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Late, great Grade Z drive-in exploitation filmmaker par excellence Al Adamson really outdoes himself with this gloriously ghastly sci-fi soft-core musical comedy atrocity which plumbs deliciously dismal and dopey depths in sheer celluloid silliness and jaw-dropping stupidity. In the grim totalitarian future of 2047 sex has been deemed an illegal act by the Big Brother-like impotent bumbling idiot the Controller (an amusingly goofy Erwin Fuller). However, sweet'n'sexy Cinderella (radiant blonde cutie pie Catherine Erhardt) remains determined to change things for the better. With the help of her effeminate Fairy Godfather (a flamboyantly campy Jay B. Larson), Cinderella attends a grand gala ball with the specific plan of seducing handsome stud Tom Prince (the dorky Vaughn Armstrong) and teaching everyone that making love is a positive, pleasurable and wholly acceptable activity.<br /><br />Adamson directs this ridiculous yarn with his customary all-thumbs incompetence, staging the incredibly awful'n'inept song and dance sequences with a totally sidesplitting lack of skill and flair. The uproariously abysmal "We All Need Love" number with people in absurd animal costumes awkwardly prancing about the forest is a hilariously horrendous marvel; ditto the equally abominable "Mechnical Man" routine featuring a bunch of clumsily cavorting robots. Louis Horvarth's crude, static cinematography, the tacky plastic miniatures, Sparky Sugerman's groovy throbbing disco score, the copious gratuitous nudity (ravishing brunette hottie Sherri Coyle warrants special praise in this particular department), the brain-numbingly puerile attempts at leering lowbrow humor (Roscoe the Robot law enforcer is especially irritating), and the uniformly terrible performances (Renee Harmon's outrageously hammy portrayal of Cinderella's wicked overbearing stepmother cops the big booby prize here) further enhance the strikingly abundant cheesiness to be savored in this delectably dreadful doozy. | positive |
B movie at best. Sound effects are pretty good. Lame concept, decent execution. I suppose it's a rental.<br /><br />"You put some Olive Oil in your mouth to save you from de poison, den you cut de bite and suck out de poisen. You gonna be OK Tommy."<br /><br />"You stay by the airphone, when Agent Harris calls you get me!" "Give me a fire extinguisher."<br /><br />"Weapons - we need weapons. Where's the silverware? All we have is this. Sporks!?"<br /><br />Dr Price is the snake expert.<br /><br />Local ERs can handle the occasional snakebite. Alert every ER in the tri-city area. | negative |
Night of the Comet starts as the world prepares for a once in a lifetime event, the passing of a 65 million plus year old comet. Instead of watching the light show Regina Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart) decides to spend the night with cinema projectionist Larry Dupree (Michael Bowen) in his booth... They awake the next morning & as Larry attempts to leave the cinema he is attacked & killed by a zombie, the same zombie attacks Regina but she manages to escape where upon she discovers that almost everyone on the entire planet has been turned into red dust. Almost everyone because by some amazing coincidence the only other person to survive happens to be her sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney), they desperately search for more survivors & meet up with a long distance trucker named Hector Gomez (Robert Beltran). Meanwhile an evil bunch of scientists need human blood to develop a serum to save themselves from turning into dust & they're on the look out for unwilling donors...<br /><br />Written & directed by Thom Eberhardt I found Night of the Comet a pretty rubbish viewing experience, I'm surprised at the amount of positive comments on IMDb about it because I just thought it was boring crap that never lived up to it's potential. The script starts off 100 miles an hour with the obliteration of the entire population of Earth & a zombie attack but then it goes absolutely nowhere & then eventually introduces the sinister blood stealing scientists towards the end of the film because by that time the slim story has run it's course. There are plot holes too, if these scientists want blood why shoot the three or four gang members & save the two sisters when the guys would have provided more blood for their experiments, killing them just seemed a totally bizarre & an almost suicidal thing to do considering they need blood to develop a cure, it just doesn't make sense I mean if your going to die & you need to experiment on human blood would rather have five or six donors providing blood or just two? I'm not having the fact that the two sisters survived independently of each other, I mean what are the odds on that? When Hector confronts the female scientist for the first time she never mentions Samantha or where she was or where the underground facility was where they took Regina before she committed suicide so how did Hector know these things? I also thought after the first twenty odd minutes the film slows down to a snails pace & became incredibly boring & dull to watch, after hearing so many good things about it Night of the Comet comes across to me as nothing more than an overrated boring piece of crap.<br /><br />Director Eberhardt does a really good job, I liked the look of the film with it's red tinted sky & he manages to create a really cool atmosphere of isolation. Unfortunately there are far too many shots of empty streets, there are constant montage's of empty streets, deserted roads & abandoned buildings & it gets extremely repetitive & dull. OK we get it there's no one else about so there's no need to keep ramming it down our throats by constantly showing roads without cars on them. The zombies are totally wasted, there are two zombie attacks in the entire film & that's two individual zombies as well although there are a couple of effective nightmare scenes. Night of the Comet pays homage, or rips-off whichever you prefer, several other much better films including the obligatory end of the world shopping spree in a mall lifted from Dawn of the Dead (1978). Forget about any blood or gore as there isn't any.<br /><br />Technically Night of the Comet is pretty good, the special effects are decent enough & the production crew were obviously very good at closing streets off. The acting was alright expect for Maroney as Samantha the air-head blonde who became highly irritating.<br /><br />Night of the Comet was a big disappointment for me, I had hoped for so much more. Persoanlly I found this film dull, boring, uneventful & the puke inducing sequence where the sisters go shopping to the tune of 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' is probably the worst moment in the film. Really bad & I just don't get why so many people like this, I'm sure I'll get slaughtered for saying it so let the abuse begin I can take it... | negative |
The snobs and pseudo experts consider it "a far cry from De Sica's best" The ones suffering from a serious lack of innocence will find a problem connecting to this masterpiece. De Sica spoke in a very direct way. His Italianness doesn't have the convoluted self examination of modern Italian filmmakers, or the bitter self parody of Pietro Germi, the pungent bittersweetness of Mario Monicelli, the solemnity of Visconti or the cold observation of Antonioni. De Sica told us the stories like a father sitting at the edge of his children's bed before they went to sleep. There is no attempt to intellectualize. Miracolo A Milano and in a lesser degree Il Giudizio Universale are realistic fairy tales, or what today we call magic realism. The film is a gem from beginning to end and Toto is the sort of character that you accept with an open heart but that, naturally, requires for you to have a heart. Cinema in its purest form. Magnificent. | positive |
Kurosawa really blew it on this one. Every genius is allowed a failure. The concept is fine but the execution is badly blurred.<br /><br />There is an air of fantasy about this film making it something of an art film. The poverty stricken of Tokyo deserve a fairer and more realistic portrayal. Many of them have interesting stories to tell. A very disappointing film. | negative |
1996's MICHAEL is warm and winning comedy-fantasy that features one of my favorite performances from the John Travolta library. Travolta gives one of his breeziest and most likable performances as Michael, an archangel whose quiet existence at the home of a lonely innkeeper named Pansy (Jean Stapleton) is disrupted when Pansy reports Michael's presence in her home to a "National Enquirer"-like newspaper and the editor (Bob Hoskins) sends reporters (William Hurt, Andie McDowell, Robert Pastorelli) to the motel to check it out. Hurt, McDowell, and Pastorelli are quite good as the jaded news staffers who have a hard time accepting they've met an angel but this is Travolta's show and he rules as the pot-bellied, sugar-eating, cookie-smelling, pie-loving, Aretha-loving, bull-chasing Michael, an angel who just isn't what you think you of when you think of angels. And you have to love the scene in the bar when he and the ladies dance to "Chain of Fools". I love this movie more and more every time I watch it and it's mainly because of the completely winning performance from John Travolta. | positive |
What did I just watch? I spent 90 minutes of my precious life watching one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. The concept of a serial killer clown is actually quite scary seeing is there are a lot of people who are afraid of clowns....but having it be a 300 pound nursery rhyme reciting killer clown makes a mockery of the genre. I still am wondering how the character Mark wasn't able to run away from the Clown...he's 300 pounds, he's gotta get tired eventually. The whole ending made me get up and literally say aloud "What did I just watch?" Apparently Brandon is Denise's cousin.... and they had got it on near the middle of the movie meaning he had sex with his cousin.....yeah that's something people want so see *shudders*.<br /><br />Another thing I found hilariously stupid was the opening scene where the clown stabs a woman and she says "What did you do?" Well bytch, what do you think he just did? The last thing that was stupidly funny was one second the main character was slapping the hitch-hiker and calling her a c*nt and then 5 minutes later saying violence isn't helping anything....did the writer of the script give the line to the wrong guy? None of this movie makes sense anyway.<br /><br />The movie was more or less a dumb low budget porno which I got sucked into buying (all 3.99)and got no entertainment out of it besides the sex scenes. I'm surprised the fat clown didn't join the orgy, would have fit right in. I hoped the movie would have some entertainment value like other B movies might have, but I was wrong. This is a moronic piece of garbage that's not even worth watching.<br /><br />1 out of 10 | negative |
Starting with a "My Name is Joe" like scene in Alcoholics Anonymous tBM careers into a mad spiral of infidelity, double standards and clandestine affairs. but what do you expect from a family of lawyers?<br /><br />A genuinely funny film, with some of the most outrageous characters since The Birdcage, plot and subplot are intertwined with surreal scenes of decadent Parisian life (ever been to a wedding reception in the gents toilet where the brides grandmother and her deranged girlfriend are smoking dope and cracking blue jokes? No, me either!) leading to a final scene of almost Arcadian symbolism.<br /><br />Excellent. | positive |
I liked how this started out, featuring some decent special-effects especially for a film 50 years old. There was some pretty impressive scenery. However, the film bogs down fairly early on with some very dumb dialog as the males all try to flirt with Anne Francis "Altaira Morbius.")<br /><br />Viewing this in the '90s after a long absence, it was fun to see Francis again, an actress who has done mostly television shows since this film was released....and is still acting. It also was interesting to see a young-looking Leslie Nielsen ("Dr. John J. Adams"), who I wouldn't have recognized had it not been for this voice <br /><br />I watched half of this movie before the boredom came almost overwhelming and I had a strong desire to go to sleep. I appreciated them re-doing this VHS tape in stereo. but it was a weak effort. This is one those overrated film where "elites" think is so "heavy" and "thought-provoking." That's nonsense. It only appeared "intelligent" because the rest of the '50s sci-fi films were so stupid!!<br /><br />Some if the early scenes would have looked great on wideescreen, which I didn't have at the time of this writing. Perhaps another look - this time on the 2.35:1 widescreen transfer would make me change this review. | negative |
In Le Million, Rene Clair, one of the cinema's great directors and great pioneers, created a gem of light comedy which for all its lightness is a groundbreaking and technically brilliant film which clearly influenced subsequent film-makers such as the Marx Brothers, Lubitsch, and Mamoulian. The plot, a witty story of a poor artist who wins a huge lottery jackpot but has to search frantically all over town for the missing ticket, is basically just a device to support a series of wonderfully witty comic scenes enacted in a dream world of the director's imagination.<br /><br />One of the most impressive things about this film is that, though it is set in the middle of Paris and includes nothing actually impossible, it achieves a sustained and involving fairy-tale/fantasy atmosphere, in which it seems quite natural that people sing as much as they talk, or that a tussle over a stolen jacket should take on the form of a football game. Another memorable element is that Le Million includes what may be the funniest opera ever put on film (O that blonde-braided soprano! "I laugh, ha! ha!") Also a delight is the casting: Clair has assembled a group of amazing, sharply different character actors, each of them illustrating with deadly satiric accuracy a bourgeois French "type," so that the film seems like a set of Daumier prints come to life.<br /><br />The hilarity takes a little while to get rolling, and I found the characters not as emotionally engaging as they can be even in a light comedy (as they are, for instance, in many Lubitsch films.) For these reasons I refrained from giving it the highest rating. But these minor cavils shouldn't distract from an enthusiastic recommendation.<br /><br />Should you see it? By all means. Highly recommended whether you want a classic and influential work of cinema or just a fun comedy. | positive |
To view the fictionalized biography "The Phenix City Story", I claim, is to enter fields where U.S. filmmakers have seldom ventured, Director Phil Karlson got his directorial assignment on "The Untouchables" TV mega-hit series largely on the basis of "Kansas City Confidential" and this film; and it has become one of the most admired and most- imitated movies ever made. The rarest feat for US filmmakers seems to be the hero-centered purposeful anti-crime film or TV series; I remind the viewer how mightily "Cain's Hundred"'s and "Hardcastle and McCormick"'s and even "the Untouchables'"' producers had to work to produce anything but episodes devoted largely to the unfictional activities of criminals rather than those of their ethical opponents. This powerful, seminal and very-gritty movie has a style all its own; and its lesson seems to be attention to detail about the opponents and victims of criminal organizations as well as their gang members. There is a twelve-minute prelude to the film, in which reporter Clete Roberts interviews the real participants from the Alabama city's who had struggled against its corrupt vice gangs. The problem grew out of the presence of Fort Benning across the river, and the nearly century-long existence of vice dens in the area. The film details the return of John Patterson from Germany where he has been a prosecutor. His father, defeated for Attorney general of Alabama, refuses to join his pursuit of the 14th street vicelords despite several provocations including a beating of his son, avenged by Patterson on his tormentor. There are several well-developed characters, including Ellie, who works in one of the clubs and her honest boyfriend, the leader of the syndicate, the Pattersons and John's wife, Ed Gage, the vicelords' operatives and Zeke Ward, an honest black man victimized for his opposition to them. The cinematography by Harry Neumann and the art direction by Stanley Fleischer are in B/W and are very much like news-film, adding to the film's realistic power. Music by Harry Sukman contributes to the film effectively. Writer Daniel Mainwaring and Crane Wilbur produced a swift-paced and straightforward story that divides into parts. Part one illustrates the vicelords' empire from inside one of their clubs, showing the fate of a victim who is beaten and then picked up by police in the pay of the Mob. In part two, Albert Patterson refuses to oppose the leader of the Mob, the intelligent Rhett Tanner. In part three, young Patterson returns and after several incidents including his having to beat up the Mob's head goon to avenge his own beating decides to run his father for Attorney General of the state. His wife is horrified; and the Mob kills Zeke Ward's daughter and dumps the body at Patterson's house with a warning his children will be next. A few more such incidents, including the loss of a trial in which the Pattersons prove the goon killed a friend of theirs who had found the car implicated in the murder of the little girl, and watch the inquest declare the death accidental, convince Patterson to run, and he wins the Democratic statewide nomination despite the Mob's statist tactics--and is promptly assassinated. John Patterson stops a vigilante crowd from starting open warfare with the 14th Street mob and uses their voices to call the capital and demand martial law for Phenix City. The clubs are closed and equipment confiscated, but not before the girl inside is murdered by the Mob's goon, and Patterson has to be stopped by Zeke Ward from killing Tanner instead of delivering him to the law. The drama's ending is upbeat; but the prognosis for the town is less- sanguine than painted; the mob in fact tried to come back then moved to Tennessee. In this well-acted classic of anti-crime film-making, Richard Kiley is young but very strong as Patterson, playing it without an accent. John Mcintyre as his father is very good, while Edward Andrews as Boss Tanner is award caliber. Others in the cast include Kathryn Grant as the girl inside, Ellie, Jean Carson and Kathy Marlowe as the Mob's women, John Larch as their goon, Biff Mcguire as the young victim, James Edwards as Zeke Ward, Lenka Peterson as John's wife, and some good character actors as townsmen and Mob bosses. It is I suggest hard to say enough good things about the realism and lack of posturing in this film; it is certainly one of Phil Karlson's best directorial efforts. Karlson also did "The Scarface Mob" later did "Walking Tall" as well. A sobering and inspiring look at the ease with which complacent citizens of a public-interest democracy can acquiesce to tyranny, and how a few honest men can teach them the need to fight for their rights. | positive |
