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384,764 | 391,152 | 37,820 | 7 |
Merely okay
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Not the best of the Val Lewton horror series , but it has its moments . When I think about it , the plot seems very good . A small group of people quarantine themselves on a small Greek island when they discover that one of them has the plague . Boris Karloff stars as a Greek general who becomes cruel when trying to keep order . After the army doctor dies , he becomes superstitious along the lines of an old woman who is also on the island . Somehow , the characters and the situation never come off especially well . It's never bad , but it's never great , either . The finale is quite effective , however . .
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385,696 | 391,152 | 258,885 | 7 |
Long and amorphous , but still interesting
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I definitely liked this film much better than Jia's Unknown Pleasures , his follow-up , but I still wouldn't call it great . Platform is a very amorphous film . Perhaps it has more meaning to those who might know the referents better than I , the various places in China which are visited . But the fact remains that the loose , repetitive , episodic structure mixed with the total lack of character development hinder much of the possible enjoyment or involvement . I know it's not cool for a certain sector of Chinese art films to allow the audience to give a crap what's going on . But , surprisingly , I did enjoy it to a fair extent . You kind of feel like you're part of the performance troupe in the film , that you're being carted between these sections of nowhere around the vast country . There are many beautiful scenes . It's worthwhile . I suggest , given its 2 . 5 hour running length , to watch it in bits and pieces . It won't feel quite as repetitive .
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384,814 | 391,152 | 45,504 | 7 |
Omnibus film in the Neorealist vein
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That was the intent , anyway . Cesare Zavattini produced the film and brought together five directors to make short films about love . The results are all good , but none of them great . They all have problems . To add to this problem , the version that I saw had English narration in the prologue and in the inter-segments , and sometimes in the short films themselves . I don't know if anything was edited out . Part 1 ( d . Dino Risi ) : This segment is a charming little film about the people in a dance hall . It has no real story . Instead , we see couples connect , people alone , and couples break up . It's very nice . Part 2 ( d . Michelangelo Antonioni ) : Of course , I saw the film for the Antonioni and Fellini segments . They're two of my very favorite filmmakers . Antonioni's is quite interesting . It is the most documentary-like segment . I don't know if it's true , but the narration claims that they gathered together a group of people who had attempted suicide over failed relationships . Two women tell their stories in an interview format . It's quite good . Part 3 ( d . Federico Fellini ) : At first , this looks like it will be the best of the film . The opening sequence , with the main character wandering through the narrow hallways of a Roman apartment building looking for a matrimonial service ( the equivalent of a dating service ) . A young child tells him that he will lead him to that room , and as they proceed , other children show up and follow them . That's a very mystical scene , but what follows is very disappointing . The man claims that he's looking for a wife for his friend , who happens to be a werewolf . This segment is the one that hints that there might have been some editing in the version that I watched . This man is introduced to the girl , they have a conversation in a field , and then the man , I guess , tells her that she is too good to do so . The result is nonsensical . There is absolutely no payoff . Actually , the weak ending reminds me a lot of the segment Fellini wrote for Roberto Rosselini's Paisa . Part 4 ( d . Mesallini Zavattini ) : I assume Zavattini is related to Cesare , probably his brother or son . Anyhow , this segment is most in-line with the neorealistic movement , which was dying by the time this film was made . A Sicilian woman went to Rome to find maid work . Her first employer impregnates her and then fires her . Now she's stuck with a young boy but no money whatsoever . She tries to scam a nanny into taking care of the kid , but he is eventually given back to her . There is a beautiful scene where the mother changes her sons diaper on the edge of a fountain . This scene's real-time realism is reminiscent of the maid's morning duties in Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D . , made shortly after this film and written by Cesare Zavattini . The climactic scene is truly heartbreaking , but the end is horribly anticlimactic . This film really shouldn't have had a happy ending . Neorealism and happy endings really don't mix . Part 5 ( d . Alberto Lattuada ) : Lattuada is most famous for co-directing with Fellini on his first film , Variety Lights . His segment in Love in the City is perhaps the best of the film . It has no story at all . Instead , it is a non-narrative compilation of the reactions of men when they see beautiful woman . The editing reminded me of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia . It's quite musical . In fact , the music of this segment is really good . The film ends on a very poetic moment . All in all , you should see the film if you're a fan of Italian cinema , or just of Antonioni or Fellini . .
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384,897 | 391,152 | 37,793 | 7 |
Monster Free-for-all ; SPOILERS
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This is quite an entertaining B-flick in the Universal Horror series featuring Dracula , the Wolfman , and Frankenstein's Monster . The plot revolves around Dracula ( John Carradine ) and Larry Talbot , the wolfman ( Lon Chaney Jr . ) , separately visiting a revolutionary doctor . They both ask him if they can be cured , and the doctor attempts to devise a way for each . Beneath the doctor's castle , they find Frankenstein's Monster buried in mud ( this is apparently a reference to the previous movie in the Frankenstein series ) . Of course , if things had went as planned , the movie would have turned out incredibly boring . Instead , Dracula can't suppress his appetite , and the doctor is eventually infected , by a blood transfusion , with vampirism . As a semi-vampire , the doctor goes insane and awakens Frankenstein's Monster . As with all of the Universal Horror series , the ending is completely unsatisfactory . A beautiful woman with a hunchback , one of the doctor's two assistants , has a particularly gruesome end . Plus , you just have to feel sorry for Frankenstein's Monster in this film - he's awake for around two minutes , kills one police officer , and then yet another building ( what's this , the fifth now ? ) collapses on top of him and is consumed by flames . It is also unfortunate that the great character created in The Wolf Man ( 1941 ) , Larry Talbot , is really reduced here . People underrate that film and Chaney's performance in it . Here , he would be justifiably criticized as wooden . All in all , though , it's a pretty fun movie at just 68 minutes . A nice waste of time . .
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384,980 | 391,152 | 230,600 | 7 |
A good way to spend an evening .
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SPOILERSThis has potential to be as big a hit as The Sixth Sense on account of its nature - it is clearly trying to copy its success and its formula ( not to mention its release date - I think they both opened in the exact same week , two years apart ) . It is nowhere as good as that film , but , if you did like that , you're going to probably like this . I doubt anyone will like this one better , though . Technically , the film is superb . In this aspect , it probably surpasses The Sixth Sense . The editing and especially the cinematography are often breathtaking . The acting is decent . I don't particularly care for Nicole Kidman - she harmed Eyes Wide Shut significantly , in my opinion , but her bizarre style of acting worked fabulously in the purposely campy Moulin Rouge . Here , as a constantly paranoid , possessive , and protective mother , she is more than adequate , though not deserving of any award or special hurrah . The three servants are well played by Fionnula Flanagan , Eric Sykes , and Elaine Cassidy - they have a certain air about them . The best performances come from the two children ( another echo of The Sixth Sense , although the adults in that one were also marvelous ) - James Bentley as the perpetually frightened Nicholas and Alakina Mann as the intelligent Anne . Mann is in fact wonderful and I hope to see her in other films in the future . There are just a few actors after these principals , and I commend the filmmakers very much . This saves a ton of money , and makes the film more intimate and frightening , which is exactly what this film calls for . Like always , almost all of the film's problems exist in the script . The screenwriter ( who is also the director ) realizes that his savvy audience will guess that this is a descendent of the immensely popular The Sixth Sense , so he is always attempting to trick us . What are these strange servants up to ? A few times , we experience the narrative from their point of view , and what they say drives us wild with guessing . And what is wrong with the father , who had disappeared in WWII ( this is set in the 1940s ) and then mysteriously reappears in a frightening fog ? We know that there are surprises , and these tricks work to confuse us and lead us away - good old McGuffins . I guessed right away , correctly , the father's situation , which kept me from seeing the forest for the trees . What the script forgets to do , or at least forgets to do well , is develop the characters . The children are well developed , but Amenabar relies too much on the inherent creepiness of the three servants for their effect - they almost become silly by the end ; anyway , there were several moments when I laughed at their actions , although it might have been intentional . Grace ( Nicole Kidman ) is Amenabar's biggest failure . Her main character trait is a severe neurosis - her husband has been lost in battle and she has been left alone in an enormous mansion with only her two children . Those children have a severe light sensitivity - they break out in hives when they come into contact with light ( no , they aren't Gremlins or magwies ) . For most of the film , Kidman's character is built up , but the revelations at the end don't ring true . One of the reasons that the ending of The Sixth Sense worked so well was because the final revelations revealed a lot of hidden facets about the characters and their actions in the events which happened beforehand . The revelations here , while very unexpected and clever , don't exactly follow what Amenabar was building . Amenabar also has a problem with suspense . He gives himself all these little peculiarities to deal with - the kids are allergic to light , for instance . But he never really uses that to create suspense . One morning , the children wake up to find that all the curtains in the house have been stolen . It would have been better , perhaps , if we were allowed to watch the curtains being slowly removed at night . The suspense nearer the beginning , when we don't know very much , is quite good . The first set piece is excellent . A lot of the other scary scenes are also quite good , including the climactic one , where the secrets are finally revealed . Still , the film uses too many stingers ( sharp rises in the music ) . That may make us jump , but for a dishonest reason .
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385,430 | 391,152 | 94,089 | 7 |
Good , but not as good as I expected
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One day a couple of years ago , while I was waiting for a television show , I was flipping through the channels and I caught part of Spalding Gray's monologue film - Monster in a Box - and I was so blown away by it that I missed the show that I had been waiting for . I don't know why it took me so long to rent another one of his monologue films , but this week I picked up his first one , - Swimming to Cambodia - . It was good , but nowhere near as good as - Monster in a Box - . For one thing , - Monster in a Box - was very well directed , and the " special effects " do not get in the way . But in - Swimming to Cambodia - , the sound effects are often too loud , and thecutting is too quick and artsy , when it should have been nothing but slow pans and zooms , sort of like - My Dinner With Andre - . Then there is this awful effect with the lights , basically shutting them off to cut the emotional rhythm . This was unneeded . Gray's performance itself establishes rhythm enough . My second big complaint is with the monologue itself . It is mostly very interesting , but it is not polished or cohesive . Just as he does in - Monster in a Box - , Gray alternates between very hilarious narrative ( such as the descriptions of the sex acts in Thailand ) and very harrowing narrative ( such as the descriptions of Pol Pot's revolution ) . That technique works extraordinarily in - Monster in a Box - , but the two halves of the narratives don't seem to do with each other at all . The funny half concerns the work on the movie - The Killing Fields - , and the harrowing half very intensely examines the true story of the Kamir Rouge and America's dealing with these kinds of situations . Also , the monologue seems to end almost arbitrarily . This film is definitely worth a rental . It is under 90 minutes , which I always count as a plus . But if you want to be impressed , rent - Monster in a Box - .
