and fans of cult films.
Besides the acting they threw in some stupid plot lines that I don't recall being in the original.Then I get to my biggest problem, why in gods name is Nick Cage still being hired to star in movies.
The Wicker Man remake is not a good film, but I actually had fun watching it.
First of all "The Wicker Man" belongs to my list of all-time favourite horror films.When I heard that the remake is coming I was very angry and disappointed,however I decided to give it a chance.Thankfully I saw this piece of garbage for free and I advise you to do the same.In Neil LaBute's awful remake of the 1973 horror classic,Nicolas Cage stars as a sheriff investigating a young girl's disappearance from an isolated,mysterious island off the coast of Maine.The film lacks scares and is ridiculously corny.It's also pretty misogynistic,mainly because in the film's third act Nicolas Cage goes berserk and starts beating the crap out of every woman that gets in his way.At least some scenes are downright hilarious for example Cage going undercover in a full-body bear costume or pointing a gun at a non-threatening woman,demanding she step away from his bicycle.Overall,watch the original first and laugh as hard as you can at the silliness of this turd.2 out of 10..
I mean, who would be so stupid as to try and remake a brilliant classic horror like The Wicker Man?
A lot of people were disappointed with this movie who hadn't actually seen the original film.
But the #1 thing that made the original Wicker Man ending scary was absolutely ignored in this movie. |
tt0048696 | Tarantula | A severely deformed man stumbles through the Arizona desert, falls and dies. Dr. Matt Hastings, a doctor in the nearby small town of Desert Rock, is called in by the Sheriff to examine the body at the local mortuary. Asked to define the cause of death, he finds himself perplexed: the deceased was someone he knew and had just seen recently – biological research scientist Eric Jacobs – whose deformity appears to be acromegaly, a distortion which takes years to reach its apparent present state. Dr. Hastings asks to be allowed to perform an autopsy to clarify the diagnosis. The sheriff refuses, judging an autopsy unnecessary because there is no indication of foul play. Hastings then approaches Jacobs' colleague, Dr. Gerald Deemer, who more bluntly refuses permission, then signs Jacobs' death certificate in lieu of Hastings, with heart disease listed as the cause of death.
Bothered still by the anomaly, and also by Deemer's abruptness, Hastings later drives to Deemer's combined home and research lab, located in an isolated mansion in the desert far from town. Deemer apologizes for his hostility, blaming it on his grief, then insists that Jacobs had developed acromegaly incredibly rapidly, over just four days. He cannot offer an explanation but attempts to convince Hastings this was only an anomaly, not a result of anything sinister. Hastings appears to accept this apology.
After Hasting leaves, Deemer goes to his closed lab, where huge cages contain white rabbits and mice, some of enormous size. Deemer examines each of the oversized specimens, noting when each last received an "injection", and how many each has had altogether. Then he turns to observe a glass-fronted inset in the back wall, as a different sort of specimen slides into view inside - a tarantula bodily the size of a large dog, plus legs.
As Deemer finishes his observations of this creature, a second deformed man appears, attacks Deemer and begins destroying the lab. During this rampage the lab catches fire and the glass covering the tarantula's cage is shattered. The man grabs a hypodermic that Deemer was preparing, knocks him out, and injects him with the contents. As flames and electrical sparking rage over the lab, the arachnid escapes outdoors, and the deformed man collapses and dies. Deemer regains consciousness, grabs a fire extinguisher, and puts out the fire. That night, Deemer calmly buries the body of his assailant - whom he has recognized from the first attack as his other assistant, Paul Lund - in the desert.
The following day, the intercity bus brings a newcomer to town, a young, beautiful woman who is expecting to be met by Dr. Deemer. Told by the hotel clerk that she will have to wait until the only taxi in town returns from a mission, she accepts a ride from Dr. Hastings, who is again going to Deemer's place and is apprised of her plight. She introduces herself to him as Stephanie Clayton, nicknamed "Steve", who has signed on to assist in the lab, to replace Paul Lund, as part of her doctoral degree program.
When they arrive at the mansion, Deemer tells them that the fire was caused by an equipment malfunction. He indicates that all the animals were killed in the fire, and explains that Lund has already left his employ. As Steve's contract stipulates that she live in Dr. Deemer's residence, Dr. Hastings leaves her there with her suitcases. Steve begins working in the lab and proves to be a capable lab assistant.
A couple of days later, Dr. Hastings finds a mystery has arisen, involving clean-picked cattle carcasses and pools of a thick white liquid up to eight feet in diameter, when the Sheriff calls on him for help. Unknown to anyone, the cause is the tarantula, now the size of Deemer's mansion, which is hungrily beginning to ravage the countryside: the next night, a horse-rancher is killed by the spider outside his stable, and later a pickup truck is flipped by the tarantula in order to get at the two men inside. Elsewhere, two hoboes trying to enjoy a meal and a smoke on the open range are chased and killed.
While this carnage is occurring, Hastings has decided to pay a call on Steve. Explaining that Deemer has been acting and looking ill recently and gone to bed, she shows Matt what they have been working on - the use of radioactive elements to produce an artificial super-nutrient which, once perfected, could provide an unlimited food option for humanity. She shows Matt some of the giant lab-animals created just since her arrival as an unintended side-effect of the nutrient. Suddenly Deemer appears, furious. He chews out Steve for revealing "secret" work and orders Matt to leave. Before he goes, he notices there are some subtle changes in Deemer's appearance as well as in his demeanor.
The following day at the destroyed horse ranch, Hastings once again appears at the request of the Sheriff and, finding again pools of the strange, thick liquid, decides an analysis of this substance might solve the mystery. He takes a sample and flies it to the university in Phoenix, where Dr. Townsend determines that it is tarantula-venom, only in such a quantity that only a monster-spider could produce. After viewing a film prepared by Townsend, showing the predatory ferocity of a normal tarantula, he phone calls Dr. Deemer but is told by Steve that he has become even more ill and is again abed. He again appears behind her, this time hanging up the phone. Matt thus hastens to his airplane and flies quickly back to Desert Rock.
Upon arriving there, he drives to the Deemer mansion, where he finds Deemer, severe acromegalic deformities rapidly setting in, resignedly under the care of Steve as he knows he is nearing death. He divulges all he knows about the nutrient's effects on humans and animals and tells of Lund's death. Matt then returns to town to brief the sheriff on what he has learned from Dr. Townsend and at the mansion. As night falls, the tarantula comes to the mansion. Deemer is killed but Steve escapes when Hastings returns by car. The tarantula pursues them down the highway toward the town. The Sheriff and his men intercept the pursuit, but their guns don't faze the tarantula. Hastening to town, they gather dynamite, but a blast big enough to blow up the highway doesn't faze the monster either. As they complete a hasty evacuation of the town, the Air Force, summoned by the Sheriff, arrives in the form of a jet squadron which launches a napalm attack, successfully incinerating the giant tarantula at the town's edge. | suspenseful, horror | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1132626 | Saw V | The film starts with Seth (Joris Jarsky ) in the pendulum trap. It is revealed Seth is a murderer who was released early from prison due to a technicality. Seth is told by Jigsaw's puppet that if he wants to live he has to destroy the things he has used to kill-his hands.The trap is later revealed to be unwinnable, but Seth is made to believe that the aim of the trap is for him to push buttons inside of two devices which would crush both of his hands before a bladed pendulum (intended to slice him in half) descends upon him. Seth had in fact, crushed his hands, but as the trap is unwinnable, the Pendulum does not stop. From the side of the room, somebody watches Seth getting sliced in half through a peep hole.Meanwhile, Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) shoots Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) and enters the room where Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) died. After investigating and finding Jigsaw's corpse, the door is locked on Strahm by Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor). Strahm finds a hidden door in the room and kicks it open. The outlines of the door had been painted with glow in the dark paint, only visible in the dark. The door leads down a new hallway. Strahm finds a tape recorder and plays it. Jigsaw's voice addresses him on the recording and warns him not to proceed, but to stay where he is, stating that he can find salvation or let his "insatiable hunger to uncover the truth drive (him) deeper in the abyss." Jigsaw urges him to make the right choice. Strahm disregards the warning and leaves the room, walking down the hallway. He is soon attacked by a figure in a pig mask, presumably Hoffman. He wakes to find himself in one of Jigsaw's traps. His head is in a sealed box, which quickly starts to fill with water. Before he runs out of air, he performs a tracheotomy with the tube of a ballpoint pen in order to breathe. The police make it to the Gideon warehouse, and Hoffman emerges carrying Corbett (Niamh Wilson), claiming that he saved her. Strahm is carried out on a stretcher, still alive, but badly injured.The next day the police hold a service for all the people who have died chasing Jigsaw. The Chief of Police (Al Sapienza) announces that the Jigsaw murders are over and promotes Hoffman. John Kramer's ex-wife, Jill (Betsy Russell) is given a videotape and box from John's lawyer. The contents of the box, says John, are of grave importance to her. After looking in the box, Jill leaves without telling John's lawyer what's inside. Later she meets Agent Dan Erickson (Mark Rolston), Strahm's boss, and informs him she believes Agent Strahm is following her.Strahm is shown mourning next to a empty hospital bed, because Agent Perez (Athena Karkanis) died during the night. Agent Erickson, Strahm's boss, visits Strahm telling him he has taken him off the Jigsaw case. Strahm is dismayed and angered. Hoffman walks into the room. Strahm starts to act suspicious and says that Perez's final word was "Hoffman." Hoffman worriedly says he has no idea what Strahm is talking about. He heads back to his office and finds a note for him saying "I know who you are." Hoffman gets worried that his secret is threatened, and that he may be in danger. Later, Hoffman heads off to a lair where several monitors are placed on a table, depicting five unconscious people on the first monitor.Meanwhile, the five people wake up in a sewer, in a neck tie trap. They are told by Jigsaw's puppet that "Five will become one, with the common goal of survival." He states that while their "lifelong instincts will tell you to react one way, I implore you to do the opposite." The first part of their test involves pulling against a cable to get a key at the end of the room to release themselves. The consequence for not completing the trap is to be beheaded. They deduce they need to work quickly as nail bombs are set to go off in the room once the timer counts down. Mallick (Greg Bryk) gets anxious and runs ahead, starting the timer. In the end, everyone, except for Ashley, gets their keys. Ashley (Laura Gordon) is eventually beheaded by the blade once the cable is pulled tight. The group walks through a door to the next room.Strahm, contemplating what his deceased partner said, heads over to FBI headquarters to find files on Hoffman. He finds a file saying that Hoffman's sister was murdered, and her killer (Seth) was killed in his trap, which was revealed to have taken place before the events of the first film. Strahm comes to the conclusion that Hoffman killed Seth, but staged it as a Jigsaw trap. Hoffman designed and orchestrated the trap himself using a voice modulator to disguise his voice as Jigsaw's and designed his own puppet to deliver Seth's message. A flashback depicting Hoffman looking at the pendulum trap ensues, as he was the person watching at the start of the film. Some time after Seth's death, Hoffman is kidnapped by Jigsaw who has discovered who was truly responsible for Seth's death. Jigsaw scolds Hoffman and blackmails him into working for him, which Hoffman reluctantly agrees to. Hoffman is then shown, through flashbacks, setting up the house trap, talking to Jigsaw before the events of "Saw IV", and kidnapping Paul (Mike Butters). After watching Paul fail his trap through a peephole, Jigsaw gives Hoffman Dr. Gordon's penlight, which he would later plant at Mark's crime scene. Logic reveals that there must have been at least one Jigsaw victim, unknown to the viewers, tested before Paul, where the puppet was used. That way, Hoffman and the authorities would know of the puppet, and Hoffman could use it for Seth's trap. By the end of these events, Hoffman is a willing apprentice to Jigsaw.Back in the sewers, Charles (Carlo Rota), Mallick, Luba (Meagan Good), and Brit (Julie Benz) make it to the next trap. In this trap, the group has to smash jars filled with glass to find keys to enter bomb shelters before a bomb goes off in the sewer. There are four bomb shelters, but only three of the keys will fit the locks. Jigsaw's puppet tells the group to decide which of them will be "the odd man out." Mallick begins to smash the jars with a pole. Charles beats Mallick with a pole down to the ground, with the intent of sacrificing Mallick's life so the rest can escape to safety. Brit and Luba pick up keys. Mallick attempts to pick up a key but Charles steps on his hand and takes it. Just as Charles is about to enter his shelter, Luba hits him with a pole and gives the key back to Mallick. The trio enter the shelter and leave Charles to die by the explosion. Luba, Mallick, and Brit make it to their next test. In this test, they have to find a way for five cords of electricity to make it into a bath of water to complete a circuit opening the door to the next test. However, the cords are not long enough to reach the bath water so they think they need to use a person's body as an electrical conductor. Luba tries to kill Mallick to use his body, but Brit stabs Luba in the neck, saying she never trusted her. Mallick and Brit use Luba's body for the electricity to reach the bath, and the door opens to their final test.
Meanwhile, Hoffman steals Strahm's cell phone from the evidence locker and plants it at the house where Brit and Mallick's game is being held, in hopes to frame him. Strahm is now sure that Hoffman is Jigsaw's apprentice. Meanwhile, Brit and Mallick make it to their final test. In this test they have to stick their hands in rotating saws and bleed into a beaker. When the beaker fills with the labeled volume of their blood, the door to the room will unlock and they will be free to go. Before they start the test they realize that there are five saws and five openings on the contraption, for which to stick arms into. They then realize that everyone could have made it through every test alive. Only one key was needed to unlock each neck restraint in the first trap, the bomb shelters had room for two in the second trap, and each person could have sustained a mild electric shock to complete the circuit in the third trap. It is also revealed that they were all connected by an act of arson that happened some time ago which resulted in the death of 8 people. In the final test, each could have given just two pints of blood and easily lived. Brit and Mallick realize the aim of their game was to work together and to help keep all five alive, unlike "survival of the fittest", as they had all thought. With no other options, the two remaining survivors begin sawing their arms in an attempt to fill the beaker meant for five with 10 pints of their blood. Just as Brit and Mallick fill the beaker with blood, finishing the final test, a FBI agent named Erickson (Strahm's superior whom Hoffman fooled into trailing Strahm's cell phone signal) arrives at the scene. Both pass out from blood loss as Erickson finds them and calls for backup. It appears as though Brit survived and Mallick did not. FBI agent Erickson, having found the Jigsaw files Hoffman planted, along with Strahm's cell phone, issues an APB on Strahm, assuming him to be the other Jigsaw accomplice.Strahm follows Hoffman to a new location, possibly Hoffman's house. It is revealed that the house is the same one from Saw II where the group game took place. The house has since been refurbished and made liveable. Strahm follows Hoffman into the house and finds the trap door leading to the underground structure of the house. Passing the bathroom, its door sealed closed, Strahm finds a new room and enters it. Inside the room is a transparent box filled with broken glass and a recording featuring Hoffman's voice, rather than Jigsaw's. Hoffman urges Strahm to have trust and to get into the box. He'll be hurt, but has a chance at life. Strahm shuts off the tape when he hears Hoffman walking in the distance behind him. Strahm hides behind the door and shortly after, Hoffman walks into the room while Strahm approaches Hoffman from behind, holding him at gunpoint. Following an altercation, Strahm shoves Hoffman into the box, sealing him in. Hoffman signals for Strahm to play the rest of the tape. The rest of the tape plays and explains the rest of the rules to Strahm, making him realize he would have lived if he had gotten into the box, stating that if he wouldn't, the room would become his tomb, and he would simply "vanish". Jigsaw's tape addressing Strahm at the beginning of the film was not referring to the "sick room", but the current one. The walls begin to close in on the room as the glass box lowers into the floor, safe from the enclosing walls. Strahm attempts to break into the glass box by shooting it and trying to pull it open, but the glass material is impenetrable. Strahm starts shouting at Hoffman, "I know who you are!". Soon the walls come close enough for Strahm to attempt to climb up to the ceiling and escape by the roof filter. However, it is too late, and he becomes slowly crushed by the walls while Hoffman watches Strahm getting crushed from down below. With all evidence planted to frame Strahm for being the next Jigsaw accomplice, Hoffman is now able to continue his work as Jigsaw's surviving apprentice, undetected, leaving the Jigsaw legacy pinpointed at Strahm who is in fact dead.It is also believed that Jigsaw's autopsy occured after the events of Saw V, giving new insight to Hoffman being "the last man standing", now that Strahm is dead. Therefore, Hoffman has yet to be tested as promised by the tape found at the autopsy. The beginning/end of Saw IV was not the setup for Saw V but presumably (and hopefully) Saw VI. | clever, revenge, gothic, violence, flashback | train | imdb | The knowledge gained doesn't force any re-evaluation of the past events it concerns; you just see and know a bit more about them, and to no great effect, except for the fact that Tobin Bell's performance is always compelling, maybe even more so when he's talking to people who aren't stuck in Jigsaw's deathtraps.The Saw films have demonstrated an unfeasibly high success rate over time in terms of pulling off twist after twist and having them nearly all hit home.
The film answers as many questions as it raises, and serves as more of an origin movie, like Saw IV did.
It's more of a thriller with some gruesome images (like the first film) than a full blown horror movie (like parts II & III).In the end, what it comes down to as far as your ability to enjoy the movie, you have to ask yourself this question: "why do I watch the Saw series?".
If you watch the series for pure shock and awe and disgust, you'll be disappointed, because Saw V does not try to be a horror film outside of a few scenes.
Given that the Saw films are notable for their unexpected plot twists, the fact that this was the most predictable one makes it difficult to see why it scored the "You won't believe how it ends" tagline.
The movie again is also featuring lots of flashbacks, which shows events that happened in the previous movies, often seen from a different side this time but some of these flashbacks however are quite pointless for the movie once you start thinking about it.I also blame Hoffman for it that this movie doesn't work out as good and interesting as any of the other sequels.
All Saw movies have a great look and atmosphere over them, though this one works out as the least effective one when it comes down to its atmosphere and horror/thriller elements because of the reason that this movie features very little new elements.The Jigsaw games themselves also seem less innovative and clever.
It's still gruesome and lots of bloods and guts can be seen flying around but it's just less surprising and shocking all.Lets hope "Saw VI" will have some fresh new good ideas and a better script with some better- and more interesting characters in it.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
So in closing I think this movie may be adequate for the die hard saw fans, not nearly good enough for new comers, and winds up lacking far more than it gives.
Saw V was a decent film, but sadly it is nothing compared to the first 4 and is the weakest of the lot.I felt the acting was very poor at times from most of the cast, but Tobin Bell still managed a very good performance as the sick and twisted "Jigsaw", it's a shame he didn't get much screen time.The other problem I had with the film was that it didn't really feel like a saw film while watching, it seemed like they wanted to focus on the drama more than the actual traps.
But with saying that, the main game with Malick, Brit, Luba, Charles and Ashley is VERY well done and entertaining, it's a shame they didn't show it more.Overall, this is a pretty good film, with a bit of a let down ending (but still shocking).PS.
However, Hoffman lures Strahm and incriminates him making Dan Erickson (Mark Rolston) believe that Strahm is the criminal in another deadly game that Strahm has to play to survive."Saw V" is another stupid films of this absurd franchise.
I couldn't figure out where the film was on the timeline at certain points - at one point I though Jigsaw had come back from the dead.The truth is, you don't really care about the characters, the games are poorly conceived and it seems that the makers just want to go for gore and guts without going any deeper, which would be the smart thing to do.I expect these films will just keep going and going, they should have quit while they were ahead but alas, money is the dictator.
The acting is just horrible and the story line is just ridiculous the only good thing about this one is the most brutal Saw death or maybe even movie death ever ( Wall closing in scene)This movie is about Marc Hoffman the last living predecessor of the jigsaw murderer.
He sets us a new game as another FBI agent tries to close the book on the jigsaw murders and put away Hoffman for good.This movie was terrible compared to the other saw movies.
In this respect, Saw V may just be the best film in the whole series, utilizing plenty of flashbacks, insane traps, and a plethora of returning characters.
which although this movie is OK and fans of the saw series will like it, lets hope the 6th one has more of a twist to it..
This film was entirely unnecessary to the series and other than to see a few good traps, this movie could be excluded from your Saw collection and not be missed..
Churning out no less than five films onto the Hollywood Halloween Horror frame in the same amount of years the Saw series knows its audience, its largely male, stumbling through adolescence onwards to the thirty something gore fiends looking for the latest offering in the now rapidly declining 'shock horror / torture porn' genre that the first film brought to prominence in 2004.After the events of Saw III shook the franchise with its inventive ending and then, somewhat competently handled the aftermath in the fourth entry, Saw V begs to ask the question: Who's left to slice and dice?
The roller-coaster only can maintain its pace for some time before you hit some slow corners and V is a sign the ride is coming to an end fast.On one hand the film wants to be a detective thriller, yet is hampered by so many explanatory flashbacks sequences (to understand how the apprentice came to this point) that anyone not familiar with the events of the previous 3 sequels would develop an aneurysm from trying to put it all together.
Two detectives start to close in on the twisted madman- but are they as clean cut as they seem?From the off set it's pretty clear to see the plot to no less than the fifth instalment of the grisly Saw franchise is just a little bit piecemeal to say the least.
There is a series of flashbacks that jumps back and forth between past and present (and more than one previous Saw sequel), making the movie convoluted and confusing.
The whole scenario is remarkably similar to Cube, a far more interesting movie.The other story is a detective named Mark Hoffman who is involved with Jigsaw as sort of an unwilling accomplice, and then there is an Agent Strahm that is investigating the killings from outside Jigsaw's world, trying to figure out what's going on while the five strangers are killed off one by one.By this point in the series, hardcore Saw fans (which I am guessing make up about 90% of the remaining audience) will probably be mostly interested in the new torture devices, but the movie spends a huge amount of it's relative short running time jumping around in flashbacks and side stories, including one about Jigsaw's daughter, who has inherited a mysterious box, the contents of which Jigsaw explains are "of grave importance."Agent Strahm, early in the film, escapes a trap that was not meant to kill him but to test him, and he begins to suspect a copycat killer or that Jigsaw had an accomplice.
It's totally lightless from beginning to end, a cheap horror technique that gets real old real quick.Not much effort is put into having a good twist at the end of the movie, although the closing scene does have the element of surprise and, like mostly all of the movies before it, is pretty painful to watch.
And the yearly sequels are not faring much better.Picking up after the rather bizarre finale of Saw IV and a ridiculous graphic torture scene, Saw V begins with Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) emerging virtually unscathed from one of Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) traps.
FBI Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) has also survived, and believes that Jigsaw's work is being continued by a new apprentice.What follows, for anyone who knows the franchise well, is a series of flashbacks, turns, crosses and wrap-ups.
But if you do, you will see some tried and tested problems that still have yet to work themselves out.Taking out any glaring continuity errors and changes made on the fly, the film suffers from the same fate as Saw IV in that it does not feel like a complete movie.
Yes, I went in thinking it would be worse than Saw IV, but throwing in new director David Hackl seems to have done the film a little bit of good.
As Saw 3 came around, the horror and suspense was gone and it seemed to just be a gore show with another twist that led to another sequel, which is what this one did.The story continues as Hoffman tries to hide his identity as Jigsaw's apprentice.
After only a 30 Minute Gig Johnny Rotten looks at the Audience and says..."Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" This because the Band, Out of Sync most of the Time, Sid Vicious barely able to Stand Up, Cutting Himself with Razors instead of "Playing" the Bass, and overall just a Disastrous Display of Depravity, the Crowd Booing constantly, the Seminal Punk Band just left the Stage and that was the End, Literally.This Entry in the Never Ending Series isn't much more than a Boring Rehash and seems Out of Sync and Not Knowing when to Leave the Stage, is Repetitive with some of the Lamest Lead Acting ever Committed to Film.
This is the fourth sequel to the gruesome horror movie Saw, where Jigsaw's deadly game continues despite his death, luring a new set of victims in his trap - five strangers trying to play a "survival the fittest" game.
Meanwhile, Agent Strahm is on the trail of the case of Jigsaw's games and his apprentices.The story continues the same elements seen the previous three films, including mind-playing games, blood, gore and graphic scenes.
The identity of Jigsaw's operative in the police force was revealed at the end of IV (a much better film in every way), and if we even WANTED to know the reasons that this particular cop 'went over to the dark side', we certainly wanted it to be a much more interesting and involving story than the one V gives us.
Meanwhile, Agent Strahm, after escaping a trap set for him, is determined to find out what Hoffman has been up to.....I liked the first 3 Saw movies.
This one takes a new route and goes to nowhere with a new story (if there was a story) and tries really hard to bring the franchise back on its feet (which it failed to do).The traps where O.K but I prefer a good story and I was actually waiting for the ending hoping that the twist may save the poor and boring movie.
If, like me, you love the past Saw movies, enjoy their inventive twists, their clever story lines and the great traps, then you will enjoy Saw 5 a great deal (well maybe be a bit disappointed with the ending, more on that later).
His way of Directing produces an Uncanny ability to Effortlessly tell the story and glide through scenes very easily (kudos to the editing for that one too).The traps of SAW V are very much different from the previous films, they are much more practical and have multiple methods of solving or dealing with them.
SAW V is really good movie but its had no compared things of the main parts.The Problem is The act and the camera moves is so different from the other part maybe because it directed by David Not Darren and this is the problem.the actors act very great in the movie specially Tobin Bell And His Character "Jigsaw", Tobin did really great job and the fans will be pleased.the games and traps are so great and fantastic and really good.
The story yet again carries on from the previous film as Hoffman continues his 'ingenious' continuation of Jigsaw's work, while a hotshot agent beats the trap and sets out to hunt him and anyone else who maybe a fan of that or-so lovable character Jigsaw.Despite being slightly more coherent than the previous two outings, almost half of 'Saw 5'is told via flashbacks and when there isn't one, we are simply being plied with buckets full of raspberry syrup and mundane traps which Jigsaw himself would laugh at if he ever saw them.
That coupled with acting to rival a plank of wood at the 'Woodies', and you've got yourself a pretty idiotic hour and thirty minutes that doesn't shock nor entertain.What made the 'Saw' franchise, most notably the first, most enjoyable for myself was the ingenuity in which Jigsaw operated, however with nothing remotely interesting or enjoyable comes from this film, exact that we can all hope that it finally does now end here!.
As usual, there are meanings behind the different traps that the five adults must understand in order to guarantee their survival.Even though the fifth entry in the franchise convinces with a solid main plot with two intriguing characters portrayed by two excellent actors and a side story involving a series of clever traps, this movie is a little bit less convincing than the four predecessors.
That it is very difficult to connect with any of the characters in any shape or form (the other films do a much job even with Jigsaw, actually a very interesting villain shamefully wasted here) and that the script is perhaps the dreariest, most tired and contrived of the series works against them.With the exception of the opening trap, 'Saw V' fails on the creepiness and suspense.
Possibly the weakest instalment of the series and definitely one of the worst sequels in existence, the 5th chapter in the Saw franchise not only discards the basic aspects of storytelling but logic as well, for anything & everything goes in this movie over the course of its runtime without making any proper sense.Once again putting a group of strangers through a series of sadistic tests, Saw V mainly concerns the guy who's been continuing Jigsaw's work following his death and whose identity was unveiled in the previous chapter.
I guess this one is a little better than the previous one though for I know I saw it but I can't remember anything of it.So if you like to watch people snuff it in a nasty way after being held hostage by an evil game host this is the film for you.5 out of 10 ways to die.
Alright to begin with, Saw 5 did a great job with the story and developing a background of the characters, however, what it lacked is the ending smart enough to make you say, "are you kidding me?" just like saw 4..I solemnly feel that the saw franchise has gone too far, because we all know that coming up with different styles of gory killing methods is the new American style of pleasing people, and it does not implore you to be creative, just sadistic..Also, with every movie the writers are giving away an opening for another saw movie.
We all know when things turn absurd.I have given this movie a 7/10 for two reasons, the story (despite the ending) and new traps, nothing else..
Only three things matter: gore, a twist at the end and die-hard fans paying to see the latest episode, no matter how disappointing.Interestingly enough, Saw V is a bit of a breath of fresh air in that it marks a departure from previous entries: aside from the bloody prologue (which, apparently, was directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, whereas the rest of the film was handed over to newcomer David Hackl), the usual game scenario, which borrows heavily from the premise of Saw II, is given less space than usual.
Sure, there are the usual unlucky people (including Dexter's Julie Benz and 24's Carlo Rota) who have to mutilate themselves in order to survive, but one has the distinct feeling those scenes were added just to spice up the main storyline, which plays out like a traditional mystery film: Special Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson), having survived one of Jigsaw's traps, is firmly convinced the case isn't closed, and rightfully suspects foul play coming from Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who - as the audience already knows - has been assigned to carry on the philosophical serial killer's legacy.
As Strahm gets closer to the truth, a series of flashbacks explain the real nature of Hoffman's association with Jigsaw.In the previous entry, those flashbacks were a blatant excuse for providing some moronic back-story (and yet, for some reason, they worked) and giving Tobin Bell some screen time in spite of the events of Saw III.
Where its predecessors have all relied on one massive, final twist at the end of the films, Saw V is the first movie in the series to leave a majority of the audience underwhelmed.
Saw VI is out next year and I hope for the sake of everyone they end the series with the twists and shocks this film never had..
Saw the short film from 2003 is a good movie.
In the meanwhile Hoffman has another group of people who are his toy and he put them to get through some traps and win their lives.I think that "Saw V" was a little bit boring as the fourth was and I believe that all have to be ended in the third movie. |
tt1831806 | The Thompsons | In this sequal to, 'The Hamiltons', they were a dysfunctional, orphaned family struggling in sunny suburbia. On the outside, they appeared normal enough, but they hid a very dark secret... in order to survive, they needed to drink blood because they all were natural-born vampires. After moving from their house, a bloodbath at a desert gas station puts the family on the run from the law, eventually seeing them resurface in the U.K. under a new name as The Thompsons. With the youngest brother Lenny gravely injured, the family is in desperate need of help.Hearing rumors of another vampire clan who might be able to assist them, Francis agrees to make contact. His quest leads to a family-run pub in the English countryside where he meets a gorgeous waitress named Riley Stuart. As Riley flirts, Francis fails to notice her blood thirsty relatives sneaking up behind him. Francis tries fighting the family off the best he can but these new vamps are faster, stronger and more vicious than he's encountered before. After a brutal struggle he's subdued and brought back to their home. When Francis wakes up he's surprised to learn that the Stuarts simply wanted to test his powers. They set him free and offer safe haven to himself and the rest of his family.As the rest of the family makes their way across the English countryside to join him, Frances begin to suspect the Stuarts may have an agenda behind their kindness. With Riley as his only potential ally and her motives still unclear, the epic battle between the two clans is inevitable... | boring, murder, flashback | train | imdb | First of all I must say that it is nice to have a vampire movie that is not tailor-made for a teenage girl audience with sparkly vampires and big hair.
However, that being said, then I will flip the sword around and say that this vampire movie is far from being amongst the more interesting or appealing of vampire movies that I have seen.The story is about a family of vampires who flee from USA after having made it to the news with a video of them killing humans.
The vampires find themselves in England where they seek the help of another vampire family, but is blood thicker than water?Having sat through "The Thompsons" now, I must say that I am filled with an overwhelming sensation of that this storyline was utterly and completely unnecessary.
The story left no lasting impression on me, nor did it manage to rise above mediocrity in its concept and execution.It should be said that the people in the movie were actually doing a great enough job with their given roles, though it is not award-worthy material here, far from it.For a vampire movie, then there were surprisingly few effects in the movie.
One good thing, and an interesting thing, about the movie, was that the vampires here were not immortal nor undead.
So that was an interesting approach to the mythical vampire creature."The Thompsons" is the type of movie that you watch once, then shrug your shoulders and forget about the movie.
It failed to make a lasting mark, despite having enough fangs to bite deeply with..
If a sequel tries to tell you a new story instead of rehashing/repeating what part 1 did, that is a good thing.
That means it's not really bad, but it won't get your blood pumping either (no pun intended).Since the main characters are established in the quirkier and better Thompsons, you'd expect this to go different places.
There's not a real story behind it all, it's a simple "match", that you will either like or you might find it too simple.
Whatever the case, if you can bare with the characters (because you saw the previous film or just simply because you like the actors), than this is indeed watchable.
Sequel is a vicious and fun vampire horror/drama.
After 6 years, The Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) return to the dysfunctional vampire family last seen in their low budget chiller The Hamiltons, who, as per that film's finale, now go by the name of The Thompsons.
After slaughtering robber and patron alike, the fiendish family flees to Europe to find help from others like themselves and escape the police manhunt.
In the small town of Ludlow, England they find their British equivalent, The Stuarts and it seems they have found help for Lenny in this kindred family.
But, The Stuarts unveil their own sinister agenda and as Francis (Cory Knauf) falls in love with their beautiful daughter, Riley (Elizabeth Henstridge), a war of the vampire clans erupts and a blood soaked battle for supremacy begins.
Where the first film was a creepy and twisted family drama, the sequel shows us what a Twilight movie would be like if they had any real fangs
and gallons of blood.
And The Butcher's version of that neutered vampire saga is a lot more gory fun.
Where the first movie kept their vampiric nature a secret till the end, this is a full blown vampire flick that explains a lot of about the character's condition that wasn't fully explored in The Hamiltons.
It's all red eyes, bared fangs and spurting blood.
The film moves quickly too, at barely over 80 minutes, so there is little time wasted on melodrama and what I really liked was how the Butchers turned the sick and blood thirsty Hamiltons/Thompsons into the victims this time round and thus the heroes.
We find ourselves rooting for characters that creep-ed us out in the first movie and that was part of what made this sequel entertaining.
If you are a fan of The Hamiltons you probably will enjoy this sequel especially as the original cast are all back, except for Hartwig as Lenny, and they are taken in a different direction.
The budget is slightly larger but, not by a lot as the Butcher's style seems to be a good fit for low budget indie horrors.
It's not perfect, there are some flaws, it's not as atmospheric or creepy like the first film, not that it lacks it's share of shocking moments, but, overall an enjoyably different follow-up to the disturbing original..
The battle of modern day vampires.
I quite enjoyed "The Hamiltons" of which "The Thompsons" is a kind of follow up, as they have fled away from th States to Europe, where they're up to no good.They describe the difficult life of modern day vampires.
After Running away from the US they go looking for their ancestors in Europe, from where Hamiltons origin, the Mandersons.
But the foreign visitors aren't politely received.If you didn't know; you shouldn't be ashamed of being a vampire.
In this film we get to know vampire life as the most common thing there is, being a vampire and a killer.
And it's a disgrace to not be a real vampire.It's a modern vampire story well told.
The Butcher Brothers knows how to tell their vampire stories, so that we almost start to believe them.
It's gory, funny, disgusting and bloody, as a vampire slasher has too be.
When the Butcher Brothers decide to do something really serious, they'll know how to do it.However this story is told so disjointed and without any car, then it falls short from the original one.
Too many stupid coincidences and plot holes makes this far off what it should have been.
You won't miss out if you stop watching this half ways, as the quality falls from there.The only thing you miss out, is that they sympathetically drive off in an Audi S-line.
Good vampire movie.
I haven't seen The Hamiltons so I can't comment on its relationship to this movie.
The story of The Thompsons isn't told linearly but it starts more or less in the middle and then backtracks.
I'll summarize the story linearly.An American family of vampires (one girl, 2 guys, 1 kid) try to mind their own business and are driving around the desert when the kid gets shot accidentally when a bunch of thugs hold up a diner.
Now the family is seeking help.
One of the guys, Francis, travels to the English country side to look for this person who can help them.
The twins (guy and girl) end up in Paris having fun.
While the other guy watches over the kid.Francis drives around, his car breaks down but he makes it on foot to some family pub where he draws the attention of the locals.
But it turns out the owner and their two sons are vampires.
They take him to the main vampire who offers to help if Francis calls his entire family to meet him in England.
The main vampire and his family don't have the Thompsons best intentions in mind.A lot of the movie is told in Francis' voice overs.
The filmmakers know how to put the creepy small town English country side to good use.
I really enjoyed most of the movie, but when things become physical near the end, the movie loses steam.
The main problem is that Cory Knauf who plays Francis (and co-wrote the script) is just too laid back.
He does a good job with the voice overs, but acting in dramatic situations is entirely beyond him.
The special effects despite being CGI are pretty good and the fangs for once look convincing.
There's a lot to like here, the creepiness, the English locations, the story overall, the women.
I look forward to the third one and will have to check out The Hamiltons.
This movie is a good effort and a very good entry into the vampire genre which has been so mercilessly abused..
when vampire clans collide.
People who liked The Hamiltons (2006) can easily pick this up because all the characters are back in action.
And even if you haven't seen The Hamiltons you can see this without a doubt.When things go awry at a diner and people are being killed the Hamiltons do have to hide themselves.
Being on the run for the cops they leave the states for the UK and do come across another vampire clan.
The Hamiltons now being called The Thompsons need their help but do they get it.It do delivers on a few points but it never do becomes rather gory.
In the beginning you will get confused by a few things but quickly you will here the story of Francis Hamilton told by himself.
It do takes a while before the fighting starts between the two clans and the last part of the flick will deliver for fans over vampire flicks.
If you aren't into vampires then this isn't for you because nothing looks believable of course.
It won't become a classic but it's a nice start to begin your horror evening.Gore 2/5 Nudity 1,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5.
Decidedly entertaining but flawed vampire effort.
Forced on the run, a vampire clan arrives in London looking for help and recuperation only to find their hosts have far more diabolical plans in mind when they're captured and forced into a breeding program to ensure survival, putting the two families against each other.Surprisingly, this turned out to be quite a decent enough vampire effort that does have some pretty enjoyable features about it.
One of them is perhaps the most controversial of the film's changes, in how it deals with the vampires in here.
Rather than being remorseless nocturnal bloodsuckers unsympathetic with humanity in the slightest, this one portrays two distinct differences that are rather unique: being a condition received at birth and thus being able to walk about in sunlight with no ill effects, and the second issue of having no real interest in humanity other than feeding time and being out and about without getting into the strange, rabid intensity around fresh meat.
That said, there's still some good parts here with some fine gore scenes from the multiple kills, a couple of outstanding action scenes coming from a multitude of brawls and gunfights, and a twisting, convoluted storyline that stays on-track throughout these twists and turns that keep this quite enjoyable though not entirely perfect.Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Full Nudity and several sex scenes..
Francis (Cory Knauf), the central character in The Butcher Brothers' The Thompsons (the sequel to their 2006 movie The Hamiltons), is something of a tortured soul, a vampire troubled by his bloody lifestyle, searching for a meaning to his existence.
Having fled the US with his bloodsucking family, he now wanders the UK looking for others like him so that he can learn about his heritage and perhaps even find love among his own kind.The photogenic cast; the oh-so-serious emo sensibilities; the romance between vampire clans; the film-makers desperately striving for a sense of cool: The Thompsons might easily be confused for an installment of the Twilight series if it wasn't for all the graphic sex and violence on display.
I doubt very much that Bella Swan would ever get it on with an absinthe addled Parisian whore, or whether Edward would savagely tear the throat out of his victims, drenching himself in blood in the process, but the vampires in this film have no such qualms, narrowly preventing it from being another worthless piece of PG-13 horror-lite and just about earning it a recommendation from yours truly..
This movie doesn't do anything right.The main character is a whining emo sun walking vampire.
After slaughtering a bar full of people he and his too dumb to breath sister and brothers vampires manage to set themselves up in Europe somehow.
There they meet up with a family of uber-vampires who have killed gazillions of normal people and vampires like them but who fail to kill a single one of these retards, they just like to push them and play with them.
The retards then kill them using vampire-skills against vampires who are as superior to them as they are to normal people.
Well, for no reason the youngest of the uber-vampires rescues the emo vampire and kills her brothers.
Probably because he is so cool or something.It tries to hide the lack of story by jumping around in the time line every 5 minutes.
It's like watching a sad Monty Python killer bunny for 80 minutes without it trying to be funny.I have no idea what kind of audience will be entertained by this crap.
Badly acted, awful story, utterly boring.
But whatever it is, it's the biggest pile of rubbish this side of Transylvania.The story begins at the end, with the central character telling a yarn about how he managed to wind up in a box.
His story begins with two young people attempting to have sex out in the open in the English countryside.
This seems to be a theme of this movie: bouncing boobs, naked bodies and a touch of lesbianism, all mixed with vampirism.But the young couple are interrupted and murdered.
No explanation other than their killers are two crazy young guys with knives.We then move to an English village pub, where the central character, Francis Hamilton, gets involved in a fight, just after killing a British policeman.There's also a phone call to an incestuous brother and sister who are having a threesome in France.
Kinky and vampires - they end up slaying the female participant in their three-in-a-bed romp.
Oh, and they also suck the blood out of a black guy who knocks on the door.All this done in DAYLIGHT.
Hang on, I thought vampires were supposed to hate the daylight.
It's daylight here too and there are vampires.Does this sound very boring?
Well, it is, and trying to maintain an interest in this trash is like trying to swim in a river of treacle.And it continues in its merry way, until the end.
The Thompsons is a 2012 horror film directed by the Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) and is actually a sequel to the Butcher Brothers' previous film The Hamiltons.The family is on the run and have taken to the road first of all in sequences set in Texas and Paris before the bulk of the story brings Francis (Cory Knauf) to rural England in search of others of his kind, which leads to a hook-up with the more confident, callous and well- established vampire clan, the Stuarts, led by the local patriarch (Daniel O'Meara) and his wife (Selina Giles).Complications arise which involve the Stuarts' human-born daughter (Elizabeth Henstridge) and murderous twin sons (Sean Browne and Tom Holloway) which eventually bring in Francis's twin siblings, David (Samuel Child) and Darkene (Mackenzie Firgens), plus injured younger brother Lenny (Ryan Hartwig), whose role has changed radically since the first film.What I liked in the first film, but I can talk about more this time round since this is the sequel and people should know what to expect, is that whilst the family are basically vampires, they are certainly no ordinary strain of vampire as they have not been turned.
In a world where vampires procreate, they were born with a disease which left them blood thirsty killers.
I felt this was a cool way of integrating something different into the world, and it works well here.The film begins and continues in the same vein as the first, with the narration coming from Cory Knauf who was the highlight in the original film.
He is even better here, and as well as being the main character in The Thompsons, he also had a hand in writing the screenplay.
The narration works well, and I really enjoyed the 'time shifts' as we keep going back and forth via flashbacks which brings us up to date on what has happened in the 6 years since The Hamiltons was released.The Thompsons is far glossier than the original and it has to shift our attitudes towards the family to make the film work.
This is definitely a positive, as aside from one they were distinctly unlikable in the original movie.
It plays much more like a thriller here, unlike The Hamiltons which was light on blood and tension.
This time round we have vampire battles, blood and guts a-plenty and a family we find ourselves rooting for rather than railing against.
Definitely how a sequel should be, and this certainly was an improvement in every way.The Thompsons is a fast-paced, beautifully shot, fun and violent film with good performances from all the cast, including a star turn from Knauf, that relies more on the style than the substance.
It's also nice to see everyone returning from the first movie, and whilst they have changed physically in the 6 years, character wise they are still the same but ultimately all pull together as families should.
Whilst the dialogue at points is a little weak (and slightly stereotypical to how us people in Great Britain speak in a Dick Van Dyke movie) and the storyline is fairly simple, I was stunned by how good this film was considering it had been 6 years since the first film, and essentially it's a low-budget vampire film.I would love to see a part 3 to this story, and hopefully Knauf is involved with the writing again as this movie improved on the original in every way.
I definitely recommend this if you like your films fun and bloody, and if you can look past a couple of weak story aspects and dodgy accents then The Thompsons comes highly recommended.
Try and watch part 1 of this series The Hamiltons first if possible though!For more reviews please check out my site: http://headinavice.com/.
So instead of breeding with this new blood from America, they decide to kill them and rape the twin sister.
Who kills their own brother for a complete stranger that they met a day ago? |
tt0110081 | Huo zhe | The story begins some time in the 1940s. Xu Fugui (Ge You) is a local rich man's son and compulsive gambler, who loses his family property to a man named Long'er. His behaviour also causes his long-suffering wife Jiazhen (Gong Li) to leave him, along with their daughter, Fengxia and their unborn son, Youqing.After he loses his entire family fortune, Fugui eventually reunites with his wife and children, but is forced to start a shadow puppet troupe with a partner named Chunsheng to support his family. The Chinese Civil War is occurring at the time, and both Fugui and Chunsheng are forcibly enlisted into the Kuomintang during a performance. After a heavy battle, Fugui and Chunsheng are captured by the forces of the Communist Party of China, where they quickly become entertainers for the troops. Eventually Fugui is able to return home and finds out that Fengxia has become dumb and lost most of her hearing due to a fever.After the CCP's victory, Fugui attends a local public trial where the new communist authority convicts Long'er of sabotaging the revolution. Long'er recognises Fugui, and tries to break free from the executioners, but he is brought back and shot. It turns out that Long'er did not want to donate any of his wealth to the "people's government", and when they tried to pressure him to do so, they only enraged him further so that he decided to burn all of his property instead of giving it away. No one helped to extinguish the fire due to Long'er's bad reputation, and he was designated a reactionary.The story moves forward a decade into the future, to the time of the Great Leap Forward. The local town chief enlists Fugui and Jiazhen to donate all scrap iron in their possession to the national drive to produce steel and make weaponry for invading Taiwan. As an entertainer, Fugui performs for the entire town, which has been devoted entirely to producing steel. Later, the district head, who turns out to be Chunsheng, inadvertently crushes and kills Youqing. At the gravesite of the boy, his mother leaves for him a lunchbox of 20 stale dumplings, which were intended as his lunch for school that day, plus 20 newly made dumplings. Chunsheng arrives at the grave, but his attempts to apologize and compensate the family are rebuffed.The story moves forward again another decade, to the Cultural Revolution. The village chief advises Fugui's family to burn their shadow puppet drama props, which have been deemed as counter-revolutionary as they are traditional cultural elements. Fengxia is now grown up. Her family arranges for her to meet Wan Erxi, a local leader of the Red Guards. They fall in love and marry.It is then revealed that Chunsheng, the district chief, has been branded a reactionary. He arrives late at night to inform Fugui and Jiazhen that his wife has committed suicide and he plans to do so also. Chunsheng wanted to give all of his money to Fugui's family as a form of his final apology and wished that they accept the money before his death. Jiazhen, who up to that point refused to talk to Chunsheng, tells him to keep living, because "you still owe us a life!"During Fengxia's childbirth, her parents and husband accompany her to the county hospital, where they find out that nurses are in charge as all doctors have been sent to do hard labor for being "reactionary academic authorities". The nurses tell the family that both the child and mother will be fine, but the family is skeptical, and manages to retrieve a doctor from confinement to oversee the birth. As the doctor has not eaten for several days, Fugui purchases seven steamed buns (mantou) for him and the family decides to name the son Mantou, after the buns. However, Fengxia begins to hemorrhage, and the nurses panic, admitting that they do not know what to do. The family and nurses seek the advice of the doctor, but find that he has overeaten and is semiconscious. The family is helpless, and Fengxia dies from hypovolemia. The point is made that the doctor ate 7 buns, but that by drinking too much water at the same time, each bun expanded to the size of 7 buns: therefore Fengxia's death is a result of the doctor's having the equivalent of 49 buns in his belly. (1949 was the year that the Chinese Communist Party cemented its hold on modern China.)The movie ends several years later, with the family now consisting of Fugui, Jiazhen, their son-in-law Erxi, and grandson Mantou. The family visits the graves of Youqing and Fengxia, where Jiazhen, as per tradition, leaves dumplings for her son. Erxi buys a box full of young chicks for his son, which they decide to keep in the chest formerly used for the shadow puppet props. When Mantou inquires how long it will take for the chicks to grow up, Fugui's response is a more tempered version of something he said earlier in the film, which shows that he no longer possesses the blind faith in communism he once had. However, in spite of all of his personal hardships, he expresses optimism for his grandson's future, and the film ends with his statement, "and life will get better and better" as the whole family sits down to eat. | realism, suspenseful, murder | train | imdb | Now that director Yimou Zhang ('Hero' & 'House of Flying Daggers') has become more popular, I'm hoping this will change.'Huozhe' or 'To Live' takes us on a trip in China that will last us from the 40's through the 70's.
Through that time, we will see life through the eyes of Fugui and Jiazhen, a husband and wife with 2 children, as well as Fugui's mother.Fugui, the husband, has a gambling problem which will set off a chain of events that will have them lose the house, and eventually separate the family.
Li Gong is beautiful, and portrays her character with such passion, it's no wonder she has been nominated nearly a dozen times, winning most.Emotional without being sappy, honest, & historically accurate, the film does have a black shroud covering it.
Most Chinese who lived through Mao's Revolution say this film tells it like it was at the simple townsperson level.
Both have some similarities, beyond the common appearance of Gong Li in front and Zhang Yimou behind the camera, but TO LIVE definitely confronts the political (I should really say "social") aspects of the decades they cover much more directly and forcefully.TO LIVE (aka LIFETIMES - I dunno what the Chinese name is) basically covers 3 or 4 decades of one family's life in China, in a period that saw not one but two revolutions, and looks at the effect the social upheaval had on ordinary people's lives.
The film rarely criticises the political movements instigated by Mao Tse Tung, but does an effective job of showing the hellishness of a society that has been turned on its head, where the people are forced to change not just the way they live but the way they think, and people are forced into social relationships that are new, and quite possibly against human nature.I hope I won't jeapordise my visa if I admit that I had strong leanings towards Communism when I was younger, having read Marx in philosophy classes.
Mao Tse Tung is, I guess, the undisputed king of Communist revolution, having led TWO of them in China, and probably disrupting more peoples' lives than anybody else in history in the process.
which makes him all the more likely to get one (and without the audience feeling used afterwards).In a career full of magnificent films, TO LIVE stands as one of Zhang Yimou's finest moments.
Yimou Zhang's "To Live" begins in the late 1940s and covers several decades in the life of Fugui (You Ge), his wife Jiazhen (Li Gong), and their two children.
At first, Fugui is the stereotypical "callow young man" and Jiazhen the even more stereotypical "long- suffering wife," but the screenplay and actors eventually deepen the characterizations.The best sequence of the film covers the Chinese Civil War. Wisely, Yimou Zhang resists the temptation to make the movie too epic, and instead focuses on Fugui's personal experiences.
After watching "To Live," it's easy to see why the Chinese authorities banned it: there's a lot of tragedy in the film, and in most cases, Communism is to blame.
In this way we know that the people have tamed the ox.Zhang's film is an epic parable of life in China in the 20th century.
He is lucky to have lost his fortune for now he is recognized as a hero of the revolution, while the man who won his family's house at dice is declared a counter-revolutionary and meets a bad end.As in every Zhang Yimou film I have seen, everything is beautifully and exquisitely done.
In another sense his depictions of the sins and excesses of the old regime before communism are so well done and appreciated by all, that such an expression also protects him.Nonetheless, I do not personally consider this Zhang Yimou's best film.
Of course Gong Li, one of the finest actresses of our time, who is often featured in Zhang Yimou's films, is outstanding as always.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!).
Every time I watch it, and I know a particular heartbreaking scene is coming up, I almost want to turn it off, but I'm just frozen in place, forced to experience the pain of the people on screen, that I've traveled three decades with.
This movie, which was banned in mainland China for "Questionable" outlooks on the communist party, is one of the best movies I have seen thus far.It is easy to dismiss this movie as a "Sad period piece," but with another look, one sees that this is a story about triumph...
The title, "To Live," is very apt, as we see the rises and falls of one small family living through the ups and downs of China during the pre-revolutionary era, the civil war, the Great Leap Forward, the Proletariat Cultural Revolution, and beyond.This movie is at turns dramatic, humorous, touching, chilling, heart-wrenching, and triumphant.
Even better is the infusion of comic touches all the way through, the dialogue (even in subtitle form) is great and is witty and touching I laughed out loud many times.Not having seen any other films by Zhang, I can only hope they are as good as this one.
It was akin to a Buddhist mandala to me, a cosmic picture directing me to find my own place in the center of things, choose repose over madness.Zhang by contrast here wanders unconstrained, under the auspice of history, aiming for a full chronicle of sorts of Chinese life as a family moves through the decades.
The stage backdrop changes frequently; Civil war, Great Leap, Cultural Revolution.We do still have the turning of cycles and it does create a (cosmic) picture; a life of comfort squandered by the man's ignorance who loses it all, to one of hardship and quiet abiding.
Ge You gives a consummate performance, and it is through his eyes that we view the story; Gong Li, though not lavished with the attention Zhang Yimou usually gives her, provides the heart and soul of the film.
As much as I have been transported by some of Zhang's epics in the way he manages to play with that kind of feeling and develops an interesting sense in the beauty of the images through colorful surroundings, graceful gestures and the the sometimes tragic intensity of themes of the ancient mystified past of the Chinese culture.
To live is one of the most heart wrenching,soul stirring film i have ever seen.Its got great acting,great cinematography,dialogues,music and direction which makes it a real gem of world cinema.Even the subtitles didn't look like a difficult task to read considering how brilliant,sad yet uplifting the film was.Its hard to believe that the main protagonist endured and suffered so much pain in the film yet had the heart and strength to carry on with their lives with a smile on their face.A brave film about a family who choose to live under every possible bad circumstance.I am proud i watched this Chinese film being an Indian.Go for it even if you don't know Chinese because this film deserves more recognition world wide..
Although the 1994 film is not an overt criticism of Mao's regime (to do so would be politically unwise for the filmmakers), the effects of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution have devastating effects on Fu Gui's family.
To live A surprisingly poignant movie of Zhang targeting Mao's mistakes and ruthless personal agenda over people's well being, rendering every individual in China suffering from the results of Mao's sick minded political movements.
China, still a land of lack of freedom of speech, albeit much better than Mao's time, Zhang was able to make such a movie rife with hidden and conspicuous messages projecting the ultimate human tragedy at such a scale that no other human histories can match or parallel it, not even the Holocaust or the massacre of Armenians by the Turks, or the Nanking massacre of Chinese by the Japanese troops.This suffering lasted 30 years and beyond.
Based on a very famous book with the same name and after some slight modifications, the movie mercylessly pictures a normal Chinese's tragic life, reflecting almost all important times in recent China.
They really do with the same idea.After 10 years, people still not live rich enough, and thanks for Chairman Mao's same eagerness, a new 'revolution' began which brought China in its worst depth in recent history.
The story weaves in and out of several decades, showing the times of the Chinese communist takeover, and it's direct effect on one family.
Tragedy all throughout the movie, with a war in the beginning, then the loss of the main character's son, then later on the loss of the daughter giving birth to a child.And all of that mixed with a gloomy atmosphere of a rather poor family in China, in once again gloomy times.
I would like to second the positive things which have been said and recommend the film to those who would like to get a "feel" for what it must have been like to have gone through some of what the Chinese people who experienced it first hand live through.
It shows the struggles of one family through the Chinese Civil War, The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, and beyond.
Zhang Yimou, the greatest director in the history of Chinese film, and one of the greatest of all directors from all countries, was a master with the camera; and he captures all of the misery that China went through during these decades.
Gong Li, the greatest Chinese actress of all time, who would go on to make several other gems for Zhang, gives an Academy Award-level performance, as does the male lead, Ge You. This is one of best half-dozen films ever made in China.
But in the end, it tells the story so well, like being born in China under surreal cultural revolution wasn't enough, some people are simply more unfortunate than others thanks to fate.
The movie is about one family life before the communist take over to the 70s where almost end of cultural revolution.
This scene is played with such truthfulness that at points you feel you are watching a slice of real life and not a big budget Chinese movie.Yimou Zhang is one of the best Directors alive today if not the best.
"To Live" (1994)"To Live" is a Chinese film directed by Zhang Yimou in 1994, starring Ge You and Gong Li. It is based on the novel of the same name by Yu Hua. Although not the grandest or most epic recall of 20th century China, (that honour would go to Chen Kai Ge's Farewell My Concubine) 'To Live' is the most intimate and touching tale of that dark period of Chinese history.
We are taken through the Chinese Civil War, The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and never deter from the main focus of a couple who, from prosperity to poverty, struggle to keep a family together through these turbulent times.
What the masterful Zhang Yimou manages to do best is not be in any way manipulative and still honor the resiliency of Fugui and Jiahzen in the face of political change, bureaucratic incompetence, and personal loss.'To Live' brings you so close to characters it feels like you can touch them, and as the closing credits roll you are left with such admiration for the brave souls that survived totalitarian rule.
I agreed with one of the comments which says 'To Live' is very similar to Chen KaiGe's 'Fairwell my concubine', both were epic films, both stories revolved around the same period of time and the same political event that happened in China.
The reason why i think this should be the Best Zhang Yi Mou's film ever is because the plot is so simple to follow, in fact, it's almost plot-less; one simply follows those characters along, surviving through the various mishaps in life and the relentless political upheavals which disrupted many people's life at the time.
We learn about the characters not through their dialogue and actor characterizations, but through their actions in the scores of vignettes we see span their lives.The film begins in the forties, while China was still under imperial control, and follows one couple through the fifties, when communism took over, to the tragedy of the cultural revolution in the sixties.
I could spend the rest of my life watching their lives.Zhang Yimou not only knows how to create a masterpiece on film, he knows where to end it.
However, Zhang Yimou brought us to a point where the movie ends, and we know that life will continue in the same fashion that it always has: with inconsistencies in joy and pain.This is, by far, one of the ten best films EVER made, and, I feel, Zhang Yimou's best work.10/10.
Gong Li is a wonderful actress and I think this is her best film.This film tracks the life of a family through the years of China's communist take over.
Of course, there will be orders that come from the top and that, conversely, are the media employees who bear the responsibility.Zhang Yimou, without doubt one of the most qualified directors of contemporary cinema and perhaps the number one in China, seems to have the best memories of the Cultural Revolution and movies like "Ju Dou" or "Raise the Red Lantern" which, as this, critics buried the unfortunate actions of the regime, have cost censorship and close supervision to all their projects.
Full of variegated hues, the Xu family life is intense, and she - like any other Family - emerge roses and thorns, while, with great subtlety, Yimou is giving subtle details of the oppression that obscures the legendary, and no doubt significant, under Mao. And if anyone wants to see indirect allusions to what the Chinese now live, you may find something that makes you nod.And there are things like perseverance brings reward, and the good that is hidden in all evil, or as inherent serenity to accept what goes against what is expected, this inspiring film, let us reach for a good reflection.And remember: ¡Whatever happens, you must live!, ¡This is the decision of the brave!.
This is a powerful Chinese war drama, a story about Fugui (You Ge) and Jiazhen (Li Gong), who after losing their personal fortunes, raise a family during the challenging cultural changes in 1940s - 1970s, China.The acting was spot-on, especially that of Li Gong, who gave a strong and touching portrayal of Jiazhen - sticking by her husband during the tough times and raising their two children.The plot was solid and well-paced, touching on each aspect of the cultural revolution, from government forces going against traditionalism to comrades praising Chairman Mao and the rise of the Communist Party.
Throughout all these changes, Fugui, Jiazhen and their family tread on to survive, just as their fellow villagers do in these trying times - all demonstrating the meaning of the movie's title, "To Live." There are definitely scenes where it will send you river of tears, and remind you of nostalgia, good old days, trials and tribulations and the desires for better days ahead.Grade A.
i've watched the other chinese films that set through out cultural revolution from the other 5th generation director, Farewell My Concubine and Blue Kite, and all i can say is that To Live tell what happened there in more sophisticated way, he tell us softly and gently, but still satire enough, to help us to get the point of what happened without such chaos scene that really rip my heart, how terrified was there at that time.this is the great film, the drama well written..the sad, the happiness, the frightened, the joy..
People who are used to Zhang Yimou's films are probably also used to the endings of his movies not making any sense.
Political orthodoxy dominated the lives of the Chinese people, whether they had any interest in political matters or not.The fact that this film was banned in China, and Zhang Yimou & Gong Li were punished by their government, is proof (if more proof were needed) that authoritarianism is not yet dead in China.
Zhang Yimou has painted a pair of wonderful lives that endured the Communist Civil War, the "Great Leap Forward", and the Cultural Revolution.
All North American Chinese should watch this film to understand our people, our families and ourselves..
Through their eyes, we get a glimpse of what life must have been like for an average person in those days.The story begins with Fugui gambling away his family's home.
Ironically, this set-back saves the family; the Cultural Revolution arrives, and with China's shift to nascent communism, all wealthy land owners are demonised, attacked and killed.Unlike most films which tackle life under Mao's Great Leap Forward, "To Live" carefully juggles the good and bad of what was essentially a nation shirking off feudalism, monarchs, uniting and then trying, clumsily, to cook up some form of egalitarian society.
The film follows the lives of Fugui, his wife Jiazhen, and their children Fengxia and Youqing, and depicts the manner in which Chinese families had to cope and adapt to the drastic upheaval in order to avoid being labelled a "capitalist" or a "reactionary" and suffer retribution.
This film tells a story of a husband（Fugui) and a wife(Jiazhen) and how how they manage to live through China's tumultuous periods.The time line of the story is quite long.
"To Live" is another fine movie by Zhang Yimou.This movie starts just when China was turning to Communism, and is a wonderful history lesson because it is told from the perspective of this family going though all the changes.There is also an ironic type of almost humor in the movie.
His wife, Jiazhen, cried with joy when he appeared in her doorsteps.The film also depicted China's history and it is effect on Fugui's family. |
tt0085244 | The Big Chill | Harold Cooper (Kevin Kline) is bathing his young son when his wife, Sarah (Glenn Close), receives a phone call at their Richmond home telling her that their friend, Alex, has committed suicide by slashing his wrists in the bathtub of their vacation house in South Carolina, where he had been staying.
At the funeral, Harold and Sarah are reunited with college friends from the University of Michigan. They include Sam (Tom Berenger), a famous television actor now living in Los Angeles; Meg (Mary Kay Place), a chain smoking former public defender who is now a real estate attorney in Atlanta and wants a child; Michael (Jeff Goldblum), a sex-obsessed People magazine journalist; Nick (William Hurt), a Vietnam War veteran and former radio host who suffers from impotence; Karen (JoBeth Williams), a housewife from suburban Detroit who's unhappy in her marriage to her advertising executive husband, Richard (Don Galloway). Also present is Chloe (Meg Tilly), Alex's much younger girlfriend.
After the burial, everyone goes from the cemetery to Harold and Sarah's vacation house, where they are invited to stay for the weekend. During the first night there, a bat flies into the attic while Meg and Nick are getting reacquainted. Sam later finds Nick watching television, and they briefly talk about Karen. The two then go into the kitchen and find Richard making a sandwich, and the three make small talk which turns into a discussion about responsibility and adulthood. At the end of the discussion, Richard states, "Nobody said it was going to be fun. At least, nobody said it to me."
The next morning Harold and Nick go jogging. Harold tells Nick that his running shoe company is about to be bought out by a large corporation, and that he's about to become rich. Harold confides in Nick that Sarah and Alex had an affair five years earlier. Nick comforts Harold by saying, "She didn't marry Alex."
Richard returns home to look after his kids, but Karen decides to stay in South Carolina for the weekend. Nick, Harold, Michael and Chloe go for a drive (while "Good Lovin'" by the Rascals plays on the car radio), while Sam and Karen go shopping. Meg reveals to Sarah that she wants to have a child, and that she is going to ask Sam to be the father, knowing now that Nick can't. Out in the countryside, Harold listens to Michael's plans to buy a nightclub. Chloe takes Nick to the abandoned house that she and Alex were going to renovate. She tells him that he reminds her of Alex, to which Nick replies, "I ain't him."
During dinner, Sarah starts tearing up over Alex as the group talks about him. Harold puts "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by the Temptations on the stereo, and everyone dances while cleaning up the dishes. While the others sit around and smoke marijuana, Meg asks Sam to father her baby, but he declines.
The next morning Nick, Sam and Harold go jogging, and the subject of Alex's suicide comes up again. Harold's surprise arrives: sneakers for everyone to wear during the upcoming Michigan football game. The group, minus Nick, watches the game on TV, while Sarah tells Karen about her brief affair with Alex and how it affected their friendship negatively.
During the game, Michael offers to father Meg's child, alluding to the fact that they had sex in college during the March on Washington. At halftime, Chloe, Sam, Harold and Michael go outside to play touch football. Nick returns, with a police car following him. The officer says that Nick ran a red light and was belligerent, but says that he will drop the charges if Sam would hop into Nick's Porsche as his TV character, J. T. Lancer, always does. Sam is unsuccessful and hurts himself, but the officer drops the charges anyway and apologizes to Harold.
Karen later tells Sam that she loves him, wants to leave Richard and live with Sam and her two sons. When they kiss, Sam pulls away and tells Karen not to leave Richard, as she will regret it in the long run. He confesses that it was "boredom" that caused his own marriage to fail, and he doesn't want her to make the same mistake. Karen feels misled and angrily storms into the house.
Harold is on the phone with his daughter, Molly, and lets Meg talk to her. Observing their interaction on the phone, Sarah decides to let Harold impregnate Meg, but does not tell him yet.
The group once again discusses Alex. Nick says, "Alex died for most of us a long time ago," but Sam disagrees and leaves. Karen follows him, and the two have sex outside. Sarah tells Harold about Meg's situation, while Chloe and Nick go to bed together, even though he warns her of his condition. Meg and Harold then have sex – she says "I feel like I got a great break on a used car" – while Michael and Sarah joke around and interview each other with a video camera.
In the morning while Karen is packing her clothes, she subtly tells Sam that she has decided to stay with Richard. At the breakfast table, Harold reveals that Nick and Chloe will be staying in the guest house for a while so they can renovate the old abandoned house. Sam and Nick then make up from their argument the night before. Nick gives Michael an old copy of an article he wrote about Alex back in college. At the end of the movie, Michael states, tongue in cheek, "Sarah, Harold. We took a secret vote. We're not leaving. We're never leaving." They all laugh and "Joy to the World" plays as the credits roll. | cult | train | wikipedia | "The Big Chill" is often regarded as the best Hollywood movie to demonstrate ensemble acting.
A problem that can affect similar films is the unequal division of time that each character receives, but "The Big Chill" avoids this problem.
Some of the careers of the talented cast bloomed after this- Kevin Kline won an Oscar for "A Fish Called Wanda", Glenn Close got 5 nominations (this film included) and got a status in Hollywood, Jeff Goldblum got success in the likes of "Jurassic Park" and "Independence Day".
It is the single best combination of acting, film editing, sound track, dialogue, and every other thing that goes into a movie, ever put together.
After a decade in the work-a-day world, being a family man and raising babies, watching "The Big Chill" was like a fantastic time machine and took me back to places long forgotten.
"The Big Chill" is still a very good movie; you have to love it for the ensemble acting.
That is of course, the plot of the movie.7 friends (who go wayyy back) one husband (who disappears pretty quickly) and a widowed girlfriend (who is barely known by anyone) come together after they learn that Alex, a friend formally part of the clique, had committed suicide (this part was infamously played by Kevin Costner).
As a member of Gen-X having just revisited this movie after several years, I have to say that the soundtrack took me down "memory lane" in a big way, and may be one of the best things about The Big Chill.
Music can make or break a movie, and in The Big Chill, the music is an integral part of the film, as important as the cast, the writing and the directing.
I had to look The Big Chill up on the internet to be reminded of the general story line, but the music has stayed with me all these years, and will remain with me, from the first notes of Joy to the World through the rest of the soundtrack and back.
I'm from Michigan, and while I didn't go to UM, I went to a state school in Michigan in the early seventies, and this was my life.This movie has both *everyone* I ever knew in it, and all the best actors of the time.
Reunions of former college mates can be an enthusiastic, but also dramatic experience, mainly when you have shared with your now adult friends great ideals in a better and just world, and all those ideals have been abandoned in favour of professional careers and wealthy lives and, moreover, when the only mate who has faced the unfillable gap between the ideal and the real has just committed suicide and thus caused that same reunion.
Not to mention the soundtrack, which contributes strongly to the emotional impact of the movie and makes one feel like rediscovering the great and out of time hits of the 60's, 70's.
The original screenplay included scenes with Alex, who was played by Kevin Costner, but, in a stroke of genius, it was decide to delete all of the Alex scenes in the film, lending a wonderful air of mystery to the character of Alex and allowing the audience more input as to why Alex decided to end his life.
Alex's friends are Harold Cooper (Kevin Kline), who now owns a shoe store franchise and his doctor-wife, Sarah (Glenn Close), who also serve as our hosts ; Michael (Jeff Goldblum), a writer for PEOPLE magazine; Meg (Mary Kay Place)an attorney who wants to have a baby; Sam (Tom Berenger) an actor with his own TV show who misses the simple life; Karen (JoBeth Williams), a restless housewife who would really like to be a writer and Nick (William Hurt) a drug dealer who would like to be anything else.
"The Big Chill" has something in common with another movie from the early eighties, Barry Levinson's "Diner" from 1981, which also deals with a reunion of a group of former classmates, although that film is a period piece set in 1959 and the characters are rather younger, being in their twenties rather than their thirties.
What the two films have in common is that both are excellent examples of ensemble acting.This was the second film of its director Lawrence Kasdan (his first was the very different neo-noir thriller "Body Heat") and it starred a number of actors, such as William Hurt and Kevin Kline, who were to become regulars in Kasdan's movies.
There are too may good performances to list them all, but special mentions must go to Kline as Harold, Glenn Close as Sarah and Meg Tilly as Alex's strange, unworldly younger girlfriend Chloe.
The piece ends suddenly, with little changed, nothing concluded and the audience thinking "So what?" We never find out why Alex killed himself but my theory is he realized that these people were the best he could do for friends so he threw in the towel.As for the soundtrack, a selection of fifteen or so different numbers of roughly the same period, well K-Tel have been doing that sort of thing for years.
Like most members of my generation (portrayed in this film) "The Big Chill" is self-centered, egotistical, puerile, vapid, and ultimately chillingly bad.Chillingly because so many of my generation believe it to be poignant and meaningful, a beautiful slice of life, and, thus believing, hearken the beginning of the dumbing of America, where the childlike, puerile, and simplistic can be raised to the level of art.The film is not even entertaining for bad art.
It is the type of movie that you just don't see anymore and the characters and situations are touching, bittersweet, and quite true to life.Anyone who likes movies about real people and friendships that can withstand just about anything will love this movie.
"The Big Chill" is a simple story that involves a group of old friends who reunite after hearing the news that Alex, a close friend has committed suicide.
The other characters like the lawyer, the writer for People magazine and the movie star...how genuinely involved were they in the 1960's movement?
A lot of baby boom audiences have responded bitterly about this film because it seems so personal and yet they cannot relate to the characters, and therefore they feel fooled, tricked or envious of these characters." The Big Chill" does not speak for an entire generation and that is the problem.
I give the movie a B-.Things to watch for: cynical product placement (Miller Beer, Nike shoes, etc.); Meg Tilly's body; Kevin Kline's come-and-go accent..