Superficically, "Brigadoon" is a very promising entertainment package. Gene Kelly and Vincente Minnelli, the team behind "An American in Paris", are reunited with a lot of the great craftsmen and women behind their previous collaborations. Gene's leading lady is Cyd Charisse, one of the best dancers of 40s/50s cinema, and unlike the generally superior "It's Always Fair Weather" this film gave them the chance for not only one but two dances. Lerner and Loewe were the rising team behind such future hits as "My Fair Lady" and Minnelli's musical masterpiece "Gigi"; Lerner and Minnelli had already demonstrated their sanguine collaborative juices on the excellent "American in Paris."<br /><br />What happened along the way? Why is the movie itself such a stupid bore? Minnelli himself didn't want to do the movie, despite his previous warm artistic and personal relationship with Lerner. Maybe it was because the movie's innate conservatism was just a bit too much of two steps forward for MGM and one step backward for Vincente Minnelli. But once trapped in this assignment like the denizens of Brigadoon are trapped within its city limits, Minnelli strove to turn it into something that would be entertaining in a specifically distracting, if not liberating way. The ultimate result is truly horrific to behold.<br /><br />While aiming for the naive charm of previous Minnelli hits like "Cabin in the Sky" and "Meet Me in St. Louis", the plaid-tights wearing inhabitants of Brigadoon can conjure up none of the illusive nostalgia of those never-have-been locales. Its whimsy doesn't even match up to the glossy luster of "Yolanda and the Thief" or "The Pirate" because the highlands settings seem at the same time too specific for such an exotic fantasy and too generic for real human emotions. The only people in Brigadoon who I at least can relate to are the malcontented man who tries to escape and the unfortunate fellow-traveler played by Van Johnson who accidentally shoots him. The general proceedings in the township of Brigadoon itself are too arcane and provincial even to be attributed to a backwards form of Christianity: they seem positively pagan in their aspect. For example, in exchange for Brigadoon's immortality, the honorable and most generally "good" pastor of the town has sacrificed his own place in the supposedly blessed refuge.<br /><br />At one point we're assured that "everybody's looking for their own Brigadoon." Suffice it to say the box office for this picture confirms my own suspicion that most of us aren't looking for this kind of quasi-queasy paradise. The premise itself is ridiculous and almost insultingly patronizing, but could work if the players were perfect. But Kelly himself is the most patronizing thing about the movie, and Charisse is horribly miscast as a virginal optimist in much the same way as Lucille Bremer was miscast in "Yolanda and the Thief." Van Johnson does his best version of the classic Oscar Levant sidekick to Kelly (even lighting 3 cigarettes at one point like Levant in "AIP"), and he provides a lot of amusing moments. But it says something in itself if the best part of a big budget extravaganza with all the best talents of MGM is a tossed-off Van Johnson performance. | negative |
When American author Edgar Allan Poe visits London, he is approached by British journalist Alan Foster, who becomes the target of a peculiar wager. Not believing Poe's assertion that all of his macabre stories have been based on actual experience, Foster accepts a bet from Poe and his friend Sir Thomas Blackwood that he cannot spend an entire night in the Blackwood's haunted castle. Once installed in the abandoned castle, Foster discovers that he is not alone, as he is approached by various beautiful women and handsome men, and a doctor of metaphysics - who explains that they are all lost souls damned to replay the stories of their demises on the anniversary of their deaths! The first time I watched this glorious bit of classic horror, I was mesmerized the entire time. I found the movie genuinely creepy and at the same time sorrowful. Babs Steele is undeniably beautiful. The music score makes the atmosphere twice as terror inducing. The topless scene threw me for a loop, as I was not expecting it. It looks as Synapse did a great job with picture enhancement, because this movie looks damn fine for its age, and it's the Uncut International version, to boot. This is the movie responsible for me starting a Babs Steele and Klaus Kinski collection. | positive |
Near the beginning of "The Godfather: Part III," Michael Corleone's son wants to drop out of law school and become a musician. Michael Corleone does not want this. But his estranged ex-wife, Kay, manages to convince him to let Anthony Corleone pursue music as he wishes. So he does.<br /><br />That seems like an odd way to start a review, as it is a minor plot point and has nothing really to do with the major action. Just bear with me here; you'll see where I'm going with this eventually. Now let me tell you about the major plot. It is about Michael Corleone wanting to quit crime for good (he has largely abandoned all criminal elements in his family business). But then along comes Vincent Mancini, an illegitimate nephew, who is involved in a feud. So of course Michael must endure yet another brush with criminality and gun violence and all that good gangster stuff. Meanwhile, Vincent has a semi-incestuous affair with Michael's daughter Mary. Oh, and Michael and Kay are trying to patch up all the horrid things that happened at the end of Part II.<br /><br />It is like a soap opera. One horrid, awful, 169-minute soap opera. Gone is any sort of the sophistication, romance, and emotional relevance that made the first two movies hit home so hard. After a 16-year break in the franchise, Francis Ford Coppola delivered a mess of sop and pretentiousness entirely incongruous with the first two films, once again proving his last great work was "Apocalypse Now" back in the 1970's.<br /><br />What's worse, "The Godfather: Part III" isn't even a logical follow-up of "The Godfather: Part II." Michael is a completely different person. He hasn't just gone to seed (which might be legitimate, even if it'd be no fun to watch). He's become a goody-goody that's trying to fix all the tragedy that made Part II such a devastating masterpiece. His confession to the priest was bad enough, but that little diabetes attack in the middle pushed it over to nauseating. He also gets back together with Kay! For heaven's sakes, there is absolutely no way that should happen, as the 2nd movie made abundantly clear! She aborted his baby, and his Sicilian upbringing made him despise her for it. Didn't Francis Ford Coppola even think of these things?<br /><br />And don't even get me started on Mary and Vincent's affair! For a romance so forbidden, it was shockingly unengaging. Sofia Coppola's acting did nothing to help. She made the smartest move of her life when she switched from in front of the camera to behind it, because she was possibly THE worst actress I have ever seen in a Best Picture nominee. Every line she delivered was painfully memorized, and every time the drama rested on her acting abilities, all she elicited was inappropriate giggles. In the climactic scene--I won't go into detail, but you'll know which scene I'm talking about when/if you watch it--she looks at Michael and says, "......Daddy?" I think I was meant to cry, but the line was delivered so poorly I burst out into long, loud laughter!<br /><br />Now we get to the climax, and now you will also realize why I took time to start the review with a description of Anthony Corleone's musical ambitions. After 140 minutes of petty drama and irrelevant happenstances, Anthony Corleone returns... with an opera! So Michael, Kay, Mary, and Vincent go to see it, and for about 10-15 minutes a couple killers walk around trying to assassinate Michael. About this climactic sequence, I must say one thing: It was really good! But not because of the killers--they were pretty boring. I just really liked the opera. It had some great music and real great set pieces. And, from what little it showed us, it seemed that the story had echoes of the Corleone family's origin. I'll bet it was one swell opera, and I'll bet Michael Corleone was glad he let his son switch from law school to music.<br /><br />My biggest wish is this: that Francis Ford Coppola had merely filmed Anthony Corleone's opera for 169 minutes and ditched the rest of the soggy melodrama. Better yet, I wish he hadn't made "The Godfather: Part III" at all. Part II gave us the perfect ending. This spin off was self-indulgent and unnecessary.<br /><br />P.S. This is not a gut reaction to the film. I watched all 3 Godfather films over a month ago (though I was rewatching the first one). Not only does this mean that my expectations for Part III weren't screwed (in fact, I had set the bar rather low for it after what I heard), but it also means I've had a good time to think about all three films. While I was a bit disappointed with Part II at first, the more I thought about it, the better it seemed. But with Part III, it was bad to begin with, then got worse the more I thought about it. The sad thing is that many people will stop with Part I, but if they watch Part II as well, they will most likely go on to Part III. If you have the will, watch Parts I & II and pretend like Part III never existed. | negative |
This 1947 film stars and was directed and written by Orson Welles (with a funky Irish accent) and also stars the gorgeous Rita Hayworth with less appealing short blonde hair. So, I've hung out with Orson before in Touch of Evil and Citizen Kane and the Third Man etc. but this was my first Rita Hayworth interaction. Our first meeting went well, she does a superb job playing the frightened/cagey Elsa, married to a crippled millionaire lawyer. Mike (Welles) and Elsa fall for each other. He wants to run away with her, she doesn't know if she can live without the things money can buy. Elsa, her husband, and his partner bicker and bite, just like the sharks Mike describes attacking each other and his foretelling proves just too true. Several twists and turns follow in this murder mystery as we come to the climax in the fun house. (Think the ending shootout in The Man with the Golden Gun, which borrowed heavily from this scene). I wasn't sure who the murderer was until the end.<br /><br />This movie is like shrimp in garlic and lemon. The dish centers on the sea, it is subtle, sour, and pungent, all to great effect. These might not be the best, fresh shrimp, but good quality frozen shrimp from Costco. The flavorful sauce adds to the naturalness of the pink shrimp as you fill up on a healthy, but filling alternative to more mundane, common fare. 7/10 http://blog.myspace.com/locoformovies | positive |
The plot had some wretched, unbelievable twists. However, the chemistry between Mel Brooks and Leslie Ann Warren was excellent. The insight that she comes to, "There are just moments," provides a philosophical handle by which anyone could pick up, and embrace, life.<br /><br />That was one of several moments that were wonderfully memorable. | positive |
As other reviewers have noted, this movie is a cross between (i.e. stolen from) stories we have seen before. Specifically, this looks like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter inserted into Mad Max. Remove Clint's cigar, and replace with a cigarette; remove his horse and give him a high-tech motorcycle, and voilà, an updated drifter. In this movie, the "hero" is even more blatantly a "Savior" than High Plains Drifter. Now our hero has long brown hair, suffers a wound to his left side, and his entry into town is preceded by a plea for "salvation" by the surviving townspeople--a pretty transparent reference to a "Second Coming." I watched the movie on a hot, humid morning. Sleep was impossible and upon arising at 4:30 am, there was nothing else on TV. So the movie served its purpose. While unoriginal, with characters that are almost comic caricatures, the movie is still somewhat entertaining...at least at 4:30 in the morning. | negative |
This movie is honestly one of the greatest movies of all time...if you suffer from insomnia. It is a fool-proof way to guarantee hours of sleep at a time. As the movie slowly progresses, the audience slips into a state of unconsciousness and gradually loses sight of any sort of plot that the movie might actually contain. This effect is surely created due to the lack of sweet action/sweet babes.<br /><br />Also, Mr. Eisenstein was obviously unable to master the art of montage. A prime example of this is the scene on the Odessa steps. For no apparent reason, an event that in real life would have taken a matter of seconds is transformed into a seven minute nightmare for any sane viewer. This editing flaw tarnishes any sort of realism in the entire film. Honestly, i've seen more realistic editing watching cartoons.<br /><br />Some individuals who have commented on this title have hailed Battleship Potemkin as: "One of the greatest movies of all time" and, "Truly a masterpiece". Well i'm writing this comment to persuade readers to avoid watching this film at all costs. My best guess is that my fellow Potemkin critics simply wrote the wrong words in their summaries. Surely what they meant to say was: "One of the greatest snooze-fests of all time" and, "Truly an epic fail".<br /><br />In conclusion, don't waste your time. If you are interested in watching a movie of far superior quality, go to www.youtube.com and watch a Halo 3 montage. If i played the movie "Battleship Potemkin" in a game of slayer on guardian, i would shoot it in the face with my sniper rifle and then teabag its dead body. PEACE! | negative |
Shamefull as it may be, this movie actually made it to the videomarket, bringing shame on my proud country - any attempt to watch this movie without stopping or pausing, will be a fruitless attempt. one cannot bear to see more than one hour of this, then having either fallen asleep, or visited the bathroom for puking.<br /><br />Note: if you haven't seen anything else from Denmark, please remember this:<br /><br />some things were never meant to be - but still some idiot goes ahead and makes it anyway! | negative |
Possibly the best movie ever created in the history of Jeffrey Combs career, and one that should be looked upon by all talent in Hollywood for his versatility, charisma, and uniqueness he brings through his characters and his knowledge of acting. | positive |
In Crystal City, a group of Mormons hire the horse traders Travis (Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey Jr.) as wagon masters to lead their caravan to San Juan River. Along the journey, they meet first the broken wagon without water of the quack Dr. A. Locksley Hall (Alan Mowbray) and the prostitutes Denver (Joanne Dru) and Fleuretty Phyffe (Ruth Clifford). Then the sadistic outlaws Clegg boys decide to join the Mormon caravan to disguise the patrol leaded by the Sheriff of Crystal City that is chasing them. When the Navajos cross their path, they are invited to visit their hamlet for a dancing party. When the wagon train is near to their destination, the Clegg boys threaten the settlers, forcing Sandy and Travis to take an attitude.<br /><br />"Wagon Master" is another great western of John Ford. The sequences with the wagon train crossing the desert and the hills are impressive. The adventure of the group of Mormons is funny and very entertaining and the songs fit well to the plot despite being dated. My vote is eight.<br /><br />Title (Brazil): "Caravana dos Bravos" ("Caravan of the Braves") | positive |