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385,057 | 391,152 | 416,449 | 7 |
A movie made for teenage boys , so it'll do really well on IMDb
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But , hell , while it's far from perfect , I'll admit that it's a lot of fun . Put it into the guilty pleasure category if you will . It goes for the title of violentest movie ever , and I think it succeeds . Much of the movie consists of the Spartan warriors hacking away at Persian fodder , with limbs flying everywhere , with an occasional head thrown in for good measure ( I was slightly disappointed that there were no entrails to be found ) . Sick as hell , yeah , but I think most of us have a little part of our brain left over from our uncivilized ancestry . Honestly , outside of the action sequences , the film is fairly worthless . The dialogue is overwrought and often embarrassing , with a heck of a lot of narration telling us about what it's like to be a Spartan . The exposition is lame ( except for maybe the prologue ? the part with the wolf was kind of cool ) . The trip to Thermopylae is dull , even when we find a tree with a hundred corpses impaled upon it . And , during the battle , whenever they show us what's happening in Sparta , I was always like , " Who the expletive deleted gives a expletive deleted ! Get back to the endless slaughter ! " The movie would have worked a hundred times better if it had just been 90 minutes of straight battle , with the only pauses being the tense , dark nights between them . So , really , the movie isn't all that great . But , hell , I have to give it my recommendation . Any movie that features a decapitated head spiraling through the air in slow motion has to be worth the price of admission .
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385,461 | 391,152 | 312,859 | 7 |
Great first half , so-so second half
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Touching Bollywood epic melodrama about a 10 year-old girl who finds out that she's adopted , and is determined to find her birth mother . The film's major success is the performance of P . S . Keerthana , who plays the girl . The first half of the film is very good . There are a few really good songs , too , especially the number that introduces the protagonist . Unfortunately , the film's second half , which takes place in war-torn Sri Lanka , feels like an entirely different , and disappointing movie . It's big on explosions and special effects , with Sri Lankan soldiers and rebels dodging grenades , running from fireballs , and being yanked by stunt wires . All the film can offer as insight are cheap platitudes like , " Some day there must come peace " and " Perhaps the children will find a way " . The final sequence , where the daughter and mother are reunited , is good , but so over-the-top with the music and a well-timed downpour that it feels like a cheat . I know , I know , it's all in the style of Bollywood . But this is a story where big moments simply detract from the simple , powerful central story . Bollywood could certainly use a little restraint at times , too .
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385,056 | 391,152 | 462,200 | 7 |
Christina Ricci needs a burger
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Any movie where Samuel L . Jackson chains up a scantily clad Christina Ricci to his radiator to cure her of her nymphomania has to be at least worth seeing . What I didn't expect is that it would turn into a respectable drama by the end . And that's wherein the disappointment lies . It is a good movie . Christina Ricci and Sam Jackson are both excellent , the story is well written and it's different from anything else I can remember , even if it does end up endorsing the boring old status quo . The film could have been a lot more memorable if it had just stayed sleazy throughout . Still , it has its moments . The first sequence where Ricci discovers the chain around her belly is gold . You have to love Sam Jackson's titular song . And the sequence where Ricci writhes sweatily to another Jackson-belted blues number is hot as hell . Certainly worth seeing , but wait for rental .
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384,922 | 391,152 | 35,446 | 7 |
Good flick , but a little uneven ;
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To Be or Not to Be is an interesting WWII era film about actors in Poland who lead a resistance against the invading Nazis . It is mostly a comedy , but there is a dramatic side to the proceedings . The acting is good , especially Jack Benny . Most of the rest of the actors don't do anything particularly special , except for maybe Robert Stack . Unfortunately , as good as this film is , it has a difficult time reconciling its dramatic angle with its comedic angle . First of all , most WWII movies that were made in America during WWII are a little weak because the makers could only guess at what was really going on in Europe before the US entered the war . The best example of that is Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator . Chaplin himself said that he could have never made that film if he had known what was really going on . Ditto To Be or Not to Be . After having seen the atrocities which happened in Poland in a film like Schindler's List ( although I believe the massacre I'm thinking of from that film happened in Krakow ; I have not seen it for a long time ) really ruins you for a film like this . However , even if it were not weakened by the actual history , the film still has problems reconciling . Robert Stack's role is never really resolved , for instance .
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385,402 | 391,152 | 78,481 | 7 |
A disaster
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But not without a great deal of interest , especially for Altman fans like myself . It's actually one of the most disappointing films I've ever seen . I caught the first hour about a year ago on television , and I was enthralled . " One of Altman's best ! " I exclaimed . Or at least I thought that it probably would be if I ever got to see the last half of it . Now I finally found it , and I am hurt . The first hour is brilliant . It's the kind of film Altman is best known for , the ensemble piece , this one about a wedding . Perfect , Altman has two huge families to play around with . There are dozens of characters , perhaps more than he had in his masterpiece , Nashville . It's amazing , the family dynamics , the characters ' histories , their feelings about the union between Dino and Muffin , etc . It's all staggering , entertaining , hilarious , and brilliant . The first hour buzzes along like fireworks . But then it begins to trip . You can actually see it coming . There are just too many characters and too much going on . Most of them had had their moments up to that point , but some , such as Ms . Farmer , who seems to be somewhat important , we don't know anything about . However , to make it even worse , Altman and the other screenwriters begin to add more characters ( what's with Briggs and Tina ? They're just a horribly cheap plot device , and the two actors are awful ! ) , come up with more plot twists , and insert a sort of very miscalculated humor ( especially with the drunk aunt or whatever she was , the one dressed like a gypsy ) . It's like watching a train wreck for almost the whole of the second half . A few good scenes turn up , but far more bad ones . For instance , what the hell was Altman thinking when ( SPOILERS , although the film itself is its ultimate SPOILER ) he had Geraldine Chaplin come unto Muffin ? I mean , for God's sake , the film had like 20 minutes left . That just came out of left field . Its parallel is even less believable , although at least that one has some precedent character development in the film . Both of these scenes are exploitative . END SPOILERSAlthough it is a disaster , A Wedding does contain enough to make it well worth seeing once . Mia Farrow is really good . And if you ever wanted to see her naked ( she is quite a beauty , I admit ) , here's your chance . That scene was awful and should not have been in the film . It's another moment that just made me sigh with anger . This may be Geraldine Chaplin's best role . Although Nashville is in my personal Top Ten , I have to admit that the only part of that film that strains the film is the character of Opal , the ditzy , pseudo-BBC reporter played by Chaplin . In A Wedding , she plays the wedding planner , and she is amazing . It's far too bad Altman took a dump on her character by adding that penultimate scene of hers that I mention above in the spoiler . At least he kind of made amends by giving her the excellent final shot of the film .
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384,675 | 391,152 | 58,450 | 7 |
Good , but not Marvelous
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I liked the Umbrellas of Cherbourg , but was acutely aware that it was gimmicky . The American musicals of the 1950s obviously influenced this film quite a bit , and that genre was already nearly dead in the world as filmmaking began to move into the more artistic ( American ) films of the 1960s , like Bonnie and Clyde or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid . The gimmick , to have every line , no matter how mundane , sung by the actors , is interesting at first , but after about 30 minutes , it gets old . The music is never all that great in the first place , and it is really repetitive . Also , the actors aren't very good singers . What I did like was the art direction and the costumes . The color schemes are very interesting throughout the film . But even this , the best part of the film , owes a lot of debt to the American musicals of the 1950s , especially An American in Paris and Singin ' in the Rain . Remember the color schemes in the extended " musical number " sequence near the end of Singing in the Rain where Gene Kelly proposes the grand finale of the film they are making ? It involves a goofily dressed Kelly trying to find a job as a dancer . Especially memorable in this scene is his dance with Cyd Charisse , decked in a gorgeous green flapper dress . Basically , the Umbrellas of Cherbourg constantly looks like it takes place in the same world as that scene in Singin ' in the Rain . I would suggest renting those two films before The Umbrellas of Cherbourg . And if you want a French musical , I suggest Le Million . As for the rest of the movie , i . e . , the plot , the dialogue , etc . , it is extraordinarily light . It is very two-dimensional and it is instantly forgettable . It isn't very romantic , and it is very predictable . It reminded me a bit of Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass in its plot , but it doesn't produce the same feelings in me that Splendor did . All in all , I would still recommend it if you're a lover of world cinema , but I'd just warn you not to expect the masterpiece that it is often touted as . I give it a .
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385,762 | 391,152 | 232,500 | 7 |
A lot of fun ( SLIGHT SPOILERS )
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The Fast and the Furious is not a great movie by any means , but it is very entertaining . It's definitely a turn - your - brain - off - for - two - hours flick , a nice popcorn flick . The plot is your basic undercover cop conflicted by his attachment to those he is infiltrating kind of thing . No real surprises here . The acting is quite good . I'm putting my money on Vin Diesel becoming the next Arnold Schwarzenegger . Michelle Rodriguez , who was just amazing in last year's Girlfight ( she is why I saw this film ) , is extremely sexy in it . Oh yeah , she gives a good performance , too . I hope she gets some great roles after the success of this movie . The other performers are all relatively good . There aren't any weak spots . The action , which is why most will see The Fast and the Furious , is very good . Although one might wonder why it takes five minutes , even in slow motion , for cars that go 150 + MPH , to travel a quarter of a mile , it doesn't hurt the flick too much . I generally don't like car chase movies . The Mad Max films and this are probably the only exceptions . I was clenching my teeth during several action sequences . .