A surprising Oscar's BEST PICTURE nominee, writer/director Lawrence Kasdan's sophomore feature THE BIG CHILL focuses on a weekend reunion of seven 30-something alumni of the University of Michigan, 15 years after leaving the ivory tower, but what convenes them together is anything but jovial, their friend Alex's shocking suicide.
The overhanging question shrouds the cohort of eight, joined by Chloe, Alex's much younger girlfriend, is what is the reason behind Alex's given up on his life, but like Alex himself, whom we are not privileged to see in his physical form (Kevin Costner is cast as Alex but all his scenes with his facial appearance are left in the editing room), it is elusive and open-ended, it might be just as well a spur-of-the-moment decision out of depression.
Pivoted around a ballast of camaraderie, nothing egregiously dark will emerge to tickle a cynical mind, Sarah (a radiant and Oscar-nominated Glenn Close in the mode of a good wife/mother which in retrospect appears at a premium in her tracking record) admits that she had an affair with Alex, which unfortunately dampens their friendship, before marrying Harold (Kevin Kline, full of panache), the ultimate version of an understanding and competent husband, who has no qualms at the bidding of her wife to become an inseminator of Meg (Mary Kay Place, embodies the career woman stereotype with considerable pizazz and tizzy), who adopts a modern view of independence and plans to become a single mother of her own accord when the biological clock starts ticking.
As per the likability quotient of their characters, in the descending order, the next-in-line is Karen (JoBeth Williams, a fine performance), a housewife forgoes her writing dreams to raise her children and gets bored with her stagnant marriage, the reunion tantalizingly rekindles her romance with her old admirer Sam (Tom Berenger, emits a refreshing air of forthright amiability and attractive unassumingness before being typecast in the villain compartment, for keeps), a well-known TV actor in L.A., divorced but sagacious enough not to wreck a family just for the old time's sake (after a mutually desired consummation, of course).
The Big Chill tells the story of eight friends who come together after the suicide of one of the best of them.
Glen Close, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Berenger, Kevin Kline, and William Hurt were the best.The movie defines a generation.
The Big Chill is a great film to watch when you are looking for happiness in a sad place.
[This would be a better story, I believe, and my interpretation of the movie would persuade me more if at least one of the characters acknowledged how much Meg resembles the hippies whom those of us old enough to have know hippies knew.]In my view, then, the cynical [Nick] is verbally worn down by the delusionals and won over by the realist [Chloe].
While The Big Chill is a good movie and is well acted fans should check out John Sayles's Return of the Secaucus Seven.
It's a great family movie OR a flick to watch partying with good friends.
Add Hollywood slickness, box office names, get the characters to dance to a great soundtrack with one of the best songs ever -- the Temptations with David Ruffin singing lead on "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" -- and you've got this 2 1/2-star thumb-stuck-firmly-in-the-middle melodrama.Big Chill probably ruins Secaucus 7 for anyone who sees this film first, but 7 is the better and more authentic film.
There's also the sad fact that movies like "The Big Chill" convinced a few addle-headed members of my demographic group (I was born in 1967) to try to create some kind of generational identity.
O.k. For those of you who aren't looking for an in depth analysis of the film, just want to know if it's worth watching, let me start out by saying the movie is worthless drivel.
Though the film has some great actors (And some of my favorite actors - Tom Berenger and Kevin Klein {sp?}) That is literally the only positive comment I have about this movie.
Unless you count that I've always had a thing for the dark-haired Jobeth Williams, kind of thought Glenn Close was pretty alluring in an offbeat sort of way, and enjoyed watching the pretty Meg Tilly doing her leg exercises.A real nothing of a film, despite the infusion of a kick-ass soundtrack of classic '60s tunes and the bumping of hips around the kitchen to the sounds of "Ain't Too Proud To Beg".
Sam (Tom Berenger) is a television star, Meg (Mary Kay Place) is a fine lawyer, Michael (Jeff Goldblum) writes for People Magazine, and Karen (JoBeth Williams) is a housewife with two small boys.
A bunch of college friends from the 1960s (Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Mary Kay place and Jobeth Williams) all get together in South Carolina for a friends funeral.
I was 21 and (maybe) too young to understand the problems these people were dealing with but the excellent acting (especially by Close), great direction, sharp script and wonderful soundtrack kept me entertained.
The film written (with Barbara Benedek) and directed by Lawrence Kasdan has reached icon status: it is as quality a memoir of baby boomer post college life that remains as poignant today as when it was released twenty seven years ago.
The group - Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, and Jobeth Williams interact philosophically, over food making in the kitchen of the Close/Kline home, share frustrations and fulfill expectations in both friendship and physical interactions.
Among them is Sam (Berenger), a notable TV actor; Michael (Goldblum), a magazine journalist; Meg (Place), a single real estate attorney; Nick (Hurt), a war veteran with a cocaine addiction; Chloe (Tilly), Alex's much younger girlfriend and finally Karen (Williams) and Richard, an unhappily married couple.
A lot has happened since the group had graduated and a lot can happen over the course of a weekend.While thematically very different than director Lawrence Kasdan's freshman effort Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill does show a similar affinity to character over story structure and pat resolutions.
But instead of the bitterness that was honestly realized in Return of the Secaucus 7 (1979) we get the upbeat vibes of "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog".All-in-all, The Big Chill is a decent film with fully realized characters worth following for an hour or two.
If you ever had a really tight knit group of school friends that you absolutely love and then spent years without them, this film will allow you to feel like you are having a reunion with your friends.
A group of seven former college friends gather for a weekend reunion at a South Carolina winter house after the funeral of one of their friends.In some ways, this film is something like "Secaucus Seven", with various friends who drifted apart getting back together again.
Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly & JoBeth Williams are efficient.On the whole, 'The Big Chill' is well-made film in all respects..
I just realized this!Harold tells the William Hurt character that the affair between Alex and Glen Close happened 5 years ago.
This probably the most quoted movie I know about, even today It starts out as the generation just before me in the Big Time Line Those "Kids" had their whole world turned upside down starting with the Kennedy Assignation and then moving on through Watergate....
It was a hit driven by good writing about somewhat believable humans, which is much less common in mainstream movies nowadays, especially ones with such a big name cast.And that fun, fun music doesn't hurt either.I agree that it may have been copied from "Return of the Seacaucus Seven" (which is fine in its own way), but see Chill anyway.
The Big Chill is one of those films that anyone who had a group of friends and aspirations from youth can easily relate to and better yet, enjoy!
This movie is definitely one of the best to come out of the 80's and goes to show the importance that friends have in a person's life.
After seeing the movie many times, it only occurred to me recently what the BIG CHILL really is...
and only because I finally and personally felt the big chill while recently watching the film.William Hurt's character is set up to be the next Alex and none of the characters in the film are "getting it".
The Big Chill has the ultimate 60s-70s soundtrack to match the changing moods and situations the characters have.Glenn Close got nominated for a Best Supporting Actress yet it seems almost
I would be more intrigued if they chose obscure songs from the time or even psychedelic instrumental music from the 60's.It's like if you did a movie about people who went to college in the 80's and the soundtrack was Duran Duran, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.
They stay behind for the weekend and reconnect with old drama and new issues.It's a feel good movie about a death and life from Lawrence Kasdan.
A cast of Kevin Kline, Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, and William Hurt really can't go wrong.
But really that's just one way of thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side, perhaps in years to come another film like The Big Chill will depict the reality of the 90's and show how the world has changed since then and then I'll feel all nostalgic.
That's a rare thing in a film, it's quite universal in it's message and it becomes a trip down memory lane no matter when you grew up; you find similarities in many things here.The Big Chill has it all; great story, great actors, great music; it's just a great movie..
The soundtrack is almost a comforting character of it's own.What can I say...this movie just makes you feel good..
Definitive for that timeframe and with 'all the goods' for a great film - which was not really possible to replicate in its follow-up (so much so I can't remember the title here).I had heard that Alex - the lost friend/corpse depicted with a chest shot at the beginning of the film - was played by Kevin Costner and that there was extra footage originally shot that included his character but it was all cut.
As I turn 23 and graduate from college, I find myself being able to relate to the characters in "The Big Chill." It has been one of my family's favorite movies of their generation.
He was the brightest of them all, yet never seemed to achieve as much as they have because he never "bought in to the system", as the film conveys.The thing I like best about "The Big Chill" is how each character has his or her own story to tell.
Till now those ideas about friendship, idealism, love, death and getting are present on my mind.It is a very sensitive movie and with a good Soundtrack.All the actors are in great performance.
And the incredible soundtrack remains one of the best uses of music in movies ever.It was this film that turned me on to a whole slew of superb actors.
Just grab this off the shelves and make ya self cumf'y - its a great 'Feel Good' movie with a difference, and has the most splendid cast - all of whom are now really big stars....
I love movies that make you think, that develop the characters thoroughly and that involve great ensemble acting... |
tt0313300 | The Blue Butterfly | Inspired by a true story, The Blue Butterfly is about ten year-old Pete Carlton (Marc Donato) who is diagnosed as terminally ill and his determined mother will stop at nothing to ensure her sons dream. Funny and intelligent, yet somewhat shy, Pete is stoic and incredibly courageous when it comes to his condition. He seeks refuge by observing the miniature world of cocoons and insects that he collects. Given only months to live, Pete has one wish; to catch the most beautiful butterfly on earth, the legendary Blue Morphothe Mariposa Azul, a magnificent creature found only in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America. He is convinced that this butterfly with the azure wings can reveal the mystery of life to him.Teresa Carlton (Pascale Bussieres) is Petes single mother. She is brave, worn out, consumed by love and sorrow for her dying son, and determined to overcome any obstacle that stands in the way of his dream. She begins by convincing Alan Osborne (William Hurt), a renowned entomologist and Petes hero, to take them to the jungle. Alan is a passionate, rugged yet vulnerable man who, due partly to a secret that haunts him, prefers the company of insects over people. He is initially dead-set against this idea. But, thanks to Petes determination, and his talent as a manipulator, his hero finally agrees to go along with the idea. However, since the Blue Morpho season is almost over, Alan will only give Pete a couple days to try to capture the magical butterfly. The Blue Butterfly is about the coming of age of a young boy and a mature man who both must learn to emerge from their protective cocoons to live life to the fullest. | storytelling | train | imdb | I didn't know what to expect from this movie and the longer I watched it the more enjoyable it became.
There is some very beautiful cinematography in this movie and even if it were not an excellent movie that alone would make it worthwhile The elusive Blue Butterfly becomes a symbol of hope and well as the source of problems.
Right to the end of the film the director never leaves you wondering but tells the story and leaves you feeling completely satisfied.
The Blue Butterfly is based on a true story about a nine year old boy dying of a brain tumor whose last request is to capture the blue butterfly for his collection.
This was a heartwarming movie that even my "Rambo'lovin husband liked.I will be buying this movie.If you do not care for the story line you will love the scenery.If you have children 6 and older they would really learn from this movie.It really shows the compassion that man can have for one another and actually restores your faith in the human race.The wildlife will really make the young ones stay entertained.Rent or buy this as much for yourself as for your children.You can be assured that this movie will not have any content that will be offensive-in fact they give you two choices-edited content for minor language or non edited.I chose non edited and it was in no way offensive..
Blue Butterfly is the best movie i have seen in the last two years.It is funny, amazing, and beautiful.
If you don't want to see it for the acting, which is EXCELLENT then go see it for the beautiful scenes of the Costa Rican jungle.This movie is proof that Canadian movies are just as good if not better than some Hollywood movies..
it features some of the best outdoor photography I've seen in any movie I'm not a fan nor like insects but this film allows you to see them much closer and makes them more interesting then i could have imagined.
its like national geographic did a love story about a miracle, with comedy thrown in and a dash of action adventure and suspense .
If you like nature films, you will definitely enjoy this as a great visual experience.William Hurt once again plays a father figure to a troubled little boy (see "Second Best" and "A.I."), and he does it very well.
Yes, this was a project that I spent much time on, but the gang that we had in Costa Rica was excellent I really applaud them I love the people here.
This film is about a 10 year old boy with a terminal brain tumor whose last wish is to catch a blue butterfly that lives in the forests of South and Central America.
I saw this movie on TV with my 8 year old son, I felt it had a lot of important things to teach him about humanity and nature: wildlife, disease, relationships, other cultures, other perceptions of reality, other lifestyles.
THE BLUE BUTTERFLY, made in 2004, is based on a true story as adapted for the screen by Pete McCormick and as directed by Léa Pool.
But THE BLUE BUTTERFLY is not a typical Hallmark-type presentation: it is based on fine acting by a varied cast gathered from Canada, the USA, and Costa Rica, it is a beautifully sculpted nature film, and it introduces a fact - that miracles do happen.
There the busy Osborne meets 10- year-old Pete Carlton (the fine young Canadian actor Marc Donato), a victim of brain cancer who is in his final month of life and who has become a devoted fan of the brilliant Osborne's books and lectures to the point that Pete wants Osborne to take him to the rain forest to capture a Blue Morpho butterfly - the Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho menelaus) is an iridescent blue butterfly from South American rain forests and is an insect Pete remembers Osborne as calling 'magic'.
From here the film is all located in the rain forest (here, Costa Rica as captured on film by Director of Photography Pierre Mignot who also is responsible for the extraordinarily beautiful close-up images of all manner of insects and wildlife), and with the help of a friendly village lead by Alejo (Raoul Trujillo) the group (Pete, Osborne, Teresa, Alejo and guides) sets out to find and capture the Blue Butterfly.
What follows is a journey that tests faith, shows courage and mends bruised lives: the capture of the desired butterfly and the manner it is handled is one of the little miracles of the film - the real 'miracle' is that upon return to Canada, Pete is diagnosed free of tumor!
As the movie rolled on, I knew that I was right.Only Costa Rica can show us such beauty in its country and wildlife.I had made the trip from San Jose to Torteguero Biosphere Reserve and stayed there for five days.No words can describe Costa Rica, you have to personally see its beauty to appreciate it.If you can, go and visit it and I promise you, you will be glad you took my advise.Having been to 72 different countries, I place Costa Rica as my number one place to return to.....that's why I'm going back for my third visit in the not too distant future.El Mariposa Azul (The Blue Butterfly) has done CR proud....or is it the other way round?.
A dying boys "last wish" is to find this Blue Butterfly with the aid of William Hurt, who first refuses, but later changes his mind.
the movie may not be everyone favorite if action "Clint Eastwood" style films are what you like, but it your like me who likes a story of hope, then you got the film to watch.
The Blue Butterfly tells the extraordinary story of a 10-year-old boy diagnosed as terminally ill whose dream is to catch the most beautiful butterfly on Earth the mythic and elusive Blue Morpho.
His mother persuades a renowned entomologist (William Hurt) to take them on a trip to the Costa Rican rain forest to search for the butterfly leading to an adventure that will transform their lives.
A magical film about a courageous young boy and a jaded man who chase a dream and whose lives are forever changed.
It is a vividly colourful production & tells an intense story of a young boy dying of cancer, needing & seeking inspiration in his struggles for life, embarking on a journey that puts his illness into perspective.
It is insightful, interesting & realistic in its depictions of interpersonal relationships - mother & son, boy & the man he looks up to, flawed but invaluable expert on insects whose knowledge of nature is only a tip of the iceberg into his deeper self & how he got to this place where he finds himself, where he can help & inspire the young boy in his adversity.Contrary to other opinions expressed, as an adult, I didn't find this a kid's movie, to be dismissed by some other's opinions that this movie is 'boring'.
It was at best, ordinary.By contrast, I can understand that "The Blue Butterfly" would be especially helpful to children with cancer or other struggles with illnesses.
But beyond that, "The Blue Butterfly" is an enjoyable family movie, with something in it for child & adult alike!.
This is a movie based on a true story, so there is just so much one can do to dramatize it, you must count on acting, and even if William Hurt played well his role of an asocial entomologist, the other actors seemed to be there just for the money.
The script also lacked a certain proof of effort, while the beautiful nature scenes seemed to be put in the movie only to make it long enough.In conclusion I could watch it, although I desperately wanted to go to sleep on it, but it disappointed me.
In this movie, William Hurt is the only slightly likable character and cancer or not, nobody seems to care in the movie either.The movie is a failure, although one cannot expect too much of dramas these days.
One of Hurt's best films, with amazing cinematography.
The lad is a winged-insect collector and his fondest wish is to go to the Costa Rican rainforest and catch a "blue butterfly", like his idol, Dr. Alan (William Hurt).
Costumes, cinematography, script (based on a true story), and the skilled direction all work to make one very admirable movie.
its pretty good but then it has a few flaws, mainly acting, but still good........the photography was amazing and very very well done, the acting was kinda cheap, it was like the acting in most of these family films i guess, William Hurt was great too, but the little kid really annoyed me because he sucks at acting, and it also has a good story, and a good meaning among a few other flaws and some other things that are good about it.....so if you want to see a pretty good family film, you should check this one out.
Based on a true story, terminally ill boy Pete Carlton dreams of going to the jungle to catch the elusive Blue Morpho.
Entomologist Alan Osborn (William Hurt) is rather aloof, and resists pleads from the boy's mother (Pascale Bussières).
He relents and take them both to the jungle.William Hurt has played this closed off character many times.
There is a lot of good jungle shots and close ups of bugs.
There is a little boy with cancer who appeals to the butterfly dude to help him catch the butterfly in the jungle.
we figured that they got william hurt to act in this turkey by either paying him buckets full of money, or he wanted to go to the jungle and figured this would be a free trip, or he's part of the cult.
i don't know the cult of the healing power of the blue butterfly, or the jungle, or the big hole in the ground that they fall into.
we watched this movie imagining if the guys from south park had written it and cartman was the little kid faking his lines so he could get a free trip to the amazon.
I thought the film even with the dramatization was compelling, but unfortunately the scriptor and director forgot or ignored the end of the film by simply ending the story with a cute Voice Over, and tracking shot of the young boy running into the fade out.
It would have been good to see or read a bio of the young boy's life in 2004 as the story was written about his life in 1987.
Expect to watch a 10 year old cancer patient being piggy-backed around the jungle for two hours.I'm trying to think of something positive to say about the movie but there was really nothing- and I can usually find something good in any movie.It really felt like a made-for-TV movie rather than a feature film..
The Blue Butterfly is about a stage four cancer child who teams up with a famed naturalist to find the elusive eponymous species of butterfly which the kid dreams of seeing before its too late.
There is a good story cocooned in this movie but it never morphs into anything that can take flight..
A Film Recommended For All, Especially Kids With Cancer.
If you know of any kids who are suffering with cancer, and especially those who diagnosed as terminally ill, this would be an inspiring film for them.Meanwhile, who doesn't like looking at butterflies?
Well, this story is a lot more than that, but you might as well enjoy the fantastic insects and nature scenery of Costa Rica while going along for this ride.
This is another based-on-a-true story film, about boy dying of brain cancer getting his wish to go track down the mysterious "Blue Morpho" butterfly which supposedly brings magical powers.The film stars William Hurt and a couple of unknown actors: Marc Donato, who plays the boy, "Pete Carlton," and Pascale Bussieres as his mom, "Teresa." All three do a fine job.I really enjoyed the wildlife photography.
The story tries hard not to be sentimental, sometimes too hard and also infers near the end that the young boy was magically healed by some spirits of the jungle.
Obviously, that is what is really important.This is the real-life story of David Marenger, who is a grateful, now-healthy young man who spends his time wisely helping other kids with illnesses.
Knowing it to be a true story I wasn't expecting any massively surprising twists and indeed there weren't any, but the characters developed satisfyingly and the jungle scenes were fantastic.
I'm lucky enough to have a large cinema screen at home and watch films via a 'proper' projector, so the huge scenes outdoors with the insects and wildlife were gorgeous and it really felt like I was actually there and experiencing it for real.
But I did fast forward through the bits where he was running through the jungle with the little boy on his back because I'm a mother and that kind of thing worries me, I was just waiting for an accident LOL It had a happy ending which made a nice change - I get fed up of films that leave me feeling tearful and depressed - this one was nicely positive.
One singularly-focused child's mind, joint forces with a nature-passionate man together pursue: a blue butterfly - that's when miracles occur.
And I was lucky enough to again catch this little known William Hurt movie (a 2004 Canadian-made film) when Encore repeated its showing.
Tear-jerker, in a way, with the story about this terminally ill young boy determined to pursue the Blue Butterfly with his ideal collaborator - an entomologist he adored and believed in, for the mythical quest of a journey deep into the jungles of Costa Rica!
Yes, sounds like a Disney adventure and family drama, as the boy's single-mother also went along to provide moral if not physical support to her son's dying wish, literally.If you try to dissect the film or compare it with other movies, you're doing yourself a disfavor.
Just go along with the trio: our young hero Pete in his wheel-chair (well-portrayed with such simple ease by Canada's popular seasoned young actor, Marc Donato), his French-accent attractive Mom who stands by his wishes (she looks familiar - it's Pascale Bussières in w-d Patricia Rozema's "When Night Is Falling" 1995 Canadian production), and the passionate nature man Mr. Osborne, who does care inside though ill-at-ease on the surface with the resolute boy (another William Hurt never-disappoint performance).And what's not to like: location shooting takes you into the rain forest of Costa Rica - it does feel like going through a National Geographics sojourn - remarkable close-ups of insects, fascinating nature captures and lush landscape scenes.
The ending notation - which is no spoiler - letting the viewers know what became of the terminally ill young boy, is definitely uplifting and life affirming.
"Love you're giving you must give away" and " Make sure you risk everything" - the lyrics sure ring true in this film.) Unobtrusive music (integral native rhythms, too) by Stephen Endelman, exquisite (nature) sound design by Ivan Sharrock and visual effects supervised by Gunnar Hansen all enhance the film experience."The Blue Butterfly" is a movie worth watching.
It's also available on DVD, which included fascinating bonus features (from 10 to 18 minutes variety): there's interview with the real life 'Pete' - David Marenger, story about young David and the real 'Osborne' - French entomologist Georges Brossard of 'Fondateur Insectarium De Montreal'.
See "Mariposa Azul: A True Story" with executive producer Francine Allaire, "The True Inspiration" and "About A Butterfly Garden" with David, and "The Actors' Experience" with Bussières, Donato, Hurt (he explained why he liked the dream sequence idea, and his observations of Georges) on their portrayals and on set anecdotes, including venturous Georges (who showed and told us about the 'big' bugs!), of course..
William Hurt is professor Alan Osborne, insect-ologist, who in one presentation had said that the butterfly the Blue Morpho was the most beautiful thing, with almost magical powers.Young Marc Donato plays Pete Carlton who has had surgery to remove a tumor in his skull, but the doctors have declared he has only a few months to live.
He takes his comments about the Blue Morpho seriously.Pascale Bussières plays Teresa Carlton, Pete's mother.
One day at a dedication ceremony they approach Alan and ask him to help a dying boy fulfill his dream of seeing and catching a Blue Morpho in Central America.
But something happens to take Alan to the boy's bedroom, he sees all the insects and posters, and guess where they all end up?
In the movie the scientist and the boy never catch a Blue Morpho.
Maybe the Blue Morpho really had magical powers.(PS - I am aware that insect-ologist is not the correct term, it just sounds better!!).
The Blue Butterfly is 'inspired by a true story.' The true story involves a young boy apparently ill with terminal cancer, who goes to the South American jungle with a renowned entomologist in search of a blue butterfly.
When they return, the boy's cancer has disappeared.The facts of the true story are dramatic and emotional moving.
But that is just what the filmmakers do.I'm guessing, but my feeling is that what we see in the movie that is not in the original story is: (1) The scientist did not have a long-lost daughter (2) There was no romantic connection between the boy's Mum and the scientist (2) No little villager girl actually connected with the boy, or caught the blue butterfly (4) The scientist did not fall down a hole, forcing the boy to make his own way through the jungle.A boy goes to the jungle and comes back cured of cancer - but the story is deemed not 'dramatic' enough by the idiots who pose as story experts in Hollywood. |
tt0382943 | Return to Sleepaway Camp | Alan (Michael Gibney) is a boy at summer camp. Unfortunately Alan is a bully, who is bullied by other kids in turn. Among his abusers are his stepbrother Michael (Michael Werner), his "friends" Vinny (Christian Hess) and T.C. (Christopher Shand), and a chubby girl, Bella (Shahidah McIntosh). The film opens with several boys lighting farts one night. Alan tries to light his own farts and after failing, threatens the other boys. He is stopped by camp counselor Randy (Brye Cooper). The next day in the dining hall, Alan gets into a violent confrontation with Randy after he complains about the food. Ronnie, the head counselor from the first movie and head counselor here, allows Alan to get something else to eat after the confrontation is stopped by Sheriff Jerry, a smaller man who uses a mechanical voice box in order to speak. Meanwhile, Alan gets in trouble with cook Mickey (Lenny Venito). Alan throws a butcher knife at Mickey and the camp owner, Frank (Vincent Pastore), argues with Alan. Alan runs away, with Michael chasing him. In the kitchen Mickey is suddenly killed, tossed into the deep fryer by an unseen person. His body is dumped in the trash compactor.
During the social, Alan is fooled by campers Terry (Adam Wylie), nicknamed "Weed," and Stan (Chas Brewer) into smoking dried cow manure, which makes him cough and stumble, falling on Stan's crotch. This earns him the nickname "Blowjob." After the social, Weed is relaxing outside when he is attacked and tied to his chair, with the unseen person squirting gasoline down his throat. The killer sticks a lit cigarette in his mouth and he explodes. Ronnie starts to worry that the murders that happened twenty years ago are happening again, but Frank believes the deaths were accidental. A week later, Alan manages to convince two girls, Karen (Erin Broderick) and Marie (Samantha Hahn), to go to his "secret hideout." Michael plays a prank and makes Alan look like he skinned some frogs, and Karen and Marie run away. Michael, T.C. and Marie make Karen lure Alan to the back of the stage, where they strip him, tie up and blindfold him and embarrass him at the social by pushing him out onto the stage in front of the entire camp.
Ronnie turns paranoid and suspects counselor Petey (Kate Simses) as the killer for always being nearby when Alan is in trouble. Coincidentally Ricky Thomas, (Jonathan Tiersten), Angela's cousin, works at a nearby construction site and is questioned about the new deaths. He refuses to talk about Angela or the killings and angrily walks away. After returning to his cabin that night, Frank is knocked unconscious with a hammer and wakes up with his head locked in a birdcage. The killer opens the birdcage and places two rats inside. The rats eat through Frank's head and down into his intestines, killing him. That same evening Randy and his girlfriend Linda (Jackie Tohn) go to the pump house to have sex. As Randy urinates in the woods, the killer attacks and ties him to a tree, using fishing line that wraps around his penis. Linda looks for him and panics after hearing Randy try to placate the killer and drives off in the Jeep. But the fishing line is tied to the Jeep and tears off Randy's penis, killing him. Linda drives through a wrapped barbed wire line, which wraps around her face, causing her to crash into a tree.
Meanwhile, Vinny visits T.C. in his cabin and then leaves. Suddenly a wooden spear comes through a hole in the floor and disappears. As T.C. is looking into the hole to find it the spear pops back up and impales him through the eye. Ronnie and another camper, Jenny (Jaime Radow), find Frank dead and begin rounding up everyone with the help of Sheriff Jerry. Bella goes to her cabin to hide, where she sees that the bunk above her has been replaced with a board of spikes. The killer suddenly jumps down from the rafters and lands on the top bunk, causing the spikes to impale and kill Bella. T.C. and Bella are found dead and Ricky is called in to help as Ronnie insists that Angela has returned to kill again. Karen runs through the camp and finds Randy and Linda dead before bumping into the killer and fainting.
Karen wakes up with a rope around her neck, hanging from a basketball hoop. The killer flips a switch to raise the net, causing Karen to be lifted off the ground and slowly strangle. As she screams for help Sheriff Jerry arrives and lowers the net. After Karen announces to the rest of camp that she thinks Alan is the killer, Michael grabs a croquet mallet and runs to Alan's secret hideout. He finds Alan and starts beating him with the mallet, Alan screaming that he is innocent. As Michael steps back to deliver a killing blow, the real killer appears behind him and the screen goes black.
Ronnie, Ricky and Jenny run to the hideout and find a badly wounded but alive Alan. Sheriff Jerry appears and slowly walks up to them, explaining through his mechanical voice box that the victims never learned, were always so mean all the time, could do whatever they want and get away with it, and they got what they deserved. As he speaks the Sheriff throws off his clothes and fake mustache, revealing himself as Angela Baker, the real killer. As Ronnie says "I knew it was you!" Jenny sees something writhing on the ground and runs away screaming. Ronnie and Ricky investigate and find Michael skinned alive on the ground. Angela begins to laugh maniacally, staring creepily into the camera as the screen snaps to black.
Following the credits, a text crawl states that three weeks prior to the film's events, Angela escaped from the psychiatric clinic where she was kept after the first movie. A short scene shows her causing a brake fluid leak in a stolen car and flagging down Sheriff Pete (Carlo Vogel), the real sheriff. She murders him by dropping the car on his head and steals his clothes to become Sheriff Jerry. | dark, cruelty, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | I was truly looking forward to this being a HUGE fan of the original and was devastated once the DVD had reached the five minute mark.I kept checking the box to make sure I had been sent the right movie.
- ços the money sure isn't up there on the screen.Cheaply shot, badly graded, sloppily edited, appallingly scored, a script that sounds like it was scratched down quickly on the back of a piece of toilet paper and the piece de resistance is the DIABOLICALLY BAD performances by a truly inept cast of nobodies.What was Robert Hiltzik thinking?
The best thing about this movie is Isaac Hayes playing the chef, just like he did on South Park before he got all the wacky Scientology crap in his head.
Fans of the original know the backstory of Angela so I won't go into that, but if you don't; it's probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with the 1983 film.
There is Alan who is supposed to be a mix of Angela and Ricky, a character named Pee-Pee (I know right?) acts a lot like a shy Angela, there is even a nasty chef who gets scalded by boiling water.
Some of the things the teens say and do is supposed to be funny but just leaves a bad taste in the viewers mouth, especially when the same joke is repeated over and over again.I've been down on Return to Sleepaway Camp so far, and rightfully so; it isn't very good.
And I loved seeing some of the original cast and characters return like Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) and a "cameo" by Felicia Rose who played the original Angela Baker.Overall, this movie is all over the place.
This is the worst sleepaway movie I have ever seen.What a travesty and even the killer was lame and overacted.The cast if you can even call them that couldn't act for nothing.Especially the so called victim who was too much of a jerk to care about to begin with .His acting was absolutely horrid as was pretty much everyone else's in the cast and the ending WTH was that made no sense whatsoever and just ended abruptly for no reason.It was hilarious how most people reacted when they were killed talk about BAD acting totally horrid.I mean I've seen some doozy of some bad movies but this one takes the cake and not in a good way lol Granted some of the violence was like the rest of the sleepaway camp movies which was cool.But they edited it like crap because half the deaths you didn't even see just an aftermath which absolutely sucked I expected this sucker to be pack full of gore but I didn't see much of that which was also a disappointment for a Sleepaway movie especially.The movie was unintentionally hilarious literally I was laughing my ass off throughout most of this movie it was as if all the actors were reading DIRECTLY off their cue cards it was hilarious lol For instance 2 actors I can remember off the bat because they were BARELY ON lol Girl: stiff lifeless and wooden delivery: Stop it Allen you retard.
Ahhh the good ol' days :) So I recommend putting on some acid wash jeans, and feathering you hair to settle in for a new version of an old classic.The chubby character of course gets picked on, the counselors are jerks, this is all stuff we know, but the big question is where is Angela?!?
Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008) ** (out of 4) The fourth film in the series is a direct sequel to the first one as this here, ala the Halloween series, leaves out parts two and three.
Whereas it was Angela in the first film being picked on, this time out it's a fat kid named Alan (Michael Gibney) who feels that everyone is after him.
Pretty soon dead kids start turning up everywhere and the counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) thinks Angela (Felissa Rose) has returned or perhaps it's Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) seeking vengeance.
This iteration not only undermines the silly B-movie cheese that fans have come to expect from the series but it also manages to create an incredibly unlikable cast of losers that you can't cheer for or care about.Fan's of eighties slasher films should note that the gore here is weak at best.
"Return To Sleepaway Camp" isn't as much a real movie as it is a joke that got a bit out of hand.
I am a huge fan of the original "Sleepaway Camp" film and its two original sequels.Like most fans of the series, I was ultra-excited when I heard that the original director was going to make his own sequel to his film.
Well, it was, and while I appreciate the nostalgic feel to the film, and the fact that is a slasher film through and through and knows its origins, the film, for me, was a huge let down for ONE reason alone: the character that we are suppose to sympathize with the most and who is by all accounts the main character of the film (Alan) has to be one of the most annoying characters in film history.
Having a unlikable main character can ruin any film, and this is a prime example.If you can get past the annoying Alan, "Return to Sleepaway Camp" follows virtually the same plot as the original, but with less originality and more clichés.
The "Angela" aspect of the film is also played down quite a bit, so much so that this really could have been any typical camp slasher unrelated to the "Sleepaway Camp" series.
Yes, Angela is mentioned, but she is hardly a crucial component to the plot, and even the ending is abrupt and explains very little and certainly isn't the return to glory that one of the most interesting slasher film killers in history deserved.There are some creative kills, but I honestly thing the original sequels are better and more brutal in this department.
Unfortunately, he didn't and the film pales in comparison to the original and even to the original sequels.I only hope that if "Sleepaway Camp: Reunion" DOES happen, it is much better than this.
After over 6 years of waiting for this film to finally get released after many delays and financing issues, I finally sat down and watched "Return to Sleepaway camp" tonight.
Note: this is a direct sequel to the original 1983 film, as part 2 and 3 are not "officially" part of the series(I liked those parts as well).
While watching the original Sleepaway Camp as a kid, all it really seemed like was an average 80's slasher, that is, until the end.
Now that the real sequel is out, we can finally get that 25 year old image out of our heads.I don't care how many years it took for this to be made, Return To Sleepaway Camp is the most entertaining, and all around best horror sequel I believe I've ever seen.
Return To Sleepaway Camp is it's own movie, with its own story, taking our minds off Angela for a while, with this outlandish kid who's performance had me in absolute tears.
Even though I laughed until I cried, Return To Sleepaway Camp doesn't come off as a spoof in the least, it's just good old fashion horror, that turns out to be a whole lot of fun.
Above all else, Return To Sleepaway Camp is a reward to all the loyal fans who loved the original, and sat through the pseudo-sequels, and waited patiently, and waited patiently some more, for the real sequel.
(The scene with the Jeep and tree goes on far too long, extinguishing any tension or morbid humour the scene might have had otherwise.) There is an amusing bit, involving a hole in a floor; that scene, with the wonderful stupidity of the characters involved, is the closest the film ever gets to matching the original in terms of gore and humor.Isaac Hayes seems to be cast only for the joke of being billed as "The Chef," and then disappears after three short scenes.
As far as horror movies go, Sleepaway Camp is definitely one of my favorites.
What we ended up with was a fun slasher with inventive kills that I was really into by the time the time the climax hit.Don't expect much in the way of characters from the original.
I am a huge fan of the original Sleepaway Camp, NOT the Michael Simpson sequels.
I tried to watch part 2 several years back and actually shut it off because the original Sleepaway Camp is almost sacred to me and I didn't like the direction it was going.This being said, as soon as I heard about a new direct sequel to the original by writer/director Robert Hiltzik I was excited.
I hope someday I have the opportunity to meet Robert Hiltzik and let him know how much I appreciate the fact that he did what seemed impossible: create a unique, fun, worthy sequel to the one and only Sleepaway Camp..
I was so happy to have come across this film, being that there hasn't been a sleepaway camp movie since the late 80's and I remember that those flicks use to scare me as a kid, but they rocked.
I read negative reviews on this flick and I was like let me be the judge of that, i mean really, i have seen some horrible films in my time, but this one wasn't really that bad.
Come on, the cuts between the scenes are timed so wrong, it looks like an amateur cut this movie.
From the opening you definitely got that Sleepaway Camp feel, whether it's the totally awesome original or the funny cheesy sequels!
"Return to Sleepaway Camp" is considered to be somewhat unique because it was once again scripted and directed by Robert Hiltzik; the creator of the infamous original.
Strangely enough the film stars a couple of respectable actors, like Vincent Pastore and Isaac Hayes in a flesh & blood portrayal of his South Park character Chef, but most of the cast is a gathering of annoying teenagers (the chubby kid is truly insufferable) and untalented scream queens.
Felissa Rose, the one and only Angela from the original, returns to camp as well after 25 years.
Camp Councillor Ronnie, who worked at Camp Arawak, comes to believe that Angela Baker may be back.The best thing about this film is definitely the atmosphere; it's light and the film never takes itself seriously, which ensures that watching it is a lot of fun.
It takes a good actor to play a bad one, and that's really the point of Return To Sleepaway Camp.
Return To Sleepaway has bad acting and terrible effects, not because they had no budget, but rather to pay homage to the B-Movies of the past.
It looked like my high school TV broadcasting class could have shot this one out in the woods.I am a big fan of the original Sleepaway Camp.
It's a late sequel within the Sleepaway Camp-series (at least when you're not counting the unfinished fourth movie) and it's a pretty worthy one.
The Sleepaway Camp movies always have been filled with some original and often disgusting killings and this movie really forms no exception to this.But above all the movie remains a fun one to watch.
It's pretty silly and childish all at times but it suits the movie and makes this movie an enjoyable one.It's characters are all quite stereotypical, just like was the case in any of the other previous Sleepaway Camp entries.
But the movie is fun to watch, especially when you have seen the previous Sleepaway Camp movie entries.
Frank (Vincent Pastore) has re-opened the ill-fated campsite, and now a new batch of children fall victim to the legend of Angela, our favorite transgender serial killer.I enjoyed the "Sleepaway Camp" series just because it mixed horror with humor in a way that was hardly heard of.
Not only do we know who the disguised Angela is all along, but we WANT for all the kids to die because there are few likable characters in this movie.
One of the most original things Hiltzik does with this film is take absolutely nothing seriously except for the Legend of Sleepaway Camp.That means the head counselor, played by NY vet Vincent Pastore, can cut in bits and pieces of Sorpranos shtick when he's not winking at the camera (yo, can you believe I'm IN this s***?).
Nothing like the Sleepaway Camp sequels.
It was just funReturn to Sleepaway camp (2008) It dose have the 80's feel to whole the movie, Acting is very cheesy and funny!, The movie starts of were the boys are messing around in the bed room as Alan come in trying to be a big shot but fails.Later all the campers are in the canteen having lunch ,while Frank tells them to shut the hell up,So the security man can tell them something but he can't speak normal because he used to smoke a lot!
But the RETURN TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP box had the look of a better than average sequel.
Pointless, juvenile, absolutely worthless(..unless you just have an urge to see stars from the original returning to reprise their roles)sequel to the original Sleepaway Camp(..the second and third films featuring Pamela Springsteen in the "prominant" role of Angela are completely disregarded, which is probably a good thing, I guess)has a psycho-killer, in black hoody, targeting those who victimize and mistreat extremely repellent frog-devoted Allan(Michael Gibney), always the center of negative attention in regards to practically everyone, in constant disagreements, arguments, and skirmishes with the teenagers/adults in camp.
Downloaded this on accident looking for the original sleepaway camp, but somehow ended up watching this one last after the other 3 movies, well 4th, but we wont talk about the 4th one.
Ill say this right now, ill probubly give this a 10, because sleepaway camp ended up being one of my favorite movies of all time.
IF YOU DID NOT LIKE THE ORIGINAL SLEEP AWAY CAMP, YOU WILL NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE!
The characters were laughably cheesy and generic, which just added to the original sleepaway camp atmosphere.
This entry however was a lot of fun, the deaths were inventive especially the final skinning victim which was nasty, but what got on my nerves about this entry is that despite the return of the former cast members, they just don't seem to be in it very often and instead the main focus seems to be on Alan (Michael Gibney) whose getting bullied by various campers and frankly I found him annoying and felt absolutely no sympathy whatsoever, he was just awful, I don't just mean the acting that was bad all by itself, but his character was written horribly with terrible dialogue, why didn't they just send him home.All of the acting in this movie is pretty awful, but I found some of the characters somewhat interesting firstly it's nice to see Isacc Hayes again even if it's just a cameo and Erin Broderick (Karen) was pretty cute and likable and the sassy black girl was a lot of fun as well.The first half of the movie pretty much drags as we only get 2 deaths but when we reach the third act this movie really gets going and I found that copper with the robotic voice really grating and annoying and the new twist ending I found pretty surprising and fun and as for the return of Felicia Rose there just wasn't enough of her, but when she did return she really chewed the scenery and was hilarious especially when she dresses up like a cheerleader for the end credits which was quite funny, but Jonathan's part was rather disappointing, it was just pointless, he only popped up in two scenes and his acting hasn't improved with time and needs to lay off the fake tan.All in all "Return To Sleepaway Camp" was partly enjoyable, but could have been better if they had better actors and more capable production values, this is nowhere near as good as the first one, but it's slightly better than the awful sequels which doesn't say much..
"Sleepaway Camp" might have the same setting as the "Friday The 13th" franchise, but it also jumps over it and takes a bit of its cue from "Psycho," the grandfather of all splatter and gore movies with a killer no one knows or expects and whose identity is revealed late.
You see, "Sleepaway Camp" has something all the other serial killer/body count movies don't have; it has a plot.
Picking up several years late since the third installment, we see two of the first movie's stars (Did I say two?) returning to action at another camp with another camper who gets just a bit too much abuse and terror.
The only failing part of this story is it runs too close to the original script; the incidents, locales and characters run just too parallel with the first movie, and like Cassandra before the Trojan War, no one listens to Ronnie when he warns them Angela could be back.
Unfortunately, like a good haunted house ride, the movie does come to an end, and Alan doesn't get the satisfaction of seeing his tormenters picked off around him.
After watching the original sleepaway camp, I tough i ll give this movie a try.
The only ones that I like were Ricky and Angela since they were in the original movie.
A dirty-looking fat kid, Allen, comes out of nowhere, and right away he's a pretty hard character to like.
Really this isn't a film worth watching unless you're a fan of the Sleepaway Camp series..
Camped Out. I don't know why I, or anyone would bother to waste time in writing a review (or even seeing the film in the first place, that is) for Return to Sleepaway Camp. |
tt0110329 | Leprechaun 2 | Leprechaun 2 (also known as One Wedding and Lots of Funerals) is a 1994 horror film sequel to Leprechaun which centers on a sadistically evil leprechaun (Warwick Davis) hunting for a bride. It's assumed that the film takes place a few years after the events of the first film. chronologically it is the fifth film.This is the final Leprechaun film to be released in theaters. The rest were released direct-to-video.On March 17, 1094 A.D., The Leprechaun is a thousand years old. As March Seventeenth is his birthday, he can choose any woman to be his bride. He picks a young girl of the O'Day family, using her innocent father as his slave. The Leprechaun describes the girl he has chosen to O'Day, but when O'Day sees that the girl is in fact his daughter, he intervenes with "God bless you, my child" therefore denying the Leprechaun his bride, as the creature can marry any girl who sneezes three times, provided no-one says "God bless you." The Leprechaun captures, tortures and tells O'Day that he will marry his descendant in a thousand years time on St Patrick's Day, before he kills O'Day, whose corpse is then discovered by his daughter.In present day Los Angeles, the Leprechaun has found a petulant sixteen-year-old girl named Bridget Callum, a descendant of the O'Day bloodline, who is fighting with her boyfriend, Cody Ingalls. Cody, whose legal guardian is his uncle, Morty, frequently has to break their dates in order to support Morty, an alcoholic scam artist. The Leprechaun steals some whiskey and a gold tooth from a homeless man and a gold ring off the finger of Tim Street, a talent agent, who believes that the little man is some kind of performer. After all of this, he follows Bridget to her house, where a boy named Ian Lyle is attempting to persuade her into letting him in; she refuses with a swift elbow to his ribs.The Leprechaun then creates an illusion that fools Ian into believing that Bridget is asking him to kiss her breasts, while in actuality, they are a pair of lawnmower blades that start up after Ian shoves his face into them, ripping his face to shreds. Shortly afterward, Cody knocks on the door and apologizes, offering flowers, which causes Bridget to sneeze all over his shirt. The third time she sneezes, Cody begins to say "God bless you," but is unable to complete the blessing when the Leprechaun attempts to strangle him with a telephone cord. After a struggle, the Leprechaun grabs Bridget and disappears, losing one of his gold coins, which Cody soon finds.The police soon arrive, find Bridget missing, Ian dead, and a note from Cody at the scene, leading them to get an arrest warrant out for him. Cody returns to Morty's house and tells him what happened; Morty is convinced that he is crazy until the Leprechaun breaks into the house and they barely escape.Morty and Cody then go to a bar, which is filled with little people dressed as leprechauns, celebrating St. Patrick's Day. While there, Cody is given a piece of chocolate in a gold wrapper by one of the bar's patrons (Tony Cox). The Leprechaun appears and Morty challenges him to a drinking contest in honor of his wedding. While the Leprechaun downs whiskey, Morty is actually drinking soda and water. The Leprechaun eventually becomes extremely drunk, so much to the point he can barely speak properly or use his magic. He distracts Morty and Cody by turning on a jukebox with his powers, leading him to bash Morty in the head with a bottle to get away.He goes to a coffee shop, where he sobers up, and takes the time to murder a waiter (Michael McDonald) who was making jokes about his size and speech. Meanwhile, Cody and Morty break into the go-kart racetrack that Ian worked at since the office contains a huge safe on wheels made of wrought iron, the only thing that can harm the Leprechaun. Cody traps the Leprechaun inside, but Morty takes advantage of the opportunity to claim three wishes and locks Cody in a store room. His first is for the Leprechaun's pot of gold, which the creature causes to appear in Morty's stomach, grotesquely stretching it. Morty wishes for the Leprechaun out of the safe so that he can help him, and, for his third wish, asks for the pot of gold out of him. The Leprechaun cuts Morty's stomach open and pulls out the pot, killing Morty. Morty begs for help as he dies, but the Leprechaun laughingly says "love to, friend, but you're all out of wishes."Just then, as Cody breaks out of the store room, a security guard, who has responded to a silent alarm that Morty tripped, enters. The Leprechaun disappears, setting Cody up to take the fall for the brutal murder. Before he can arrest Cody, however, the officer is lured onto the track by the Leprechaun's impersonation of Bridget and is run over twice and killed by the little green man in his own custom go-kart. He attempts to kill Cody for his gold coin, but Cody realizes that as long as he holds it, the Leprechaun cannot harm him, leading him to run to the Leprechaun's lair to attempt rescuing Bridget.In the Leprechaun's tree lair, Cody runs into the skeletal corpse of William O'Day. After a hard and victorious battle, he finds Bridget, who breaks free from her shackles, and they both flee, but get hopelessly lost and separated. Cody then runs back into Bridget, who kisses him and says that it's okay to give her the coin. Cody does so, but finds out that Bridget is actually the Leprechaun, who laughs and says 'you lose' in his normal voice. Before he can claim victory, though, Cody proceeds to impale the Leprechaun with a wrought iron bar, revealing that the coin he handed over was the chocolate coin he received earlier, causing the little man to explode.Bridget and Cody head out of the Leprechaun's lair into the sunlight together. She asks how he knew that it wasn't really her. Cody replies, "He kisses differently than you." as they laugh and walk home. | good versus evil, cult, violence | train | imdb | Don't get me wrong, the original wasn't as scary or as a nightmare as this one; this time as the trailers said, "He's Back!" This time Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) is on the search for his bride after his latest 1000 birthday and wants to breed more leprechauns.
Like the first movie, he wants his gold after it has been stolen or has been retrieved by the main hero of the film.
The makers of these movies know that they're not making Shakespeare, and create agreeable horror comedies that may have some viewers groaning, shaking their heads, and struggling to get through them, and others having a fine old time.
I was confused and disappointed to see this film start off with a completely different leprechaun who just happens to look like the original.
LEPRECHAUN 2, in my opinion, is a very clever and hip horror film you'll love which will leave you feeling good.
The only things about it that scared me, like the first two, were some of the blood and gore and when the leprechaun (Warwick Davis) suddenly appeared or jumped out from somewhere.
According to this sequel's magical lore, once a leprechaun has lived for 1000 years, he can claim any woman as his bride simply by making her sneeze three times—just so long as no-one says 'bless you' afterwards.
When an evil leprechaun (Warwick Davis) fails in his attempt to take a beautiful young woman for his wife, he vows he will return in a thousand years to wed her descendant.
Fast forward a millennium, and sexy babe Bridget (Shevonne Durkin) gets the shock of her life to find that she is the unlucky distant relative of the 'one who got away'.The first Leprechaun movie was a mediocre-at-best, tongue-in-cheek horror made more bearable by the presence of a young and very tasty Jennifer Aniston; having quickly moved onto bigger and better things, Aniston unsurprisingly didn't return for this sequel, but thanks to part 2 actually having something remotely resembling a plot, plus some nastier-than-before violence and a fine replacement babe in the shapely form of sexy Shevonne Durkin, it actually proves to be a tad more fun than the original.As Bridget's boyfriend Cody (Charlie Heath) desperately tries to find a way to stop the diminutive troublemaker from wedding his woman, viewers are treated to plenty of zany humour (Lep getting drunk is priceless), a fair smattering of hokey gore, lots of dwarfs, and even a bit of gratuitous female nudity (although Durkin's topless scene almost certainly utilises a body double).
The only things that kept this movie from getting a flat out 1/10 were that it was entertaining to an extent at times, mainly due to the fact that I suspected it to live up to the first and get way better at any point in the movie, and it had a lot of good, fresh ideas which made the film somewhat tolerable.
This time luck has nothing to do with it, as the Leprechaun goes on a killing spree to find his gold & his bride to be!
Leprechaun 2 is a big disappointment if you saw the first.The killings are weak and the plot is dumb.In the first movie he goes after people because they stole his gold.In this one he wants a bride and doesn't care about his coins;Just anything gold.He lets people get away and it has too many funny parts to be scary,also it really slow.There's no one that famous in it; the only good thing about this movie is it's got Warick Davis.
The problem with the first movie was the fact that it was taking itself too seriously at times, but this sequel does the right thing by embracing the ridiculous nature of the character.On the one hand, the new human characters are more likeable than the ones in the first movie and the title character is always entertaining to watch.The plot on the other hand is a completely different story because it is so confusing and inconsistent that it is a mystery to figure out if this movie is connected to the first one..
I love how warrick davis played the evil little leprechaun yet again , I really love how the lep rhymes and shows more of his magic The only person I didn't care for was the character Bridget , I just really disliked the character, she was very annoying to even watch , the acting was just better bad Davis made up for her though with his evil funny humor , I loved how lep wanted to find himself a bride and would stop at nothing to get his hands on her Only part I couldn't understand was his weakness , I'm not sure why they changed that But other wise another great job by Davis :).
I know a lot of people consider this to be the best of the series, which let's face it doesn't say much, but I personally preferred the original movie by a whisker.
Leprechaun was a good little horror movie.
Leprechaun 2 (1994) Starring: Warwick Davis, Charlie Heath, Shevonne Durkin, Sandy Baron, Clint Howard, Adam Biesk, James Lancaster, Linda Hopkins, Kimmy Robertson, and Tony Cox Directed By: Rodman Flender Review THIS TIME...
The make-up effects are good on the Leprechaun and the acting isn't all that bad in my opinion I'm pretty sure when this was being filmed that the actors were clearly having a good time I mean Warwick Davis had to be having fun with this role if he came back for a sequel.
In this movie, he returns after being ''killed'' in the original and searches for his long lost bride which he finds after a 1000 years and is a direct bloodline next of kin to the one he originally wanted back then.
A devilish Leprechaun (Warwick David) shows up with his eyes on Cody's girlfriend, Bridget (Shevonne Durkin), because she's the descendant of a woman he wanted to make his bride a thousand years earlier.
I've only seen the first four Leprechaun movies and this first sequel is definitely an all-around improvement, likely because the filmmakers had over twice the budget.
Sure, not many people actually die throughout the movie, but still, the ways they did was way better in part 1.And they also toned down the goofy cheesy comedy that was rampart in part 1, giving way for a more sinister leprechaun, though he is still firing off corny - and rhyming - catchy one-liners to torment his prey.The acting in "Leprechaun 2" was also better than what they had in part 1, except Shevonne Durkin (playing Bridget), sad to say.
While Jennifer Aniston's character was likable by the end of the first film, you can't help but to hate Bridget (played by Shevonne Durkin) throughout this one due to a huge lack of talent.
Cody is okay but Charlie Heath's acting can be rather pathetic at some points (ex: "I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!").Now here's the good news: Warwick Davis (the Leprechaun) appears more frequently than he does in the original and Warwick's acting is even better.
Not only that, he gets drunk at a bar, something that obviously didn't happen in the first "Leprechaun".This is even less scary than the first film, but the gore is still somewhat graphic at times and the kills are more creative.Out of all six movies, I'd say this one is the fourth-best, third-worst.MY RATING: 5.8/10.
this time it is his 1000 birthday, and he is looking for a bride to call his own,, there are no quote stars in this picture like jenniffer annison from last time,, which i think helps the movie this time..
the leprechaun is up to his old tricks in this one, and more evil than ever, 1000 years before he missed the chance at getting his bride,, so now he says he ain't gonna make the same mistake again, all in all i think that this is a very decent picture,, lot's of gore for the horror fans,, so i give it a good rating..
Even, if it means killing a few people.I'm not sure how famous the 'Leprechaun' series is, but the original film has spawned one theatrical sequel and many straight to video sequels.
At least this time around, there ~was~ a story!The make up effects for the Leprechaun were much better also, but Warwick Davis is the only actor in this farce to pony up professional performance.
While it was still not a good film 'Leprechaun 2' for me was a marginal improvement, with a couple of assets done better while containing pretty much all the faults that the first film had.Davis is the best thing about the film.
This time there's some sort of narrative attached, if trivial and slight, but it bears no relation to the first film other than having Warwick Davis' fiendish leprechaun returning to cause havoc.
One thousand years later, the leprechaun is determined to take the beautiful descendant of the woman for his bride.This is your standard 1990s horror sequel, not much different than the direction "Child's Play" or "Children of the Corn" took at this point.
This sequel has a lot of things going on at once, and it works because it keeps focus on the major plot point - Cody and his search to find and save Bridget.
One thing I never liked was that it didn't really continue from the first film, and by all counts had really nothing to do with it other than there is a Leprechaun and his pot of gold.
I think that Leprechaun 2 is a great sequel to the first film.
The plot is very different but very absurd in a good way.I believe like the first film, which made this film entertaining enough was Warwick Davis as the Leprechaun.
The concept of the Leprechaun having a bride was also a nice idea and a great touch to the film.I'd give it a 7.5/10 as I believe it holds up with the original well..
Tedious sequel to yet another worthless horror movie has Warwick Davis returning as the titled character.
It has all the Good stuff found in the Original, Good Scares, Gore Galore, Perfect Acting, and a Very Bad Script that Somehow Makes a Good Plot and well Developed Characters.The Effects and Make-Up for the Leprechaun are Very well Done!
I left the movie on and started doing another things as well, I Don't think there was one scenes that I actually liked in this movie.The acting was really bad in this movie as were the effects and the dull plot!
LEPRECHAUN 2 is a pretty bad film just like the original but whereas the original at least had a good cast going for it, this one here just comes across as boring non-sense that never really adds up to anything.
Of course nothing wrong with that, I wished more horror sequels would do that but in this case it just doesn't work out for the good of the movie.
Again, this is largely due to Warwick Davis, who plays the Leprechaun character so extremely well and fun.I wish I could say that the other characters were halve as good or interesting as he was.
I have masterpiece script about a leprechaun horror flick!!" doesn't know the first thing about film making.
The only good thing out of this is that it gave me some of the biggest belly laughs I've ever had, just because some scenes were so poorly done that it came out hysterically funny.BOTTOM LINE: Don't waste your time or money on this film..
The bar scene with all the little people as leprechauns was a real hoot, especially Tony Cox from Bad Santa.Warwick Davis, known to modern movie goers as Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter films, played the evil Leprechaun.The barista getting steamed was also funny.Like I said, more comedy than horror.
The bar scene with all the little people as leprechauns was a real hoot, especially Tony Cox from Bad Santa.Warwick Davis, known to modern movie goers as Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter films, played the evil Leprechaun.The barista getting steamed was also funny.Like I said, more comedy than horror.
Bridget's boyfriend, Cody, tries to find her while being chased by the police for a murder he did not commit.This is the second film in the Leprechaun series.
this is not a good movie by any means,but it is better than the first.it's not as slow or boring and there are a few funny moments,including some not bad one liners.the story has nothing to do with the original,other than the fact it has the same Leprechaun who just wants his gold.of course if he has to kill anyone along the way,that's just a bonus.the story is also a bit better than the first.there's a little more going on while the first one didn't merit a sequel,at least the sequel was better.Warwick Davis returns as the psychotic title character,and he seems to be having even more fun in this one.this movie is funny occasionally but it's not scary in any way.i won't say it's good,but it's just not as bad as the first.i guess that counts for something.in this case,it counts for 3*/10.
Warwick Davis is the only reason to watch this, the other actors aren't worthy to share the screen with him.Our evil Leprechaun is celebrating his 1000th birthday and chooses a bride in the sexy, but talentless Shevonne Durkin.
i liked this one the storyline is pretty strong the Leprechaun wants to find a bride to marry and to share his gold with but then his plans went bad when his "wife" knocked him out and tried to run away its a good movie 7/10 stars.
This movie features the leprechaun claiming a girl to be his bride because a slave of his promised a descendant would be his bride or some stupid thing like that.
This movie takes place at Saint Patrick's Day. I guess it's weird to watch this for a Halloween Month but with all the people the leprechaun kills, it's more appropriate here.
There are some really good scenes in this film that I liked a lot.
Basically in medieval times, William O'Day (James Lancaster) is chased by a nasty Leprechaun (Warwick Davis), after he attempted to steal his pot of gold, he locks the young man in a collar and threatens to kill him if he tries to escape.
Apart from Davis, the rest of the actors are naff and given dreadful dialogue, this time the story is a little less about the gold, it is about the creature going on a killing spree while finding himself a bride, hence why it is sometimes referred to as One Wedding and Lots of Funerals, as it came out the same year as Four Weddings and a Funeral, you can laugh mostly at how bad it is, there is slight fun to be had, but it is another lacklustre horror comedy.
The original 'Leprechaun' movie might had a lot of flaws; but the film had a few things going for it; that this sequel directed by Rodman Flender is lacking.
The sequel also abandoned any continuous storylines from the first movie, instead, focusing on a really disturbing angle, in which, the sadistically evil leprechaun (Warwick Davis) tries to force a nuptial on a woman, Bridget Callum (Shevonne Durkin) in order to consummate; while her off & on, boyfriend, Cody Ingalls (Charlie Heath) tries to prevent it.
The reason why, is because the leprechaun was able to kill, another character holding a pot of gold, later in this same film.
Nevertheless, the deaths were a lot better than the first film, even if some of them, lack the gory special effects like the lawnmower scene.
Overall: This is my least favorite movie of the film series, besides the 2014's reboot 'Leprechaun: Origin'.
But Yes, he came back!!Like the first film this one starts with a flash back (to 1094 AD) sequence to set the scene, in this movie the Leprechaun has turned 1000 years old and is looking for a wife.
What the film than makes good is Warwick Davis.
It was all so fake, it was like watching to a film who made a joke of the original Leprechaun film.I give this film a 5/10 Warwick was great and saved this movie from a disaster.
Warwick Davis is creepy as the evil leprechaun (though the make-up on his face looks like Play-Doh), but some of the other performances are so wooden that I wouldn't be surprised if Flender wanted the acting to be bad as part of the "B" movie tradition.
(SPOILER)This movie was OK but the first movie is so much better and i am so happy that the cool Warwick Davis from the first movie came back to play the evil Leprechaun.The acting in this movie is mostly bad but this movie is a b movie so what would u suspect.And there are some OK gore scenes in this movie like when The evil Leprechaun rips out a old mans gold tooth and when the Leprechaun tricks a man and he gets a pot of gold put in his belly.Over all this movie was OK/good and my rating is 4 and a half out of ten..
And a darn good one I must say myself.Leprechaun(Warwick Davis)is 1000 years old.
It's St. Patrick's Day & the evil little Leprechaun shows up to claim a new bride, namely Cody's hot girlfriend Bridget (Shevonne Durkin) & kills one of her friends, a guy named Ian (Adam Biesk), in the process.