I loved the the film. it beautifully analyzes Italian petty bourgeois society, how the leftists of the 70s have given up all their ideals and come to a happy arrangement which they don't want disturbed. For instance, the aging psychoanalyst who is jealous of his own son, and doesn't want to be reminded of his more radical youth.<br /><br />For a long time wanted to buy the video after having seen the movie a couple of times on the big screen and on TV, but it seems to have completely disappeared from the market, even in Italy no one in the book shops knew about the film. a great pity.<br /><br />The one sex scene, which everyone seems to go on about, does the film no harm. | positive |
"Blame it on Rio" is a romantic comedy 80's style, with more than an eye full of sex throughout its 101 minute running time.<br /><br />The plot concerns two middle-aged men in crisis, one of whom is sorting through his divorce, the other dealing with the possibility of that same prospect. Both good friends, they decide to take a vacation in exotic Rio de Janeiro, each with a daughter at their side. Complications set in when one of them gets involved with the other's daughter.<br /><br />This potential riot of a story is fairly funny and there are some good lines, however it never really becomes hilarious, as it could have. Any attempt at handling the moral issue seriously doesn't work either, and perhaps director Donen should have stuck to the humour of the situation.<br /><br />Not a bad film, but what really ruins it is Michelle Johnson's awful performance as the naughty little temptress Jennifer. While she uses her body to full advantage, it's the only thing she's got. Michelle's acting prowess leaves a great deal to be desired. No wonder we haven't seen her in anything else.<br /><br />Friday, January 7, 1994 - Video | negative |
This was the very first movie I ever saw in the theatre by myself. I was 7 years old, and to this day it is one of my favorite movies. It's pure smarmy cheese. The cartoon was marketed towards young girls, selling dolls with soft bodies and big plastic heads, one for every colour of the rainbow, with their own special animals, 'sprites' and even a talking rainbow horse. Typical of the time period, each show was about how hope, togetherness and magic can make 'everything all better'.<br /><br />The movie concerns the coming of spring, when all the light and colour returns to the world, but this time it just isn't happening for our lovely hero. A spoiled Princess plots to overtake the soul lightgiver (and implied life giver)of the universe, which happens to be a giant diamond, for her own devious purposes, with no regard for reality, and now Rainbow and her newly found friends Orin, Onyx and Chris must save the universe. As I said before, it's cheesy, but it's cute, and it's exactly like all of the other cartoons from that time period, like the CareBear movies, Strawberry Shortcake, Rose Petal and the Smurfs. All movies created to sell dolls to kids. And it works. :) | positive |
This was a very good PPV, but like Wrestlemania XX some 14 years later, the WWE crammed so many matches on it, some of the matches were useless. I'm not going to go through every match on the card because it would take forever to do.<br /><br />However major highlights included the HUGE pop for Demolition winning the tag team belts from Haku and Andre the Giant, The first ever mixed tag match featuring Randy Savage and Sensational Queen Sherri vs Dusty Rhodes and the late Sapphire and the first ever clash between The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan.<br /><br />Some matches were a complete waste of time. Like The Bolsheviks vs The Hart Foundation was only about 40 seconds long, Koko B Ware vs Rick Martel was short and Big Bossman vs Akeem was too short.<br /><br />Mr Perfect vs Brutus Beefcake and Ted DiBiase vs Jake 'the snake' Roberts were very good indeed.<br /><br />Overall Grade - B | positive |
This film is absolute trash and proceeds to become even worse towards the, very protracted, end! <br /><br />The plot is confused and laboured, the actors have a couldn't care less attitude (maybe they were paid in advance - bad move, or knew they weren't going to get paid), and the sets were featureless, boring and cheap.<br /><br />I fell asleep twice and actually decided to not bother with the last 5 minutes as I assumed the actors would have fallen asleep themselves by then. More unrecoverable life time wasted!<br /><br />If you must watch it, then take it to the bedroom and forget the sleeping pills for once. But maybe you'll need an antidepressant instead!<br /><br />Sometimes it's good if celluloid degrades. | negative |
Fritz Lang directed two great westerns: "Western Union" and "The Return of Frank James". The Frank James movie equals "Jesse James". "Western Union" is one of Randolph Scott's great westerns. I have never seen Robert Young in a western before; he is terrific as the telegraph employee. This is the only movie I can think of that is about the telegraph company opening up in the west. It is a high-geared story about the telegraph in the west, a triangle love story, and about loyalty. <br /><br />The supporting cast is superb. Dean Jagger, who made a few westerns, plays the telegraph manager. Virginia Gilmore, who plays Mr. Jagger's sister, is the love interest in the movie. Ms. Gilmore had a short career in movies. She quit films in 1952 and became a drama coach. She is primarily known as the first Mrs. Yul Brynner. It is great to see Slim Summerville in a movie with Mr. Scott again. They were in two other great movies: "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" and "Jesse James". | positive |
Another variation and improvisation on the famous and beloved children tale, La Bete (1975) aka The Beast tries to imagine (in very graphic and what may seem offensive and disturbing but in reality rather silly and comical way), what actually happened between Beauty and the Beast? I am amused by many reviews and comments that seem to look too deeply into this movie. I would not go so far as saying that it is a serious and dark exploration of such subjects as sexual frustration, longing, fulfillment, or satirical criticizing of the catholic Religion. I would not even call it a horror-erotic movie. It's more of the parody on all genres it touches or mentions even though it's got some shocking moments in all departments that sure will stay in your memory.<br /><br />The long (way too long) scene between an Aristocratic young woman and the supposedly horrifying but the most laughable I've ever seen in the movies creature with truly impressive...well anatomy, is set to the clavichord music of Scarlatti and is hysterical. My husband and I both laughed out loud at the exaggerated details of the encounter. The moral of the scene is - beauty can and will defeat the monster. The question is - who is the target audience for the film? For an erotic picture, it is too verbose; for an art movie - it's got too many jaw-dropping scenes of sheer madness and I'd say an abrupt ending. IMO, the film creator did not mean for it to be a serious drama. As a parody of art house/horror/erotica, it is funny and certainly original. Have a good laugh and try not to look for some deep meaning. This story of the curious Beauties and the lustful Beasts certainly is not recommended for co-viewing with the children. The opening scene that may shock an unprepared viewer much more than the infamous scene of bestiality can be successfully used On Discovery channel for the program like "In the world of animals - mating habits and rituals of horses". | negative |
Wow. Simply awful. I was a fan of the original movie, and begrudgingly sat through part 2, 3 was and improvement. 4,5 and Freddy's Dead were pretty bad. But NOTHING is as bad as Freddy's Nightmares. Freddy acts as a Rod Serlingesq host of this anthology series.<br /><br />I can accept how Freddy became one punchline after another, but at least in the movies the appeal of Freddy carried the movies, but here these were so poorly made, they looked like high school productions of a horror series. The poor actors, if you really want to call yourself that after doing this show were obviously exactly what they paid for. I'm nearly certain this was a stopping point for two types of actors. Ones just starting on the Hollywood ladder, brand new willing to take any part that would put off their having to take that porn job they were offered last week, or seasoned actors on their way down the Hollywood ladder willing to take any part that would put off their having to take that porn job they were offered last week.<br /><br />I half expected Dana Plato to guest star, but she was already dead by the time this was in production.<br /><br />To paraphrase Nancy's line in the original Elm St,"What ever you do try not to fall asleep watching this." | negative |
The End of Violence and certainly the Million Dollar hotel hinted at the idea the Wenders has lost his vision, his ability to tell compelling stories through a map of the moving picture. The Land of Plenty seals the coffin, I'm afraid, by being a vastly unimaginative, obviously sentimental and cliché'd film. The characters are entirely flat and stereotyped, the writing, plot and direction are amateurish, at best. For the first time in quite a while, I was impatient for the film to end so I could get on with my life. The war-torn delirium of the uncle, the patriotic abstract gazing at the sky at the conclusion...it all just struck me as being so simple and pathetic, hardly the work of a filmmaker who once made some compelling magic on screen. What happened? The days of experimentation, perceptive writing and interesting filming possibilities are long behind him, I'm afraid. Let's hope he finds his inspiration again... At the Toronto film festival, which is where I saw the film, Wenders was there to introduce it. Completely lacking in humility, he offered us the following: "I hope...no, wait...I KNOW you're going to enjoy the next two hours." I'm afraid he couldn't be more wrong... | negative |
The producer, Matt Mochary, stumbled upon the film's subject, Anderson Sa (leader of the AfroReggae music movement), when on a Hewlett Foundation trip to Rio de Janeiro. Mochary was so moved by Sa's story that he called his friend, NYC filmmaker Jim Zimbalist, who quit his job and joined Mochary in Brazil to work on a documentary on Sa, Rio's favelas, and the culture of violence.<br /><br />The first part of the film shows you the culture of violence in Rio's favelas (shantytowns where the poor live) via footage of police raids and assaults on the residents. The footage is graphic and shocking.<br /><br />Rising from the negativity of the favelas is the charismatic Anderson Sa, who overcame a possible career in drug dealing to start the AfroReggae movement, which combines elements of Afro-Brazilian culture, Reggae, ska, and other elements into a fast-paced, percussion heavy style of music which has since spread to other parts of the world. You can't help but be carried away by the music, especially when you see the local children get involved in Sa's school, which he founded to keep kids out of drug gangs. The rest of the film follows Sa's meteoric rise and his positivity changes many of the children's lives to seek a life beyond drug running. SPOILER: Just when the filmmakers thought they had wrapped filming, an unbelievable life changing event occurs of which the resolution has to be seen to be believed. The film then continues and you are gripped in your seat until the end.<br /><br />This film is a response to "City of God," and a worthy one at that. The bleak situation portrayed in that movie is countered by a real example of how favela dwellers can overcome the dire situation they are in and use their resources to constructive ends. You can't help not liking and rooting for Anderson Sa to succeed.<br /><br />This film is terrifically shot, fast-paced, and is quite absorbing. Judging by the overwhelming response of the audience at last night's SilverDocs screening, the film should get domestic distribution in the US and the thumping soundtrack should be released as well. Keep an eye for this superlative documentary--it is excellent! | positive |
Anyone looking to learn more about the development of skateboarding should find Dogtown and Z-Boys adequate research material. This is not to be confused with Lords of Dogtown, that sorry Hollywood attempt to cash in on the success of the original Dogtown revival. <br /><br />Directed by Stacey Peralta, a former Z-Boys himself as well as pro skater and mastermind behind the 80s Bones Brigade, and co-written with skateboarding photojournalist Craig Stecyk, this documentary traces how a group of surfing kids from Southern California's mean streets (known as Dogtown) who formed the Z-Boys skateboard team (actually there was one girl--Peggy Oki) revolutionized skateboarding. The film contains interviews from nearly all of the Z-Boys (Chris Cahill's whereabouts are unknown) with the most noteable being bad ass Tony Alva and the youngest, Jay Adams, who's talents (along with Perlata) seemed to transcend the rest of the teams. There are interviews of the team's (and the Dogtown shop) founders, surfboard designer Jeff Ho, Skip Engbloom, and Craig Stecyk. There are also interviews of folks like Tony Hawk (obviously), Ian McKaye (Fugazi), and Henry Rollins, who were young kids in the 70s when Dogtown was making it's influence on skateboarding (skateboarding was a whole other context in previous years as the documentary explains). <br /><br />It really shows you not only who the Dogtown team was and how they formed, but why their style changed not only skateboarding tricks (pool skating became immensley popular, and thus gave way to vert skating), but also facilitated the sport (though not into the extreme commercialism it is today) as more than just the fleeting fad it had been earlier as these surfing kids who's waves ran out in the early morning needed ways to spend their time and eventually got into skateboarding. The days of Russ Howell and Alan Gelfand were long over as the Dogtown, at least through the publicity of their skate team, paved the way for the new generation of skaters. Because Dogtown got all the attention, they were able to push skating to the next step.<br /><br />It's a great documentary in the way that it is put together, though Stacey Peralta always knew how to do this even when producing the Bones Brigade mini movies/skate demos like "Ban This" and "Search for Animal Chin." Narrated by Sean Penn, the film is accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack, contains lots of terrific archive footage, and lots of interview to give you a genuine feel of who the Z-Boys were and how they made their mark on skateboarding. | positive |
The closing song by Johnny Rivers was the only great thing about this movie. Unfortunately that is all the positive I can say about this western movie. I have to write 8 more lines for my comments to be posted, but there is more than 8 lines of awful in this western. I am not sure if the movie was a tribute to Hopa Along, or just a spoof. The hero and the villain in this movie were too plastic. Not realistic at all. A lot of the supporting actors in this movie looked authentic, but the shooting scenes were a joke. A previous commentator thought this movie was great, and in the comments took a cheap shot at President Bush. This was not a democratic or republican western. It was just a bad western movie to be sold commercially. I wonder if it made any money. At times I thought I was watching a movie made by college movie students. If that was the case, then it was a great movie. | negative |
Co-directed by and starring Rutger Hauer, this film short was based on a short story by Dutch writer Harry Murlisch.<br /><br />In the 10 minutes of the film's length you will get to see a life-time as 'Harry' unravels his long-time fascination with a room he passes constantly in his youth. Returning to the city many years later he finds he has rented the same room.<br /><br />Using black and white film the textures are accentuated in this delicate telling of a tale. The voice of 'Harry' drawing you into his world.<br /><br />A subtle, tight performance from Rutger Hauer and 2 non-speaking characters. Wonderful soundtrack by Dutch musician Dyzack.<br /><br />At the moment difficult to see this movie as it is only available on DVD region 2 "L'infidele" (Liv Ullman) as a bonus track. But is due to be on the re-released DVD of "The Hitcher" - another tight, but very different performance from Hauer!<br /><br />See this film if you can! | positive |
Together with the even more underrated , The Sun Shines Bright, Wagon Master was one of Ford's favorite films. It is a western of exceptional beauty and narrative purity, well acted by members of Ford's 'stock company', including Jane Darwell, Alan Mowbray, Ward Bond,and Harry Carey, Jr.Like almost all of Ford's films,it is a meditation on freedom and community. It is also noteworthy for a much more positive portrayal of Indians than in most of Ford's movies. Ford, for all his faults, remains the supreme poet of American Democracy. | positive |