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385,202 | 391,152 | 69,865 | 7 |
entertaining , for the most part
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Charley Varrick is a pretty good heist film . There are a lot of cliches , but there are even more original twists and turns . If you are a fan of the genre , then you will certainly like it . If you are not , then you will not . I myself don't care either way , and I just barely ended up liking it . MILD SPOILER : The only thing about the film that is particularly painful is the fact that Walter Matthau gets laid by a 20 year old woman . He is not the looker , and the sex scene is so ridiculous that they should have thought twice about filming it at all . It halts the picture in its tracks . Many will probably have to exit the room and vomit .
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384,927 | 391,152 | 62,827 | 7 |
SPOILERS ;
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This pre-MASH Altman flick will probably be uninteresting to anyone who is not an Altman fan . Maybe a hard-core sci-fi fan would like it for the novelty , but , let me warn you , it is barely a sci-fi movie . It tries to be as realistic as possible . It is an interesting prediction of the actual moon landing , which would happen a bit over a year from Countdown's release date . As an Altman film , it is an interesting precursor to MASH , but it is a little bit too mainstream for Altman buffs . I don't know whether the conventions of an astronaut film were instated before this film or whether they were set up here , but you won't find anything that much different from Apollo 13 or even Armageddon . Most of the scenes include a bunch of scientists sitting in front of panels , with some cross-cutting between them and the astronaut , James Caan . There are a few inventive touches in the direction , including a cut that predates 2001's bone-to-satellite edit by a few months : Caan throws a baseball into the air , we are blinded by the sun , and an invisible edit takes us to the launching platform at Cape Kennedy . Actually , since 2001 was released only a few months afterwards , this film was likely buried under that film's glory ( even though many despised that film upon its release ) . Also , another famous sci-fi film appeared around the same time as Countdown : Planet of the Apes . The acting may be the film's saving grace . Both James Caan and Robert Duvall give top-notch performances . So does Joanna Cook Moore , who plays Caan's worried wife . Most of the other actors are hardly distinguishable . Look out for Barbara Baxley and Michael Murphy , who were both in Altman's Nashville in 1975 ( which I watched earlier this afternoon for about the fifth time ) .
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384,637 | 391,152 | 1,175,491 | 7 |
An exploration of America's Nero
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I , for one , liked it . The film is half a standard bio-pic , depicting much of George W . Bush's early life up until his Presidency . The other half takes place in the run up to the Iraq War , and continues until around the time the war starts to turn back on him . The stuff of the past is sometimes messy , but I liked that it attempted to understand Bush ( Josh Brolin ) psychologically . The film takes the stance , popular around 2004 , that W . ' s political career was a desperate attempt to win his father's love . The modern-day stuff is a lot more interesting and well done . It depicts the politics of Bush's first term . Stone has done a mostly excellent job of re-creating that cabinet , with Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice , Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney , Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell , along with several more . The make-up guys are the ones who do the best job here , but Dreyfuss and Wright are particularly great in their roles . The film isn't an especially deep exploration of the President ? I suspect we'll get many more thorough analyses of this undoubtedly fascinating man's life in the future . The film's major angle , that Bush was a well-meaning idiot who is easily manipulated , is a very common opinion , one that is not entirely supported by facts . But , really , who can know the entirety of a man ? W . is at least a good cursory examination of Bush .
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385,508 | 391,152 | 74,626 | 7 |
Terribly beautiful - terribly pretentious
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It's impossible to love this film , and it is as impossible to hate it . The plot is slight and silly , and the dialogue and acting are unintentionally hilarious . Heart of Glass could stand as the archetype of the so-called " pretentious European cinema , " you know , the kind you would have seen Mike Meyers make fun of in his " Sprockets " sketches on SNL . In fact , I don't know of anything that comes even close to Heart of Glass in its pretentions . The film is as shallow as could be . Perhaps those with overactive imaginations could " figure it out , " but I don't want to waste that time . However , Herzog is an amazingly skilled director . The script may suck , but the visuals , the cinematography and the mise-en-scene , represent some of the greatest moments in all cinema . It's not a non-stop beauty festival , but there are many individual scenes of outrageous splendor . If only Herzog had planned the script as intricately as he searched out locations for the shoot . What this film really reminds me of an Andrei Tarkovsky or Michelangelo Antonioni film with no substance whatsoever . I can't give Heart of Glass more than a , but , in many ways , it's a must see . If you've never seen a Herzog film before , though , avoid this one . Start with Aguirre the Wrath of God or , my favorite so far , Fitzcarraldo .
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384,622 | 391,152 | 67,962 | 7 |
Watch for the jokes on Last Year at Marienbad
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Fassbinder's wry comedy about the trials and tribulations of filmmaking . It's gorgeously shot and very well acted ( especially by Fassbinder himself and Lou Castel , who plays the director ) , but , truth be told , a bit on the dull side . I guess most of Fassbinder's early films are a little dull . Only fans will want to pursue them . There is plenty to like , though . The best element of the film seems to be lost on all those whose reviews I've read . The film is set mostly in an opulent Spanish hotel , and , at least for one sequence , it lapses into a deft parody of Resnais ' Last Year at Marienbad . I think that , if I tried to describe it , my explanation would be too wordy and would not convey it well enough . So , if you ever do happen to watch the film , make sure to keep an eye out for that joke . .
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385,351 | 391,152 | 464,105 | 7 |
Good effort , but the results are somewhat forgettable
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There really aren't enough films made about the modern experience of immigrants in America . There's a huge vein to be mined there . Man Push Cart is a step in the right direction . This film follows a Pakistani immigrant in New York City who sells drinks and donuts from a push cart . He was a pop star in his native country , but is now reduced to nothing . It's a simple story , entertaining and moderately involving , told decently enough . Unfortunately , when you step back and look at it , it's all pretty vapid . Director Bahrani clearly aims for neorealism , even echoing The Bicycle Thieves at points , but the neorealist classics aren't nearly as simplistic as a lot of people tend to think . Here , the characters are two-dimensional , the situation is pretty shallow , and the distantly foreshadowed climactic event feels like a cheap ploy . I'd hardly call it a bad film , but I think much more could have been done with the subject .
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385,959 | 391,152 | 364,955 | 7 |
Entertaining but weak
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This is definitely Terry Zwigoff's least successful film , and a big disappointment in a lot of ways . But I think if you don't expect too much , it's fun and has some good twists along the way . The film follows Jerome , who goes to art school after graduation . The film's major strengths are that it really gets into the absurdity of the concept of art school ( I don't think many believe that one can be taught how to be an artist ) , and that it communicates well the feeling of not being able to succeed . It also does good by not making Jerome a remarkable artist himself . He's a talented drawer , but his stuff is largely uninteresting and unimaginative . For a while the film seems to be poking fun at more abstract art , but then it does pull back and smartly doesn't dismiss the more abstract or pop art on display , though it does put forward some of the various artists ' pomposities . The film plays a lot like Ghost World , which had the same director and writer , in that it sets up all the characters as stereotypes and then begins to reveal them as more human . Unfortunately , it just doesn't work nearly as well here . There are a ton of other problems , too . Max Minghella , the actor who plays Jerome , is painfully dull . He looks like a model in a catalogue . The girl in whom he develops an interest is equally dull , an everyday blonde cutie who comes off as rather vapid . With these two protagonists , a certain tiny part of the film kept coming to mind , where one of the very rare persons of color in the class asks their art history professor why they only study dead white males . Why do we have to have these two boring , white-bread characters dominating the film ? Luckily , the supporting cast is very good , and includes John Malkovich ( in a rather typical but entertaining Malkovichian role ) , Steve Buscemi , Jim Broadbent and Joel Moore . It also includes Anjelica Huston , whom I generally don't like . But it feels like she might have had a bigger part originally which was cut down .
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385,266 | 391,152 | 69,824 | 7 |
Sweet and pretty , but it doesn't really go anywhere
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Francis of Assissi depicted as the first hippie . That's not really a ridiculous comparison . After all , Godspell depicts Jesus and the Apostles as hippies , as well , far more annoyingly , I may say , than Zefferelli depicts these characters . I actually started off really enjoying this picture . I thought it was sweet , lovely , and beautiful . It helps a lot if you like Donovan . I know that he's kind of dopey , but I've always found his mellowing tunes quite pleasant . None of his songs here are among his best ( in fact , not a one appears on the anthology I own , which contains other work on soundtracks ) , but they're pretty good . Unfortunately , the film never really goes anywhere . It plateaus early and only reaches a little further in its climax , when Francis and his followers ask the Pope ( Alec Guiness , in what amounts to a cameo ) to bless their order . The only really good Francis of Assissi movie I've seen is Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St . Francis .
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385,098 | 391,152 | 1,152,850 | 7 |
Like Old Joy , maybe too minimalist , as well as forced , but it has its charms . Spoilers in the last paragraph only .
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Following in the same steps as her first film , Old Joy , Kelly Reichardt has constructed another small , simple , minimalist film . Wendy is a hippie chick who has nothing but a few hundred dollars to her name , her car and her dog . Lucy is that dog , and Wendy's only companion . Wendy is traveling to Alaska for some seasonal work , and has stopped off in small town Oregon for a night's sleep ( in her car , of course ) . In the morning , she finds her car does not work . Not knowing how much of her approximately $500 it will take to fix it , Wendy makes the incredibly , almost unbelievably moronic choice to shoplift a can of dog food for Lucy . This results in the obliged prosecution , which separates the title characters for several hours . Upon Wendy's return , Lucy is nowhere to be found . Most of the movie consists of Wendy looking around for her pooch , while her money slowly dwindles between the shoplifting fine , the Xerox usage and the tow , not to mention the impending cost of repair . Michelle Williams plays Wendy , and everything we know about her is due to her masterful performance . Much like in Old Joy , Reichardt gives us almost nothing to work with concerning who this person is . We learn of a not very sympathetic sister ( and rather more sympathetic brother-in-law ) back in Indiana , but we don't learn whether Wendy's wanderings have anything to do with these people . Little to nothing is implied there , though I suspect some who feel like digging will come up with a theory involving Wendy's illicit affair with her sister's husband . Honestly , her history is not much worth speculating . It's Wendy's characteristics which identify her , her cropped hair and lack of attachment to material things . I'm aware of her subculture because one of my best friends from high school became a professional hippie after college . I half kid , but you really do have to work at it . He has told me about many of his acquaintances , among whom were female drifters accompanied by large dogs . I actually really like Reichardt's style . It's hypnotic and often beautiful . And I think Wendy and Lucy is an even better film than Old Joy . However , it's impossible to feel too much sympathy for Wendy . I mean , shoplifting isn't a major crime or anything , but why would you even chance it when you're in such a precarious situation ? A can of Alpo costs , what , a dollar fifty ? Dropping a buck fifty is probably not going to tip the scales on whether or not you can afford to replace the serpentine belt on your car . And then there's the film's finale . It's powerful , to be sure . But it rings completely false . These drifter women don't have a dog solely for companionship . They are an essential part of the lifestyle . Their symbiotic benefit is that they serve as protection . The scene where the hobo assaults Wendy would never have happened if Lucy had been there to protect her master . Without the dog , this 100 pound woman is completely vulnerable to any of the male drifters with whom she crosses paths . There's no way this woman is going to give up her dog .