The Leprechaun puts the wedding plans on hold as he ventures into Hollywood to find Cody & reclaim his gold using his sinister magic powers along the way on anyone who tries to stop him...The first of 5 (so far) sequels to the '93 comedy horror film Leprechaun this was directed by Rodman Flender & was nowhere near as good as the original. |
tt0387564 | Saw | The film begins with photographer Adam Faulkner (Leigh Whannell) waking up in a bathtub filled with water. In his instinctive flailing, his foot catches and removes its plug; as the water drains a glowing blue object can be briefly seen to be washed away with it. After a few cries for help it is revealed that he is not, in fact, alone. Surgeon Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) is on the other side of the same room, and soon finds the switch to turn on the lights.Both men are inside a grimy, dilapidated industrial bathroom, chained to pipes at opposite corners of the room. Between them, out of their reach, is a body lying in a pool of blood, holding a revolver and a microcassette recorder. Both men discover envelopes in their pockets which contain microtapes; Gordon also holds a bullet and a key that does not unlock their shackles. Adam, with Lawrence's help, manages to snag the player from the body with which they play their tapes. Both tapes have the same voice, distorted by a pitch modulator. Adam's tape refers to him as a voyeur and asks, "Are you going to watch yourself die, or do something about it?" Gordon's tape reveals he must kill Adam before six o'clock (within seven hours as evident by a clock on the wall), or his wife and daughter will die and he will be left in the bathroom, presumably forever to starve to death. "Let the game begin..." the voice concludes. Hacksaws are soon discovered in the toilet tank; neither is sufficiently sharp to cut chain, and Adam accidentally snaps his in frustration. Dr. Gordon realizes that the saws are meant instead for their own ankles, which, if sawed through, would free them from their shackles.The film then presents flashbacks of their captor's previous victims: Paul and Mark. Both men failed to escape, and hence had pieces of skin cut from them in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle piece; thus the genesis for referring to him as the "Jigsaw Killer" by the detectives Tapp (Danny Glover), Sing (Ken Leung) and Kerry (Dina Meyer) who investigate the murders. Back in the bathroom, Dr. Gordon comments that they are dealing with a misnomer, as the killer never directly murders his victims nor places them in situations where death is unavoidable. In yet another flashback we are shown the police interrogation (with Dr. Gordon witnessing behind a window) of Jigsaw's only known survivor, a highly traumatized heroin addict named Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), who believes that her experience in the test has made her a better person in the end.After a brief sequence where Adam and Dr. Gordon discover a hidden camera, another flashback sequence shows Gordon's last moments with his family, and their subsequent abduction. Another flashback shows an attempt by Tapp and Sing illegally breaking and entering into what turns out to be one of Jigsaw's lairs. The two discover a man tied to a chair with two drills mounted on each side. Before the Detectives can secure Jigsaw's arrest, he starts the drills. While Tapp subdues Jigsaw, Sing attempts to save Jeff. Though Jigsaw helpfully points out a box that contains the key to release Jeff, the box in question is seemingly endlessly filled with keys; Sing shoots the drills instead, but the gunshots distract Tapp long enough for Jigsaw to escape, who slashes and permanently scars Tapp's throat in the process. While Tapp recovers from his deep knife wound, Sing pursues Jigsaw and is killed by multiple shotguns set on a tripwire.His partner's death has a permanent effect on Tapp, and what was already an unhealthy fascination with the case deepens into an obsession that leads to him being discharged from the police force. Convinced from a piece of evidence from earlier in the film that Dr. Gordon is the Jigsaw killer, Tapp moves into a house across the street from Gordon's and monitors it with video surveillance.Back in the bathroom, Gordon (with assistance from Adam) discovers a box holding cigarettes, a lighter and a note suggesting he dip a cigarette in poisoned blood from the body and uses it to kill Adam. Gordon and Adam attempt to fool the camera by faking Adam's death with the un-poisoned cigarette, but a strong electric shock is sent through Adam's chain, proving Adam to still be alive. The box also contains a cell phone which cannot make calls, but receives one from his wife Alison (Monica Potter), who tells Gordon that Adam knows more than he is revealing. Adam explains that he had been paid by Detective Tapp to spy on Gordon, and has witnessed him going to a hotel with the intention of cheating on his wife. In fact, Gordon left the hotel before doing anything, but this is between Gordon and the other woman, Carla (one of the med students to which Gordon had been explaining the condition of a cancer patient of his, John Kramer), and no mention is made of possible previous encounters. In the pile of Adam's photographs which he hid from view of Gordon when found with the hacksaws, the two find a photograph of an orderly at Gordon's hospital named Zep, seen through Gordon's window after he left the house. Just as this realization is made, however, the hour of six PM strikes.Alison manages to free herself and take control of Zep's handgun, however she is soon overpowered. Shots are fired, which attract the attention of Tapp, who wounds Zep. He is unable to keep him from leaving the house, however, intent on killing Gordon; who is only aware of the sounds of screaming and gunshots. Flung into a state of desperate temporary insanity, he follows his instructions by sawing off his foot and shooting Adam with the revolver held by the body in the middle of the room and the bullet found in his envelope.Zep arrives, pursued by Tapp, however Zep manages to shoot Tapp fatally. He then enters the bathroom but tells Gordon he's "too late," because "it's the rules." Adam recovers from his gunshot wound, which was in fact non-fatal, and kills Zep with the toilet tank lid. Gordon crawls away to seek medical attention, promising to return with help.Adam searches Zep for a key to his chain and instead finds another micro-cassette player. As the climatic theme of the series, "Hello Zep", begins, the tape informs Adam, that Zep was also following instructions under pain of death. As soon as Jigsaw's familiar voice ceases, the body lying in the center of the bathroom lets out a long breath. As Adam watches, his face frozen in horror, the dead man peels off the latex that gave the appearance of his head wound and then slowly rises to his feet. He is John Kramer (Tobin Bell), a terminal brain cancer patient of Gordon's; he is seen, briefly, in the same flashback where Zep is (equally briefly) introduced. Jigsaw/John Kramer, whose voice is in fact quite weak, informs Adam that the key to his chain was in the bathtub all along; a quick flashback replays the opening scene of the movie, where an object is seen to disappear down the drain with the water.Adam reaches for a gun to shoot John, but is stunned with electricity, triggering an extended flashback sequence that runs through the vital shots of the movie in roughly 30 seconds. Just before he flicks off the lights in the bathroom for the last time, John repeats a line he said to Amanda immediately after she escaped: "Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore." John then shouts: "Game Over!" before slamming the door shut, sealing Adam in the bathroom forever, screaming his despair over the end credits. | mystery, gothic, murder, psychological, cult, violence, horror, plot twist, flashback, clever, insanity, claustrophobic, suspenseful, sadist | train | imdb | null |
tt0963178 | The International | The film begins with Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) standing outside in the pouring rain in Berlin, Germany. Across the street, his partner Thomas Schumer (Ian Burfield) meets with André Clement (Georges Bigot) in a car. Clement talks to Schumer about how the International Bank of Business & Credit (IBBC) is going to purchase missiles in a deal with China. Both men smoke cigarettes, but Clement remains adamant that the windows stay closed
. Schumer tells him that they can protect him if he turns on the bank. Clement says that he'll think about it and contact him later. Schumer exits the car and Clement drives away. Schumer calls someone and is excited that Clement is going to be their informant, so they can take down the bank. Schumer walks to the road as people walk around him. He signals to Salinger on the opposite side, but then suddenly clutches his arm. Schumer vomits and collapses on the ground. Salinger rushes over through the busy street, but has his head smashed by a side-view mirror of a panel van. Salinger goes down, hearing nothing but a ringing noise, looking directly into Schumer's dead eyes.Salinger is checked out by a doctor in a hospital, who recommends that he stay overnight so that they can keep an eye on him. Salinger refuses and requests to see Schumer's body. Salinger goes to the morgue and inspects the body. It appears as though Schumer suffered a fatal heart attack, but Salinger doesn't believe it. He thoroughly inspects the body and has the coroner help turn Schumer on his chest. While inspecting his back, Salinger finds a small lesion. He tells the coroner to conduct a full autopsy. Meanwhile, in New York, District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) tries to contact Schumer to get an update on how the meet went, but she can't reach him. Salinger calls her office and tells her that Schumer is dead. He also tells her to come to Berlin so that they can meet with police officials. Salinger and Whitman meet the police officials and try to convince them that Schumer was assassinated. The autopsy report found a small trace of prussic acid and cyanide in Schumer's body. For the poison to kill him that quickly it had to have been administered only a minute or so before, Salinger saw the whole thing but didn't notice who the killer was. The police question Salinger about why he and his partner were in Berlin. Whitman explains that Interpol is investigating the IBBC for being the bank of choice for money laundering all over the world, while also participating in other illegal dealings (murder, weapons buying, etc.). Whitman is involved because the New York branch of the IBBC is where they primarily do their shady dealings. Everyone who has tried to testify against the bank has been either murdered or disappeared completely. The police don't see any evidence against the bank, and so they tell Salinger and Whitman to go home. They also inform Salinger that they've read his dossier, and tell him not to make the same mistake he made in Scotland Yard. As they leave, Whitman asks Salinger what the police meant by Salinger's past. He just tells her to read his dossier as well.Salinger goes back to his home in Lyon and fills a sink full of ice water. As he dunks his head into the sink, he recalls Schumer's death and remembers a man (the assassin) bumping into him after he got out of the car. The next day, Salinger's boss arrives at Interpol headquarters and is surprised to find Salinger there so early. Salinger is determined to bring down the IBBC. He has found a newspaper article about Clement having a freak accident while driving home, the same day Schumer was killed. With Clement dead, they no longer have an informant. Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen), the head of the IBBC, gave a statement to the police about Clement. He says that Clement was at his house working on something and then left before he was found dead. Salinger found that Skarssen was lying about the time he said Clement arrived at his house. Salinger wants to talk to Skarssen and try to catch him in his lie (then start to build the case again). Meanwhile, the assassin (Brian F. O'Byrne) meets his handler Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl) at a museum. Wexler finds that the assassin is fixated on a particular painting, and asks him why he likes it. The assassin replies that its because he can see the agony on the peoples' faces, and agony is real. Wexler gives him another assignment on a USB key. The assassin hesitates at first, but decides to take the job.Salinger goes to the IBBC headquarters for his meeting with Skarssen. While waiting, he sees Skarssen walking/talking with a group of men, including Wexler. Salinger shouts out to get Skarssen to talk to him, but is ignored. Salinger is brought into a room and is introduced to Martin White (Patrick Baladi). White is Skarssen's attorney, and he has also brought the bank's attorney to join their meeting. If Salinger wants to talk to Skarssen, he will have to talk to White first. Salinger is pissed that he's being jerked around, but stays for the meeting. He questions White about the time Clement arrived at Skarssen's house, and White gives the wrong time. Salinger calls him on lying and tells him that the police report he has states a different time. The bank's attorney inspects the report, and then pulls out another report. He says that the report Salinger has was a preliminary draft, and so has errors. The official report, which is in his hand, says that the time White gave is correct. Defeated, Salinger leaves the headquarters and calls Whitman on the phone. He says that they changed the report and there's nothing he can do. While talking, someone bumps into Salinger and walks towards the bank. Salinger freaks out, thinking that hes been poisoned as well, and confronts the person who bumped into him. It turns out to be an innocent woman, who thinks that Salinger is crazy.Salinger visits his boss at home and tries to get him to come outside. His boss refuses, and so Salinger makes his way into the house. He smashes his boss's phone to pieces and pulls out a hidden wiretap from it. They go outside, and Salinger says that he also found a wiretap in his phone. The bank bugged them, which is why they wrote up a new report before Salinger went to visit. Meanwhile, Whitman calls Clements's widow and tries to question her about her husband, but she hangs up. She leaves a message for her, giving her cell phone number and telling her to talk. The widow picks up the phone and says that she doesn't know anything about why her husband was killed. She hangs up again, but then text messages Whitman's cell phone. They reply back and forth, and the widow tells Whitman to talk to Umberto Calvini (Luca Barbareschi). Also, during this time, we see the assassin practice firing at a target a certain distance away. He then carefully loads the bullet shell into a container to save for later. Salinger looks into Calvini and finds that he is the head of a weapon
s industry corporation. He also is running for Prime Minister in Italy. Salinger and Whitman travel to Milan to question him about Clement and the IBBC. Meanwhile, we see a couple of exchanges, ending with a package being handed over to a uniformed senior cop. Salinger and Whitman show up at a political rally, where Calvini will give a speech. They enter a nearby building to meet Calvini. While waiting, Whitman says that she read Salinger's dossier and found out what happened to make him quit Scotland Yard and join Interpol. He had found a good informant in the IBBC to help him bring them down, but the IBBC got to his informant and made it appear as though he was unreliable. They then caused the informant and his family to die in a car accident. Everyone wrote Salinger off and they buried the case. They meet Calvini, and he candidly explains that the IBBC has purchased a bunch of missiles from China to sell to another country. They then came to him to buy guidance systems because he's only one of two people in the world who can supply them. However, Calvini refused to do business with them and turned them down. Clement was his friend in the IBBC. Calvini warns Salinger and Whitman that the IBBC control everything and everyone. They supply countries with weapons to control the wars, which makes them control the debt in war zones. He promises to talk more with them after the rally is over.Calvini goes outside and attends the rally. Salinger, Whitman, and an Italian detective decide to get some drinks at a bar next door while they wait. In a nearby hotel, we see a hitman setting up a rifle and aiming for the stage. Calvini starts to give his speech, and the hitman sets off a countdown for sixty seconds. When the minute is over, he tries to shoot Calvini's head but misses due to a sudden movement. Immediately after, a second shot is fired and Calvini is shot in the head. The hitman is confused, since he didn't fire the second shot. The crowd panics and everyone runs off. The uniformed cop from earlier blasts his way into the hitman's hotel room and pumps him full of bullets. After his colleagues leave, the cop shoots the hitman in the head to finish him off. He then plants the shell that the assassin fired earlier on the floor. Salinger runs to the hotel while Whitman and the cop follow. While everyone flees, Salinger spots the assassin. He follows after him through an alley, but loses him once they get to the backstreet. Whitman and the detective also get to the street. Whitman sees the assassin in a car and slowly approaches. The assassin starts up the car, crashes into Whitman, and speeds off. Salinger and the detective are shocked and rush over to her. She appears to be fine, and the detective gives Salinger his gun, telling him to pursue the assassin. Salinger runs on foot and eventually comes to a crowded intersection. He spots the broken windshield of the car and approaches it, but finds that the assassin has escaped.Whitman is checked out at the hospital and is fine apart from some bruises. Salinger and Whitman go back to the rally site, which has been sealed off by police. They are let through and begin to inspect the stage. They notice that the trajectories of the two bullets fired are different from one another. They go onto the roof of the hotel where the hitman was killed and Salinger realizes what happened. The assassin was on the roof, with the hitman a couple of stories below. They both set off a countdown for sixty seconds once Calvini started to talk. When the hitman missed, the assassin fired and got the head shot. The second bullet shell in the hotel room was placed to look like the hitman was alone and fired both shots. And since the hitman was connected to the Red Brigade, Calvini's death looks like a political assassination. As Salinger visualizes how the assassin got away, he comes across a puddle on the roof. He has the cops drain the water and then they find the footprint of the assassin in it. Salinger recognizes the footprint from a murder years ago, and realizes that the IBBC keeps on using the same assassin. Also, due to the footprint, they determine that he uses a leg brace to walk. If they can get to the assassin and turn him, they can bring down the bank. The corrupt cop shows up and informs them that their superiors have ordered them back home. Their investigation is hereby closed. Salinger and Whitman go to the airport and can't believe they're being shafted like this. As they say goodbye to their cop friend, Whitman notices the metal detector nearby. If the assassin left through the airport, he would've had to show his leg brace once he stepped through the metal detector. They review the security footage and find that sure enough the assassin was there earlier, but since he was aware of the camera he had his head turned away (so they dont have a clear image of his face). They find that he went on an airplane to New York, and so they head on the next flight to NYC.Once Salinger and Whitman arrive, they are greeted by NYPD detectives, Iggy Ornelas (Felix Solis) and Bernie Ward (Jack McGee). The detectives managed to get a clear screenshot of the assassin's face when he landed in New York. And since he has a leg brace, he must have been a particular doctor's patient to get the shoes that he's wearing. Meanwhile, we see the assassin running on a treadmill at a gym. Salinger, Ornelas, and Ward locate Dr. Isaacson (Tibor Feldman). They go to his apartment and knock on the door. He answers, but then shuts the door, saying that he hasnt done anything and seems nervous at letting them into his apartment. Salinger scares Isaacson into cooperating with them by saying that the assassin kills doctors. Elsewhere, Skarssen is at home playing the Asian strategy game Go with his son when he gets a video conference call from White, Wexler, and his senior staff. It's revealed that they had Calvini killed so that they could deal with his son's for the guidance equipment for the weapons. They also know that Salinger and Whitman are close to finding their assassin. It is decided that they won't allow anything to mess up their deal with the Calvinis.Salinger and the detectives look through all of Isaacson's patient files for those who have the specific leg braces. One file has a dead phone number listed and no photo of the patient. Also in the file is an address, which was where he would get dropped off by a taxi every time he left the office. Whitman's boss chastises her for wasting time on the IBBC case and tells her they have 1 more chance. Salinger, Ornelas, and Ward go to the address but find that its an empty lot. Still, they figure that the assassin must live around there. Ornelas goes to get some coffee and as he pays, he spots the assassin walking down the street. Ornelas runs out of the store and gets Salinger and Ward. They follow him through the streets until he stops at a payphone. He calls someone, and tells him to meet at the Guggenheim Museum. Salinger and the detectives follow the assassin to the Guggenheim and blend in with the crowd. Wexler shows up and Salinger recognizes him from before. Wexler tells the assassin that Salinger is his next target, since he's getting too close to them. Wexler leaves and Ornelas follows him. The assassin gets ready to leave when he sees a reflection of Salinger and Ward spying on him. Salinger realizes that they're blown and so they confront the assassin. They hold him at gunpoint and prepare to arrest him, but the assassin says that the bank will never let them bring him in. The assassin is suddenly shot in the chest and falls over. A gunman shoots Ward in the throat, causing him to fall onto Salinger. Ward bleeds all over Salinger and painfully dies. The gunman is about to kill Salinger when the assassin shoots him through the forehead. It turns out that a whole hit team is in the museum, and a massive shootout ensues. Salinger grabs Ward's gun and kills some henchmen. The assassin also saves Salinger from being killed again. The assassin was wearing a bulletproof vest, and so he's unharmed from being shot before. He tells Salinger that they need to get out the museum, since the hit team is meant for both of them.During the shootout, Salinger is wounded in the side of his face. He and the assassin realize that the only way out of the museum is the spiral ramp, which is scattered with hitmen. They try to shoot their way out floor-by-floor, but keep on getting held down. Salinger shoots a hitman and tries to grab his gun, but the hitman fights him over it. Salinger shoves his finger into the hitman's bullet wound and causes him to unload his machine gun into the roof, showering the museum with glass. Salinger manages to shove the hitman over the balcony, where he falls to his death. The assassin is shot in the hand, and then four times in the stomach. Salinger smacks him around to make sure he doesn't die, and then shoots out a giant ceiling piece, causing it to crush some gunmen below. Salinger and the assassin manage to elude the last two gunmen and escape from the museum shortly before the police arrive. Salinger carries the assassin to a nearby park, and the assassin says that he was right all along they would never allow him to be taken into custody. The assassin dies, and Salinger is found by the police.Whitman visits Salinger at the police station, where a detective tells them that the cops were told to detain both of them. Whitman and Salinger manage to escape from the police station and drive off. Whitman shows Salinger a file and drives him to a building, where Ornelas is waiting for them. He caught up with Wexler and is keeping him downstairs. He tells Salinger to turn Wexler so that Ward didn't die for nothing. Salinger goes downstairs and meets Wexler. He knows that he was the assassin's handler and knows that he set him up to die. Wexler says that the reason why Salinger failed to bring down the IBBC and will continue to fail is because the IBBC controls everyone. All government agencies and criminals invest in the bank so that they can do things outside the law. Wexler was a former East German communist secret police and Salinger is puzzled how he came to be so dedicated to a western bank. Wexler wearily hints at selling out his beliefs and is not happy anymore. To bring down the bank, Wexler tells Salinger he will have to also go outside the law. Salinger tells Whitman to walk away from the case and write him off. She wants to see the case through to the end, but Salinger says that the bank will go after her family. Its better if he goes at it by himself. Whitman eventually agrees and says goodbye.The IBBC lawyer White and others go to the Calvini organization to sign the contract for the guidance equipment. However, the Calvini security team suddenly shows up and orders White and his guys to leave immediately. It turns out that Salinger informed the Calvini sons that the IBBC assassinated their father. While driving away, White is informed that the Calvinis know about the assassination. Whites car enters a tunnel, but doesn't come out. Later on, while watching a news segment on a general staging a coup de tat (which the IBBC supported), Skarssen sees a report about White's death. He realizes that the Calvinis are sending them a message, but reassures his colleagues that everything will move ahead. So instead of buying the guidance equipment from Calvini, they will have to buy it from Ahment Sunay (Haluk Bilginer) in Turkey. Currently, Sunay is in Istanbul for his cousin's funeral. Skarssen plans to travel there to negotiate a deal. Wexler calls Salinger and tells him that the meet is in Istanbul.In Istanbul, Skarssen and Wexler arrive at the funeral. While waiting for Sunay, Wexler excuses himself to use the bathroom. Salinger is waiting in the bathroom with an earpiece. Wexler planted a bug on Skarssens jacket, so when they meet Sunay Salinger will be able to record their conversation. Sunay greets Wexler and Skarssen while Salinger watches from afar. Sunay has Wexler wait outside while he takes Skarssen into a building to talk business. Salinger sneaks into the building because he has to be within a certain level of distance to hear the conversation. However, he's soon discovered by guards and thrown out. Meanwhile, a man approaches Wexler. He looks up and knows what's going to happen next. After negotiating, Skarssen goes outside and finds Wexler slumped against a pillar. He tells him to wake up, but then notices a hole in his jacket. Skarssen opens his jacket to find that Wexler has been shot and killed. He then panics upon seeing Salinger, who starts to approach him. Salinger grabs Wexler's gun and stalks Skarssen through busy markets. Skarssen tries to shake him, but Salinger continues to follow him. Scared, he runs onto a rooftop and flees. A part in the roof is destroyed, and so he can't run any further. Salinger, gun in hand, introduces himself. Skarssen says that he doesn't have the authority to arrest him. Salinger says who said anything about arresting you? and aims the gun at him. Skarssen says that if he kills him, it will solve nothing. Someone else will take his place, and the IBBC and 150 other banks will continue to thrive. If Salinger were to kill him, it would only quench his blood thirst. As Salinger contemplates killing Skarssen, a shot is fired. Skarssen is shot in the chest and collapses on the roof. A gun is then held to the back of Salingers head. The shooter is the same man who killed Wexler. He takes Salinger's gun away, and then walks down to where Skarssen is barely alive. He shoots Skarssen again, this time in the head to finish him off, "with greetings from Mario and Enzo Calvini". The film ends with the hitman walking away, telling Salinger "Grazie" (Italian for thank you). We hear a ringing noise and the screen cuts to black.During the end credits, we see newspaper headlines about Skarssen's death. He was replaced by one of his colleagues, who continued the illegal activities of the IBBC while making it appear as though they are a clean bank. The last newspaper clipping says that Whitman, in a promoted position in Washington, is going to perform another investigation into the IBBC. | realism, revenge, action, murder, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt0045888 | House of Wax | The movie opens with title and credits over the streets of turn of the century New York City at night in the pouring rain. A solitary figure walks down the street holding an umbrella. We enter the Wax Museum with various tableaux of crimes of the past, and then enter the workshop where Prof. Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is working on a sculpture. His business partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) enters and walks partially upstairs when he is hailed by Jarrod. He tells Jarrod he's there to study the account books. They have a philosophical difference between their approaches to business. Jarrod proposes a buyout arrangement, and Burke either eager or desperate for the money agrees in principle. A potential investor is scheduled to see Jarrod that very evening.Bruce Allison (Phillip Tonge) and Sidney Wallace (Paul Cavanagh) arrive and are given a brief tour of the wax museum. Wallace is impressed, but Jarrod explains that he's never satisfied with certain aspects of the finished products. Wallace explains he's going to Egypt for three months, so no decision on investment can take place prior to his return. Allison and Wallace depart. Burke was eavesdropping from the upstairs room and heard everything. He is impatient for a financial settlement and proposes an insurance fire. The place is insured for $25,000--$12,500 each. Jarrod is horrified by the proposal, and opposes it categorically. Burke lights the Marie Antoinette wax figure's dress with a match. It starts a fire that Jarrod quickly extinguishes. Burke starts a few more fires, with Jarrod quickly working to save his wax figures. Burke and Jarrod fight, and at one point Jarrod is knocked out. Burke douses the workroom and display area with a flammable liquid and turns on the gas light spigots. He goes upstairs as the place begins to catch fire. He returns to the workroom and continues his fight with the now revived Jarrod. Jarrod works desperately with buckets of water to douse the fire, but it is a losing battle. He is knocked out again by Burke and left in the burning building. The gas ignites blowing out the front of the building. The police and fire departments respond.At a dance Burke is entertaining a young lady, Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones). He tells Cathy he and Jarrod were friends and no trace of him was found after the fire. He confides to Cathy the insurance settled with a check this morning and he's already cashed it. Burke returns to his office, opens his safe and pulls out the money. Jarrod is there, horribly scarred from the fire wearing all black. He turns off the lights then attacks Burke with a rope. He takes the money, but before he can exit he hears the cleaning lady on the stairs. She continues down the stairs. Jarrod has something dramatic planned. He rigs a rope in the elevator, carries Burke to the elevator door, ties the loose end around Burke's neck and throws the body down the elevator shaft. The cleaning lady (Ruth Warren) screams when she discovers the dead body. It is meant to look like a suicide.At their boarding house Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) is helping Cathy get dressed for her evening out. Cathy expresses no sorrow for Burke, as she has found a new sugar daddy. Mrs. Flannigan (Riza Royce) confronts Sue upon her return from a job interview to get her back rent. Sue goes up to her room to get some money from Cathy. Cathy is dead and Jarrod is there in the room. She screams which brings the household upstairs. Sue leaves through an open window out onto the roof. Jarrod chases her down the street. She manages to slip him and calls for help at a house of an old friend. Mrs. Andrews (Angela Clarke) and her son Scott Andrews (Paul Picerni) bring her inside and she tells them Cathy was murdered and she saw the horrible visage of the murderer.The police investigate the murder at the rooming house. Lt. Tom Brennan (Frank Lovejoy) is lead and he is assisted by Sgt. Jim Shane (Dabbs Greer). The coroner (Frank Ferguson) determines Cathy's cause of death was strangulation. The surgeon (Grandon Rhodes) adds that she was drugged. Her body is taken to the morgue storage room where Jarrod is waiting under a sheet pretending to be a corpse. He's there to steal Cathy's body. With two accomplices below, he lowers her body out of a window with rope into a waiting hearse.The next morning, Mrs. Andrews, Scott and Sue come to the police station to give her report. Lt. Brennan tells them Cathy's body was stolen from the morgue. Before that, Mathew Burke's body and a few others were stolen from the morgue. He tells Sue not to leave town, but she is free to leave.Sidney Wallace is back in New York. He stops at a shop and is greeted by Igor (Charles Buchinsky/Bronson), a deaf-mute, and is escorted inside. Jarrod, looking as he did before the fire, greets Wallace sitting in a wheelchair. He tells Wallace he's rebuilding his exhibition from the ground up and will give the public what it wants, "sensation, horror, shock." He adds, "Crimes of violence will be reproduced in wax and exhibited while they are still fresh in the public mind." He is searching for a model for his new Marie Antoinette. He shows Wallace the basement with the wax body dip machinery. He asks Wallace to invest. He needs $30,000.The House of Wax opens for its debut. A man exits the lobby to work the crowd. The Barker (Reggie Rymal) has two paddle ball games. (Note: This was originally released as a Color 3-D movie.) He works the crowd into a frenzy by knocking things with the balls on the elastic. Jarrod greets Wallace and escorts him into the museum. He gives him the tour, along with some paying customers.Scott Andrews accompanies Sue on a tour of the Wax Museum. Wallace sees and recognizes Scott--he has been sponsoring him as a talented sculptor. Wallace wants to introduce Scott to Jarrod. While Sue wanders around she is surprised to see a Joan of Arc wax figure that looks exactly like her friend Cathy Gray. She climbs up on the tableaux to get a closer look. Jarrod sees this and approaches in his wheelchair. Sue asks, "But why should it be so like Cathy?" Jarrod responds, "I think I can explain that." He tells her that he copied her face from newspaper clippings. Jarrod offers Scott a job, then tells Wallace he sees Marie Antoinette as Sue.Jarrod, without his makeup, goes to see Sue. He spies on her through her open window. She goes to bed. Jarrod steals into her room, but Sue wakes up and screams. Jarrod departs as Mrs. Andrews comes into her room to comfort her.Sue and Scott are at a Can-Can show having lunch. She is convinced there is something wrong about the Joan of Arc figure. Cathy had one ear pierced as does the wax figure. Such detail seems inconceivable. Scott tells Sue they'll talk to Lt. Brennan. Brennan listens to the story. To humor her, he agrees that the Police will investigate. He does confirm that someone matching Jarrod's description (with makeup) did ask to look at the photographs of Cathy's body. Brennan tells Sgt. Shane to check on Jarrod and his employees. They visit the Museum and examine the Joan of Arc. Sue stops by and climbs up on the wax figure again to touch the face. Jarrod catches her again. Jarrod shows Sue a wax head of herself. He tells her he needs her to model for his Marie Antoinette. Before Brennan and Shane leave, they notice some of the wax figures resemble people who have recently died. Shane also thinks he recognizes one of Jarrod's sculptors, Leon Averill (Nedrick Young).Wallace was waiting outside Brennan's office for Brennan and Shane to return. They arrive and ask him some questions about Jarrod. Before he leaves he vouches for Jarrod. Shane then remembers Leon as an artist imprisoned at Sing-Sing. He was then known as Hendricks and was an alcoholic. Brennan tells Shane to bring him in. They search his belongings at the station and find a watch that belonged to one of the bodies stolen from the morgue. Brennan tells Shane to book him on suspicion of murder.Jarrod sends Scott on an errand after he tells Jarrod Sue will be stopping by later. Sue enters the darkened Museum. Igor locks her in then follows her as she wanders around looking for Scott. She is drawn to the Joan of Arc and climbs back on the tableaux. She pulls back the black wig and finds Cathy's blond hair beneath. Jarrod tells her, "You shouldn't have done that, my dear." Sue tells Jarrod, "It's Cathy's body under the wax. I knew it. I knew it all the time." Jarrod gets up out of the wheelchair and walks towards her. She runs straight into Igor. She hits Jarrod about the head and his wax face breaks off revealing the scarred face below. She is taken to the basement where Jarrod fires up his wax machine.At police headquarters they are questioning Leon with alcohol as a bribe. He spills his guts and tells the police, "The whole place is a morgue." The police race over to the House of Wax. Sue is shackled in a box with the hot wax shower threatening. Scott returns to the museum looking for Sue. Igor blocks the door to the workshop and he and Igor fight. Scott is knocked out. Igor places his body on the guillotine, but before he can operate the machine the police stop him. The police break down the door to the cellar. They fight with Jarrod on the bridge above the boiling vat of wax. Jarrod is knocked into the liquid and dies. Brennan moves the box Sue is shackled into away from the hot wax as the machinery explodes.The next morning Scott, Sue, Brennan and Shane meet in Brennan's office. We close with Brennan holding up the wax head of Igor. | revenge, murder | train | imdb | null |
tt1790864 | The Maze Runner | Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) wakes up in an ascending elevator. With him are supply containers marked WCKD. When the elevator reaches the top, a door above him opens and he's surrounded by a Lord of the Flies type gaggle of young men/boys. Thomas takes off running, but stops when he realizes he's in a small glade surrounded by huge walls.Gally (Will Poulter) subdues Thomas and keeps him from trying to run into a maze which is accessible through a door in the wall.The leader of the group, Alby (Ami Ameen), and his consigliere Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) explain the situation to Thomas. Once a month the elevator (or the box as they call it), comes to the surface with supplies as well as a new boy. They all live in the glade and call themselves Gladers. None of them can remember anything about their pasts or why they were sent there, but after a few days their names come back to them. Each boy is given a different job. Some are builders, some are runners. A door opens in the giant wall every day and closes every night. The door leads to a maze that surrounds the glade. Runners go through looking for a way out. "If you're trapped in the maze over night, the Grievers get you and you die". The maze changes every night. Alby was the first boy to arrive in the Glade. No one knows why they're there.Thomas starts to form a friendship with the kid who came up the month before him. He's one of the youngest of the group. His name is Chuck (Blake Cooper).That night there's a celebration for Thomas. Gally is wrestling one of the other boys and asks if Thomas wants to have a go. They end up sparring and when Thomas hits his head on the ground, he remembers his name.That night Thomas has a dream. It's full of fleeting images, but a woman (Patricia Clarkson) says, "Wicked is good."Alby takes Thomas around to show him more of the sites. The boys carve their names on the wall when they arrive. When one dies, they cross off the name. Thomas tries to fit in and he's given the task to go dig up fertilizer from out in the woods. While he's there, he's attacked by Ben (Chris Sheffield) one of the Runners who was stung by a Griever. While they fight, the other boy says, "This is all your fault. I saw you. That boy has what they call The Changing. A sting will apparently cause tremendous pain and make you prone to violence. There's no cure for it, so they force the boy into the maze at night just as the doors are closing." Everyone is concerned that there was a Griever attack during the day.That night Thomas has another dream. It's more of the lady assuring him that Wicked is good, but now he also remembers himself and a girl about the same age sitting across from each other at work stations going over diagnostics.The next day, Alby goes into the maze to retrace Ben's path and find out what happens. It rains during the day. Now it's getting late and Alby still hasn't returned. All the boys gather around the entrance to the maze. Just as the doors are about to close, the lead Runner named Minho (Ki Hong Lee) appears with a very injured Alby. Thomas rushes into the maze to help them, but the door closes behind him.Minho and Thomas use vines to suspend Alby's body and try to keep it safe from the Grievers. Alby was stung while inside the maze. One of the Grievers appears and chases after Thomas. The Grievers looks like gigantic bedbugs with robot legs and scorpion tails. Thomas and the Griever run around a bit as the walls in the maze change. Finally Thomas is able to lure the Griever between two walls that are colliding and SQUISH! Dead Griever.The next day Gally calls for a meeting of the Gladers. Most are excited that Thomas killed a Griever. There's another group though, lead by Gally who feel that the rules they have were put in place to keep everyone safe and ever since Thomas arrived things have changed like Grievers attacking during the day. Speaking of things changing, the elevator arrives.The boys run out to check what the elevator brought. Inside are no supplies, only a young girl (Kaya Scodelario). She looks up and says, "Thomas...", before passing out. In her hand is a note that reads: 'She's the last one ever.'Gally calls for Thomas to be punished because non Runners are allowed in the maze. He doesn't like the fact that the girl knew who Thomas was. He's scared that the elevator hasn't gone back down since they took out the girl. Newt says Thomas can be locked up overnight without any food and starting tomorrow, he's a Runner. Gally is mad at his leniency.Some of the boys go back into the maze to look at the carcass of the Griever, which further upsets Gally. Inside it they find a weird device that has an electronic display reading the number 7. The device also is marked WCKD. The boys realize whoever sends them supplies also made the Grievers.Minho shows Thomas a map of the maze. There are different outer sections that open each day as the maze changes. Each outer section is numbered. Last night, section 7 was open.The girl is awake. She's at the top of a tower throwing stuff at the boys on the ground. Thomas yells up to her that it's him. She agrees to let him come up. He explains that her memory was wiped, but in a few days she'll remember her name. She says she already remembers her name. It's Teresa. She remembers Thomas too. He tells her that he's had dreams about her and a lady saying that "Wicked is good." When Teresa woke up she found two syringes in her pocket too.That night, Thomas deals with his punishment of being locked up. Chuck visits him and brings him some food. He also asks Thomas to give his parents a little carved statue Chuck made. Even though he doesn't remember his parents, he's sure his parents remember him and miss him. Thomas gives back the statue and tells Chuck that he'll be able to give that to his parents himself.The next morning Thomas and Minho go into the maze along with the device they got from the Griever. The device ends up making clicking noises and guides them to a new section Minho has never seen before. Minho is also concerned that all of the outer sections of the maze seem to be open. They get to a wide area marked WCKD Loading Dock that ends up in a dead end, but the device turns from red to green and opens a new path. That path leads to what looks like some sort of sewer tunnel. The edges of the tunnel have the same slime that the Grievers secrete, so they go back to the Glade.Thomas decides to use one of the syringes on the still changing Alby. It ends up making him better. When he comes to he tells Thomas, "You were their favorite." But we don't find out what he means because outside doors all over the maze begin to open and out pour scores of Grievers.The Griever attack that wipes out lots of the boys and destroys most of their village. Alby is among the dead. Chuck is saved after being grabbed by one of the Grievers. They end up hacking off its tail. After the attack, Thomas realizes that the venom from the Griever stings helps the victim remember, so he takes the hacked off tail and stings himself and he remembers a little bit more.Thomas remembers that the maze isn't a prison, it's a test. He sees all of the other boys in incubation tubes. A lot of them are in a panic. He also sees himself as a scientist along with Teresa.The Gladers use the second syringe and Thomas is cured and confesses to everyone that he's one of the people responsible for everyone being there. Gally is furious; he and his group tie Thomas and Teresa to stakes outside the entrance to the maze as an offering. But half the group is still with Thomas so they free them. Now the Gladers are divided.Thomas tells Gally that he'd rather die trying to escape than die in the Glade not trying. Thomas takes a group into the maze. They get to the Loading Dock area from before and are attacked by Grievers again. They go through the sewer tunnel and it leads to a locked door. They need a numerical code to get through. They realize the code must be the sequence in which the maze would normally open. Theresa types it in and everyone goes through a door. Walls crush all the Grievers behind them.The kids walk through some hallways until they find a door marked exit. (It's seriously a regular old exit door like you'd find in any office building). They go through and now they're inside the lab from Thomas dreams and memories. All the scientists are dead. A video starts to play.The woman from earlier identifies herself as Ava Paige and tells the kids that they don't remember this but there was global devastation by something called the Flare. She was part of a controversial group called The World Catastrophe Killzone Department (WCKD), that believed that in testing the kids they could monitor their brains and find a cure. While she speaks, behind her guerrilla soldiers rush in and start killing other scientists. She tells them she's glad they passed the first test and reminds them that Wicked is good. Before signing off, Paige shoots herself in the head.A door opens leading outside. Before anyone can leave, Gally shows up. He has a gun. He says that they all belong in the Glade. He goes to shoot Thomas, but Chuck jumps in front of the bullet. Gally gets stabbed in the chest with a knife. Chuck hands the, now bloody, statue to Thomas and dies.A group, who looks like the guerrilla soldiers from the video, rush in and takes the kids outside to waiting helicopters. At first it looks like they're in the desert, but we pull out to reveal that they're outside what used to be a city. Buildings are destroyed and everything is covered in sand. They fly over the maze and the Glade and no one asks why the helicopters just didn't land inside the Glade and rescue the kids there instead.In the final shot, it is shown that Paige is alive and wiping fake blood off her head. She says that the kids have taken the bait. More kids survived than she anticipated. The Maze was a success, and now "phase 2" can begin as the helicopter flies away to the city of ruins.To be continued... | mystery, murder, violence, horror, flashback, action, suspenseful | train | imdb | It was jammed with stock lines: bland, insinuating lines that were supposed to put me on the edge of my seat but instead left me thinking, 'Okay, when are we going to get to the POINT of this movie?' We got to see the intimidating-jerk-who-doesn't-listen-to-reason character, the hardened-guy-who-will-later-be-reduced-to-a-weak-state-to-show-us how-shaken-up-the-best-of-us-can-get character, the arbitrary female (although, thankfully, fewer movies today are marginalizing women), the amnesiac/s, and the innocent-character-we-can-get-away-with-killing.
The pacing of the film, if not the events, were completely predictable and the ending (which I came to the theater curious for in the first place) came off as stale and forced, like the rest of the ponderous placeholder scenes that served as a plot.
Indeed, The Maze Runner is such a cool, confident and thrilling blend of action beats and character work that it's hard to believe Ball has never before commandeered a full- length feature film.
But this is more a problem with the source material than Ball's own skills as a director.Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) finds himself thrust rudely into the world of the Glade: a community of boys who have figured out how to live while encircled by a giant, constantly changing maze, within which dwell giant, boy-eating monsters known only as Grievers.
Thomas winds up unsettling the entire camp with his refusal to follow the rules and determination to ask questions: he wants to explore the Maze with designated runners like Minho (Ki Hong Lee), and figure out a way to get free.
Ball cuts scenes of great, heart-stopping tension together masterfully: whether it's Thomas running through walls that are fast closing in on him, or Thomas and Minho trying to outrun a Griever while burdened with an unconscious Alby.The film even finds some welcome dramatic depth in this strange little community of lost boys in the Glade - Thomas' growing antagonism with Gally is balanced against the mutual respect he and Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) develop for each other, and the brotherly connection that he forges with the adorable Chuck (Blake Cooper).
It's a strangely deflating experience to have the film's rich ethical dilemmas and intense action sequences give way to an underlying dystopian narrative that isn't really all that compelling.Nevertheless, The Maze Runner remains quite an accomplishment.
For me, this was the type of film that I knew if I just went with the flow and didn't try and look for all the holes in the story and script that I'd be better off.The way the film was presented by first time director Wes Ball was top notch, as I felt I was right there in the maze with the main characters.
The action, when it happens, is fun, but it doesn't happen often enough.The film follows a boy named Thomas who is cast into a mini society put together by a group of boys that live in the center of a maze, in a place they call the Glade.
Much like an episode of Lost meeting The Lord of the Flies meeting Labyrinth, we understand narrative at the same time as Thomas, who is eventually told that three years ago a young teenage boy first arrived at the glade, and each month since one more arrives in the lift with certain supplies to survive.
Co-staring alongside Dylan O'Brien are equally exceptional performances by; Will Poulter, in a dark tough-guy role, (and absolutely nothing like his recent role as Kenny in We're The Millar's); Thomas Brodie-Sangster stars as a fellow Glader; and Kaya Scodelario in a surprise turn-up as the first female at the Glade - but also 'the last one ever' to arrive.
For an age in which the medium is flooded with young adult novels and movies, the film feels fresh and isn't overwhelmed by clichés like so many others are.It's led by a relatively unknown cast.
While the story is nothing we haven't seen before, the Maze Runner has some suspense and unknown elements that keeps you latched into the film.
Lead Maze Runner Minho (Ki Hong Lee) was also a nice supporting character, bringing the wing man role to life and adding a little grounding to Thomas's flamboyant attitude.
However, in my opinion, "The Maze Runner" is unable to get it to be thrilling.The film comes to an end without knowing the answer to several questions in order to make room for the second film.So I will be waiting for a new episode and news surprises from Wes Ball and T.S. Nowlin in "Scorch Trials" :).
The Maze Runner is a very bad movie, poor acting, trying to capture poignant moments fail, logic is for director unknown concept.
Although the main structure of "The Maze Runner" will probably look familiar if you have seen more then 100 movies in your life, it's still expertly paced and done so you will be glued to your screen for the whole ride.Overall, "The Maze Runner" is not to be missed one if you like sci-fi movies, which are good crafted and tells interesting stories.
The movie banked in with such a lead that most of us would die to see what Dylan aka Styles do in this novel depiction..Believe me the confused confident curious attitude of our teen wolf Star , worked here too...Glade was a Habitable place, created in the middle of a evershifting Maze inhabited by mysterious(never seen) creatures.
group of teens struggling to survive inside the glades, met a disoriented Thomas who , ever since his visit, starts u...nveilling the secrets of the maze with the help of Runners...To add up the complication a girl named teresa was sent as the last one...From there how they embark upon the journey to freed themselves is what Maze Runner All about....Teen oriented movie with a teen starcast, gave a performance so good and observable that The movie will survive the Box Office...Good Points: 1)A fresh starcast , with some brilliant performances 2)A story which was well captivating and grippy, at no point it was loose, from the first scene it will hold you back and will keep you surprising till the end...and is refreshingly dark....Much better than the book....It seemed more detailed...
3)The set was the best part, what a creation 4)Cinematography well carried out 5)Sound effects were perfect and gave the movie that extra punch...Bad Points: 1) The end was abrupt It's a watchable trade......After a long time , a performance based movie from Hollywood....
I recently watched this movie called "The Maze Runner", a scientific thriller film directed by Wes Ball.
The movie is filled with great suspense and kept me entertained at all times.The story opens with Thomas who wakes up in an elevator which was filled with water for a couple of hours.
While not gory by any standards, the dark tone of the film added atmosphere and made for quality viewing.For those who haven't read the books, the ending may have seemed abrupt, but you leave the cinema feeling like you've got your money's worth...
It had everything I had ever hoped to see in a movie: a great opening, a highly engaging, thrilling, mysterious, easy-to-follow, simple yet effective and to-the-point plot, likable characters you could actually care about and root for, incredible performances delivered by each and every single actor and actress, a superb conclusion and cliff-hanger ending, which calls for a sequel, awesome special effects, the kind where special effects are kept to a minimum and are not employed for the sake of special effects but for the sake of the plot, a pleasant and balanced mix of all the popular genres: Mystery, Sci-Fi and Action.
It's a pretty bad movie, you will watch it feeling that the screenwriters just did copy paste from every somewhat successful movie that has been done lately, he even thrown in at the last second a Kristen Stewart look a like complete with the half dumb look in her eyes, since the movie is pretty much all made from well kept only boy teens do seems a bit over the top very gay, in any case most of the acting was OK even though you are wondering did the deserted characters had a beauty salon close by that fixed their hair every two hours?
The Maze Runner is a captivating movie centred around Thomas, a young man who awakes in a village populated entirelyby males and has forgotten who he is.
The Maze Runner is a 2014 action/sci-fi film in which a teenager named Thomas wakes up to find himself without any memory of who he is, and in a small colony surrounded by a dangerous maze known as "The Glades".
It's a well acted and thrilling film with more upsides than down.Maze Runner itself if very reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, and just like the book, the characters are the main selling points.
Besides, I have to say I found The Maze Runner superior to Divergent, Beautiful Creatures and The Hunger Games; I know that that isn't something very enthusiastic to say, but we can't demand too much from this kind of films..
The movie also has some bad points, there wasn't any love story between Thomas and Teresa, a lot of people died for the same reasons, and they all died because of the flares and grievers.
I read the book and I did not know how the movie was going to do at the box office or with the fans of the book and critics.The first film in the series is based on a series of books by James Dashner and it is an entertaining film, but it's not flawless.The story follows Thomas, a boy who wakes up in a moving elevator going up called The Box. Once he arrives, he discovers a grassy area called The Glade and the people that live there called Gladers.
When a young girl, Teresa arrives in the box, Thomas's memory starts to come back and he realizes what is really going on and sets out to try and find a way out.I wasn't totally against the movie, I was very interested to see how this movie would turn out, so my sister went out one night and bought a couple of movies from RedBox and she bought this movie.
This sequence becomes the drive to finish the story and that's all we get because we don't know a lot about and they attempt to play an important role in the film and this creates a major plot hole.The one major problem that these young adult movies keep having is that in every teenage movie, there has to be an antagonist and this goes to Will Poulter as Gally and he plays the role like an idiot and he does not make me feel sympathy for him at all.Why you put a stupid-ass character in the movie?
The acting is good and bad, the supporting cast is out there and makes a lot of effort to put on good performances, but the only two that really shines out is Dylan O'Brien and Kaya Scodelario and they have great chemistry.Overall, I enjoy THE MAZE RUNNER.
Sure, it has it's major flaws, a stupid character and a very confusing ending setting up a sequel, titled "THE SCORCH TRIALS", for a September release this year and I can't wait, it is still watchable.I give THE MAZE RUNNER a 8.5/10..
Coming off the heels of hits like The Hunger Games and Divergent, The Maze Runner is the first story in the trilogy of novels by James Dashner.
Standing against great movies like what I have mentioned earlier The Maze Runner is still has a long way to go being this is the first of a sequel of movies we are about to see in the coming years.
And at times we are left to make tough choices.Equipped with strong acting and brilliant CG The Maze Runner is a movie that will keep the viewer engaged every second.
Who is keeping them in that place?"Maze Runner" is a surprisingly good film, with mystery, action and sci-fi with wonderful special effects.
Unlike movies based off book series (like The Giver) that hastily solve the main conflict at the end and explain everything because they know that their movie sucks but that they'll make money on hype anyways, the Maze Runner is confident that it'll be a series that will continue, and thus keeps the viewer in suspense at the end, having only revealed a bit more about the mystery surrounding the maze, but still ending with a cliffhanger that leaves you confused but eager to see more.
Anyway, with the title and concept like 'The Maze Runner', the movie 'Logan's Run' quickly comes to mind.
My immediate thought while watching The Maze Runner was just how close the whole premise was to Vincent Natali's sci-fi horror Cube (1997), both films featuring a group of people who wake to find themselves in a strange environment with no memory of how they got there.
The big difference is that, where Cube was a brilliantly executed low-budget thriller with nail-biting tension and a thought provoking ambiguous climax, The Maze Runner is a mega-budget blockbuster that, for much of its running time, moves like molasses, and which ends leaving questions that we know will be answered, just so long as we shell out more cash to see the next couple of instalments.Obviously, at 47 I'm not exactly in the intended demographic for this film, but I do feel that this one missed the opportunity to be a hugely entertaining adventure for all ages.
Blake Cooper who plays Chuck, really did an awesome job, with credible performances being logged by Dylan O'Brien, Aml Ammen, and Hi Hong Lee. This film is definitely designed for a sequel, but that's really not a big surprise, is it?Anyway, the wife and I really enjoyed it and we are looking forward to The Maze Runner 2!
There are things that don't line up and not having read the books yet I'm not exactly sure what is plot holes and what is intentional but nevertheless I still really enjoyed it.This movie kept me glued to my seat the whole time.
Which Isn't all that bad, lots of movies have them, wouldn't want to watch a 5 hour movie right?Like I said in the beginning, read the book first.
Dylan O'Brien (Thomas) though was new to me, I've heard that his from Teen Wolf which I don't watch, but I was actually surprise with his acting performance in this film, it actually pretty good.
It leaves you in suspense at the end wanting more but as this is a series one has to wait with bated breath for the next grand adventure, like in our favorite TV sitcoms from the 70,s and Eighties when we would see To be Continued on the screen and sigh as our parent,s shooed us off to bed this is that kind of movie one where we all gasp and sigh.the boy who played Newt I have seen in Nanny Mcphee and and a film about a 8 year old boy with a brain tumor that was a true story.
The Maze Runner is an exceptionally entertaining little movie that belies its origins as a young-adult story.
The acting is better than might be expected for a young-adult film, and O'Brien, Brodie-Sangster, and Poulter are each well cast.It's obvious that The Maze Runner is intended to be a franchise - if it enjoys box-office success, of course.
For me, "The Maze Runner" just felt like another young adult dystopian film too many..
The Maze runner is a science fiction action thriller film directed by Wes Ball, based on James Dashner's book with the same name.
The Maze Runner tries to be as good as science-fiction stories, like The Cube, The Hypercube and Lost, but instead we have a "Hunger- Games-ish" ending.
Although The Maze Runner didn't disappoint me, I thought the movie could be a lot better, because there are certain things that diminish the importance of the actions in the plot: the tiny an uncomfortable laughs; and it looks like a Disney movie, but it has really aggressive moments.In the end, the film is OK, just one of the bunch.
Making a movie like that one or two times a year, and the originality quickly fades out.To go into the detail of "The Maze runner" it was quickly to me, it had some things that could make it a better movie.
But then it has to make good on its initial promise and instead delivers a head-scratching ending that's just a set up for a string of $equels.Still, 'The Maze Runner' is well made and features a strong cast of young actors who are light years ahead of the typical mannequins who make up these sorts of movies.
Some folks have suggested that one ought to read the book to really get what's going on - I'm not going to do that, the screenwriter's job is to explain them or leave it out, and this movie wasn't good enough to sell me on the books.I think the most disappointing aspect of The Maze Runner is that I have the distinct impression it could have been a lot better if they had spent more time on adapting the story..
I was reading through several pages of reviews on this movie and noticed all the positive comments regarding "good acting" in this film but imo, The Maze Runner had the worst acting I have ever seen.
First things first, if you read the book The Maze Runner and liked it go see this movie, end of review for you, but if you haven't read the book keep reading.
None of them remember their past, only their name, and when Thomas shows up he is determined to find a way out of the maze.I was really excited for this movie, the trailer was great, the cast was pretty good, and although I hadn't read the book I heard it was fantastic. |
tt0059037 | The Cincinnati Kid | A casually dressed 30-ish man walks purposefully down a sidewalk. He passes a New Orleans' style funeral. He meets a young boy, they know each other and toss quarters, the man wins and gently teases the boy.Title sequence, bluesy jazz funeral march.At a card game, the man wins by calling his opponent's bluff. The Loser claims he marked the cards. Confrontation in the washroom, the winner escapes thru a window. Chased by two men he manages to get away by passing through a railyard.A nattily dressed 60-ish man arrives by train and is greeted as Mr. Howard at a fine hotel.In another room a card game is underway at a bar. Greeted by others as "Kid", the young man from earlier sits down to watch and takes $170 from a happy player, a payment on his markers. He greets a well dressed man, "Shooter", and they chat. Kid says he may move to Miami when the other man says "Lancey Howard" is in town, others ask if the Kid will play him.Lancey calls a man named Slade to offer a game of stud poker at noon, they agree. Slade, post coitus with a mistress, asks for Shooter to be the honest dealer. Lancey requests more tabasco for his oysters.Shooter and Kid chat on a ferry. Shooter recounts his past when he thought he was the best until he was gutted by Lancey. Lancey is "the Man" and the Kid wants to beat him. On the other side Kid meets his girl. She says she went to a French movie with subtitles. They continue to discuss the movie as Kid has a bath, the story concerns death and honour, Christian doesn't get it and mentions she went because Melba wanted to go.Shooter watches his sexy wife Melba work on a jigsaw puzzle, she trims pieces to fit. He chides her for cheating herself, she shrugs it off and munches on an apple. Lancey calls and explains the game with Slade, Shooter agrees.Melba and Christian are window shopping, then go to a turkish bath. Christian, a naif, gets her first rubdown massage. The two women talk obliquely about their men.The card game starts with Lancey and local players Slade and others. Shooter and Lancey talk about "the Kid" and the potential challenge.Kid is getting his shoes shined by the young boy again as the two women arrive. Melba annouces she heard the Cincinnati Kid will be playing Lancey Howard. Once again Kid beats the kid in a coin flip.At their home Christian tries to get a better idea of Kid's feelings for her. Since he doesn't respond she says she will be going home the next day. Kid's focus is on the upcoming game and his reputation, Christian doesn't want to be #2 and leaves on a bus to go home.At the poker game the players tally up, they have been playing for 30 hours and Slade writes a cheque to Lancey for $6000, acknowledging Lancey has taught him at $200 per hour. Lancey takes the cheque and subtly disses Slade. Slade then wants to meet Shooter later that night. Shooter telephones and asks Kid to take his wife to the "fight". Shooter and Lancey arrange the big game with the Kid for Monday. Shooter mentions he will bring along Ladyfingers, a fellow cardplayer, to be the relief dealer.Kid takes Melba to the cockfight and they bet and watch. Melba is excited by the action. Back at her home she tries to seduce the Kid, they kiss and he slaps her rump and leaves.At his home, Slade and shooter agree on a $12000 side bet on the Lancey/Kid game. Slade then tells Shooter to help Kid win the big game with Lancey. He holds $25000 in Shooter's markers as leverage, Shooter is upset at having to compromise his honesty and strongly believes Kid can win without help.Kid goes to the countryside to visit Christian and her parents. Stern and humourless, they have dinner together, then Christian asks the Kid to show a card trick. He fans out a deck of cards and tells the father to pick any card, then immediately calls it correctly as 3 of Hearts. The father laughs and Kid repeats the trick for the mother.In their bedroom, Melba and Shooter discuss Slade's demands, Melba mocks her husband's honesty.The big game is set for Monday at 5:00 pm in room 2A of the Lafayette Hotel. Kid and Lancey pack in their respective rooms and prepare, Kid studies the "New Practical Exercises in Rapid Calculations" math book, Lancey arranges several bundles of cash. Kid arrives by taxi and waits outside. Inside, a large gathering of local players are in the suite. Ladyfingers arrives and greets everyone, taunting Lancey. Kid makes his entrance and is warmly greeted as the local hero. Lancey, standing alone, observes the locals. Shooter introduces "Eric Stoner, the Cincinnati Kid" to Lancey Howard, they size each other up warily.Lancey, Kid and three locals set up to play with Shooter as the dealer. The men are all jovial and in good spirits as the stud poker game begins. After a while Pig, thinks he has a strong hand and tries to win the hand by betting heavily. An impassive Lancey sees all the bets and finally raises $1100, the same amount Pig has left. Pig folds and gives up the game, upset at being forced out. Shooter calls for a break. Slade puts down Shooter in front of Melba.During the intermission the characters chat. Kid and Lancey discuss women and Miami. Ladyfingers takes over as dealer and continues to tease Lancey. Quite a while later the other two locals, Doc Sokal and Yeller, tired and disheveled, throw in and leave the table leaving only Kid, Lancey and Shooter. Kid wins regularly, later, Kid glances at Shooter, then concedes a hand. He asks for a sleep break and Lancey agrees to restart at 5 o'clock.Kid leaves the room and Shooter follows. Kid confronts Shooter in private, he has noticed Shooter has been dealing him good cards for the past several hours. Shooter tries to explain but the Kid angrily wants to win without help. He places a wakeup call for 4:00. A weary Lancey also goes to sleep in his room muttering about the Kid.Melba comes to Kid's room and slides under the sheets with the Kid at 3:35. Kid rouses and makes love to her. While both are finishing dressing later, Christian unexpectedly arrives. Melba excuses herself and Kid makes a comment about timing.Play continues and the onlookers watch in silence. Finally Ladyfingers dealing calls another break, Lancey sets 1 hour, he appears tired and weary. While on break Kid has a nice steak and talks to Slade, once again refusing any assistance to beat Lancey. As the game begins Kid says Shooter looks unwell and asks for Ladyfingers to be the dealer. She wakes from the sofa and takes over dealing the cards.Over time Lancey appears to get more weaker under the hot lights. On one deal Lancey gets an 8 of diamonds, Kid 10 of clubs. Kid bets 500, Lancey matches. Lancey then gets the Queen of diamonds, Kid the 10 of spades. Kid bets 1000, Lancey raises 1000 and Kid calls. Lancey gets the 10 diamonds, Kid the Ace of clubs. Kid now bets 3000. The crowd senses something significant is happening, Lancey calls and gets the 9 diamonds. Kid gets the Ace of spades. Kid checks. Lancey bets 1000, Kid raises 3500, all he has left. Lancey calls the $3500 and raises $5000. Most of the onlookers, now clustered around the table, think Lancey cannot possibly have the Jack diamonds needed for a straight flush. Lancey takes the Kid's verbal IOU so Kid can call. Lancey overturns his hole card, it is the jack of diamonds. Everyone is stunned, a shocked Kid turns over his ace hole card. A smug Lancey rubs it in by calling Kid "2nd best". The game wraps up and Melba and Slade make angry comments, Shooter is sympathetic.Outside the hotel Kid meets the shoeshine boy again, they toss quarters this time the boy wins. Depressed, Kid walks around a corner and meets Christian. They embrace, fade to black and Ray Charles' theme song. | suspenseful | train | imdb | Like the rest of the English-speaking world, I've recently succumbed to poker-mania, and started wasting some of my spare cash in amateur Texas Hold 'Em games.Due to my newfound interest in card-playing, and my appreciation for old movies, I picked up "The Cincinatti Kid" on DVD.
Set in New Orleans, during the Depression the film tells the story of 'Cincinnati Kid', who wants to be the best card player in the world.
The movie follows the few days before the big game of the Cincinatti Kid and several other characters who in one way or another could be affected by the games results: One is a sort of a shady gangster (Rip Torn) who was "butchered" by "The Man" not very long ago and will do anything to get even with him including threaten and bribe one of the dealers named Shooter (Karl Malden) who is The kid's best friend.
Also in the mix is Shooter's sexy and seductive wife Melba (Ann-Margret at her most beauty) who has a few things on her mind (one of them is money of course and none of them is her poor husband) and also are trying to tempt Mcqueen's Character who is in relationships with a sweet and innocent country girl named Christian (the lovely Tuesday Weld) who wants to settle down.
But as that eminent American philosopher Ric Flair says, "to be the man, you got to beat the man." And there's a kid from Cincinnati played by Steve McQueen who thinks he can do it.McQueen's up for a fair and square game, but Robinson's developed a bad enemy in Rip Torn.
Anyway Robinson is a wily and wise old soul who goes to the poker table like most of us go to the office, to work.This is one of Steve McQueen's four or five best screen roles, he's an ultimate rebel hero here.
Norman Jewison's (`In the Heat of the Night,' `The Thomas Crown Affair,' `Fiddler on the Roof')1965 `The Cincinnati Kid' contains top notch location shooting in New Orleans and gritty dialogue (screenplay by Ring Lardner, Jr., `M*A*S*H*') that seems way ahead of its time.The star power of this film is immense, with Steve McQueen portraying `the Kid' who is overly confident that he can beat `the Man,' Edward G.
McQueen is ever confident while Robinson has seen it all and will not be surprised or scared by anything that he sees on the card table.As in all great movies there is a very strong supporting cast in this film.
Five-card stud isn't played much anymore, but it's played for something like 30 hours in the final hour of "The Cincinnati Kid," a 1965 film directed by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen, Edward G.
Robinson, Karl Malden, Ann-Margret, Tuesday Weld, and Joan Blondell.McQueen is The Cincinnati Kid, a rounder, someone who looks for poker action in various towns, and Robinson is a long-time champion, also a rounder.
And the cast is terrific -- Joan Blondell as a replacement dealer, Jack Weston as a fellow player, Torn as the angry Slater, Ann-Margret in top form in looks and sex appeal, Malden as the frustrated Shooter - all are excellent.Considered one of the best, if not the best poker movie of all time.
Cincinnati gets together in 30's New Orleans for big poker game with unexpected consequences .This interesting film contains emotion , drama , a lot of competing game in the tradition of the not dissimilar : The Hustler , and meaningless romances between McQueen , Tuesday Weld and Ann Margret .
McQueen is the title character, a cocky young player who's out to prove his worth by taking out the veteran Lancey Howard (Robinson) in a game dealt by Shooter (Malden).
People will sit down at the table with you, just so they can say they played with The Man. Blah blah blah is the feelings I get when I see comments about this being McQueen's answer to The Hustler, the Newman film is firmly ensconced in the hall of classics and rightly so, but this is a different animal that stands up on its own two feet as a great film regardless of comparisons of leading men or films they respectively delivered."It's a pleasure to meet someone who understands that to the true gambler, money is never an end in itself, it's simply a tool, as a language is to thought"Steve McQueen is The Cincinnati Kid of the title, a young man who has an enviable reputation as the pretender to the throne of king stud poker player.
Reading through all the other comments let me give you my idea what the movie is about: The Cinicinnati Kid, a young talented but poor poker player gets the opportunity to play against Lancey, an old and rich master player.The Kid thinks he has nothing to lose, it is the only opportunity he's got, poker is the only thing he can do, the can succeed alone on his own, he is in control of his side of the game, life would change for the better should he win, he is respected, Lancey is the man to beat, it is a fair game.
Not so here.Steve McQueen and Edward G Robinson do a great job at building suspense and meaning into their encounter: if you haven't seen this you'll stick around to the end to find out who wins.Norman Jewison allows for moments of too much theatricality in places, but also uses the extreme close-up to great effect when necessary.The rest of the cast Ann-Margaret and Rip Torn, both looking impossibly young, and Rip Torn is unrecognizable compared to his later roles, are all excellent.Above all this is worth watching to see Steve MaQueen being Steve McQueen and for watching poker as it can be at its best on screen..
This film send for audience an important lesson not to depend on luck only but it must need from ourselves to depend on our shoulders to reach for our aims.Cincinnati left every things to be a great poker player by gaining the master and professional player by crossing his people and his lover but at the end of this story he lost his hope by losing from the master and when he left the poker room by receiving blame comments from his friends he met a young Negro boy who learned from him a poker but in street not in a high society and he invited him to play with him to take a revenge in the last match between them but also he didn,t be good in poker in the street level as a message that he must return to his nature after loosing everything but the only thing he did not lose it his lover that she waited him beside poker club to take his hand to cross this turmoil to begin a new life with soft soul and pure hearts in spite of this crisis..
Steve McQueen, an underrated actor in his lifetime who was actually quite subtle and gifted as his films now confirm, is an up-and-coming poker player, The Kid, cocky and sure of himself, smitten by Ann Margret's sexy purring miss, and led into the lion's den - a game against Lancey Howard (The Man - a showy and assured performance from Edward G Robinson) - by Shooter, a crooked card sharp (Karl Malden).Mainly a poker film, that's where all the scenes of tension lie.
Steve McQueen plays the title role of the Cincinnati Kid; a young, up-and-coming poker player.
Kid's colleague Shooter (Karl Malden) is appointed the trusted dealer, but after an exclusive meeting with a head honcho named Slade (Rip Torn), Shooter is put into a corner and is forced to rig the game.Meanwhile, when Kid's girl Christian (Tuesday Weld) is out of town visiting her parents, he begins an unsteady relationship with Melba Nile, played by the beautiful Ann-Margret.
Joan Blondell rounds out this great assemble as Lady Fingers, a respected card dealer and old friend of Lancey Howard."The Cincinnati Kid" is a pretty entertaining movie.
First McQueen's character, Eric Stoner, a.k.a. The Cincinnati Kid, must take on the guy everyone else in the world he inhabits calls the Man, Lancey Howard (Edward G.
When McQueen and Robinson lock horns, that's when this movie goes into a whole different orbit, aided by Terry Southern and Ring Lardner Jr.'s sly, unsentimental scriptwork; fantastic set design and use of New Orleans locales; a supporting cast of great character actors at the peak of their craft; and a director, Norman Jewison, who knew how to get the right shot for every moment.Sure, Jewison took over the project from Sam Peckinpah, one of my favorite directors, but I can't see even Sam pulling off a better job than this.
Jewison milks the kind of drama Sam never would have found from guys sitting in chairs smoking cigars, and his shafts of welcome humor arrive with a grace and subtlety Sam had no patience for."The Cincinnati Kid" is quintessential McQueen, the ladies' man who's a loner at heart and who knows, like Robert Mitchum in "Out Of The Past", that winning in the end is just a matter of losing more slowly.
Ann-Margret is sexy, as usual, never more so than at the rooster fight, but Tuesday Weld does little in the equivalent of Piper Laurie's role in "The Hustler." Rip Torn goes over the top playing Slade, yet I remember every line of his dialogue ("How's that steak, kid?").
(Significant spoilers ****) Up-and-coming hotshot "Kid" (Steve McQueen) prepares for showdown with reigning poker king Lancey Howard "The Man" (Edward G.
It didn't pick up a single Oscar nomination but it probably provided more pleasure than any of the films that were nominated that year, including "The Sound of Music".Some people describe it as 'The Hustler' of poker with Steve McQueen as The Kid who wants to be The Man. The Man is actually Edward G Robinson and he's simply magnificent here.
As well as McQueen and Robinson there's Ann-Margaret, (a bad girl and Oscar-worthy), Tuesday Weld, (a good girl), Karl Malden, Rip Torn and a terrific Joan Blondell as Lady Fingers.The brilliant screenplay is by Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern from the novel by Richard Jessup, (the film is at least the equal of the book and probably better), and it's superbly photographed, designed and scored.
THE CINCINNATI KID is a drama film that shows us, in an interesting way, the sharpness and the ability of poker game during the Great Depression.
An authentic scenery and sharp dialogues very well correspond to a red-hot atmosphere of a scam and love.Steve McQueen as Eric "The Kid" Stoner is a charismatic character who wants to prove that he is the best poker player in the region.
(Then too, I'll bet Robinson and Blondell {Ladyfingers} had fun talking over old times at Warner Bros.) Add the always reliable Karl Malden, a slimy Rip Torn (Slade) and a sweaty Jack Weston (Pig), along with the ravishing Ann Margret and the vixenish (not here) Tuesday Weld, and you've got a cast that could carry even a bad movie, which this movie definitely is not.
The opening scenes are well done, and the ending poker scene is unquestionably classic, but the middle is seriously bogged down by the romantic scenes between McQueen and Tuesday Weld.during the awful middle segment of this movie, and amidst all the hype the characters are making about the big game, you're just begging the director Norman Jewison to just deal the cards already.
From the cool jazzy world of New Orleans, comes the story of Eric Stoner (Steve McQueen) who believes he has got what it takes to beat "The Man" (Edward G.
With the memorable talents of Karl Malden as Shooter, Rip Torn as William Slade, Jack Weston as Pig, Cab Calloway as Yeller, Ann-Margret as Melba and Tuesday Weld as Christian, the film evolves into a classic from sheer star power.
Robinson, Steve McQueen, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, and Rip Torn (and Joan Blondell and Ann-Margaret with a cameo from the immortal Cab Calloway, for good measure) under the direction of a world class director (Norman Jewison)?
It seems to me that I've read a number of reviews on this site which are quite critical of this movie,seeing nothing original or unique in the plot.Given the original story,which was written the year before,they might appear to have lodged a valid complaint.Nobody is doing anything in this picture that they haven't done in at least 2 or 3 others.But there IS another way of looking at it.We can be very critical of this movie for a lack of originality in terms of content.OK,a brash,bold young upstart challenges the old champion,and is roundly trounced.Nothing at all new here.But,maybe we can examine it in terms of process-not what they're saying,but,rather,how they say it.We've got a first-rate cast assembled,playing as a team.Some players are doing more than others,but,as the line goes"No small parts,just small actors."We see how they of and with others.And the technical aspects are first rate.And,by putting it back in a late Depression setting,we view it through an almost mystical lens.Give credit for a fun movie.I don't think that anybody involved would have considered it great art,including the players.
Steve Mc Queen aka The Kid is to become poker-gambler number one, if it wasn't for "The Man", extremely well played role by Edward G Robinson.
The thing is that there isn't that much to tell, the whole movie seems to be filmed around the table the game is playing...and yet, director Norman Jewison makes it one of the best McQueenmovies ever.
Interesting film with good cast led by Steve McQueen as Cincinnati Kid and the always effective Edward G.
McQueen was really good in the role of an efficient poker player who tries to prove himself playing against the smart Lancey Howard (Robinson).
The first half of the movie seems to be slow, tedious, and a bit dramatic at time, but its worth it when it comes to the actual poker game between The Kid (Steve McQueen at his coolest) and The Man (Edward G Robinson), you end up getting hooked till the last minute, though It would help if you knew a bit about poker.
Tuesday Weld turns in a surprisingly strong performance as the Kid's girlfriend Christian, who has moved to New Orleans from a farm in rural La. She and McQueen are in love but they both know that his top priority in life is stud poker.
Another problem is that while McQueen is very good in the role, his character, the main one, is outdone by too many of the supporting players including Robinson, Karl Malden and Ann Margret.
Steve McQueen plays the cool, strong challenger, a young clever stud poker gambler, ready to risk his whole world on the turn of a card...Edward G.
But for all her urbane sophistication, Melba is still searching for love in vain...Tuesday Weld plays the sweet country girl in love...Joan Blondell is the relief dealer whose only hope is to see the 'Man' finished!If you like pressure and tension, and you love the atmosphere of professional poker marathon game, and you enjoyed "The Hustler" with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason, well, don't even hesitate to see this fascinating exhibition of professional characters competing for supremacy...
This might have been a better and more profound film about maturity and honor had the script "dealt" more thoroughly on the only two characters who really matter: "The Kid," Eric Stoner (Steve McQueen," and "The Man," Lancey Howard (Edward G.
Most viewers will find "The Cincinnati Kid" entertaining enough for one look, but it is not the kind of film you'll want to see often unless you are a die-hard fan of McQueen, Robinson, or five-card stud.BTW: The "French" movie that Tuesday Weld's character talks about early in "The Cincinnati Kid" is a real flick – "La Kermesse heroique," (The Heroic Village Fair), which was released in the United States as "Carnival in Flanders." This 1935 film (a hint to the historic timing of "The Cincinnati Kid") was directed by Belgian-born Jacques Feyder, from a story by Charles Spaak, and was highly honored, winning the Grand Prix du Cinema Francaise and the Best Foreign Film awards from the New York Film Critics' Circle and the National Board of Review in the United States.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Finally got a chance to see this flick that I had been trying to catch for years, drawn by its great cast (McQueen, Robinson, Malden, Rip Torn, etc.) However, the fine efforts of the performers cannot rescue a script that basically goes nowhere and does nothing to develop the possible subplots, e.g. the romantic conflict between Melba (Ann-Margret) and Christian (Tuesday Weld), Shooter's conflict with Slade (Rip Torn), the hints - that never play out - at Lancey Howard (Robinson) having a serious illness, etc.
(Spoilers!) Steve McQueen plays Eric Stoner (the Cincinnati Kid), a young professional poker player.
"The Kid" (Steve McQueen) is the up-and-coming new player in the stud poker world.
One poker flick that's never forgotten in the wide array of films in the subgenre is 'The Cincinnati Kid.' The film features one of Steve McQueen's most legendary performances (in a long list of great roles) and puts him alongside such other great actors like Karl Malden, Rip Torn, and oh-so-sexy Ann-Margret.One issue that has come along with this film is that it does feature a LOT of poker, but what really works about the poker scenes is that it's more about the characters than the actual game.