Love hurts. That, I think, is the main message Mike Binder's newest film Reign Over Me brings across. Whether that love has caused your relationship to become stagnant, or has brought anger from the one you love cheating for years, or has broken your heart to the point of being unable to open yourself up to the world, love hurts. The great thing about this film, however, is not in its portrayal of these lost souls trying to let their past heartbreaks go, but in the eventual restart of new bonds for the future. No one in this drama is perfect; they are all at some degree trapped emotionally in relationships that they can't free themselves from alone. There is some heavy subject material here and I credit Binder for never making the story turn into a political diatribe, but instead infusing the serious moments with some real nice comedic bits allowing the tale to stay character-based and small in scale compared to the epic event that looms overhead. What could have become a trite vehicle for opinions on how 9-11 effected us all, ends up being a story about two men and a connection they share that is the only thing which can save their lives from a life of depression and regret.<br /><br />This is a new career performance for Adam Sandler. I like to think that my favorite director Paul Thomas Anderson was the first to see the childish, pent-up anger in his stupid comedies as something to use dramatically. The juvenility of a character like Billy Madison allows for laughs and potty humor, but also can be used to show a repressed man, shy and shutout to the world around hima man with no confidence that needs an event of compassion to break him from his shell. Anderson let Sandler do just that in his masterpiece Punch-Drunk Love and Mike Binder has taken it one step further. Sandler plays former dentist Charlie Fineman whose wife and three kids were killed in one of the planes that took down the World Trade Center on 9-11. That one moment crushed any life that he had and as a result, he became reclusive and started to believe he couldn't remember anything that happened before that day. He really delivers a moving portrait of a man trying to keep up the charade in his head while those around him, those that love him, try and open him up to the reality of what happened and what the future holds. Always on edge and ready to snap at any moment when something is mentioned to spark the memory of his perished family, he goes through life with his iPod and headphones, shutting out everything so as not to be tempted remember.<br /><br />Reign Over Me is not about Charlie Fineman though, it is about dentist and family man Alan Johnson. A man that has trapped himself into a marriage and dental practice that both have stagnated into monotony, Johnson needs as much help in his life as his old college roommate Charlie does. Played perfectly by the always brilliant Don Cheadle, Johnson has lost his backbone to try and change his life. He has no friends and when he sees Charlie, by chance, one day, his life evolves into something he hasn't felt in 15 years. He revels in the chance to go out with an old friend no matter how much he has changed from the death of his family. Cheadle's character wants to revert back to the college days of hanging out and Sandler's doesn't mind because all that was before he met his wife. The two men get what they want and allow themselves to grow close despite the years of solitude that used to rule their lives. Once they begin opening up though, it is inevitable that the subject of the tragedy will creep up and test the façade they have created for themselves.<br /><br />The supporting cast does an amazing job helping keep up appearances for the two leads. Jada Pinkett Smith has never been an actress that impressed me and throughout the film played the tough as nails wife nicely, but it is her final scene on the phone with Cheadle that really showed me something different and true. Liv Tyler is a bit out of her element as a psychiatrist, but the movie calls her on this fact and makes the miscasting, perfect casting. The many small cameos are also effective, even writer/director Mike Binder's role as Sandler's old best friend and accountant, (my only gripe here is why he feels the need to put his name in the opening credits as an actor when it is everywhere, considering it is his film). Last but not least is the beautiful Saffron Burrows. She is a great actress and plays the love- crushed divorcée trying to put her life back together wonderfully. A role that seems comic relief at first, but ends up being an integral aspect for what is to come.<br /><br />Binder has crafted one of the best dramatic character studies I have seen in a long time. The direction is almost flawless, (the blurring between cuts and characters in the fore/ background really annoyed me in the beginning), the acting superb, and the story true to itself, never taking the easy way out or wrapping itself up with a neatly tied bow at the conclusion. Even the music was fantastic and used to enhance, not to lead us emotionally, (why after two great uses of the titular song by The Who did Binder feel the need to use the inferior Eddie Veddar remake for the end, I don't know, but it did unfortunately stick out for me). Reign Over Me is a film about love and how although it can cause the worst pain imaginable, it can also save us from regret and allow us to once again see the world as a place of beauty and hope. | positive |
Alright so this episode makes fun of Al Gore. I'm sure it pisses a few liberals off. The thing is South Park makes fun of everybody, much like the Simpsons did. If you get offended that a politician you like is made fun of then maybe you need a better sense of humor and are taking the show too seriously. With that being said this episode is hilarious and one of the best. Al Gores portrayal is hilarious, Cartman's scheme goes terribly wrong and the results will have you rolling on the floor laughing. It is basically everything you would ever want out of a south park episode and it is easily one of my favorites. I'll won't comment too much further on the plot because I don't want to give anything away. | positive |
A young doctor and his wife are suddenly expecting a child. Both are disturbed about a two hour memory lapse on the night of conception. Interesting twist on an hackneyed story. Very good F/X and interesting editing. Jillian McWhirter is outstanding in a cast that features Arnold Vosloo, Wilford Brimley and Brad Dourif. Brimley brings normalcy to the outlandish. Kudos to director Brian Yuzna. | negative |
Ida Lupino was one of the few women to break through the directorial glass ceiling in Hollywood under the studio system. Not surprisingly, she also tackled proto-feminist themes that, when touched at all, were approached in so gingerly a manner that it was seldom quite clear what was being talked about. In Outrage, she treats rape and its aftermath, and though throughout the short movie it's referred to as `criminal assault,' she leaves, for once, no doubt about what happened.<br /><br />Mala Powers (in her official debut) plays a secretary-bookkeeper at a big industrial plant; she lives with her parents but is engaged to a swell guy (Robert Clarke), who just got a raise and now makes $90 a week. Leaving the plant after working late one night, she finds herself being stalked. In the ensuing scene the best in the movie she tries to escape her pursuer in a forbidding maze of buildings and alleys but fails.<br /><br />When she returns home, disheveled and in shock, the police can't get much out of her; she claims she never saw her attacker (who manned a snack truck outside the factory). Trying to pretend that nothing happened, she returns to her job but falls apart, thinking that everybody is staring at her, judging her. She goes into a fugue state, running away to Los Angeles on a bus but stumbling off at a rest stop. <br /><br />Waking up in a strange ranch house, she learns that she's been rescued by Tod Andrews, a young minister in a California agricultural town. She lies about her identity and takes a job packing oranges. The two fall vaguely in love, but it's clear to Andrews that Powers is keeping dire secrets. When, at a company picnic, she seizes a wrench and cracks the skull of Jerry Paris, who was trying to steal a kiss, the truth about her past comes out....<br /><br />It was a courageous movie to come out in 1950, and that may explain and excuse some of its shortcomings. Lupino never recaptures the verve of the early assault scene, and the movie wanders off into the bucolic and sentimental, ending up talky and didactic. Yes, Lupino had important information to impart, but she didn't trust the narrative to speak for itself. Her cast, pleasant but bland and generic, weren't much help, either, reverting to melodramatic postures or homespun reassurance. But Outrage was a breakthrough, blazing a trail for later discourse on what the crime of rape really is, and what it really means to its victims. | positive |
This is what happens when you try to adapt a play from the theater. Look at the end of the picture, totally theatrical.<br /><br />With a reminiscent of Les liaisons dangereuses the final steam-less speech try to make us think that the whole (and deep) theme of this matter was the manhood. Who cares by this point? It was about manipulation. And so the audience feels after this movie has ended.<br /><br />Young directors: A play is told with the words more than actions. A film is the opposite most of the times.<br /><br />And I'm not talking about the gay theme, overly exploited without a point ('cause there's no explanation of this topic considering the so called "philosophic" or presumptuous basis) to the level that this film should have been called Grand Gay | negative |
A scientist (John Carradine--sadly) finds out how to bring the dead back to life. However they come back with faces of marble. Eventually this all leads to disaster.<br /><br />Boring, totally predictable 1940s outing. This scared me silly when I was a kid but just bores me now. I had to struggle to stay awake! With one exception, the acting is horrible. Such expressionless boring actors! Hopeless.<br /><br />There are some good things about this: Carradine, despite the script, actually gives a very good performance. And there are a few mildly creepy moments involving a ghost of a Great Dane walking through walls. There's also one of the worst-looking knockouts in cinema history. Still, none of this is fun enough to sit through this. Avoid. | negative |
OK, so I just saw the movie, although it appeared last year... I thought that it was generally a decent movie, except for the storyline, which was stupid and horrible... First of all, we never get to know anything about the creatures, why they appeared, wtf are they doing in our world, and really, have they been on Earth before we were or did they just come from space? Secondly, the role of the butcher to maintain order is just so obviously created... Really, how large could the underground for a sub station could have been? There were only so many of those creatures, so I think instead of killing innocent people in vain, they could have just planted some tactical bombs, or maybe clear the are and a Nuke would have done the job. I know it sounds funny and it is, but I do not see the killing of people as being NECESSARY... Thirdly, Leon acts like Superman jumping on the train and fighting Vinnie Jones, who was way taller and bigger in stature. Then again, when he faces the conductor he does nothing and acts as a wimp, watching all the abominations. I mean OK, the conductor had creepy help(lol), but if Leon was so brave he would have gone all the way... I mean he risks his life first, then does nothing exactly when he should have. He could have died as a hero but lives as a coward... this might be the case, but not after showing so much braveness earlier on... Then, the cop thing... come on! This was a city having a subway, I bet there must have been other cops except that lady, other police stations,this was really kind of silly... All in all, great acting by Vinnie Jones, interesting idea up to the reason behind it which is not really built at all... By the way, what did the signs on the chest mean? Vinnie Jones cannot make up for the rest... | negative |
We now travel to a parallel universe where the appearance of giant prehistoric monsters flattening cities are part of the daily routine. It's the world of Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra Ghidrah and their kind - a strange world, and one made even stranger by the appearance of an unidentified flying turtle called Gamera.<br /><br />Forever in the shadow of the monolithic Toho Studios, second rung Daiei Studios were more famous for samurai sagas than monster movies. In the mid 60s they decided to join the giant reptile race and designed a rival monster series to Toho's mammothly successful Godzilla. They wisely chose Gamera as their flagship - a giant turtle that shoots flames from between its snaggle-teeth, and spins through the air by shooting flames through its shell's feet-holes (and at one point you almost see the paper mache shell catch fire!).<br /><br />The first Gamera film "Gamera The Invincible" (as it was sold to the US) is a virtual mirror of the first Godzilla film, only 10 years behind. American fighters chase an unmarked plane over the Arctic to its fiery demise - the nuclear bomb on board ignites and awakens the giant Gamera from its icy slumber. Feeding off atomic energy, it immediately goes on a rampage, and the world wants to destroy Gamera once and for all, but a little Japanese boy named Kenny, who has a psychic connection with the giant turtle and even keeps a miniature version in an aquarium by his bedside, believes Gamera is essentially kind and benevolent. He's like a little Jewish kid with a pinup of Hitler. "Gamera is a GOOD turtle," he pleads, then sulks, and puts on a face like someone's pooped in his coco pops. Miraculously the world's leaders listen to him, and so begins Z-Plan to save the world AND Gamera from complete destruction.<br /><br />Released in 1965, Gamera was a surprising hit. The annoying infantile anthropomorphism actually worked on kiddie audiences in both Japan and the US, and the sight of Gamera on two feet stomping miniatures of Tokyo and the North Pole is gloriously chintzy. Most surprising of all is the longevity of the series: eight original Gamera films, plus a slew of recent remakes. Not bad for a mutant reptile whose only friend is mewing eight year old milquetoast - and if I hear "Gamera is friends to ALL children" one more time I'M going to crush Tokyo. Which appears to be an easy task in the parallel universe where children are smart and turtles are bigger than a Seiko billboard in the 1965 turtle-fest Gamera. | negative |
There are interesting pieces here of and about Bruce Weber's likes and dislikes. Maybe if a professional editor had put it together for Biography, I would have felt more satisfied. Instead, I spent $8 at a film festival on it. For an autobiography, almost nothing is revealed about Bruce Weber, other than he likes to look at photographs, shoot interesting people, especially beautiful teenage boys, and listen to jazz. The director of "Crumb" would have made a much more interesting and cohesive film. | negative |
Gregory Peck and Gig Young are competing for the same girl and after Peck sends Young on a very dangerous mission, they blame him for his reasons. Feeling guilty, Peck goes on an almost impossible task of defending a fort, where they are outnumbered by the Indians. Peck chooses for this mission soldiers which he considers to be the scum of the earth and the actors that play these soldiers, Ward Bond, Lon Chaney Jr., Neville Brand among others, are excellent. The script is derived from a novel by Charles Marquis Warren who was a specialist in westerns, as a writer, director and producer. The idea of using this type of men as heroes inspired many films that came out later including "The Dirty Dozen" made in 1967. | positive |