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385,190 | 391,152 | 458,352 | 7 |
Even though I wish it were less formulaic , it's still pretty enjoyable
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Not an especially interesting movie narratively , but the performances are so good that it's very watchable . Anne Hathaway plays a frumpy girl ( Hollywood frumpy , that is ? only in Hollywood could Anne Hathaway be repeatedly referred to as fat ) who gets a job in the fashion industry under the cruelest exec in the biz , played by Meryl Streep . Streep has been getting pretty much all the credit for the movie . It's not entirely fair . She is indeed excellent ? you just want to strangle that bitch . But the film would be utterly worthless without a strong central performance , and Hathaway supplies it . Even when the film is at its least engaging , Hathaway makes it engaging . More her presence , I suppose , than her performance . I mean , damn , she's an attractive young woman . You'd think her smile could cure cancer , or at least bring dead puppies back to life . Emily Blunt and especially Stanley Tucci also deserve a lot of credit in the main supporting roles .
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385,349 | 391,152 | 415,127 | 7 |
Slightly disappointing effort from Bela Tarr
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Tarr returns after a long absence . Unfortunately , it's not up to par . Well , I should say , I have much of the same problem with this film that I do with all of Tarr's films . I'm certainly not his biggest fan anyway . I love his aesthetic , and would definitely call him a genius just for his visual prowess . It's so extremely original . And he's so good at setting mood , although I should say that the mood of all of his films , at least his later , more well known films , is pretty close to the same . Dark , cold , lonely , the drudgery of life , etc . But as soon as the characters start to speak , I stop paying attention . I find most of the actual words of Tarr's films uninteresting , and , when the characters are talking , I start to realize that I don't find these people that interesting . They may look interesting , as Tarr captures their essence in severe close-ups , but they never say anything interesting . The Man of London unwisely adds plot to the mix . Tarr's earlier films have a wonderful meandering quality , where it feels like he's just capturing people going about their lives . That is true here to an extent , but this one has a pretty clear plot structure , and one that's been told often before : a man finds a pile of money that belongs to crooks , and he pays for it . It's not plot driven by any means , but that skeletal plot is followed , and it makes the film less interesting than Tarr's other films . Also , Tilda Swinton shows up as the protagonist's wife in what amounts to a cameo ( she has about five minutes of screen time in this 2 hour and 12 minute film ) , and it's pretty distracting . There's a cute little nod to Satantango at one point , where people in a bar dance like they did in that behemoth . Also , the little girl with the cat from Satantango shows up as the protagonist's daughter . It's weird , because she looks exactly the same , except she's a woman now . A very , very creepy woman . Who probably still kills cats when nobody's looking .
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384,636 | 391,152 | 84,516 | 7 |
Okay ghost story , but a little too loud and obnoxious at times
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I guess there's no objective reason for it , but , in my mind , ghost stories should be subtle . In general , I think all horror films should be subtle . Poltergeist is anything but subtle . It's a loud , flashing , exploding horror film . The basic story : a suburban family is terrorized by ghosts . It starts innocently enough , with a young girl hearing voices come out of a television , forks bending and chairs being moved . Three minutes later , though , ghostly hands are shooting out of televisions , beefsteaks are crawling around like slugs and giant demon heads are popping out of the closet . It's all too much , too fast . Watch the scenes in The Exorcist where objects begin flying around the room , then contrast them with the scene in Poltergeist where the paranormal investigators open a door and see the objects there flying around . The film was directed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur Tobe Hooper , but the marks of its screenwriter and producer , one Steven Spielberg , are all over it , and not generally in a good way . That's not to say I didn't like the movie . In all honesty , it has a lot of memorable moments , from the iconic " They're here ! " to the chair stacking sequence . There's a really good use of a false climax , which I imagine caught people off guard at the time .
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385,392 | 391,152 | 952,682 | 7 |
Great story , but could have been done better
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A great story that should have been a great movie . It's unfortunately pretty poorly directed , and the writing could have been tighter . I can still appreciate it for what it is , and hopefully writer / director Nichols , whose debut this is , will come up with something as good in the future and do better by it . Michael Shannon , Douglas Ligon and Barlow Jacobs play three men named Son , Boy and Kid . Their father left them when they were kids , which led to their mother abandoning them emotionally . Son , the oldest , basically raised them , and their lives are pretty lousy , though seemingly normal for the setting , rural Arkansas . When they hear their father has died , the three men attend his funeral and speak badly of the man who couldn't have cared less about them . This deeply offends the old man's second family , consisting of four brothers , and a war begins between them . What the film really has going for it is the great characterizations , very well performed by mostly amateurs . I pegged Michael Shannon last year , with his performances in Bug and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead , as being one of this generation's finest actors , and he does well by that promise here . Nichols almost undoes it all with awkward pacing and way too much wallowing in the town's redneckiness . The film is mostly pitched as a serious indie with copious comic moments , all involving how trashy everyone is . The movie probably does not play well in the South . I think maybe the script's biggest problem is that it really contains only one idea , and Nichols doesn't want to spend it all in one place .
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385,977 | 391,152 | 22,787 | 7 |
Great direction , but the lack of distinct characters makes it a bit of a bust
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Amazingly well directed and produced WWI flick made in France . Bernard is an extremely talented director . Unfortunately , the film doesn't stand up too well compared to so many other WWI pictures , notably the earlier All Quiet on the Western Front and the later The Grand Illusion . What Wooden Crosses lacks is strong characters . About the only one who stands out from the rest is the " loudmouth " , as he is described bluntly by another solider . " There's one in every company , " he says ; or at least , I think he says that . If no one said that , someone probably should have . Instead , Bernard concentrates almost wholly on extremely long battle sequences . One lasts nearly 40 minutes . Great , but if I don't care about the characters , I'm not going to care much when one gets killed .
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384,803 | 391,152 | 498,380 | 7 |
I'm surprised Flags of Our Fathers got such mixed reviews and Letters from Iwo Jima only got raves
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After Clint Eastwood's American version of the Iwo Jima story , Flags of Our Fathers , premiered , it was met with surprisingly indifferent reviews . A lot of Eastwood lovers and WWII buffs were gravely disappointed . The followup , Letters from Iwo Jima , was due in February , but Eastwood bumped it back so it would come out in 2006 . It , on the contrary , got rave reviews . I'm at a loss . I thought they were both of about the same quality : they are respectable but unremarkable WWII films . Letters is notable , I suppose , because it tells the Japanese side of the story , and humanizes an American enemy to a pretty much unheard of degree . But that's not enough to win me over by itself . It's been a long enough time where I don't think anyone would think the Japanese were all inhuman monsters . The story follows a young soldier , Saigo ( well portrayed by Kazunari Ninomiya , a relative newcomer ) , who begins the battle inside Suribachi Hill . In Flags of Our Fathers , the vast majority of the war story took place on this hill , on top of which the American soldiers raised the titular flags . Letters covers the entire battle , which , if I remember right , lasted over a month . Much to Saigo's commanders ' dismay , Saigo doesn't quite feel like sacrificing himself in this impossible battle , and he narrowly escapes death several times . Another prominent character is General Tadamichi Kuribayashi , played by Ken Watanabe . Unlike most of the commanding officers under him , he is completely sympathetic with the underlings ' anxieties , and he also acknowledges his enemies as human beings . It sure is frightening to experience the losing side of a battle ( though I don't see much difference either way if you die , or even if you witness dozens of your friends die ) , but I didn't really think Letters from Iwo Jima broke new ground . There are plenty of Japanese movies about the war that are far more powerful , especially Kobayashi's The Human Condition , which I think is probably the best WWII film ( or series of films ) ever made . Frankly , I was frequently bored by Letters from Iwo Jima . It does have some great moments , but I don't at all feel it's essential .