Robinson an old master, Karl Malden is their friend and dealer, Ann Margret his flirtatious girlfriend, and Tuesday Weld is McQueen's. |
tt0116308 | Fire | The film's prologue takes place in a field of flowers. Radha (Karishma Jhalani), a young girl, relaxes with her mother (Ramanjeet Kaur) and her father (Dilip Mehta). Radha's mother tells a story of a group of people living in mountains who'd never seen the sea. They were sad, and then an old woman told them they had to see without looking. Radha's mother asks her if she understands. Radha says no.In the present, Sita (Nandita Das) stands with a bunch of visitors in front of a tour guide, looking at the Taj Mahal. The tour guide explains how Shah Jahan's wife made him promise to build this monument as a symbol of their love. Sita's husband Jatin (Javed Jaffrey) joins the group. He and Sita are in an arranged marriage and they don't get along. Sita asks Jatin, "Don't you like me?" He responds that they've only been married for three days.In her home, the now adult Radha (Shabana Azmi) cares for her mother-in-law, Biji (Kushal Rekhi), who's suffered a stroke, cannot talk and barely moves around. Radha powders her back, clothes her, and gives her a bell, which she uses to communicate with. Radha lives here with Biji and her husband Ashok (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), and the family operates a restaurant downstairs with a video store next to it.Jatin and Sita arrive at the house. Jatin and Ashok are brothers. The family talks. Jatin leaves for an appointment. Radha takes Sita to her room, explaining that when Biji rings her bell, she needs something. In her room, Sita puts on a pair of jeans and dances to music. Radha opens Sita's door, taking her by surprise. The two women go into the main room where Biji is. Biji rings her bell, disturbed by the sight of Sita in the jeans. Sita goes back to her room to change clothes.Meanwhile, Jatin paints his Chinese-Indian girlfriend Julie's (Alice Poon) toenails. He tells her that he cannot live without her.Ashok sits with a group of followers of his religious leader/swami, Swamiji (Ram Gopal Bajaj), who talks to them. Ashok says one should test oneself against temptation until desire leaves the body.Ashok and Radha work at the restaurant with Sita helping. Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry), the family's manservant, carries Biji, who likes watching them work, upstairs. Ashok tells Sita that when she has a baby, caring for it will become her full-time job. Sita wonders why this subject matter came up. Radha explains to her that she cannot have a baby.Upstairs, Mundu jerks off in front of the reposed Biji to a porno movie. Biji moans in disturbance. Mundu tells her to shut up. Sita comes in and Mundu manages to compose himself, not getting caught. Sita sees that Biji's disturbed. Mundu talks about the program he has on the TV, wherein the goddess Sita's purity is being tested.Jatin tells Ashok that he felt he had no choice in marrying Sita, due to his nagging. Jatin accuses Ashok of doing everything he does for Swamiji. Ashok hits Jatin. A few moments later, Ashok tells Radha to forgive him, saying to her, "My choices have made life difficult for you." Radha responds, "What is there to forgive?"That night, Jatin and Sita have sex for the first time - a loveless, mechanical act. Jatin lies back and goes to sleep. Sita cleans her blood off of the bed's sheet.The next day or so, Jatin and Sita talk. He suggests that she find something to do. They argue. Sita tells him he should not leave his picture of Julie laying around.The family is about to clean up downstairs. Ashok gives Radha and Jatin some money. Jatin asks how long Ashok will support Swamiji. Ashok says Swamiji doesn't ask for money; he gives to Swamiji willingly.That night, Ashok lies in a bed next to Radha, testing himself to see if he will be tempted by her sexuality. She gets up and asks him if she could have children, would he need her? He says, probably not. Ashok tells Radha that by helping him with his tests, she's doing her duty as his wife.Sita and Radha meet on the roof of the building that Ashok's family lives in. Sita says Jatin has gone to meet his girlfriend. In the street below, a marriage ceremony takes place.Later, Radha finds Sita crying in her room. Sita says she wants to go home. Radha comforts Sita. Sita kisses her on the mouth and Radha leaves.In the field from the prologue, Radha's mom cries. She tells young Radha to look at the fields and what they've become. Radha says they look the same. Radha's mom says, "Close your eyes." Young Radha answers, "I still can't see."That night, Radha gets up and looks at the sleeping Ashok in his separate bed. Elsewhere, Jatin and Julie talk for awhile, then they kiss passionately.Radha and Sita have tea together and talk. Sita says that someone can push a button on her back marked tradition, and she will respond.Radha and Sita fast together. Radha tells a story of a king, a queen and a maidservant to Sita and Mundu that ends with the queen fasting in order to win back her husband's love. Radha explains that the women fast to prove how much they love their husbands. Sita says the queen was a wimp and the king was a jerk. Radha summarizes that the queen didn't have many choices.Radha and Sita finish the ceremony on the roof of the building they live in. Biji sleeps in her bed. A bit later, Sita gets up, goes to Radha's bedroom and wakes her up. Sita kisses Radha and the two make love. The next morning, Sita asks, "Did we do anything wrong?" Radha answers "no." Sita exits Radha's bedroom under Biji's watchful eye.The next day, Radha and Sita bestow jewelry upon each other while Mundu looks at them. Later, the two couples sit outside, having eaten some food. Sita massages Radha's foot while Ashok watches, thinking nothing of it.In the family's house, Jatin prepares to go out, amid his relatives. Ashok tells him that he's not going. Sita tells Ashok to let him go. Radha asks Ashok if he's going to Swamiji's and he says after Biji finishes dinner, he will. Biji rings her bell at length and Ashok assumes that she doesn't want him to leave.That night, before a crowd in public, some men act out a part of the Ramayana wherein Lord Ram tests the goddess Sita's purity by having her go into a fire. Ashok and Swamiji watch them.Radha and Sita kiss outside, on the roof of the building. Ashok calls Radha and after awhile, she comes to him. He asks her, "Why didn't you come?" She says that Sita says the concept of duty is overrated. Ashok tells Radha to prepare for him to test himself with her, and she says not tonight.In their bedroom, Jatin starts to mount Sita, but she doesn't want to have sex, so he lays off.The next day, Radha and Sita dance together in front of Biji to jubilant Indian music. Biji looks on disapprovingly as the two women sink to the floor together. Mundu watches in the next room.Later in the video store, Jatin convinces some young boys to buy a porno movie from him. Mundu takes one of the porno movies upstairs to jerk off to while Biji watches in horror. Radha walks in and catches him. She slaps him, asking him where he got the movie. He says that Jatin rents them to special customers. She tells him to get out, and he says that the "hanky panky" between her and Sita isn't good for the family name.Radha asks Ashok to get rid of Mundu, but Ashok insists that he stays. On the roof, she and Sita meet and talk. Sita says that even if Mundu mentions what he's seen, no one will believe him. Radha admits she is not so different than Mundu in his selfishness.Jatin recites some of Swamiji's words to Sita in their room. He tells her that he cannot stop seeing Julie, mentioning some of her good traits. He says Sita can leave him, but then says life can be difficult for a divorced woman. The other option, he says, is for Sita to have a baby with him. She calls him a "pompous fool." They slap each other. He says he likes her new feistiness and kisses her on the mouth. She looks at him with displeasure, so he knocks her down and leaves.On the roof, Radha sees a bruise on Sita's face and asks her if it hurts. Sita says she's treated "like a household pet," and "that's what hurts." The women hug each other.In the restaurant later, Ashok carries Biji upstairs, leaving Radha with a singing Mundu. Radha's gaze is contemptuous. Jatin announces to everyone that he won't be back tonight and leaves. Mundu sits down and stares at a photo of Biji, Jatin, Radha and Sita, with everyone crossed out except for Radha, who has a heart drawn around her head.Alone together, Radha tells Sita that a long time ago, Ashok took a vow of celibacy. She explains what he does with her to prove he's beyond temptation and therefore closer to God. Radha tells her that he's done this for 13 years. Radha and Sita hug each other. Mundu listens at the door outside. Sita says they're not going to stay there any longer.Mundu pulls Ashok away from his time with Swamiji, but then says nothing. Later, the two men go upstairs to the house. Ashok tells Mundu to pack his bags and get out of the house before he calls the police.Inside the house, Ashok listens at the door outside the room where Radha and Sita make love. He slams open the door, startling them and catching them in the act. He walks away, then exits the house.The women decide to leave, with Sita saying there's no word in their language for what they are. Radha says she has to talk to Ashok one last time, to tell him that her leaving is about her. She tells Sita that she should leave and they will meet later tonight. Sita packs her belongings to leave. In the main room, Biji rings her bell as Sita leaves. Radha steps close to Biji, who sits up and then spits in her face. Downstairs, Ashok freaks out, thinking about his wife in intimacy with Sita.Ashok goes to Radha in the kitchen and tells her to come to the bedroom, so he can test himself again. She refuses, saying that she's going to leave him. Ashok says that what he saw in their bedroom is a sin in the eyes of God and man. She openly repudiates his thinking that desire is wrong. Ashok snaps, throwing himself upon her. She rejects his touch. He says, "Touch my feet," then pushes her aside. Her sari catches fire on the stove.Ashok stares at Radha for a moment, then picks up Biji and heads for the door.Back at the field from the prologue, young Radha closes her eyes and then says she can see the ocean.At the agreed-upon meeting place, Sita stands in the rain. She sees Radha shuffle over to her, looking shaken. Radha leans against a wall for support. Sita goes over to her and comforts her. | queer, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt3460252 | The Hateful Eight | Note: The movie is divided into six narrative sequences, all of which take place chronologically, with the exception of Chapter Five, which takes place before the others.Chapter One: "Last Stage to Red Rock"Set in the dead of winter in post-Civil War Wyoming, Major Marquis "The Bounty Hunter" Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) attempts to hitch a ride on a stagecoach driven by O. B. Jackson (James Parks). Warren is trying to transport the corpses of three outlaws to Red Rock for a handsome reward; O. B. instructs Warren to consult the passenger of the coach, one John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell), himself an infamous bounty hunter. Ruth is escorting fugitive Daisy "The Prisoner" Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock - alive - to collect a $10,000 reward, and to see her hanged. To ensure she cannot escape, Ruth has handcuffed her to his own arm. Ruth and Warren know each other, having seen each other in Chattanooga some eight months before.Ruth agrees to let Warren ride with them to a passover called Minnie's Haberdashery, where they intend to take shelter from an oncoming blizzard. While riding, Ruth asks Warren to see his letter written to him by Abraham Lincoln. Warren produces the letter, which Ruth reads. Then Daisy spits on the letter, and Warren hits her in the face, causing her to fall out of the carriage, yanking Ruth out of the carriage as well. Warren signals the driver to stop the coach while Ruth picks himself up. Warren exits the coach to find his letter, and throws snow in Daisy's face. The driver sees another man in the road. Ruth makes Warren put on handcuffs, suspecting the Major is in cahoots with Daisy or the new man.Chapter Two: "Son of a Gun"They are approached by Chris "The Sheriff" Mannix (Walton Goggins), who is also looking to hitch a ride to Red Rock. He says his horse stepped in a hole in the snow, and recognizes Ruth and Warren, but not Daisy. He claims to have been appointed the title of Sheriff of Red Rock and to be the person who is supposed to pay the bounties Ruth and Warren seek to collect. Ruth tells Warren that Mannix is the youngest son of the leader of the "Mannix Marauders", a group who terrorized South Carolina following the Civil War. Mannix refuses to wear handcuffs, and insists on coming aboard since Ruth will be charged with murder if he causes his death. Ruth reluctantly allows Mannix to ride with them, but uncuffs Warren and has him hold a gun on Mannix for the remainder of the ride. Ruth knows Mannix would never work with Warren since he is notoriously racist.On the coach, Mannix says he will buy the two men dinner and a drink at the Haberdashery. Ruth says he does not drink or break bread with rebel renegades. Mannix says, "it sounds like you have an ax to grind against the cause," and Ruth says that there was no cause, just terrorizing people, especially (he points out to Warren) emancipated blacks. Domergue says she supports that kind of thing. Mannix says that Ruth is misinformed by Union newspapers.Mannix asks Warren if Ruth knows how famous Warren once was. Warren's answer is no. Mannix asks if Daisy knows Warren. She says she knows he had a huge bounty from when he Confederacy put a $30,000 on Warren's head, and he was openly suspected in the North of just wanting to kill white people. Warren's bounty fell to $5,000, but people would still try to collect it. Warren says he has killed several of them. Warren, a Union veteran, tells Ruth of how he burned down Wellenbeck prison camp in order to escape.Mannix is offended because many young southern men died there, but Warren is indignant, asking why he should apologize for killing Confederates who wanted to enslave him. Mannix says that he also killed 37 Union prisoners of war. Warren says indifferently that "people die in war." Mannix says "War is hell" is hard to argue with, but that the Union also investigated him following the war. Mannix claims that Warren was ultimately forgiven because of his service in the cavalry during wars against indigenous people.Ruth says that Mannix has no right to talk, given the atrocities that his father inflicted on black people. Mannix says not to talk about his father, who was fighting for the dignity in defeat that southern white men, as the "brothers" of those in the North, deserved. Warren asks how many black towns Mannix raided in this struggle for dignity. Mannix says many, and that when black people are scared, white people are safe. Warren immediately points the gun straight at Mannix's temple and says that if he speaks so hatefully, Warren will kill him immediately. Mannix is very scared, says he only starting talking "politics" by mistake, and goes to sleep.Chapter Three: "Minnie's Haberdashery"The group finally arrive at Minnie's Haberdashery with the blizzard bearing down fast, and they find it in the hands of Bob "The Mexican" (Demian Bichir), who explains that the owner, Minnie Mink (Dana Gourrier), is visiting family for a week and has entrusted the passover to him; Warren is suspicious of Bob's explanation. Ruth and Daisy go inside and meet the others staying at the haberdashery. Oswaldo "The Little Man" Mobray (Tim Roth), introduces himself as the hangman of Red Rock and speaks with an English accent. He asks to see the warrant Ruth is carrying for Daisy. Meanwhile, in the blinding wind of the blizzard outside, Warren, Mannix, O.B. and Bob put the horses away. Mannix and O.B. further set up ropes to find the outhouse and stable in the snow, and Warren stays behind to help Bob with the remaining stablework. Warren asks Bob again where Minnie is, and says it doesn't sound like her to have left Joe "The Cow Puncher" Gage (Michael Madsen), a quiet cowboy and Sanford "The Confederate" Smithers (Bruce Dern), an aging former Confederate General. Ruth, suspicious that they may be trying to ambush him and release Daisy, announces his intent to deliver Daisy to Red Rock alive and forcefully disarms all but Warren of their pistols.Over a dinner of hot stew, Mannix teases Warren over his letter from Abraham Lincoln, saying that there is no chance Warren was friends with Abraham Lincoln. Ruth says that he is surely telling the truth, but Warren reveals that it is a lie. Mannix and Daisy laugh. Ruth spitefully throws stew in Daisy's face. Ruth is angered and loses trust in Warren, saying that it must be true what people say: that you can't trust black people. Warren asks Ruth if he hurt his feelings and Ruth says yes. Warren rebuts by saying that Ruth cannot understand what it is like to be a black man faced with America. Warren says that black people are safe when white people are disarmed, and the letter disarms white people (sets them more at ease). Ruth says it is still a dirty trick to him. Warren points out that it got him a seat on Ruth's stagecoach.Mannix says the letter wouldn't have worked on him. Daisy says she spat on it, and Mannix congratulates her for it. Warren brings Sanford food and asks to join him. Sanford says yes and Warren places a gun on a side table next to Sanford. Warren reveals to Sanford that he murdered Chester Smithers, Sanford's son, in a retaliation for the latter trying to kill him (most likely for the bounty). Warren taunts Sanford with the humiliating details of his son's death, claiming he was forced to march naked in the snow for over two hours and perform fellatio on Warren before being killed. In a fit of rage, Sanford reaches for the gun to shoot Warren, but Warren swiftly draws his other gun and shoots Sanford dead, much to Mannix's dismay.Chapter Four: "Domergue's Got a Secret"Daisy asks to play the guitar and Ruth says yes. A narrator then reveals that while everybody was distracted by Sanford's death, an unseen character slipped poison into the brewing coffee, which only Daisy witnessed. Ruth and O.B. drink the coffee, and Daisy smiles knowingly. She sings a beautiful song on the guitar, which she plays well. Ruth asks to hear another verse as he drinks coffee, and Daisy sings a verse that end with the line "You'll be dead behind me John as I go to Mexico." Ruth becomes furious, takes the guitar and smashes it before handcuffing Daisy to himself once again.Mannix pours himself a cup of coffee. Suddenly Ruth violently vomits blood on the table, just as Mannix is about to take a sip. O.B. also vomits blood, and collapses onto all fours, repeatedly vomiting up more blood. Ruth throws the coffee cup away, and Mannix realizes it was the coffee and throws his cup away too. As Daisy mocks a dying Ruth, the latter tries to kill her, only for her to seize his pistol and shoot him dead.With Ruth and O.B. dead, Warren lines up the rest of the lodgers at gunpoint and throws the key to Ruth's handcuffs in stove, ensuring that Daisy cannot escape. Warren determines that Mannix could not have poisoned the coffee since he was about to drink it himself, so he gives Mannix a spare gun. He goes on to explain that the stew they ate was made by Minnie that morning, so something must have happened to her. Bob asks Warren if he is really accusing him of murder.Warren then explains that Bob's story about Minnie entrusting the place to him cannot be true, since she hated Mexicans. He also finds a dried bloodstain on one of the armchairs, and hypothesizes that Bob murdered Minnie; he knows, however, that Bob cannot be the person who poisoned the coffee since he was playing the piano at the time. He shoots and kills Bob because he knows he was involved in killing Minnie, only to be shot in the groin from underneath the floorboards by a shadowy gunman. Mobray then draws a gun and shoots Mannix, hitting him the thigh, before the latter shoots him back, hitting Mobray in the abdomen.Chapter Five: "The Four PassengersEarlier that morning....A stagecoach arrives at Minnie's Haberdashery containing the four passengers: Bob, Mobray, Gage, and Jody (Channing Tatum). They are driven by the cheerful and cheeky Six Horse Judy (Zoe Bell), who hails from New Zealand. They are met by Charlie (Keith Jefferson) outside Minnie's. Charlie, a black man, stays outside and helps the carriage driver with his horses before he travels on. Judy leads the passengers inside and introduces them to Minnie Mink. Minnie is shown to be a cheery, light-skinned black woman perhaps in her thirties, and is there with a younger black woman, Gemma (Belinda Owino) cooking. Two older white men, Sweet Dave (Gene Jones) and the previously seen Sanford, are playing chess by the hearth.The crew makes small talk for a few minutes before violently massacring everybody in the lodge, leaving only General Sanford alive. Charlie comes in from outside just in time to see the massacre, and is shot by Bob in the doorway (one of the shots destroys the door's latch) before fleeing outside. Mobray asks in Spanish if they should perhaps keep Sanford alive to create the illusion of a more lively setting. They agree to try it, and Jody talks to the old man while his crew starts cleaning up the mess the massacre left. Gage goes to kill Charlie, whom he finds hiding in a shed and shoots in the throat with a shotgun as he begs for his life.Jody explains to Sanford that they are preparing to ambush Ruth to rescue Jody's sister, Daisy, and that they will not kill him if he agrees to keep quiet about their plan. Sanford agrees, and the bandits all prepare for Ruth to arrive: throwing the bodies down the well, hiding guns around the lodge, cleaning up the jelly beans that had spilled. Jody hides in the basement (implying that he was the one who later shot Warren in the crotch from under the floorboards).Chapter Six: "Black Man, White Hell"We cut back to the present as, Warren, in agonizing pain, is confined to a bed while he and a wounded Mannix hold guns on the surviving lodgers - Domergue, Gage, and a mortally wounded Mobray. Warren tells Mannix his genitals are destroyed, and he thinks he will bleed to death. They flush Jody out of the basement by threatening to kill Domergue. Warren shoots Jody through the head, killing him. Domergue becomes hysterical, berating Mannix for working with a black man. She then attempts to strike a deal with Mannix, explaining that her brother was the leader of a notorious gang and that 15 of his men are waiting in Red Rock. Domergue further claims that these men will hunt down Mannix if he kills her, however she will call them off if he kills Warren instead. Mannix tells Warren Domergue has "nothing to sell," but to humor him as he listens to Domergue's offer. They count up the bounties that Mannix could collect: Bob, revealed to be "Marco the Mexican" with a bounty of $12,000, and Mobray, really Pete Hicox, with a bounty of $15,000, and Gage, really Grouch Douglas, has a bounty worth $10,000.Domergue explains that they cannot collect the bounties if they kill her since the gang waiting in Red Rock will kill them. She also says the gang will sack the town and kill all the residents. If Mannix as sheriff wants to protect the town, he should spare her life. Warren shoots Domergue in the foot. Hicox tries to convince Mannix again that they can forgive him what he has done if he kills Warren. Warren shoots Hicox in the leg. The scene is then interrupted when Gage reaches for a pistol that he had previously hidden underneath a table. Mannix and Warren shoot him dead.Warren tries to shoot Domergue, but his gun is out of bullets. Warren begs Mannix for his pistol, Mannix smiles and sits down. He asks Domergue about the offer: he kills Warren, they wait two days, and then he gets the bounties for Oswaldo and Gage. Domergue ascents. Mannix asks about Jody's bounty, since he is worth $50,000. Warren asks Mannix if he is about to make a deal, and Mannix says they're just talking. Domergue says he is being greedy and that she must take that body, since Jody has children. So Mannix goes over the terms again before looking back at Warren. He turns back to Domergue and says "no deal".Domergue says he is making a big mistake, and that the gang will come and kill him. Mannix says that in order for him to be afraid, he would have to believe that those 15 men existed, which he doesn't. Warren laughs. Mannix says Douglas poisoned the coffee and points out that Domergue didn't say anything as he was about to drink the coffee, too- showing that she didn't care about his life. He says she is a liar and is surely just saying what she needs to in order to escape being hanged. He says he suspects that what remains of Jody's gang is lying dead on the floor.Domergue replies that Jody leads an army of men, but Mannix interrupts her and says that his father led an army, a renegade army fighting for a lost cause- 400 men who followed because of their respect for his command. Warren nods appreciatively, then Mannix says he doesn't feel so good and collapses on the floor, fainting due to his leg wound.Daisy cuts Ruth's handcuffed arm off with a machete, freeing herself, before reaching for the gun Douglas dropped on the floor. Mannix suddenly wakes up (or reveals himself to have been playing possum) and shoots Daisy, wounding her. As he prepares to shoot her again, Warren convinces him to spare her so that they can hang her, just as Ruth wanted to. Since Ruth saved their lives from the storm, they can act out his last wish: to see Domergue hanged.Domergue is hanged from the rafters of the lodge. Mannix pronounces it as his first and final act as sheriff of Red Rock. Mannix is left lying on top of Warren, but then he drops down off the bed and onto the floor. The two men delight in seeing Domergue slowly strangle to death in accordance with Ruth's final wishes and the law.Mannix asks Warren if he can read his letter. Mannix takes the letter in his bloody hands and reads it aloud. In it "Abraham Lincoln" praises Warren for his service and expresses the belief that racial progress is being made slowly in America. Mannix remarks on the final line of the letter, "Ol' Mary Todd is calling so I guess it's time for bed," that it was a nice touch, and Warren thanks him. Mannix crumples the letter up and throws it away, and the movie ends with Mannix and Warren waiting to die.(Note: their ultimate fates are left ambiguous, much like the final scene from John Carpenter's The Thing, but it's doubtful they survive). | comedy, suspenseful, murder, violence, flashback, revenge | train | imdb | OK - if you've already seen the movie and hated it, my review won't change your mind, so move along folks, move along, there's nothing to see for you here, thanks.Now for you, dear film fan, who is about to watch 'The Hateful Eight', but who is now slightly worried because of some very mixed critical reactions - for YOU I'm writing this 100% spoiler-free review.Judging from many comments here on IMDb and other forums, I gather that many long-time Tarantino fans apparently don't like his newest film.
Don't expect any exciting "action" scenes (for lack of a better word: I don't mean the 'Fast & Furious' kind of action scenes) every 10 minutes or so; in fact, don't expect anything other to happen between the characters than dialog for a loooooong time.
Best approach this film as you would theater; for that's what 'The Hateful Eight' really is: a stage play disguised as a movie.
There's a reason for the film's title, and unlike in all his previous films, there is not a single person in Tarantino's latest movie you'll feel any real sympathy for.
All the main characters have committed despicable, hateful acts, and they're all beyond redemption - but that doesn't mean they're not compelling to watch (especially given THIS cast: everyone is fantastic, but Jackson, Russell, Jason Leigh and Goggins are just a joy to watch).5.
The film is too well crafted to get the really low scores, the cinematography is too good, the acting too high caliber, the direction too solid, the score too nice, and the flick too engaging for such ratings.This also applies to the other end.
The "twists" are unimportant and add no spice, the pacing just slogs along, the joy too nonexistent, the characters evoke too little emotion either way, the story too light on satisfaction, the story telling too inconsistent, the length too needless,the magic (other than on the technical side) too absent, and the rewatchability too minimal for me to see greatness but maybe a second viewing will change my perspective but it will definitely be on video for me, only the lure of a hot date fixated on going could get me into the theater again other than maybe just for the experience a 70mm screening.I'm a pretty avid Tarrentino fan but I didn't overly enjoy this effort.
The storyline is a simple one, but it's told in a complex, interesting, and relatively unique way that is guaranteed to keep your eyes glued to the screen throughout the entire 3 hour run time of the movie.
Tarantino's direction is unparalleled as usual, and the performance of the entire cast combined with the wonderful cinematography and deeply engaging dialogue make for a remarkably fun time at the theater, if your willing to sit through a lot of grisly violence and mean spirited subject matter.
And for those of you who are willing to let Tarantino's comments about the police force get in the way of your enjoyment of this film, like I said; Disney is more than willing to take your hard earned money..
It does help a lot that we do get a great cast (Kurt Russel, Sam L Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh) because without them the movie would fall apart rather quickly.
The film was shot on 2,76:1 70mm widescreen because retro elitist Tarantino thinks digital isn't good enough and I do have to say the snowy landscape shots look awesome but they make up only 2% of the flick.
It may be similar to his previous movies, but great directors don't come often and in a single life they can make only so many films.
Even if he makes similar movies a dozen times, I would still watch it, cause this guy knows filmmaking at its finest.
I enjoyed the film but my biggest flaws were the length and the spontaneous introduction of a narrator mid- movie, that was a pretty 'out of nowhere' lazy way to develop the back story, but oh well, Tarantino is known for making risks and doing crazy sh*t.
He has those suspicions justified before the film is ended.80% of the action takes place on set of the 19th century bed and breakfast during the time of a nasty Wyoming winter and does the dialog crackle.
If you were bored by this movie, I hope you can at least admit that the people involved with this film are extremely talented.
It feels very much like a stage play (as another reviewer mentioned), allowing greater intimacy with the characters and their interactions, while providing us with an opportunity to witness multiple scenarios unfolding at the same time.
Im required to write a minimum of 10 lines, so this is my take on this...putrid, poor excuse of a movie.I just cant see how Kurt Russell or Samuel L Jackson could ever take this script seriously as the dialog was a total load of diatribe on a path that led nowhere!
How can all these great people come together to make something so terrible?The overuse of the N word was done well in other Tarantino films, but in this one it's just gratuitous without any humour at all.Please don't waste your time..
This movie is like a box,a really well packed box,decoration is very interesting,very intriguing.Gonna take a lot of time to open it-hell gonna take 3 long hours of your life just to find a little piece of turd inside of it.But it's a Quentin Tarantino's turd (although QuenTEEN would be much more appropriate) so movie critics are gonna celebrate this piece of turd and write how great this turd is.Don't be fooled.This movie has lots of qualities for sure-cinematography is great,music as well (Ennio Morricone!),almost all performances from actors are fine too-but the story,OMG...some stories simply don't have a right to be told..
Tarantino used the UltraPanavision format to good effect, and the results are on the screen (I saw the 70mm film version).That said, the dialogue is comic-book level, the characters are cardboard props with no development whatsoever, the plot is rice paper-thin, the violence is beyond extreme for no good reason, and it is too long by at least an hour (more like an hour and a half, given the lack of a compelling plot).
Many times during a day.It seemed like Tarantino's whole point to the movie was the degradation of the African American, which I found repulsive and not fitting the facts of our modern world, based on my real life exposure to working with and around a mix of Caucasians and African Americans.
I realize that African Americans were probably not treated well back in western times, but it seemed to be very overboard, and felt like it was trying to make a modern point.A lot of what Tarantino has done in past movies was used in this movie, I guess he was so anxious to push his private agenda that it blinded him to being creative.
Unless he has lost his touch, which often occurs with movie guru's.I also felt that some of the actors were wrong for their parts, things for some of the characters just didn't feel real, lines were spoken as if read off of a billboard out of sight of the camera.
I think Tarantino was more fixated on getting names to raise ticket sales, then on focusing on creating something people will want to re watch in a year..
I will never watch another Tarantino film as long as I may live (37 years old as of this review).
Another Tarantino movie about a bunch of depraved killers, another three-hour bore-fest by the master of unabashed hate.
The plot of TH8 is simple, but told very heavy-handedly, with lots of chitchat & filler scenes; several times, for example, we have to watch people meticulously nailing a door shut, because the lock is broken.
The way it's shot gives you feeling that you are watching a play, but all of the details of a movie like this don't fit into such a limited frame, so the effect is that it's sloppy.
They write it, paying homage to Tarantino films in a few different ways, casting some of his usual players.
I hated this film so much that it caused me to write my very first movie review to help you save your money, your time, and leaving the theater with an awful feeling in the pit of your stomach!.
Why do people insist on glorifying every pointless, overly-violent, massively cliché, plot devoid, piece of drivel that Quentin Tarantino manages to capture on film?
You would think that after watching the last several Tarantino films with the EXACT SAME formula that people would eventually get tired of it.
Quentin Tarantino surely must rate as one of the most dissipated directors of all time, and his latest piece of cr@p is called "The Hateful Eight".
The moonlight coming through the windows is as bright and harsh as the sunlight in the day scenes; and if that's not enough to take out of the movie, there are at least 10 separate times throughout where the film falls so flat that I had my face in my hands saying to myself, "what the hell is this?"...
Blazing Saddles has better use of the n-word, is less boring and has an actual message.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/If you want I'll spare you the interminable three hours and sum up the Tarantino version, here it is >>Spoilers<< Just say niggler minus the l over and over again until you pass out from boredom.Honestly that word so many times was distracting and just smells of lazy writing.
Nothing.If you enjoy absurd levels of blood (again for no good reason) and you like lots of racial epithets, maybe you could sit through this film, but giving the the movie an eight rating?
However the general movie just felt like an overall waste of time.
Armed with vicious humor and an intense story, Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight is as brutal in its insights into race relations and human nature as it is in its depiction of violence in the old West.I'm starting to doubt if Pulp Fiction is still his best movie to date..
He must feel he gets away with it because he adds black actors, making them main characters many times the hero.
While Quentin Tarantino makes cameos in his movies he doesn't here, he does for the first time in this movie start narrating right after this descriptive scene.
To sum up, this is a western that takes place 90% of the times in a one room building, the fact they pulled this off is impressive, would be a lot more impressive if the movie was actually better..
This story is typical with the other Tarantino movies: Add a bland story line with lots of violence and blood, which men generally enjoy (I am a male) and therefore give Tarantino an Oscar.This movie is exactly like his others, think of it like Gran Torino, simple movie, lots of violence, great acting, great Directing, BUT pathetic storyline.The "twist" was like a murder investigation programme like Law & Order, the film had no leads, no 'Who done it?' moments, just some guy who happened to admit to the murder or some unrelated character who just happens to become important, who admits to the murder.Think of it like a Harry Potter sequel where Voldermort just happens to be resurrect him, or a new 'one ring' was created in Lord of the Rings.
Its almost as if Tarantino tried to remake "Clue: The Western" except it was so boring for 2 hours of the 2 hours and 47 minutes of the movie, that I really didn't care who did what by then of it.
If you want to watch the movie but don't have a lot of time, skip to the last 47 minutes and you will know enough and get most of the excitement to enjoy the film.
P.S. For a Tarantino movie, it was lacking in the violence, excitement and blood for the overall film.
I thought the Movie started out very good with some humor, I liked the actors that were in the show, I was expecting something on the lines of tombstone, but wasn't even close.Towards the middle of the movie it turned south, with the way they portrayed a black man and a white man and what the black man did to the white man.
It seemed like it could have been a good story but the way they finished the movie I thought was very disappointed.
If you are willing to watch a limitless, unbounded extravaganza of unreal gore and depravity; that violates all standards of moral behavior; that repeats racial, ethnic, and sexual epithets ad nauseum primarily for their shock value; that obliterates heads and bellies; that rips off limbs; that describes the complete and utter degradation of a human being by another--then actually shows it; this is your movie.Yah, it was very artistically filmed, a gripping mystery full of surprises.
Quentin Tarantino can and does make good films but sadly 'The Hateful Eight' was for me a long drawn out affair, glorifying violence to new highs whilst a basic story line made it a great disappointment and a restless 3 hour cinema experience.May I point out also how powerfully dark this Hollywood film was with my subconscious mind that I awoke at 5am the following morning with the image of Christ and the hammering of nails.If you are in to ultra violence, blood/guts, the N word and don't mind hurting your subconscious state then go and feast your eyes on this movie.
Maybe it's time Tarantino takes a break from writing and directing, and starts rethinking his approach to movie making?
Before I begin my review, I'd like to emphasise that there are two different versions of Quentin Tarantino's eighth film, the 70mm print which runs for 187 minutes including an overture and intermission, and the 168 minute version I saw which has been released in digital cinemas.
It will be shame when Tarantino retires from writing and directing for he has provided some innovative and entertaining films in his time.
3/4 of the movie is just painfully boring, you have to wait a long time to see some nice gore scenes but its all predictable.
The entire movie sounds and looks like a bad high school production of a badly written stage play.When everyone starts projectile vomiting blood all over each other and getting shot in the nether regions, and it isn't interesting, cool, or even mildly diverting.
From the opening credits when he bills it as literally "The eighth film by Quentin Tarantino" on down, every single thing in this movie is not only done with ineptitude, but is covered with a veneer of arrogance that is more offensive and shocking than Tarantino's gratuitous use of the 'n-word' and blasé attitude about everyone taking turns beating the crap out of a woman.Better movies than this go straight to cable/Netflix every day..
Many times it looked like some bad theater play, but for god's sake this is a movie, please give me some action.
To be completely honest here, The Hateful Eight is Tarantino's worst effort as a writer and a director but it is his best film visually.
While these performances are perfection, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is absolutely brilliant in this role and deserves any award that they throw her way, the film ultimately suffers from it's best attribute...Quentin Tarantino, himself.
I watched it a few nights ago, knowing Tarantino was a lover of the old spaghetti westerns, as I am myself, I was hoping for a modern version of the good , the bad and the ugly.
The recent Tarantino movies have been tongue in cheek comedies, it worked in Django to some extent.This film never had any depth, the characters were never developed, you couldn't relate to any of them, they were not believable.
If you watch this movie you have wasted 3 hours of your life..
Actors: Fantastic, the only fault here is that with this cast, there could have been a truly memorable movie instead of this waste of film.Story: I have seen better suspense in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
it had enough substance to fill a 30 minute short.Mr Tarantino you owe me 4 movie tickets and 3 hours of my life back.....
Please watch a Clint Eastwood movie to try and get some idea of what a good film should be like.
After you have finished the movie, you actually feel like you had spent 24 hours of your life watching it.
Imagine a movie about Julius Caesar and Tarantino has the Caesar say, "Hey Dudes, we Italianos, we gotta go and beat up the Frogs and Krauts, pronto-like." It is that bad.3) Strike Three - They talk about an escape from a West Virginia Prison in the Civil War by the character played by Samuel Jackson.
I went into "The Hateful Eight" fairly blind, having made it a point to not want to let the reviews or my perception of past Tarantino movies spoil the film for me.
I have never seen a movie this bad; 3 hours of my life wasted.
more time spent with these characters!If you want to watch a three hour live action cartoon (that feels like 5) about gun toting morons who can't die quickly enough, The Hateful Eight might be right up your ally.
In this movie, however, they actually distract from the story.Narration by some unknown person is also no longer needed in his films.
The rest of the characters are merely bit players to push the story forward.There were a lot of throwaway scenes I don't even want to get into because it might spoil the story for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet.People are comparing this movie to Reservoir Dogs, which is laughable. |
tt0108002 | Rudy | In the early 1970s, Daniel Eugene "Rudy" Ruettiger grows up in Joliet, Illinois dreaming of playing college football at the University of Notre Dame. Though he is achieving some success with his local high school team (Joliet Catholic), he lacks the grades and money necessary to attend Notre Dame, as well as the talent and physical stature to play football for a major intercollegiate program.
Ruettiger takes a job at a local steel mill like his father Daniel Sr., a Notre Dame fan, and two of his older brothers who worked there after high school. When his best friend Pete, who always supported his dream of playing football for Notre Dame, is killed in an explosion at the mill, Rudy decides to follow his dream of attending Notre Dame and playing for the Fighting Irish.
He travels to South Bend, Indiana to the campus but fails to get admitted to Notre Dame. With the help and sponsorship of a local priest, Rudy enrolls at Holy Cross College, a nearby junior college, hoping to get good enough grades to qualify for a transfer. He approaches a Notre Dame stadium groundskeeper named Fortune and volunteers to work for free. Fortune offers a job at minimum wage. Having no place to live, Rudy sneaks in and out of Fortune's office at night through a window and sleeps on a cot. At first, Fortune is indifferent toward Rudy but later provides him with blankets for the cot and a key of his own to the office, even though Fortune later denies it. Rudy learns that Fortune has never seen a Notre Dame football game from the stands, despite having worked at the stadium for years.
Rudy befriends D-Bob, a graduate student at Notre Dame and a teaching assistant at Rudy's junior college, who offers to tutor Rudy in exchange for help in meeting girls. Suspecting an underlying cause to Ruettiger's previous academic problems, D-Bob has him tested and Rudy finds out that he has dyslexia. Rudy learns how to overcome his disability and becomes a better student. At Christmas vacation, Rudy returns home to his family's appreciation of his report card but is still mocked for his attempts at playing football and loses his fiancée to one of his brothers.
After two years and three rejections, Rudy is finally admitted to Notre Dame during his final semester of transfer eligibility. He rushes home to tell his family, with his father announcing the news to his steel mill workers over the loudspeaker. Rudy persuades Fortune to promise to come see his first game if Rudy is permitted to suit up. After "walking on" as a non-scholarship player for the football team, Ruettiger convinces coach Ara Parseghian to give him a spot on the practice squad. An assistant coach warns the players that 35 "scholarship" players will not even make the "dress roster" of players who take the field during the games but notices that Ruettiger exhibits more drive than many of his scholarship teammates.
Coach Parseghian agrees to Rudy's request to suit up for one home game in his senior year so his family and friends can see him as a member of the team. However, Parseghian steps down as coach following the 1974 season and is replaced by former NFL coach Dan Devine. Coach Devine keeps Rudy on the team, but refuses to list him on the active playing roster. When Rudy sees that he is not on the dress list for the team's next-to-last game, he becomes angry and quits the team.
Fortune sees Rudy at the stadium and chastises him for giving up. Rudy learns that Fortune has seen his share of Notre Dame games because he was once on the team but has never seen one from the stands. Fortune had quit the team because he felt he was not playing due to his color. Fortune reminds Rudy that he has nothing to prove to anyone but himself, and that not a day will go by when he will not regret quitting. With that, Rudy returns to the team.
Led by team captain and All-American Roland Steele, the other seniors rise to Rudy's defense and lay their jerseys on Devine's desk, each requesting that Rudy be allowed to dress in his place for the season's final game. In response, Devine lets Ruettiger suit up for the game against Georgia Tech.
Steele invites Ruettiger to lead the team out of the tunnel onto the playing field. Fortune is there to see it, as promised. As the game nears its end with Notre Dame up 17–3, Devine sends all the seniors onto the field but not Rudy, despite urging from Steele and the assistant coaches. As a "Rudy!" chant begins in the stadium, the offensive team, led by tailback Jamie O'Hara, overrules Devine's call for victory formation and scores another touchdown instead, providing defensive player Ruettiger with one more chance to get into a game and thus be entered onto the official roster of Notre Dame football players.
Devine finally lets Rudy play on the final kickoff. Rudy stays in for the final play of the game, sacks the Georgia Tech quarterback, and to cheers from the stadium, is carried off the field on his teammates' shoulders.
An epilogue text states that since 1975, no other player for Notre Dame has been carried off the field (In 1995, two years after the film's release, fullback Marc Edwards became the second Notre Dame player to be carried off the field by his teammates following their upset win over the USC Trojans). Rudy graduated from the university in 1976, and all his younger brothers later went on to college to earn degrees. | inspiring | train | wikipedia | "Rudy" had kind of a lame title for a sports movie, and i remember the first time I saw a preview of it, I was totally moved and involved by the scenes and then guffawed aloud at the end when the announcer intoned, "RUDY." That set the rest of the theater laughing too, so imagine my surprise when i saw it a couple months later and it was a 10 out of 10 in my book.
One of my favorite football movies of all time, this film follows in the long tradition of great sports movies which can uplift the spirit through means other than winning the big game and getting the girl or some other typical Hollywood convention.
"The best revenge is success." One of my favorite quotes comes from this movie as well, when the coach dan devine tells rudy and the rest of the team that "Nobody, and i mean nobody, comes into our house and pushes us around.".
Between the gut-wrenching acting by Sean Astin, tear-jerking moments of the climax, the miraculous true story of a short man fighting to make his lifelong dreams come true, you'll be rooting for Rudy throughout the film.
After watching this movie, I was inspired to try just that much harder at everything I do, in hopes of one day becoming half the man that Rudy is.
Sean Astin is "Rudy" in this 1993 true story of Rudy Ruettiger, a short, average kid who wanted to dress for the Notre Dame football team.
His story provides a great lesson - the brick walls aren't there to keep you out, they're only there to keep out the people who don't want something badly enough.Rudy grows up obsessed with Notre Dame football, but he lacks the physical prowess for the game and the grades for Notre Dame.
Sean Astin gives a very natural performance as Rudy - he doesn't "act" in the sense of giving an emotional, big performance, but rather behaves like a young man from a lower middle class family in Joliet, Illinois, probably much as the real Rudy acted.Life can be pretty frustrating and when trying to break through a glass ceiling or a brick wall like Rudy did, it's tempting to want to give up.
Every since he was a boy, Rudy Ruettiger has dreamed that he would play football for Notre Dame college.
When his closest friend is killed on the job, Rudy sets out to follow his dream and enlists at Holy Cross college to get his grades and takes on jobs within Notre Dame to make his dream come true.I taped this as I thought it would be the traditional sports movie where the underdog comes through to win the big game at the key moment.
The story is inspiring but is also mixed in reality Rudy's dream amounts to one tackle and 8 seconds of game time.
This took away a little from his story, but also it made it a better ending his appearance is in a game already won with only seconds left, but it's HIS dream.The film is way too sentimental and mawkish at times, but it's strong theme still makes it work and be enjoyable.
The cast do a good job on the whole but it is Astin's movie and he does a great job in the lead, maybe only being a bit too nice at times.
This is one of those movies that I have seen almost a dozen times over the years, and I never get sick of it."Rudy" is the classic underdog story.
Rudy, played with strength and vulnerability by Sean Astin, is an underdog in football because of his small size, and he's an underdog in school because he has to work twice as hard to get the good grades.
He'is a hard worker with a big heart whose had his share of pain in life, so an audience member I celebrate when he does & feel sad when he does.This film has all the right pieces a great story inspired by a true one, beautiful directing, a fantastic musical score, great football scenes, and emotional punch.
Young Rudy must find the answer to his problems, and his coach comments that the answer he finds really applies to all areas of life.The film uses football as the playing field for life, and we see how each member of the team takes the answer for life into every aspect of his being, from school work, to family, to the grid iron.This film is first about how we are to live, and why we were created in the first place.
Over the years, and having watched this movie some 25-35 times now, it always screams out, "You can do anything you want if you just put your whole heart and soul into it and truly try." Sean Astin certainly has his most inspiring role in this movie, and he translates so perfectly what a young man chasing his only dream, to play for the University of Notre Dame, can do if he sets his mind to it.
The movie also represented what that period of time was like for anyone whoever wanted to play a major college sport, but was considered too small or too light.
Football is a team sport and though Rudy may become a mediocre component of the team from a strictly athletic point of view, his dedication and doggedness actually provide the team with an intangible ingredient.The inspirational speeches Rudy practices repeating early on are more or less done as a fan of Notre Dame.
The story may be rather simple and the ending predictable, but what's wrong with a true-life based account that makes one feel good?
I've seen the movie three times, and each time I was moved by the story of the kid who wouldn't let his dream die.Even though I grew up Protestant in Texas and loved the Longhorns, I reveled in the history and the tradition of Notre Dame football.
I thought the filmmakers did a reasonable job of showing enough about the conflicts in Rudy's life without getting mired in a lot of subplots that in my opinion would've detracted from the storyline.I like the fact that they spent so much time actually developing the story of how he struggled to get to become a Notre Dame student.
A lot of filmmakers might've opted to focus on the actual Notre Dame experience, which I think would've made the film a lot less effective.Anyway, the music was wonderful, Sean Astin gave a great but understated performance, all the football sequences were real enough to make you wince, my wife who knows next to nothing about football or Notre Dame loved the movie, and it made me want to head to South Bend someday and take in a game.Why do so many great sports films (Breaking Away, Hoosiers, and Rudy) take place in the upper Midwest?
It is so much more than just a "football movie." It is a great portrait of Notre Dame Football at its best, The brewing, underdog tensions of the film are excellently portrayed in a very real way.
So, I can't be objective about "Rudy" -- I have a personal, sentimental attachment to its heart-warming story.But after talking with many, many others who have seen this terrific film -- most of whom don't know anything about Notre Dame or its legendary football teams -- I now realize that everyone who has seen "Rudy" has found real inspiration in its story.Sean Astin does a remarkable job playing someone that overcame his limitations through sheer perseverance.
Other than that, it's a great story, well crafted -- what more do you want from a movie?One last note: many of my friends that have seen "Rudy" have commented to me that there really can't be families that are so fanatical about Fighting Irish football.
Based on a true story, Rudy is among the best of such films, and completes the holy trinity of sports movies; Baseball - The Natural, Basketball - Hooisers, and Football - Rudy.
But Sean Astin, never before or after better, or nearly as good, gives the performance of his young life.All sports movies are a bit predictable, and they're usually designed to put a lump in your throat, and of course they only appeal to 49% of the population (sorry), but Rudy is inspirational in a way that only a sports movie can be.
Sean Astin plays the title character and he plays a young kid from Joliet, who dreams of becoming a Norte Dame football player.
Finally, Rudy does get into Notre Dame and his dreams of success falls into failures and redemption as he fights his way toward the end.
Rudy works as a moving, inspiring and very well-told true story that is based on the real Rudy Ruettiger that attended Notre Dame in 1975.
I suppose I am biased because I am a Notre Dame Football fan, but even so, it was a wonderfully heart-warming story.Sean Astin did a terrific job in this movie, as did all the other cast members.
A lot happens during the 8 years or so that the movie covers, but Rudy's determination to realise his dream has you rooting for him all the way..
Sean Astin delivered an amazing performance as Rudy Ruettiger, a person who was always told that he could never play Notre Dame football because he was to small but now in this movie he proves that he can.
Rudy's dream was to play football at Notre Dame and earn everyone's respect (including his doubting family).
Rudy overcame reading difficulties thru hard work much the same way he overcame his lack of size to make the Notre Dame's football team --thru a gut-busting, never quit attitude.
It's a familiar tale - the underdog rising through sheer determination to overcome adversity and achieve success in sports, or in the case of Rudy, play one down for the fabled Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team.
Modern film-goers are thought to be either too sophisticated and/or cynical to fall for such fare as "Rudy." Nevertheless, this is a film that can be enjoyed by both sporting neophyte and armchair quarterback alike (speaking from personal experience, even football fans who spend autumn Saturdays rooting for the real-life Irish to lose will tear up by the final scene), due to a slew of excellent dramatic performances.
Uplifting True Story About An Unlikely Working-Class Kid Who Fights His Way to Notre Dame and Its Football Team.
Rudy's father tells him this story at a bus station where Rudy is going to travel to South Bend, Indiana, hoping to not only enroll into Notre Dame University, but also play for their illustrious football team.
Rudy's chances of getting into Notre Dame as a student are slim at best and almost negligible in regards to joining the Fighting Irish football team.
In a very interesting shot about mid-way through the film, we see Rudy on the outside of the Notre Dame stadium while a game is in-progress.
While the supporting cast is perfect for the film, it's the performance of Sean Astin as Rudy which takes us all the way.
His name is Rudy and he's big fan of Notre dame football team, his childhood dream is to play for them or at least to made a debut for them.Whole his family was watching them and they were big supporters of them, every Sunday they were in front of television watching them.
Rudy reached his dream, his parents, brothers, friend were proud of him.If you like inspirations movies this one is perfect for you, for binging up your motivation.
So his father and his brothers tell him that he cannot achieve his goal of playing football for the Notre Dame which is what he dreams about all the time.
My dream,like rudy who wanted play football, is to become a filmmaker, I want too write films, direct, any little job that has something to do with the film industry I want it.
Nor do I like Notre Dame over any other college team.That said, I will state that I found RUDY to be inspirational in many aspects.
The fact that he did not quit or give up when all seemed futile.Watching the movie, almost anyone would have thought that his chances at actually playing in a game were about the same as hitting the mega lotto.I was saddened that any football program would "use" guys as little more than tackle dummies in practice.
Yeah, and this was the same guy that acted like a DI the day before in gym class.Oh well, in any case, RUDY is a film that is really good.
"Rudy" Ruddiger has wanted nothing less than to play football at Notre Dame.
And in the end we have one of the biggest tear jerking moments in all the movies i ever saw...If you love sports or just want to see a good movie, give Rudy a chance.
Every time I watch this movie I feel I can relate, and if a man or woman works hard they can fulfill any dream no matter how impossible it seems.
They said "Rudy is so little",that was because they did not see his heart.A tenth of it could have made a player an All-American.Its a true journey of a kid's dream to play for a great college.
Rudy finds out that this person was also on Notre Dame's football team, but never got to play, and quit.
Although I think that Rudy is one of the best movies of all time, I think that most people lose sight of the true meaning.
Well done & touching story of a young man's obsession with Notre Dame football and his desire to be a part of it.This film does exactly what it wants to do- nothing more, nothing less..
My friend said she had to buy this movie, "Rudy," and has watched it 35 times.
Although it's a bit one dimensional, you cannot help but feel for this guy who's dream is to play for the Notre Dame team.A great feel good movie..
Rudy (Sean Astin) is a "five foot nothing, one hundred and nothing" guy whose life long dream is to run out of the tunnel for Notre Dame.
2. The movie doesn't do a very convincing job of explaining why Rudy wants to go to Notre Dame.
Rudy is the true story of a guy whose dream is to play football for Notre Dame.
Rudy not only had to make the football team, he also had to get good grades so he could transfer to the University of Notre Dame in the first place.
But he is determined to overcome the odds and fulfill his dream of playing for Notre Dame."The film was highly inspirational and I enjoyed watching Rudy persist.
I feel like this is an important film to watch purely because of how much Rudy had to persist to achieve his dream.
"Rudy" Ruettiger, played by Sean Astin, and his fight to become part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team.
For a film like this, however, time is (and will continue to be) almost a non-factor, as a movie so based in human themes and emotions will never cease to be relevant.For a basic plot summary, "Rudy" is based on the real-life story of Rudy Ruettiger (Sean Astin), whose entire goal in life from childhood onward was to enroll at Notre Dame and play football for the Irish.
So, while watching this film now it may seem like you've seen this type before, just remember that is only because "Rudy" started the trend!As a football fan myself, it is tough to believe I hadn't seen this one all the way through until my 32nd year on this planet.
The dream in itself is crazy but is handled in a realistic way (the film is based on Rudy Ruettiger's true story) it's not about a small guy who wants to be the star of Notre Dame football team, but who wants to play at least one game.
No need to spoil it.Paraphrasing Hugo, Rudy wants to be a "Fighting Irish at least once or nothing" and the whole film is a harrowing odyssey where we follow each step that gets him closer to his dream: getting the sponsors, having good grades in prep school, joining Notre Dame, then the practice team...
Read through these reviews and you'll find an overhwelming number of comments that reaffirm the same things - how inspiring this movie is, how perfectly played the role of Rudy is by Sean Astin, even how good the background music is.
It feels great to watch someone work so hard and overcome so many obstacle to reaching his (or her) goal, because when they succeed we're happy for them - even if they're not a real person, as was Rudy.I've lived in Indiana for 20 years and I have to say, it gives me a good feeling to see how well and warmly Indiana and Hoosiers are regarded in movies like this.
Now like most sports film, I can see from a mile away the outcome of the movie, but it doesn't really make a difference, There were still some emotional moments to be had as we see this young man's dreams come true.
This film also does a good job in raising my interest in football, because these are the kind of inspirational stories I love.David Anspaugh's film is about a young adult named Rudy who aspires to play football for Notre Dame.
But one day when he is finally admitted to Notre Dame, Rudy proves that he has what it takes to follow his dreams.The acting is very good.
I recommend this movie to anyone even if they do not like football you will love this move regardless.Sean Astin Rules!. |
tt0089885 | Re-Animator | At University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!"
West arrives at Miskatonic University in New England in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain and converts the building's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus. Dan's fiancee Megan, who already thinks West is creepy, walks in on this experiment and is horrified.
Dan tries to tell Dr. Alan Halsey, who is Megan's father and dean of the medical school, about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean infers that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to prove that the reagent works, and thereby salvage their medical careers. The corpse they inject comes back to life, but in a frenetic and violent zombie-like state. Dr. Halsey stumbles upon the scene and, despite attempts by both West and Dan to save him, he gets killed by the reanimated corpse, which West then kills with a bone-saw. Unfazed by the violence and excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Dr. Halsey's body with his reanimating reagent. Dr. Halsey returns to life, also in a psychotic, zombie-like state. Megan chances upon the scene, and is nearly hysterical, but the sight of her seems to awaken some kind of memory in her reanimated father, who while still crazed, appears to suddenly feel a kind of regret.
Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill, a professor and researcher at the hospital, takes charge of Dr. Halsey, whom he puts in a padded observation cell adjacent to his office. He carries out a surgical operation on him, lobotomizing him. During the course of this operation, he discovers that Dr. Halsey is not sick, but dead and reanimated.
Dr. Hill goes to West's basement lab and attempts to blackmail him into surrendering his reagent and notes, hoping to take credit for West's discovery. West offers to demonstrate the reagent and puts a few drops of it onto a microscope slide with dead cat tissue. As Dr. Hill peers through the microscope at this slide, West decapitates him with a shovel, snarling "plagiarist!" as he drives the blade of the shovel through Dr. Hill's neck. West then reanimates Dr. Hill's head and body separately. While West is questioning Dr. Hill's head and taking notes, Dr. Hill's body sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head back to Dr. Hill's office, with West's reagent and notes.
Exercising mind control over Halsey (in a deleted scene Hill is revealed to have psychic/hypnotic abilities; in the finished film, Halsey's submission is explained as a result of the lobotomy), Dr. Hill sends him out to kidnap Megan from Dan. While being carried to the morgue by her reanimated father, Megan faints. When she arrives, Dr. Hill straps her unconscious body to a table and strips her naked. She wakes up in the middle of this experience. Hill then sexually abuses her, including shoving his bloody, severed head between her legs.
West and Dan track Halsey to the morgue. West distracts Dr. Hill while Dan frees Megan. Dr. Hill reveals that he has reanimated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue, rendering them susceptible to mind control as Halsey is. However, Megan's voice reawakens a protectiveness in her father, who then fights off the other corpses long enough for Dan and Megan to escape. In the ensuing chaos, West injects Dr. Hill's body with a lethal overdose of the reagent. Dr. Hill's body mutates rapidly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work before being pulled away by Dr. Hill's mutated entrails.
Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent and notes. As Dan and Megan flee the morgue, one of the reanimated corpses attacks and kills Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. As the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard screaming. | comedy, cult, violence, horror, insanity, humor, suspenseful | train | wikipedia | Re-Animator is one of those fun horror movies that is so over the top that it is just a lot of fun to watch, kind of like the spectacular Evil Dead films, although not quite to that same level of skillful horror/comedy mix.
It's amazing to me that Richard Bond, the music composer, didn't think anyone would notice him plagiarizing one of the most famous movie soundtracks in cinematic history, but luckily everyone else in the production was right on the mark.Jeffrey Combs delivers a wonderfully crazy performance as Herbert West, the scientist in the movie who is determined that he has discovered a scientific method to beat death, and is desperate to try it out on a human being rather than small animals, on whom he has had remarkable success.
Maybe his intentions are good after all, but for the purposes of the film, he just wants to get his hands on some fresh corpses, which is a great premise for a horror film.The movie operates in its own world, like the Evil Dead films did.
All of the Freddies, Jasons, and Michael Myers films combined don't come close to having an ounce of the entertainment and imagination of Producer Brian Yuzna and Director and Writer Stuart Gordon's Re-animator.Professor Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a scientist who has discovered a formula which brings the dead back to life by reanimating their tissue.
The score was heavily inspired by the famous Psycho score, a classic by Bernard Herrmann.The movie, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's `Herbert West: Re-Animator', follows a simple plot.
Herbert West (played to precise pitch perfection by Jeffrey Combs who, like Bruce Campbell, is a B-Movie legend) is new at Miskatonic Medical University.
Dan tries to resist the temptation of power inherent in the re-animating fluid, but is sucked into Herbert's mad world of life giving.There is a turn of events about halfway through the film (which I would be crazy to spoil) that almost screams to the viewer, `We aren't playing by the rules here.' The storyline twists its way to the famous conclusion that, if you haven't heard of it, will leave you breathless.
It also has huge doses of black humor and the whole cast blessedly plays it straight...it they had winked at the camera once it would have destroyed the film.The film also has a tight, well-written script (it runs 86 minutes), is well directed by Stuart Gordon and has a great cast--David Gale (sadly no longer with us) was fantastic as the evil Hill.
West thinks so, and with his reagent serum he might just prove to the world how right he is."Re-Animator" ranks at the very top of my all-time favorite horror movies.
For me, the film is paced perfectly, has plenty of gore, a fair amount of nudity (and a scene of sexuality you won't find elsewhere), some black comedy and a simple plot premise (a variation on the Frankenstein story).This is the film that gave Jeffrey Combs his place in cult film history.
I have yet to find one that combines the gore of the uncut version with the plot of the R-rated one (which I think really drives home the story and fleshes out the motives and power of Dr. Hill).But the sheer fun of the film makes up for the flaws.
Jeffrey Combs is clearly having plenty of fun, and the way they approach such things as the reanimated cat and the use of the reagent as an intravenous drug tells me they knew that the key was just letting a good time fly.The people involved with this film (Combs, director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna) went on to make a variety of other Lovecraft-inspired films.
Jeffrey Combs heads a great cast as Herbert West, a strange and eccentric but brilliant young doctor/scientist who has perfected a syrum that can reanimate the dead.
Combs is absolutely brilliant as Herbert West, one of the most memorable mad scientists in horror history, and the rest of the supporting cast - Bruce Abbott, David Gale, and the lovely Barbara Crampton - are all excellent.
Gordon uses H.P. Lovecraft's West stories as a jumping off point for some grotesque and genuinely funny moments that once seen are never forgotten, particularly THAT scene between Crampton and Gale, which is now the stuff of legend, though beware it is cut from some versions of the movie.
In Austria, the medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) develops a serum to resuscitate the dead while working with a famous scientist that mysteriously dies.
This was actually one of the first movies that I saw with Jeffrey Combs and what made me become a fan of his work and acting.The story in "Re-Animator", to those unfamiliar with the timeless work of Lovecraft, is about Herbert West (played by Jeffrey Combs) whose study in reanimating dead tissue goes awry and drunk with power, the scientist craves for more specimens to conduct his experiments on.
Helping him with the ghastly work is his roommate Dan (played by Bruce Abbott).Sure, the effects in the movie are ridiculously outdated and crude by todays standards, but back then they were quite good and actually were impressive to look at.
When you see it today, the effects make the movie appear campy and sort of goofy, but still the movie is driven by the solid story and not the visual effects."Re-Animator" spawned two sequels which also were quite good, and they were all part of a great many movies that Jeffrey Combs starred in that were based on the work of H.
The only thing about this film is its graphic gore and brief "head scene" with actress Barbara Crampton which may make it a bit tough to take at times, but it's well worth it.Rating: 8/10.
I went to an all night horror movie festival that supposedly featured the best of all the blood and gore films and although some of them were pretty good for the time (considering the "code"), I realized after seeing them that the ReAnimator was the film they were all trying to make.
Horrifyingly disfigured corpses cavort, dripping blood and gore, dissected cats howl and scratch, and severed heads....well, watching Dr. Hill's disembodied head molest poor Barbara Crampton in a "special area" is an all-time horror/comedy highlight!
After all these years I finally got around to watching Stuart Gordon's much loved and much talked about adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's Herbert West, Re-Animator.
Plot in a nutshell finds two medical students getting more than they ever could bargain for when they start reviving corpses with Herbert West's (Jeffrey Combs wonderful) gooey serum.It's all very 80s, but in a good way, because it takes one away from remembering all the formulaic slasher movies that dominated the decade, so with that in mind Gordon's movie should not be under valued in the context of being different.
Low budget collision of black comedy and gruesome horror marked the debut of director Stuart Gordon and has gone on to be a classic among horror fans.Medical student discovers that his strange new roommate has a formula that will bring dead bodies back to life, unfortunately it falls into the wrong hands and all bloody hell breaks loose.With its campy humor and wall-to-wall splatter FX, it's not hard to see how Re-Animator became a favorite among genre fans.
The film is loosely based upon the classic story 'Herbert West - Re-Animator' by the great H.P. Lovecraft and although this film adaptation doesn't have the same creepy atmosphere of the story, it more than makes up for that with some truly wild action.
Kudos also go to Richard Band for his quirky theme music, even though it does sound a lot like the Psycho theme.All around the performances are good but it's really Jeffery Combs who shines as the plucky Dr. West (villain or hero, you decide).For those that enjoy strong horror comedies Re-Animator is a must, but you might not want to watch it before dinner.Followed by three sequels.*** 1/2 out of ****.
The show is stolen by Jeffrey Combs, as Herbert West, the modern, mad scientist of horror movies.
Debut outing for Stuart Gordon provides a very entertaining film with a big helping of good special effects and quite a large amount of gore for an R-rated feature.Great touches of humour shine through the gore although the gore,which there is a lot of,is always excellent.Jeffrey Combs as a scientist/doctor Herbert West is simply amazing."Re-Animator" is visually interesting to look at,it is also quite creepy at times.It just can't get any better than this!In my opinion Stuart Gordon should be worshipped by all horror fans for producing such fine films like this one.OK,I admit that his another horror flick "Dolls" is pretty lame,but "From Beyond","The Pit and the Pendulum","Castle Freak" are all great.If you like "Re-Animator" check out its sequel "Bride of Re-Animator",also highly recommended..
But once you see it, it's another reminder of how sick and twisted and hilarious a film can be when its creators keep logic dangling by a thread - sure, some of this is logical, but that's after setting up the 'fact' that people can come back to life by some weird green liquid that one isn't really sure how it's made but, hey, it's Herbert West so maybe you just don't want to know...Simple premise: Herbert West (Herbert to his friends) is at a medical school when he takes a room with Dan and Megan, an engaged couple who also are connected to the medical university (Dan also a student, Megan daughter of the uptight dean), and tries out his formula to extend life past the expected amount of time the brain can function after death.
But probably the best assets to make it crazy-funny as opposed to just crazy is David Gale as Carl Hill (mostly after he's a severed head and body, doing more campy takes than one could ever ask for outside of Bela Lugosi), and Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
The turn out to being very livid, uncontrollable zombies.The story is loosely based off of H.P. Lovecraft's work, "Herbert West, Re-Animator".
Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" of 1985 is without any doubt one of the most wickedly entertaining films ever brought to screen, and no lover of Horror and Gore, no, no true lover of cinema could possibly consider missing it.
This is not least due to the brilliant performance of Jeffrey Combs, who doesn't play but IS Herbert West, and, of course due to director Stuart Gordon's brilliant sense of macabre humor, and his talent to make an ultra-gory Horror/Sci-Fi flick one of the most outrageously hilarious comedies ever.The film starts out with a delightfully macabre and witty scene, which I don't want to give away, and then really begins at the renowned medical University of Arham, Massachusets (Lovecraft's town for everything macabre), where the kind-hearted Dan (Bruce Abbott) is studying to become a doctor and working at the University clinic.
Because it was a return to black humor (which "motel hell" (1980) had already broached) which had been completely forgotten in the likes of Freddy ,Friday the thirteenth ,Halloween....And funny,nay hilarious,"Re-Animator" is!Jeffrey Combs is wonderful as the lead.I dig the way he introduces himself,I love his swagger,I love his deadpan face,and above all his logic (I'm a scientist!).His reluctant pal Dan delivers this line which is the best euphemism I 've heard in the whole horror cinema:after the extremely gory scene in the morgue ,he mumbles " must be dreamin'" .The cat in the fridge,the dean turned into a zombie,the lecherous professor licking Barbara Crampton's magnificent body,and more and more!
At least Re Animator has a level of intelligent direction to it.Being the kind of movie lover who's not a great fan of horror films and tries to avoid them because of the often awful repetitiveness.
But it's definitely not for everybody, as Gore-don's effects take center stage in an entertaining zombie free-for-all.In a deliciously over-the-top role, Jeffrey Combs is Herbert West, eccentric and dedicated medical student and the Re-Animator of the title, who as the film opens, has already resurrected his first corpse and I must say, it's literally eye-popping.
He presents his neon-green miracle potion to the disbelieving Dan, but finds himself breaking into the morgue to resurrect dead bodies.As with any horror movie of this caliber, there has to be a bad guy, and in this case it's Dr. Hill (David Gale), who experiences first-hand the effects of West's serum (the head on the box cover art belongs to him).
The movie itself is sacred among gore fans and it's easy to see why, what with its gonzo bloodletting and its impressive use of technical and makeup effects, not to mention Jeffrey Combs in the lead role, delivering the kind of B-horror performance that jumps out from the screen.
All of those combinations make Re-Animator one of my favorite Horror/Zombie movies,a Horror classic and Cult Classic.Based on H.P Lovecraft's story of the same name,Re-Animator tells the story Dan Cain(Bruce Abbott),a Miskatonic University Medical student who needs a roommate to share rent on a house.
However,Dan gets more than he bargained for when finds out Herbert West conducts bizarre science experiments using a serum chemical that brings people back from the dead and when Cain decides to help West the results are lead to chaos and insanity for Herbert and Dan.1985 was an amazing year for Zombie movies with the release of Horror/Zombie classics such as George A.
Right from the very beginning Re-Animator is an amazing Horror-Comedy that for it's 85 minutes gives viewers a terrific and memorable movie that is twisted and offbeat,weird and hilarious as well as gory,bloody and disgusting.
The Comedy and Humor in Re-Animator is hilarious and funny with a dark Comedic glee that is politically incorrect and matches the insanity that happens throughout the movie and it's the way the characters react to situations that are over the top and wild and when the horrific scenes become more horrifying you cannot help but laugh.
Everything Works in this Boundary Pusher.The Low-Budget SFX and Makeup are Outstandingly Over the Top. The Dark Humor mostly comes from a Deadpan Delivery from a Star Turned Jeffrey Combs as the Delightfully Demented and Giddy Discoverer of the Re-Agent that turns a Medical School into a Playground for Catatonic Corpses Creating a Commotion, and a Gadfly Student.The Movie has its Roots in Lovecraft and Shelley but it Grows on its Own. It is Very Rare that such a Complete Genre Exploitation is Enjoyed and Exalted by both Fans of this Type of Thing and Usually Stuffy Critics.
However West's obsession does not end there and experimentations in Cain's basement produce a certain amount of success but will only lead to terrible failure.I'm not a big horror fan but I do have a certain amount of OCD when it comes to watching films and when I saw this in the TV listings I realised that I had never seen it and decided to do so.
It does differ in humour though because, although some reviewers have said it is "tongue in cheek" I actually thought it did a good job of playing it as straight as possible and, although excessive in tone and gore, it is certainly not a "comedy" in the way that the Evil Dead films could be described.
From Comb's performance it is not hard to believe West as an obsessive character, but given the relative short runtime of the film, just over 85 minutes with both opening and closing credits, it really seems like that little extra bit could have been in there somewhere.But in the end this is a classic of horror cinema.
Ok, so it had a love interest and THAT SCENE, which Lovecraft probably couldn't even have imagined, let alone written, but somehow it really managed to capture the feel of the stories despite bringing them more up to date.It's a B-movie, some of the effects are kind of hokey, some of the action is so dark it's hard to see, but as a horror movie (as opposed to a scary movie, they're not necessarily the same) it works well, and the ending, while seemingly inevitable, was both unexpected and perfect.
Yes, it was a blatant case of plagiarism (very closely resembling Bernard Hermann's classic theme), but it worked well.I highly recommend 'Re-animator' to all fans of gory horror, but I do suggest that they watch the 'unrated' version and then the deleted scenes afterwards to fully appreciate what might have been..
The main two elements that make Re-Animator so memorable are one, it's sharp witted dark humor (mainly thanks for director Stuart Gordon and co-writer Dennis Paoli), with it's shockingly over-the-top gore done with a sly nod and a wink, and secondly, the film features a terrific breakout performance by Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
The satire in this film is beyond plentiful, not the least of which comes in the form of obscenely over the top gore effects.This movie is scary, gory, original, and above all, a lots of fun.
A lot i said about Re- animator and I admit, it's a classic but have seen it the other day it's still watchable for the effects but in the beginning it moves slowly towards the point of no return for Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs).
Jeffrey Combs is okay but you can see that the combination of Combs and Crampton do works which went on in From Beyond (1986).Still, it's a must see horror flick that do have some black comedy scene's like in The Evil Dead (1981).
Brilliant tongue-in-cheek horror which has stood the test of time well as it camps up an HP Lovecraft story with over-the-top gore, cheesy dialogue and gratuitous nudity.Obviously it's quite dated in some aspects but the SFX are well done although the cat scene amuses more than scares and Jeffrey Combs steals the screen with his creepy and insane Herbert West.