Coming immediately on the heels of Match Point (2005), a fine if somewhat self-repetitive piece of "serious Woody," Scoop gives new hope to Allen's small but die-hard band of followers (among whom I number myself) that the master has once again found his form. A string of disappointing efforts, culminating in the dreary Melinda and Melinda (2004) and the embarrassing Anything Else (2003) raised serious doubts that another first rate Woody comedy, with or without his own participation as an actor, was in the cards. Happily, the cards turn out to be a Tarot deck that serves as Scoop's clever Maguffin and proffers an optimistic reading for the future of Woody Allen comedy.<br /><br />Even more encouraging, Woody's self-casting - sadly one of the weakest elements of his films in recent years - is here an inspired bit of self-parody as well as a humble recognition at last that he can no longer play romantic leads with women young enough to be his daughters or granddaughters. In Scoop, Allen astutely assigns himself the role of Sid Waterman, an aging magician with cheap tricks and tired stage-patter who, much like Woody himself, has brought his act to London, where audiences - if not more receptive - are at least more polite. Like Chaplin's Calvero in Limelight (1952), Sid Waterman affords Allen the opportunity to don the slightly distorted mask of an artist whose art has declined and whose audience is no longer large or appreciative. Moreover, because they seem in character, Allen's ticks and prolonged stammers are less distracting here than they have been in some time. <br /><br />Waterman's character also functions neatly in the plot. His fake magic body-dissolving box becomes the ironically plausible location for visitations from Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), a notorious journalistic muckraker and recent cardiac arrest victim. Introduced on a River Styx ferryboat-to-Hades, Strombel repeatedly jumps ship because he just can't rest in eternity without communicating one last "scoop" about the identity of the notorious "Tarot killer." Unfortunately, his initial return from the dead leads him to Waterman's magic show and the only conduit for his hot lead turns out to be a journalism undergraduate, Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson), who has been called up from the audience as a comic butt for the magician's climactic trick. Sondra enthusiastically seizes the journalistic opportunity and drags the reluctant Waterman into the investigation to play the role of her millionaire father. As demonstrated in Lost in Translation, Johansson has a talent for comedy, and the querulous by-play between her and Allen is very amusing - and all the more so for never threatening to become a prelude to romance.<br /><br />Scoop's serial killer plot, involving grisly murders of prostitutes and an aristocratic chief suspect, Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), is the no doubt predictable result of Allen's lengthy sabbatical exposure to London's ubiquitous Jack the Ripper landmarks and lore. Yet other facets of Scoop (as of Match Point) also derive from Woody's late life encounter with English culture. Its class structure, manners, idiom, dress, architecture, and, yes, peculiar driving habits give Woody fresh new material for wry observation of human behavior as well as sharp social satire. When, for instance, Sondra is trying to ingratiate herself with Peter Lyman at a ritzy private club, Waterman observes "from his point of view we're scum." A good deal of humor is also generated by the contretemps of stiffly reserved British social manners encountering Waterman's insistent Borscht-belt Jewish plebeianism. And, then, of course, there is Waterman's hilarious exit in a Smart Car he can't remember to drive on the left side of the road.<br /><br />As usual, Allen's humor in Scoop includes heavy doses of in-jokes, taking the form of sly allusions to film and literary sources as well as, increasingly, references to his own filmography. In addition to the pervasive Jack the Ripper references, for instance, the film's soundtrack is dominated by an arrangement of Grieg's "The Hall of the Mountain King," compulsively whistled by Hans Beckert in M, the first masterpiece of the serial killer genre. The post-funeral gathering of journalists who discuss the exploits of newly departed Joe Strombel clearly mimics the opening of Broadway Danny Rose (1984). References to Deconstructing Harry (1997) include the use of Death as a character (along with his peculiar voice and costume), the use of Mandelbaum as a character name, and the mention of Adair University (Harry's "alma mater" and where Sondra is now a student). Moreover, the systematic use of Greek mythology in the underworld river cruise to Hades recalls the use of Greek gods and a Chorus in Mighty Aphrodite (1995).<br /><br />As to quotable gags, Allen's scripts rely less on one-liners than they did earlier in his career, but Scoop does provides at least a couple of memorable ones. To a question about his religion, Waterman answers: "I was born in the Hebrew persuasion, but later I converted to narcissism." And Sondra snaps off this put-down of Waterman's wannabe crime-detecting: "If we put our heads together you'll hear a hollow noise." All in all, Scoop is by far Woody Allen's most satisfying comedy in a decade. | positive |
If I watch a movie and don't once look at my watch or clock to see how much longer it will be running or when I hope that the last scene wasn't the end of the movie, it's got to be pretty good. I'm not an movie internalist or cinema dissectionist. I watch movies and if they keep me interested till the end, then they are pretty good because some of the most critically acclaimed films bore me to death (The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Atonement, Crash. This movie kept me interested and absorbed beginning to end. Acting is great, story is absolutely original, flash-back technique very affective. There was a bit of Citizen Kane thrown in tho when Hoffman trashes his apartment after Tomei leaves him, but I forgive that cause I see it as a homage to, rather than a rip-off of, Orson. | positive |
Mullholland Drive proves once again that David Lynch is the Master of cinematic expression. At the screening last night I witnessed a brilliant addition to the history of cinema. The performances are astounding, the score entrancing, and the photography mesmerizing. David's ability to weave the many elements of film making into a unique and stunning cinematic experience is unequalled. As I watched Mullholland Drive I couldn't help but realize that with David Lynch in this world we are truly blessed. The cinema is blessed as well for, in the films of David Lynch, we are shown that one man's vision can be realized with stunning results. We realize that blockbusters are not the only path. We realize that a true cinematic artist has a chance in this world and in that we are blessed indeed. | positive |
What a disappointment! I've enjoyed the Jon Cleary books about Scobie Malone, but there's little resemblance between him and the cinematic Malone. In the books he's a city detective, who is devoted to his wife and doesn't get involved in fisticuffs. For the film the character has been spiced up, into an outback copper who uses his fists and isn't averse to jumping into bed with a gorgeous girl, though quite what she and the film's other sex interest see in him I don't know; Taylor was 39 at the time and his face was getting puffy.<br /><br />But his character's stamina is remarkable; he flies in from Australia, apparently goes straight to the Commissioner's house (rather unwisely seeking to arrest him during a black-tie reception), saves him from assassination (getting into a fight in the process), goes to a casino with one girl, leaves with another and takes her to bed. So much for jet lag! On the way back to the Commissioner's house (showing a good knowledge of London back streets), he gets beaten up by the baddies, but is still first down to breakfast! It's also remarkable that the commissioner's limo has its windscreen and headlights miraculously repaired within minutes of the assassination attempt and that one character has a touching faith in the precise timekeeping of a clock-activated bomb.<br /><br />The best thing is Joseph the Butler's disdain for the uncouth Malone. And at least the film avoids being a London travelogue, though some scenes take place during the Wimbledon tennis week. | negative |
I'm trying to decide if jumping into a wood chopper would be more enjoyable than this dreck. It finishes the destruction of what was once a classic couple of films. With Jedi, Menace, Clowns and Sith we have the death of Lucas' career. He wants us to swallow the Annakin is Vader nonsense? I never believed it was true. This film vindicates those feelings. The story hasn't worked since Phantom Moron, and each new film just piled the crap on until all that was left was a toy parade. I have to go. I know where some new rocks to throw are. You want spoilers? Here they come. Luke and Leia are NOT related. Vader is NOT their Father. Duke Countoo should have switched sides while he still could. Yoda has less verbal skills than Yogi Berra. His advice has never been any good to anybody. Obi Wan lied to Luke for the first two films. Annakin didn't build C3P0. He found him in the desert and lied to his Mom about putting him together from scratch. Chewbacca has fleas. This whole mess with Vader and the fall of the Republic can be blamed on that stupid b***h Amma-Lamma-Ding-Dong. If she had any brains she wouldn't have come within a light year of Annie, but she had told do what George Lucas wrote for her. What a dope! | negative |
Hoot is a nice plain movie with a simple message. It seemed like that this film was for young children, but I know that adults will like this film. The storyline is pretty simple. A kid who moved to Florida must help a soccer jock and an outcast save burrowing owls from construction of a pancake house. The message in this film is big especially for animal activists and lovers. The message is about doing all you can to save endangered animals. The acting in this film is decent. All the three kids looked like they had good chemistry. The music is not too shabby. I liked Jimmy Buffet's songs in this film. Overall this is a good family film. I rate this film a 9/10. | positive |
Gore hounds beware...this is not your movie. This little nail bitter has very little blood and guts. Its basically a version of Open Water that is effective and worthwhile. But what sets it apart is that we actually like the three leads (unlike Open Water) who find themselves up a tree when a crocodile flips their fishing boat and munches up their guide. We don't want any harm to come to any of them. SO when they start getting into dangerous situations...we actually care. <br /><br />Now I like killer animal flicks but I haven't been too impressed with Lake Placid up to Primeval (although I'm still waiting to see Rogue and hoping it is somewhere as good as this one!) but this little bugger did the job and did the job well. It's scares are creative and it only lapses into the run of the mill frantic crying sobbing and arguing for brief stints of realism so I never got annoyed. <br /><br />I remember reading the true story that inspired this where three guys went fishing and two ended up in a tree while their buddy was killed by the crocodile . But the thing that always impacted me that gets left out from the film was that the crocodile didn't eat up the buddy. No. For hours and hours he swam around the tree and shook the dead body still in his mouth at the friends in the tree. Seeming to stay, if you come down here this is what will happen to you. | positive |
A gaggle of unpleasant city dwellers descend on Le Touquet for a week's holiday. Stories intertwine, characters fight, make friends, deceive each other, have sex...<br /><br />Blanc has gathered together a stellar cast for his adaptation of Connolly's book, but to little avail. What should be hilarious is instead at turns tedious and irritating. All the characters are either pathetic or unpleasant or both, and in the end, despite the farcical nature of things, this viewer was left caring little about what happens to any of them.<br /><br />Credit to the always wonderful Rampling, plus Bouquet and Viard but that's it. And Dutronc looks like he's rather overdone the nips and tucks, if you ask me... | negative |
I can't really criticize this film. It is literally the first film I ever remember seeing and lead to a lifelong love of science fiction and horror films and prehistoric animals. Fortunately, seeing it again years later, it held up fairly well. Rod Cameron plays a big game hunter whose last safari was wiped out by mammoths. No one believes him, including his best friend, played by Cesar Romero, whose brother was among those killed. And Rod Cameron was the only survivor. The film was shot in India and has some good scenery. The acting is on a high level. I don't believe Rod Cameron, Cesar Romero and Marie Winsor ever turned in a bad performance. The mammoths, when they finally arrive are fairly effective. The ending also has an unusual twist, particularly for a 1950's science fiction film. Definitely worth seeing. | positive |
This must be the most boring film I ever saw. The only positive I can say about it is that thankfully I didn't pay to see it. We were given a free showing in school and everyone in the audience just sat there embarrassed wondering when the fun would start. This piece of junk is a badly filmed, way too long film. The actual idea on why making the movie took about 10 seconds to present. The only ones who can be interested in this film are those who lost their jobs and want to know why. They might find some of the interviews interesting. A different edit might have made an interesting documentary of this, but I doubt it, the interviews shown were not engaging in any way. As it is, it is just a tragedy, both to behold and to be a part of. AVOID THIS FILM AT ANY COST! | negative |
Not just the money we paid to rent it or actually go to the movies. I'm talking about how big productions companies waste so much money in things that actually are boring and not to talk about ridiculous. With the millions they used to make a movie like this, because I don't think the actors here would actually work for free or for an insignificant sum. With that money imagine how many good independent movies you could make, or maybe one good Hollywood movie. Its just to rip you off, but not anyone, just the majority of teens that are willing to go and see an Ashton Kutcher movie, just because they are fans of him. I don't really know either how someone with common sense could actually act in this kind of movie. If you actually look at it in prospective the actors are the same quality of this movie. So i guess I shouldn't be surprise, I actually couldn't have expected more. | negative |
The original review I had planned for this movie was perhaps a little over-harsh, so I'll preface with the good: Sleepy Hollow is a perfectly acceptable beer-and-pizza or sleepover movie, the kind you watch with a good group of people when the mood is light and no-one's really focusing on the movie. The visual elements are beautiful, and it is kinda fun, in parts. But horror, my friends, it is not. I made the mistake of watching it expecting something to shiver at with all the lights off. If this is your intention, send me a personal message and I'll offer you a list of alternate recommendations. (That's a serious offer, by the way. True horror fans deserve better.) Now my complaints, complete with SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Why bother even making a movie "based" on a classic story if you're not even going to attempt to stay true to the sense, feel, tone, or theme of the original? Listen carefully between the lines of ill-written dialogue and you'll hear the slow churn of Washington Irving rolling over in his grave. I will even accept the Big-City Detective bit, but... Ricci drawing warding-hexes around the bed? Come, now. Not only is there nothing even vaguely like this in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", but it's historical BUNK. I don't care what neo-pagan axe you have to grind, but in the 18th century, "witchcraft" meant selling your soul to the Devil in exchange for diabolical powers; this whole fluffy white-witch goddess-worship "an'-it-harm-none" approach to witchcraft dates back, historically, about as far as the British Invasion. (Parties interested in real old-school pagan practices are referred to James Frazer's "The Golden Bough", if you don't believe me.) This creates such a discordant element thrown into the context of the film that the very framework of the Sleepy Hollow legend is shattered. So we wind up with a totally different story altogether. If that was Burton's idea, I wish he'd warned us in advance. Also, I wish he'd come up with a better story than the rather pedestrian one witnessed here. And he might as well have dropped the Irving pretensions altogether. And, at any rate, the movie isn't scary. Not once. Not at all. The warped tree came close, but was more than counterbalanced by the laughable effect of the Hessian's farce-comedy bellowing. And finally, yes, I too wanted Christina Ricci for Christmas, but God clearly never meant her to be a blonde. | negative |
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.<br /><br />Attributed to Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945<br /><br />When faced with intolerance or injustice, the easiest thing to do is nothing - speak up and you risk becoming an object of scorn. But when does enough become too much? Global anti-Semitic sentiments allowed Hitler's genocidal policies to thrive, and equal doses of fear-mongering and ignorance made it possible for the anti-Communist purges of McCarthyism to destroy thousands of peoples' lives. Inaction makes one no less culpable.<br /><br />Lawrence Newman is a chameleon of a man: quiet and nondescript he blends seamlessly with his surroundings. Lawrence doesn't like to get involved - when he witnesses an attack on a young woman, he tells no one and goes about his business. His world spirals into chaos when he buys a pair of glasses, and is mistaken for one of "them." Lawrence's view of the world and its view of him is forever altered. <br /><br />While the subject matter of this film is not new, its presentation is definitely unique. It is much easier to understand the irrational nature of prejudice, when placed within a certain context - Lawrence is more concerned with the assumptions that he is Jewish, than he is with the views of his attackers. He believes that if he corrects this "oversight" that everything will be all right, not realizing that logic and prejudice never go hand in hand. <br /><br />Whether playing a schemer (the only thing I liked about "Fargo") or a down home nice guy sheriff, William H. Macy's roles are linked by a common thread -his characters share a subtle, deliberate countenance that gives them substance. Macy nails Lawrence down to the smallest detail, and says more with a furtive glance or tremble in his voice than a page of dialogue. By showing, rather than telling, Lawrence is able to share his fear and bewilderment with the viewer. The supporting cast brings the story together.<br /><br />Laura Dern is compelling as Gerty, Lawrence's bombshell wife with a past. Trailer park rough, yet other worldly wise, she has also felt the wrath of prejudice as the result of "a mistake" and unwittingly exacerbates Lawrence's situation. Michael Lee Aday (aka "Meatloaf") is frightening as Fred, the prototypical redneck next door, equal parts ignorance and venom, rallying neighbours to his virulent cause. In the midst of the chaos is Finklestein (David Paymer), the focus of the aggression, and the voice of reason that raises the important questions. Paymer's even handed portrayal keeps Finklestein from becoming a stereotype or someone whose sole purpose is to engender sympathy, making his one of the strongest performances in the film.<br /><br />The tight editing and close-cropped cinematography make for a clean picture with few distractions, and mixes an air of claustrophobia in with the small town USA feel - it is simultaneously comforting and disturbing. The deliberate use of harsh two-tone lighting to accentuate the malevolent aspects of the piece and the carefully scored soundtrack, are powerful without being overwhelming. Finally, the set and costume designs recreate the feel of the era, an essential component in the film's message.<br /><br />"Focus'" unconventional approach in dealing with prejudice is reason enough to recommend this film. Just consider the excellent story, solid acting and look of the film as added bonuses. | positive |