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385,864 | 391,152 | 36,341 | 7 |
Weak and poorly written , in my opinion
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Truly disappointing , considering how big a Val Lewton fanatic I've become . This is probably the third most famous Lewton film , after The Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie , but I thought it was so far below any of the others that I've seen ( also including at this point The Ghost Ship and The Leopard Man ) that it is scarcely believable . The story concerns a young Catholic school girl , played by recently deceased actress Kim Hunter , whose tuition has not been paid . Expelled , she travels to New York City to find out why her businesswoman sister hasn't paid it , as she usually does . Apparently she's disappeared , although , when Hunter's not around , her sister's friends seem to know where she is . To me , every aspect of the film seemed utterly muddled . The script was sloppy and rather crappy , the acting was often execrable . The only one who does a decent job is Lewton regular Tom Conway . I was particularly disappointed in Hunter , who was so amazing in three of my very favorite films , Stairway to Heaven ( aka A Matter of Life and Death ) , A Streetcar Named Desire , and , of course ( and I'm certainly not being facetious ) Planet of the Apes . Of course , this was her debut in the cinema . It just doesn't look here like she knows what the hell she was doing ( which I hate to say only a month after her death ) . I don't understand her character , she seems all over the place . Half of her problem is the script , of course . There are apparently two love interests , but the screenwriter can't decide into whose arms he wants to push her . I'm all for going against the audience's expectations , but we need to , at the very least , get involved with her emotional state so we can understand why she does what she does . Eventually , a lot comes to the characters ' attentions about the sister being involved in a Satanic cult and also a murder . The cult might worship Satan , but they are apparently not bloodthirsty ; they just want to kill the sister because of her own murderous transgressions . The shock is that these Satan worshipers are normal , small town people . But that's been done better since 1943 , Rosemary's Baby being the best example . There were a couple of good scenes within the course of the film . I love how two villains try to disguise a murdered man by pretending they are both drunk and that the dead man between them has passed out . I also loved the shower scene . You're never more vulnerable than when you're naked - unless you're a naked , teenage , Catholic high school girl . The scene has probably been described as a forerunner of Psycho's infamous shower scene a thousand times , but the scene in The Seventh Victim is almost creepier for its lack of violence . Still , most of the film , as I've said , just seemed poor to me . Hopefully I'll see what some have raved about on subsequent viewings , as I have it taped . It's enough of a collector's item that I won't erase it ( especially since it's short and wedged between the superior The Leopard Man and The Ghost Ship ) . .
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384,988 | 391,152 | 86,961 | 7 |
Weak script , but very good acting
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The narrative in this film is far too flawed . There are two intertwining halves of it , one good , one poor . The good one involves a woman , Ulla , whose husband died suddenly and unexpectedly one morning while he waited in his car to take their son to school . Now he gently haunts his family as they deal with the pain . The acting is magnificent here . Kieslowski is masterful at directing his actors in material like this , as he would show a million different times in The Decalogue , made a few years later . There are a few outrageously and subtly powerful scenes . Most memorable is the one where Ulla decides to prostitute herself to a British tourist . This happens about a month after her husband has died . After the man has sex with her , she asks him if he speaks Polish . He says no , and then she begins to talk about her problems in Polish . The other half of the plot is utterly weak in comparison . The husband was a lawyer , and the defendant in the case he was working on is screwed because of the death . The defendant's wife comes to Ulla for help , and though she is refused help at first , Ulla eventually introduces her to her husband's mentor , a cynical old man about to be kicked out of the business . Perhaps it's just my aversion to lawyer and courtroom dramas , but I just didn't care a lick what happened in this part of the plot . Supposedly it's meant as a criticism against the Communist law at the time . I don't know . It's dull whatever it is . But the film is slightly worth watching , especially for the acting . Even in the parts that I didn't care for , the acting is exquisite . .
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384,592 | 391,152 | 25,301 | 7 |
Comparison to the remake
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You can find my review for the 1959 version by clicking on my name . I am not a fan of the Douglas Sirk remake of Imitation of Life ( 1959 ) . It was the third film from that director I saw , and I felt that he was trying to play it straight , make a prestige picture , denying the insanity of classics such as Written on the Wind . Seeing the 1934 version of this film , I only find my opinion of the 1959 version reinforced . Sirk barely changed anything . He doesn't crank it up a notch . He changes the main white character's profession ( Claudette Colbert , 1934 , and Lana Turner , 1959 ) . In the older version , she ( with the help of her black maid ( Louise Beavers , 1934 , Juanita Moore , 1959 ) ) , establishes a pancake restaurant . One day , a customer ( character actor Ned Sparks ) suggests that they start selling the pancake mix in boxes , which will ( and does ) make them rich . In the 1959 version , Lana Turner , as I remember , is an actress of some sort . I suppose I prefer the pancake story better , because I get sick of seeing pretty women become successful actresses in movies . Weighing the two films against each other , they do come out pretty even . For example , the conflict of the young , light-skinned black girl ( played by Fredi Washington in 1934 , Susan Kohner in 1959 ) is much more fleshed out in the later version , and it just works better . Kohner is a better actress than Washington , as well . The main white character's daughter ( Rochelle Hudson in 1934 , Sandra Dee in 1959 ) works better in the earlier version , as Hudson is a better actress than Dee . Louise Beavers and Juanita Moore come out as a dead heat . They're equal . Too bad neither of them are that good . I suppose the original novel must be to blame for this ; the black maid character is very poorly developed in both films ( so I assume it was the same in the novel ) , and , in the end , they both lack focus . I suppose it comes down to the last race , Lana Turner and Claudette Colbert . Well , now here , in the films ' main characters , we find a clear winner . Personally , I just don't like Lana Turner . I thought she was poor in Imitation of Life ( it's the only film I've seen with her , and it makes me want to avoid others ) . On the other hand , Claudette Colbert doesn't have a great track record with me . However , I really thought she was great in Imitation of Life . She's utterly charming , clever , and gorgeous . Blondes are overrated anyhow . I much prefer Ms . Colbert's doe eyes . 1934 was really Colbert's year , with this , Cleopatra , and her Oscar-winning role in It Happened One Night ( which I'll watch in the next couple of days , incidentally ) . So 1934 Imitation of Life ends up winning by a nose . Neither film is great , mind you , but both are worthwhile . .
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384,843 | 391,152 | 181,689 | 7 |
Good , but very , very flawed
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Steven Spielberg has made a couple of clunkers in his career , that's for sure . When sitting through Hook or The Lost World : Jurassic Park II , it's difficult to believe that the same man who made Jaws or E . T . or Close Encounters had a hand in them . Most of Spielberg's output , though , has been fantastic . Despite the occasional 1941 , his films , even when flawed , soar above the average film . Minority Report falls into the category of fantastic and soaring , yet deeply flawed . Minority Report is , above all else , an enormously entertaining film . I personally like actioners and thrillers and sci-fi , and Minority Report fits well into all these categories . There are a couple of action set pieces that are simply amazing , like the chase through the car factory or the spider scene . Unfortunately , in the idea department , the film is kind of a dud . Critics have immediately pointed to the politics of today to show how prescient Minority Report is , but no matter how large and powerful the intelligence industry gets I seriously don't believe that we'll ever live in a world where , even if it were possible to predict crime , law enforcement could arrest someone for a crime they were about to commit . And then , without a trial , apparently , they not only imprison the pre-perpetrators , but they encase them in suspended animation goo , apparently forever . At least they never say whether these prisoners are ever to be released . I mean , what happened to correctional institutions ! And , what's worse , almost every perpetrator chooses to murder for reasons of passion since everyone knows that it's impossible to commit premeditated murder . That means that a man who was about to stab his wife and her lover with a pair of scissors - a horrific but understandable crime - is doomed to never see the light of day again ( apparently ) . And I haven't even mentioned the time frame : this story takes place in just over 50 years from now . It specifically states that the ACLU still exists . Perhaps if the film took place a hundred and fifty years from now and the ACLU had been disbanded or something ( with some heavy explanations in that department ) , I may have bought the story . The screenwriters never come close to making the situation believable . And even if it weren't so unbelievable , the film has dozens of flaws besides that , and several poor , not very well thought out scenes . For example , the crimes are predicted by three psychics whose origins are dubiously explained . Part of the plot of the film is that this Pre-Crime department is supposed to expand nation-wide . The three pre-cogs are supposed to be the only ones alive , so where are they going to get others to predict the murders of every other city in the United States ? These three only cover Washington D . C . I assume they aren't going to now cover the entire country ( and soon , the world ! ) . Okay , so maybe more exist . Perhaps I misunderstood that part of the exposition ( which is generally very bad in this film ) . But if these three cover a populace only as big as the capital , they're going to need hundreds if not thousands of pre-cogs , and the three that they show in the movie seem to be so important and irreplaceable that the logistics of the project seem completely unfeasible . Then there's a scene where Tom Cruise kidnaps one of the pre-cogs to help him avoid the murder that he is accused of having been about to commit . First of all , you must know that the three pre-cogs are kept in a sort of sensory-deprivation chamber where they are suspended in a vat of liquid nutrients that is supposed to foster their psychic abilities . So Cruise kidnaps Agatha the pre-cog and escapes from the authorities in a ridiculous manner ( there's apparently a drain in the bottom of the pool big enough for two people to slide down ; the Pre-Crime division must have a hell of a time preventing the pre-cogs from accidentally being flushed in the first place ! ) . Agatha , for the first time in a long while , begins to exist in the present . Then there's this scene in the mall , where she is able to protect Cruise by predicting every second of what's going to happen . She couldn't even do anything near this in the nutrient bath , and even there she could only see one thing : murders ; but outside of it she sees every single thing that's ever going to happen . It just doesn't make any sense . And then there are the poorly calculated scenes . The scene with Peter Stormare ( Fargo ) as a black market surgeon makes little sense . It's completely ridiculous and also rather foul . The writers set up a whole history for this character , but don't follow up on it at all . And Cruise's whole backstory is very lame . Has every single individual who works for any law enforcement body had a child or wife who was murdered ? All the good stuff in Minority Report is technical . It's often beautifully done . Spielberg's direction is often fantastic . The set designs are miraculous - it would be insulting if it didn't get nominated for an Oscar in this department - as is the cinematography ( a very beautiful , bleached look ) . The acting I would rate as merely adequate . Tom Cruise's character is not developed well enough , and therefore the performance isn't anything special . Max von Sydow , as nice as it is to see him in a summer blockbuster , has a very stereotypical role . Tim Blake Nelson ( O Brother , Where Art Thou ? ) , as Gideon , the warden of all the criminal tubes , should have been axed . Nelson is totally wrong for the movie . The only great performance in the film comes from Samantha Morton , who plays Agatha . She is amazing at times . Many critics have praised this , saying that it's a great rebound after the failure of A . I . That's so incredibly insulting . A . I . is by far the superior of the two . Overall , Minority Report is a fun movie when you're watching it , but the more I think about it , the more my opinion shrinks . I give it a . Good entertainment , far too many flaws to even count . I think I could go on for days pointing them out .
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385,170 | 391,152 | 94,631 | 7 |
Not half bad
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Considering that it is little more than your standard cop buddy movie , the slight variation being that the buddies are a tough seen-it-all cop and a by-the-books rookie who is an alien , Alien Nation ends up being a pretty good film . You can give a lot of credit to James Caan and Mandy Patankin for that . They have great chemistry as the partners . Both are very accomplished actors , and they make a very cliched script into something well worth watching .