P. Lovecraft's "Herbert West-Re-Animator", a wonderful short story to check out to complement the film.. |
tt2084970 | The Imitation Game | BASED ON A TRUE STORY.We hear Alan Turing saying, "Are you paying attention? Good. If you're not listening carefully, you will miss things. Important things. I will not pause, I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. You think that because you're sitting where you are and I am sitting where I am, that you are in control of what is about to happen. You are mistaken. I am in control. Because I know things that you do not know. What I need from you now is a commitment. You will listen closely and you will not judge me until I am finished. If you cannot commit to this, then please leave the room. But if you choose to stay, remember that you chose to be here. What happens from this moment forward is not my responsibility. It's yours. Pay attention."It is 1951, in Manchester, England. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Headquarters intercepts a message that Alan Turing has been robbed at his place. Alan, now known as a professor at Cambridge, is visited by the police inquiring about his burglary. They find him in his home but he is dismissive towards them. They mention that he is an insufferable person and are suspicious that he is hiding something.In a flashback to September 1939 in London, War has been declared with 800,000 people being evacuated from their homes. On the train, a 27-year-old Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) admires a kid doing crossword puzzles. He arrives at Bletchley Park, guarded by Royal Naval officers. He waits in the office of Commander Denniston (Charles Dance). When the Commander arrives, Alan is cold and seems to lack humour. The Commander asks why Alan wants to work for the government; he replies he doesn't. He mentions that he's not very political and the Commander says it may be the shortest job interview ever. Alan mentions he doesn't speak German but tells the Commander that he's one of the best mathematicians in the world. He considers German codes to be like puzzles, which he enjoys solving. The Commander calls for Alan to be removed by his secretary so Alan mentions Enigma, revealing he knows about the top secret program he's being considered for. Alan explains that Enigma is the greatest encryption device in history and if the Allies can crack the code, it will end the war. The Commander says everyone thinks Enigma is unbreakable. Alan says to let him try and they'll know for sure.Alan is welcomed to Enigma alongside five others including Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard), John Cairncross (Matthew Beard), and Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode). They have got their hands on an actual Enigma machine smuggled out of Berlin but they don't know the machine's settings to decode messages. Every night at midnight, the Germans refresh the settings; because they intercept their first message every morning at 6 A.M., the code breakers only have 18 hours a day to crack the code before it changes and they must start from scratch. Hugh, a chess champion, is able to calculate that this means there are 159 million million million possibilities every day. Alan is reluctant to work as a team; Stewart Menzies, the Chief of MI6, tells them that four men have died in the last few minutes because the code remains uncracked and orders them to begin.Alan tells us that all the messages are floating in the air for anyone to grab; the problem is that they are encrypted and there 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 possibilities. It will take 20 million years to try everything.The team wants to take a lunch break but when they invite Alan, he is cold and off-putting. They go on without him. Alan continues his work alone, on blueprints of a machine.In 1951, the detective from before finds out that Alan's records are classified. He doesn't know why a math professor would have classified records and becomes suspicious. He uses a typewriter to falsify a document, allowing him to secure Alan's service records.Back in 1939, Alan complains to Commander Denniston that Hugh Alexander has denied funding for the parts he needs to build a machine. The commander tells him the other code breakers do not get along with him and he should take up the complaint with someone else. Alan suggests firing them all and using the funds for his machine. He says he only needs 100,000 pounds only a machine can defeat another machine. Alan asks who the Commander's commanding officer is; he is told Winston Churchill. Alan gets a letter to the Prime Minister via Stewart Menzies. Churchill puts Alan in charge, overriding Hugh's authority. Alan immediately fires two of his teammates, calling them mediocre linguists and poor code breakers. He is asked if he was popular at school.Flashback to Charles as a schoolboy he was picked on for having a form of OCD, keeping the carrots and peas separate during lunch. His classmates pour food on him; bury him under the floorboards. He tells us, "Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction and the act becomes hollow." When Alan is able to remain calm under the floorboards, the other kids leave him alone. He is rescued by a fellow student named Christopher (Jack Bannon). Christopher says they beat Alan up because he's different. Alan says he's an odd duck. Christopher tells him, "Sometimes its the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine."Now short on staff, they decide to find new members of the team by placing a difficult crossword puzzle into newspapers to be mailed in upon completion; anyone who can solve it is a good candidate. The war rages on, with many hiding out in bomb shelters. The handful that managed to solve the puzzle are gathered together to take a test. One young woman, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), shows up late because she claims that her bus had a flat tire. They think she is in the wrong room. She tells them that she has solved the crossword puzzle and everyone is skeptical. Alan tells her to take a seat. He has the room solve a very difficult puzzle in six minutes although it will take an expert like Alan eight minutes. Surprising them, Joan solves it in five.Joan and one other man are kept afterwards and told that they are not allowed to share what they are about to be told or they'll be executed for high treason. They are ordered to lie to everyone they know about what they are going to be doing. Joan asks what he is referring to. She is told she will be helping to break an unbreakable Nazi code and win the war.In school, a young Alan bonds with Christopher, who shares with him a book on code and ciphers. The awkward Alan compares cryptic messages with how people talk they say one thing, have hidden intentions beneath their words, and he doesn't know how to decipher them.It is now several months later in 1940, Bletchley Park. The supercomputer is being hooked up in a secret hut. Alan is concerned when Joan does not show up. He goes to her home and tries to convince her parents that she's very necessary at the radio factory that wants to employ her. Joan comes home and talks to Alan in private, although her parents are listening in Joan explains that it is indecorous for her to be working and living among men (according to her parents); Alan loudly suggests she work in the clerical department with women (although she won't really be doing this). Apparently, this is convincing enough because Joan packs up and leaves with Alan. She wonders why he is so fixated on helping her; he responds that "Sometimes its the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine."In 1951, Detective Nock shares with Superintendent Smith that Alan's classified military file is empty. His war records aren't classified; someone has burned and erased them. They suspect he is a Soviet spy.In 1940, Joan arrives at Bletchley Park under the guise of a clerical worker. In narration, Alan tells us that the British were literally starving to death; every week, Americans would send 100,000 tons of food to them and every week, the Germans would send it to the bottom of the ocean. Every night at midnight, a bell sounds, telling them their day's work has been wasted (since the code is reset at midnight). Frustrated, Hugh visits Alan, tinkering with his machine (referred to as Christopher throughout the film, named after Alan's childhood friend). A frustrated Hugh grabs a wrench to destroy the machine but the others hold him back. Hugh tells him that the machine is useless and there are legitimate ways to help in the war. One of the others, Peter, explains that his brother and cousins are actually fighting in the war while they have nothing to show for all of their work because of the machine. Alan is adamant the machine will work.Later, Alan is in the hut alone. He removes a stack of Enigma messages and stashes them in his socks. They manage to go undetected by the guards at checkpoint. He sneaks over to Joan's home and climbs through her window. He reveals the decrypted Enigma messages, delivered from Nazi high command they read one with the weather report, ending in "Heil Hitler". Joan and Alan talk about Christopher and the concept of a digital computer.The next day, Alan enters the hut to find military police rifling through his desk while the other code breakers watch. Commander Denniston explains that there is a spy in Bletchley Park and they suspect it's one of them. The Commander shows Alan a telegram that was intercepted on its way to Moscow, which is encrypted with a key phrase. They suspect Alan because he's arrogant, has no friends or romantic attachments, and he is a loner. Commander Denniston says he will no longer have to fire him he can hang him for treason if he's caught.Joan greets Alan, working on Christopher, and tries to cheer him up by taking him to a beer hut. Hugh, John, and Peter enter the hut and Joan is friendly towards them. She tells Alan in private that she's a woman in a man's job and doesn't have the luxury of being an ass. She says it doesn't matter how smart he is; Enigma is smarter and Alan needs all the help he can get. But his team will not help him if they don't like him. The next time he sees them, he brings apples since Joan has suggested he give them something. He then tries to tell a joke.In a flashback to his schooling, Christopher is caught passing a note to Alan. The teacher mocks them for the note being in gibberish (he doesn't know it is encrypted). Alan retrieves it from the garbage and breaks the code later "See you in two long weeks, dearest friend." The school is going on holiday.In 1941, at Bletchley Park, Joan and Alan are bonding over codes. Hugh Alexander approaches, telling Alan that if they run the wires on Christopher diagonally, they'll eliminate rotor positions 500 times faster. Alan is able to utilize this idea. The machine is turned on; it is the very first digital computer. And it works. They wait to see if it can tell the the day's Enigma settings.We see footage of the war. In Denniston's office, he is told that the machine is not producing any results. He surprises Alan at the hut, who barricades the door, trying to keep him out. They force the door open and turn it off. Commander Denniston tells him his machine doesn't work because it hasn't broken Enigma. Denniston's associate from the home office is upset about spending a hundred thousand pounds with nothing to show for it. Alan tries to defend his machine but he has not decrypted a single German message; the Commander fires him. But he is stopped short by Hugh, John, and Peter who say that if he fires Alan, they will have to be fired, too, because they believe his machine can work. Hugh reminds the Commander that they're the best cryptographic minds in Britain and asks to be granted six more moths. Commander Denniston tells them one more month or they're all gone.At the beer hut, Hugh tells Alan that he cracked the encrypted message "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find. Matthew 7:7." He knows that Alan is not the spy because he would not have used a simple Bible quote for his code.In 1951, Detective Nock and Superintendent Smith are told by a sergeant that he has found out that Alan is a "poofter" (British slang for homosexual). He has been caught with a male hustler, who later robbed his house. That was the piece of information that he was hiding from the police, not that he's a spy. The detective is sure Alan is hiding something else so he asks for him to be arrested so he can interrogate him.In 1941, Joan comes home to find Alan there, using her flat to try to solve mathematical equations so Christopher can run through more settings per 18-hour block. She interrupts Alan to tell him that she has to return home; her parents are unhappy with her being 25 years old and unmarried. He suggests she get married. She suspects he is suggesting Hugh or Peter but of course, he means himself. He proposes with a piece of electrical wire, rolled into a ring.An engagement party is thrown at the beer hut. While Joan dances with Hugh, John Cairncross talks to a sullen Alan who admits he is a homosexual. John is sympathetic and tells Alan that he already suspected that for some time. John suggests that Alan keep it a secret because homosexuality is illegal and, on top of that, Denniston is looking for any excuse to put Alan away.At school, everyone returns from holiday. A young Alan encrypts the message I LOVE YOU and prepares to give it to Christopher but he never shows up.In 1951, Alan is interrogated by Detective Nock. The detective asks if machines can think. Alan notes that he must have read his published work since he was called in on charges of hiring a man to touch his penis, not on computers. Alan says "machines can never think as humans do but just because something thinks differently from you, does it mean its not thinking?" He tells the detective, "We allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries. I hate ice-skating. You cry at sad films. I am allergic to pollen. What does is the point of different tastes different preferences if not to say that our brains works differently, that we think differently? And if we can say that about one another, then why cant we say the same things for brains made of copper and wire and steel?" The detective asks him about the paper he wrote, The Imitation Game. Alan tells him is a test to determine whether something is a machine or a human being. The detective asks him what he did during the war and Alan tells him he worked at a radio factory. Detective Nock knows this isn't true.In 1942, Alan and his team wait for Christopher to crack the code but then the midnight buzzer sounds. The machine will never be able to process so many possibilities in an 18-hour time.At the beer hut, Joan's friend, Helen, is admiring Hugh. Hugh finally approaches her, with Alan by his side. To charm Helen, Hugh tells her that Alan believes men and women should not work together because it will lead to romance although Hugh personally believes that women are smart and should be considered equals. Helen says she agrees with Alan because she has a male co-worker that she has garnered a crush on; upon further inquiry, she reveals she intercepts messages from a German radio tower and she has been assigned one counterpart. She says she has grown fond of him but unfortunately, he has a girlfriend. Hugh steals Helen and they go off to the bar. Alan is lost in thought and then calls out to Helen. He asks her why she thinks he has a girlfriend. Helen says because every message begins with C-I-L-L-Y, which she assumes is the name of his love. Alan tells her the Germans are instructed to choose five letters at random to start each message but because he is in love, he uses the same five letters every time. Alan remarks that love just lost the Germans the whole bloody war.Everyone chases Alan as he rushes across Bletchley Park, past guards and security checkpoints. They get into their hut and Alan pours out previously decrypted messages. He points out that Christopher doesn't have to search through every possible settings; the computer can search for ones that produce words he knows will be in the message. They realize the entire 6 A.M. weather reports end in "Heil Hitler". They can have Christopher search for the words weather, heil, and Hitler to crack the code. They test it on a 6 A.M. message. Christopher comes to a stop. They take the letters it produces and run back to the Enigma machine, typing in the same letters. They are able to decode a message. They've cracked the code!The team works throughout the night. They have decoded messages and translated decrypts, now able to produce a map that represents all of their ships versus the Axis ships. John tells them, There are five people in the world who know the position of every ship in the Atlantic. They are all in this room. Joan realizes that they're going to attack a British passenger convoy as they are positioned 20 minutes away. Hugh tries to call Denniston to warn him but Alan stops him, ripping the phone out of the wall. Everyone argues. Alan tells them they have to let the U-Boats sink the convoy or else it will gives the Germans a heads up that they have cracked Enigma. They will stop radio communication and change the design of Enigma immediately. In order to keep their work secret and win the war, they have to allow the lives of hundreds of innocent people to be lost. Peter breaks down, realizing that his brother is on one of the convoys. He demands that they alert Denniston of just that one ship but Alan simply apologizes. Peter tells him they don't decide who lives or who dies; Alan says they do because no one else can.Alan and Joan ride the train into London. They meet with Stewart Menzies in a teashop. They reveal that they have broken Enigma but ask for Stewart's help in determining how much intelligence to act on, which attacks to stop. He can come up with believable sources of information so the Germans don't suspect Enigma has been cracked.Peter harbours animosity towards Alan for letting his brother be killed despite knowing it in advance. He knocks his books over and while retrieving them on the ground, Alan spots John Cairncross' Bible. He opens it and realizes that it earmarked to Matthew 7:7. John notices Alan making this discovery, now aware that John is the Soviet spy. In private, John tells Alan that the Soviets and Britain are on the same side; he then threatens Alan that if he tells his secret, he'll reveal that Alan is a homosexual and his work will be destroyed.Alan tries to call Menzies but knows his calls are being intercepted. He returns to Joan's flat and Stewart Menzies is there; Alan is told that Joan is in military prison after discovering that she was the Soviet spy -- they have found Enigma messages in her things. Alan tells him that he gave her the intercepts when they were trying to crack the code. Stewart says Denniston is looking for a spy in their hut and Alan tells them the spy is actually John Cairncross. Stewart admits to knowing this before Cairncross even got to Bletchley; this is exactly why he placed them there so they could leak whatever they wanted to Stalin since Churchill was too paranoid to share information with the Soviets. Cairncross is unaware that he is being used by them. Stewart says he needs Alan's help to know what to leak to John and feed to the Soviets. Alan says he's just a mathematician, not a spy, but demands that Joan is released. Stewart reveals he lied about her being in a military prison but threatens to use the Enigma messages against her if Alan doesn't cooperate.Alan encourages Joan to leave Bletchley, knowing she is in danger, but it is too risky to tell her this explicitly. To get her to go, he reveals that he's a homosexual. Joan responds with indifference. She tells him she had her suspicions about him for some time, but doesn't think they can't love each other in their own way. Joan tells Alan that despite the fact that he only loves her as a friend, that they'll be in a marriage built on companionship and intellectual stimulation rather then love since most married couples that love each other end up divorcing anyway. Alan then lies and tells her he doesn't love or care for her and was only using her to break Enigma. She slaps him and tells him she's not going anywhere, despite all the low expectations placed on her by men and her parents. She calls him a monster.We see more stock footage from World War II. In voice-over, Alan says that every day, they decoded messages and the war wasn't determined by the bombings and fighting but a team of six crossword enthusiasts in a tiny village in England. We see everyone celebrating on V-E Day of May 8, 1945. Menzies tells the group that before they can return to their lives at university, they have to burn all evidence that they cracked Enigma because it may be used again for future wars. They also have to pretend they have never met each other.In 1951, the interrogation of Alan by Detective Nock continues. Alan tells him he has told him his story and now the Detective has to play the Imitation Game and answer if he's a machine, a person. "Am I a war hero?" he asks. "Am I a criminal?" Detective Nock tells Alan he can't judge him. Alan tells him he's no help to him at all (because he doesn't know how to judge himself).In another flashback, Alan is called to the principals office and asked about his friendship with Christopher. He vehemently denies being friends with him, afraid they are aware that it is romantic. The teacher tells him he asked because he heard they were close and wanted to inform him that Christopher has died over the holiday break; he had bovine tuberculosis and never told Alan.Six months after his interrogation, the detective is congratulated after Alan has been sentenced for indecency (homosexuality). Joan goes to visit the older Alan at his home. She says that she would have testified on his behalf, to keep him out of jail. Alan is shaky and reveals to her that the judge gave him a choice: two years in prison or two years of weekly and experimental estrogen treatments. The hormonal therapy is designed to cure his homosexual predilections. He wouldn't be able to continue his work from prison and if he's taken away, they'll destroy Christopher, despite all the work he's done on him over the last ten years. He has a panic attack and she calms him down. He notices her wedding ring and she tells him about her husband. She asks him to do a crossword puzzle for old times' sake. But he is not able to do it, the hormonal treatment having ravaged his brain. He tells her she got what she wanted work, husband, a normal life. Joan tells him no one normal could have done what they did. That morning, she was on a train that went through a city that wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for Alan. She bought a ticket from a man who would most likely not be alive if it wasn't for Alan. She's read up on a whole field of scientific study that wouldn't exist if not for Alan. She is glad he wasn't born normal. She tells him, "The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren't [normal]". He asks if she really thinks that and she tells him, "I think that sometimes it's the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."In 1953, Alan is in his home, alone. He looks longingly at Christopher, at his supercomputer, at the love of his life. He turns off the lights.Cut to a flashback of the six cryptologists burning all the evidence that they cracked Enigma.In a series of final on-screen texts, it is said that Alan killed himself in 1954, after a year of government-mandated hormonal therapy.Between 1885 and 1967, approximately 49,000 homosexual men in the UK were convicted and imprisoned of gross indecency under British law.In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous royal pardon, honouring Alan Turing for his achievements during the war.Historians estimate that breaking Enigma shortened the war by more than two years, saving over 14 million lives. It remained a government-held secret for more than 50 years. Turing's work inspired generations of research into what scientists called "Turing machines", now known as computers. | tragedy, humor, historical, mystery, flashback | train | imdb | The whole audience were laughing and applauding and crying in places, including the man next to me who had to borrow a hankie from his wife.The film switches between the drive of the team of code breakers to solve the Enigma code, young Alan Turing and the events after the war that destroyed his life.
A lovely script that had you switching back and forwards between tears and laughter.I know some wanted a more in depth and in detail look at Alan Turing's life and have commented frequently that this does no focus enough on his sexuality or the events after the war.In this case I think less is more, this film highlights the man and the mind.
It brings to life the man behind the facts and we laugh at his interactions with his fellow code breakers and cheer as he proves his theories and our hearts break as we watch him try to cope after his court case.One of the best films I have seen in a long time.
Brilliant adaptation of the story of Bletchley Park and the cryptanalysis team, ran by Alan Turing, that cracked the code of the German Enigma Machine during World War II.
Featuring an outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch as war hero Turning and supporting acts from a brilliant cast including Keira Knightley, Charles Dance and Mark Strong, 'The Imitation Game' is a powerful and eminently well-made biopic that illuminates the facts whilst respecting the story it is based upon.
The story of Alan Turing, a key member of the team that developed the methods and machines that broke those ciphers is an important one, also deserving of an accurate telling."The Imitation Game" is neither of these films.
The story told by this film is watchable, Cumberbatch renders Turing sympathetically and, somewhat to my surprise, Knightley takes the thinly written role of Joan Clarke and turns it into something with a fair bit of heft.
This is *not* how the German ciphers were broken and it is not even a reasonable depiction of Turing's life, particularly so when it comes to the atrocious way he was treated after the war.You will not find Harold Keen or Gordon Welchman in this film, the writers preferring to insinuate that Turing was wholly responsible for the design and building of the bombe machines (except that Hugh Alexander is credited with the idea for improving their working that was actually Welchman's).
It will undeniably be a huge contender at the big awards this season, perhaps going all the way.Director Morten Tyldum's film follows Turing's journey to break the Enigma Code, the form in which the Germans communicated during WWII to conduct surprise attacks.
The movie focuses on different aspects of his life: it shows him and his team trying to break Enigma, it shows Young Turing during his time at boarding school, and the events after the war.
During the war he as part of a team was involved in breaking the code, the Enigma Code that is.The character of Alan Turing tends to pop up in other novels and films usually in the periphery such as the Robert Harris fictional novel Enigma.The real Alan Turing's story had a tragic ending as he was arrested for homosexuality in the 1950s when it was illegal and committed suicide.
There is a road in Manchester named after him, his work in the field of computers and code-breaking in World War 2 eventually led to a posthumous pardon.The Imitation Game cast Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing and right from the early scenes we see our modern day Sherlock playing a genius like he was another Sherlock Holmes.
The feisty Joan Clarke is seemingly the best of both worlds (a genius and socially adept), but Knightley's portrayal, while delightful, may not quite convince the audience she had a double first in mathematics at Cambridge.Despite covering a complex and intellectual topic, the film gracefully glides between the main story and two other plots.
Thanks to its Oscar-nominated editing, The Imitation Game keeps audiences equally invested in the main story, Turing's troubled time at boarding school, and when he's under investigation for "indecency" (the term used when homosexuality was illegal) a few years after the end of World War II.The Imitation Game is possibly the best film of 2014.
While a few writers and researchers have tried to assign such a retrospective diagnosis to Turing,[106] and it is true that he had his share of eccentricities, the Asperger's-like traits portrayed in the film – an intellectual snob with no friends, no sense of how to work cooperatively with others, and no understanding of humour – bear little relationship to the actual adult Turing, who had friends, was viewed as having a sense of humour, and had good working relationships with his colleagues.Scenes about Turing's childhood friend, including the manner in which Turing learned of Morcom's illness and death.Suggesting that the chemical castration that Turing was forced to undergo made him unable to think clearly or do any work.
The Imitation Game is a historical thriller starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, based on the life of code-breaker Alan Turing.
Benedict Cumberbatch gives possibly the performance of his career.Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician recruited by British Top Secret Intelligence to help crack Enigma, an extremely cryptic code created by the Nazi military during World War II.
Enigma is considered impossible to decipher but Alan, along with his team of code-breakers, believe it can be solved, not necessarily by a lone human, but with a machine.Benedict Cumberbatch was fantastic in this movie.
As the war starts, mathmatician professor Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) arrives at Bletchley Park under the militarist Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) to break the German Enigma code.
An un-sung hero of World War II; Alan Turing, a genius British mathematician who secretly worked tirelessly to decode the German 'Enigma' code within the now famous Hut 8 of Bletchley Park.
It is not long before we see the genius of her work as she proves not only to play a pivotal role in the collaboration to break the 'Enigma' but she also provides Alan with moral guidance and support through his time working alongside her at Bletchley Park.It is apparent by the film's sombre conclusion that the somewhat brief and seemingly convenient engagement to Joan actually had a profound impact in Alan's life.
It's delightful but ultimately fateful to watch on screen as the story begins to unfold and race towards its conclusion.It is fitting that the breakthrough in cracking the German's code comes courtesy of an epiphany of love – sometimes love makes us do things we don't always intend.It is emotionally trying to see the eventual outcome of Alan and his teams' work at Bletchley Park be ultimately foreshadowed by the politics and implications of Alan's homosexuality.Based on the book; Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, Director Morten Tyldum makes his English language debut here with none of the frantic mania that came with Headhunters, but with a more structured and methodical approach that flits between Alan's youth, middle-age and his work during World War II.The screenplay by Graham Moore is crafted with beautiful complexity and precision, gleefully layering in key events from Alan's life, compounding the reality of his tragic end – the relentless bullying at boarding school, his fondness of a fellow student that ultimately ends in tragedy, the constant pressure of hundreds if not thousands of lives lost every day, the discovery of a Russian double agent embedded within Hut 8, all whilst bearing the weight of the consequences of his sexuality, itself the focus of an investigation after the fact in the 1950s in an attempt by a keen detective (played by Rory Kinnear) to act on a Policeman's hunch, after investigating a reported break-in of Alan's place of residence.The simple but terrific score by Alexandre Desplat elevates the emotive narrative; and compounds into reality, the harsh realisation of war.The Imitation Game is the perfect platform in which to showcase the true acting chops of Benedict Cumberbatch in a performance that will remain very memorable indeed and a highlight of his career – a front runner for the Best Actor gong for sure.
The best of British cast, including Kiera Knightly, Mark Strong and Charles Dance all prove to be very able in their supportive roles, not forgetting Alex Lawther in his breakthrough role of young Alan Turing also doing fine work here.Whilst not absolute perfection on all accounts – some pacing issues mid-way through; and jarring usage of CGI depicting sequences on the front line aside, this is clearly a passion project of everyone involved, and one that I can firmly say that without a doubt was very interesting, surprising and emotionally engaging to watch.
While both sides are quite gripping in its own distinct interest, the movie rather picks some conventional choices in its storytelling, making it sort of underwhelming and predictable, but its skilled direction and a terrific performance by Benedict Cumberbatch surpasses that fact, thankfully made most of it worth it.The first hour focuses on how they would break the Enigma code, while it teases some flashbacks where Turing learned his encoding skills.
He's backed up well with Matthew Goode and Keira Knightley, even though there isn't much about their characters, same with other solid supporting like Mark Strong and Charles Dance who are mostly at the background.The Imitation Game still holds a fascinating story which remains itself as a good film.
And maybe we shouldn't even dig deep into it, leaving it stay as a magic of the cinematographic art.As for 'The Imitation Game' itself, it is a very solid movie, gritty and dramatic, just as a life of Alan Turing itself, whose work made a huge influence on the course of the World War II, helping save millions of lives, but who ended up prosecuted in his own country for something that is now considered, if not a norm then, at least, a matter of one's private business.
And while it may sometimes feel that the movies covering the WWII period are too aplenty already and that the filmmakers should move on and look for some fresher and more burning topics, films like 'The Imitation Game' allow us to see a whole epoch via the eyes of a single man, feel not only the world as it was but also what it was for real people to be a part of it, to live in it.But despite having an Oscar-winning screenplay, this film would not be what it is without the people who act it out.
During the World War II, the mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) joins a team of code-breakers at top-secret facility at Bletchley Park to try to decipher the code of the German enigma machine.
Turing is a homosexual genius and along two years, he and his team successfully develop another machine to decipher the enigma."The Imitation Game" is an excellent dramatic thriller based on a true story.
While The Imitation Game does take some artistic license in dealing with the facts, it more than makes up for it by delivering an intense, thrilling and surprisingly funny drama with a tragic ending.The story covers the historical aspects of Turing's work and includes some glimpses of his earlier years in a beautiful, engrossing way, thanks to a stellar performance by Alex Lawther.
There have been plenty movies throughout the cinematic age of war and it's heroes, most of them pay homage to the heroes that defeated armies with their guns and ammunition and occasionally you will get the film that shows the one soldier who stood up and protected his war buddies on the field but how often do you get a film that goes behind all that action and still till this day has done more for mankind and its fight against those that wish to bring it down in one way or another, more than any cape wearing, hammer throwing, green giant or super human possible and best of all this person actually existed.The year is 1951, two police officers are at Alan Turing's a Cambridge Mathematician's home investigating a break and enter whilst during their interrogation Alan begins telling his story of back when he worked in Bletchley Park.
Unfortunately in 1952 Alan is disgraced and sent to prison for the most disgusting reason imaginable I will not give away here...The story of Alan Turing and how he and his machine broke the unbreakable code was a real let down for me, Once the credits began to roll the only things going through my head was what I would have done differently had I directed the film myself, I really expected so much more and I'm more than surprised that such an amazing event in history was dealt with so placidly.
But particularly effective is Matthew Goode ("A Single Man", "Stoker" but perhaps best known to TV viewers as Finn Polmar in "The Good Wife") who is a magnetic big-screen performer and who should be getting more leading actor roles.Also outstanding is young Alex Lawther as Turing the schoolboy who delivers a memorable performance in a challenging role bringing to mind the screen presence of Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense": a young man to watch for the future.The decidedly non-English director is Norwegian-born Morten Tyldum, who directed the outstandingly black but entertaining "Headhunters" back in 2011.Also likely for BAFTA recognition is the Art Direction in this film (Production Design by Maria Djurkovic), which paints a nicely nostalgic vision of war-time Britain, and the costume design by Sammy Sheldon.
Plot.Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.Another movie made due to the lobbying of the gay agenda folks.Thank them for this bore fest that is largely made up and not true in the slightest.In truth...the movie is formulaic and insulting to out intelligence at best.The world doesn't work this way.Oh...and then there's the whole gay agenda thing.
The British Government essentially killed Alan Turing.The man who invented what we now consider the 'computer' and he may have saved 14 million people from death because of his contribution, sorry vast contribution, to the foreshortening of the Second World War through his invention of the Enigma code breaking machine.
With the intertwining story lines of how the British mathematicians are going to break Germany's Enigma code and the challenges Turing faces as a gay man in the 1940s, it strikes a good balance as a gripping thriller that's not an action film and a moving drama that's not a depressing tragedy.
Although Benedict Cumberbatch does a very good job in delivering the complex personality of Alan Turing, for me the more noteworthy performance was Keira Knightley's in what is probably her best one yet.
Hopefully a film will one day come along that can crack the code of Alan Turing's incredibly fascinating life story but The Imitation Game is not that film..
In Morten Tyldum's film, we follow the life of British mathematician and genius Alan Turing, a major force who, along with a team of similarly-minded decoders from Bletchley Park, help to end WWII by decrypting the Germans' top-secret messages called the Enigma Code.
Benedict Cumberbatch is codebreaker Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game," a 2014 film based on the true story of Alan Turing, a mathematical genius and the father of the modern computer.The first review on this site complained that the movie is historically inaccurate.
The idea was to get the code broken in a matter of minutes instead of hours using the machine.Turing is not easily accepted by his coworkers (Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard) but gets along well with Joan (Keira Knightley), who urges him to be a little friendlier because "you're going to need "all the help you can get." They have to fight to continue their work, since it's not happening fast enough for the government.It's been said Benedict Cumberbatch plays the role of a brilliant eccentric well, but this character is the complete opposite of Sherlock, though their minds might work similarly.
The script is full of things we have all seen before, we know roughly how it will end (well the WW2 part anyway) and the dealings with the disgusting attitudes toward homosexuality in the day are not actually explored enough to make us feel as bad as we could do for Turing (although Cumberbatch goes a long way to make us so).Now if you go into watching this movie only thinking that you will find it great then scratch that because I and from what I have seen many others also find this your same old kind of story.
The film is set in World War II England, and follows the story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), and other code-breakers as they attempt to break the Nazi's code machine, enigma.
Some of the best scenes are of Turing's confrontations with a Royal Navy Commander (perfectly played by Charles Dance), and of course, the critical moments with the other members of his code-breaking team (including Matthew Goode and Keira Knightley).There are so many aspects to Turing's story: his impact on ending the war, how society treats true genius, his isolated childhood and final years, the extreme lack of civil rights for homosexuals of the time, and how his work on "Christopher" led to the development of computers.
Alan Turing and his comrades played a crucial role in decoding the Nazi code Enigma, there is of course so much more to the story but The Imitation Game plays out like an old school spy movie, each character has layers of secrets which are unraveled during the course of the film. |
tt0103644 | Alien³ | Scenes that were cut from the theatrical version of the film but restored for the 2003 DVD "Assembly Cut" appear in red. Scenes that appear only in the Theatrical Version and no longer in the Assembly Cut appear in blue.In the opening credits of the film, the Sulaco, the large military ship carrying the survivors from the mission to LV-426 (as seen in the movie Aliens), is en route to Earth. Newt, Hicks, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and the remains of the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) are all safely in hypersleep. However, a stowaway Alien egg on the ship has released a facehugger. It breaks the glass of one of the tubes, wounding itself. Acid dripping from the facehugger starts an electrical fire, and the ship responds automatically. The medical scanner shows the facehugger as it is attached to one of the sleeping figures. Unable to contain the fire, the automated systems of the Sulaco eject all the cryotubes into an escape pod and eject the pod into outer space. The navigation systems lead the escape vehicle to the nearest planet, which happens to be Fiorina "Fury" 161, home to a penal colony populated by life-sentence XYY-chromosome prisoners, all of whom are multiple murderers and rapists. Unsurprisingly, it is owned and operated by Weyland-Yutani, the omnipresent company that employed Ripley. The EEV crash lands in the water near the shore.A man, Dr. Clemens (Charles Dance), wanders alone along the shoreline when he sees a strange figure lying on the beach. It is Ripley, covered in mud and barely alive. Clemens takes her inside and warns the prisoners that an EEV has crash-landed, and that they need to extract it from the water quickly. He performs CPR on Ripley, who starts breathing again. In the meanwhile, the prisoners use oxen to pull the remains of the EEV from the water. Superintendent Andrews (Brian Glover) prepares a message to the Company: Message screens read that the EEV has been salvaged, but the young female (Newt) has drowned, Corporal Hicks is dead, and Bishop is damaged beyond repair. Ripley is the only survivor as she receives immediate care at the infirmary. The prisoners tow the wreckage back to the prison by crane. Spike, the Rottweiler belonging to one of the inmates, barks fiercely at a facehugger that is still inside the EEV that goes unnoticed by the prison crew..Mr Aaron (Ralph Brown), Andrews' assistant, assembles the inmates as they go into prayer. In an attempt to prevent rumours from spreading, director Andrews (Brian Glover) announces the news to the prison population, making note that the only survivor of the EEV crash is a woman. Two prisoners, Morse (Danny Webb) and Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the spiritual leader of the prisoners, view the presence of a woman to be disruptive in the all-male population, out of concern for the spiritual well-being of their brothers, many of whom have adopted a fundamentalist, millenarian denomination of Christianity and have vowed celibacy. Andrews assures them that he has requested a Company rescue team to pick her up. He leaves Ripley in the care of doctor Clemens (Charles Dance), under orders that she's not to leave the infirmary until the rescue ship arrives for her.Ripley awakens from hypersleep and is disoriented, but Clemens stabilizes her with an injection. She is distraught to learn of her circumstances, especially the news that her companions are dead. She demands that Clemens take her to the wreckage of the EEV. He takes her through the blast furnace to the EEV and explains that the prison once accommodated 5000 inmates, but has since been reduced to a custodial staff of 25, to keep the furnace functioning. She hears that Hicks got hit by a support beam upon impact, and was instantly killed. Bishop was lying around in pieces; what was left of him was dumped on the trash heap. The news that Newt drowned in her cryotube after the ship crashed makes her break down in tears, despite Clemens' assurance that Newt probably wasn't conscious when it happened. Before she can process the information, she sees some acid scorching from the facehugger on the side of the cryotube, and immediately suspects the presence of an Alien. Ripley asks to see Newt's body. Clemens takes her to the morgue. He asks her if Newt was her daughter; she denies it. She asks to be alone with Newt for a while. As Clemens leaves, she looks for signs that Newt was impregnated by a facehugger. As there is none, she eventually insists on an autopsy, under the guise of a communicable infection, cholera. Clemens is suspicious, but gives in to her emotional request. The autopsy is gruesome for Ripley to watch, but Clemens finds nothing but the usual signs that the child drowned. Superintendent Andrews and Mr Aaron (Ralph Brown) enter, dismayed that Clemens started an autopsy without their approval. Clemens claims there was risk of infectious disease, and did not want to take any risks. Andrews explains that he wants Ripley confined to the infirmary, as he doesn't wish to upset the religious male population. Ripley insists that the bodies be cremated, to which Andrews protests, until Clemens assures him that the risk of a cholera outbreak is still present. Andrews allows Clemens and the prisoners to prepare a funeral for her friends.Inmates Murphy (Christopher Fairbank) and Frank (Carl Chase) drag a lifeless ox inside the kitchen and hang her upside down to be slaughtered later. They discuss Ripley and seem to forget about their celibacy vows for a moment. Apparently, the ox dropped dead for no apparent reason. As they leave, Murphy finds a dead facehugger. Inmate Murphy (Christopher Fairbank) is looking for Spike, his Rottweiler. He finds the animal, apprehensive and with wounds in its face, but otherwise healthy. He wonders who could do such a thing to a dog.Since the prison was used as a lead works at one time, the prisoners will use the blast furnace to cremate the bodies. Andrews reads a short ceremonial text for the deceased, followed by a chilling and powerful eulogy by Dillon. Unseen by anyone, a new Alien is born: Spike, the Rottweiler, goes into convulsions, and explodes with a chestburster that moves on all fours emerging, running off to some distant location inside the maze-like prison complex. The dead ox in the kitchen starts to twitch, and a chestburster that moves on all fours emerges, running off to some distant location inside the maze-like prison complex.Ripley, whose head is now shaved due to the lice problem on the planet, bathes herself. She has now said goodbye to her new surrogate family, and is once again starting over. In the mess hall, Dillon confronts prisoners Boggs (Leon Herbert) and Rains (Christopher John Fields), who complain about fellow inmate Golic (Paul McGann). They refuse to work with him as they think that he is crazy and smells bad. Dillon reproaches them for this and demands that they treat Golic like an equal. The two reluctantly grumble their agreement. Ripley enters the mess hall and attempts to thank Dillon for his eulogy. Despite his disturbing warning (he informs her that he is a murderer and rapist of women) she sits down at his table. He asks her about her faith, assuring her that although strictly talking, there is no place for women in their adopted religion, they will nevertheless tolerate her.In a private moment, Clemens informs Ripley about the history of the prisoners and the penal colony; how they stayed after the Company closed the prison, their adopted religion and his tense relation with Andrews. She tries to find out how he got his current position as medical officer on such a barren place. Clemens eludes the answer by asking about the real reason for the autopsy, but Ripley evades the question by seducing him. The two of them become attracted to one another and share a sexual encounter.Meanwhile, prisoner Murphy is working in an isolated tunnel when he finds a shed skin. Hearing movement, he thinks it is his dog Spike. He finds the embryonic Alien finishing its metamorphosis into an adult. It attacks him, spitting acid in his face. Blinded and howling with pain, he falls backwards into a gigantic fan and is immediately shredded to bits.Clemens again tries to get information from Ripley, but she wants to know about a barcode she noticed on the back of his head. He says he will tell her some other time. Clemens is called away to investigate Murphy's remains. Andrews is quick to conclude that Murphy was too distracted by the presence of Ripley, and came to close to the sucking fan; Clemens, however, concludes that the fan was blowing in Murphy's direction. He also finds a burn mark, similar to the one Ripley discovered on Newt's tube. When he leaves, Andrews requests a private conversation later.Clemens finds Ripley rummaging inside the EEV wreckage, retrieving its flight recorder. He tells her about Murphy's death and the burn he found. She begins to realize that maybe an Alien did survive after all. Clemens wants to help her, but insists that Ripley trust him, and tell him the whole story. She replies that in order for her to share that information with him, she needs to recover Bishop's remains so she can access information from the EEV's flight recorder. Clemens points her the way to the garbage dump, but he cannot escort her there, as he has a meeting with Andrews.Meanwhile, Boggs, Rains and Golic are prepped to go on a survey assignment. Dillon asks them to light a candle for Murphy on the way. Clemens enters Andrews' office. At first, Andrews is pleasant, but suddenly he turns verbally aggressive. Andrews berates Clemens for letting Ripley wander on alone. He also shares that the installation has received an unprecedented high-level communication from Weyland-Yutani regarding Ripley. The automated communications with the Sulaco have informed them of Ripley's whereabouts, and they have dispatched a rescue team to come pick her up. Andrews understands that Ripley must be very important to them, but can't imagine why. After a hostile exchange with Clemens, where the warden threatens to share Clemens' dark history with Ripley, Andrews grills him about what he might know about Ripley. He can only confirm that she was part of a combat team that was wiped out. Andrews dismisses him.Ripley finds Bishop's remains in the garbage dump. As she tries to leave, she is cornered by three prisoners. They attack her and bend her brutally over a nearby railing, intending to rape her. Dillon rescues her and properly 'reeducates' his brothers, beating them with a piece of steel. As she leaves, Ripley violently punches one of her attackers in the face.Golic finds an old cigarette machine and grabs as much cigarettes as he can, much to the annoyance of Boggs and Rains. Boggs (Leon Herbert), Rains (Christopher John Fields) and Golic (Paul McGann) arrive in a large room and start placing candles to measure the area. However, somewhere in the distance, some candles are being blown out. Assuming one of the inmates is pulling a prank, Rains goes in to investigate. He finds the fully grown Alien, which grabs him and begins biting him. Boggs and Golic come to investigate the screaming, and upon seeing the monster, they run away back to the entrance, only to find Rains' dead body lying there. Boggs is suddenly snatched and attacked from above by the Alien. It rips out Boggs' throat and the blood sprays on Golic, who is momentarily frozen to the spot, seemingly in awe and then flees the area in blind panic.Elsewhere, Ripley reconnects what is left of Bishop to a power supply in the infirmary and reactivates him. He immediately notices Ripley's new hairstyle. Meanwhile, Golic has returned to the mess hall, where an inmate finds him eating, smiling manically while covered in blood. The inmate returns with Dillon and some others, who restrain Golic. Using Bishop to access the flight recorder from the EEV, Ripley finds out that a fire caused their ejection from the Sulaco, and Bishop confirms that an Alien traveled with them to Fiorina 161. This information has been shared with the network, so the Company knows about this as well. As he is beyond decent repair, Ripley grants his last wish, and permanently disconnects him.Golic is dragged into the infirmary, ranting on about a "dragon" that attacked his friends. Andrews and the others dismiss him as insane, but Dillon defends him, stating that Golic may be a fool, but he has never been a liar. Andrews even refuses to believe Ripley after she confirms the story. She requests a meeting with him later that evening, which he grants her after his duties. Ripley tells him all about the Alien, but Andrews is not impressed. She learns that, aside from some knives and fire axes, there are no weapons on the colony. Andrews also doesn't believe her story and confines her to the infirmary until the rescue team arrives.Ripley refuses to recount her story to Clemens, out of fear of being written off as crazy herself. Golic seems to be raving mad, quoting that "in an insane world, a sane man must appear insane", much to Clemens' derision. Ripley asks Clemens about the barcode on the back of his head. Clemens admits that he was a former prisoner on Fiorina, sentenced there after a morphine addiction and a bad medical decision caused several deaths. When the prison was turned into a lead shielding factory and the population reduced, he decided to stay with the inmates, knowing no one else would hire him as a doctor ever again. Pleased with his sincerity, Ripley gives her trust to Clemens, but the Alien suddenly appears in the infirmary, emerging from a ventilation shaft. It immediately grabs and kills Clemens and advances on Ripley, cornering her against a wall. For one terrifying moment, it seems to examine her, pressing itself right up against her cheek, but instead it retreats and takes the body of Clemens with it. Golic gazes in awe and admiration of the creature. Ripley bolts and rushes to the others, who are all congregated in the mess hall. Dillon once again initiates a prayer, in which he vents his anger about the recent deaths, and reprimands his brothers for the near-rape of Ripley. Andrews tries to prevent rumours by presenting his facts. He tells the inmates that Murphy got killed by his own carelessness, and that Boggs and Rains are missing, presumably killed by a deranged Golic; Dillon begrudgingly hears the story. Andrews requests several volunteers to organise a search party for the missing inmates. Suddenly, Ripley dashes in, warning that the Alien is here. Andrews tries to silence her and orders for her to be dragged back to the infirmary, but is suddenly snatched through a vent above him by the Alien, right in front of all the prisoners; the vent drips with blood afterwards.As one of the inmates wipes the floor, the rest of the group congregates in the Assembly area. Dillon again leads a prayer, convinced that the group is now being tested by God for their sins. Now that there can be no question about whether or not they are in danger, the prisoners attempt to deal with their situation. Aaron feels he is Andrews' most logical successor, but the prisoners seem to hold him in low regard by calling him '85', and nobody takes him seriously as leader. Ripley informs the prisoners what she knows about the Alien, although this one is definitely different from the others she has seen. She remembers that the others were only afraid of fire. However, the absence of anything close to weapons or a surveillance system in the prison creates considerable tension amongst the prisoners; Morse even blames Ripley for bringing the Alien with her, suggesting they should kill her; unafraid of Morse's threats, Ripley says she's okay with that. Finally, Dillon restores the peace with his natural leadership, even though he doesn't want to be a leader.An inspection of the floor plan shows that the basement houses a large system of tunnels and a toxic waste containment unit that can be completely sealed off. There are also barrels of highly combustible material left behind in the colony. Eventually they come up with a plan; they will use this material to burn the Alien out of the tunnels, at which point they will force it into the containment unit and trap it indefinitely. Ripley makes an inspection with an inmate, where she learns that Aaron's nickname '85' came from his file, which stated it is his IQ. The inmates start making preparations by mopping the tunnel with the fuel. Some of them start searching for working batteries for the flashlight, while others start working in the narrow tunnels. Dillon notices that Ripley is unwell, seemingly missing doctor Clemens. Unfortunately, the plan backfires when the Alien attacks one of the inmates before they can finish: he drops a flare which ignites the fuel. Many prisoners get trapped in the burning tunnels and their numbers are drastically reduced. Dillon asks one of the prisoners to activate the sprinkler system, while Ripley helps two of the injured people: they appear to be two of the men from the rape attempt. Unexpectedly, the plan to flush out the Alien works: the creature suddenly emerges in the tunnel, blocked at one end by a large group including Ripley and Dillon, and on the other end by prisoner Junior (Holt McCallany). He runs to the chamber, taunting the Alien to follow him. The door is shut and Junior can be heard screaming inside as the creature kills him. After the creature is contained, Dillon activates the sprinkler system, extinguishing the fires. They then move through the tunnels, collecting their dead comrades.Dillon holds a sermon commemorating the dead inmates, as Ripley and Aaron discuss what will happen next. Aaron mentions that the Company will come and kill the Alien. He also mentions that the Company has designated Ripley as top priority. In the meanwhile, Golic is guarded by Morse in the infirmary. He succeeds in convincing Morse to let him out of his straight jacket, since he was innocent of killing Boggs and Rains anyway. Golic briefly states his intention to free the Alien before knocking out Morse, and leaves.Ripley and Aaron send a communication to the Weyland-Yutani network, informing them that they have trapped the Alien and request permission to kill it. A message returns immediately, stating that a rescue team is on its way, and their request for termination is denied. Golic arrives at the containment chamber and tells Arthur (Deobia Oparei), who is standing guard, that he needs to see the beast. Arthur refuses, as the Alien would certainly kill him and escape. Golic suddenly lashes out with a razor, and slashes Arthur's throat, while frantically lamenting what he did. He enters the chamber, and asks the creature what to do next. A shadow closes in on him, and moments later, the Alien is seen running out into the tunnel system.Ripley confronts Dillon with her suspicion that the Company will not kill the Alien, but intends to take the creature with them. Although she is not concerned with what happens to the Company people, she fears the creature will escape and spread to other worlds. Dillon says that he and his friends are outcasts, and can no longer be concerned what happens to the rest of humanity. They are interrupted by Morse, coming in with bad news. They go to the containment chamber and find it empty, with both Arthur and Golic dead. After the fire dies out, a tour through the tunnel identifies 10 dead inmates. Aaron scolds Morse for his ill-fated decision to release Golic. With options seemingly running out, Aaron and Morse argue about what to do, until Dillon ceases their unproductive bickering. Ripley suffers pains in her chest and suspects internal bleeding. Aaron helps her with the biomedical scanner in the wrecked EEV, where they discover something worse: it was Ripley who was impregnated by the facehugger in the Sulaco, and she is carrying an Alien embryo. Even worse, the embryo is a Queen, and therefore capable of replicating the entire Alien colony.Dillon has gathered the inmates in the Assembly area again, updating them on the current state of affairs. He suggests staying in the Assembly area, as it has no ducts, so the Alien could only come through the door. The prisoners argue that since they have no weapons of relevance, they would be trapped there with no way to defend themselves. Morse lights a match for his cigarette; this sparks a sudden realization that the Alien's only fear is fire. Immediately, the group moves towards the much safer furnace area, where they heat will hopefully keep the Alien out.Ripley suspects that Weyland-Yutani knows about the Alien embryo already. She asks Aaron to send a message to the Company, stating that the whole base has gone toxic and they should stay away. Aaron asks why, as he is still under the impression that the Company will come to kill off the creature. Ripley warns him that if the Company arrives, they will take the Alien for their own purposes just like they've always wanted to do. Even worse, they could get hold of the Queen she is carrying, and the whole of humanity will be in grave danger. However, Aaron doesn't believe her story. He wants the Company to come, as his job on the colony is done, so they can take him home to his wife and child. Despite stating that he likes Ripley and it is nothing personal, Aaron refuses to send the message.Knowing that she herself is doomed, Ripley seeks out the Alien in the basement of the complex, hoping it will kill her. She locates the beast and attacks it with a rod, but she finds out that she mistook a rusty pipe for the Alien's head. Immediately, the Alien appears behind her from an overhead space, and lands in front of her.Dillon is in the cell complex, when he is startled by Ripley's sudden appearance. Ripley tells him that she sought out the Alien, but it refused to harm her; it can somehow sense that she is carrying the Queen, which is why it did not kill her in the infirmary earlier. Since she does not want the Queen to fall into Company hands, and knowing that she can never survive the Queen's 'birthing', she asks Dillon to kill her. He agrees to do it, and prepares to give Ripley a fatal blow with a fire axe; however, he has a last-second chance of heart. He refuses to kill Ripley over her objections, stating that it would be a defeat to kill her now with the adult Alien still running around killing people. Instead, the fact that the Alien will not kill Ripley may be used to the group's advantage. Dillon promises to give Ripley a quick and painless death, as soon as the creature is dead.The group congregates in the furnace: Dillon and Ripley's plan is to fire up the blast furnace, lure the Alien into the lead mold and drown it in the hot metal. The prisoners will act as bait, rushing down the corridors of the lead works, closing off all the entrances until the Alien is forced into the mold. Initially, the plan is not met with much enthusiasm; some prisoners, and Aaron, still believe that the Company plans to rescue them by killing the Alien for them. Ripley tells them about the two previous encounters with the Alien, and how the Company relentlessly sacrificed its crew to obtain the creature. Dillon finally convinces the others that it is better to go down fighting than die begging on one's knees, and it may be their first step toward heaven. Aaron still dismisses the plan as foolish, and returns to the top floor to wait for the Company crew.Ripley and Dillon inspect the piston of the leadworks. Since it has not been used for 5 years, it is not certain whether it will work. Ripley will pull the lever to activate the piston that will trap the Alien in the mold, but there will only be one chance to do this as the machinery cannot be reset in time. A few of the inmates discuss Dillon's promise of a place in heaven, and decide that they should try anyway. Prisoner David (Pete Postlethwaite) starts to have second thoughts about running around in the leadworks while being chased by an Alien. Morse yells that the door he is supposed to close is no longer working. A distant scream signals the beginning of the chase. Several inmates successfully lure the Alien through the corridors towards the mold. However, the maze-like design of the leadworks causes a lot of confusion. Several inmates find the remains of their friends, and some get so lost that they end up back at the piston; One prisoner unexpectedly runs into the Alien and gets killed.In the meanwhile, a Company ship is nearing the planet. The prisoners try to stick to the plan, but in the confusion, some unexpectedly bump into each other; David (Pete Postlethwaite) successfully traps the Alien, but it backtracks, corners and kills him. When the beast finally crosses the mold, Ripley hastily prevents Eric (Niall Buggy) from activating the piston in a panic. Dillon enters the tunnels, and finds Kevin (Phil Davis) in the clutches of the Alien. He pulls him away, luring the Alien with them back towards the mold. Kevin dies, but the Alien does not take the bait: it does not enter the mold, but instead grabs Kevin's body and pulls it back into the tunnel. Eric again panics and activates the piston, meaning they have only five minutes to get the Alien back into the mold before the piston shuts it off. Prisoner Jude (Vincenzo Nicoli) makes an attempt, but the Alien grabs him before they can enter the mold. Meanwhile, the Company ship has arrived and several people enter the complex. Aaron receives them; one man immediately asks about Ripley. Aaron explains she is in the furnace. A man with sunglasses enters, followed by a group of people with a steel cage for the beast.Morse runs through a tunnel, bumping into Gregor (Peter Guinness). They joke about the scare it gave them, but the Alien uses their lapse in attention to grab and kill Gregor. Ripley, having found two more dead inmates, enters the tunnel, sends Morse away and taunts the Alien to follow her. Together with Dillon, she finally lures the Alien into the piston. Morse closes the last door, finally trapping the beast in the mold, and runs back up to man the lead platform. Ripley intends to stay in the mold, as she wants to die anyway, but Dillon pulls her with him, stating her promise that the Alien should die before Ripley. They both climb up, but notice the Alien is following them up as well. Dillon decides to stay in the mold to keep the Alien there, comforting Ripley that God will take care of her now. Dillon sacrifices himself by wrestling with the Alien in the mold. Ripley climbs out, and as Dillon's final cry echoes, Morse dumps the hot lead on Ripley's command, completely submerging the creature. Morse cheers, but the lead fails to kill the Alien as it bursts out of the mold, now enraged. It makes for Ripley, who climbs a series of chains to get away from it, but it begins to scramble up after her. Suddenly, Morse shouts to Ripley and reminds her of the sprinkler system hanging above her. Ripley triggers it and dumps cold water over the Alien. The sudden cooling immediately causes cracks and breaks to appear over the Alien, until it finally explodes.Ripley climbs up onto Morse's platform, which hovers above the furnace. When she looks up, she is confronted by Aaron who brought the Company medics and soldiers. The man with the sunglasses moves to the front, and Ripley recognizes him as Bishop (Lance Henriksen). He speaks soothingly to her and tells her that he is not the Bishop android, but rather its human designer, sent by the Company to ensure Ripley's safe return. He tells her that the medic team is there to remove the embryo from her in a simple surgical procedure that will save her life. Ripley asks him what they intend to do with the Alien embryo once it is removed, and Bishop II promises her that they will destroy it, as its cannot be allowed to live. Ripley, however, will be unconscious so she will have to trust them. Ripley gives it some thought, but she knows that the Company really can't be trusted. She closes the fence that separates Morse and herself from the rest of them. Morse moves the platform away from the others and one of the soldiers immediately shoots him in the leg. In response, Aaron hits Bishop II in the back with a lead pipe; the soldiers lethally shoot Aaron. Bishop II, wounded and dazed, yells that he is not a droid, and, as red blood gushes from his wound, begs Ripley not to ruin his chances for studying the alien: "It's a magnificent specimen! You must let me have it!" he shouts at her. Ripley asks Morse to help her one more time, and he moves the platform out over the boiling blast furnace. Walking to the edge, she summons up her strength and drops herself backwards into the furnace, taking her own life. On the way down, the Queen Alien erupts from her chest, but Ripley holds tightly onto it, dragging it with her into the furnace. Ripley's body is finally immersed in the flames.Empty-handed, the Company medics bandage Morse's wound and take him along with them when they leave, abandoning the penal colony on Fiorina 161. During a final pass by the crashed EEV, we hear the radio picking up Ripley's final transmission from the end of the first movie, decades before: "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off." A final Company message screen shows that the Fury 161 colony is to be closed, and its equipment sold as scrap.End credits. | dark, boring, neo noir, gothic, murder, allegory, cult, violence, suspenseful | train | imdb | But even though Weaver is there, the movie just doesn't have the same power as the first two films.Ripley (Weaver) crash lands on a prison planet and is taken in by a doctor (Charles Dance).
Once again its up to Ripley to destroy the monster.The acting in this film was pretty good, and the visuals are amazing, but this movie, as directed by David Fincher, is way too dark and depressing when compared to the first and second films.
Too bad that the director took it down this despairing road with a horrible ending that I never could accept.When compared to the first two movies, this film is second rate.
After all this is I think the truth about this movie: like it is, you can't see it the way it is intended.I just can't believe that someone who directed such a solid and compact movie as Se7en, could make such a horrible mistake: there is no story, there is no center, the whole thing just falls apart in pieces when you watch it.
There were also moments when I thought the music was kicking in way too early or too late, making it some kind of a mere commentary instead of accompanying and enforcing the action (like it is so well done in Star Wars or The X-files just to name a few).I think a better editing could make this movie a whole new experience, getting things at the right moments and making it one whole again, like it proved possible with "Blade Runner".
I for one wouldn't mind to see it one more time, but only the way it was probably intended, so I hope they will give the director a chance to remake this movie and to prove that it is a good one after all..
While "Alien" (1979) was the first film of the saga to make me fall in love with the Horror/Sci-Fi genre, people told me about the first sequel "Aliens" (1986) and how amazing it was from the action and special effects.
Sigourney Weaver plays the lone hero where she thinks that despite being a prisoner, all of her problems are gone where maybe none of the creatures would return...Yet...A face-hugger manages to hijack on the ship where Ripley is sleeping before going after its first victim and later creating the famous monster creature.
The alien goes after the prisoners and guards in the detention center where Ripley must find a way for her and the survivors to take on the single beast.Alien 3 doesn't have the same thrills and drama as the first movie nor the horror and action of the first sequel where fans would go back and take a look at these marvelous scenes.
The uninteresting premise of the film, the uninteresting setting, uninteresting characters, uninteresting story in the end just kill the film.More effort seemed to go into shaving Weaver's head than making the script good.
After how good the first and second movies were I was looking for a great ending to the Ripley saga, BUT NOOOOOOOOO Whoever made Alien 3 must not have ever seen the first two, Alien 3 made no sense it had very little story and some of the worst acting ever.
I would like to begin by pointing out the most glaring error of this movie--the Queen Alien simply could not have brought eggs on board.
Either she laid them (which could not have happened since we saw her after she exited the drop-ship, and she probably needed her reproductive apparatus), or she carried them on board (another impossibility, she wasn't holding them, and even if she was and simply tossed them out while the camera wasn't looking, why would the blasted face-huggers wait for the 30 min - 1 hr period it would take for Ripley to shower, change, fix Hicks up, clean poor Bishop up, and enter the cryo-tube before they {or it} jumped out to latch on.
However, about Alien³, I found the experience very deceiving, cause there's very less action and horror comparing to the 2 first movies, not to mention that on the planet, there's no weapons or modern technology, which makes the film too obscure and fade for the genre.When Newt and Hicks died in the beginning of the film, I felt sorry for them, but we didn't need a so bad conclusion about all the survivors of the Sulaco.
This makes nonsense, and the whole experience shocked me a little when watching it.Oh yes, I saw the special edition of Alien³, and it's far beyond worse than the original film.
What a waste of time it was this bunch of acid that falls on your face...Also, I had the SNES game years ago, and it was very good: we had many Aliens, a new one (the Mother Alien), the same weapons that we saw in previous films and all the stuff that can please you in an action/sci-fi/horror movie.
In the opening, a strong ensemble cast faced a vague sense of menace; over the course of the film, this gradually transformed into a fight to the death between just one of the characters (Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver) and the eponymous beast.
Riply, meanwhile, has transformed into someone almost unimaginably macho; the prisoners are supposedly men with two Y chromosomes, but a desexualised Ripley appears to possess more testosterone than all of them together.The real problem with the film, however, is principally that as the third movie in a franchise, there's not really anywhere new for it to go.
However, if you liked the first Alien the best out of all the movies, you will probably enjoy this film more than I did.
I've seen Alien and Aliens countless time, but have only seen Alien 3 once and that was pretty much enough for the last 15 years.This movie is really just a waste of time, because the few good ideas and interesting things that happen are completely overshadowed by the illogical plot, worthless characters and slasher feel (you could replace the alien with any other movie monster, no problem).I don't think this has anything to do with David Fincher, though.He did not write the story or the script, and those areas are where the major problems lie.Think of all the other movies he has directed since then:Seven, Fight Club, The GameThose are three of my all-time favorite movies, and the ones I didn't list above, like panic room, are still good movies.I just can't believe that it was Fincher causing the problems here, but I can believe that he could be easily pushed around by a studio during his directorial debut (maybe even their fall-guy?).
That's a very inconsistent, half-assed and frankly shitty way to present a movie to devoted audiences.However, I did watch Alien 3 several times up through the last 12 years, and seemed to like it better and better each time.
It completely ruins its predecessor, "Aliens," and was clearly only made to make a quick buck.Fun to watch, but this movie is not a sequel.
Actually, the only real problem with Alien3 is that everyone involved in it, with the exception of David Fincher, Sigourney Weaver, H.R.Giger, and maybe Charles Dance seems to be completely useless.
Where the first two films had darkness and dinginess, or just sheer scale to impress you with, Alien3 just has a rust coloured prison planet that looks like something from Dune.
I recommend this to those who want to watch every movie in this series, and/or all of David Fincher's films.
Fincher tries to mix the dark feeling in the first movie with the 100 % action of ''Aliens''.
But the real crime is that, by answering the question of what happened to the android and little girl Ripley saved in Alien 2, and given what happens to Ripley in this movie, you feel like your investment in the series and in the characters was a complete waste of time and emotion.
One major beef I had with Alien3 was the condescension on Ellen Ripley's part, namely the scene where she is chastising the warden for not having weapons of any sort (it is a prison planet after all, and given its circumstances, hardly not understandable.) Overall, I found the movie bothersome and annoying, an unnecessary sequel that offered little to the mythology or to the moviegoer..
Also, because of the way the scene was shot, I believe the director (David Fincher "Se7en", and "Fight Club") tried to cover up these cheezy effects by only giving very brief glimpses of the alien.
After re-watching the film a second time, I now have come to realize that is not awful like I once thought, it's horrendous beyond belief.
There are those who will say I am being unfair to Fincher since he walked off the project before editing even began and the production was an extremely troubled one, but regardless of how much studio interference comes into play, he ultimately was the man behind the camera and its his directing that makes ALIEN 3 the worst in the series.
Yes, it's true that in a way "Alien" wasn't much different, only difference was that in 1979 this approach was still new and original but not by 1992 standards anymore.Problem is that this movie is fairly standard and mostly predictable.
The aliens proved to be kickass creatures in the first 2 films, and in this one, they should've been dispatched in the same manner as in the 2nd one.Simply killing off Newt & Hicks was a bad idea too.
In the previous two installments of the series, you could have almost called the films "Human" and "Humans" respectively, because the alien was often incidental to the way the human characters related to one another.
It highlights the fact that the characters are not fleshed out enough for anyone to care.Another problem that becomes apparent when watching making-ofs is that the film was rushed into production without even a script to work from.
Alien 3 ruined all of the characters and atmosphere created by the first two movies.I remember walking out of the theatre wanting my money back..
And it is perhaps because of the weighty themes of this film that many fans of the franchise quickly turned their nose up at it.Directly following the events of Aliens, the film's surviving character's escape pod crash lands on a prison planet filled with Double Y Chromosome convicts who have now found religion.
Unfortunately one surviving alien came with the pod and it is not long before it starts feeding off the prison population.A stark contrast to director James Cameron's flashy sci-fi action romp 'Aliens', Alien³ is more of a grim psychological horror where the optimism of the first two films are crushed under a near nihilistic tone persistent in this one.
This makes the rescue of Newt (the last 20 minutes of the fantastic and infinitely superior Aliens) totally redundant.The sets and music are on the whole good but lack the imagination and variety of the previous two films.
On a sort of high from just seeing the first two movies, I was expecting big things from the second "Alien" sequel, and the trailer promised exactly that: "In space, no one can hear you scream...
We must suffer through uninteresting characters that are indistinguishable from each other, dull "turn around and there's the alien" shocks, poor camera work during the action sequences (some would call it style, I call it confusing and obnoxious), and finally the ending that gels perfectly with this bottomless abyss of a movie.
Where Fincher is an original artiste this also quickly becomes annoying when any real suspense is missing (there is a lone alien running around again), the story is a no-story and when no characters (other than Ripley) are even vaguely interesting.
Such as:Why are so many interesting characters introduced (namely Dance), then dropped so arbitrarily?Why does Fincher's direction seem so shaky and unsure (in great contrast to his work in "Se7en")?How could the same writers (mainly Hill and Giler) write a story that has little or no emotional impact and next to no development as far as plot, motivation or even (in the alien's instance) shock value?And you'll notice, once you've seen this film, that it hasn't got the same sensibilities the first film had.
Lots of exasperated sighs at different points, some non-amused laughter and at least one person commented aloud "Aw, jeez!".My feelings, exactly.Three stars for the effort but as far as sequels go, this probably wasn't as "Alien" a product as they wanted to get to the audience..
Sigourney Weaver does her best this time around and she is quite good but David Fincher, who did well after this with 'Se7en', 'The Game', and 'Fight Club', seems like the wrong guy to direct a movie like this as his vision is full of potential but low on actual execution as he looks confused at times in the story he is trying to complete.
Personally I love films which don't have happy ending as they are too clichéd, there is realism to be had, which the series isn't afraid to justify.Despite the lack of originality and the predictability, Sigourney Weaver still maintains that opinionated persona of Ripley and is one of two bright points about this third part.Alien³ was the definitive turn in the series, the time when the Alien was no longer scary and original horror and suspense was thrown out for action convention and special effects..
His movie is ruined by an awfully unimaginative script that essentially repeats the story of the first movie on a remote planet, but it does so without fleshing out the characters, without giving the movie an underlying meaning except for some vague notions of religion (which were apparently taken over from an abandoned script about a religious cult inhabiting the planet).Weaver returns as Ripley, strangely promoted to the rank of Lieutenant since Aliens (impossible really, since there is no time gap between the second and third movie to allow this to happen).
It also has some style by director David Fincher, I liked his point of view shots of the Alien.
I mean the film literally throws out everything that made the other two films great: Horror thats actually decent, suspense, setting, good alien design, STORY, acting, soundtrack, giving the audience what it wants etc.
But once again little bit of emotional scene between him and Ripley alien comes up behind him middle of the film I might add and dead, just as quickly as he kills off the two surviving characters earlier on.
Oh and I forgot to mention for some stupid unexplained reason Ripley happens to have an alien queen inside of her so she has to kill herself then end of film.
A few hints if Fincher can read this on how to have improved YOUR film: Firstly characterise characters you actually want to survive it is very confusing for the audience to portray someone as good and great then kill them with no one left characterised to hope to survive the ordeal.
why kill off the best characters from the previous film within the first five minutes for no reason whatsoever?, why use a script that is utterly poor and the most basic of storys?, why does David Fincher expect sympathies or an emotive reaction from characters he didn't even characterise?
It seems David Fincher wanted to combine the elements of the first two films to create a dark, foreboding action movie.Something just didn't work.
Now instead of continuing their story, as seems logical, Alien 3 simply kills all these lovable characters, with the exception of Ellen Ripley, within the first five minutes.
I only realised after watching it that I'd seen the Special Edition that restores extra scenes that David Fincher wanted in there - I must recommend the Special Edition, without these scenes ( http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alien+3+scenes&aq=f ) I can imagine the film would feel shallower and rushed.**spoiler**I also liked the idea that the Alien wouldn't touch Ripley because it knew she was breeding the Queen.
Another factor that contributed to the failure of the film in the U.S. was that the film was very depressing and dark that ended up taking the audience by surprise that he expected a direct sequence of aliens, which did not happen, Fincher went further and kill the most charismatic characters of the james cameron movie(well done)This movie is a classic and one day will get the recognition it deserves.
Yet it wasn't enough for David Fincher to make a mound of garbage such as this, in the process he felt it necessary to completely obliterate the Alien movies by totally disregarding everything that had come before his film.
I'm not saying he had to make the same kind of movie as the previous two films, but to kill two main characters in the first five minutes of a sequel, two characters that we had invested so much time in in Aliens, and to do it without blinking an eye is not only inexcusable, but makes Alien 3 so downbeat from the start, it's hard to care one iota about what comes afterward.
but with Alien3, i think the story of Lt. Ripley finally comes onto its own.unlike most of its detractors, i actually believe the third installment does NOT disregard the second movie.
in fact, i believe it used Mr Cameron's Aliens as the perfect set-up for Ripley's final descent and eventual transcendance from the Alien.this installment is definitely more thoughtful, a lot slower and more of a character study than the first two films.
Alien 3 seems more personal than the other films, perhaps because it centers entirely on Ripley's character.
Without the sympathy for Ripley from the previous ALIEN movies and only minor flashes of humanity from the prisoners themselves, the film is without sympathetic characters worthy of redemption.
I think this movie is a much better sequel to the original than ALIENS.
It shows us the alien as a creature superior to the human being (like in the first movie). |
tt0035612 | The Adventures of Tartu | In 1940, demolition expert Captain Terrence Stevenson, an Englishman born in Romania and educated in Germany, is summoned to the Foreign Office. Because Stevenson knows both Romanian and German fluently, he is asked to go on a mission disguised as Romanian chemical engineer Jan Tartu and destroy a poison gas factory in Czechoslovakia. After parachuting into Romania, "Tartu," dressed as a dandy and assuming the air of a gigolo, travels toward Czechoslovakia, pretending to be sympathetic to Germany and wanted by the Romanian people because of it. Arriving in Czechoslavakia, Tartu stops at the shop of his contact, a shoemaker. Before putting Tartu in touch with the underground, the shoemaker is arrested in a Gestapo raid, but Tartu escapes. Wearing a German uniform, Tartu then goes to work at a war materiel plant and is told to keep his eyes open for Czechs who try to stop production. At his hotel, he encounters Marúschka Brunn, a formerly wealthy Czech who fraternizes with the Germans and flaunts her distaste of her own people. One day, a woman is shot for sabotage at the plant and landlady Anna Palacek's daughter Pavla, who works at the plant, arrives at home very upset. When German officers arrive to investigate the death of a fellow officer, Tartu gives her an alibi and hides a gun for her. Pavla and Anna now say that they will do anyting for him and he reveals that he must contact the underground to fulfill a secret mission. A short time later, Marúschka asks to see him and he invites her for dinner at a nightclub. They begin to realize their mutual attraction, and, as he gets to know Marúschka, Tartu deduces that she is really anti-Nazi. In the restaurant's garden, each decides to take a chance on the other. She tells him that she works with Pavla in the underground and will put him in touch with her compatriots. The next day, Pavla is caught in an act of sabotage. Because the Gestapo know that Tartu has seen it, Pavla secretly implores him to save himself and give her away. To fulfill his mission, Tartu does so, and she is shot. Meanwhile, Marúschka goes to the underground council and tells them about Tartu, but when they inform her about what happened to the shoemaker and Pavla, she concludes that he is really a Nazi. They then order her to "eliminate" him. After talking with Anna, Marúschka decides that "one Nazi should get rid of the other." She goes to Inspector Otto Heidrich, a Nazi admirer staying at the hotel, and convinces him that Tartu is a spy. She asks Otto not to call the Gestapo, but to take care of Tartu himself to further his career. They plot to kill Tartu that evening, and she arranges to meet Tartu on the nightclub's terrace. She tells Tartu that she is not a member of the underground, and, as he relates that he is being transferred the next day, Otto prepares to kill him. Just then, however, all officers are ordered to review everyone's papers, and when a young man is killed escaping, Otto's plan is interrupted. In the morning, Tartu reports to the poison gas works and is told that he must memorize the gas's secret formula quickly because the gas will be shipped in two weeks. That night, he goes to a bar and, pretending to be roaring drunk, boasts of his knowledge of the underground. When he leaves, members of the underground follow him, knock him out and take him away. When he comes to, he tries to convince them that he is a British agent, even when they say that they are actually the Gestapo. After they realize that Tartu is telling the truth, they offer to help him sabotage the poison gas bombs. To do this, they create very powerful but tiny bombs that Tartu can smuggle into the plant. Next morning, Otto confirms to Marúschka his findings that Tartu is not a Nazi. Now concerned for Tartu's safety, she starts to flirt with Otto and suggest that he delay calling in the Gestapo to keep the credit for exposing Tartu for himself, then knocks him unconscious. With Anna's help, she quickly leaves after realizing that Otto is dead and goes to the gas works and asks to speak with Tartu, coyly pretending to be his girl friend. She warns Tartu, but he says he cannot leave and tells her to inform the underground that he is planting the bombs right away. As he furiously places the bombs, there is an announcement on the loud speaker that exposes him as a spy. After a desperate chase, he is finally able to escape just before the gas works is sealed off and is picked up by the underground as the explosions begin. Because Marúschka has now become a liability, the underground decides to send her away, and she happily escapes with Tartu in a stolen Nazi airplane. | murder | train | imdb | The versatile Robert Donat is Captain Terrence Stevenson a.k.a. Jan Tartu, a British spy well versed in Russian and Rumanian that is assigned to aid Czech partisans in destroying a poison gas factory operated by Nazis.
A good-sized budget, wonderful stars, a good script and excellent direction by Harold Bucquet make for a top-notch British film, "Sabotage Agent," made in 1943 and starring Robert Donat, Valerie Hobson, and Glynis Johns.
Donat plays a British soldier sent to destroy a poison gas the Nazis are making in Czechoslovakia.
There, posing as an Iron Guard member, Jan Tartu, he draws attention to himself as a loud dresser and a ladies' man while trying to infiltrate the underground.The severely asthmatic Donat goes all out in this one, playing his Tartu character to the hilt, preening and raising his arm as he says "Heil Hitler" every other minute, it seems.
Glynis Johns plays a young girl who lives with her mother in the conscripted house, but she also works in the factory where "Tartu" is assigned as a guard.
This propaganda film pits a British-born, German-educated, chemical engineer (Stevnson - Robert Donat) who speaks Rumanian, German and Russian fluently against Nazis in Eastern Europe.
Captain Stevenson becomes an Iron Guard named Tartu (the real Tartu is dead) and heads off, with minimal briefing and no espionage experience, to upset a Nazi plot.
Donat, Glynnis Johns and Valerie Hobson are especially good.
Here, however, he is in fact a man of action, two-fisted and able to handle a pistol as well, sort of a James Bond-type character.He gets good back-up acting support from some dependable character actors and shares billing with lovely Valerie Hobson, who seldom gave a bad performance, and with whom there is apparent chemistry, the kind that two pros can generate.
Donat's army captain gets drafted to impersonate a German-speaking Rumaninan dandy, to infiltrate and destroy a German poison gas camp in Czechoslovakia.
This extremely well-paced 1943 spy film shot in England during the Second World was directed for MGM by British-born Harold S.
If the film has a weakness it is the performance of that wooden English rose, the beautiful Valerie Hobson,(Mrs.Profumo in life) whose not quite up to Donat's delightful mix of romance and melodramatics..
Robert Donat gives a very spirited performance as a British spy fluent in languages who is assigned to sabotage a Nazi gas factory in Czechoslovakia.
He's more action-oriented than usual in a role requiring a lot of physical action while keeping one step ahead of the Nazis.His spying activities also include some romantic moments with lovely Valerie Hobson, a woman who openly flirts with Nazi officers while working with the Czech underground.
Especially good are Walter Rilla as an officer in love with Hobson and Glynis Johns in a small role as an ill-fated Czech loyalist.Highly recommended as one of the best espionage yarns from the U.K. during the war years..
"Sabotage Agent", also known as "Adventures of Tartu", is a first-rate British spy thriller.
It is a quick and entertaining movie about a British spy, whose mission is to destroy the poison gas factory in Rumania.
Robert Donat is very good as the British spy who poses as a Greek and a Rumanian.
Never seen Walter Rilla before or since, but he gave a good performance as the German officer, Otto, who is one of the villains, who loves Ms. Hobson's character..
Robert Donat's Eastern European background and fluency in a few languages make him the ideal choice for British Secret Service to send on a mission to destroy a Nazi poison gas factory in occupied Czechoslovakia.
In a brief prologue with Donat disarming a buzz bomb that landed in a hospital, we see an example of how he keeps his cool under fire.Sabotage Agent next has Donat in Czechoslovakia disguised as a refugee from the Nazi sympathizing Iron Guard of Romania.
Donat moves effortlessly from the stiff upper lip British agent to the bumptious Jan Tartu of Romania.
Another agent is Valerie Hobson who like Donat is always good.
This was more like something from James Bond.Nevertheless Donat and Hobson give good characterizations and also Glynis Johns as another Czech patriot gives a memorable performance..
Sabotage Agent - a Super Action Film of the WWII Era. My first hint that this movie was great was an early scene between Robert Donat and the actress who plays his mother, Mabel Terry-Lewis.
Donat plays each of his secret identities with a confident, warm-hearted air.I usually hate chase scenes but the only one in this film was truly exciting.TCM advertised this movie as Sabotage Agent, so keep an eye out for it under that title.
"The Adventures of Tartu" has a fine opening scene, quickly establishing Robert Donat as a cool and collected expert in defusing bomb which hadn't exploded in one of the Nazi's blitzes of London.
Donat essayed a similar role in "Knight Without Armour" (1937) in which he was a British spy posing as a Russian revolutionary during and after WWI, but that film was far superior on every level to this one.
Still, any film with Donat is interesting at the very least, and "Tartu" is fairly good.Thus far (as of 2013) a very clear print of this motion picture hasn't surfaced, but perhaps Criterion will restore/release one in the future, should the British Film Institute or some such other organisation have a good transfer from the original negative on hand..
"Sabotage Agent" (aka, The Adventures of Tartu) is an excellent WWII action film.
It then moves into an espionage and spy thriller, and gives a very good account of the underground that operated in Nazi-occupied countries.
It was a much more involved thriller with Robert Donat as a British Officer who goes to Romania to hopefully destroy the latest in Nazi poison gas.