Chillers starts on a cold, dark stormy night as a bus drops off three passenger's outside a bus station, a young boy named Mason (Jesse Emery), a college professor Dr. Howard Conrow (David Wohl) & a woman named Sharon Phillips (Laurie Pennington). Inside they discover that they have missed their connecting bus & are stranded for the night. In the waiting area they find two other people, Ronnie (Jim Wolf) & a sleeping woman named Lindsay (Marjorie Fitzsimmons) who is currently having a terrifying nightmare...<br /><br />While swimming in an indoor pool Lindsay encounters & befriends guy named Billy Waters (Jesse Johnson), the next time Lindsay sees Billy he dives into the pool & then seemingly disappears into thin air before he surfaces. Shortly after Lindsay discovers that Billy Water died in a diving accident 5 years ago...<br /><br />Lindsay wakes up & tells the others about her nightmare, everyone else responds by saying that they too have suffered disturbing dreams recently & decide to share them to pass the time...<br /><br />Next up is Mason who tells a story of how he & two friends, Scott (David R. Hamm) & Jimmy (Will Tuckwiller), are terrorised during a camping trip...<br /><br />Then it's Sharon whose story revolves around a newsman named Tom Williams (Thom Delventhal) who she phones up, in no time at all Tom is at her front door but he actually turns out to be a Vampire...<br /><br />It's Ronnie's turn next & he describes how he discovers that he can bring the dead back to life, unfortunately he brings executed mass murderer Nelson Caulder (Bradford Boll) back to homicidal life...<br /><br />Finally Dr. Conrow tells a tale of how two of his students brought an ancient Aztec war-god named Ixpe (Kimberly Harbour) back to life...<br /><br />Then it's back to the bus station for one last (predictable) twist...<br /><br />Written, produced & directed by Daniel Boyd Chillers is one of the worst horror anthologies I've ever seen & I usually really like this sub-genre. The script by Boyd lacks what is needed for films such as Chillers to work, you can see the final twist coming a mile off & each story is really lame. The first one is totally pointless & didn't seem to have an ending & the best thing about these anthologies are the short snappy stories that are rounded off with a neat twist. The second story is predictable &, again, just ends without any payoff. So it continues throughout Chillers that each story is deeply unsatisfying to watch & have no reward for doing so. The character's & dialogue are poorly written, the stories seem to have no original ideas of their own & as a whole the film totally sucks. At least each story doesn't last long & I liked the idea behind the linking segments.<br /><br />Director Boyd was obviously working with a very low budget & it shows. All I can say is if you want to watch a 15 odd minute short story set entirely within a swimming pool then Chillers is for you. The stories are neither clever, scary or have any sort of tension or build up to anything. Having said that it does have a few nice scenes & some surprising competence shines through on occasion. Violence & gore wise there isn't much happening in Chillers, a ripped out heart, a decapitated head & a bitten off hand is as gory as it gets.<br /><br />Technically Chillers is poor stuff that won't impress anyone. Basic cinematography, bad music, cheap special effects & below average production values. Chillers also features one of the worst closing theme songs ever, period. The acting is also of a very low standard.<br /><br />I am sure a lot of effort was put into Chillers as a low budget film & at least the filmmakers tried so I will give credit for that at least, but that still doesn't stop me from thinking it's crap. Similar anthology films like Tales From the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), Creepshow (1982) & Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (1990) are far superior to Chillers so watch one of those instead. | negative |
I saw this film in Winnipeg recently - appropriate, given the location used. I first read Lawrence's book back in the 70's and for me, it's always been a very powerful picture of the trials of aging in our society. It resonated when I was young, and it resonates even more now. When the film came out, I was keen to see if the story could survive. and was thoroughly impressed, especially with Ellen Burstyn's performance. She manages to give us a complete human being, even though the character is generally cranky and judgmental - someone that you wouldn't want to live with. It's great to be able to see favourite characters come to life so authentically. | positive |
Definitely the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. I can't find anything positive to say about this movie (if this production is even worthy of that word). <br /><br />This production is not even the standard of a low budget porn-movie!<br /><br />My question is simply: why did someone look at the script and think "Hey I'm gonna make a movie out of this"?<br /><br />At the end of the movie I wasn't even hoping that "Nicole" was going to make it
. She was really that annoying!<br /><br />So for your own sake, do not watch this movie... unless you want to waste 85 minutes of your life... | negative |
***LIGHT SPOILER ALERT*** The story sounds good and if you've read the novel, then you're probably expecting a deep and intense movie that could offer some insight for some interesting and insufficiently explored human relationships.<br /><br />True enough, the script tries to do that, the director tries to do that, but the main cast fails miserably. Maria's acting is so dry that lacks any feeling whatsoever, her most intense moments seem almost comical. Sometimes she seems to be nervous due to the camera. Her only really feeling scene is near the end where she gets dumped by her girlfriend.<br /><br />Ioana seems even more tense than Maria and even worse, she doesn't seem natural at all. Maria had the attitude, even if it was artificially pushed towards being obvious, but she had it and her character received some credibility. And to make matters worse, we don't have an insight on her: where does she come from, how come she got involved in the lesbian relationship, how did the relationship evolve? We only get some bits from her parents and their relationship just seems to 'be' there: it has a content and and end, but no beginning. Just like her partner Maria, she has only once scene that is truly touching, the scene where she dumps Maria's character Kiki.<br /><br />Tudor is the only person in this movie (aside from the landlady, great acting there) who manages to prove some acting talent. He has his character's attitude and it fits him. Only once or twice he seems to falter (the scene at his parents' meal, he tries to be obvious when it wasn't necessary at all).<br /><br />I love the story, Tudor Chirila is OK there, the landlady actually acts and Puya delivers his couple of lines with style, but this doesn't save the movie. Too bad, the entire setting had huge potential and the Romanian cinematography could've used a movie on this theme.<br /><br />Oddly enough, the incestuous relationship between brother and sister seems to have more credibility than the no-background no-feeling (well, Maria's spoken interludes are a nice try in this direction) lesbian relationship of Maria and Ioana. I'm quite sorry for spending money on a ticket, I'd rather had watched it from the comfort of my room. | negative |
I firstly and completely and confidently disagree with the user who calls this a "spoof". Crispin Glover is very serious about his film. He personally introduced the film at the screening I saw in Chicago. He had worked on the film for years and it is the first in an intended trilogy. "What is it?" is Crispin Glover's attempt at an art film in the vein of those he idolizes by Herzog, Lynch etc.<br /><br />I had heard rumor of this film years ago "epic porno movie with all down-syndrome cast directed by crispin glover". When it finally came out i watched the trailer on-line and read the synopsis and i was foaming at the mouth with anticipation. ...I went to chicago to see it and it was a major disappointment. If he took out the goofy sh*t, such as the pot-smoking grandma, and the dancing dolls, he would be left with something much better, but only about 10 minutes long.<br /><br />In other words just watch the trailer, be entertained, and leave it at that. There are some striking images and fantastic juxtapositions and phrases, but its lack of focus amounts to disappointment. | negative |
Working at a video store I get to see quite a few movies and on occasion I try to watch some of the not so big movies. Proud happened to be one of them. The initial idea of telling of the story of a primarily black crewed ship during WWII had some merit. However in less than 10 minutes of watching the movie you find out that the primary point of the movie was to tell about racial tension in WWII. The underlying story is about the ship, the crew and their exploits in the war. This primary point is hammered at you to the point of excessiveness all throughout the movie. I commend the men that served on the USS Mason for their triumph in the face of adversity and for the hardships that they endured. A movie should have been made focusing on the accomplishments these men did for themselves, the Navy and for their country and not making a movie whose focus is racism during WWII. | negative |
This movie had very few moments of real drama. After the opening minutes the film descended in a spiral that didn't quite take us to hell and back - viewing was pure purgatory to say the least. The acting was more horrendous than the subject matter of the film and at times I couldn't stop laughing. The continuity between some of the scenes was dire - characters disappeared from scenes without explanation only to be replaced by other characters who minutes earlier had been some where else. Surely this was a spoof of The Exorcist. The collection plate at the church must have been full of copper the day Mr Russo signed up for this one. Do I speak Latin? Et tu Brutus. | negative |
Completely worth checking out. Saw it on MLK's birthday 2006 and it hit me big time. Sometimes it feels like we're all in a trap and are doomed to repeat the past no matter how much we try to change. All we can do is to keep on going and speaking out. Just keep on going. Don't mean to be a downer because that's not the point but maybe we need to get down before we see how much we need to work on ourselves. What happens when we keep being told by the best people like MLK what needs to happen to pull us out of our "dead end road" but we don't listen. I know that some of us do listen but how do we get the rest of the world to see things as they really are? Just keep going, I guess. This movie got me thinking even more about all of this so I guess it has done what it set out to do. That's what I consider to be a good movie or play or book or poem or speech or anything: something that gets you thinking and keyed up to move in an active direction instead of sitting stuck and bored and hopeless. | positive |
Webs starts in 'Chicago: Present Day' as four electricians, Dean (Richard Grieco), Ray (Richard Yearwood), Sheldon (Jeffrey Douglas) & Junior (Jason Jones) are about to disconnect the electric to an unused building scheduled for demolition. As they search for the relevant cables & stuff they come across a set of doors that according to the buildings blue-prints shouldn't be there, being nosey & all that they force the doors open to have a look & find a room full of computers & scientific machinery. As they mess around with some buttons a portal to a parallel universe opens, Dean & Junior accidentally 'fall' in with Ray & Sheldon following soon after in search of their friends. Unfortunately they've all ended up in an exact parallel Earth that has been taken over by a mutant spider thing that either eats people or turns them into mutant soldiers with which she uses to protect herself & do whatever she wants them to really. In a desperate bid for survival they team up with a few of the last remaining humans including the original inventor of the portal Dr. Richard Morelli (Colin Fox) who says that with the help of our electrician boys he might (yeah might) be able to build another portal to take them back home...<br /><br />Edited & directed by David Wu I thought Webs was pretty crap, it's as simple & straight forward as that really. The script by Grenville Case & Robinson Young is preposterous to say the least & has plot holes in it you could drive a tank through, for instance is this film really trying to suggest that a few mutant spider things no bigger than a couple of people in size took over an entire world? How did they do this? If this parallel Earth was the same as ours where the hell was the army? The police? All of our weapons? A few fragile looking spider things against literally billions of humans?! The whole flawed, stupid & downright naff concept constantly bugged me throughout the entire film. Lets not forget that there is a inter-dimensional portal to a parallel Earth in the basement of most buildings that have sat there undisturbed for decades & remain in perfect working order, right? Then there's the nuclear reactor the size of a briefcase, the fact one electrician can make it work perfectly purely by accident as he randomly presses a few buttons in a room that probably had 100's spread over dozens of pieces of equipment & what about the wonderfully thoughtful guy who sets an explosive bobby trap in his base without telling anyone, what if one of his mates had set it off & found themselves blown to pieces by their mates homemade bomb? You wouldn't be best pleased would you? What about food? Do they grow their own in little vegetable patches? I could go on & on all day long about how flawed, ill conceived & poorly written Webs is but I can't be bothered. The character's are clichéd & annoying as is the film as a whole which obviously doesn't help. The only half decent thing I can say about Webs is that it's short & it moves along at a fair pace but when all said & done it's still crap.<br /><br />Director Wu has to take a large chunck of the blame here, for a start the film looks cheap & the editing that he is credited with is terrible. There's lots of annoying inappropriate slow motion shots that come from nowhere, the action scenes are almost identical & become incredibly boring very quickly. He uses that highly annoying quick cut technique along with a bit of the old jerky camera movement, now I don't know about anyone else but I hate this editing style as it just looks a complete incoherent mess. In fact I don't know a single person who does like this sort of thing & I'm puzzled as to why filmmakers think people do. Forget about any gore, just a few shotgun wounds to the spider zombie soldier guys & they don't have red blood anyway so it doesn't relate to reality in my mind.<br /><br />Webs was made-for-TV, the American Sci-Fi Channel I think & it looks every bit as cheap, low budget & rushed as you would expect. It's all so bland, forgettable, flat & dull. The special effects are far from special & the spider thing lacks imagination when finally revealed. The acting was OK considering everything else was so poor & I still can't believe the sweater Grieco was wearing in this.<br /><br />Webs is crap, I can't really say anything good about it other than I've sat through worse films & that's the sole reason I'm not giving it 1 star & a quick glance at the IMDb user ratings for Webs confirms what I already knew in that it has more '1' votes than any other & there is very good reason why... | negative |