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385,752 | 391,152 | 401,997 | 7 |
All for Cooper
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Good true story about the biggest spy ever to infiltrate U . S . security . They caught him in 2001 , and I remember the story , though I didn't know the details . The film is mainly worth seeing for Chris Cooper and the complex character whom he plays . Cooper definitely gives one of the best performances by an actor of the year . A very subtle , very beautiful performance . Ryan Phillippe isn't quite able to hold his own against Cooper , but he acquits himself well enough . He certainly doesn't screw the film up or anything . I have a feeling that Phillippe is just about to break out as an actor . I really liked him in Flags of Our Fathers last year . Laura Linney was a big reason I wanted to see this film . She was praised for this performance , but I don't think she was given that much to do , honestly . I liked the film , but was far from loving it . That's probably because it pulled out one of my most hated cliché , that of the suffering , whining wife of a man who is busting his hump to save the world . She drags that old chestnut out , " I don't even know you anymore ! " Supposedly , this is pretty much the truth , but for Christ's sake , think of the greatness Eric O'Neil could have done if he had stayed in his position !
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385,150 | 391,152 | 209,163 | 7 |
Unpretentious and fun .
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The Mummy Returns is maybe a step above the first one . The action is non-stop , and it does manage , for the most part , to rouse the audience , or at least me . The good guys are likable . Brendan Fraser is where he belongs . Rachel Weisz is beautiful . John Hannah amuses as Jonathan , and Freddie Boath manages not to annoy as Alex , the kid . He's pretty good as a smart-mouthed brat . The bad guys are , for the most part , fun to hate . Im-Ho-Tep is a good villain . Maybe he isn't given enough to do here , but he's still cool . Patricia Valazquez is a real stunner as his love interst , Anck-Su-Namun . She's probably the best thing about the film . Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was good as Lock Nah , the main henchman . Perhaps the weakest part of the film is the Rock as the Scorpion King . The narration during the film's prologue is not nearly as good as it would be if we were watching the story develop . The Scorpion King is basically a boring character . His computer-animated doppleganger at the film's climax is neat , but it would have been better if there were some feelings towards that character . People who know their action flicks will notice that the Mummy Returns steals about every action scene from every action movie made in the past 20 years , quoting movies like Aliens , Indiana Jones , Jurassic Park 2 ( why ? that movie was terrible ) , and especially Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace , with which , if you remember , The Mummy I was competing with in the box office successfully in May of 1999 . They don't try to hide any of it . They even make a jest at Spielberg with a shadow against the moon from ET and Amblin Entertainment . It's all in good fun . You shouldn't be too angry at the sloppy script . If you are going to be angry , the shoddy computer animation should be your target . Still , it's not bad .
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385,303 | 391,152 | 133,363 | 7 |
Pretty good , but falls apart near the end .
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I was loving this movie for the longest time , but near the end it was trying too hard to maintain its palindromic structure . When filmmakers put style over substance , it detracts from the film . MILD SPOILERSIt would have been perfect if they had just met up at the end and stayed with each other for the rest of their lives . If you think that sounds cheesy or cliched , just think to yourself what the last drama was where a couple actually fell in love and stayed there . You might say that that never happens , but this film was stressing the magical aspect of life . It would have made more sense if they had lived happily ever after at the end . MAJOR SPOILERSBesides , I'm not even 100 % sure what happened at the very end of this movie . Again , the filmmaker was stressing his construction too harshly . But I'm pretty sure Ana died ( and her meeting with Otto was just her dying dream ) . This is an incredible let down ! The film still had potential to be great until the very end . There's just no payoff . Even though the characters were not particularly well developed ( and they didn't need to be , really ; like I said above , this film was more of a magical fairy tale than a piece of realism ) , I had an emotional bond with them ( or more likely , with their situation ) . I was feeling rather elated throughout the whole movie , but after it ended , there was no feelings to be felt . I would have given it at least an 8 , and maybe as high as a 9 on the imdb grading scale , but I have to give it a . It was worth watching , but it will dissolve quickly from my memory .
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384,582 | 391,152 | 1,121,931 | 7 |
Pretty much the same thing , but still fun
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Roger Ebert , after giving Speed 2 a much-criticized 3 stars , ran a contest on his website : anyone who could come up with a way to make Speed 3 would get an autographed Speed 2 DVD from Ebert . I like to imagine that DVD sitting on the mantelpiece of either Neveldine or Taylor , the two men who came up with the wild Crank in 2006 . In it , Jason Statham plays a poisoned man . He will die quickly , but he can slow down the poison's progress by keeping his adrenaline pumping . The movie was way over-the-top , so much so that it's on a level almost of its own ( the underrated Paul Walker vehicle Running Scared is its only competition for the title of most over-the-top ) . People who saw Crank 1 might be surprised to see they came up with a sequel , giving this film's ending . But then again , maybe not . Neveldine / Taylor are so crazy and distrustful of logic that they probably didn't think twice about doing a sequel . They don't improve on their previous formula , truth be told . Crank 2 is pretty much the same thing as Crank 1 . It tries to go bigger , but it just can't feel fresh . But , like the first one , Crank 2 is quite a fun piece of crap . Statham's heart has been replaced with an artificial , battery-powered one . To keep it charged , he has to keep shocking himself . The best thing about Crank 2 is probably Bai Ling as a hooker who speaks broken , subtitled English . She's always a fun nutjob to have around . The film is chock full of goofy cameo appearances by the likes of David Carradine , Corey Haim , Geri Halliwell and Jenna Haze .
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385,840 | 391,152 | 1,125,849 | 7 |
Too familiar in its story to be a really great movie
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A small film about a big man . Mickey Rourke is , as you've certainly heard , outstanding as an aging wrestler who was famous back in the ' 80s and still plugs along at small events . Small those events may be , but they don't skip on the showmanship . One particularly brutal match rubs out the possibility of any more , and he has to take his life into perspective . He tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter ( Evan Rachel Wood ) and form a real relationship with a frequently-visited stripper ( Marisa Tomei ) . Frankly , my opinion of the film is lower than that of most who have seen it . When The Wrestler focuses on wrestling , it's spectacular . It's very detail-oriented , and you can just sense how much Rourke , the big lug , loves it . And the aforementioned brutal match is sure to be one of the most shocking things you'll see in any 2008 film . I rarely am disturbed by what I see in a movie , but I was wincing hard at it . When the plot kicks in , though , I just found it to be utterly predictable . It's made out of three basic clichés : the old pro who desperately wants to re-achieve his former glory , the family member connecting with an estranged family member and the sex worker unsure of whether she should cross the line between her profession and her feelings . I could never get very excited about it , because I felt I knew exactly where it was going and I never was wrong .
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384,870 | 391,152 | 988,047 | 7 |
Forgettable , but Cheadle and Pearce raise it above mediocrity
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Gripping but derivative thriller about terrorists and the people trying to stop them . Don Cheadle plays a Muslim who is a secret agent with the United States , under the supervision of a single man in the FBI , played by Jeff Daniels . No one else knows his true intentions , but he is connected to a terrorist organization by two other FBI agents , Guy Pearce and Neal Mcdonough . Cheadle has infiltrated these terrorists , lead by Saïd Taghmaoui , who also played a terrorist earlier in 2008 in Vantage Point , so deeply he's afraid that he'll have carried out attacks against the U . S . before Daniels gets what he wants . Traitor is clearly indebted to The Departed in its plot ? no points for guessing what happens to Daniels eventually ? and the Bourne movies in tone and style ( although not nearly as shaky ) . It never transcends its influences , and is thus , in the end , generic and forgettable . I don't want to be too harsh , however . For a bit of mild entertainment , it's well worth seeing . The final twist is great , if initially confusing and unintentionally hilarious . And the performances are quite good . I saw it mainly for Cheadle , who , as far as I'm concerned , can do no wrong . Pearce is quite good , too .
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385,902 | 391,152 | 29,608 | 7 |
Grrr . . .
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Profoundly frustrating , but , without a doubt , emotionally stirring . It's about a low class woman , Stella Dallas ( Barbara Stanwyck ) , who marries a rich man . They have a daughter , Laurel , but then the marital relationship deteriorates . The husband ( John Boles , always looking shocked ) moves to New York , where he gets involved with a woman he knew before he met Stella . She married and has children , but her husband has died . Stella has little interest in men , though she does have one very good male friend , Ed Munn ( Alan Hale , the real life father of the Skipper from Gilligan's Island ) , who does love her , but both are content as friends . Stella's only real interest is the happiness of her daughter ( played by Anne Shirley as a teenager ) , and the main conflict of the film is her class as compared to her husband's . She , of course , wants her daughter to be a proper young lady , but she herself is really not . Stella's idea of high class is the upper class ' idea of trashy . While this conflict is very interesting , the resolution of it is maddening . Really , how would a poor audience during the Great Depression see this film ? It was certainly very popular . But the message is that , if you're not bourgeois , it's best that you give up your child . It's better for the child that way . This is the kind of sentiment that might start a revolution in some parts of the world ! That cruel final scene made me want to pull out a guillotine . Yet there are so many beautiful pieces of the film . King Vidor was one of the very best Hollywood directors , and it shows here as well as it does in The Crowd . There's a poetic moment where Laurel Dallas has a tender moment with her boyfriend after they've been for a bikeride . It's filmed without dialogue . And the relationship between mother and daughter is wonderful . Anne Shirley has many of the film's best scenes in terms of acting . She's very sensitive as an actress , and there is a scene where she has to comfort her mother , when we might expect Laurel to be angry at her . Barbara Stanwyck is good in the role , but she did better . The character has many inconsistencies , which is the script's problem . Stella seems like a naïve , young girl when we first meet her , but her manners and class seem to fade steadily as the story moves on . It's far too exaggerated at some points , and that , I suppose , is Stanwyck's fault . Or Vidor's , perhaps , as well . Among the other actors , Alan Hale is fun . He also gets more and more pathetic as the film advances , but , disappointingly , at a point we are no longer asked to care for him . He was such an interesting person , and I don't like how he's dismissed . John Boles is painful to watch . .