Unlike Saddam Hussein, the Nazis really did have WMDs and the release of a gas like this could have turned the war.Donat is best remembered for his Academy Award winning performance in Goodbye Mr. Chips.
She was a "stand by your man" wife and gave up acting to work with the developmentally disabled.She gave an excellent performance as someone who openly flirted with the Nazi's, but was actually a member of the underground..
During WW2, Robert Donat (Tartu) is selected to act as a British agent with the mission to blow up a factory that is making poisonous gas for the Nazis in Czechoslovakia.
Valerie Hobson (Lanova) plays a Nazi sympathiser who is lodging at the same house as Donat but is she what she seems?
Factory worker Glynis Johns (Paula) is also at the house.The film has a story that keeps you watching and at the end it turns into a bit of a James Bond adventure as Donat has to do some pretty miraculous things all in the name of action sequences.
This film pits a chemical engineer (Captain Stevenson) who is fluent in Rumanian, German and Russian against Nazis.
Stevenson becomes an Iron Guard named Tartu and attempts to upset a Nazi plot by destroying a poison gas factory.
Robert Donat had gotten into film when talkies began, and won the oscar for "Goodbye Mr. Chips".
Lively, Well Produced British War Time Spy-Thriller.
With a Bigger Budget than usual, this Movie Stars Popular and Charming Actor Robert Donat on a Mission to Destroy a Nazi Chemical Weapons Plant...Single Handedly.Donat, Turns it Up, maybe a notch too much sometimes, as an Effeminate Flake of an Engineer with Wild Gestures and Over Emoting.
For this reason, instead of a team of well-trained saboteurs going in to execute the mission, a single tri-lingual army captain (Robert Donat) is parachuted in and has to make contact with "the Underground" in order to carry out what would be a huge, complicated mission in real life.
They sound quite interesting together on screen.Donat spends most of this WW2 drama wearing a Nazi uniform and saying things like 'Heil Hitler'.
We see some brief stock footage of the actual Blitz, with London in flames; unfortunately, this dose of reality contrasts sharply with the fictional sequences that follow.Donat is soon conscripted to go undercover in Czechoslovakia, using the identity of a dead man named Jan Tartu.
Donat's mission is to make contact with the Czech resistance and blow up a Nazi chemical factory.
Donat continues his Nazi act when another resistance agent (a haggard middle-aged woman) is arrested.
But the third time the Nazis try to bounce a Czech, the resistance agent is an attractive young woman ...
so *this* time, for some reason, Donat endangers himself and his mission to save her.Valerie Hobson, whom I've always liked, is cast as a Czech woman who appears to support the Nazi cause but who is actively involved in the resistance.
Despite a relatively small film output (roughly 25 movies I believe) Donat showed a wide variety of different parts, including comedy, historical, character studies, spy films (including THE 39 STEPS for Hitchcock), and straight drama.
Fans of GONE WITH THE WIND may have cause to grumble (forgetting Gable already won the Oscar as "Peter Warne" in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT) but fans of Donat (and they included Walter Matthau, who said he was his favorite actor) have never complained.SABOTAGE AGENT is known in the U.S. as THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU.
"Jan Tartu" is the false identity name given to Donat's character Captain Terence Stevenson when he is sent on a mission into Czechoslovakia during World War II.
The ADVENTURES OF STEVENSON would have been less misleading on this point, but people might have thought that it referred to the author of TREASURE ISLAND.Stevenson, a linguist, has been on home watch duty, but is selected for the mission due to his grasp on central European languages, specifically, Czech, Roumanian, and German (a neat trick, by the way, as these are from three separate language groups: Slavic, Latin, and Germanic - Stevenson must have been like my father, a real super expert on foreign tongues).
Of course the partisan escapes while the Nazis are forced to see "Tartu" pounding on a wall as though he is doing something remarkably clever.The mission is to find the secret factory where a deadly new gas is being manufactured (this is a running theme in many films of the 1930s and 1940s - a secret poison gas that some country is manufacturing to use on the battlefield: memories of the battles of World War I prevented people from considering poison gas used on civilian prisoners for "ethnic cleansing" purposes).
With the assistance of Glynis Johns and Valerie Hobson Donat does find the factory, cleverly hidden within a mountain.
Now the problem is to destroy it, which leads to an exciting conclusion within the factory within the mountain.Unusual for most Donat films (only KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOUR has as much daring-do involving Donat and co-star Marlene Dietrich fleeing the Bolsheviks in 1919) THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU is a good escapist film.
The performances are good, with Johns quite moving as she sacrifices herself for Donat's mission, and Hobson being forced to descend to murder to help as well.
When the film begins, Robert Donat is a bomb disposal expert working during the Blitz.
Despite this stupid plot element, the rest of the film is pretty interesting--especially when the Underground decides he is a Nazi and mark him for death!
I was actually very surprised that the British film industry had such sets or had access to a factory like this--it was huge and impressive.
While far from Robert Donat's best, it's a solid WWII propaganda movie from start to finish..
The Adventures of Tartu aka Sabotage Agent is a cut above the mass produced war movies of the 40s.
Soon enough he's off to try to contact the Czech underground, disguised as one Jan Tartu, a now deceased Romanian Iron Guard member.
You go from moment to moment wondering who is for the good and who is for evil, even when in reality you know.Robert Donat is marvelous here as the English chemist who goes to Czechoslovakia to destroy a Nazi based gas plant.
Go know that she is really working for the Czech anti-Nazi underground.Glynis Johns appears briefly as the young lady who attempts sabotage in the film and then condemns herself to death as she realizes that Donat saw her do this and that he would blow his cover if he said otherwise.Exciting with a host of Nazi characters, one worse than the other..
***SPOILERS*** With the British Foreign Office getting wind of a plot by the evil Nazis developing this new strain of poison gas that's 1,000 times more powerful then mustard & chlorine they decide to go into action to stop them.
It's decided to parachute drop British bomb defusing expert and part time chemical engineer Terry Stevenson played by Robert Donat, who's been rumored to be the hair to the "Dunkin Donut" fast food empire, being dropped into Nazi occupied Czechoslavakia where the Nazis are secretly developing the deadly gas.Taking the identity, with false papers provided to him by the British Foreign Office, of deceased Romanian chemical engineer and army officer Jan Tartu Stevenson gets a job at the Czech Skoda works or factory where the poison gas is being developed.
While staying in Czechoslavakia at the Palacek residence Stevenson using the name Jan Tartu then tries to get in contract the the Czech Underground, a group of real bad dudes, to help him sabotage the Nazis attempt to make the gas.
And even worse Tartu gets romantically involved with Nazi loving Maruschka Brunn, no relation to Eva, played by Valerie Hobson who if she finds out who he really is and what he's up to, destroy her beloved Nazis plans to developing the super poison gas, can blow his and the British Foreign Offices plans of stopping them out of the water!***SPOILERS*** As it later turns out the Nazi loving Maruschka is really working for the take no BS, from the Nazis and anyone else, Czech Underground and using her both beauty and charms to get vital information from the Nazi high Command, who are falling all over themselves to get a date with her, to relay back to them as well, by short wave radio, the allies.
It takes a while for Tartu to convince the bad a** Czech Underground that he's the real deal a British secret agent not a die in the wool Nazi for them to go along with him on his mission.
That's to blow up the Skoda Works Factory with everyone in it the Nazis and even the slave Czech worker, which considering the circumstances was a small price to pay, to keep the deadly gas from being developed and later used against the allied forces fighting a life and death struggle against Hitler's Germany.
*Spoiler/plot- 1943, A British Army native Romanian chemist is sent into learn about and destroy a Natzi poison gas and its factory plant.
He assumes the identity of a Romanian Natzi officer and with the help of the Czech underground is successful.*Special Stars- Robert Donat, Glynis Johns *Theme- Natzism must be stopped by brave men and women of the world.*Trivia/location/goofs- British, Watch for a very young new actress, Glynis Johns as a munitions worker sabotage agent.*Emotion- An rather enjoyable WW2 spy film with all the intrigue and suspense of a mystery novel.
While full scale efforts against Germany in Norway, Greece and France were full scale disasters, the notion in propaganda films was that one man could wreak almighty justice upon the Nazi monster.In SABOTAGE AGENT aka ADVENTURES OF TARTU, the slight and sickly Robert Donat is gotten up as a master war hero.
It is Donat's mission to blow up the factory before they can ship the gas which he does escaping with his new girlfriend and assorted helpers and contacts in a stolen JU-88 .Its been said that when Goebbels saw British propaganda he was so thrilled that it was so crude because that meant German propaganda was so superior.
Robert Donat is a British chemist sent into Rumania, through Germany, into Czechoslovakia to sabotage a huge industrial plant where the Nazis are manufacturing vast amounts of poison gas.
But Donat succeeds in his mission, blows the plant to smithereens, and makes a suspenseful escape with Hobson and a few other patriots in a Junkers 88.For such a complicated yet slight tale, the story generates a good deal of suspense.
aka Tartu (1943) aka Sabotage Agent (1943)Directed by Harold Bucquet, with a story by John Higgins and a screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Howard Emmett Rogers, this slightly above average espionage thriller was the first film MGM Studios was able to get Robert Donat to agree to do after his Oscar winning performance in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939); he had a right of refusal clause in his contract.As British Captain Terence Stevenson, who defuses a bomb in a partially collapsed London hospital during World War II, Donat's character is asked to assume the identity of Romanian chemist Jan Tartu in order to infiltrate and destroy a German poison gas factory hidden in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
As Tartu, he pretends to be a dandy that wants to serve der Fuhrer (Adolf Hitler), but must make contact with the Czech resistance while avoiding detection and capture by the Nazis for whom he'll work.
Valerie Hobson, Walter Rilla, Glynis Johns, Phyllis Morris, and Martin Miller are among those who also appear in key roles.When the only contact Tartu knows is captured, and later killed, right after they'd met, he must find a way to find and get help from the Czech resistance without alerting Nazi Inspector Otto Vogel (Rilla) and the other Germans.
In the meantime, careless Paula is caught trying to sabotage some of the artillery shells by another Nazi officer right while Tartu is nearby.Quick on his feet, Tartu decides to go straight to the plant's manager with a cover story that he'd been making friends with some of the Czech's to infiltrate their resistance. |
tt0145681 | The Bone Collector | The credits appear over newspaper articles and photos detailing the successful career of forensic expert Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington). One story details Rhyme's involvement in convicting a cop.Rhyme is investigating a transit cop's death in a sewer tunnel when a falling concrete beam crushed him. He wakes up in a hospital bed, a quadriplegic. A man and his wife (Gary Swanson and Olivia Birkelund) are at the curb at the airport early in the morning, looking for the person they expect to pick them up. When their ride doesn't show, they take a taxi. The cab driver kidnaps them to a desolate part of town, but before we learn more Rhyme wakes up in his apartment which is fully equipped to manage his medical care. Rhyme's medical tech Richard Thompson (Leland Orser) tells him his heart monitor is faulty.Dr. Barry Lehman (John Benjamin Hickey) arrives to talk about Rhyme's request for assisted suicide. He agrees to help Rhyme the next weekend. His nurse, Thelma (Queen Latifah), listens and watches.Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) is brooding by the window of her apartment. She's a patrol cop and her boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale) pressures her to make a commitment to their relationship, but she refuses. On the street, she responds to a radio call and finds the man from the cab buried in the rocks, with only his hand showing. One of his fingers is missing. On the nearby railroad tracks she sees a pile of sand, a note, and a bolt. She stops an oncoming train and ask Chris (Christian Veliz), the boy who reported the dead man, to buy her a disposable camera. She photographs everything including a footprint nearby.A masked man is dragging the woman from the cab through underground tunnels. She is handcuffed and gagged. He attaches the handcuffs to chain around a pipe and leaves her.Captain Howard Cheney (Michael Rooker) arrives at the crime scene and meets Detective Solomon (Mike McGlone), then is directed to Donaghy. She gives the evidence she collected and the camera to Detective Paulie Sellitto (Ed O'Neill). Cheney dresses her down for stopping the train.Rhyme is visited by Sellitto and Solomon, who describe the crime scene to him. The victim's name is Alan Rubin, a wealthy NY builder worth several million dollars. His wife's wedding band was forced onto one of his fingers, stripped of flesh. Rhyme believes it's a kidnapping and a ransom demand will be forthcoming. Rhyme has a seizure and passes out.When he wakes up, he looks at the evidence and crime scene photos left behind by Sellitto on a large monitor. The note is a torn page from a book. The page number is 119. There's a newspaper clipping from 1913 with 4PM circled.Donaghy is receiving an introduction to the youth services division that she has just transferred into. Rhyme has her pulled out of the training session and, when she arrives, he praises her excellent forensic work and photography. She says she read his book in the academy. He believes the book page number and time refers to the current day's date, three hours from now. Rhyme thinks the man's death scene is staged and that it indicates the woman will be killed at 4:00. He asks Donaghy to help on the case. She refuses, but her boss overrides her. The cops set up workstations and desks around Rhyme's spacious apartment.In the tunnels, a masked man shaves a wooden stick and looks at a pocket watch. The kidnapped woman, Lindsay Rubin, her mouth covered in duct tape and her wrists handcuffed to the pipe, watches.The investigators learn that the bullet taken from Alan Rubin was from an old Webley pistol. The bolt has three initial "NSG" embossed on it, and it's not steel, but iron, meaning it too is very old. They also look into the asbestos found at the crime scene. Rhyme tells Donaghy to identify all locations where asbestos is currently being remediated in Manhattan.Crime technician Eddie Ortiz (Luis Guzman) arrives and sets up a portable forensics lab. Eddie finds a scrap of very old paper on the bolt. The sand appears to be ground up oyster shells. Rhyme remembers a police case from 1913 where a body was found in crushed oyster shells in downtown Manhattan, near the Woolworth building.Rhyme asks Donaghy to investigate the area, encouraging her to trust her instincts. As they drive there, Sellitto tells Donaghy about Rhyme's superior expertise in forensics, his interest on collecting eclectic stuff, and examining it. She asks about his family, and Sellitto says he has cut off contact with his only sister.Underground, the masked man loosens another bolt from a steam pipe. He rotates a very large pipe around so the opening faces Lindsay Rubin. Eddie tells Rhyme that the iron bolt was primarily used for assembling steam pipes. . Rhyme tells Sellitto that there is a steam junction in downtown Manhattan where steam is released from the pipes everyday at 4:00 pm. Rhyme tells Amelia to put on a radio headset and prepare to enter the steam tunnels to work the crime scene if Lindsay Rubin can't be rescued. Donaghy enters the sewer tunnels. The Department of Steam is unable to turn the apparently frozen valve. Donaghy can hear Lindsay Rubin, but a new wall of construction blocks cuts off access. The steam pipe workers break the steam valve and learn it has been tampered with. Lindsay Rubin is burned to death.An Emergency Services team blows an opening in the concrete block wall. Donaghy enters and describes the scene in detail to Rhyme over the radio. Donaghy is terribly upset when she sees Lindsay's burned corpse. She finds a piece of wood, hair clippings, and a bloody bone shard. Under Rhyme's direction, she tells Rhyme that Lindsay was bound with old-fashioned shackles, with a chain around her waist, and a rope around her feet. Lindsay has a surgical-style wound on her forearm. Rhyme wants her to saw off the hands to preserve the cuffs. Donaghy tries but then refuses and goes home. Rhyme researches Donaghy's background and learns that her father, a cop, committed suicide, and that Donaghy found the body. Det. Solomon goes to Donaghy's apartment, but when she doesn't answer the door, he tries her window. Donaghy arms herself and nearly shoots Solomon. He tells her that Rhyme believes the evidence she collected indicates there's another victim in play, and that Rhyme needs her help.Outside a nightclub, a student (Danial Brochu) gets into a cab and disappears. A witness reports that she saw the cab driver hit the student before driving away. The taxi driver takes the bound and gagged student to an abandoned building. The masked man ties the student to a post at floor level and cuts him repeatedly.Rhyme's team discovers the bone fragment is from bovine, from a cow, and discover more old newspaper embedded in it. The hair is from a rat, shaved. Donaghy suggests that the perp might be a cop. Rhyme tells the team to look for the location of old stockyards and slaughterhouses.Rhyme sends a team to one of the old slaughterhouses, decommissioned in 1898. Donaghy goes in first and finds the dead student. He has been eaten by rats attracted to the numerous bleeding incisions. Donaghy describes the scene to Rhyme, while the team outside tries to delay the NYC ESU unit, led by an official in contact with Cheney, from contaminating the area. The student is missing a chunk of flesh from his leg. Donaghy finds a matchbox and a piece of old paper. Cheney removes Rhyme from the case, but Rhyme tells Ortiz to continue his research.Captain Cheney's team finds a finger print and match it to a taxi driver with a criminal record. They raid his repair shop only to find him dead under a vehicle and missing a finger. Cheney demands Donaghy turn over the evidence she collected, but she demands a chain of evidence receipt, which Cheney refuses to provide.Donaghy takes the evidence to Rhyme. Ortiz produces records of old unsolved homicides that include evidence of missing flesh. Each homicide also had a message buried in the evidence, but no one noticed. Rhyme has another seizure and passes out. Thelma tells Donaghy about Rhyme's request for assisted suicide, and while Donaghy waits for Rhyme to wake up, she looks at his badge, awards and photos. Cheney tries to see Rhyme, but Thelma refuses to allow him to enter, and Cheney vows to come back with a warrant.A grandfather and his granddaughter get into a taxi at the airport. A taxi inspector stops the taxi and questions the taxi driver about why his flag is down. The driver kills him and speeds away. The little girl screams.Sellitto calls Rhyme to report the taxi incident, while Rhyme examines the paper clippings, uncovering a logo from an old book publisher. Amelia goes to a bookstore and finds a book called, The Bone Collector, which contains stories describing the murders already committed. One of the final chapters illustrates a man and girl hanging from a rope over water. Rhyme thinks the odd smell from the paper is diesel, and he remembers an old diesel refueling station on Staten Island. Amelia searches for and finds them tied to a pier, drowning under the rising tide. Rescue crews are unable to resuscitate the grandfather, but the little girl survives.Donaghy looks for clues and finds a map, a bone, and a piece of metal that looks like a cop's badge. The map shows an old subway map, and Rhyme thinks the killer is at the southernmost station. Cheney arrives and Amelia sneaks off to the station described by Rhyme. There are footprints in the abandoned station, and she finds a train numbered 78499. She tries to remember the number, and realizes it's the same as Rhyme's police badge number that she saw earlier at his apartment.A man knocks at Rhyme's apartment door and when Thelma opens the door, he stabs and kills her. Someone enters the apartment and washes their hands. Richard Thompson, the medical technician who has been maintaining Rhyme's medical equipment, appears. He says Thelma is in the hall, but when the phone rings, he yanks the phone line and disconnects the power to Rhyme's monitor. Thompson reminds Rhyme of a forensics cop in Syracuse, New York, named Marcus Andrews who was suspected of doctoring evidence to obtain false murder convictions. Rhyme's expert testimony put him in jail for six years. Thompson / Andrews tells Rhymes that as a cop he was brutalized every day while in prison. When Thompson / Marcus tries to lower the bed, Rhyme uses his mouth control to suddenly lower the bed and trap Thompson / Marcus' hand. Thompson / Marcus pulls his hand out, but his fingers are mangled. He pulls Rhyme off the bed and as he prepares to stab him, Rhyme bites him in the neck. Thompson / Marcus retrieves a carving knife, and as Thompson / Marcus prepares to stab Rhyme, Donaghy appears and shoots Thompson.Sometime later, Rhyme is using a motorized wheelchair and living with Donaghy. It's Christmas, and all his friends show up, including his estranged family and niece. | revenge, neo noir, murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0092608 | Back to the Beach | In the opening scene, Bobby (Demian Slade), a 14-year-old punk teen wearing black leather clothing with a few facial piercings, narrates the story about his parents; his father (Frankie Avalon) was known as the Big Kahuna, a professional surfer from southern California who was also a teen idol and pop singer in the 1960s. His mother Annette (Annette Funicello) as a former "Mouseketeer" on the original Mickey Mouse Club TV series whom met and got married and moved to Ohio. Bobby is constantly in the throes of teenage rebellion against his seemingly square folks. Bobby'sf father Frankie (though he is never called by name in the film) currently works as a stressed out car salesman having left the surf scene in California while Annette bottles her own sense of angst up in a bevy of shopping. One day, the family decides to take an early spring vacation to Hawaii, deciding to stop in Los Angeles, California to visit their 20-year-old daughter Sandi (Lori Loughlin).After arriving at LAX and renting a convertable auto, they drive past their old beach and to a pier where Sandi lives in an small apartment above a bait shop. Sandi hasn't told her parents that she has shacked up with a local surfer named Michael (Tommy Hinkley), and only learns about her parents arrival after hearing a phone message on her answering machine announcing their arrival. When she sees them approaching, Sandi throws all of Michael's clothes out a window and into the ocean along with his surfboard and Michael himself. Frankie, Annette and Bobby know right away about Michael's presence in the apartment, so Frankie drags Bobby with him to find the "surf bum" while Annette stays behind to comfort Sandi who confides in her about living with Michael for the past six months. Annette offers to take Sandi out shopping.On the beach, while looking for the surf bum, Frankie accidentally knocks over a row of surfboards belonging to a punk surf gang led by Zed (Joe Holland) who takes a liking to the smooth-talking Bobby, but a dislike to Frankie whom he insults Frankie's thick retro hairstyle as a "hair helmet". Frankie is not intimidated by Zed and his gang's implied threats and walks away, only to knock over their surfboards again. Reunited with Annette and Sandi, Frankie and Bobby drive away.That evening, the family passes by a beachfront club called Daddy O's where Sandi works as a waitress to drop her off for work. Annette sees an advertising poster of Dick Dale and the Del Tones still appearing after 25 years and wants to go inside to visit, but Frankie refuses for they have their connecting flight to Hawaii to catch, but he decides to go with the family in the club anyway. In the club, a young surf bum named Troy (John Calvin) flirts with Annette, who refuses his advances. Just as Frankie drags Annette away, they have a run-in with Connie (Connie Stevens) the owner of the club and one of Frankie's old love interests. Connie shows Frankie and Annette a shrine she had put up in honor of Frankie as The Big Kahuna compositing of his old nine-foot-long surfboard and several records and memorabilia. Annette is hardly able to hide her jealousy when Connie insists that Frankie get up on stage with Dick Dale to sing a song. Frankie, wanting to relive his musical days, does so and sings a duet with Connie and Dick Dale and his band his version of "California Sun".After the musical number is over, an angry and jealous Annette tells Frankie that they just missed their plane to Hawaii and wants to leave, but Frankie wants to stay and get into a big row where Annette walks out on him.Back at Sandi's apartment, Michael shows up wanting to spend more romantic time with her, but she tells him about her parents argument and that her mother will be staying with her for a few days which begins an argument of their own leading Michael to walk out on Sandi.As Annette tries to comfort Sandi over her problems with Michael, she throws a "pajama party" for Sandi and all of her girlfriends who show up. The pajama party is briefly interrupted when several punk surfers crash the party, but Annette along with the other girls team up to drive the punks away. Meanwhile, a distraught Frankie is back at Daddy O's getting drunk and rambling on to Connie as well as the familiar looking bartender (Bob Denver of Gilligan's Island fame) about his failed life and crumbling marriage.The next morning, Frankie wakes up on the floor of a loft surrounded by several young men whom are surfers whom live together with Mountain (David Bowe) the leader of another surf gang of clean-cut friendly youths who surf at the beach every day. After the surfers get up and disburse with their surfboard to "catch the waves", Michael stays behind with a hung-over Frankie and serves him a "pick-me-up" drink to sober him up and then reveals his identity about being Sandi's boyfriend. Frankie is appalled, but comes to accept Michael when he sees that he is a nice guy.Later that day on the beach, Annette talks with Sandi about her husband's row and jealousy and shows her how Frankie would respond to anything. Annette approaches Troy, the same guy who tried to pick her up the previous night, and flirts with him, unaware that Frankie is standing nearby watching the whole thing. Annette then walks back to Sandi and her friends to prove her point. The distraught Frankie goes back to Daddy O's bar to confide in Connie about his marriage problems only to discover that Michael is in fact Connie's son. Frankie then leaves to check himself into a local hotel.The next day on the beach, Bobby is seen becoming more chummy to Zed and his gang of surf punks when Bobby shows them how to make cherry bombs to blow up toilets. Nearby, Frankie is with Michael, Mountain, Webby, and other surf bums talking about having fun, while further down the beach, a distraught Annette decides to show off her own singing skills to Sandi, Robin, Briggette and other "surf chicks" by singing her own version of "Jamaica Ska". Annette's singing takes command of the presence of the other beachgoers and all of them join the singing and dancing, and head off down the beach, leaving Frankie all by himself.The following day, a rainstorm hits which leads to the beaches being closed. Frankie spends his time somehow aquiring an ice cream cart and selling ice cream. He arrives at the end of the day at Michael's workshop where he sees the potential that Michael has in making surfboards. However, Michael tells Frankie that he makes surfboards only for principle not for purchase. Being a smooth-talking car salesman, Frankie encourages Michael to find his potential by selling surfboards to make an honest living. That evening at Daddy O's, while watching singing guest star Stevie Ray Vaughan (playing himself) performing alongside Dick Dale, Frankie suggests to Michael that they throw a luau-themed beach party in the hopes to lure their women back to them. Michael tells Frankie that the harbor master will not give them a permit to have any party on the beach after dark, so Frankie decides they try their sales-skills on the harbor master.The next morning, Frankie and Michael visit the trailer beach home of the eccentric Harbor Master (Don Adams) where, after failing to persuade him to lend them a permit for a beach party, convince him that the party is a cerimony to honor him for being "harbor master of the year". The Harbor Master agrees to give them the permit. That evening, the Hawaii-themed beach party is well under away. Annette and Sandi arrive, where Michael approaches them to introduce himself to Annette as well as make up with Sandi who tells him about him starting his own surfboard selling business. While, Annette looks for Frankie, she spots him talking with Connie by the grill and, consumed by jealousy once again, seeks out and begins flirting with Troy.When the Harbor Master arrives and realizes that Frankie and Michael tricked him into throwing the party for themselves, he threatens to shut the party down until Michael persuades Bridgette to flirt with him to make him change his mind.When Frankie sees Annette going on a evening surf excursion with Troy, he becomes jealous himself and confronts and punches Troy when whey they return from the water. However, this act only makes Annette even more angry and she walks away over Frankie acting so immature. Annette then confronts Connie where she convinces Annette that she has no interest in her husband but that Frankie loves only her. Annette then goes back to Frankie where they both apologize to each other over everything that happened and finally make up. Just then Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) appears from out of nowhere and sings a flashy version of "Surfin' Bird" leading to the Frankie, Annette and the whole party dancing with him until he literally takes off on a surfboard and vanishes as when he appeared.As the beach party winds down, Frankie finally tells the attendees about his "surf accident" and why he never goes back in the water. Frankie explains that 20 years ago when he went surfing he encountered a huge wave which knocked him off his surfboard and landed him in the hospital, which is why he moved away from California and never surfs again. Just they, the surf punks crash the beach party by showing up on four-wheel beach rovers. Bobby is now with him sporting a multi-colored Mohawk hairstyle having joined their gang (by purchasing the rovers with Frankie's stolen credit card). A full-out gang fight between Zed and the punks and Mountain and the beach bums is avoided when Frankie steps in an argues an old fashion way to settle it: a surfing competition for full rights for the beach. Each gang will pick their best surfer to compete against the other. The punk's gang leader Zed picks himself, while Michael volunteers to represent the surf bums only for Frankie to accidentally drop a bongo drum on Michael's left foot, breaking it.The next day on the big climatic surf competition, with Michael unable to surf due to his broken foot, Frankie volunteers to surf in his place using his old surfboard. With two judges (Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers) judging the surfing, Zed goes first out and does an impressive surfing of one large wave. When Frankie's turn comes, history begins to repeat itself when the "humongous wave" appears once again, leading even Zed to flee from the water. However, Frankie finally overcomes his fear and becomes "the Big Kahuna" once again and surfs the wave, winning the contest and proving that he still is king of the surf.In the final scene, Frankie and Annette, along with Sandi and Michael are back at Daddy O's to celebrate their victory where Sandi and Michael announce their engagement and plan to have their wedding on Christmas. Bobby, with new found respect for his father, sheds his black leather fatigues and adopts his father's "hair helmet" hairstyle and clothing in a total makeover for himself. The whole cast then gets up on the stage to sing the final song "We'll Go on Forever". | storytelling, flashback | train | imdb | For those of us who grew up on Beach Party movies, this is a fun revisiting of the genre.
Done as a combination homage/spoof to these early/mid 60's drive-in specials, the movie reunites some of the principle players and revisits the myth of California as Shangri-La.Annette, Frankie, Connie and dozens of guests in cameo roles gently rib the genre and themselves.
Take the icon duo of Frankie and Annette put them in a parody of their own genre add a half dozen cameos from some of the most memorable characters 60's T.V. had to offer add some great casting especially the role of Bobby (Demian Slade) and you have Back to the Beach.
Frankie is an over worked car dealer Annette is an overly optimistic housewife- they opt to take a trip to Hawaii stopping along the way in L.A. to visit their eldest daughter who happens to live on the very beach they once romped as teens.
There on the beach Frankie finds his daughter dating a surfer and an old flame "losing" Annette in the process while ticking off the local "beach roughians".
The plot is great as a parody with the perfect couple playing the leads while the story plays out in old beach film fashion.It's risqué enough to keep your eyes open but innocent enough in dialogue to show a six year old.
the songs are fun the story is a little silly but its fun to go back and realize how silly things were when we we younger,But I must say that I tottaly enjoyed frankie and annette as well as all the other stars of the flic, I heard a rumor that there was suppose to be a sequal however thats when unfortunatly annette was stricken with M.S. and so that was that ...so follow former mouseketeers and all others get this fun movie when it finnally arives on DVD this summer and enjoy it as I will.
The Big Kahuna (Frankie Avalon) is a family man now who's wife (Annette) is a preppy housewife who has a kitchen cabinet full of Skippy's peanut butter (creamy) with a 50's housewife aura.
That's until the family heads back to the beach and the kids discover their parents lively background!You can't go wrong with this movie if you're a big fan of the 60's films that starred Annette and Frankie.
Loads of inside jokes for those who love the old beach movies.
Appearances by Dick Dale, Connie Stevens, OJ Simpson, and Pee Wee Herman are all top notch.This was the first PG movie I ever saw.
Look for the jokes, the spoofing of the genre and of Frankie & Annette and the cameos.
I mean look at the list...Connie Stevens (more than a cameo, she again plays the "bad girl" that tries to lure Frankie away from Annette), Stevie Ray Vaughan (In a great duet with the King Of The Surf Guitar, Dick Dale...
a rare appearance on movie screens by Stevie Ray..), Pee Wee Herman (typically goofy..), Don Adams.
Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, Barbara Billingsly, Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow (see a theme here?), Bob Denver and Alan Hale, Jr. Great cameos, worked in in insane ways.
particularly if you have seen some of the "Beach Blanket" movies...
Of course this movie won't mean much to you if you don't know who Frankie and Annette and Connie Stevens are, but that makes you ignorant, that doesn't make the movie bad.
It has a great cast with many funny lines and a wonderful light touch that doesn't take itself too seriously and throws in bizarre touches like Pee Wee Herman appearing out of nowhere to sing "Surfin' Bird." It was quite a feat for them to make funny characters out of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as a middle-aged couple; they weren't exactly known for their great acting or comedy talent.
It doesn't try to BE a beach movie of the 1960's...it tries to be a silly remake.The costumes and sets are delightful - every known form of beachie cabana style is represented.
Annette looks adorable in her cartoonish costumes, and is an inspiration to get out to the beach for all us "old folks."The cuts with real surfing footage are enough to keep real surfers mesmerized, and the bathing suit styles are updated and sexy.What more could you want on in the background on a Saturday afternoon?.
:) Seeing Annette & Frankie together is like all those 50s beach movies returned - and ya gotta love PeeWee Herman because 'the bird IS the word'!
What makes Back to The Beach so enjoyable is the great cast and cameos that pepper this film.
We get a followup to those old cheesy beach movies, with a Chevy Chase Vacation kinda feel.
While obviously not a classic love story like Dr. Zhivago or even Sleepless in Seattle, it's just a fun kitsch filled family musical picture.
How can you resist Pee Wee Herman flying above the beach doing Surfin' Bird with Fishbone, or Dick Dale rocking with Stevie Ray Vaughan?
I wasn't old enough to remember the beach movies, although throughout the years I came to know and love them.
This movie follows Frankie and Annette after they've gotten married and have a couple of kids.
This film, much like the original beach movie, is extremely camp.
If you haven't seen it - BUY IT I could watch this movie over and over again LOVE LOVE LOVE IT :) Annette keeps you laughing The cheesy songs are catchy haha The beach is GORGEOUS and you gotta love the Big Kahuna :) last song from the movie is the best one yet haha the guy even gives Becky from full house an engagement ring with a little surfboard on it haha - so classic...(she should've said no haha but thats besides the point) haah Watch it :) Best movie ever!!!
If you haven't seen it - BUY IT I could watch this movie over and over again LOVE LOVE LOVE IT :) Annette keeps you laughing The cheesy songs are catchy haha The beach is GORGEOUS and you gotta love the Big Kahuna :) last song from the movie is the best one yet haha the guy even gives Becky from full house an engagement ring with a little surfboard on it haha - so classic...(she should've said no haha but thats besides the point) haah Watch it :) Best movie ever!!!
If you haven't seen it - BUY IT I could watch this movie over and over again LOVE LOVE LOVE IT :) Annette keeps you laughing The cheesy songs are catchy haha The beach is GORGEOUS and you gotta love the Big Kahuna :) last song from the movie is the best one yet haha the guy even gives Becky from full house an engagement ring with a little surfboard on it haha - so classic...(she should've said no haha but thats besides the point) haah Watch it :).
In the early to mid 60's Annette and Frankie were in what I used to think as dumb beach movies.
The music was good and boy Annette and Frankie could sure sing.
Their really wasn't much of a plot to these movies just hanging out at the beach with the girls in bikinis of course Annette was in her one piece, and the guys and their surfboards.
But this is a good last tribute to the queen of the 60's beach movies.
It's not the best movie it's silly it does have a plot though, and it is watchable but I still give it only a six because the kid that plays Annette and Frankie's son in this movie is so annoying that I wanted to strangle him.
With cameos from O.J. Simpson and Gilligans Island cast members, and even the voice of inspector gadget, this film is chock full of fun songs, an interesting (if cheesy plot) and of course, lots of surfing..
I have seen the 60's beach movies a couple of times and actually prefer the 80's version.
Anyway, this movie remains a favorite escape for me(its not supposed to be reality people, come on!)lots of nice people and even the bad guys are good deep down inside.
Frankie and Annette are married now with children, and return to the beach while going through a life crisis.
For those of us who grew up as kids watching the beach blanket movies, this one is a special treat.
They're visiting their daughter in L.A. While there, there are all sorts of hilarious situations, jokes, and even cameos (Don Adams, Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr.)Fun from first reel to last.
With Cameo appearances from Pee-Wee Herman, Don Adams, Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsly, Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Fishbone, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and many others how could you go wrong.
If You Like Old Beach Movies .
Then, I suddenly realized they were making FUN of their old beach movies .
It's not the best movie ever made, but if you like the old beach movies, give this one a try.
Back to the Beach is one of my favorite movies of all time.
You have to love Bobby, Frankie and Annette's son!
Back to the Beach was a fun movie.
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello co-produced this nostalgic romp about two swingin' teen sweethearts from the '60s now married and middle-aged, coping with the passing of time (not good material for a comedy) and the problems of their own punk kids.
Although I wasn't born yet, I am a big fan of the 60's beach movie series.
I saw this long ago in the 80's when I had not yet seen any of the previous beach movies.
To say I appreciated it more now upon a rewatch, would be an understatement, dude!It looks like it would not be such a good idea on the surface, but the movie is both a loving tribute to the original movies and 60's surf culture and a more modern comedy with some fun jabs at both time periods and some great music..
A Hilarious Spoof of the Early 60's Beach Movies.
Although "the Big Kahuna" (Frankie Avalon) and "Annette" (Annette Funicello) were the king and queen of the California beach scene twenty years earlier, the two of them now live ordinary lives in Ohio with their rebellious adolescent son named "Bobby" (Demien Slade) giving them more drama than the two can handle.
Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I found this film to be a hilarious spoof of the old beach movies produced in the early 60's.
I just watched "Back To The Beach" last night after not having seen it for at least 10 years and I still think it's great.
It's gloriously silly and does a wonderful job of skewering the old beach party pictures (which I thought were brainless fun too).
Even though Annette and Frankie are all grown up, they still act like teenagers (and look like they're having great fun doing it).
If you've never watched any Frankie & Annette beach party movies, see at least a couple before seeing this; you'll appreciate it more..
Funny rehash of the old beach party movies.
In this movie Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon played the characters they played in all those beach party movies.
The kids at the beach STILL act like a bunch of idiots (just with better bodies this time), sex and drugs are NEVER brought up, nobody would dare swear and (sigh) there's a rival beach gang (all dressed in black) whose overacting would make Jim Carrey blush!This starts off great with son Bobby always insulting his father and seeing how everybody reacts to Funicello and Avalon's naivety and sweetness.
Also the cameos by Bob Denver, Connie Stevens, Don Adams etc etc are fun and Annette sings a really fun song ("Jamaica Ska").
But the jokes quickly get repetitious and the movie completely goes flying out the window when Pee Wee Herman (!!!) shows up to sing "The Bird".
Just ALL the kids on the beach acting like a bunch of morons got on my nerves (I was never a big fan of the original "Beach Party" movies anyways).
I recommend it, but only if you've seen the beach party movies.
I have a friend (to keep his name confidential, let's just call him Nor) who swears up and down on the merits of 1987's beach blanket bimbo film Back to the Beach staring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.
Playing on Saturday afternoon television every so often, you may not require a detailed review of the films storyline, but here goes
Frankie and Annette have grown from their beach personas and are now living in Ohio.
All comes to a head when a group of thugs teams up with Frankie and Annette's rebellious son and challenge the father (known only to us in the film as the Big Kahuna), to a surfing contest.
Interweaved through all the 80's fashion crazes are old television stars and even a 60's type musical number on the beach that if you don't watch out, will have you tapping your feet to the Jamaica SKA.
Blink and you might miss Bob Denver and the late Alan Hale (Gilligan and the Skipper for you younger folk), Pee Wee Herman, Don Adams (Get Smart), Barbara Billingsly, Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers (Leave it to Beaver).
Now, I will be the first to admit that throwing a bunch of stars into a movie doesn't necessarily make for a good time, but the fact that none of these accredited actors take themselves seriously, means that the audience too can sit back and enjoy the performance.
When Bob Denver continues to play up his Gilligan character he made famous, it takes us back even further to childhood memories of sitting in front of the 13 inch black and white television rooting for the castaways to eventually find their way off the island.Back to the Beach is not for all tastes and that was evident even back in '87 when the movie only grossed $13 million (granted, it was released on the same date as Dirty Dancing so it sort of slipped into the background).
Most younger viewers won't get the inside jokes either like when Annette goes to the cupboard and pulls out a jar of SKIPPY peanut butter (she was their commercial spokesperson back in the early 80's) and that might take away from some of the films appeal.However, for a fun time in the vein of Saturday Night Live where each scene sets itself up as a skit some work, some don't it's not a bad way to say hello' to the summer.
Great only if you have seen the old beach movies.
I don't think Pee Wee adds anything to the movie; his cover of Surfin Bird is awful.
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, whose series of "Beach Party" films were huge hits for teenage crowds back in the 1960's resurrect the series with this lame 1987 Paramount release.
I'm old enough to be able to identify exactly what they were parodying, I enjoyed the cameos by such 1960's luminaries as Don Adams and Alan Hale Jr., and I liked the music of the period, so it followed that I would enjoy the movie.However, it doesn't hold up well.
i thought that this movie was not that well done, but i loved pee-wee herman's cameo in this film, when he sings a few songs, inluding 'the bird is the word." other than that, i didn't very much care for the movie that much..
Cameos by Don Adams, Pee Wee Herman and Bob Denver couldn't even begin to save this poor attempt..
Pee Wee's little number is more in tune with the 50s-in-the-80s funkiness of the script.It's an innocent romp, but will appeal only to those who are hardcore fans of the original 60s Beach flicks.
Back to the Beach is a comedy film from the 1980's that spoofs surfer pictures from the 60's.
I guessed the ending ten minutes into the film, however I would never have imagined Pee Wee Herman to come out of nowhere to sing surfing bird then literally fly away, but that mind fart certainly happened.EisensteinThis whole film had a lot of set ups for cameos but I guess we're too young to recognize any of them.
BACK TO THE BEACH and back to the Old-Fashioned custom of giving a Film a fair viewing before ruling on its worth.
The preeminence of a formerly strictly Black type of Music had been with us for well over a decade when the "New" Song & Dance form, now known as "Rock 'n' Roll" was forever fused with the Movies.The Southern California Surfing Scene, the New Mores of permitting the Exhibition and viewing of highly Semi-Nude Human form on the screen and the Economic$ and Realitie$ that possibly for the first time in our history, the Adolescent or "Teen Ager" was beginning to show that it was to show that it was His/Her expendable Ca$h Dollar$ that were a, if not THE, number factor in the Movie Business.The resulting type of Film Genre, the Teen-Age Beach Movie.
Hence, this Parody-Send Up-Tribute to the whole bunch of films.BACK TO THE BEACH (Paramount, 1987) provides us with a gentle and truly funny film that answers a lot of the heretofore unanswered questions, like: What happens to old Surfers?
They were probably responsible for more Pictures that we DIDN'T WATCH at the Drive-Ins than the other Companies Films we DID SEE!NOTE: ** There was even an "A" Film Beach Movie with DON'T MAKE WAVES (Filmways/MGM, 1967).
Now, I loved the Beach movies....they are in that "so bad that they are good" genre by now.
As it was, we got a made-for-TV feel to it.I propose they remake the beach movies with Rose McGowan as Annette's character and anybody they want as Frankie |
tt0109578 | Death Wish V: The Face of Death | Back In New York City, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is in the federal Witness Protection Program using the name Paul Stuart, teaching architecture at a local college. Kersey is invited to a fashion show given by his girlfriend, Olivia Regent (Lesley-Anne Down), who was formerly married to mobster Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks), and with whom he had a daughter Chelsea (Erica Lancaster). Backstage during the fashion show, O'Shea threatens Regent, insisting that he wants to see his daughter even though the courts removed his visitation rights.O'Shea and his goons are using the garment factory to launder dirty money, and demand that Albert, the factory manager, increase the amount of cash they launder. Kersey sees the bruises on Regent's wrist and learns O'Shea is downstairs. O'Shea meanwhile threatens Albert and insists he has to pass more cash.Albert resists, saying that it will create trouble, and O'Shea wounds Albert with a fabric knife. Reggie intervenes and is wounded as well. Reggie decides he has enough of O'Shea's abuse and takes Albert to the hospital. Tommy threatens Regent , and Kersey enters the factory floor. Kersey confronts O'Shea, but his goombah Tommy threatens Kersey and points a gun in his face. The daughter Chelsea appears and O'Shea leaves. Chelsea shows her mother the blood on the fabric knife.NYPD officers Tony Hoyle (Saul Rubinek) and Hector Vasquez (Miguel Sandoval) visit Kersey at his home. Kersey tells them about Tommy O'Shea and Hoyle reveals that they've been trying to nab Tommy for years. He asks if Regent is willing to testify. Kersey will talk it over with her. That night at a restaurant, Kersey proposes to Regent, and she accepts. Regent excuses herself to go to the ladies' room after spotting Tommy. An associate of Tommy's, named Freddie Flakes (Robert Joy) enters the bathroom in drag and ties her up tightly, and tapes her mouth shut. While mocking her and lecturing her about her possible testimony, he bashes her head in a mirror, permanently disfiguring her face. Flakes leaves, passing Kersey as goes to check on Regent. Kersey goes to the hospital, where he is told by a nurse that Regent will need to have reconstructive surgery. He then talks with Lt. Mickey King (Kenneth Welsh), who admits that they've been working on the O'Shea case for 16 years. Kersey is angered by this, but King wants Kersey not to pick up his old vigilante habits and let the police handle it for once.As this is going on, Tommy breaks into the factory and demands from Reggie information on who he talked to. He threatens him by burning his hand and face, before killing him. Lt. King and female officer Janice Omori (Lisa Inoue) set Albert up as an informant, but Sal sees through his act and runs Flakes down with the car, smashing through the window of a restaurant. Flakes then runs over Omori with the car, killing her. Kersey sees Omori die, but Flakes drives away before Kersey can do anything.The next day, Kersey takes Regent back to his apartment and informs Hoyle by phone that Regent will not testify. He then goes over to Hoyle's house at night and says that she will: Kersey couldn't tell Hoyle over the phone because someone else was listening in. Hoyle informs Vasquez, and they send a cop over. The cop comes over and Kersey answers it. Kersey stops and hesitates at letting him in, recognizing the cop as being Flakes. Kersey informs Olivia to use the fire escape to make her quick getaway, as Flakes and two other men break in and start shooting the place. Flakes follows Regent up to the fire escape, and shoots her in the back. Kersey escapes by jumping off the ledge, and falling into a pile of trash bags. Franke, Chicki (Kevin Lund) and Sal (Chuck Shamata) move in for the kill, but sounds of police sirens interrupt their plans.The following week, Kersey and Chelsea both mourn Regent 's death and watch TV to see that Tommy has been cleared of his involvement in his ex-wife's death. NYPD officer Tony arrives to offer his apologies to Paul, but Kersey orders him and the team sent to protect Kersey off his property. A short time later, Vazquez arrives with Tommy and handing him a court order: since Kersey wasn't legally married, Tommy has claim over his daughter. Kersey fights but gets knocked unconscious. Kersey now becomes a vigilante, and gets his gun ready.Kersey follows Chicki to an Italian restaurant where he orders cannoli. While Chicki is in the restroom, Kersey laces it with cyanide. Chicki finishes one cannoli, but dies shortly after starting the second one, and as he is choking, Kersey pushes his face into the plate. Vasquez reveals to O'Shea that Chicki was killed by Paul. (Revealing two things at the same time: that Vasquez is dirty and O'Shea thought Kersey was his alias Stuart all along).Paul's next target is Flakes who is in the bedroom with his big breasted girlfriend, whom he manages to take out in his fortress-like home and blows him up with a rigged electronic soccer ball. Kersey then calls Hoyle and arranges to meet with him privately. As Hoyle hangs up, he hears another conversation (which signals to him Kersey was right regarding an earlier conversation). Kersey waits at Regent 's house, holding one of Chelsea's dolls until Vasquez comes and points a pistol at Kersey. Without hesitation, Kersey shoots Vasquez. Hoyle arrives and sees Vasquez dead, and finally understands how far deep this goes and Kersey's vendetta mission. Hoyle is in cahoots with Tommy, but finally lets Kersey handle it his way. "I was never here" he tells Kersey as he leaves.As a funeral procession for Flakes takes place at a local church attended by local mobsters, a young boy enters and gives O'Shea a receipt. Back at his headquarters, O'Shea's associates open the crate and it is revealed to contain the dead cop (Vasquez). Tommy talks to Sal back at his house, and the two resolve to take a final stand again Kersey by using Chelsea as bait. Sal grabs Chelsea and Kersey follows Sal, just as Tommy predicted.Back at his house, Tommy hires three more men, Frankie (Scott Spidell), Mickey (Tim MacMenamin), and Angel (Sandro Limotta) to take care of Paul. Kersey arrives at the factory and using his survival instincts, tricks the three into shooting up a dummy in a forklift with the presumption that it's him. Kersey appears and kills Frankie and Mickey and wounds Angel in the leg. Angel is led by Kersey to the plastic machine. Kersey turns it on to wrap him in plastic. Angel reveals Chelsea's location, and is hooked up on the movable rack by Paul. He then radios O'Shea using Frankie's channel, announcing that he is coming for him. Chelsea hears this and easily escapes Tommy's grasp. O'Shea orders Sal to find and kill Kersey. He comes across Angel and mistaking him for Kersey, shoots him. Sal turns off the machine and continues to search. Kersey appears and knocks Sal into a grinder in the next room. The police soon arrive as Chelsea escapes the factory building. Inside, Kersey manages to find Tommy and beats him. Lt. King arrives and is quickly wounded by Tommy. Kersey manages to defeat Tommy by knocking him in a pool of acid, and leaves him to die.The final scene shows Kersey making sure King is okay before he leaves, calling out "Hey Lieutenant, if you need any help, give me a call" before reuniting with Chelsea. | comedy, neo noir, murder, violence, cult, revenge | train | imdb | The beginning of this final installment of the long-running "Death Wish" series is shaky with inappropriate humor (even the title comes off as a tasteless pun, as a central character is disfigured by having her face bashed into a mirror) and a lot of mobster-movie clichés (the henchmen to Michael Parks' villain are howling stereotypes), writer-director Allan Goldstein transforms "Death Wish 5" into a surprisingly entertaining little crime thriller.
Add to that the stress on facial disfigurement and scenes involving torture by steam press, plastic wrapping machine, and radial saw and you have a new and wonderfully vicious formula for more Death Wish mayhem.This is not the best in the series, but Bronson's presence alone gives it distinction, and it manages to make the most of the obviously very limited budget.
(By the way, Golan actually announced "Death Wish 6: The New Vigilante" in the trade papers not long after this one was released, though his company going bankrupt put an end to that plan.).
One of those who's at first viciously mutilated and later murdered by the O'Shea Mob is non other then Olivia,this brings the wild animal out of the peaceful and kind Paul Kersey.Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey takes on organized crime in "Death Wish 5" unlike the mostly unorganized street thugs and criminals that he took on in the previous four "Death Wish" films.
Even though he was 73 at the time in 1994 Charles Bronson is very believable as the avenging vigilante Paul Kersey knocking off the entire O'Shea Mob. Kersey does his unpleasant and bloody job not only with bullets but with cyanide-laced pastries exploding soccer balls and clothes making and knitting machinery.Tommy O'Shea, as well as his gang, gets his comeuppances by being dropped, by Paul, into a boiling vat of acid and made to look a lot slimmer and 150 ponds lighter.
Death Wish 5 had a good plot and plenty of bad guys for Bronson to play with.
It is a very interesting character and portrait of a time and a frame of mind.And the bad guys are not as comical as in some other Death Wishes, they are somehow more realistic.From the start setting of this film some mental professional would suggest that Bronson's character is begging for blood and violence in his life: He has hooked up with some psycho-sadist-mob boss's ex-wife, who has a daughter with the mentioned.
Give this a try, I'm not saying your guaranteed to like it, but its a very good film for Bronson who has finally come to an end with his acting career..
I am a great fan of the Death Wish films as I love to watch Bronson knocking off one by one the scum of society.
Death Wish : The face of death¨(1994) that would be the last and it was then not made for about another seven years , being starred by with Leslie Anne Down , Michael Parks , Chuck Shamata , Saul Rubinek and Miguel Sandoval .
Sequel to successful crime thriller that created the Vigilante genre with Bronson as the main star as architect Paul Kersey (wooding acting by Bronson who looks bored and tired with this rehash material) turned the one-man vigilante when his sweetheart , a clothing manufacturer (Leslie Anne Down) , has her business threatened , being attacked by mobsters , one of whom turns out to be her sadistic ex (Michael Parks) and a hired killer (Robert Joy) hitting her on a mirror .
The original film ¨Death wish¨ had great commercial hit , it was followed by various extremely violent sequels to this successful 1974 movie , that's , of course , the best from the series , being starred by Hope Lange , Stuart Margolin , William Redfield and Jeff Goldblum .
This first big hit motion picture was middling directed by Michael Winner such as the successive films with his main star, Charles Bronson , usually giving wooden performance .
It's the basic revenge scenario, but without the senseless killing in Death Wish IV.At least this movie spent the first half setting up the reasons for Kersey's revenge and gave his efforts at having the law do their job.He was also original in his dispatches with powdered canolies, recycling, and some dermatology assistance.Criminals don't come any sleazier than Michael Parks (Kill Bill, Grindhouse).
Death wish 5 ...Bronson is about 74 and hasn't lost his knack of knocking off the villains ...sum good graphic violence and typically vile villains ...( played to perfection by Michael parks) they don't make stuff like this anymore ...becoz u idiots prefare Borefests like " Miami vice " and weak soft core crap like the transporter check this one out its Better than number 4 !!.
The Vigilante Killer Versus The Mob. Charles Bronson's last theatrical film was a return to his most popular character, the vigilante killer Paul Kersey.
Well, it's easy to be scornful of this movie, after all it is "Part V" of a disreputable series, and Charles Bronson is so old to be playing in an action picture it's almost funny, but the fact remains that it's actually competently made, and possibly the most mean-spirited, sadistic "Death Wish" chapter of them all.
Charles Bronson's last theatrical film was a return to his most popular character, the vigilante killer Paul Kersey.
He's also Lancaster's father as well.As is the pattern of all the Death Wish movies Bronson springs into action when a woman close to him dies.
He's also Lancaster's father as well.As is the pattern of all the Death Wish movies Bronson springs into action when a woman close to him dies.
"Death Wish V" is the fifth and final movie in the series, and I really don`t see why Charles Bronson bothered being in this movie since he was 73 years old, and that is not the best age to be in when you want to do an action-film.
Odd, huh?Now, I have already mentioned that "Death Wish V: The Face of Death" is the best of the five movies, and that is attributed to the fact that it had the most mature and well-rounded of all five storylines told in the franchise.Funny how Paul Kersey loses someone he loves in every single movie, and yet he keeps going.
Not with the 2018 remake with Bruce Willis hitting the cinema.Personally, I think that the "Death Wish" movies will always belong to Charles Bronson, because he embodied the Paul Kersey character and he was the face representing the franchise.If you enjoyed the previous four movies, then you definitely also will enjoy the fifth and final, yes final!, movie in the "Death Wish" franchise..
This time Paul Kersey(Once again Bronson in his final Death Wish appearance) takes on the mobsters responsible for the murder of his new disposable foil.
Good Way to End. Death Wish 5 (1994) *** (out of 4) Final film in the series has Charles Bronson returning as Kersey.
Death Wish 5 is a very good dark Thriller & very early 90s & that's cool, BRONSON is very good & very weary as this older version of Vigilante Paul Kersey in this AWESOME 5th film in the DW franchise!!!
Michael Parks is a very entertaining actor, he gives the movie that spark of life that Charles Bronson couldn't really deliver in the later sequels.
DEATH WISH saw him play Paul Kersey , a mild mannered family man who after his wife is murdered and his daughter raped turns in to a one man vigilante army .
Death Wish V: The Face of Old. Even at about 109 years old Paul Kersey is still getting the babes.
This being a Death Wish movie, this woman is living on borrowed time and like all females in this series, she's going to get riddled with bullets, or explode or get raped.
Many years after Part IV, Paul Kersey is now living in the witness protection program(for undisclosed reasons) whose girlfriend(Lesley -Anne Down) is the ex-wife of a powerful mobster, who wants sole custody of their daughter, and retaliates against her, while at the same time trying to expand his empire in New York.
Kersey must come out of retirement, and become the famous vigilante again.Charles Bronson is still remarkably game for his age, though looks bored in the film, which, despite some potential, is just tired and uninspired, though Michael Parks is good as the mob leader.
Poorly directed , and filmed cheaply, sequel will be an unsatisfying end to the series, though Paul Kersey's last line to a policeman is good, and a nice coda for the character.
After Death Wish 4 in (1987) many people thought that was the end of the Death Wish series, But 7 years later Charles Bronson returned for one final Sequel, Frankly i wish it hadn't been made and heres why.Lets begin with the plot, The Plot involves Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) Now living the quiet life with his new wife Olivia (Lesley Ann Down)who runs a fashion trade, and her previous husband was a psychotic mob leader.
Everything seems to be going good for kersey and his new wife until, Olivia's ex-husband Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks)returns to muscle in on her fashion trade, and after seeing her with Kersey he gets a bit jealous and decides to disfigure her, of course this Angers Kersey and once again he decides to pull out his guns and get the bad guys.CONS: OK, first things first, This film came way too late, Charles Bronson was 73 years old when he made this film & It's Really hard to buy Bronson at 73 taking on A bunch Bad Guys In his old age, Not only that, his wife in the movie is like half his age and I really cannot believe she married him, I mean seriously, she is rich and famous in the fashion trade and she can have any man she wants and she chooses a 73 year old man, Its a bit Unusual if you ask me, and another thing is there is not much excitement in this film I never felt involved in the action or drama scenes because it's acted half heartedly, For me the film doesn't seem to get you involved.PROS: Now I complained about Bronson being too old to play Mr.Vigilante again, Because Lets face it by 73 years old he should be having problems handling bad guys half his age, which would've been an interesting approach to the film, but no they tried to make it seem like he was in his 40s again, which at this point was silly, But to be fair From a Performance Standpoint Bronson really does well, He still seems fit, and has no problems doing the action and it's amazing to see him in great physical condition, Also the Main Villain is really ruthless, Michael Parks really does a good job playing the laid back mobster who could snap at any moment when pushed, and the ending fight between Him and Kersey is pretty cool, and of course there are some funny one liners from both Kersey and O'Shea.OVERALL: 4/10 While it has it's Moments, It really Doesn't work, Bronson is Exceedingly old to buy as an action man, and overall the film fails to get you involved, It's worth a rental but not worth Buying.TRIVIA: Believe it or not there was plans for another sequel without Charles Bronson entitled DEATH WISH 6: The New Vigilante, Would've been Interesting to see what they would've done with it..
A very very tired and much older Charles Bronson reprises his role as the one man crusade himself, Paul Kersey, the poor man who every time he says 'I love you' to a woman, she gets murdered in the next sequence.
The revenge sequences seem to focus more on torture than anything and correct me if I'm wrong but that wasn't what Paul Kersey was all about in the first four Death Wish films.
It's no wonder Paul is so compelled to make up for the inadequacies of the injustice system.Helping this final (at the time) entry in the "Death Wish" series is the fact that the filmmakers know damn well what they're doing, and that's making a trashy B movie with violence aplenty.
Paul is not content to just shoot people here, getting more creative with his kills (a poisoned cannoli, a booby trapped soccer ball, etc.) Charles Bronson is good in his full-on tough guy mode, but it's the supporting actors that bring life to the tired scenario.
In fact, simply based on how the film looked and started right off the bat, I was not at all expecting it to go where it ultimately did in terms of the action and violence.Poor Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson).
In either case, you can bet your ass that when it comes to the "revenge" aspect to the film, Death Wish V: The Face of Death does in fact deliver the goods in a big way.Despite all my praises, because it is indeed a highly enjoyable film and better than I was expecting, it doesn't come off as one of the best in the series.
Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994) 18 | 95 min | Action, Crime, Drama | 14 January 1994 (USA) plot Paul Kersey is back at working vigilante justice when his fiancée, Olivia, has her business threatened by mobsters .
Death wish 5 is the final film in the series starring Charles Bronson is a middle aged man who is also a vigilante battles mobsters who are led by Michael parks who are trying to sabotage his girlfriends soon to be fiancé olive regent played by Lesley Anne down from continuing .
Anyway the film isn't as bad as that bad as some people might say sure the script is ineptly riddled with clichés seen in other movies of this genre its preposterous to watch Charlie boy running about dodging bullets and killing off bad guys in macabre ways at the age of 75 but .
'Death Wish V' breaks that mold by trying to be something the audience doesn't want to see, a low quality mainstream Hollywood action film.Paul Kersey's (Charles Bronson) back in NYC after his stint as a California vigilante in 'Death Wish IV' and remarried to a beautiful rich fashion designer on 9th Avenue.
Paul Kersey Takes On The Mob. The original "Death Wish" was a genuine masterpiece, and, without doubt, the single most memorable vigilante film of all-time.
The fifth and final entry to the series that lowered in quality with each film, namely "Death Wish V: The Face Of Death" is actually quite a bit better than the (dreadful) fourth part.After the events in part four, architect-turned-vigilante Paul Kersey has once again re-settled in New York, under a different name.
His wife-to-be, however, is still being stalked by her ex-husband, mobster Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks), and as everybody knows, messing with Paul Kersey is not a good idea.
man,this movie is pretty bad.this time Kersey(Charles Bronson) jumps into action when his girlfriend is brutally facially disfigured and then killed,by order of her ex husband,local mobster and all around sh*t bag.the only somewhat decent thing in this movie is the creative deaths of some of the mobster's underlings.other than that,there's not much to recommend it.it slow and ponderous.it's not even fun to watch.all you want is for it to end.and,thankfully,it eventually does.honestly,you'd have to be pretty bored to watch this thing.clearly,the worst of the series,and made for no good discernible reason i can think of.i guess if i try really hard,i can squeeze out a 4/10.
Charles Bronson returns as Paul Kersey who this time becomes vigilante after the murder of his girlfriend Olivia (Lesley Anne-Down) who was killed by her ex-husband Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks) a sadistic mobster who orders the hit to prevent her from testifying against him in this very mediocre sequel.
Paul Kersey had his first wife raped and murdered, his daughter rapped then killed in the second film in the series.
When Death Wish came out in the early 70's it was original, and Paul Kersey was seen as a hero for fighting back against the street scum that killed his wife and rapped his daughter.
The sequels fall into cheap B-movie category and give a bad name to the famous original."Death wish 5" was obviously made for money since Bronson's career was pretty much dead at the end of the 80's .
We may as well watch Death Wish 5: The Face of Death.It turns out that Olivia has been paying protection money to her evil mobster ex-husband Tommy O'Shea, who is Michael Parks!
Death Wish V: The Face of Death is set in Los Angeles where ex vigilante & architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) lives happily with his fiancé fashion designer Olivia Regent (Lesley-Anne Down) & her teenage daughter Chelsae (Erica Lancaster), trying to break away from her past proves harder than she thought & her ex husband big time mobster Toomy O'Shea (Michael Parks) uses her fashion business to launder dirty money.
The cast is alright & Michael parks turns in a good performance as the main bad guy.Death Wish V: The Face of Death is average at best & not as good as the previous two entries, there's a lack of action, plot & a story that really does feel very familiar.
For those familiar with the series, the original "Death Wish" (1974) was actually a well-acted and thoughtful piece of film-making that resonated with that time period.
Charles Bronson is back, in his 70s and whupping criminal behind once more in this, the final entry in the DEATH WISH franchise.
Bronson is great as always, but the man was in his seventies.If you can overlook this though, you get the funniest hit and run and go flying through the window scene, and of course the final act, which features a man being gift wrapped.Not a bad film, but the fifth best Death Wish movie. |
tt0370986 | Mysterious Skin | *The beginning of the movie is told from the main characters' point of view, i.e. Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Brian (Brady Corbet), so for the beginning this will be told in an omniscient sort of view. I also might over explain things. Sorry.*Summer of 1981: The movie opens with an 8 year old Brian Lackey in the crawlspace of his house. It's dark and his nose is bleeding, though he doesn't seem to notice it, or anything for that matter. He tells us that 5 hours disappeared from his life. The last thing he could remember was sitting on the bench at his Little League game; it started to rain. After that, nothing. His sister, Deborah (Rachel Kraft), finds him and realizes his bloody nose. When their mom (Lisa Long) gets home Brian rushes over. You can see an overbearing mother, still calling brian a "poor little baby", but you can also see an annoyed father (Chris Mulkey) on the couch. His mom then gives him a bath, saying she knew he would get hurt playing sports, but the dad is disappointed with Brian saying he's a quitter. His mom makes him quit baseball the next day. When Brian's asleep we see him dreaming; he's lying on this strange looking surface while still in uniform. The screen shows a blue light before a shadowy figure passes in front of it. Brian wakes up startled, saying this was when the nightmares, the nose bleeds, the bed wetting, and the black outs all began. One night when the TV won't work quite right, Brian sees a bright blue light over the tree tops. Deborah thinks it's a UFO, but the mom thinks it's just a weather balloon. They go on the roof to look at this thing, which does in fact look like a UFO (I'm not really sure what it is). He finishes the scene by telling us those were the two things he'd never forget; the crawlspace and the UFO.Summer 1981: The movie then switches to Neil, also age 8. He's looking out his window, watching his mom (Elizabeth Shue) and her boyfriend, Alfred (David Smith). Neil masturbates while watching his mom give Alfred oral sex. When he orgasms it's the first time something came out. He couldn't wait to show Coach (Bill Sage). At the beginning of summer his mom signed him up for Little League. When he sees Coach he says he looked like the life guards, cowboys, and firemen he'd seen in the Playgirls his mom hid under the bed (Suggesting Neil's gay). He becomes the star player fast, but it wasn't much considering the other kids were terrible; Brian being the worst. During the first game, Neil scores big, saying the only thing that mattered was making Coach proud. After the first victory Coach calls saying he's taking the team out to celebrate, but when the doorbell rings, it's just him. Coach takes Neil to see a movie, then to his house with pizza. By Neil's standards, the house is awesome since there's a huge TV with his favorite video games. They play Astroid and make small talk until the Coach wants to record Neil's voice. He takes Polaroid's of Neil making various faces. Neil goes to Coach's again after another baseball game. Coach shows him the album full of Polaroids he took last time. Coach then shows him his cabinet full of food, and they proceed to each mini cereal boxes. Neil's box bursts open spilling cereal everywhere, but Coach uses this opportunity to throw his cereal everywhere and he ends up kissing Neil, telling him everything is going to be ok.October 1983: It's Halloween and Neil introduces us to his new friend Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg), they decide to play a prank on a mentally challenged kid; Neil places small fireworks in the kids mouth and sets them off. He gives the kid oral sex in order to "win him over." Brian on the other hand gets bullied, breaking his glasses and running for the woods. He sees a shadowy figure and we see his nose bleeding and him passing out.November 1986: Neil's 15 and turning tricks in the park. His tricks are always older men that somewhat resemble Coach. Neil shows Wendy what his latest trick did to his merchandise, which causes Wendy to always worry about Neil tricking with the wrong guy, but Neil is carefree.Fall 1991: what? | cruelty, dramatic, violence, queer, flashback, brainwashing, romantic, prank | train | imdb | null |
tt0242653 | The Matrix Revolutions | Bane/Smith and Neo are both in an unconscious state. The former is said to be merely asleep, whereas neural patterns of Neo are identical to those of people who are connected to the Matrix. Morpheus, dispirited after the destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar and discovering the true nature of the Prophecy at the end of the last film, starts a search for Neo within the Matrix despite him not being jacked in. Neo is in fact trapped in a limbo: a subway station named "Mobil Avenue" ("Mobil" notably being an anagram for "Limbo".), a transition zone between the Matrix and the Source (the Machine mainframe). At this station, Neo meets a 'family' of programs (of Indian Origin). The little girl called Sati talks to Neo, saying that her father has told her Neo isn't supposed to be in the station. Father tells Neo that Mobil Avenue is controlled by a program called The Trainman who, in turn, is an exile loyal only to The Merovingian. When Neo tries to board the train with the family, the Trainman refuses, and knocks him away from the train, telling Neo he makes the rules down here.Seraph contacts Morpheus on behalf of the Oracle, who now resides in a different "shell" (see Cast, above). The Oracle informs Morpheus and Trinity of Neo being trapped in Mobil Avenue. Seraph, Morpheus, and Trinity pursue the Trainman to secure Neo's release, but he escapes. Their only option now is to go to a place called Club Hel and confront the Merovingian for Neo's freedom. The three fight their way from the club's parking garage to the coat check station. They engage some of the Merovingian's guards, who are able to walk on ceilings and walls and kill them all, gaining access to the elevator.The trio force their way into a large dance hall, brandishing two guns each. The Merovingian, in a display of scornful admiration, tells them to hand over their guns and he'll meet with them directly. The Merovingian demands "the eyes of the Oracle" in exchange for Neo's release. Trinity however loses her patience and provokes a Mexican standoff in which she, Morpheus, Seraph and the Merovingian each have a gun to their heads, forcing the Merovingian to release Neo.In Mobil Ave, Neo tries to leave by running through the train tunnel. When he does, he simply runs back into the station from the opposite direction. Some time later, Trinity arrives and frees Neo.Troubled by new visions of the Machine City, Neo decides to visit the Oracle one last time before returning to the real world. She informs him that as the One, upon visiting the Source (the Machine mainframe), he developed a connection with it. The Matrix and the rest of the Machine world, are derived from the Source as well. Thus we learn that all of Neo's abilities - both in and out of the Matrix - exist because of this connection. This is how Neo was able to stop the machines giving pursuit after the Nebuchadnezzar was destroyed, although the end result of his lack of preparation was temporary confinement in Mobil Avenue. She characterizes Smith (who is also growing in power) as his exact "opposite" and his "negative". She also elaborates upon the relationship between her and the Architect (tellingly, each of them ejects an exasperated "Please!" when Neo asks them about the other). She also tells Neo cryptically that "everything that has a beginning has an end" and warns that Smith's power threatens not only the Matrix, but also the Source and eventually the Machine City. The Oracle states that the war is about to end "one way or another."After Neo takes leave of the Oracle, a large group of Smith clones arrive at her home. One of them, the original Smith, finds Seraph and Sati. Smith then confronts the unresisting Oracle and assimilates her, and having gained her powers of precognition, the new Smith cackles maniacally at the future he is seeing.In the real world, the remaining crew of the Nebuchadnezzar and the Mjolnir (referred to by the characters as "the Hammer") encounter Niobe's deactivated ship, the Logos and its crew (whose ordeal is portrayed in the game Enter The Matrix). They successfully reactivate the ship and begin to interrogate the now awakened Bane, who claims he has no memory of the events of the earlier battle. After contemplating his visions, Neo announces that he needs a ship to travel to the Machine City, although he cannot explain why. Roland, the Mjolnir's captain refuses him but Niobe (who was told by the Oracle in Enter The Matrix that she would have to make a choice to help Neo or not), lets him take the Logos over Roland's protests. Trinity decides to accompany Neo.The two remaining crews plan to return to Zion, and avoid the Sentinel army by allowing Niobe to pilot the Mjolnir through a series of service tunnels, which are nearly impossible to navigate. Shortly after departure, the Mjolnir's crew discover that Bane has murdered a crew member and has hidden aboard the Logos. However they are unable to double-back in order to warn Trinity and Neo. Before the Logos can depart, Bane ambushes Trinity and takes her hostage. Neo fights Bane, who reveals himself as a manifestation of Smith. During the struggle, Bane manages to blind Neo by cauterizing his eyes with a severed electric cable. As Bane appears to have the upper hand, he closes in on Neo - only to have his attack thwarted and reversed. Neo can see Smith inside Bane as a fiery form, in spite of his blindness. Neo finishes the fight by smashing Bane's head with a jackhandle and releases Trinity, who pilots them towards the Machine City.Niobe, with Morpheus as her co-pilot, flies the Mjolnir through the lowest tunnel system. Flying slowly and at low power to avoid detection, they make their way to Zion. One of the craft's hover pads collides with the debris on the floor of the tunnel - the bang is heard by the sentinels, who immediately pursue the craft. The crew makes a valiant effort to fight them off, however, they overwhelm the ship and begin to damage it with cutting lasers. A small group of sentinels also rips off the craft's communication's antenna, making it impossible for them to signal Zion they're coming.In Zion, the defenders deploy infantry armed with rocket launchers and Armored Personnel Units in order to protect the dock from assault. The dock is breached by two giant drilling machines, Diggers, and a huge swarm of sentinels, igniting The Battle of Zion. Despite a desperate effort the APUs fail in holding the Dock and many are destroyed. In other areas of the dock, Link's wife, Zee, and her partner, Charra, use a rocket launcher to fight the sentinels and Diggers. Charra manages to blow the leg off a Digger, however it uses another of it's legs to stabilize itself. She is also able to disable another Digger for a short time - it is soon reactivated by more sentinels that recharge the massive machine. Zee is able to escape the sentinels, however, Charra is killed by them.During the battle, Captain Mifune fails to open the gate for the approaching Mjolnir and is attacked and viciously wounded by a swarm of sentinels. With his last breath he tells Kid (who was renewing his ammunition supply at the time), to open the gate for the Mjolnir. Kid is reluctant at first, saying he did not complete the combat training needed, only for Mifune to tell him, "Neither did I." The Kid suddenly finds the courage to fight through a cloud of Sentinels to the gate and open it. Just as the remaining humans are about to be overwhelmed, the Mjolnir bursts through the gate, with further Sentinels close behind. The Mjolnir's EMP is fired which disables all electronic equipment in the area. The EMP destroys all the present Sentinels, but it also disables the remainder of Zion's defenses. The humans are forced gather what weapons they can and fall back to the temple entrance, awaiting the next Sentinel swarm which will surely overwhelm them all.Nearing the Machine City, Neo and Trinity fly over the harvesting fields where millions of humans produce energy for the city. They are attacked by the city's defense system, which hurls numerous mobile bombs and Sentinels at the Logos. Neo uses the power given by his connection to the Source to destroy the incoming bombs. However, Sentinels overwhelm the ship. To evade them Trinity flies the Logos up into an electrical storm cloud. The Sentinels are disabled, but the cloud also disables the ship's engines. As the ship emerges temporarily above the cloud layer, Trinity gets her only glimpse of real sunlight and blue sky. The ship then stalls and plummets back into the storm cloud as it free-falls directly toward the Machine City. Trinity attempts to ignite the engines but it is too late and the ship crashes into a machine tower. The impact of the collision fatally wounds Trinity, and she dies in Neo's arms.Neo emerges into the Machine City to strike a bargain with the machines, personified by the Deus Ex Machina. Neo warns the machines that Smith (who has by now assimilated every human and programme within the Matrix) is beyond the machines' control, and will soon assault the Source to which the Matrix is connected. He offers to help stop Smith in exchange for a ceasefire with Zion. The second wave of Sentinels in Zion instantly responds by standing down at the temple entrance. Neo openly confronts the Deus Ex Machina, a massive droid with a human child's face that acts as the interface to The Source. Neo negotiates with it, saying that in exchange for a peaceful coexistence, he'll destroy Smith and his clones, which have infected most of the Machine City. The Deus insists that they don't need Neo's assistance, to which Neo says "If that's true... then you should kill me now." The Deus agrees, providing a connection for Neo to enter the Matrix and confront Smith. The Deus suggests that Neo might fail - Neo says he won't.The city is now wholly populated by tens of thousands of Smith copies - the clone with the Oracle's powers steps forth, claiming he has already foreseen his own victory. Smith's clones stand by and watch while Neo and Smith square off. Fighting on the streets, through buildings and into the sky, they continually repel each other. While battling in the sky, Smith grabs Neo and plunges to the ground with him, creating a massive crater. The two continue to battle in the crater, seemingly to a standstill. Neo is eventually outmatched by Smith, who pauses to gloat that he has "seen this [the details of his victory] before". Describing the details aloud, he cannot remember what he was supposed to say next in his vision. Neo refuses to give up the fight, and a frustrated Smith continues his attack until Neo is too badly hurt to go on. To both Smith and Neo's surprise, Smith announces "everything that has a beginning has an end." Hearing the Oracle's parting advice again allows Neo to understand that Smith's assimilation is not total, and baits the scared Smith into assimilating him. Neo's final words to Smith are, "It was inevitable," quoting Smith's oft-spoken admonition.Smith's assimilation of Neo is seemingly successful, and when the Oracle-Smith asks Neo-Smith whether it is over, he receives a nod and smile as reply. Back in the Machine city, Neo's body spasms as a surge of energy enters his body through the Matrix connection. Neo is returning to the source, and starting with the Neo copy of Smith, a white light begins to rip the clones apart from the inside out. One by one, similar to the destruction of Agent Smith at the end of The Matrix, the copies are destroyed.With the elimination of the Smiths, all the programs and humans that were possessed return to normal, including the Oracle. The Sentinels that were about to attack the humans withdraw from Zion. Neo, having sacrificed himself to save both the Machines and humans, is unplugged from the Matrix and his body is respectfully carried away by the Machines.The Architect, upon meeting the Oracle, tells her that she "played a very dangerous game" by attempting to change the way the Matrix functioned. The Oracle responds by saying that she understood the risk and knew it was worth taking. She asks the Architect what will become of any humans who want to be unplugged from the Matrix, and the Architect replies that "they will be freed." The Oracle asks the Architect, "Do I have your word?" The Architect answers "What do you think I am? Human?"The closing shot of the film depicts a new dawn on the world of the Matrix, created by Sati. Plant life is shown in the Matrix, and for the first (and last) time the ubiquitous green tint is absent. | suspenseful, fantasy, murder, avant garde, mystery, cult, alternate reality, violence, psychedelic, action, philosophical, romantic, sci-fi | train | imdb | In this explosive final chapter of the Matrix trilogy, Neo, Morpheus and Trinity battle to defend Zion, the last real-world city, against the onslaught of the machines that have enslaved the human race.