When an actor has to play the role of an actor, fictional or factual, the task becomes much more difficult than playing a role. In A Double Life,Ronald Coleman surpassed himself as Anthony John, the tortured double personality. He put into that character all his talent and sincerity. The facial expressions, mannerisms,gait and stance spoke eloquently of what Anthony John was going through while playing Othello on stage. Coleman also did extremely well as a Shakespearean actor in those short scenes as Othello that were part of this gem of a movie. Closups of Coleman's face as Othello tortured by doubts about the fidelity of Desdemona were in themselves scenes worth watching.Add to that, his character's off stage desperation and only someone with Coleman's depth of acting perception can achieve. It was like watching Spenser Tracy as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except this double role was much more profound and poignant. Shelly Winters looked so sweet, vulnerable and gorgeous at the same time and added her talent to the movie. It is believed that Ronald Coleman liked his role in this film above all others he played and went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor in 1947. I would see this movie repeatedly and never feel bored. | positive |
Well, I don't normally think there's such a thing as a HORRIBLE movie, but this is pretty damned close! The best acting performance in the whole thing was Snoop Dogg, who has one line in a 10 second scene. I agree with the "glad it was short" review. The music videos at the end were cool though. | negative |
First off, I must say that I made the mistake of watching the Election films out of sequence. I say unfortunately, because after seeing Election 2 first, Election seems a bit of a disappointment. Both films are gangster epics that are similar in form. And while Election is an enjoyable piece of cinema... it's just not nearly as good as it's sequel.<br /><br />In the first Election installment, we are shown the two competitors for Chairman; Big D and Lok. After a few scenes of discussion amongst the "Uncle's" as to who should have the Chairman title, they (almost unanimously) decide That Lok (Simon Yam) will helm the Triads. Suffice to say this doesn't go over very well with competitor Big D (Tony Leung Ka Fai) and in a bid to influence the takeover, Big D kidnaps two of the uncles in order to sway the election board to his side. This has disastrous results and heads the triads into an all out war. Lok is determined to become Chairman but won't become official until he can recover the "Dragon Head Baton", a material representation of the Chairman's power. The current Chairman, Whistle (Chung Wang) has hidden the baton somewhere in mainland China and the race is on to see who can recover it first.<br /><br />Much of the film is devoted to the recovery of the Baton. As both aspiring leaders search for it they must dodge cops and opposite sides, which leads into one of the stand out scenes in Election, which involves an underling named Jet (Nick Cheung), a machete, and lots of bad guys. Nick Cheung's presence is attention grabbing to say the least... I wonder if this influenced director Johhnie To in any way while making the second Election, as he does deliver more of Jet's character in the sequel.<br /><br />While Nick Cheung gives a scene stealing performance, I must not fail to give due to the rest of the film's actors. Election has a great ensemble cast with well thought out performances that are both subtle and impacting. Simon Yam is his usually glorious self and the film also benefits from heavyweight HK actors like Louis Koo, Tony Leung Ka Fai, and the under-appreciated Suet Lam. There really aren't any weak links in the acting and one could easily believe that they're watching real gangsters.<br /><br />Although the performances are great, one of the most impressive things about Election is Johnnie To's eye for the camera. There are some truly striking shots in the film and it goes without saying that To definitely knows how to frame his shots, as the viewer is treated to a series of innovative and quite brilliant camera placings and angles. All of which makes Election, above all, a great looking film.<br /><br />My issues with the film arises mostly out of the shear amount of characters involved in Election. It gets a bit hard to follow because the film is so full of characters that aren't integral to the plot. While the sequel opts to focus more on the two candidates, the first Election offers the election process as a whole with tons of Uncles, underlings, and police officers crowding the storyline. Maybe the film would have worked better if it would have been a bit longer with more time dedicated to the inner workings of the Triad, or if Director Johnnie To would have funneled down the necessary elements and expounded on them more. <br /><br />Bottom Line- All in all, this is a wonderfully brutal film with a great cast, excellent direction, and leisurely pacing that packs a punch. It's just a little more complicated than it needed to be. | positive |
We gave up at the point where George Clooney's character has his finger-nails extracted. We were not squeamish - having sat through an hour of this drivel we just knew what it felt like. To say this film was incomprehensible, boring, pretentious twaddle would be to over-praise it! How did people manage to sit through this confusing, slow, depressing pseud's corner of a film, let alone nominate it for an Oscar? Clooney looked as ill as we felt watching him. What was he thinking? Oh .. and what was with those subtitles? - did we just have a dud DVD or was the original film done like that - sentences left hanging in mid-air? The film was hard enough to follow without that as well. I pity the cast, who obviously did their best with the material available. | negative |
Got to confess right up front that I didn't watch this entire movie. I missed the first hour during a Sci Fi Channel broadcast. Or was I spared the first hour? The other reviewers sum this one up nicely. It was badly conceived. Badly scripted. Badly acted.<br /><br />But the worst thing for me was the ADR. The entire film, which appeared to have been dubbed, sounded like it was done in somebody's garage. There was a voluminous echo to the words, which just served to make the bad dialog hang. And hang. And hang. Even a made for TV movie should have recognized this.<br /><br />And the idea that alternate dimensions are differentiated by color saturation went out in the 80s, folks. | negative |
The Japanese have always had incredible ambitions in their fantasy movies. They have always been ready to destroy cities by huge plastic monsters coming from outer space and elsewhere. The problem is they have never had the money to succeed in making convincing special effects. This film, released in France under the title Les envahisseurs de l'espace, is no exception. Its ambition is to show three creatures from the giant octopus to the giant lobster trying to have the upper hand on the humans. It's extremely awkward and laughable, but well quite enjoyable too. After all, we do like these creatures and these films after all, don't we? | negative |
At first i didn't think that Ben Affleck could really pull off a funny Christmas movie,, boy was i wrong, my daughter invited me to watch this with her and i was not disappointed at all. James Gandolfini was funny,, i really liked Christina Appelagate, and Catherine O' Hara was good too, the storyline is what really sold me,, i mean,, too put up with family,, at the table for people you only hardly see but once or twice a year,, and probably don't get along with anyway,, you really do need as much alcohol as you're system can stand to deal with Christmas,, so i thought that the premise was good there, buying the family with 250000 dollars, was a little on the far fetched side,, but it turned out to work pretty good for me,, cause it was a riot all the way through, it shows the class struggle of the different families. it has lot's of funny moments, including embarrassing stuff on the computer for a teenage boy. all in all i loved this movie and will watch it again next Christmas or sooner if my daughter wants too. | positive |
Frankly i just enjoy watching James Caan. Wonderful actor. With such simplicity you know exactly what he's thinking. A true pro.<br /><br />I have watched the show from the very beginning and found it different - that's something that is unique in Hollywood - a new idea - not a 3rd version of a current hit show - <br /><br />I also find the show fun and exciting -I like the pacing - you're never bored - I especially like the mystery in each episode - the way it unfolds. I am a big mystery fan and have read a lot of the great mysteries but I find the stories in the show well written and the outcome is rarely obvious. Also extremely interesting to me, probably because I am not a gambler, is the different cons that the 'gamblers' come up with - I was fascinated by the number of schemes that people have come up with to rob Las Vegas. The music: I like the music at the top of the show. Absolutely perfect for the show...Sets the tone and atmosphere . Just marvelous. And of course, there is James Caan. | positive |
No one should ever try to adapt a Tom Robbins book for screen. While the movie is fine and the performances are good, the dialogue, which works well reading it, is crap when spoken. Or, to put it another way, no one would be likely to suggest that hearing someone else's name was like seeing it written in radium on a pearl.<br /><br />Overall, the movie feels like a badly-adapted Cliffs Notes to the book - most of the parts have been hacked down to a fifth of their size in the book, in terms of backstory and current story, and the ending is wildly (and unpleasantly) different from that of the book. Most of the plots from the book have gotten lost, including the one that makes everything make sense at the end, and there's more than one reference that makes sense in the book that makes the viewer say "Huh?" Not a worthy effort, unfortunately - the script should have been read, compared to the book, burned, and all the actors sent off to do something far better. I admire Gus Van Sant tremendously, but not even someone of his calibre could have made a decent movie of such a complex book without making a miniseries. | negative |
A widely unknown strange little western with mindblowing colours (probably the same material as it was used in "Johnny Guitar", I guess "Trucolor" or something, which makes blood drips look like shining rubies), nearly surrealistic scenes with twisted action and characters. Something different, far from being a masterpiece, but there should be paid more attention to this little gem in western encyclopedias. | positive |
note to George Litman, and others: the Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff is "I don't think so, *breeder*".<br /><br />my favorite riff is "Why were you looking at his 'like'?", simply for the complete absurdity. that, and "Right well did not!" over all, I would say we must give credit to the MST3K crew for trying to ridicule this TV movie. you really can't make much fun of the dialog; Bill S was a good playwright. on the other hand, this production is so bad that even he would disown it. a junior high school drama club could do better.<br /><br />I would recommend that you buy a book and read 'Hamlet'. | negative |
I enjoyed the movie very much. Everything in The Italian Job is simple. An explosive guy, a safe-cracker, a computer genius, a wheel-man and a man with a spectacular plan of stealing 35 million without using a gun. This film is entertaining although it has no central idea. It is a non-stop movie with lots of actions. All the stunt work is gorgeous. From the speedboat chase in Venice at the beginning to the chase on the busy roads in Los Angeles involving three mini coopers and even a helicopter. The best boast chase I have ever seen. I like the mini coopers. The expert thieves used mini coopers for the getaway cars. The chase between the mini coopers and the motor-bikes is amazing. They chased underground. I can say there was not a moment I was bored. Mark Wahlberg (Charlie Croker), Charlize Theron (Stella Bridger), Donald Sutherland (John Bridger), Jason Statham (Handsome Rob), Seth Green (Lyle), Mos Def (Left Ear) and Edwin Norton (Steve) really did a good job. I like the actors in this film. I have seen a lot of heist movie but The Italian Job& is one of my favourites. A great Hollywood action movie without a drop of blood. After all, I do love this kind of movie. | positive |
When this show first came on the air, I saw it once or twice and thought it was another "fat guy, skinny wife" show that seemed to populate the networks at the time. It was just "okay" upon initial viewings and I didn't watch it again; however, once it went into syndication, I caught several episodes (simply because it was on twice a night), and I'm telling you, the more you watch this show, the funnier it is. Once you see how all of the great supporting characters are connected, this show makes you laugh out loud. Every new episode I watch is more creative than the one before--people who only watch this a couple of times will not notice this. The writing and story lines are much more sophisticated than they appear at first (this is far from "According to Jim"). First of all, Kevin James is hysterical, incredibly charming, and a talented comedic actor, as is the supporting cast. Leah Remini has excellent timing, and Patton Oswalt's Spence is one of the funnier characters on the show. And of course, Jerry Stiller is brilliant as Arthur. I was shocked to read comments that he was the worst part of the show--he's a gigantic part of why this show is so great--his delivery of these ridiculous schemes (rounding out the crazy dad character) are beyond hilarious. And the yelling--the best episode is when they show him as a kid yelling "Lemon Icee!!". That episode, during which Carrie takes him to a therapist in hopes to get him medicated (to make Doug less stressed out), guest star William Hurt decides that Arthur yells because he's never been validated. The latter part of the episode where Doug beats up his childhood self in a therapy session is beyond funny, it's one of the most creative scenes I've seen on a sitcom. I feel the strange need to defend this show, because it is severely underrated--while "Friends" was sometimes amusing, and "Raymond" has some great episodes and characters, they both lacked the creative touch that "King of Queens" has. In an era where most sitcoms have canned jokes and are on the whole mediocre, "King of Queens" continues to push the sitcom envelope and show real comic genius. Critics of this show obviously don't get it--or haven't watched the show enough to give it a chance, because anyone with real comic and creative sensibility has to laugh out loud while watching. It's certainly on par with my other two favorites, "Seinfeld" and "The Office" in its ridiculous tone. It's the Arthurs, Kramers, and Michael Scotts of TV that keep us watching, and laughing out loud. | positive |
This movie was pointless. I can't even call it sci-fi, since that requires more from a movie than merely taking place in space. "Max Q" isn't even set in space for the entire movie. The story/plot is unoriginal, the cast isn't anything to write home about, although it would be strange with a top cast in a mediocre film... Furthermore, it's not particularly exciting or well-told. At least it's evenly balanced in a low quality sort of way, in that nothing or no one stands out. Everything is equally bland. I usually find some quality in "space flicks", even if it's just 90 minutes of semi-lame entertainment bordering on low-budget pathetic, but "Max Q" didn't even give me that satisfaction. All in all , a complete waste of time. | negative |
"Cover Girl" is a lacklustre WWII musical with absolutely nothing memorable about it, save for its signature song, "Long Ago and Far Away." This film came out before Gene Kelly really hit his artistic stride, and while there are evidences of his burgeoning talent here, mostly he plays sidekick to Rita Hayworth. And there's the problem. Rita Hayworth is gorgeous, no doubt about that. But she's simply not a compelling screen presence. I've always found myself wanting to like her more than I actually do, and this movie is no exception. She's simply not a very good actress, and she's not even a very good dancer. Good looking as she is, there's something vapid about her, and this movie suffers because of it.<br /><br />Grade: C- | negative |
Well, Anne is way way too old. Wentworth looks younger than she and he should not. Louisa is much too young and too cheerful Oh sister Mary is way too pretty. She is supposed to be average, not pretty. When this actress complains the way Mary should all I think is that she is too pretty to be a complainer. Lady Russell is too Old. This is crazy. If you read the novel, she is Anne's older more mature friend, maybe as old as Annes mother would be which would be around 18-20 years older than Anne- so around 50 NOT 70! Its crazy, doesn't fit. How come Anne is so darn happy in the beginning? She smiles when she says "oh the worst is over, I've seen him now the worst has passed" yeah right. OK if anyone has seen the 1995 Roger Michell version than you cant compare these two. That one is right on. This one is way off. Read the novel and you'll know what I mean. | negative |
Seymour Cassel gives a great performance, a tour de force. His acting as supposed washed up beach stud Duke Slusarski will always have a place in my heart. The film is centered around a nerd who just came to the beach in hopes of honoring his dead brother's dreams. What he gets is lame surf hijinks. Guys cheating, guys fighting, and guys getting drunk going to watch surf documentaries with the whole town of LA on a Friday night. Duke takes the nerd in and tries to teach him how playing volleyball is like touching a woman. Next time my woman talks back I will pretend I'm spiking the ball. <br /><br />Back to Seymour Cassel. The end of the movie turns into a good drama, since the first half of the film really had no point. Duke plays a wonderful game of volleyball, the best he's played in over ten years. The way the scene is shot is beautiful. You can feel the heart this man has for the game and the love of being on the beach. Those five minutes will go down as one of my favorites of all time. 3/10 Bad to Fair, the rest of the movie was lame. | negative |