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385,277 | 391,152 | 53,459 | 7 |
Overrated
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Big disappointment . I've heard such great things about this French horror film , but it doesn't at all live up to them . Sure , it has its moments , but most of the time , it's fairly dull . An experimental surgeon ( Pierre Brasseur ) is trying to graft the faces of young women he kidnaps onto his daughter , who lost hers in a car accident . Alida Valli plays the assistant who carries out the kidnappings . The situation is definitely promising , but the film just plods along . Valli was never more bland , and Brasseur is weak , as well . The film only comes alive when Edith Scob , the daughter , appears . That mask , featured on the DVD cover , is very creepy itself . And when we actually see Scob's face , she's one of the most beautiful women imaginable . I like the fact that Franju gives us that pleasure halfway through the film , and then cruelly takes it away through a photo montage of the skin graft's deterioration . Which would be the best moment of the film , if not for the excellent ending . So I guess I kind of liked it . I only wish it were a lot better . If you get the Criterion DVD , make sure to watch the short The Blood of Beasts . It's better than the feature , though be warned : it's not for the easily queasified . .
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384,805 | 391,152 | 404,203 | 7 |
Great setup , no payoff
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An oddly toned film . I have been able to avoid the more intense discussions this has aroused , and I was barely at all aware that the film had comedic tones . As far as I can figure , the film posits suburban and married life in the realm of the Twilight Zone , via a deep-voiced , omniscient narrator . The narrator is something that most film audiences don't care for , but I don't think Field and novelist / screenwriter Tom Perrotta would have been able to capture the tone they did without it . So I personally thought that worked . I think the tone is really what makes the film memorable . The movie's steeped in awkwardness , but , at least for most of the film's run , it isn't awkward itself . The story begins well , and the characters are excellently realized and performed . Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson play the primary caregivers to their toddler children . They grow closer as they meet repeatedly at playgrounds and the public swimming pool , and soon begin an affair . The film's major subplot deals with a recently released sex offender ( played by Jackie Earle Haley ) who is being hassled by a former police officer ( Noah Emmerich ) . Haley's loving , elderly mother ( Phyllis Somerville ) tries desperately to protect her son . The main plot and the subplot tangle together in the end , and there is an attempt to relate the subplot to the main plot ( as per screen writing 101 ) , but it feels mighty forced . In fact , pretty much everything fizzles by the film's very weak ending . The strong story that had been built up , alas , has no satisfying resolution . I still think it's mostly a very strong film , though , with great direction by Field .
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384,553 | 391,152 | 94,608 | 7 |
Painfully dated courtroom drama , but not too bad besides that
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Jodie Foster plays a woman who was raped by three men in a bar . The legal case this film covers is not about the rapists , however , but about several men who stood by and cheered it on . In that way , the brunt of the film is somewhat anticlimactic . It's based on a true story ( many details were changed , of course ) , and the conviction of the " criminal solicitors " was a precedent . The quality of the movie is like a made-for-TV movie of the week . The music is awful and most of the acting is poor ( Kelly McGillis co-stars as the prosecuting attorney , and is very weak ) . However , I did think the film was worth seeing . Jodie Foster - and I'm not a big fan - is excellent . She won the Oscar for the role . Yeah , it's the old trick of an actress de-glamming herself ( though , honestly , Foster has never been much of a glamor queen as it is ) , but she creates a real person . The character of Sarah Tobias is the only thing in the film that's anywhere near three-dimensional . The actual rape sequence , which is smartly held off until the climax of the film , is also very powerful . For its time , it's very unflinching . Niki Caro had to have used this film as a reference point for 2005's North Country . The films are very similar .
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384,842 | 391,152 | 46,750 | 7 |
Good , but too slow for my tastes
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A look at three geishas who are way past their prime . Now they look back on their pasts with fondness and bemoan their present . Kin ( played by Floating Weeds ' Haruko Sugimura ) has sworn off men and has made a good living as a moneylender ; everyone on the block owes her . The other two , Nobu and Tamae , wish they could land husbands , but are not foolish enough to believe they ever will . Meanwhile , their children - one has a son and one a daughter - are both about to get married ( not to each other ) . Tamae is irked at how much prettier her daughter has become than her , and bitterly tries to convince her not to marry the man . Nobu's concerns about her son are more legitimate in nature , but they are also ( understandably ) self-serving . After her son leaves , she'll be alone . A bit into the film , two of Kin's former clients come looking for her , one a man so obsessed with her that he tried to get her to commit double suicide with him , the other one of her handsomest clients . Unfortunately , he comes for her money , not her love . The way I've described the film makes it sound unrelentingly depressing , but it's really not . Sad , but not fatally so . It's more bittersweet . Unfortunately , I only marginally liked Late Chrysanthemums . The story seems better when I look back on it , but it is very slow and dull . I actually nodded off twice during the film , and I wasn't at all tired before I started it . This is the kind of film that I can appreciate more than like ; it reminds me very much of my reaction to a couple of Ozu's more famous films . .
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385,766 | 391,152 | 247,638 | 7 |
Surprisingly good - Anne Hathaway is going to be a huge star !
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I was completely expecting to despise this movie . The only reason I watched more than five minutes is because I was lazy . Fortunately , it turned out to be quite good . I mean , yeah , it is sort of trite . It doesn't ask for too much . You know , be yourself kind of thing . Anne Hathaway is at first provided with hair , eyebrows , and glasses that don't make her ugly at all . In fact , when she gets her magical makeover , she's no more pretty than before . So what makes this movie good ? Well , Julie Andrews , for one . It's just wonderful having her back in a movie , for God's sake . But it would be a very slight film if it weren't for Ms . Hathaway . She's a very rare breed indeed : she's Hollywood A-list material , easily one of the most beautiful faces out there . But she's also a fine actress . Her character is the typical accident-prone , romantic comedy type , but Hathaway provides her with so much character that it's difficult not to be swept off your feet . Even in scenes that were clearly terrible , she shone through . I laughed at jokes that were quite bad . Her character's growth was nothing but cliches , but she convinced me . Also of note is the excellent supporting cast : Hector Elizondo especially , but also Heather Matarazzo , so great in Welcome to the Dollhouse , and Sandra Oh , who was great in Don McKellar's film Last Night . Most people are , of course , still going to hate this movie . That's fine ? there is plenty to frown upon . Young girls will very much like it . It's very harmless . The lessons taught are all valuable ones , however cliche . .
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385,847 | 391,152 | 285,175 | 7 |
Better than it's given credit for being , though certainly far from great
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This movie was thrown out on DVD in 2005 without any real theatrical release . It's well pedigreed for such treatment , directed by famed documentarian Barbara Kopple ( Harlan County USA ) , written by late phenom Jessica Kaplan , " fixed " by famed screenwriter Stephen Gaghan ( Traffic ) and starring Anne Hathaway in her first serious role . The film is far from perfect , but it isn't nearly as bad as people have said . It's main problem is that it is undoubtedly exploitative . Hathaway and co-star Bijou Philips both get naked , the kind of naked that leaves the viewer feeling sleazy . The film is about a group of teenagers from upscale Los Angeles who like to play gangsta , pretending they're black or Latino . When Hathaway's boyfriend is threatened by a Latino drug dealer ( Freddy Rodriguez of Planet Terror ) , she is attracted to the more authentic gangsta scene . She becomes involved with Rodriguez , which leads to the titular havoc . While many of the characters are one-dimensional and uninteresting , Hathaway's is well written , and she turns in the best performance of her career up to that point . She's nearly as intriguing here as she would later be in Rachel Getting Married . Also appearing is my favorite young actor of today , Joseph Gordon-Levitt , but he has a pretty weak role , so it's not worth watching just for him .
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384,782 | 391,152 | 848,557 | 7 |
Not Romero's best by a long shot , but not nearly the failure that I had heard it was
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Romero returns to the zombie well for the fifth time . And , yes , it's gotten old now . These stumbling monsters have shown surprising resilience in the past 60 years ! Romero goes big theme hunting here , exploring the current video - and internet-obsessed youth culture , dusting off that old film-making-is-voyeurism chestnut ( with dozens of shots of characters staring daggers at whoever's operating the camera at the moment ) , but I think he fails to say anything especially interesting . Truth be told , I don't think he was particularly insightful in any of the Dead movies , save maybe the class-consciousness of the undervalued Land of the Dead . But , come on , if you really think the whole " people be acting all like zombies at the mall " thing counts as deep social commentary , you're overselling it more than just a little . But wait ! I didn't say I disliked the film . In fact , quite the opposite ! It's not Romero's best by a long shot , but the guy is a consummate filmmaker , there's no doubt . I went into this with low expectations , given the reviews , but I was entertained by it . Romero delivers on stuff like gore . You'd think he'd have imagined every possible zombie situation , but then you get stuff like a scythe through the head or hydrochloric acid eating away at a brain . The film comes off much like Blair Witch meets Night of the Living Dead , and it's about as successful as the other Blair Witch rip-off of this year , Cloverfield . It isn't as frightening as Cloverfield , but I'd say , with its more interesting characters , it's about equal .
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384,824 | 391,152 | 31,725 | 7 |
Decent , but disappointing
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I began this week with Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise , which is one of the funniest films I've ever seen . I'm also in love with Greta Garbo . Her Queen Christina is one of my favorite films . I had great expectations for Ninotchka . Unfortunately , it didn't live up to those expectations . The film begins well enough . Three Russian ambassadors get distracted from their duty by capitalist excesses in Paris , which leads their superior to send a woman , Ninotchka , to check up on them and report their activities . Ninotchka is a former soldier and is now a cold-hearted communist . She cares about nothing but facts and figures . Almost immediately , she meets up with a Parisian lawyer who just happens to be fighting her and the ambassadors in court over the ownership of some expensive jewelry . The lawyer eventually breaks through her communist armor , challenging her ideals . For nearly an hour , the film is very good . Garbo is hilarious as an almost robotic woman . After she begins to enjoy herself in Paris , the film quickly goes downhill . The film never gets bad , per se , but it's painful to watch a film that had been so humorous only moments ago become so flat . And the film is never romantic , which seems to be what Lubitsch wants . Trouble in Paradise was a hundred times more romantic . Leon , the Parisian lawyer , is kind of a jerk . At least Garbo didn't become submissive to him . That would have hurt me beyond words . She retains her grandeur throughout the film . I say , check this one out . It is too famous to ignore , and , like I said , it never becomes less than watchable . If your thoughts of it are similar to my own , please , check out Trouble in Paradise and Queen Christina . .