It is my second favorite film in the trilogy because it ends the story and answers what happened with Neo (Keanu Reeves), he saved Whole planet and defeat Smith (Hugo Weaving) on the end of the movie.
That end fight and emotional ending leaving behind a plot for sequel ...Second really expanded the meaning of matrix and the whole idea so I don't understand the hate.There is a lot of memorable moments the Smith vs Neo climax rain scene is one of my favorite movies scenes of all time.
Whether or not people like a film or not is a subjective matter but I can't help feeling that the people who dislike (or even hate) this film are missing something because Revolutions is an intelligent, entertaining, beautiful, sad and moving picture.The acting of all three films have been a mixed bag and although I usually join in the bashing of Keanu Reeves I find him strangely fitting for the part of Neo. His voice is not the perfect voice due to its monotonous tone but his body language is very good and sometimes even great and that is the case in Revolutions as well.
'The Matrix Revolutions' is the much-anticipated conclusion to the Wachowski Brothers' cultic sci-fi trilogy, whose previous entries were 'The Matrix' and 'The Matrix Reloaded.' In the series' final installment, the messiah figure, Neo, does battle with the diabolical forces that have imprisoned most of humanity in a world of cyber unreality via a massive computer program known as The Matrix.Of the three films, 'Revolutions' is definitely the least imaginative and the least interesting.
Perhaps smarter people than I can figure all this out for, frankly, after the overall disappointment occasioned by this film, I couldn't muster either the desire or the effort to probe very deeply into the matter.It goes without saying that the special effects in this film are spectacular - we would expect nothing less - but what we don't get from 'Revolutions' - which we did from the two previous 'Matrix' films - is that little something extra in the form of intelligence and sophistication that made them more than just the bland, over-produced, assembly-line products they easily could have become - and which 'Revolutions' very nearly is.
Makes me laugh when people speak of logic in such type of movies.What a dose of special effects, which were really fantastic, specially the final battle, with $110 million budget it outcast many biggies of nowadays.I personally believed that those who felt disappointed was because:1.They wanted to see the normal happy ending.
The dialog is geared toward answering unanswered questions rather than raising new ones, and even the new questions raised in the third film can be answered by watching the film again (watch all three a few times over and you'll be as pointlessly knowledgeable about The Matrix universe as I am!).Unlike Reloaded, even the score fits well with every scene in the movie.
Such an egotistical, maniacal character should be the focus of more attention than what he received in what is supposed to be the best movie of the trilogy.(One thing I must say to any viewers who criticize the film because it doesn't look real enough or doesn't feel right: you need to stop thinking like an illogical human and treat The Matrix like what it is: something that isn't real.
The Wachowski brothers put together an excellent body of work with these films and accompanying works on various media -- so excellent, in fact, that I am easily distracted by discussion of The Matrix, both within the context of the story and above and beyond the story (symbolism, allegorical applications, etc.)My only complaints were that the Merovingian was grossly underused, the fate of the Twins and some other characters was not explained, and the Kid's triumphant "The war is over!" at the end was a bit premature, given what we had just watched for the last two hours.Finally, everyone should keep in mind that the machines have Neo's code, and whether Keanu Reeves comes back or not, his intellect may yet survive in the Matrix somehow....
I hope that in ten years time, as happened with the Highlander series, somebody will come along and pretend that these original sequels never existed and create some new ones following on from the first film.Too many characters with too little substance.
It is as if the Wachowski brothers have run out of ideas for the main characters, who, without the fast-paced world of the matrix to play with, reveal themselves as increasingly 2-dimensional, only defined by each one's singular purpose - i.e. Morpheus' faith in Neo as saviour, Trinity's love for Neo, or Neo simply being Neo, the all-asskicking super-dude we all secretly wish and/or think we might be.
Neo and Trinity are given little screen-time for the bulk of the film as they go about their separate mission while Morpheus literally takes a backseat to Niobe, a character for which we care little for unless we have been lining the Wachowski brother's pockets further by buying Enter The Matrix.The action scenes themselves can err the viewer towards boredom - there's only so much interest or fear to be gleaned from admittedly well-crafted but still obviously CG creations.
The questions of free-will and metaphysical freedom touched upon in the first film are largely ignored in favour of a simple fight for survival against the evil machines invading Zion and Neo's battle with the cyber-bogeyman that is Agent Smith instead of the potential for a psychic/psychological battle with the matrix program itself - a potential for a mindblowing effects-fest if ever there was.All in all the concluding part of the Matrix trilogy comes over as a bloated, overlong ending tacked on to reloaded with few to zero new ideas, less engaging action scenes and an ending that may well have been conceived on the back of an envelope while on the way to work.
Consequently, those who have a grasp on what happened enjoyed the experience as much as I did and feel the same way I do.The Wachowski brothers, perhaps, could have portrayed the finale with a little more clarity; but I find it ashame that so many have come to hate this trilogy upon seeing Revolutions.
Why not just end the movie with 100 years later everyone celebrating a holiday called "Neomas?" Despite all the Matrix fans who say that this is a film designed to "deprogram" people and "open minds," and all the Matrix fans I met who bash christianity, this is a pretty pro-christian movie.When I first saw the Revolutions trailer, I said "This fight between Smith and Neo had better be the best throwdown ever caught on film." Well, it wasn't.
I tried watching Matrix the other day, and it just wasn't as good now that I know the full story and most of the disapointing answers to the questions asked in the original.So those are my problems with the movis, but I've got one other problem pertaining to Matrix Revolutions.
I know that a film is good if it leaves you thinking about things and I could sort of guess that Neo might have become some sort of programme etc at the end, but I still felt that the film should have helped me out even a little bit!The plot is very heavy going and it lacks the light imagination evident in the first film.
some of the machine action sequences or battle scenes or whatever didn't do so much for me, but that storyline was fairly necessary for the movie.all in all i am really looking forward to seeing what the wachowski brothers do next.
i really like the philosophical/psychological elements in their films and would really be interested in seeing what they could do with a movie that didn't require so much action and special effects.
and who could ever get enough of agent smith?the matrix: 9.5, reloaded: 8 (mostly for the weakness of the first 40 minutes), and revolutions: 9 (for being too dependent on the machine action/battle sequences).
That's how there are so many interpretations to it, it has so many layers that it would take more than just one good chat to understand all the meanings of the matrix.This third installment didn't have more kung fu, or philosophical speech than the first two, it rather had more symbolisms throughout not only the actions and reactions of the characters but also through the concepts used.Something people should consider is that according to Joel Silver, Reloaded and Revolutions are the same movie cut in half, which gives a different perspective to Revolutions if only analyzed alone.This movie is about an end, death, finding a meaning for life, fighting, truth, etc.
Why the Wachowski Brothers turned the third (and hopefully final) saga of the Matrix, into a emotionless, plot-lacking, ridiculous battle against the machines, that the humans could never hope to win, I will never know.
The final "battle" between Neo and Agent Smith is perhaps the most anti-climactic finale in any movie ever made.Some people have come to the film's defense.
In the first two movies, the main plot was the rebellion of mankind against the machines, not vice-versa, forgotten?What about the promising thought at the end of "reloaded", that maybe all the setting of the underground world and the machine-ruled earth surface were kind of another matrix themselves, including Zion and the characters of Morpheus and even Trinity?
The first Matrix was a pretty good movie...but not a huge revolution...and what kinds of drugs were people smoking when they thought the Brothers W had invented some kind of deep new philosophy?
Neo is no more intended to have deep psychological realism than Indiana Jones, but the thing is, I liked Indy and hoped he got out in one piece -- while my concern about Neo has been jerked around by so many layers of whether he's real or not, and whether he's really doing what he seems to be doing, that finally I measure my concern for him not in affection but more like the score in a video game."OK, so again I use the words of critic Roger Ebert to help express the feelings I have towards the groundbreaking "The Matrix" (1999) and its two lackluster sequels "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions" (both films released in 2003).The first "Matrix" was (obviously) the best film in the series, with its wild and kinetic action scenes, and gravity-defying special effects.
That kind of killed the experience knowing that is what was most likely the intention behind this film; but at least it kept you watching through the special effects and breathtaking action scenes that were reminiscent of the sequences in the first "Matrix" film.Indeed "Revolutions" was much more tolerable to watch, and it did go out with a bang as was expected by the "holy" crowds that view these films as some sort of new religious experience.Another scene would be the attack on Zion, which, forgive me, reminded me a little too much of the battle sequence from Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" (2001) because of the style and the way it was presented to the audience.
The trilogy certainly ended the way I predicted that it would (I will not disclose the details) but it ends up being worth it (much more satisfying than the abrupt conclusion of the previous film), especially for the all-too symbolic, apocalyptic "Burly Brawl" action sequence between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) at the end of the film.
If the Wachowski Brothers (Andy and Larry) ever did something right with the sequels, it would easily be this one scene.Anyways, to conclude, "The Matrix Revolutions" ended the series on a good note and I enjoyed it a lot.I give it a solid "7.".
The first time was "Boat Trip" (which was a sneak preview, I had no idea they were showing this, I assure you I would never have chosen that movie out of free will), the second time was while I was watching "The Matrix Revolutions".I liked the first Matrix film.
To top it all of, most of the film is about defending this city, which is done by characters which were all added later while the main characters just vanish or become cyphers.Only two scenes of the movie take place in the matrix, one in the beginning and one at the end.
the entire film had been ruined for me a long time before during all these ridiculous and redundant fighting scenes in Zion.This third installment is so terrible, that it weakens the entire trilogy and even the first movie as a standalone work.The only positive thing that can be said about it is that after that, all that annoying geek talk about the matrix allegories stopped.
After all the battles they've had over the trilogy, I didn't know how this one can be any different or any more special, but the Wachowski brothers definitely raised it up to another level.Like I said, this movie is still pretty confusing.
It is as if any form of freedom and anarchy that was in the first film turned into consumerism and conformity in the second two movies.If you are a fan of the Matrix DON'T see Reloaded or Revolution.
The Matrix Revolutions marked a sorry end for one of, certainly at the beginning, the most creative; most original science fiction films running on a smart premise we'd seen for some time.
The Matrix Revolutions appears tired with its origins, bored even; like the cleverest student in the class whom sits at the back just not feeling up to it on the day of the big exam, and falling just a little short of the pass mark when so much more was expected of them.As the piece crawled towards the end of its one hundred and twenty five odd minute run time, nearly all sense of immersement and respect for the trilogy was on the way out of the window, and I was praying their God-like Architect character would simply walk onto the screen, turn to the camera, hold up a remote control of some kind and just press a button that would make the screen go black.
Revolutions is the point The Matrix ceases to be a science fiction film about ideas complete with an initial, original vision; now rendered a dorky war-come-action film which pastes on a dull love story or two involving the leads and their supporting acts so as to try and insert a bit of heart into proceedings, amidst the gradually less and less interesting teenage orientated spectacle.The war between man and machine has reached its crescendo, the ultimate showdown between flesh and blood and metal and A.I. has arrived after burning at the back on a hob throughout 2003's other Matrix sequel entitled Reloaded.
That's right, unlike the Matrix Reloaded which was just a giant action movie (not saying that's bad either) but Revolutions was a lot about preparation and Planning.
The first Matrix was good for introducing you (obviously) The second for Action (action taking you deeper into the story) And the third one for making you think and (as I said) BLOWING you away.I give this movie a 10/10.
He does stumble in the ending, mainly because the fight scene is ludicrous, but his character is still the best thing in The Matrix series.So what does work in this movie?
I'm sure that movie has much less ambiguity for your jaded tastes, and will spoon-feed you the answers like you need them.I am by no means a huge fan of the Matrix trilogy, nor did I find the last 2 installments particularly good, but Reloaded and Revolutions were, in their own right, entertaining and visually spectacular.
But the action sequences are still intense and fun to watch, especially the final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith.This movie actually requires you to listen to the dialogue like the second one, which seemed to disappoint all the 12 year-olds in the screening I went to.
Neo is stricken blind by a man that has been possessed by Agent Smith, Trinity serves as only a dramatic character, and the film ends with peace between man, the machines, and the Matrix, rather than the annihilation of the last two.
However, looking at it now, all of these things work in favor of the movie.While Reloaded exploited the iconic nature of the first film with such stunts as having Neo fly, having Neo fight fifty Agent Smiths at once, having Neo manipulate the Matrix in every way imaginable, having Morpheus fight bad guys for fifteen minutes straight, and having the machines attack the Nebuchadnezzar again, Revolutions seems to throw off all of the iconic nature of the trilogy, and instead find a conclusion that is interesting and, surprisingly, in tune with all the mounds of philosophical ideas they built into the first one.
However, it is made even worse by the fact that these characters fighting the machines were not developed enough in this film or the previous one.Bottom line: The Matrix Revolutions is about a war between some humans and some machines which I just don't care about all that much.
Instead the final scene ends too quickly and it's predictable, recycling some of the ideas from the first Matrix film.The Wachowskis failed big time on Revolutions, it lacks pretty much everything that made the first film exciting to watch, and everything that made Reloaded at least passable as a sequel.
Revolutions was hyped for having an awesome battle in Zion as well as one final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith - but both these "highlights" are just run-of-the-mill CGI frenzys, that cannot stand up to any of the action scenes in the first film.
The matrix revolution is amazing action film i enjoy watching them it is such a great movie. |
tt1212452 | Bag of Bones | This is a synopsis of the book - not the made for tv movie.The main character, Mike Noonan, is an author living in Derry, Maine who suffers from severe writer's block after the death of his wife, Johanna (called Jo), from an undiagnosed brain aneurism. Particularly disquieting to Mike is that his wife had just bought a home pregnancy test, but never revealed the pregnancy to him. Mike languishes after his wife's death, and finds himself unable to write due to panic attacks. Fortunately, he has four unpublished manuscripts, and using them he keeps his agent and editor unaware of his problem.Four years after Jo's death, Mike begins to experience nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90, an unregistered township in Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to the house, known to locals as "Sara Laughs". On his way to town, Mike encounters a small child, Kyra Devore, walking down the middle of the road. Mike worries that something might happen to the child if she continues walking like that, so he scoops her up and returns to his car with her. A moment later, Kyra's mother, Mattie Devore, comes flying up the road in her old jeep. Mike's initial reaction is that Mattie is a "white trash" mom who will yell at the child and possibly beat it due to her own inattentions, but he is pleasantly surprised when Mattie clutches the child for dear life and begs her never to run off again. The two talk for a few minutes and Mattie drives off.Later, while in town, Mike learns from the locals that Mattie's late husband, Lance, was the son of Max Devore, a rich and influential man from the town who didn't approve of his son's marriage to Mattie. Max, now well into his 80's and bound to a wheelchair, wants custody of his granddaughter, and is using his money and influence to paint Mattie as an irresponsible mother. Through his caretaker, Bill, Mike learns of Mattie's past, her marriage, and her custody woes.When Max finds out that Mike ran into Mattie and Kyra, he threatens him via telephone. Despite the threats, or perhaps because of them, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie as an act of kindness, and he gradually develops feelings for Mattie despite the almost twenty-year age difference between them. Through his various crooked connections, Max manages to drag Mike into the custody battle even further by forcing him to make a deposition for the impending custody hearing. Accompanied by a local lawyer, Romeo Bisonette, Mike makes the custody lawyer hired by Devore look foolish by beating him at his own game and calling his bluff.Mike begins to write again, while both Kyra and Mike experience hauntings in their homes. The author realizes that the ghost of Jo is assisting him in solving the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose spirit is haunting Mike's house. Mike asks the locals about what happened to Sara Tidwell, and is warned to refrain from digging in old scandals. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him.Max Devore threatens Mike again, and in an encounter with Mike, Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, almost succeed in drowning him. It's only due to the help from his wife's spirit that he's able to survive the attack. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, Max Devore commits suicide, which seemingly leaves Mattie and Kyra free from his influence.Mike, Mattie, John, and Romeo Bissonette, the lawyer that assisted Mike during his deposition and a detective are having a party when a gunman shows up and shoots everyone in sight, Mattie fatally. Mike, the only adult not hit, takes Kyra back to Sara Laughs as a huge storm breaks. He is acting under the influence of the ghost of Sara Tidwell and finds himself preparing to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself, going so far as to give Kyra cocoa and Benadryl to make her sleep, and drawing the bath. But there are still pieces to the mystery that Mike doesn't understand, and the ghost of Jo is trying to prevent him from doing what he is doing.As Kyra sleeps, Mike goes to Jo's studio to search for answers. He discovers documents that Jo had hidden away before her death, and among the papers is a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families. Several had firstborn children with "K" names who had been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances. The genealogy shows that Mike and Jo's child (who was going to be named Kia) would have been the next firstborn child with a "K" name in the family line, had she been born.Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He returns to the house, checks on the still-sleeping Kyra, and drains the bath meant for her drowning. He can feel Sara's influence to take Kyra to the lake, but he fights it off. He leaves the house once more with a shovel and a bottle of lye to search for Sara's grave, knowing that the only way to break the curse and keep Kyra safe will be to destroy Sara's bones. On his way to where Mike suspects Sara is buried, the ghosts of Max Devore's grandfather and several other town men appear to him and try to block him from getting to the grave. Mike learns through a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake. Furthermore, all the "K" children who had died were descendants of those men. Mike makes it to the grave site, but Sara's ghost doesn't want the curse ended prematurely. She tries to stop Mike, and attempts to assume corporeal form to do so. Jo appears in corporeal form herself and tells Mike he must hurry as Sara has enlisted the help of "The Outsider" to harm Mike and prevent him from reaching Sara's bones. Jo struggles to fight off The Outsider while Mike digs up and destroys Sara's bones with the lye, ending the curse.Returning to the house, Mike discovers that Max Devore's assistant Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. Mike follows Kyra and Rogette to a neighboring property, arriving just as Kyra bites Rogette and attempts to escape onto a dock heaving in the waves from the storm. Mike tries to hit Rogette and keep her away from Kyra when Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the Lake. Rogette attempts to pull Mike into the lake with her, but she is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra, and she tells Kyra that she is now Mike's daughter.The story ends with an epilogue in which Mike has retired from writing, and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than Mike anticipated. Still, the state has allowed Mike to visit Kyra, and she has been allowed overnight stays with him. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but there is hope that it will be a positive outcome. | paranormal, revenge, murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0100661 | Sonny Boy | Some kind of wooden pyramid is burning in the desert. Next thing we know, we are in 1970, in New Mexico. A car reaches a motel. A man wants to stay there but his wife would rather find a nicer place.Another man, Weasel (Brad Dourif), starts to steal the car. The couple notices, and Weasel shoots the man. The narrator remarks how the sound explodes in his head, and that he wants his mother's arms "to make me safe."Weasel proudly delivers the car to Slue's compound. (The wooden pyramid is there, not yet burnt.) Slue (Paul L. Smith) is grumpy and dismissive. Suddenly they realize there is a baby in the car. Pearl, Slue's helpmate-- David Carradine in a dress-- insists on keeping the baby, although Slue would rather sell the baby through Charlie P., his fence (Sydney Lassick).At a bar, Weasel boasts of the murder and brags that together with Slue, he owns the town. Doc (Conrad Janis) is in the bar and hits Weasel. Charlie P. warns Doc to be careful. Doc is rumored to have got in trouble experimenting with monkeys.A newly recruited policeman shows up at Slue's compound and noses around. Slue eliminates the policeman with a howitzer.Slue decides to appropriate the baby after all. He brandishes it to the sky and we understand that the narrator remembers being the baby as he recalls a flow of blood.A table is set, Pearl plays the piano, and everyone puts on animal masks. The baby is taken from a box and Slue gives it what the narrator calls "the gift of silence," cutting its tongue out. The baby doesn't cry.The narrator is seen at age 12, being towed behind a car as part of Slue's "games of strength and love," at 14 being tied to the stake and surrounded by a circle of fire to make his "skin so hard even fire can't harm me," and at 17 receiving a haircut.A policeman who cooperates with Slue warns him that the mayor could be a trouble-maker. Slue takes the narrator, Sonny Boy, to the mayor's house in an ice cream truck. Sonny Boy lopes toward the house on all fours, crashes through the window, and kills the mayor. He finds a mirror and considers himself a pitiful thing.Slue is pleased. Sonny Boy waxes emotional, and Slue berates him for weeping.Slue decides to extend his robberies into more prosperous territory and steal art. He takes Sonny Boy in the ice cream truck again. A pretty girl named Rose (Alexandra Powers), with crucifix earrings, notices Sonny Boy and tries to befriend him. The truck cruises suburbia a little, and Sonny Boy finds the area disturbing.He is sent into a church, where he is attracted to the figure of the crucified Jesus. A priest discovers him and he kills the priest, experiencing "the blood of a good man."Slue's accomplices, Weasel and Charlie P., would like to kill a prospector and take his gold. Slue refuses, because the prospector is part of the town that he considers his. The accomplices take Sonny Boy, with a cattle prod to control him, and they commit the crime. When it is discovered, the police understand that Slue "wouldn't turn on his own people."Sonny Boy escapes and experiences nature a little. He comes upon an abandoned house where a couple is in bed. They resent his intrusion, and they chase him on a motorcycle and the girl gleefully knifes him. He knocks the girl off the motorcycle and stands sorrowfully over her. A police car comes.Slue wonders why Sonny Boy has run off. Pearl thinks Sonny Boy may need a wife. "Whatever you say," Slue responds.A lynch mob is after Sonny Boy. He escapes, but he doesn't know the territory. He passes by walls with graffiti-- one says Helter Skelter. On another, the drawings are colorful and pleasant.He enters a house where a girl lives. He finds a rifle there. The girl understands Sonny Boy isn't normal and she pretends to sympathize with him until she can grab the gun and chase him away.Again Sonny Boy escapes, but others are after him.Three days later, in the desert, we see Rose arriving where Sonny Boy is lurking, and she kisses him. Slue grabs Sonny Boy back.A mob threatens the sheriff for not capturing Sonny Boy. Although Sonny Boy has a couple of defenders, Weasel understands there is no stopping the mob and he offers to help them find Sonny Boy.Sonny Boy, Slue, and Pearl are besieged in the compound. Despite their weapons, including the compound, they are cornered in the pyramid where they store some of their stolen goods. Slue's accomplices try to take advantage of the situation by taking some goods away, but Slue shoots them. Pearl goes down shooting against the mob. Sonny Boy briefly attacks Slue. The pyramid is burned, but Sonny Boy survives.Doc takes Sonny Boy in and repairs his tongue, using the tongue of a monkey. Lying in bed, Sonny Boy recalls seeing Slue lying dead in the pyramid.When he can speak, Sonny Boy's first word is "No!" He escapes, and as narrator he remarks, "I have words now, but what good are they? The pain doesn't stop, and I wonder: who am I now?" | murder | train | imdb | Smith playing Slue, a small town crime boss.
David Carradine plays his transvestite (I think) squeeze, Pearl, while Brad Dourif and Sydney Lassick are his two henchmen, Weasel and Charlie P.
When Sonny Boy gets loose, his actions threaten to turn the town against Slue.I had wanted to see this one after reading about it in "Terror on Tape", and TCM gave me the chance when they aired it as part of their Underground lineup.
While I would hesitate to call "Sonny Boy" a good film, it's worth a look if only to say that you've seen it.
Personally, I'm still not 100% sure if Carradine was supposed to be playing a guy in drag or an actual woman..
There is no film like Sonny Boy: even Leonard Maltin was moved to call it (I quote verbatim) "A repulsive, socially irredeemable waste of celluloid ...
filmed for no apparent reason other to offend and appal", and if that isn't a recommendation for a cult movie, I don't know what is.
It's pitiful that Sonny Boy has so little recognition apart from a few right-thinking die hards - you don't have to like it, just admit you've never seen its like before or since.
Sonny Boy is a one of a kind horror/comedy with an exceptional cast.
Smith (Midnight Express, Crimewave) plays his usual over-the-top man/monster role, David Carradine his transvestite wife, Brad Dourif (legend!) the aptly named Weasel, and Dourif's Cuckoo's Nest co-star Sydney Lassick, the slimy Charlie P.
Maybe making Sonny Boy scarred him for life?!
I also liked veteran Conrad Janis as one of the few non-repulsive characters in this, an alcoholic doctor with a liking for surgery involving monkey parts(!) Janis has had one eclectic career, working with everyone from Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan to African bushman N!xau, from Mork And Mindy to The Cable Guy, but surely he must rate this as the weirdest project he's ever been involved in!
And Brad Dourif has made more than his fair share of strange movies,not least of which Blue Velvet, but none as demented as this crazy mutha!I recommend Sonny Boy to bizarre movie lovers everywhere, and fans of Garth Ennis comics will find much to enjoy here, as it shares a similar gonzo humour to Preacher et al..
While watching this with a friend (in a general state of disbelief due to the surreal audacity of the flick), they looked over at me to exclaim that I had found "the impossible movie".
(I'm not talking about today's so-called "indie" films that are pushed into theatres by giant corporations like Miramax and Lion's Gate and Fox Searchlight, but movies that were peddled by independent distributors the old fashioned way.) I'm proud to say I saw it twice on the big screen: the first time, I was the only person in the theatre; the second time I brought a friend I knew would appreciate it and it was only the two of us!
After all, who doesn't want to see a film starring Brad Douriff, David Carradine, and the guy who played Bluto in Popeye which, according to Maltin, "was filmed for no apparent reason but to offend and appall?" When I finally tracked it down via a bootleg site years later, I was expecting an unredeemable gorefest, but instead, I got a quirky, sensitive, sorta moving flick about child abuse...kind of.
I mean, it ain't The English Patient--it's got a deputy getting exploderated at point blank range with a Howitzer and a cigar-chomping David Carradine in full drag (one of his best performances, by the way.
This is one of the most ignored and genuinely horrific horror films I've seen, and I consider myself a connoisseur of these type of films...This ranks with Irreversible, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Hostel etc for pure nauseous shock - a child's tongue is cut out by his perverted 'parents' as a birthday present which is utterly normal in the context of the film...Forget Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes - this is real US horror, like The Girl Next Door (though not that shocking).Utterly nihilistic, very strange and well worth a look if you can find it!.
Smith plays (convincingly) one of the most repugnant characters you'll ever see, the film has enough originality and audacity to be preferable to many other formula horror outings.
Outstanding performance by the actor who plays Sonny Boy.
This was a bizarre film, is one way of putting it.
A con artist, played by Brad Dourif, kills a couple then steals their car taking it to his friend who deals in stolen items.
The car ends up having a baby in the back of which the man wants to get rid of but his wife played by David Carradine (who wears make-up and several dresses throughout) wants to keep the baby.
If that's not weird enough they keep him in a box and on his sixth birthday the man cuts the boys tongue off!
He later takes his son (now a man) to kill people he needs killed.Definitely a weird and dark film.
Imagine Peckinpah, Cocteau, Bunuel and a strung-out Sam Shepard doing a mixture of ultra violent desert town fairy tale and the ultimate poetic love story, including a clever gay Bonnie-&-Clyde-ending.
In twenty years from now, "Sonny Boy" will be praised as a work of genius, a unique, surrealist masterpiece in a decade of mid-cult movies..
Definitely worth seeing (if just to see David Carradine wearing a dress, though it has much more to offer).
Smith plays a local crook "Who has the town under his thumb" however things get extremely bizarre when in the opening sequences we see Brad Dourif kill a couple and steal the car with a baby inside, to which Smith wants to kill but his "wife" David Carradine(!) wants to keep, Smith compromises and raises the boy as a geek and through out we see a blackly comic, utterly bizarre, daft and overall daring movie to say the least.
First of all the thought of having David Carradine as your mother, Smith as your dad and Dourif as your uncle would guarantee any kid's trip to insanity.
The movie is indeed quite strange but it's all surprisingly well acted, with effective black comedy and surreality that verges on true greatness.
And yet in it's own way Sonny Boy is ingenious in it's story.
A movie that is unpredictable, jaw dropping (Seriously anyone known to remembering Carradine for his role on Kung Fu, will have their jaw drop whenever he's on screen, which is pretty often) and at times somewhat tragic.
This is a movie for the adventurous who have grown tired of predictable blockbusters, and unpredictable Sonny Boy is.
This is a cult classic and for my money, needs a DVD release.* * *1/2 out of 4-(Very Good).
You adventurous soul who is reading this, I envy you because as much as I intend on finding this movie and watching it until the tape wears through, you are going to be seeing it for the first time.
This film has no category and plays by no rules, which explains the low rating here and the fact that it's practically unheard of.
There's no doubt that there's something here to offend anyone who is jaded but I personally found the Christ/Frankenstein analogies extremely moving, and David Carradine is thus far the best Virgin Mary I've ever seen (I'm serious).
One can read all sorts of stuff like that into this movie if they so desire.
I liked the "Father, Son and Holy Ghost' quote in the middle of the film, and Paul L Smith's cartoonishly cruel yet fatherly image comfortably fits with my personal conceptions of God so I was happy to chose that route at times (anyone else see the sheriff as Pontius Pilate?).
Yet it does manage the feat of being somewhat poignant, even in the face of its depravity.In 1970 New Mexico, a young couple is murdered, their car stolen, and baby unknowingly abducted - by quirky lowlife Weasel (who else but the great Brad Dourif).
Weasel takes the prize(s) back to his boss, small time crime kingpin Slue (Paul L.
Slue lives with a "wife", Pearl (David Carradine, who plays the role in full drag) who takes an instant shine to the kid.
Slue wants nothing to do with a child until he realizes that he now has innocent life that he can corrupt as he sees fit, and turn into a feral attack dog.
Smith, who didn't want to do the movie but changed his tune when he saw who else had been signed up, is typically amusing as the loathsome father figure.
And Alexandra Powers is appealing as Rose, the young lady who is moved by Sonny Boy and tries to reach out to him.Worth a look see for the more adventurous among B movie enthusiasts.Seven out of 10..
Okay, let's start with David Carradine in drag...he gives a surprisingly touching performance.
And any movie with Brad Dourif - well - what can one say?
If you didn't know it was filmed in 1989 you'd swear it was a product of the 1970's; it certainly has that feel to it.
I stumbled across,Sonny Boy last night,late around 1:00 am on turner classic movies on cable.I missed the very beginning and could not stop watching it!
So I watched as the baby got older and older and realize what was going on.It was sad and I was upset that the way the boy,Sonny Boy ,his name,was treated and made to do.It was really wild and crazy and weird of what was going on in the whole movie.The big guy was so mean and nasty.I watched to the end and had to say it was a good movie and to see it now in this entry was really good!
If you take the backwoods inbred rednecks from "Deliverance" and place them in the desert, add some "Frankenstein", and a little something from John Waters, you would be pretty close to describing "Sonny Boy".
Sonny's behemoth monstrous father "Slue" is (Paul L.
Smith), his mother, "Pearl", is none other than David Carradine dressed as a woman, and their number one henchman is Brad Dourif (Weasel).
If you have ever appreciated any movie containing violence and depravity...SEE THIS FILM.The acting is WONDERFUL...the writing is WONDERFUL...the direction is WONDERFUL.Denouncing the violence and depravity in this film is on par with denouncing the violence and depravity in Shakespaere's "Richard III" OR "Titus Andronicus."It is sad to learn that the director of this movie lost his career over it...and that the movie is forgotten...when snooze-fests like "No Country for Old Men" are now heralded and have awards hurled at them as though they were something new.This movie is simply better in every way than "Pulp Fiction"..."No Country...." or so many other ultra-violence-and-depravity-as-art films.
Sonny Boy has something of a cult following; and it's really not hard to see why, but I have to say that I personally am not a part of it; and to be honest I found this film rather disappointing.
It seems that director Robert Martin Carroll wanted this to be a crime film with a twist; but the twist ends up overtaking the rest of the plot, and it's really not all that interesting anyway.
As will most probably be the case for most people that bother to seek this film out, my main point of interest was seeing David Carradine in a dress.
Anyway, the film begins with a small time criminal stealing a car and bringing it back to his boss, Slue.
The pair bring the boy up like an animal; cutting out his tongue and keeping him in a cage.
Years later, when the boy is grown up, he manages to escape; leading to trouble in the local area.The film is in exceptionally poor taste; but unfortunately this isn't matched by an interesting plot.
The cast does provide the negative elements of the film with some respite, however, as the director has brought together some talented performers; most notably the two in the lead roles.
Smith strikes all the right notes as the detestable mob boss at the centre of the film; and of course he receives good feedback from cult star David Carradine in his rather bizarre role.
Sonny Boy (1989) 1/2 (out of 4) Sick, twisted, disturb, morally insensitive, vile, strange and repulsive are a few of the words that others have said when reviewing this film.
A crackhead thief (Brad Dourif) kill a couple and steal their car not realizing that their infant son is in the back.
Smith) and his wife (David Carradine in drag) who raise the kid in all the wrong ways, which leads him, known as Sonny Boy, to become a raging killer.
No matter how you look at it, this is a crazy little film that one really does need to see in order to get its full impact.
Yes, seeing Carradine in drag is the main draw and to me it was pretty much the only draw as I found the film to be boring from start to finish.
Seeing Carradine in drag is just plain weird but it's the main reason to watch the film.
Dourif isn't too bad and neither is Smith but they're lost in a worthless movie.
Impressive as Boston is, 'Sonny Boy' is best known as the film in which David Carradine plays a female character.
He is never convincing as a real woman though and always looks like a man in need of a good shave and therefore his performance is sadly distracting in a film with otherwise serious undertones.
Indeed, 'Sonny Boy' has lots to offer as a personal identity study, a look at the effects of improper parenting and an examination of choice.
Making his feature film directing debut, Robert Martin Carroll does a great job matching the desert locations to desertion themes at hand and Boston's performance is simply exquisite..
Somebody compared Sonny Boy to the above.
Sonny Boy's voice is taken from him by removing his tongue.
I must admit I couldn't figure out who the heck David Carridine in the movie was until the final credits, which pairs the actors with the roles.
Sonny Boy---Gives Home abuse a bad name and a Chilling thrill..
Very good and original performances by the entire cast who seemed to have embraced this definitely 'cult' style film, as a mother Swan might embrace the ugliest duckling in the pond.
SONNY BOY has to be seen to be believed.
Brad Dourif (Deadwood,...Cuckoo's Nest) chews up the scenery as Weasel, a sniffling psycho who works for the small town crimelord Paul L.
Weasel robs a couple one day, murders them and steals the car - not knowing there is a little baby in the back seat.
Paul Smith lives out in the middle of the desert with his "wife" Pearl - played by David Carradine (Kill Bill, Kung Fu).
Carradine is in full drag the whole movie and gives an entertaining, strange performance (he also sings the theme song).
The crazy crime couple raise this baby in their own perverted way - cutting out the tongue of the boy, raising him like a wild animal in an empty silo.
Then Paul Smith "sics" his Sonny Boy on anyone who tries to cross him!
Small time crook Slue (Paul L.
Smith) and his girlfriend Pearl (David Carradine in drag--seriously!) inadvertently get a stolen car with a baby in the back.
Slue treats the boy named Sonny Boy like an animal.
By the time Sonny Boy is 17 (played by Michael Boston under the name Michael Griffin) he's little more than an animal and does anything his father asks...even murder.
But Sonny Boy realizes there has to be something more than this life.Sick, disturbing, no budget film.
When it has David Carradine playing a woman in drag you KNOW this isn't a normal film!
The story doesn't have much of a plot--just seeing how Sonny Boy was bought up and seeing the poor man trying to cope with his environment.
He's in drag the entire movie and there isn't any real point to it that I could see.
Also Brad Dourif plays another psycho role and Alexander Powers is very good in the small part of Rose.
It would be easy for me to dismiss this film as a piece of utter repulsive garbage--but the acting by Boston and some nice directing makes it too hard to just ignore.
Smith (as Slue) and his transvestite lover David Carradine (as Pearl).
The kid grows up to be handsome Michael Griffin aka Michael Boston (as Sonny Boy)...Mainly, the story involves Mr. Griffin's problems adjusting.
With time taking away this film's power to shock, there isn't much left.**** Sonny Boy (3/22/89) Robert Martin Carroll ~ Michael Boston, Paul L.
Smith, David Carradine, Brad Dourif.
Everyone should watch a bad film.
My theory about films is this: only a few of them are really good, most of them are okay, and some of them are awful.
I'd never heard of Sonny Boy until I saw it on TCM Underground's schedule and I knew it would be just bad enough to enjoy.Here are some gems from this film:David Carradine in drag, bursting through a window with a gun in each hand.Numerous facial closeups of a girl with brown teeth (you won't want to be eating anything during this film)Strangely non-catchy chanting by the bloodthirsty mobA pyramid constructed of two-by-fours and tissue paperBrad Dourif's maniacal laughPaul Smith and Brad Dourif, together again after the highly successful "Dune"Monkey tongueConrad Janis staring off into spaceA musical score consisting entirely of banjos, guitars, and harmonicas, despite the southwest settingAn "ice cream" truckIf you watch a big-budget blockbuster film and go away feeling a little empty from all the overdone special effects, paper-thin plot, and reconstituted characters, watch a truly awful film such as Sonny Boy and be truly disappointed. |
tt3203606 | Trumbo | The movie starts in the year 1947 with Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) in his bathtub, writing a script on a typewriter. At this point in time, he is an established screenwriter in Hollywood. We next see Trumbo on set as the film he wrote is shot. He attends a party with Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg). Trumbo goes to the movies and watches a film reel where gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), speaks of many in Hollywood being Communists, showing Trumbo as an example; the House Un-American Activities Committee has been formed to investigate. After the film is over, a patron recognizes Trumbo and throws his soda at him.Back at his ranch, Dalton's young daughter Niki asks him if he's a Communist. He tells her it's not against the law and he simply wants a better government. He gives her the analogy if she saw someone at school who didn't have a lunch, would she share hers or tell the student to get a job? Dalton and others, including Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.) meet with Edward G. Robinson at his mansion; they discuss the scare tactics Congress is stirring up. At a meeting for the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, John Wayne gives a speech vilifying the Commies and declaring that they need to answer some questions. Arlen and Trumbo hand out pamphlets on free speech but John Wayne argues with them and ostentatiously tears one up while Hedda Hopper looks on. Trumbo points out that he served in the military but John Wayne hasn't - the closest experience he had was on a film set, wearing makeup. Hedda Hopper hints that she will put the exchange in her next column.Trumbo goes to MGM Studios and meets with Louis B. Mayer who tells him that his next deal is going to make him the highest paid writer in Hollywood. But Mayer points out Trumbo has been featured in Hedda Hopper's new column and says he doesn't want to see an article like that again. Trumbo suggests he stop reading Hedda Hopper.Trumbo and his friends and family gather at his ranch. They mention Trumbo's record-breaking, three-year contract with MGM. Trumbo's wife, Cleo (Diane Lane), demonstrates her juggling skills at her daughter's urging. We learn she was an acrobat as a child. The party is interrupted by a man who serves a subpoena to Trumbo, suggesting he and others in Hollywood are using the movies to corrupt democracy and overthrow the nation. We see some news reels of the hearings, then hear Trumbo and the others deciding to answer questions ambiguously. Some worry this will be contempt of court but someone else points out that they can appeal and the Supreme Court will side with them there's a five to four liberal majority who will agree the Committee is unconditional. In court, Trumbo is one of ten forced to testify along with Arlen, who is hesitant and can't afford the legal fees. Trumbo offers to cover him.In the U.S. Capitol, the hearings take place. Trumbo is defiant of the questioning, pointing out he hasn't been accused of a crime. Arlen follows suit, responding to questions with humor. Outside, Arlen admits to Trumbo he has recently found out he has lung cancer. The Hollywood 10 that testified are charged with contempt of Congress. At MGM, Hedda Hopper meets with Louis B. Mayer. She threatens to name him as a supporter if he doesn't fire Trumbo and the others, reminding him of her days as an actress when he tried to force her to have sex with him. Cut to Louis B. Mayer announcing he is dissolving ties to any of the Hollywood 10 under contract at MGM.At Edward G. Robinson's mansion, he collects money for a defense fund for the Hollywood 10. Trumbo realizes Robinson has sold one of his paintings to help fund the cause. The group is found guilty of contempt of Congress. Trumbo's lawyer tells the press the Supreme Court will side with his defendant. Privately, Trumbo admits he is now broke since his three-year contract was annulled the defense is going to cost him $90,000. Trumbo gets to work writing a new screenplay. Buddy Ross, a Hollywood producer, agrees to produce the films Trumbo is writing, independently, as soon as the court case finishes. Trumbo asks him if he would ever name names if he was on trial for being a Democrat Buddy says he wouldn't.Trumbo continues to write but just can't put his own name on his work. He instead gives the credit to Ian McLellan Hunter (Alan Tudyk) and asks him to sell it to the studio in exchange for 30 percent of the payout. The script he's written is Roman Holiday. Meanwhile, contractors are working on the ranch; one mentions to Cleo that they haven't been paid. Right then, Trumbo enters, declaring that he and Cleo are rich - Roman Holiday just sold to Paramount. Cleo is distracted though because one of the liberal judges on the Supreme Court has died, right after another liberal Supreme Court judge. There now is no longer a liberal majority and their appeal is going to be denied, securing the prison sentence that they were given.Trumbo reports to prison for his one-year sentence. He does his best to get along with other prisoners but feels very out of place. Outside, Edward G. Robinson is being questioned at the U.S. Capitol about whether or not he had political meetings attended by Communists at his home. He is asked to name names and Edward does, naming many including Arlen Hird and Dalton Trumbo. Time goes by. We see news footage of the Rosenberg espionage trial, where a couple is found guilty of selling atomic secrets to Russia. And of Joseph McCarthy focusing on uncovering Communists in the United States. Trumbo is released from prison and reunites with his kids, who are now much older (Niki is now played by Elle Fanning). His house has been sold. Trumbo runs into Buddy Ross at a restaurant but Buddy blows him off.Arlen suggests they sue the studios but Trumbo suggests they instead make money by continuing to write screenplays. He visits Frank King (John Goodman) at King Brother Pictures, which creates B-movies. Frank says they can't afford him but Trumbo agrees to write screenplays at the same rate as other writers they've hired and will have it done in three days. Trumbo locks himself in the bathtub and bangs out a script. When the script is delivered, Frank loves it. He pays Trumbo and then asks Trumbo to fix other scripts they've had. Trumbo and his family move into a new home. A neighbor has written a note, calling him a traitor, and vandalizing his pool.Roman Holiday is a huge hit. Trumbo continues banging out scripts for the King Brothers who want quantity over quality. He's overwhelmed by the demand so he gets Frank to hire Arlen Hird and Ian McLellan Hunter, who is now blacklisted despite getting an Oscar nomination for Roman Holiday (which Trumbo actually wrote). Trumbo asks his family for their help in keeping the business going they will answer the phone and if they are asked for one of Trumbo's pseudonyms, he will take the call. They'll hand over scripts to messengers at their door based on what name they're under. And Cleo and Niki will make deliveries. Niki is concerned because she's consumed with schoolwork and civil rights projects.Frank King has issues with Arlen's script but assigns Dalton to fix it, despite him not getting paid for rewrites. Arlen is embarrassed to be writing crappy screenplays and keeps integrating political themes into his works. He points out that he was nominated for a Pulitzer and Trumbo won a National Book Award. Trumbo tells Arlen about an idea he has for a screenplay about a bullfighter. Later, the Oscars telecast is on and Roman Holiday wins Best Screenplay. Buddy Ross calls Trumbo at home and asks if it's true that he had actually written Roman Holiday he needs a script and wants to hire Trumbo. Arlen and Trumbo argue, with Trumbo saying if they continue to work despite being blacklisted, they win. Arlen saying he wants to make changes, not just get money and accolades.Jumping forward in time, it's now Niki's 16th birthday. Trumbo is locked in the bathroom, working on a script. Niki tries to get him to come downstairs for cake and he yells at her for interrupting him while he is working. She runs off in tears. Cleo comforts her as she complains about her father.Dalton finds out Arlen has finally died from the cancer. Trumbo attends the funeral, then visits Edward G. Robinson to tell him the news. His walls are now adorned with paintings. Trumbo wants to repay the money Edward gave them for their defense fund, so they're not indebted to him (after he named their names). Edward explains he just wanted his life back. Dalton tells him he didn't have to give names since Congress had no right to demand it of him. Edward tells him he probably shaved years off Arlen's life by forcing him to commit contempt against Congress. In a restaurant, Hedda Hopper approaches Trumbo. She asks him to solidify the rumor that he's been writing popular screenplays under false names. He refuses to give her an exclusive. Hedda reveals that Buddy Ross named names behind closed doors, including Trumbo's.Trumbo asks his son to deliver a script to a film set in Agoura, 50 miles away. Niki points out Chris has a date that night. Trumbo suggests Niki does it instead but she is going to be protesting racial segregation. He is adamant she deliver the script first; she refuses and rushes off. Trumbo then forces Chris to abandon his plans to go to the movies. Niki doesn't come out that night.Cleo tells Trumbo that when she was younger, she chose Trumbo over another boyfriend because that other boyfriend would have been an abusive father. She tells Trumbo he's losing them, always barking orders after returning from prison instead of talking to them like he used to. He is defensive and she tells him she won't let anybody bully their children. Trumbo finds Niki at a protest. He apologizes for being so aggressive but lately he's wired just to fight. She forgives him.The IASTE Union Leader, Roy Brewer, visits Frank King and tells him he knows hes employing Trumbo and other Communists. He threatens to expose the King Brothers, which would result in protests and boycotts. Frank responds by picking up a baseball bat and smashing things, telling Roy he isn't afraid of boycotts; all of his movies are garbage. He says he is in film for the money and the pussy and if Roy takes that away from him, he won't sue him but he'll beat him to death with the bat. Roy runs off. Trumbo arrives with a new script, The Brave One, using his bullfighter idea. He explains to Frank that it's too good to be made on the cheap.Months later, the film comes out and the family goes to see it although it's credited as being written by Robert Rich. Later, the screenplay is nominated for an Academy Award. But unlike Roman Holiday, which was accredited to his friend, there is no Robert Rich to get the credit if it wins. And it does. Hedda Hopper storms the Motion Picture Alliance Offices and demands Roy Brewer tells her who Robert Rich is, hoping it's not who she thinks it is. Journalists interview Trumbo, asking if he's Robert Rich. He is ambiguous in response. Kirk Douglas comes to visit, asking if Trumbo can work on the script of his new movie. He does, it's called Spartacus and credited to Sam Jackson. Hedda meets with Kirk and threatens to send him to court if he hired Dalton Trumbo. Kirk says he doesn't like the way things are and isn't scared of Hedda.Otto Preminger, the director, has read Trumbo's Spartacus script and wants to hire him to write Exodus for Paul Newman to star in. He waits impatiently during Christmas morning, forcing Trumbo to write pages of the script. He doesn't like the work and says if he keeps it up, he'll put Trumbo's real name on the script to shame him. More new pages and Otto demands the work be more genius. Trumbo says if every scene is is brilliant, the work will be monotonous. Otto tells him to write every scene brilliant and he'll direct unevenly. Kirk visits and asks for some new revisions on the Spartacus script. Trumbo can't begin working on it again for another week. He tells Kirk that Otto said that if he keeps up that level of work, he'll see to it that his name is on the movie twisting his words to make it seem like Otto might give him a screen credit. He then tells Otto that Kirk came by and they discussed him getting a screen credit on Spartacus.On the set of Spartacus, the head of Universal tells Kirk that Hedda Hopper is predicting a boycott unless they fire Trumbo. Meanwhile, the King Brothers have several lawsuits against them from writers claiming that they are Robert Rich and wrote The Brave One. In order to settle the cases, they have to reveal Trumbo was the real writer. Niki points out that the neighbor that had called Trumbo a traitor upon moving in has seen Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger visit and has already figured out Trumbo is writing all of these scripts with mysterious writers. Trumbo will legally be tied to the film and will receive the Oscar. Trumbo admits that he is Robert Rich to a news reporter. He uses this as an opportunity to point that the House Un-American Activities Committee has yet to expose any Communist conspiracies or write any laws yet invested millions of dollars in their investigation. The only thing they've accomplished is keeping people from working. Yet he still managed to win two Academy Awards. Trumbo is able to use this interview to turn public opinion against the blacklist. In response, Otto announces his new film is written by Dalton Trumbo. Kirk also demands that the head of Universal announce Trumbo wrote their screenplay, as well. When he refuses, Kirk threatens to leave the film despite already having shot half the movie (meaning those millions of dollars would have been wasted).Right before its release, Hedda threatens a mass protest of Spartacus unless Trumbo's name is removed. When the Universal head refuses, she threatens it will be the end of his studio. Nonetheless, the film premieres with Trumbo's name in the credits. Cleo begins to cry, stating that it's all over now (i.e., the blacklisting). President John F. Kennedy is asked about his thoughts on Spartacus and the controversy. He responds that he thinks it's going to be a big hit, indirectly supporting Trumbo and denouncing the blacklist.Years go by and Dalton Trumbo is given an award. In his speech, he notes that the blacklist was a time of evil but people shouldn't think of the people involved as heroes or villains but every single one of them, victims.THE END | violence | train | imdb | null |
tt0837564 | Spider-Man 3 | NOTE: The summary concerns the Xbox360/Ps3/PC versions of the game and not the Wii/Ps2.Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man aka Peter Parker, returns to save the city yet again. The game opens with a psychotic group known as the Mad Bombers and their leader Luke Carlyl (Neil Ross) who set a skyscraper ablaze and promptly invade it. Making his nightly rounds, Spider-Man crashes in to investigate and instantly is attacked by Mad Bomber henchmen. With aid from the Narrator (Bruce Campbell) in learning the basics, Spider-Man rounds up the thugs and saves the hostages. The Mad Bombers are still at large however having gotten away in their helicopter.From here, Spider-Man narrates his current life that he has a beautiful girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson (Kari Wahlgren), his estranged friend Harry Osborn who refuses to speak with him (James Franco), and a new rival photographer, Eddie Brock Jr. (Topher Grace) at the Daily Bugle who is keen for brown nosing the tempermental boss J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). There are also still random criminals but the main source of crime lies with that of three gangs: Arsenic Candy (rich spoiled girls), Order of the Dragontail (kung fu fighting ninjas) and the Apocalypse (deranged, half nude psychos who liter the streets). Also, a comet crashes down into Central Park and the symbiote substance slowly slithers from it.NOTE: After the first mission, the game allows the players to pick any mission at random and play them in any order. Thus the missions tend to overlap and writing a synopsis for the way the game flows is somewhat impossible as they can be played in any order. The following is a synopsis is of the missions grouped together.Mad Bomber Missions
After the burning building incident, Peter stops by the Daily Bugle to visit his angry boss J. Jonah Jameson. However, Jonah's phone rings and it is the voice of Carlyl who threatens that the city has betrayed him and it will burn. Peter rushes over to the Grand Central Terminal and into the subway tunnels where he finds Mad Bomber henchmen planting bombs all around the tunnels. He locates them all and puts a stop to them. However, one last Mad Bomber with jetpacks puts bombs on a speeding subway train. Racing towards it, Spider-Man webs it up and forces it to a stop, all the while defusing the bomb.Caryl isn't done however. During a round up at the Financial District, Spider-Man encounters Mad Bomber thugs planting bombs atop City Hall. Even though Spider-Man defeats the thugs and defuses the bomb, about 4 Mad Bomber Jetpack thugs are flying around the Financial District and planting even more bombs. Spider-Man swings to the bombs, defuses them and hunts the jetpack thugs down. With luck, he is able to stop them all.That night, Spider-Man receives tip from fellow Detective DeWolfe that there is a bombing incident occuring beneath the George Washington Bridge. Taking her advice, Spider-Man rushes to the bridge and encounters more Mad Bombers planting yet another set of bombs. Quickly defeating them, Spider-Man's attention is turned to a nearby factory that is overrun with Mad Bombers. He swings to the scene and navigates his way across the smoke filled factory. Carlyl plans to use the factory as a main base for exploding the entire city- but Spider-Man is able to stop him. Before Carlyl escapes yet again, he sees Spider-Man face to face and the helicopter flies away. There is another lurking surprise as the factory detonates and Spider-Man swiftly finds the exit out.Deciding to visit the Daily Bugle again, Peter arrives to see that it is lit on fire and the Mad Bombers have planted bombs in the main editing room and taken Jonah captive. Defusing the bombs, Spidey swings after the helicopter where Jonah is held captive. Throwing the editor from the helicopter, Spider-Man rushes and saves his bossy editor and continues to follow the helicopter. The chase ends atop a building roof where the helicopter eventually goes down but Carlyl unfortunately escapes yet again.Lizard Missions
Dr. Curt Connors (Nathan Carlson) attempts to start an experiment at 8:47PM to regenerate his arm with a serum. Unfortunately, things go astray and he transforms into the evil Lizard. The following day at the Daily Bugle, Peter Parker is told that people are crying about giant lizards running amock in the city and he instantly snaps a picture of Larry the Lizard- a cell phone promoting mascot. Jonah is furious that Parker thinks it is a joke and demands for real pictuers of the giant reptalian creatures. Sure enough on the second search, Parker gets plenty of pictures of actual giant lizards which vanish into the sewers every time he snaps a shot.That night, Peter goes to his university to see Dr. Connors (possibly to ask about the lizards) when he sees that Connors himself is the supervilalin known as the Lizard. The Lizard warns Peter to stay away and then hides in the sewers. Suiting into his spider suit, Spider-Man follows the Lizard. In the sewers, he encounters hundreds of lizards, like the ones he snapped photos of and large hives that is emitting the Lizard disease. The chase to find his professor ends up in a room with three conveyor belts. The Lizard attacks Spider-Man on each of the conveyor belts but Spidey is able to best him and tosses him into another room. From here, the two battle and while Spidey wins, the Lizard slips away further beneath Manhattan.Some time in the future of the game when Spider-Man has the symbiote, he decides to return to the sewers now that he is stronger. Upon arrival, Symbiote Spider finds dead lizards impaled by spears and instantly investigates. After swinging down waterways and running through dirty hallways, Symbiote Spider-Man encounters an old foe: Kraven the Hunter (Neil Kaplan) who came to New York City only to find a suitable equal for hunting. Declaring that the Lizard was unworthy, Kraven decides to add Symbiote Spider-Man to his collection and engages in a battle. Even though Kraven morphs into various creatures and even turns invisible, Symbiote Spider-Man is victorious and interrogates the hunter, demanding to know where his professor went. Laughing, Kraven taunts and says, "See for yourself."Obliging, Symbiote Spider-Man is horrified to find that the Lizard has been transformed into a giant blue glowing 30 foot creature. The two battle in a room with four generators, that are broken causing the Ultra Lizard's shield to vanquish. Finally, Symbiote Spider-Man lets his power get ahead of him and nearly kills the Ultra Lizard by breaking his jaw and throwing him onto electric subway lines. The Lizard cries and morphs back into Dr. Connors where he is rushed to the medics.Later on when Spider-Man has rid himself of the symbiote, he visits his professor in the hospital in his suit and Connors begs Spider-Man to help him cure the rest of the lizard-turned citizens. Going into the sewers yet again, Spider-Man locates and finds three samples of Lizard DNA that Connors needs to create an antidote for. Rounding the samples up, he brings them to Connors in his lab where the professor tells Spidey to come back later for the antidote.A few days later, Spider-Man returns and is informed that he must place the antidotes in three dispensers within the sewers- the third being in the hardest place where the Lizards thrive. Spider-Man dives into the sewers for a final and last time and cures all of the Lizard turned people by placing the antidotes in the dispensers. Returning to his professor, Spidey informs him to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.Scorpion Missions
Spidey recalls the events he witnessed after dropping Harry off at the hospital where Scorpion (Dee Bradley Baker) was taken away in another van. Remembering his first battle with Scorpion at the terminal and how he was endangered in an experiment, Spidey suspects that the MechaBioCon base on Governor's Island has something to do with it. Slingshotting over the ocean to the island base, Spidey sneaks in and locates Dr. Andrews (Iona Morris) talking to the evil Dr. Stillwell concerning the Scorpion project. Stillwell threatens that Andrews is getting too emotionally involved and if any more mishaps occur, then she will be terminated. Reminiscent of the two arguing scientists from Oscorp in the first game, Spider-Man agrees to help Dr. Andrews and he gets information where Scorpion is being kept. However, shortly afterwards, the alarms go off and Spider-Man instantly escapes the island, attaching himself to the helicopter that Stillwell is escaping in.Now at the mainland highrise base, Spider-Man invades and locates the Scorpion who is under mind control. Trying to convince the arthropod-like experiment, Scorpion refuses and battles back at Spider-Man. The fight leads to the Manhattan Bridge where the mind control devices are being kept. Resisiting as best he can, The Scorpion manages to destroy the mind control homing devices and rids himself of as much equipment as he could. Spidey and Scorpion make an agreement to meet later at a secluded warehouse where they will both take down Stillwell.Towards the end of the game when Spidey rid himself of the symbiote, he recalls Scorpion's request and meets him at the warehouse. The two contemplate to take down Stillwell at the Governor's Island laboratory. Spidey follows Scorpion as they swing down the monorail underground terminal and into the main faculty. Upon arrival, Scorpion is horrified to find The Rhino (John DiMaggio) carrying Dr. Andrews. Rhino taunts Scorpion and then heads up an large lift. Scorpion jumps after him and Spidey follows. After avoiding lasers up the big lift, Spider-Man meets up with Scorpion again and the two battle the overly large Rhino. After defeating him, Scorpion corners Stillwell and demands to become normal again. Stillwell however is not about to agree to the demands and states that he will never be normal again. Preparing to kill her, Spider-Man and Andrews convince Scorpion to refrain from murder and he reluctantly lets the witch-like scientist down. Spider-Man warns Dr. Andrews to never let anything like this ever happen again and to make sure no one else ends up like Scorpion.DeWolfe Missions
Detective DeWolfe (Vanessa Marshall) is a tough female New York detective who catches Spider-Man's attention during a false cry for help. During this time, Spider-Man is informed that the police department is filled with rats and dirty cops. DeWolfe can't put her exact finger on it all so she gets Spider-Man's unofficial help in taking pictures of gun running operations and illegal trades. The first two nights involve Spider-Man spying on cops and Dragontail members and the second is Arsenic Candy girls and cops. The final is Spider-Man taking pictures of the final dirty cops at the docks and getting DeWolfe's back. After the final request, DeWolfe thanks Spider-Man but is persistent that a vigilante and cop don't mix.Order of the Dragontail Missions
Being one of the three major gangs in the city, Spider-Man is typically swinging around when a delivery van is jacked by Dragontail members and the Asian driver thrown out. The Asian driver claims he will be fired, so Spider-Man follows after the van which has dropped a few ancient statues as a trail. Spidey finally locates the gang and defeats them as the cops arrive. The inspector claims that the items belonged to a certain Mr. Chen (Keone Young), a Chinese antique collector. Later, Spidey visits Chen and asks him why the Dragontail tried to steal his statues, but suddenly Dragontail members attack. Spider-Man defeats all of them and stops the falling helicopter they are in. Days later, Chen is delivering more goods and asks Spider-Man to help defend the van. Spidey does so and once more, thwarts the attempts of the Dragontail.Sometime later, Symbiote Spider-Man angrily demands why the Dragontail seek the statues and Mr. Chen states that is is because the bell he has in his garden. When the bell is rung in front of the statues, a secret treasure shall come forth. Chen has also gotten tips on the Dragontail hideout and in seconds, Symbiote Spider-Man is following Chen's helicopter to the Dragontail lair- an old warehouse atop a skyscraper. Jumping in, Symbiote Spider-Man witnesses the entire Dragontail gang and their Dragontail leader (Ron Yuan) in the process of a ceremony to ring the ancient bell. Dropping in, he defeats all of them and then reports to Mr. Chen that he has cleaned up all of his messes.Apocalypse Missions
Being one of the most sadistic in the city, Spider-Man swings around to find the Apocalypse Gang Members lowering an innocent citizen down on a winch and into the water. They accused him of spying. Spidey intervenes and saves the citizen, who tells Spider-Man that there were punks in the subways. Fleeing into the subways to hunt the Apocalypse down, Spider-Man encounters various Apocalypse thugs and eventually their hidden base where they have three hostages. Spider-Man easily defeats them and saves the conductor who is about to get hit by a train. The following day, Spider-Man seeks the aid to a troubled cop who claims the Apocalypse are messing up the west power station in attempts to cause a massive blackout. Spider-Man follows the cop in his cop car to a few Apocalypse thugs and then swings over to the power station to defuse the bombs. One bomb can't be defused however so he hurls it into the water by a nearby dock. Upon Spider-Man's attempts to leave though, the Apocalypse leader and some of his best henchmen appear with battle axes and whips. Spider-Man engages in a brief melee with them and manages to defeat them all, ending the Apocalypse reign for now.Arsenic Candy Missions
The Arsenic Candy girls are spoiled brats with deadly weapons at their hand. The first occurence with them is at a clothing store when Spider-Man swings hearing an alarm go off. He defeats the various girls and learns that they raided the store, took clothes and headed to an abandoned theater. Spider-Man rushes over to the theater to find three hostages amid an Arsenic Candy fashion show. Spidey defeats all the girls and after saving the hostages, one hostage claims she works at a toy factory where the girls linger. Spider-Man finds his way to the factory and infiltrates the gang- but a few escape by helicopter. Following the helicopter, it lands next to a fireworks warehouse on Roosevelt Island and Spider-Man defeats the girls and saves the hostages. During this ordeal, the Arsenic Candy girls talk about a wedding which gets Spider-Man's curiosity brewing.About a week later, Symbiote Spider-Man is making his swinging rounds at the university when he finds two girls drop a librarian from the clocktower on campus. Swooping in and saving him, the librarian informs Symbiote Spider-Man that the Arsenic Candy girls were interested in the antique wedding rings held at the library which were on loan to the Natural History Museum. Symbiote Spidey instantly makes his way to the museum where he finds an entire posse of Arsenic Candy girls ransacking the museum and shooting bazookas at the precious dinosaurs. Defending the dinosaurs as best he can, Symbiote Spider-Man is incapable of taking the wedding rings but finds a letter inviting him to Priscilla's wedding. Obliging to his invite, Symbiote Spider-Man arrives at the old abandoned church on the upper east side and finds a disgruntled groom forcefully wedding to Priscilla (Erin Fitzgerald)- the leader of the gang. Dropping in, Symbiote Spidey defeats all of the girls and defeats Priscilla.Kingpin Missions
Sometime after the Arsenic Candy wedding ordeal, Peter stops at the Daily Bugle to receive an assignment by Jonah to take pictures at the courthouse as the three major gangs' bosses are going on trial. Peter goes to the courthouse and takes pictures and before he leaves, he spots Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Bob Joles) surrounded by shady characters of each major gang. Snapping a picture of Fisk, Symbiote Spider-Man suddenly witnesses the gang make a raid of the courthouse and free their bosses. Being the only capable hero present, Symbiote Spidey attacks and defeats all of the gang members, but Fisk and the leaders have escaped. Returning to the Bugle, Peter learns from Robbie Robertson (Charlie Robinson) where Wilson Fisk lives.Furious at Fisk's responsibility for all the gangs trouble, Symbiote Spider rushes to Kingpin's penthouse and crashes through the window. The minute he arrives, the security metal blasts cover up the windows to prevent escaping and Symbiote Spidey is greeted by Apocalypse members. Defeating them with ease and after fighting more members, Symbiote Spidey is invited by the Kingpin himself to come through his fancy double glass doors. Breaking through the doors in blind rage, Kingpin threatens Spider-Man that his behavior is unncessary and then hurls a table at him. Kingpin leaves through another set of doors that promtply is covered with a metal blast seal and more gang members arrive. Symbiote Spider-Man defeats them and then breaks through the doors where he fights the slowly angering Kingpin in a fancy hallwall.After the brief duel, Kingpin tosses Spider-Man through another set of doors and heads into his office. Before Symbiote Spidey can follow however; the Apocalypse boss, Dragontail boss and Priscilla arrive in cool fashion to take on the arachnid superhero. In his rage, they are no contest and it isn't long before Symbiote Spider-Man faces Kingpin in his own office. By the end of their fight, Symbiote Spider-Man becomes so enraged after beating Kingpin to a pulp that he throws him out the penthouse window. Kingpin's fate remains unknown but Peter knows for sure that his strength as well as behavior is seriously altered.Movie Missions
Remembering he was going to meet his girlfriend MJ, Spider-Man swings over to her work late at night and meets her on the rooftop. MJ jumps on his back and Spidey swings off into Midtown, giving his girlfriend a true roller coaster style thrill ride. Their ride ends at Central Park where the two talk. Peter is troubled that Harry won't talk to him, and MJ (knowing the truth about Norman Osborn's death), states that he must go to him and the truth needs to be revealed. While Peter is distracted in deep thought, the wandering symbiote finds him as a suitable host and unknowingly latches onto his leg.Peter Parker then decides to check on his university professor Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard, who had vanished last night after morphing into the hideous Lizard and running into the sewers. As Peter leaves the university building, pondering what could've happened to his professor, his spider senses tingle and he is suddenly swooped up by a dark figure flying a glider/sky stick.Harry Osborn has become the New Goblin through the same strength enhancers his father took and he is intent on killing Peter who he thinks murdered his father. The two battle across the northern New York skyline, Peter desperately balances on the glider whilst battling Harry. After damaging him enough, Peter swings away but Harry is intent on following him. The two continue to battle and after a brutal fight, Harry is distracted and accidentally runs into a web that is taught like a clothesline. He falls into an alleyway and Peter, horrified, takes his unconscious friend to the nearest hospital. After Harry is in the hospital, Peter puts on his Spider-Man suit and prepares to swing away when he hears nearby commotion. Checking in the streets, he finds a van suddenly crash and within the storage compartment, the Rhino comes out into freedom.However, another familiar figure to Spider-Man shows up, that of Scorpion/Mac Gargan who quickly battles the Rhino in a one sided fight. The Rhino runs off and then another van pulls up with security guards and Dr. Jessica Andrews, who works for a company known as MechaBioCon, calms Scorpion and takes him away. Spider-Man who witnessed it all keeps that in mind.A few nights later, Spider-Man is having a vicious nightmare about his Uncle Ben's death when the symbiote takes advantage of Parker's unawareness and engulfs him in it's darkness. Waking up screaming, Spider-Man finds himself atop a large skyscraper and realizes that he has a new suit which makes him feel better, faster, and stronger. Trying out the suit by swinging around, Symbiote Spider-Man eventually runs into Flint Marko/ Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) who is escaping with bags of cash. The chase leads to the subway tunnels where Sandman places the bags of money down and engages in a duel. The fight rages back and forth as the two are fairly evenly matched, but Symbiote Spider-Man ends up knocking Sandman down the tunnels and into a puddle of water. As the stunned Sandman prepares to get up, Symbiote Spidey unleashes a huge water pipe and water spills out onto Sandman, draining him through a grate to his supposed demise.Meanwhile at work, J. Jonah Jameson offers a challenge to both Eddie Brock and Peter in who could take the best picture of Spider-Man. Eddie sneakily taunts Peter and leaves, and this entices Peter to spy on him. In his Symbiote Spider-Man suit, he spys on Eddie who has hired a friend of his to dress up in a Spidey suit while carrying bags of cash. Dropping in on them, Symbiote Spider-Man ruins Eddie's plan by breaking his camera as well as locating the hidden cameras for further evidence. Utterly outraged, Eddie vows he will remember Symbiote Spider-Man's actions.Nights later during a dinner date with MJ, Peter's attitude has been greatly affected by the symbiote. As a result, MJ demands to be taken home and Peter purposely swings carelessly and causes MJ to become scared, sick and dizzy. By the time they reach their destination, MJ is upset and breaks up with Peter. Dumbfounded and ashamed of himself for his behavior, Peter swings off to the nearby church. Recalling the symbiote hates noise, he hits himself against the church bell and finally rids himself of the suit. However, Eddie Brock (who saw Spidey slip into the belltower) watches below and sees that Spider-Man is really Peter Parker. The falling symbiote latches onto the vengeful Brock who cries and morphs into the almighty Venom.Venom somehow unknowingly kidnaps Penny Marko (Spencer Lacey Ganus) and locates Sandman who survived his incident in the subway. Venom blackmails Sandman to help him kill Spider-Man or his daughter will suffer- and much to Sandman's dismay, he agrees to the demands. That same night, Peter is watching the news on his small TV in his lowlife apartment when a live broadcast occurs. Venom and Sandman have captured Mary Jane and are holding her in a construction highrise in the Financial District. Suiting into his spider suit, Spider-Man swings over and arrives at the scene.At first Spider-Man is unsure of who Venom is until he admits that he is Eddie Brock. Horrified, the two battle atop the unfinished skyscraper. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn is out of the hospital and back at his rich penthouse. He too is watching the news and sees that Spider-Man is battling Venom. A change of heart occurs and he suits up in his New Goblin suit and flies off to the construction site to aid his superhero friend. Harry rescues MJ and takes on the giant, 300 foot Sandman while Spider-Man continues to clash with Venom in the construction site. At the end of both battles, Harry ends up exploding various pumpkin bombs at Sandman but supposedly perishes in the raging sandstorm; while Spider-Man forces Venom off the construction site where he falls to his death and is impaled on a bed of poles.Peter and Mary Jane make up and Sandman prepares to attack Spider-Man once more when Penny Marko comes running towards her father. Sandman's fate remains unknown but he thanks Spider-Man and apologizes claiming that Venom blackmailed him to do it. The game ends with closing narration and a reminder that Spidey will always be that superhero who swings in and fights crime. | violence | train | imdb | null |