Kill Me Later" has an interesting initial premise: a suicidal woman (Selma Blair) on the verge of jumping off the top of an office building is protects a bank robber (Max Beesley) who promises to "kill her later."<br /><br />The actual execution of this premise, however, falls flat as almost every action serves as a mere device to move the plot toward its predictable conclusion. Shoddily written characters who exhibit no motive for their behaviors compromise the quality of acting all around. Lack of character depth especially diminishes Selma Blair's performance, whose character Shawn vacillates from being morose to acting "cool" and ultimately comes across as a confused dolt. This is unfortunate, as under other circumstances Ms. Blair is an appealing and capable actress.<br /><br />Compounding matters for the worse is director Dana Lustig's insistence on using rapid cuts, incongruous special effects (e.g. look for an unintentionally hilarious infrared motorcycle chase at the end), and a hip soundtrack in the hopes of appealing to the short attention spans of the MTV crowd. Certainly Ms. Lustig proves that she is able to master the technical side of direction, but in no way does her skill help overcome the film's inherent problems and thus the movie drags on to the end. Clearly, Lustig has a distinct visual style; however it is perhaps better suited to music videos than to feature film.<br /><br />The producers (Ram Bergman & Lustig)can be commended for their ability to realize this film: they were able to scare up $1.5 million to finance the film, secure a good cast, and get domestic and foreign distribution. This is no small feat for an independent film. Yet given the quality of the product, the result is a mixed bag. | negative |
Although I found the acting excellent, and the cinematography beautiful, I was extremely disappointed with the adaptation.<br /><br />One of the significant portions of the novella is the fact that Ethan and Mattie decide to kill themselves, rather than go on. This is never presented in the movie, they show it as if it were a sledding accident.<br /><br />The character changes in Mattie and Zenna are almost non-existent. While in the novella they almost change places, at the end of this adaptation it appears as if they are both invalids.<br /><br />Lastly that Mattie and Ethan consummate their relationship fully nearly destroys the power and poignancy of the finale.<br /><br />The change of the narrator being a preacher was one effective change.<br /><br />Neeson and Arquette are superb in their portrayals. Joan Allen was also wonderful, however her character was much watered down from Whartons novella.<br /><br />I do not expect films to faithfully portray novels, but this one went to far and in the process nearly destroyed the story.<br /><br />Overall, I would not recommend watching this film unless you have read the book as you will come away confused and disappointed. | negative |
-That's pretty much the whole soundtrack to this film. I just saw this baby at the Munich Film Festival and it rocked the house. Director Doug Pray is never seen in this documentary, nor I think he is even heard, but he has done a very intimate look into the lives and history of the "mixer." He has segmented his film into about eight chapters and then his motley group of enthusiastic interviews will be spiced throughout according to what they are talking about. I was never big into "scratching" but the film does a wonderful job of keeping elementary for those who know little, and infusing in-jokes for those who are experts themselves in this area. Mix Master Mike from the Beastie Boys is in this film, but it wasn't until after the film that I could name several heavy hitters in the industry (DJ Shadow, Q- Bert, etc). The extreme fascination for turntables by these talented and quirky DJs is evident in their explanations of what their music means to them. The film also sheds some gratifying light on these guys (and one woman) to be classified as musicians. Pray doesn't let his film idle and if there exists a slow scene it is soon re-energized by hardly ever ceasing music. If nothing else, this film will increase your slang vocabulary. I have to get back to "digging", so I'll end this review. See it, it will be of interest. Good stuff man. Good stuff. | positive |
An ex- informant of the East Germany finishes in Mexico like spy of a student group in 1971 in where she falls in love with one of the activists. This is the first co-production of Mexico with Germany, and although it is a good picture of the ideals that marked, and continue marking (at least to the CGH), youth, as much finishes being something insipid since to the internal dilemmas that it faces Dark brown (Noethem) like the passion by his ideals that Adela feels (Campomanes), as soon as they glimpse, in the case of him, I want to suppose, by the barrier of the language; and in the case of her by its lack of experience. Reason why in the end a concrete identification with any of them does not exist, which causes that what could have been films that even served as document like Red Dawn, finished being one more a film; although I want to clarify that in the room many of the assistants were excited in the conversation with the director, which says to me that no longer they are so young or my ideals have changed. | negative |
Okay, so I get it. We're supposed to be horrified. The idea has been planted. A girl is doing her dad and taking photos of it. Call me over the shock-rock genre but I call for the explicit detailing of an act before I can fall for this. But don't expect me to watch a soft-porn and become horrified that she is 'doing her father'...I mean hasn't that convention become a bit abused in the adult film industry already infiltrated with 'rape, and molestation' porn...Horror isn't what your mind can fool you into believing. It is what actually exists in film. This is where Miike fails in Visitor Q. Extremism becomes mild when it becomes a choose your own adventure. | negative |
Boris Karloff is Matthias Morteval, a dying, lonely old nut who lives in Morhenge Mansion with some servants and tells his doctor friend, "Don't try to doctor me, doctor! I'm disgustingly healthy!" He invites his nieces and nephews to his home and warns them they may have inherited a genetic disease that causes madness by "shrinking the brain" (?)<br /><br />***SPOILERS***<br /><br />Morteval/Karloff ends up dying, and murderous "toys" (designed by his dead brother) start killing off the relatives. A mini cannon fires real bullets into a guys face, a life-sized knight in armor attacks with an axe and a dancing Sheik stabs people with a knife. One guy getting strangled makes some hilarious faces. At the end, Julissa and her boyfriend find Karloff is still alive and hiding out in the dungeon where steel gates seal off the room. He plays the recurring organ theme music (sort of a death rattle used for the killings), the brother's spirit starts talking ("The whole house will go with me!") and the mansion goes up in flames.<br /><br />This senseless mess is too dark, boring and the stupid dialogue never matches the lips. | negative |
Don't listen to fuddy-duddy critics on this one, this is a gem! Young rich Joan and her brother find themselves penniless after their father dies - and now they have to work for a living! She, naturally, becomes a reporter, and he, just as naturally, a driver for the mob! By wild co-incidences their careers meet head on, thanks to gangster Clark Gable. In the meantime there is the chance for a moonlight underwear swim for a bunch of pretty young things and for Joan to do a couple of risque dance numbers (with all the grace of a steam-shovel).<br /><br />But none of this is supposed to be taken seriously - it's all good fun from those wonderful pre-code days, when Hollywood was really naughty. Joan looks great, and displays much of the emotional range that would give her career such longevity (thank God she stopped the dancing!). Gable is remarkable as a slimy gangster - he wasn't a star yet and so didn't have to be the hero. Great to see him playing something different. And William Bakewell is excellent as the poor confused brother. And there are some great montages and tracking shots courtesy of director Harry Beaumont, who moves the piece on with a cracking pace - and an occasional wink to the audience! Great fun! | positive |
I like Goldie Hawn and wanted another one of her films, so when I saw Protocol for $5.50 at Walmart I purchased it. Although mildly amusing, the film never really hits it a stride. Some scenes such as a party scene in a bar just goes on for too long and really has no purpose.<br /><br />Then, of course, there is the preachy scene at the end of the film which gives the whole film a bad taste as far as I'm concerned. I don't think this scene added to the movie at all. I don't like stupid comedies trying to teach me a lesson, written by some '60's burn out especially!<br /><br />In the end, although I'm glad to possess another Hawn movie, I'm not sure it was really worth the money I paid for it! | negative |
Well now, this was certainly a surprise episode. In this anthology science fiction series, with all of this Alien Beings, Extraordinary Occurrences and many Brushes with the Hereafter, this episode would certainly rate as unusual. Its seemingly insignificant settings apparently not imparting any morale at story's end. Or does it? Kicking off with the Silent Movie Form, no recorded dialog, but having Musical accompaniment. In this case it's on the sound track, not utilizing the Playing of Organ or Piano by an on sight Musician. This part of the episode, along with the ending section, also made liberal use o Title Cards, just like "the Old Time Movies." While these Titles are a bit exaggerated and overdone, they are made so intentionally and with an affection for rather than any contempt for The Silent Film.<br /><br />Veteran Comedy Film Director, Norman Z. McLeod, was the man in the Chair for this half-hour installment. He had been the Director of many of the greatest comedies of all time, featuring people like the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Harold Lloyd and Danny Kaye. He was no stranger to to TV, as he had done a lot of work on Television Series.<br /><br />It doesn't appear that he and Mr. Keaton had ever worked together before(as I cannot find any evidence of this)' but judging by the outcome of the film, they succeeded in doing so with flying colors! Anyone who directed Keaton was aware that Buster was also a fine comedy Director as well as a Comedy Player. He was just as comfortable behind the camera as he was in front of it. Their short partnership must have been a harmonious one, with 'give and take' about how to do things. It is apparent that many of the gags were Keaton's, resurrected from his own Silent Picture Days. For example, the gag of putting the pair of pants on with Rollo's(Stanley Adams assistance was done by Keaton and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in one of the Arbuckle 2 Reelers, THE GARAGE (1919). That was a clear example of his craft in a nutshell.<br /><br />Buster knew that we film our world with a camera, rendering it a two dimensional image. This one fact is at the bottom of so many of gags. It is a Cardinal Rule for his film making.<br /><br />The cast was small and once again just chock full-of veteran talent. Stanley Adams was Rollo and served as Mr. Keaton's straight man. Jesse White, the old 'Maytag Repair Man', ran the fix it shop that fixed the 'Time HJelmet'. Gil Lamb, serene veteran of RKO Short Comedy series, was the 1890's Cop. James Flavin, George E.Stone, Harry Fleer, Warren Parker, and Milton Parsons all rounded out this largely silent cast.<br /><br />Without spilling the beans, let's just say that yes, there is probably a lesson to be learned here. If not the one already mentioned, "The Grass Always Looks Greener on the Other Side of the Fence!", then how about, "Be Careful in What You Ask For, Because You Just May Get It!" | positive |
So it's a space movie. But it's low budget. You ask, "what about the effects?" The effects are at times good, and at times really, really bad. I mean bad. And notice I started with the effects.<br /><br />There's a story here, but it's told in what I think is the wrong order. I don't mean a Tarantino style wrong order. I mean, it's told in a completely nonsensical arrangement. Most of it's about a mother (in the future, because you know, it's sci-fi) as told by her daughter, which is mostly exposition done in narrative from the daughter's perspective. Only once you're through the first hour and hear Paul Darrow's voice as a computer do you realize how much more tolerable the constant narrative would have been if he'd read it. This narrative is so constant and inclusive, that the actors on screen hardly say a word for the first hour.<br /><br />There's also a lesson here for you up and coming filmmakers: if you're not doing 2001 and want to have some action (this one does), then PLEASE hire a good fight choreographer. Otherwise, your fights will look like, well, what's in BATTLESPACE. And notice the title has the word "battle" in it. Ugh.<br /><br />I think this might be the classic scenario of trying to make a movie based on nothing more than a concept. And some effects. My biggest surprise is seeing the IMDb listing this film as costing $1.8 million. When you compare it to something like PRIMER, which did better with a budget of a few thousand, you realize in low budget film-making, it's all about the story. I wasn't expecting much - but I was STILL disappointed. Two out of ten stars. | negative |
An excellent family movie... gives a lot to think on... There's absolutely nothing wrong in this film. Everything is just perfect. The script is great - it's so... real... such things could happen in everyone's life. And don't forget about acting - it's just awesome! Just look at Frankie and You'll know what I thought about... This picture is a real can't-miss!!! | positive |
Beautifully filmed, well acted, tightly scripted suspense movie. Had me on the edge of my seat. I liked the lead actress very much, and thought the villain was very well done. Not much to chew on here in the way of a theme, but if you just get in your seat, turn your brain off, watch the fancy camera work, and enjoy the plot, you will have a great time. The plot is well worn, and regular movie goers will probably know more or less what to expect by about ten minutes in. But that didn't bother me, as I enjoyed watching it unfold. In the old days, they might not have focused so tightly on just two characters, and there were some enticing moments when I hoped they were going to let some other people have a few lines. But these folks were probably right to keep the movie so tightly focused. The plot got me by the throat fairly early on, and never let go. It's not a good idea to think too much either during or after the movie. as I'm not sure it makes a great deal of sense. Just sit back and enjoy. | positive |
<br /><br />It wasn't the worst movie that I have ever seen. However, that is only if I get to count home movies made by 8 year olds. This movie was horrible from start to finish. Nothing about it made it worth watching unless you wanted to show new filmmakers how not to make a film. | negative |
I really liked this movie, it was good, and the actors were brilliant! Leon Robinson, who played Richard, and many other classic singers, is very good at his job, when you see him in a musical movie, you know that it is going to be good! I would suggest that people watch this heart warming, sad, and special movie, if they want to know more about Richard! Outstanding! Fresh! | positive |
I love this movie like no other. Another time I will try to explain its virtues to the uninitiated, but for the moment let me quote a few of pieces the remarkable dialogue, which, please remember, is all tongue in cheek. Aussies and Poms will understand, everyone else-well?<br /><br />(title song lyric)"he can sink a beer, he can pick a queer, in his latest double-breasted Bondi gear."<br /><br />(another song lyric) "All pommies are bastards, bastards, or worse, and England is the a**e-hole of the universe."<br /><br />(during a television interview on an "arty program"): Mr Mackenzie what artists have impressed you most since you've been in England? (Barry's response)Flamin' bull-artists!<br /><br />(while chatting up a naive young pom girl): Mr Mackenzie, I suppose you have hordes of Aboriginal servants back in Australia? (Barry's response) Abos? I've never seen an Abo in me life. Mum does most of the solid yacca (ie hard work) round our place.<br /><br />This is just a taste of the hilarious farce of this bonser Aussie flick. If you can get a copy of it, watch and enjoy. | positive |
Englar Alheimsins are very good movie. She happen on a mental home in Iceland. Ingvar E. Sigurdsson is in a leading role and is good. Other good actors in this movie are Baltasar Kormákur and Bjorn Jorundur. I like this movie she is very good. I voice with this movie. | positive |
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