tt1700841 | Sausage Party | The film opens at the supermarket Shopwell's on a new day as customers are rolling in. The food there live in their own world where they greet each morning with a song about "The Great Beyond", where the "gods" (shoppers) take the food to their ultimate destiny.A pack of sausages and a bag of buns are placed next to each other during a 4th of July weekend sale. Frank (voice of Seth Rogen) is a sausage that wants to finally get all up in his bun girlfriend Brenda (voice of Kristen Wiig). He shares the pack with his buddies Carl (voice of Jonah Hill) and Barry (voice of Michael Cera). Barry is the smallest sausage and is mocked by Troy (voice of Anders Holm) and his pals. All the sausages and buns think they are destined to get together in The Great Beyond. For now, Frank and Brenda can only touch tips. They then witness one of the store's employees, Darren (voice of Paul Rudd), whom the food refer to as "the dark lord", coming around and throwing out all the expired food, despite the food pleading and insisting that they are still good.Later in the day, Honey Mustard (voice of Danny McBride) gets returned to Shopwell's. He is trembling in fear and appears traumatized, unable to speak about what he has just seen. As this happens, a shopper named Camille Toh (voice of Lauren Miller-Rogen) picks up the sausages and buns, and then Honey Mustard. While the rest of the food in the cart is celebrating being chosen, Honey Mustard stands up and tells the food that everything they have been led to believe about the gods and The Great Beyond is a bunch of bullshit. He says that the gods are preparing them for unspeakable horrors. Refusing to go back, Honey Mustard gets ready to leap off the cart. Frank gets out of his package and runs to catch him, leading Brenda to leave her bag to save Frank. Before falling, Honey Mustard tells Frank to seek out Firewater (voice of Bill Hader) to learn the answers he seeks. Another shopper then bumps his cart into Camille's, causing Honey Mustard to fall and crash. Several other products fall and become damaged. Banana's face peels off, Jelly gets splattered, a bag of chips gets popped and his chips slice the other food, and a can of noodles has his guts spill out.Frank and Brenda escape the chaos, but the store is now closed and they're away from their packages. They run into a douche named...Douche (voice of Nick Kroll), who's pissed that his nozzle is bent and therefore he cannot fulfill his purpose to have a woman use him. Douche tries to come at Frank and Brenda, but Darren sweeps him up into the garbage.Douche climbs out of the garbage bin and finds that his side is cracked, causing his juices to leak. He cries about not getting to do what he's made for. Douche then spots a broken grape juice box. He goes over to it and is then inspired to seek out revenge on Frank and Brenda. Douche drinks out of the box's crotch and gets juiced up, ready to get payback.Frank and Brenda head back to their aisles and meet the Armenian flatbread Lavash (voice of David Krumholtz) and Jewish Sammy Bagel, Jr (voice of Edward Norton). The two of them hate each other, as their food groups are made to believe they should. The four of them discover the aisles that form a city in the grocery store. Frank spots the liquor aisle and decides to seek out Firewater. They head down that aisle, and Frank finds Firewater's spot. He leaves Brenda with Lavash and Sammy as he goes to talk to Firewater.Frank encounters Firewater sitting around a fire. Frank asks him what Honey Mustard was talking about. Firewater explains that once the food goes out the door, the gods kill their asses. Thinking Frank has heard too much, Firewater puts a bag over his head and prepares to have him killed, but one of his friends talks him out of it. Frank then meets the Non-Perishables, which also include Mr. Grits (voice of Craig Robinson) and Twink (voice of Scott Underwood).Brenda goes looking for Frank and runs into Tequila (also Bill Hader), who says he knows where to find Frank. He takes Brenda, Lavash, and Sammy to a pub in the Mexican food aisle. Teresa Del Taco (voice of Salma Hayek) sees Brenda and becomes smitten with her. However, she knows that the three are being brought in for a trap. Teresa hides them as Douche arrives. He smashes Tequila and drinks his fluids, getting even more juiced up. Teresa leads the food out a secret passageway.Frank sits with the Non-Perishables as they smoke sativa from their pipe. Firewater admits that because they are Non-Perishable, and therefore immortal, they have seen the barbaric nature of the gods long before the rest of the food in the store, knowing full well what awaits them once they are out the doors. So, they made up the tale of the gods being saviors so that the next wave of food would leave the store happy instead of terrified. Firewater says they also made up the song (he made the tune, Twink made the lyrics), but other food have changed up the meaning to their liking, which upsets Firewater. Frank decides he has to warn everyone about what awaits them. Firewater tells him to go down the Dark Aisle in order to find the proof that he needs to get the food to realize what is really happening.At Camille's house, all the food is excited to see what they are in for. Camille picks out Potato (voice of Greg Tiernan) first. He is elated and thinks he is about to enter eternity...until Camille starts peeling his skin off, and then drops him into a pot of boiling water. The food then become horrified when a tomato gets chopped in half, a lettuce head is split in two, cheese is grated and microwaved onto nachos, and bacon is fried alive! Two little baby carrots try rolling away to freedom, but Camille catches them and eats them. Carl and Barry make a run for it out the window. They prepare to jump into the bushes when Camille sticks a knife through Carl and slices him upwards. Barry avoids the same fate as he falls into the bushes.Brenda, Teresa, Lavash, and Sammy walk down the back of the aisle. Brenda thinks all the bad stuff is happening because she and Frank touched tips, and now the gods are punishing her. Teresa admits that she has urges that she cannot give into for fear of angering the gods. They are then attacked by the jacked-up Douche. He is about to kill Brenda until she rips off the sticker that kept his juices from leaking. The food manages to escape from Douche as he gets stuck in the walls.Barry is now out in the streets, scared out of his wits. He finds a turd with zombie corn, and then a used condom who laments what he was used for. Barry hides and sees a Druggie (James Franco) stopping by with a Shopwell's bag. The Druggie buys bath salts and walks away. Barry thinks the man can help him get back to Frank to warn him. He runs after the Druggie and hangs onto his shoelace as he drives home.Frank reunites with his friends and tries to get them to follow him to the dark aisle so that he can show them proof of what the gods really do with them. However, Brenda remains firm in her beliefs and feels hurt that Frank would start badmouthing the gods right now. She decides that she would rather go to The Great Beyond without Frank and gets filled with something else, like an eggplant or tube of toothpaste, to Frank's horror. Brenda returns to her aisle and tearfully parts from Teresa. Meanwhile, Lavash and Sammy discover they have a common friend with Hummus, but they remain unable to put their differences aside and return to their arguing groups.Now at the Druggie's home, Barry tries to sneak into the Shopwell's bag. The Druggie them shoots up the bath salts and starts tripping balls. This causes him to be able to see, hear, and speak to Barry, as well as the other food in his room. The Druggie freaks out when he sees the half-eaten and conscious food, as well as the mortified Toilet Paper (voice of Conrad Vernon). Barry then meets a Stephen Hawking-like wad of gum named...Gum (also Scott Underwood), who is the most intelligent being in the world, having been stuck under the desk of a brilliant scientist for decades. Gum figures out how to get Barry back to the closest Shopwell's. The Druggie agrees to help Barry get home, but first he passes out.Frank goes down the Dark Aisle and finds a big recipe book. It contains disturbing depictions of the gods chowing down on food as it is fully aware of being eaten. Frank then sees the page with a sausage and bun being eaten. He rips that page out and sets out to tell the truth.The Druggie wakes up, but the effects of the bath salts wear off and he can't understand the food anymore. He starts eating the bag of chips, and then reaches for Barry. He goes to throw him in a boiling pot of water.It is now morning, and the store is about to open. Frank gets himself on camera and speakers to talk to all the food. He tries to explain to them that the gods are going to kill them and not take them to a Great Beyond. Frank shows off the pages of the recipe book, but the food thinks he is just speaking blasphemy and making things up. Frank leaves, defeated, but then reunites with Barry. He brings with him the decapitated head of the Druggie. We see how Barry managed to miss the boiling water, leading the Druggie to try and pick him up, only to knock over the pot and burn himself. Barry grabbed his shoelace and made him slip, causing him to fall and have an axe from from the wall and chop his head off, so Barry and the rest of the Druggie's food (plus Toilet Paper). With this revelation, Frank knows someone else has witnessed the barbarity of the gods firsthand. But now that they know the gods can be killed, the food sets out to stop them once and for all.Frank sees that Brenda is about to be taken away in another package. He races to get her while Barry has the house foods cook the bath salts and dip toothpicks in them, which they shoot at the shoppers and employees. They start to trip out and see the sentient food. The lady with Brenda's package freaks out and tries to run. Frank locks the store down, causing the woman to slam into the door. She grabs Frank, but Brenda whacks her face to the ground. The food tries to get the shopper's attention, but a woman slams a pizza slice against the door. The other shoppers start smashing the food when they see it's alive. This proves to the food that the gods are monsters. They decide it's time to fight back once and for all!The candy aisle shoots gumballs at an obese man. A bottle of cola and a tube of Mentos sacrifice themselves to go down the man's throat and blow him up. Other shoppers and employees get brutally attacked by the food. Darren goes to get a gun and finds Douche speaking to him. He offers to form an alliance so they can both kill Frank. Douche jumps into Darren's pants and sticks his nozzle up Darren's ass to control him. They go hunting for Frank as Darren shoots the food. Frank is caught by Douche, who takes a bite out of him. Brenda swings down to save Frank while Barry and his friends set up a garbage bin with explosives that hurdles toward Darren and Douche. The bin snatches them up, and the food sets them up to get launched out of the store where they perish in a massive explosion.Now that the food has won, Frank and Brenda decide to do what they've been wanting to do this whole time...get all up in each other. Lavash and Sammy come out with their feelings for each other and get in on the action, along with Teresa. The whole store them has one epic orgy, including the Non-Perishables, plus Barry and a smushed bun.After all the fun, Frank and his friends are guided by Gum to Firewater's lair. He tells them of another terrible truth - all of them are just cartoons coming from the mind of Seth Rogen and his buddies. Gum shows them a machine he's built for them to head out into the real world and cut the strings loose from these puppet masters. Frank and his friends hold hands as they make the leap into another crazy new world. | satire | train | imdb | null |
tt2885628 | Nina Forever | We open with a man splayed out on the road, seemingly dead. His motorcycle is crashed a few feet away from him, smoking and beeping. Just when it appears that the man is dead, he comes to and moves.We cut to a supermarket parking lot, where Holly (Abigail Hardingham) is discussing the accident with some of her co-workers, and the man who had it, Rob (Cian Barry), who is a fellow employee. Rob had apparently caused the accident on purpose to commit suicide, despondent over the death of girlfriend Nina (Fiona O'Shaughnessy). Holly finds his actions endearing and sweet. "I'd love it if my boyfriend tried to kill himself because I died", she says.Her co-workers tell her that Rob failed in his attempt though and now he is stocking shelves for minimum wage. "Imagine being fucked by someone like that", Holly says, equating Rob's damaged psyche with sexual prowess. Her coworkers say she is weird and that she doesn't actually want to sleep with him, she just wants to be there when he finally succeeds in killing himself. They tell her she can't save him before going back to work. As they leave, Holly hears them snicker about the fact that despite being enamored with Rob, she has yet to speak to him.That night, Holly is in a car with her boyfriend, David, who is breaking up with her. David awkwardly asks to be friends, and Holly agrees at first. David then notes that perhaps he was too dark for her. When Holly inquires what he meant, David says that he considered her vanilla due to her being so nice. He immediately tries to backpedal, telling her that isn't a bad thing. Holly tells him to go fuck himself and leaves the car, saying he knows nothing about her.The next day, Holly is at work, ringing up customers' purchases while she watches Rob stock the shelves. At one point, Rob breaks a jar and cuts his arm, screaming an obscenity. His boss asks if he is okay and he storms off to the break room.Later, Holly goes back to the stock room and sees Rob sitting on a shelf listening to music. She gets his attention and asks to see his cut, as she is a paramedic in training. She takes a look at it, and Rob goes back to listening to his music. Holly asks what he is listening to, so he offers an ear bud and she listens with him. As she listens, Rob looks at her and for the first time notices her beauty. Holly grabs a pomegranate and tears it in half for Rob and her to share. As she digs into the fruit, Rob looks at her intently.At home that night, Holly cant sleep. She gets a text from an unknown number. It says "I really wish I'd kissed you." Holly smiles, realizing it was Rob that sent the text, and goes back to sleep.Rob and Holly go on a date. They seem for a minute ready to kiss. Rob then asks her why she spoke to him. Everyone else at work think of him as this fragile freak that is ready to kill himself. Holly notes that he does a pretty good impression of that stereotype. Rob smirks then walks off the sidewalk near traffic. Holly tenses, thinking Rob was going to try and kill himself with an audience. However, all he was doing was taking a shortcut across the street to get to the theater they are going to. After some convincing, Holly runs across and joins him, taking his hand when she reaches safety. Rob notices her action and they both smile.The next day, Holly thinks about the night before. Rob told her he didn't want to hurt her. Holly tells him he won't.Holly goes to one her paramedic classes where the instructor briefs them about what it means to be a paramedic. Intercut with the speech is Holly trying on her outfit at home for her next date with Rob. We see her in his apartment, taking off her clothes. The instructor concludes his speech saying that distance is one of the most important things to have in their line of work, as they must understand that they will not be able to save everyone.That night at Rob's apartment, they put on some music and drink a glass of wine. As they look at each other, Rob moves to kiss her, causing Holly to spill some wine. She apologizes then breaks the glass and laughs.We see a close up of Rob's bed. A small red dot on the pillow slowly becomes larger.Rob and Holly begin to undress and they move to the bedroom where they begin to have passionate sex. We see Rob has a tattoo on his back that says Nina Forever. As they continue to have sex, blood begins to seep into the mattress and sheets around them. A bloody hand crawls out from underneath the covers. Bloody hands grab Holly's feet. She thinks they are Rob's but they have their hands clasped together. They realize something is horribly wrong.Blood continues to soak the sheets and a body forms out of the bed, startling both Holly and Rob. It is a naked Nina, broken and bloody as she was on the day her car accident took her life. Nina is less than pleased to find a naked woman in her boyfriend's bed, despite the fact that she is no longer among the living. Rob introduces them to each other, and notes Holly works with him at the supermarket."How old is she, really?" Nina asks as her body contorts, barely able to stand or sit up due to her injuries. Rob replies that this isn't possible, that she is dead. "Yeah, but I kept my standards", Nina deadpans. During this time, Holly watches with shock, unable to comprehend what is happening. She believes Nina to be a hallucination, but when she goes to touch her, Nina slaps her hard across the face. Nina says she is Rob's girlfriend, and because they didn't break up before she died, she is technically not an ex. She orders Holly to get the fuck out of her room, and she cuddles up to Rob who says he doesn't want this. But Nina sweet talks and seduces him, leading him to kiss her as Holly watches. Holly goes back into the living room to collect her clothes in disgust. As Rob goes to her, naked and covered in Nina's blood, Holly runs out of the apartment. Rob turns around to look at the bloodied bed, but Nina is gone. "Fuck!", Rob says.The next day, Holly is at home, trying to process what happened. She bandages a cut she got stepping on a piece of glass and looks up Nina's obituary, that says she died after losing control of her car and was pronounced dead at the scene.Holly is at her classes but cannot concentrate on her studies. She gets a text from Rob saying she doesn't have to see him again and thanks her for trying to get through his depressive fog. Her coworkers snidely ask how her relationship is going with the suicidal stock boy and asks if his dead girlfriend has come up. Holly says it was mentioned then walks off, disgusted with their callous attitude.Rob is in his apartment, wrapped up in a blanket and curled up in a ball on his couch. He gets up to look up at the bed that is still covered in blood. He laughs nervously, trying to figure out an explanation for what happened, but finding none. Somehow, some way, Nina came back. Rob then proceeds to clean up the glass and all the blood. He takes off the bloody sheets and flips the mattress to the non-bloody side. He sees the blood trail caused by Holly's wound and cleans it up with a mop. He then takes the sheets to the laundry but realizing what it would look like, he trashes them and buys new ones.At the cemetery, he checks his phone for messages from Holly, finding none. In the car, he is spoken to by a woman, who is later revealed to be Nina's mother. She asks if he has found someone else to love. She tells Rob that if he hasn't it is okay, but if he has it is also okay to move on, that they all have to move on. Unsure of his status with Holly, unable to explain what happened the night before, and not wanting to hurt a woman he considers family, Rob tells her no. Nina's mother then tends to her daughter's grave.We cut the house of Nina's parents. Rob apparently still has dinner with them often. Nina's father is a bit unnerved that he still comes around so much, but tries to be as sympathetic as possible, knowing all three of them are in pain over losing someone they all loved. Over dinner, they ask him awkward questions about restarting his schooling and his motorcycle. Later, Rob and Nina's father read over the latest chapter of the dads book and asks Rob to read it, even though Rob can tell it is terrible. He does it because he wants to feel close to Nina still. Nina's father tries to tell Rob that he can do anything he wants in his life, and not let Nina's unfortunate death keep him from living his life. At the end of the night, Rob hugs Nina's mother and tells them hell see them next week. He then texts Holly saying how sorry he is, but he still gets no response.Rob sits at his apartment, staring at his bed. Rob is at work, unable to feel. At his apartment, he looks at a picture of Nina, before turning the frame face down.Sleeping on his couch, he hears noises in his bedroom and goes to investigate. As he looks in his room, he hears a knock on the door. It is Holly. Holly asks if Nina is there. Rob says no. Holly then asks him if he wants Nina to be there. Rob tells her no. Rob thought she wanted nothing to do with him anymore after what happened, but Holly reveals she saw all his texts and decided to see him after he stopped sending them. Rob brings her inside and warms up her freezing body and they begin to make out and get naked. Rob stops, realizing that if they try to have sex again, Nina will show up. We can cope, Holly says understanding. They begin to kiss again, but Rob stops once more. Rob shows her his tattoo of Nina Forever in shame, realizing his inability to let go all this time has perhaps caused this to happen. Holly kisses his back near the tattoo to display her sympathy and understanding.In bed, Rob and Holly proceed to make love again. Blood begins to pool in the bed. Holly sees it but tells Rob to keep going. Nina's hands reach out of the bed and grab on to Holly's breasts, gripping them tightly. To take her mind off what is happening, Holly tells Rob to kiss her. As they break away, they both see Nina once more in the bed, looking at them with disdain. Holly tentatively tilts her head to Nina's and kisses her. "You're so warm", Nina says. Rob kisses Holly who nods, letting him know it is okay. Rob kisses Nina then proceeds to keeping have sex with Holly until he climaxes. Holly turns back to Nina, trying to pleasure her with her hands. However, Nina explains that all she feels is her injuries and that Holly shouldn't bother trying to give her pleasure. Holly says she just wants her to feel good, but Nina curtly tells her to stop.Nina then proceeds to toy with Holly, telling Rob is just using her for sex. Nina will always be in Rob's head first because of the past they shared and the sexual fantasies they experienced together. She equates Holly to an oil painting that is still wet. The very fact that Nina is dead and has no next makes her most appealing to Rob.Rob then defends Holly, saying that SHE is his girlfriend and though they don't know how to fix this situation, they will deal with it. Nina says they cant break up because she died. Rob says he breaks up with her now, only to be told that wont help him either. Rob continues to argue with her, saying she cannot expect him to be alone forever. Nina notes that he isn't. Rob tells her just because he wants to move on, doesn't mean he wont forget her and what she meant to him. What the fuck does that mean? Nina asks. Rob tells her she is impossible and turns away from her on the bed. Holly, who has been on the edge of the bed getting dressed, listens as she is basically ignored by Rob and leaves. Rob says he doesn't know what Nina wants. "I don't want anything", she notes as death has robbed her of human desire despite the ironic fact that she does want something; to have Rob all to herself even if life itself separates them.Holly is seen walking alone on a stretch of road. Apparently the area is where Nina died.Rob wakes up, once again in a blood soaked bed. He walks out into his living room, to find Holly on his couch, holding a cup of coffee, and smiling at him. Despite everything happening, she loves him, and cares enough to handle this strange situation together. They go and throw away the latest round of ruined sheets and buy countless sets to replace them when Nina arrives.Holly talks to Rob saying she feels she should do a memorial of some sort for Nina, to show how much she cares. At a tattoo parlor, while Holly gets a tattoo, Rob explains how he first crashed his bike and how he wanted to get scars. Nina told him that he would probably die first but she would never die. Holly asks if he got the Nina Forever tattoo after her death, but Rob admits they got it the night of his first bike accident. Rob tells Holly about Nina's love of art, and printing presses and how it mattered to her. Rob asks Holly if she is sure she wants to her so much about Nina, but Holly says it is okay.One day, as Holly and Rob have sex again, Nina appears once more. Holly pulls off the bandage of her tattoo, showing she too got Nina Forever on her back. "What the hell Rob, you're branding them now?" Nina asks incredulously. Rob tells her that it was actually Nina's idea, to honor her. Holly tells her that she knows what this is about; Nina is afraid to be forgotten. She tells Nina that she won't be forgotten and she can never take her place, so it is okay to pass on. Nina begins to mock Holly for being a fool. She tells her point blank that she would prefer to be in oblivion then be back like this. Her reappearances have nothing to do with wanting Rob back. She is only back due his deep rooted agony over losing her. She reiterates that she doesn't want anything.As Holly gets dressed, Nina mockingly says the least she could do for her was read a book out loud. Holly gets mad, saying she will continue to fuck Rob as much as she wants and she will read to Nina if she wants but Nina will not drive her off. Holly asks if Rob is going to say anything. Rob tells Holly he loves her, only for Nina to interject that he cannot forget her. Nina tells Holly she still doesn't get it, pointing to their now matching tattoo of Nina Forever; Nina on some level wants to be forgotten. Because she is kept in spirit so much by Rob, her parents and now Holly, it makes even more difficult to get rid of her.Holly stands in the bathroom, apparently waiting for Nina to disappear from the bedroom.Holly asks if Rob wants Nina to come back. Rob says no, as they change their sheets to a red color this time. Rob says though he doesn't want Nina back, he doesn't know how to make her stop. Rob then gets an idea, asking if Holly will meet Nina's parents. Holly looks at him weirdly, but Rob explains that Nina's parents had hoped he would meet someone new. If he can show them that he is moving on with her, perhaps Nina's spirit will accept it too and move on.Holly and Rob meet Nina's mother at the cemetery. Rob talks to her privately first. Nina's mother cries and hugs him, happy he is starting to find peace. They proceed to have an awkward dinner with Nina's parents. Things get off to a bad start when Nina's father has to leave the kitchen when he sees Holly is sitting where his daughter used to sit. Furthermore, Holly becomes enraged to find out that Rob has a Ph.D. but is squandering his potential (plus the fact she knows little about his personal life) and that he has been going to see Nina's parents every week since she died. Rob tells her that they need him lest they dissolve into grief so Holly says he can have them and angrily gets on the bus, refusing to sit with him. Holly says she felt like she didn't matter to him. Rob tells her that isn't true. He is around Nina's mother a lot because in part he is all she has left in the world. He wanted her to meet Holly because he loves her. Holly tells him to prove it.At Nina's grave, Rob and Holly make out. God, you are dark, Rob exclaims. Holly unzips his pants and they sit on the gravestone, with Holly on top and they begin to have sex, literally, on Nina's grave. Nina shows up, and slides over the gravestone, coating it in blood. She tells them that the two of them are quite rude for having sex on her grave. She cradles Rob and once again, tears into Holly as she jerks Rob off, reminding her once more than she is nothing more than a sexual surrogate to assuage his grief over losing Nina. Rob pulls away in disgust and zips up his pants. Rob asks Nina if this how she wants to say goodbye. Nina says no, though crashing through a windshield wasn't how she wanted to go either. Sometimes you don't get a choice and you never really say goodbye.Nina crawls over to Holly close and tells her that she has been coddled her entire life and that she knows nothing and is nothing. She means nothing to Rob and to Nina and that will never change. You cant even put your own trousers on, Nina cackles. "NINA, STOP!" Rob screams.Rob holds Nina and tells her that he is finally letting go of her, that he is saying goodbye. He is going to their apartment and getting rid of every last trace of her. Nina looks and Holly. "I think he's going to ask you to move in with him", Nina says mockingly. "Do you think you can manage that Holly? Living in my house? Do you think you can eradicate every last trace of me?" "Yes", Holly replies. "I love you, Holly", Rob says.Holly moves in with her things. Holly notes that he wont be able to see Nina's parents anymore if they are going to make Nina disappear for good. Rob says he understands, and is willing to pay that cost. They hug. They begin to clean out the apartment, taking out anything directly related to Nina. As they eat dinner, Rob discusses getting her a car. Rob says he will sell his motorcycle, as he doesn't ride it anymore and he only feels up to walking. Holly kisses him in happiness.While Rob sleeps on the couch, Holly looks in a dresser and finds a dress that Nina wore. She takes it out and places it on the bed. Turning on a light, she looks at the printing press kit, Nina had.Later in bed, Rob is asleep but Holly is still awake. She thinks she hears a noise and looks under the bed but nothing is there. She then goes to bed.In the morning, Holly brushes her teeth, only to find a bloody Nina sitting in the tub. They apparently hadn't gotten rid of everything yet. Nina says she is angry they threw out all her stuff and mocks Holly more. Holly turns the mirror away until Nina disappears, leaving behind blood in the tub.Holly looks around the apartment, trying to find other things to destroy of Nina's. Nina shows up on a chair and asks Holly why she thinks she is still hanging around. Holly looks inside a book and finds a picture of Nina and Rob. "Fuck you, Nina", Holly sneers as she tears the photo up and throws it in the trash. She finds more stuff to throw away of Nina's.Nina is still there, watching TV on a laptop one night with Holly as Rob sleeps. As Rob wakes up, Holly notices the blood on the sheets and takes them away. Holly decides to take more drastic measures by painting the apartment white. You missed a bit, Nina mocks. Holly throws away yet more sheets and more potential Nina reminders.Rob comes home and says he sold the motorcycle and they will deliver it. He sees all the new paint and asks why the room is white. Holly puts on Nina's dress and drives off fast, parking near where she died, unable to figure out a next move. Rob comes home and sees her in Nina's dress, asking if that is a new shirt. Holly says yes. Rob then sits in his all white apartment alone.Rob visits Nina's mother, who tells him he deserves his new relationship, while her husband listens to music loudly in another room. She thanks Rob for everything, saying she couldn't go on without his help. She reveals that the love has more or less died in her marriage but she cant find the strength to leave after 30 years. The baggage she has would negate any chance of new happiness. Nina's mother begins to cry and asks if Rob is going to leave them. Rob tells "no, of course not."As Rob packs bags for a trip he is taking with Holly, Holly sits under the bed, looking at something. Rob tells her come along so they can start towards their trip. Holly tells him hes driving.In the backseat, Holly digs into her fingertip with a metal printing press tile. We see the apartment, stripped bare of most things, including Nina's printing press kit. Holly presses the tile in her fingertips. They get to the bed and breakfast they are staying at, and begin to have foreplay, using the tiles to mark each others bodies. They make one spelling out the word Fuck and Rob slowly stamps the word up her legs. Holly pulls her panties down in anticipation and Rob stamps her butt check. She then pushes Rob down on all on the tiles, until a design is printed on his back.Holly tells him to scratch her and make her bleed but Rob refuses. Holly calls him a coward and goes to use the press to make a scratch. However, Nina shows up at that moment and catches her arm in the press, causing her arm to start to break, telling Holly that this is what real darkness is. Rob tells her to stop, but Nina persists. Nina says Holly won; Rob has forgotten about Nina. However, Nina has gotten under Hollys skin, so she will continue to remain. Nina tells Holly she is not ready for a relationship with someone that doesnt need saving. Rob is finally able to pull Holly away from the machine when Nina lets go and tells her he is so sorry.It is at this point that Holly reaches her breaking point, telling Rob that she cannot do this anymore; she cannot be with him if Nina will never leave them alone. Though no one asks her, Nina interjects, saying Holly assessment is accurate, and that it hasn't really worked out.Rob sits on a beach alone, heartbroken.Holly sits in an ambulance, apparently having finished her training. But she too is miserable.Nina is at a crash scene, the same place Nina was killed. She sees a woman, and for a second, she looks like Nina. The woman asks if she is hurt. Holly holds her hand, tells her yes, but they are going to get her out of the car and that everything is going to be okay. Holly is later seen in the locker room, sighing in relief at a job well done. She looks at her arm and notices several bruises. As she undresses, we see her 'Nina Forever' tattoo.Holly sits with a co-worker of hers at a bus stop, who is ecstatic at the work they did. Nina looks at him and realizes that perhaps the only way she can be free, is also to move on, completely from Rob. She takes the mans hand and kisses him.Rob sits at a restaurant and looks at his phone and sees there are no new messages.Holly goes to the guys dorm room and is about to have sex when he notices the Nina tattoo, and inquires that if she was an ex and if Holly is bi. Holly pauses for a moment, and then proceeds to take off her clothes.At the restaurant, a red stain appears on the tablecloth. Rob is met by Nina's parents and tells them he got a new job. They are ecstatic for him and Rob awkwardly thanks them. Rob then finally says that what they are doing isn't healthy, and it isn't helping them heal at all. Nina's father then explodes on Rob thinking it is all about him. He asks Rob what he thinks it was like to see him every week, to help him back on his feet, to get him a job, for him to a constant reminder that his only child is dead and he isn't. He tells Rob he cant help but look at people his age and wonder why they get to live but Nina didn't. He tells Rob he can find someone else; their child is irreplaceable. He tells Rob that he cant stand there and say they didn't help him because they did. Rob tells them he is so sorry and leaves the restaurant.Back at the dorms, Holly takes off her panties, ready to have sex with the other guy. They have sex, and as Holly looks down at the floor, Nina appears. Typical, Nina whispers, thinking Holly's plan to have sex with another person to have no link to her was foolish. Holly then tosses the guy out of her room.The next day, Rob shows up at Holly's dorm. Rob says he had to see her, since she didn't respond to his texts. Rob tells her he's better and he loves her and he wants to be with her. Holly says they can't, and shows him her bed with the bloodstains. Rob recoils in shock, realizing that Holly already had sex with someone else, and yet Nina is still haunting her."I'm sorry", Rob says. Holly tells Rob it was never him that was the problem it was her. Holly had romanticized Rob's tragic link with Nina, and felt that she could fix him. Yet, her whole attraction was apparently around saving a guy with a dead girlfriend, so Nina had been linked to her from the very beginning. While Rob finally found his closure and is no longer haunted, Holly apparently always will since she idealized the tragic end of their romance. "Are you going to be okay?" Rob asks quietly. "Yeah", Holly replies, not believing it herself.We see Holly strip her bed of bloody sheets and change into night clothes.We cut back to a completely heartbroken Rob, who leaves the dorms and Holly though it is clear he does not want to. Holly is now apparently doomed to spend the rest of her life alone as every time she will get intimate with a guy, Nina will appear to taunt and mock her. Since she is no longer with Rob, who could see Nina (because they are linked) Holly must suffer this haunting alone with no hope of it ever ending. | comedy, adult comedy | train | imdb | ...with a bit of Rom-Com/Horror thrown in for good measure.We all bring baggage into a new relationship - this film makes the invisible visible and takes you on an enjoyable journey through the process of 'letting go': grief, loss, flights of fantasy, darkness, obsession.
And the level of gore is appropriate for the telling of this story: being haunted by an ex- who appears in bed with you and your new partner every time you attempt to have sex.Nina Forever will make you feel, but then it will make you think.
The premise of this movie makes no sense; the ghost of a man's ex-girlfriend shows up, bloody and battered from the accident that caused her death, every time he has sex.
Every time I think that all topics have been covered in film, someone comes along and does something wholly original.
"Nina Forever" starts out a bit chaotic, but it sets a pretty good mood for the movie.However, that mood was quickly gunned down by the utter boredom that trailed along with this movie.
I managed to get to the part where Nina returned from the dead for the second time, then I just couldn't take it anymore.The story is about Nina, who dies in a traffic accident, leaving her boyfriend Rob on the brink of suicide and in a very dark place.
When he does manage to find a shimmer of hope in the form of colleague Holly from the supermarket, Nina returns from the grave to interfere whenever they are being intimate.What killed off my interest in "Nina Forever" was the excessive focus on sex in the about 30 minutes or so that I managed to watch of this ordeal of a movie.
But it was just painfully killed off by the focus on sex and directors Ben Blaine's and Chris Blaine's urge to show nudity on the screen.Sure, I had expected this to be a comedy of sorts, and perhaps one that would bring zombies into the frame.
A British indie written and directed by Ben and Chris Blaine, it's a jet-black sex comedy about a dead young woman who comes back to life whenever her ex-boyfriend has sex.
And he's having a lot of sex with his new girlfriend, Holly (Abigail Hardingham).Avoiding potentially tiresome scenes of endless disbelief, the central couple accept the bizarre situation far more easily than their zombie.
And the Blaine brothers throw into the mix Nina's grieving parents, whose struggles to cope (dad's writing a terrible book; mum's trying to keep her daughter alive through Rob) are funny and moving.The Blaines' control of the material is seriously impressive.
It has always been us Americans that like to remake films, but this is an example of the Brits doing it, and doing it badly.Maybe the filmmakers were just not aware of the excellent Life After Beth from 2014, and maybe it's just one of those occasions when two lots of people have similar ideas, but this film has just recently come out, so I'm not sure.
Having looked forward to watching this film as a possible modern horror classic, I was disappointed - very.The story sounded interesting - one which would open up a multitude of opportunities for exploration and artistry.Unfortunately, it never really developed into anything at all.
THe pace was painfully slow at the start, and continued all the way though the film.Really the only reason for watching this is to see the incredibly beautiful Abigail Hardingham (who plays Holly) naked on many occasions throughout the film.Although I can see what was trying to be produced, it seemed to be more of an extension of some film school project that needed some severe editing to stop the audience nodding off part way through.So, watch this if you want to see Abigail Hardingham - otherwise go and do something more interesting, like watching your laundry go around in the machine..
Great camera direction.The actors give enough to make it work, and that says a lot for them, as this is a very tough film.
I really enjoyed Nina Forever, it's like a really black comedy, that shows how good a film can be made on a tiny budget.The main focus is around a character called Nina who tragically dies, leaving her boyfriend to pick up the pieces of his life, but then she comes back.While being very graphic and very sweary Nina Forever is also very very charming, it's a beautiful story of loves lost, loves found and loves twisted grip.I gather the film was shot on a budget of around $13,000 but took a very long time to make.
Rob, Holly and dead Nina too.
After a period of grief and attempted suicide Robb falls in love with a co-worker Holly - trouble is his dead ex-girlfriend Nina will not leave them alone!
Nina appears, back from the dead, when Rob and Holly engage in sex, and there is a lot of it here.
Nina Forever is the second horror film I have seen this year employing a supernatural context to examine the problems of an excessively possessive ex-girlfriend.
The first one was Burying the Ex, but its general tone had been more humorous and playful, while Nina Forever employs deep metaphors in the shape of a bloody naked ghost which appears while the characters Rob and Holly are having sex.
During their long relationship, Nina was an essential part of Rob's life, and Holly's presence will never be able to erase it, despite how intense and sincere this new love might be.
That's what the characters have to find out while facing the bizarre challenges of their "romantic triangle"; and even though their decisions don't always seem logical or even rational, actors Abigail Hardingham, Cian Barry and Fiona O'Shaughnessy express intense and realistic feelings, making the audience plunge into the confusing (and undoubtedly macabre) situation.
The Blaine brothers employ an unusual narrative style, telling the story with chronological games which sometimes invert the normal order of the scenes (ie, we first see the consequence, and then the cause); that occasionally feels like an affectation, but it generally contributes to highlight the contradictions of the morbid romance, and generate suspense which wouldn't exist otherwise, because the horror is more cerebral than physical.
As I previously said, Burying the Ex took a completely different focus than the one of Nina Forever, but that doesn't mean that both perspectives lack of validity.
This horror-comedy was directed by two brothers and it was theirs first feature film.
I wanted to see it, purely because it had Fiona O'Shaughnessy, a girl who's quickly become one of my favourite actresses, hugely talented, and that voice, she is fantastic, but even she couldn't inject the spark that failed to light this film.
However I have to admit that ultimately by the end I was left with an overall feeling of disappointment and missed opportunity.The overall highlights were the scenes between the main character Rob, Cian Barry, and Nina's parents.
The actress who played Holly, Abigail Hardingham, was a very natural and engaging presence, hanging on in there with the relationship despite all of the bizarre difficulties because she wanted to appear "dark" and not "vanilla" and to be committed to her first real boyfriend (although in reality the actress is too pretty to have been "left on the shelf").
-and this unbalances the whole film.The last half hour was a bit of a drag and the other serious problem, the "twist" ending of switching over the "curse of Nina " to Holly, was silly and felt tagged on.
The Writer/Directors., the Blaine Brothers, should have had the conviction to retain faith in the subtext of people being unable to move on from a relationship.If we had a much sweeter and charming Nina and a more grown up conclusion ( perhaps along the lines of Morettoi/Grimaldi's "Quiet Chaos" ) in which eventually Nina disappeared because the main character was able to finally move on we would have had a poignant conclusion and a more consistent tone to add to the humour and interesting premises.
Nina Forever is the blackly comic debut feature from the writer/director team of Ben & Chris Blaine which begins very promisingly with supermarket drone Holly (Abigail Hardingham) wooing her work colleague Rob, (Cian Barry), into a romantic relationship.
This opening segment is well set up with offbeat humour, convincing performances and a disquieting atmosphere thanks to Oliver Russell's sullen cinematography.Once Rob and Holly hop into the sack however, the brothers Blaine hit premature ejaculation and out pops the bloody apparition that is Nina, spawned from the hereafter for a sabotage mission.
But almost as quickly as Nina's arrival comes the realisation that this is as good as it gets and the story has reached its final destination in stalled county.The scenario is served up again and again and again as, rather than screaming her lungs out and running for her life, Holly perseveres and messes in (pun intended) with replacing the gore stained bed sheets every time naughty Nina appears from the afterlife to spanner the would-be blossoming romance with the supposedly acerbic diatribes spewed forth from the bowels of her gob.Add in Rob's continuing and, it has to be said, occasionally hilarious affiliation with his undead girlfriend's parents, and you've pretty much got everything Nina Forever has to offer.
She looks physically too long in the tooth for young Rob, yet (ironically) lacks the mature thespian chops required to flesh out the complexities this, admittedly difficult role demands, resulting in a double whammy fail.Some compensation arrives late in the shape of Rob's moving confrontation in a restaurant with Nina's Mum and Dad and the torch passing fate afforded Holly in the closing scenes.
If I were to put it in one genre, then it would be "romance", yet somewhere in this dark love triangle we find comedy, horror, drama, gore, eroticism and pure love.
Our emotions are played with in "Nina Forever", and it's exciting to be part of from start to finish.The movie follows Holly and Rob, a young couple who fell in love after meeting each other at work.
Holly finds this out because his girlfriend, Nina, comes back to life while they are having sex.
She continues to torment the couple every time they have sex.The wonderful thing about this kooky concept is that we have no distinct answers as to why Nina returns, but it never makes us question it.
We feel involved but we don't let the mystery of Nina get in the way of what actually matters in the movie - the love story.
Both of those movies follow a recognizable formula, but "Nina Forever" is its own thing entirely.
Nina comes back as something else, more of a ghost, and only comes back during sex to make life harder for the couple.Thanks to the comedy, which is not too crazy or out there, we can relate to this strange story and connect to it as a love drama rather than a horror movie.
There are scenes that could be qualified as necrophilia, several scenes of graphic gore, and a whole lot of nudity and steaming hot sex scenes (always followed by a bloody mess in the bed as Nina makes her entrance).
Luckily the movie remains hard to classify because it doesn't choose to focus on one thing specifically, and this leaving us with the wonderful movie that "Nina Forever" is.Abigail Hardingham, Cian Barry and Fiona O'Shaughnessy make up the lead trio of actors and I am pretty sure that the Blaine guys would have had some problems on their hands if it weren't for these three.
These three lovely actors could not have had an easy time on their hands, trying to balance all of the important ingredients to make "Nina Forever" as lasting and engaging as it is.
It could easily have slipped into the realms of bland or trying too hard, but it never does."Nina Forever" is one of the bloodier romances, but don't confuse that with being a horror movie.
It shows several aspects of a horror movie, obviously, but there is a heavy focus on comedy, drama and romance as much as there is on blood and gore.
Whether "Nina Forever" sounds like it would be up your alley or not, it is a movie that I highly recommend to all of our readers..
I'm not really sure what it is or what it even wants to be, expect to say that it seems to copy the American comedy movie LIFE AFTER BETH in the tale of a guy who keeps being haunted by his dead girlfriend, killed in a car accident.What it boils down to is that NINA FOREVER is a mess of a film.
The only thing it succeeds in being is grotesque, with lots of icky sex scenes in which a bloody corpse comes into play.
I also found the whole film to be oddly depressing because it's so poorly achieved.Unlike other reviewers, I didn't have a problem with Fiona O'Shaughnessy's acting as the oddball Nina.
There's more to life than sex after all.It doesn't help that Cian Barry and Abigail Hardingham aren't very good actors either, although at least the latter has a nice figure, and perhaps the reason for her casting was her willingness to show it off.
In any case, NINA FOREVER is a tough film to watch, purely because it's so dull, vapid, and pointless, and it actually made me feel depressed about human existence.
'Nina Forever' is a film that is tough to describe in a nutshell and say which genre it belongs to.
Yes, it does have a ghostly corpse of a dead ex-girlfriend returning to haunt Rob and Holly whenever they decide to engage in sex.
For me, I think at the heart of it, the film is a hardcore drama about the pain of suffering a loss and the difficulty to move on and also the effects that one partner's baggage and the trauma that he/she brings to a relationship has on the other person.Similar to 'The Babadook', 'Nina Forever' uses some of the elements of the horror genre to explore grief and the struggle to move on after the death of a loved one.
Holly, a shy girl who works at the same supermarket as Rob gets intrigued by him and they end up dating.
The problems arise when the corpse of Nina start appearing whenever Rob and Holly have sex.
Why do we not get too many scenes involving Rob and Holly having tender moments with each other except one or two?
Holly and Rob didn't actually enter this relationship because they admired or liked each other.
From Holly's point of view this is a bit of a disturbing coming of age story.
The film ends with a marvellous shot of Holly on her bed now with black bedsheet.
The performances are straight all across the board.'Nina Forever' is a very heartfelt film about grief, trauma and relationship baggage.
It might throw a pessimistic light on romance and relationships, but the mature way in which the directors treat the story and the characters, ends up distinguishing this film from the Hollywood comedies with similar plots involving dead girlfriends coming back.
I wouldn't exactly put this film into the "HORROR" genre, although it gets bloody at times.
There is a lot of 'maybe this will fix it?' to no avail, this works as a pretty accurate portrayal of real life problems, but it doesn't make for a very entertaining movie.Overall there are enough plus points here to say that it was a story worth telling, it just seems like it might have been better served in book form, especially since the same story has also been told better through film before..
Co-worker Holly (Abigail Hardingham) who didn't like be called "vanilla" by her last boyfriend develops a dark side.
Her and Rob hook up and discover that his dead girlfriend Nina likes to make appearances during their love making.Normally such an absurdity would prevent any more such contacts, but Rob and Holly decide they will work through it as the scene turns bloody and requires frequent cleaning.
Nina's sharp tongue and catty attitude become the highlight of this dark comedy,I liked the film up until the ending when the humor aspect fell short as compared to the rest of the feature.
It is a good film for indie lovers.If you liked "Burying The Ex" and "Life After Beth" give this one a view.Guide: F-bomb, sex, nudity (Fiona O'Shaughnessy, and thank you Abigail Hardingham ).
Interesting, original and depressing horror romance comedy.
So this is a horror comedy that revolves around a lot of sex.
I did like the dark tone in this film and how it goes into a more realistic direction when it comes to relationships and why certain people fall for each other.
It gets pretty depressing watching two character just mope around and having sex while dealing with inner pain.
Surprising small British black comedy of horror, undead, with surreal touches, which highlights the performances of the three young protagonists, specially Fiona O'Shaughnessy, the dead chick.
It reminded me in a way that other British jewel, fantasy genre, called "Cashback", perhaps only because the work environment at the supermarket...A very interesting movie, except at the ending, in the resolving of the love triangle situation, maybe because I expected something more brilliant....
The main issue is that it follows the same scenes over and over again, the couple is making love, the dead ex-girlfriend mysteriously appears from under the sheet and so on.
After one hour I had to stop it and finish the film two days later, it was that boring.Maybe more complex it was better and not so humble with the story, the only good aspect is the acting witch wasn't too bad and Nina's appearances who were creepy, at least for me.
Only to watch by fans of the resurrection, blood, tender and horror all this put together in a film and you get Nina Forever. |
tt0070849 | Ultimo tango a Parigi | Jeanne (Maria Schneider) is a 20-year-old Parisian woman wondering the streets looking for an apartment to live for herself and her fiancée. She goes alone to look at an apartment in a region of the Left Bank. There, she runs into a middle-aged, obviously depressed man (Marlon Brando) who is also looking at it. Jeanne quickly identifies him as an American because of his thick accent while they are communicating in French. After a few minutes of silence and some quiet dialogue, he picks her up, backs her against a wall, rips off her panties and has sex with her in the deserted apartment. They are very passionate yet never introduce themselves. When it is over, they each go their separate ways.Jeanne goes to the Paris Metro train station to meet her fiancée Tom (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a young television documentarian who has just returned to Paris following an assignment. They walk back to Jeanne's apartment where she currently lives with her mother having taken care of her since her father, a soldier in the French Foreign Legion, was killed in action in 1958 in Algeria. Despite their genuine loving engagement to be married, Jeanne is unhappy and annoyed that Tom insists on doing a cinéma vérité documentary all about her life and of her father, who is a well-known war hero. He films everything she does.Meanwhile, the middle-aged American man, who is named Paul, returns to a flophouse hotel in a run-down part of the city where he ventures to his apartment and watches a maid wash blood off the bathtub and surrounding walls. The maid speaks to Paul about the fact his French wife, Rose, two days earlier committed suicide in the bathtub by slashing her wrists. Paul doesn't say much and goes to his room to be by himself.The next day, Paul and Jeanne rendezvous back at the vacant apartment. Paul lays out ground rules that they are never to reveal their names to each other and never to discuss the outside world or to talk about their pasts. They are to meet there twice a week only for sex and tell no one about each other. But Jeanne (who has some knowledge of English after overhearing Paul talking to himself about his miserable life) keeps trying to find out who the strange American man is. Paul is adamant and refuses to talk about anything for he only wants to have sex with her and nothing else. Jeanne, unhappy with her own personal life, agrees to their arrangement. They lease several items of furniture (couch, chairs, table, bed, etc.) and bring it to the apartment which Paul signs a lease under a false name.The following day, Paul meets with Rose's mother (Maria Michi) to talk about the funeral arrangements. Paul soon becomes furious with her, screaming and cursing at her in a mixture of English and French, after she tells him she wants Rose to have absolution from a priest. Paul does not think that a person who committed suicide should receive absolution because (in his mind) killing oneself is a mortal sin.Meanwhile, Jeanne takes Tom and his camera crew on a tour of her former childhood house and shows him all her antiques. She will not tell him about her very first love who was her cousin. Ironically, Jeanne's cousin was also named Paul (not the same man.)Back in the apartment, Jeanne and Paul meet again where Jeanne wants to talk about her cousin, but Paul angrily stops her, reminding Jeanne of their agreement not to reveal anything, not even about what she did during the day. However, Paul soon relents and agrees to let her briefly talk about her cousin on the condition that no names are to be used. Jeanne talks about her cousin being the first man that she ever had sex with and that it was awkward, but nice. Paul then talks about his youth in the American Midwest and his unhappy childhood. Jeanne is proud she got some information about him, but Paul hints that he wasn't telling the truth. Jeanne becomes angry and asserts that Paul is an egoist and correctly assumes that something terrible happened in his life to explain his need to vent his anger and rage by having a meaningless sexual relationship with her. Paul will neither deny nor admit that Jeanne is right about him. Fed up with his arrogance and egotism, Jeanne masturbates.Another day or so later, Paul visits Marcel (Massimo Girotti), a tenant who lives in the hotel/flophouse that he and Rose managed and operated. It turns out that Marcel was Rose's secret lover. Paul doesn't know what she saw in Marcel or why she killed herself.Jeanne continues to get angry with Tom over filming her wherever she goes. After another argument with Tom, she returns to the vacant apartment to meet with Paul again, wanting to have sex wit him. She is shocked when Paul sodomizes her with a stick of butter, and forces her to renounce the Holy family, the Catholic Church, and all that broke her will as a child. It is painful for her, but she obeys.Another day later, Jeanne is in her wedding dress with her mother and various relatives and guests at the wedding rehearsal. Jeanne becomes more frustrated and insecure with everything happening around her and she leaves the rehearsal and returns to the vacant apartment, still wearing her wedding dress to meet with Paul again. She tells him that she couldn't leave him; although she is engaged to be married to someone she insists she loves while she does not love Paul. After helping her change out of her dress and bathing her, Paul tells Jeanne that true love in this world doesn't exist. To find her true love, Paul says, she "must go up into the ass of death". He orders her to snip off her fingernails on two of her fingers and put the fingers "up my ass". She obeys. They are both delirious with passion.A little later, Rose's funeral and wake are held at the flophouse. Afterwords, Paul sits alone by Rose's coffin. He insults her dead body terribly over why she committed suicide and left him all alone. He then realizes that he never really did know her or the person that she really was. He cries. He calls her "sweetheart". He wished he knew why she killed herself and left behind no note or reason for the act. He wishes he could do the same. He pauses when a prostitute arrives at the flophouse with a client, but Paul chases them away. He follows the prostitute's client a short distance and assaults him before fleeing.A few days later, Jeanne arrives at the apartment only to find it deserted. The "mysterious American" (Paul) is gone. It would appear that he has left her for good. Tearfully, she goes back to Tom and asks him to come look at the apartment. After visiting the flat and looking around, Jeanne asks Tom if it would be a good place for both of them to live after they get married. He doesn't like it and thinks it smells due to a musky odor as if someone had recently had sex in the apartment. He insists that the two of them live somewhere else as adults and not as overgrown, oversexed children. Tom walks out, leaving Jeanne all by herself.A little later, while Jeanne is walking on a boulevard, Paul comes up to her. Jeanne insists that their relationship is over for she has decided to get married to Tom. (She defiantly tells Paul her fiancée's name after he angrily tells her "I said no names!"). Being the egoist that he is, Paul won't accept her decision to break up with him, and he finally begins to tell her all about himself and about how his wife committed suicide weeks earlier (without revealing his name or wife's name). Paul wants to continue their secret relationship of sex to purge his painful feelings about his wife's suicide. All he wants is meaningless sex because he does not want to feel anything at all.Paul and Jeanne spend the rest of the day getting drunk in a cafe where a tango dance contest is taking place. After Paul pesters her, Jeanne alternately tells him that she does love him, but that their relationship is over for she has still decided to marry Tom. They then join the rest of the tango dancers on the dance floor, where she masturbates him, but then runs off, telling Paul "it's finished!" Paul chases after her through the streets, telling her that it will never end.Jeanne runs back to her mother's apartment where Paul forces himself inside and tells her that he will never let her go. Paul tells Jeanne that he needs her in order to continue not to feel anything. It is here that Paul finally asks Jeanne to tell him her name. Just after Jeanne tells Paul her name, he lunges at her and she pulls out a pistol from a desk drawer (her father's military service revolver) and fatally shoots Paul once in the chest. Paul stumbles out to the balcony to view the sights of Paris one last time before he collapses to the floor of the balcony, dead. The final shot shows a shaken Jeanne rehearsing with herself over what to tell the police, as she prepares to call them, telling them that she does not know the man who assaulted her, or his name. | tragedy, romantic, murder | train | imdb | Okay, so I am not supposed to say anything about other user's comments, but I should mention that reading those comments is what lead me to write this...I don't know if this is an enjoyable movie experience, but it is nonetheless a triumph of cinema.This film has very little to do with sex.
Marlon Brando delivers a ferocious performance as Paul, a middle-aged American expatriate tormented by his wife, Rosa's recent suicide, her infidelities and his failure to understand their relationship.
In meeting a 20 year old girl, Jeanne, played by Maria Schneider, in an empty apartment, Paul hopes to form a relationship purely on his own terms and at his own pace, i.e. one he can understand fully.
Unfortunately the obvious improvisation in the film prevents the character of Paul from staying within check as he gradually becomes too much like Marlon Brando in the second half of the film.
Tango is something else altogether, cinema veritè photographed by Vittorio Storaro, a revolutionary artistic genius, Gato Barbieri's music and Marlon Brando giving himself totally in one of the most brilliant pieces of self indulgence ever put on film.
This is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies." American director Robert Altman expressed unqualified praise: "I walked out of the screening and said to myself, 'How dare I make another film?' My personal and artistic life will never be the same." Eminent critic Roger Ebert has added the film to his "Great Movies" collection.The movie presents an episode in the lives of two loners residing in Paris: Paul, a recently widowed, middle-aged American businessman, and Jeanne, a young, voluptuous, soon-to-be-married Parisian girl.
Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?" The scene in which Paul confronts the dead body of his wife, who has committed suicide, is probably the most powerful scene ever filmed in cinema.
The scene where Paul lets out his anger and frustration out on his dead wife is a prime example of why Marlon Brando is a great actor.
The genius is that we'll never know if it was Marlon Brando exposing his own vulnerability or the greatest trick Houdini never pulled.The plot is so simple it borders on preposterous: haunted American widower Paul meets young Parisian Jeanne by chance and together they rent an apartment where they engage in anonymous sex.
Only inside is where Paul and Jeanne can begin to comprehend the lonely places of their hearts.So much praise has been lavished on Brando it seems unfair to exclude Maria Schneider, whose life was haunted after doing this movie.
Bernardo Bertoluci's "Last Tango in Paris" is a beautiful art-house movie that features one of Marlon Brando's finest performances.
Their anonymity with each other only makes it all the more difficult.Brando delivers a stunning performance and Maria Schneider is quite convincing in what must have been a very demanding role.This isn't a flawless film but it is very good and offers more than just the average "t&a" the genre has come to be known for."Last Tango in Paris" has been copied a few times over the years - most noticeably with films such as "9 1/2 Weeks" and "Intimacy." However, this is still one of the best "erotic" dramas out there..
They're not scenes to make people watch the movie and just wait for the part in which Brando and Schneider have sex.
The two meet by chance in an empty apartment--and immediately embark upon an anonymous affair in which Brando seeks to both purge and renew himself through Schneider.Both stars offer intense performances, and director Bertolucci invests the film with numerous poetic and symbolic flourishes.
I first saw the film in a drive-in and it's effect was life changing.Vittorio Storaro's stark use of light and images; mixed with the bare-but- meaningful dialogue (much of Brando's lines were brilliantly improvised and often spellbindlingly meandering; and Gato Barbieri's hauntingly unforgettable sax-driven score; Brando's legendary performance matched beautifully with Maria Schneider's combined under Bernardo Bertolucci's magical directing spell to create a mammoth 129 minutes (in America) of cinema for the ages.It must be noted separately that Brando's improvised soliloquy next to his wife's body as it lies in its coffin after her unexpected suicide is one of the greatest single moments in the history of film acting."Last Tango In Paris" is essential viewing..
The idea of making a movie about two lonely people who connect for sex at a neutral locale and deny themselves the faintest pleasure in terms of knowing who they are screwing looks like something Bernardo came up with while sitting in a 42nd Street grindhouse.
A tired middle aged American businessman encounters a young woman while flat hunting in Paris; and starts a torrid affair with her.One of the those movies that more people have heard about than seen and probably works better that way.
While certainly sexually frank, even today, it is far too European art house for most tastes.The plot idles, stops and jerks like a country milk train, leaving so many questions unanswered that you have to write half the script in your own head to get through it.Brando's portrait of a man that seems torn between falling in love and falling under a bus is certainly unique.
Indeed this is merely an exercise in mood, tempo and design and was a box office hit because people had not seen frank sexuality on the screen like this before.The world of sex-on-film has moved on so much since this was released that today's audience will not have a clue what caused the press headlines.
(spare me) As you can well-imagine, this cue card business of Brando's literally drove director Bernardo Bertolucci crazy, trying as he could to make sure that none of these stupid, little cards (sticking out everywhere) remained visible in his film's final product.2 - Years after LTIP's release, actress Maria Schneider came out of the closet, or wherever, to say that playing "Jeanne" was the absolute, most humiliating experience, as an actress, that she had ever had to endure.Maria claimed that certain sex scenes, particularly the simulated anal-rape scene, were not in the script and that it was Brando and Bertolucci who plainly coerced her into doing these scenes, with Brando repeatedly reassuring her - "Maria.
That's the scenario in Bertolucci's self-fulfilling, exotic and provocative LAST TANGO IN Paris, telling based on his own sexual fantasies, a privilege which has been a substantial stimulus to encourage generations of youngsters to become a filmmaker, but only those very few in the top tier can achieve that gratification with momentum and flourishes, even Bertolucci couldn't get away with lambaste and the film has been perpetually on the list of films that shock the world!Jeanne (Schneider), a 20-year-old parisienne, comes across a near-rape sexual intercourse with a middle-aged American expatriate Paul (Brando) in an empty apartment which is available for rent.
"Everything outside this apartment means nothing to us" So, who is Paul outside that apartment?We see a grief-ridden man, wanders around in bereavement after his wife committed suicide, which hits him like a severe jolt, therefore, he is in the limbo of mourning, questioning, self- doubting and resentment, he and her wife run a low-rent hotel in Paris, they had been married for 5 years, and in the end of the day, he has to face the music that he has never been able to understand her, he can even host a pleasant conversation on the face value with her wife's lover Marcel (a down-to-earth Girotti and still gets his appeal in his 50s), a lodger in their hotel.
Let's take a step back from a feminist POV, and perceive the film in a plain angle of egalitarianism, the lascivious fetish of Schneider's sultry body presented in constant nakedness has never been balanced out by Brando's (supposedly) unsightly figure in all his frankness (maybe, Bertolucci simply cannot pay the sum to convince Brando to reveal some of his sagging skin), not to mention the unsolicited sodomy scene (which has forever ruined butter for me), Schneider was completely taken by surprise, on that front, Bertolucci is exploitative, sinister, sadistic and misogynist.However, simply disregarding all the behind-the-camera trivia (which is not an easy task and sometimes involuntarily infuses some preconceived sentiment into one's subjective judgement), and taking a forensic look into the film per se, in its claustrophobic, ill-lit interior shots, what Bertolucci achieves with the sinuously fluid movement of his camera is something masterfully seductive, voyeuristic, intimate and thought-provoking, two total strangers, unburdened from formality and luxuriate in their primal libido and form a rather wholesome rapport devoid of any negativity associated with reality - that's everyone's unsaid fantasy, but in sheer perception, Bertolucci also shows that such purity can be fragilely sullied by the world outside, literally outside that apartment, where, in the third act, when Paul moves out, and then flippantly courts Jeanne on the street, in the tango bar, how foolish he is when he becomes love-struck, the magical potion doesn't work in broad daylight, where Jeanne will ultimately realise Paul is no more than another nettlesome suitor, only much older, and at her age, he is far from a premium worth her time and effort while the world is her oyster, something menacing looms in the offing in the hard-pressed eagerness, there will be no happy ending out of it.
A listless, pretentious film that meanders on for way too long and is redeemed only by Marlon Brando's tremendous lead performance, perhaps the best he's ever given on screen.Maria Schneider is a blank slate at best, both the actress and the character she plays.
It really is astounding that such a pointless movie could have such a wonderful performance in it, and for Brando alone this film is worth watching.
But as for the rest, consider yourself warned.Movies like "Last Tango in Paris" are the reason why so many people hate international cinema.Grade: D.
Brando dominates the movie so much it is easy to overlook Maria Schneider, who I think gives an excellent performance.
That's how crude the dialog is in here, and that's hard to do considering what has been heard on film the past 30-plus years.Some of the things that Marlon Brando says to Maria Schneider are downright disgusting.
When Paul and Jeanne discuss their "rules" is another scene that shows how great this movie could have been.But there are too many scenes where I feel that Brando and his improvised dialog should have been reeled in (I would hate to see the takes that weren't used in the film).
By the time they end up in the dance hall, I just wanted the movie to be over.If someone could enlighten me and give me a better understanding of what was going on, without sounding like you've just stepped out of Film Appreciation 101, I'd welcome a discussion.5 out of 10.
After Brando's Paul and Maria Schneider's character Jeanne have sex for the first time, they detach themselves as soon as possible to lie apart on the floor.
So Marlon takes up with young Maris Schneider and makes it clear all he wants is good sex and completely at his whim.This dopey girl actually goes for that even though she's engaged to young film maker Jean Pierre Leaud.
I rented this movie because I had heard a lot about Marlon Brando's performance and the beauty of Maria Schneider.
Superficially about a stormy affair between a young French woman (Schneider) and a middle-aged American widower (Marlon Brando), it seems to me that the movie depicts a clash between 1960s idealism and 1970s cynicism.
Marlon Brando plays Paul, an American whose wife has committed suicide.Maria Schneider plays a French girl called Jeanne.They both want an apartment and they meet in an empty room.Without a word they have sex.That begins a relationship that is based on sex.The man doesn't want to know anything about the woman, not even her name and he doesn't want to reveal his.Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris(1972) is a movie that caused a lot of controversy back then.Maria Schneider's full frontal nudity was one reason for the controversy.Schneider is brilliant in this film.She works great with Marlon Brando, the big Hollywood star.This is a brave film but never pornographic.There is one scene that caused big controversy, I'm talking about the anal intercourse where butter is used as a lubricant.It's not a pornographic scene and we don't see any pleasure there but rather pain that it causes to the woman.Last Tango in Paris is not the most pleasant movie experience but it's something you will remember..
(At times it looks dated due to the film reel, but that's forgivable since the movie's over 45 years old!)Last Tango is a very moving movie, it excited my soul(for lack of a better phrase) and it's simply astounding to watch.I do have one tiny negative, the size of a dot on a sheet of paper: The actors speak very softly so you may need subtitles to watch it, but something like 90% of the movie is in French anyways, so I didn't see that as a huge deal this time.Other than that, I have nothing less than praise fro this beautifully made movie!I should address the elephant in the room that this movie has a WELL EARNED NC-17 rating for it's explicit sexuality.
He is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, he star of many New Wave films, particularly for Godard and Truffault and it would seem that Bertolucci is having a little fun here pitting the pretty boy of trendy 60s cinema against the old brawler Brando (I understand though that Leaud was so intimidated by the American giant that he could not work alongside him).
Last Tango was a simple story of a man who meets a woman completely by chance, and then has anonymous sex with her over a short period {three days} in which time, he makes personal explorations that eventually coalesce into a realization of the emotional heart of his existential dilemma.As with his previous movies, the Roman goddess Fortuna, {that is human fate or destiny}, was of paramount interest to Bertolucci.
What I think happened is Bertolucci wanted to live out as a director one of his youthful fantasies (raw, anonymous sex with a young beauty) and Brando, with his ultra sophistication about such matters, played his part with a brutal satirical edge, perhaps making fun of Bertolucci's fantasy, turning it into an unpleasant, hard reality.But the "reality" was a bit over the top for everybody.
The infamous "Get the butter" scene, which was improvised by Brando and Bertolucci (to Schneider's dismay), made it clear that Paul considered Jeanne an animal that you used and nothing more.
I rate this film very highly because it was innovative (rather shocking for its time), with a fine jazz score, but mostly because of Brando's stellar performance and the sensual beauty of a 20-year-old Maria Schneider.
It lags a bit into pretentiousness when the movie focuses on the female lead and her relationship with her boyfriend but it is pure gold most of the time as it deals with the emotional complexities of Brando's character and a bizarre and destructive affair with a young woman..
Brando was still pretty then, and Bertolucci spends a lot of time just letting the light fall onto his face in different ways, a technique revisited by Coppola in 'Apocalypse Now'.But for all this, I am not so sure that this is a good film.
The sex scenes may be a little much but the carnal desire of the sexual revolution between Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider are nothing short of amazing!
Yes , Marlon Brando has a great performance but I believe that the movie is great because of the feeling that the characters give you not cause of the characters themselves.The scene from the end when Maria Schneider says after she shoots Brando: "I didn't even know his name!" points out Bertolucci's solution for the ending: nothing happened in the end, nobody remembers nobody!!!
The movie is about an American played by Marlon Brando who finds himself in Paris after the death of his wife.
I liked the erotic tension between the protagonists and I think that it was filmed very well.On the other side, Marlon Brando's acting is second-rate and Schneider's is almost decent.
It is a movie where even if you might know some of the cliches invented in the film (get the butter, for example), it is still thought provoking.Marlon Brando, who is undoubtedly an excellent actor, shows off his stuff here and is so good it can be argued if he deserved the Oscar for the Godfather or this because both performances are extraordinary.
This isn't a major problem as Paul's character is big enough to carry the film.This is mainly due to a tremendous performance by Brando.
Though time has blunted it's controversy, and the film is best know for its sexual excess (the butter scene) this remains a powerful viewing experience almost 30 years later.
Last Tango in Paris is blessed with some top acting, particularly from Marlon Brando who does a great job as the lead character, playing a complete scumbag.
But on the whole Last Tango in Paris is a film that does not offer much in themes despite the pretences to be art house, having very long and drawn dialogue scenes and during the course of the film I was wondering why was a young woman like Jeanette (Maria Schneider) was drawn to a middle aged man like Paul (Brando) at all.
Although prurient viewers have since picked up on the film's more sensational aspects, "Tango" is a serious movie about sex and subservience that features one of Marlon Brando's finest performances.
The scene in which Marlon Brando's character has rough anal sex with the young, wide-eyed Maria Schneider is all that seems to be discussed about the film, even by people who have yet to see it. |
Subsets and Splits