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385,413 | 391,152 | 379,865 | 7 |
Quite fun ; Zellweger is awful , though
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Clooney's third directorial outing , and his followup to the Oscar nominated Good Night and Good Luck . This movie is quite a bit lighter , a screwball comedy about the early days of professional football . Clooney stars as a pro football player for the Duluth Bulldogs in 1925 . The sport is not very popular at this level , but is insanely so at the college level . His plan to increase attendance and save the sport is to recruit football and war hero John Krasinski , who plays for Princeton , onto the team , though college football players rarely go on to the pros . Meanwhile , a reporter from Chicago , played by Renée Zellweger , has discovered that Krasinski's war hero story is bunk , and plans to expose him . While never hilarious , it's quite an enjoyable movie . Clooney , I think , is a more talented director than any of his three films have displayed . I think , if he ever gets his hands on a great script , he'll knock out a truly great film . He captures the period detail well , and the photography is great . I think the film would be a whole lot better without Zellweger . I'm not necessarily a Zellweger hater , but she's staggeringly awful here and drags the whole film down a notch . I like the whole fin de siecle mood . Nothing especially memorable , but a good time .
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385,958 | 391,152 | 25,134 | 7 |
Goofy , campy jungle adventure courtesy of Cecil B . DeMille
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It is included in Universal's five-disc DeMille set and is the least well known of the films , mostly because it's not an epic , the genre to which DeMille usually contributed . Claudette Colbert stars , and is , as usual , wonderful . She plays a mousy , virginal school teacher who eventually transforms into a jungle princess . Mary Boland , Herbert Marshall and William Gargan round out the cast , along with Leo Carrillo as a native who claims he is accepted as a white man because of his necktie . The film is racist as hell ( at one point the men shoot a native because they think he is a chimp who stole their rifle ) , but I tend to expect that with these kinds of movies . It's about the same as a Tarzan movie . There's some good comedy , and Colbert strips down pretty naked . The film was cut upon re-release because of its sexual content ( the version available is missing 17 minutes , at least according to IMDb ) . Either the missing footage is lost or Universal was too lazy to find and restore it .
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384,709 | 391,152 | 74,958 | 7 |
Doesn't fully fulfill its promising premise
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An interesting , ambitious , and somewhat entertaining satire of television , but one that pretty much fails for a number of reasons . It's difficult to believe almost everything that happens in it . Not one of the characters rings true . William Holden is as boring in 1976 as he was in 1955 , and his cliché relationship with Faye Dunnaway is not at all believable , and not even that interesting . Their scenes together go on forever , and Holden's character carries the trite and obvious metaphor of Dunnaway as television personified , and their relationship as soap opera far further than necessary . Dunnaway herself puts an amazing amount of energy into her performance , and she didn't not deserve the Oscar she won , if you'll excuse my double negative . But her character really is only the metaphor that Holden attributes her , so what ground can she win with that ? Beatrice Straight gives a performance that's most famous for being the shortest that ever won an Oscar , only three minutes . I didn't know who Beatrice Straight was , but it's obvious when she starts giving her big speech , so showy that she induced me to roll my eyes as many times as inches tall her Oscar is ; that must be a record , too . Robert Duvall fares the best among the major cast members , although he hasn't much of a character either . Peter Finch's performance is interesting , but his ranting gets old quick . While Howard Beale's first couple of ravings would undoubtedly raise people's interest ( the ' I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore ' scene is as great as it is famous ) , but I doubt the television show that is developed for him , which apparently airs five days a week and runs for many months before the film ends , would ever attract an audience of any kind , except maybe a small bit who have a taste for public access television , which is what it seems like . I think people , especially the kind of disenfranchised , cynical people to whom Beale's show is supposed to appeal , would be much more critical and suspicious of a man who does his show opposite a psychic and in front of stained glass window . People always refer to Network as ' prophetic , ' and then claim their proof is stuff like Jerry Springer , Hard Copy and reality television . As much as some of us may hate those kinds of television shows , only the deranged or stupid would ever believe that When Animals Attack is harmful to anybody other than those who are being attacked by animals . Does anybody really believe that anyone would ever air programs like The Ecumenical Liberation League or whatever that was ? Some of the scenes focusing on this new show which the network is developing seem to want to be comedy , although the film is too heavy-seeming to ever succeed in being comic . Anyhow , in the world of reality , in which Holden's character keeps trying to convince Dunnaway and the film's audience that the story is really happening , the network's lawyers would have stopped them immediately . I will say that the film is prescient in only one way : Ned Beatty , who appears for one scene , has the most intriguing part , where he says , among other things : " It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet . That is the natural order of things today . That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today ! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature ! And you will atone ! Am I getting through to you , Mr . Beale ? You get up on your little 21 inch screen and howl about America and democracy . There is no America . There is no democracy . There is only IBM and ITT , and AT & T , and DuPont , Dow , Union Carbide , and Exxon . Those are the nations of the world today . " It comes out of right field in the film - well , kind of . The almighty dollar is the driving force of the film , and , the film realizes correctly , the world . But what Network does not understand is how television works to propagate this system , or perhaps how it would . It's too busy finding its subject , television , overtly evil when it misses the ways it can be more subtly evil . Not that I think all TV is evil or anything . Personally , I watch a lot of television and enjoy it immensely . I don't think it is particularly wicked , and I actually think that there's a lot of great art to be found on television ( yes I do ! ) . However , most of the evil I do see comes from the news . I wasn't around in 1976 , so I can't say whether or not the news was as suspicious and creepy back then , but , if Network really had been prophetic , it would have at least got some of the satire right . .
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384,832 | 391,152 | 102,175 | 7 |
Pretty good , but a bit dated
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Definitely not one of Spike Lee's best films , and definitely a bit dated after 15 years . But it still holds some interest . It's a whole mishmash of racial issues , of the director and of the actors ( many scenes seem to be improvised ) dealing with their own thoughts . Often Lee shows his own prejudices . In 1991 at least , it doesn't seem like he thought black people and white people should be involved romantically . When Lee was promoting the film at the time , he implied that people of two different races were only attracted to each other because of stereotypes they had in mind . I think we still have a ways to go , but I think a lot of the barriers that may have been in place in 1991 have crumbled . The two main characters , played by Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra , are fairly weak . I don't think either of them are especially good actors . Snipes has always been rather mediocre . The film is much stronger with its supporting characters . Samuel L . Jackson was much lauded for his performance as a crackhead . He is very good , though I think Lee makes him a bit too humorous at times ( though certainly he is downright frightening at others ) . I also thought John Turturro was excellent as the boyfriend Sciora dumps for Snipes . Honestly , I don't think Turturro can do any wrong . The film ends on the silliest note possible . Still , I rather liked it for the most part .
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385,335 | 391,152 | 783,608 | 7 |
Well worth watching just for Woody Harrelson
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A rather forgettable mystery bolstered by a remarkable lead performance and some good supporting performances , as well . The lead is played by Woody Harrelson , in my mind one of the most undervalued actors of his generation . He plays Carter Page III , a dandy fop in Washington D . C . who spends his life escorting the wives of politicians to parties and functions that their husbands don't wish to attend . He accompanies Kristin Scott Thomas to her lover's apartment one day , and she finds him there dead . Harrelson protects Thomas from getting involved , but entangles himself in the investigation . And when he and his lover ( Moritz Bleibteu ) begin investigating on their own , they open a whole new can of worms . To me , the mystery seems pretty half-baked . I think , even at the end , I only kind of understood why the man was murdered . Director Schraeder is far more interested in the character of Carter Page III , but even when he dives headlong into character development , it can feel forced . It's mostly only because of Harrelson that the film works at all . I'd recommend the film solely for his performance . Also in the cast are Lauren Bacall , Lily Tomlin and Ned Beatty , but none of them are given all that much to do . Besides Harrelson , Thomas and Bleibtreu provide fine work .
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385,167 | 391,152 | 356,680 | 7 |
Good for the most part , but it all works out too well in the end
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Pretty good Christmastime family drama . A liberal family welcomes their son's conservative girlfriend into their home , but nothing goes right for any of them . Advertized as a comedy , the film is almost pure drama . In fact , the bulk of the comedy ? all of which was featured in the previews ? doesn't work that well ( most notably the big slapstick sequence where Sarah Jessica Parker , Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams all slip in some food ) . As drama , it is somewhat affecting . However , I hate that every little thing ends up working so perfectly by the end . I much prefer The Myth of Fingerprints , which ends in heartbreak and a family rift that might never be solved . That might have been a lot more truthful here . At least one of the plot lines could have been resolved less cleanly .
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385,824 | 391,152 | 49,516 | 7 |
A pretty good B sci-fi that anticipates Planet of the Apes
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Surprisingly good B sci-fi . John Agar and Hugh Beaumont star as archaeologists who gets trapped in a world below the Earth's crust . They discover two intelligent species there , a race of Albinos apparently descended from Sumerians and the mole people . The mole people are initially the scarier race , with their ugliness and their big claws , but the superstitious , ultra-religious ways of the albinos prove more threatening in the long run . The script is fairly intelligent , and anticipates Planet of the Apes in many ways . Yes , the B-movie production level is at times risible , and the ending is very odd ? read IMDb's trivia section for an explanation ( though avoid it if you haven't seen the film , as the one piece of trivia is an enormous spoiler ) ? but otherwise it's a fine movie . I was racking my brains to understand why it was rated so low ? only 4 . 4 ? then I figured it out : it was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 . That show really is a bane to real movie lovers . So far , this is the only film in Best Buy's sci-fi set that I've really liked besides The Incredible Shrinking Man .
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385,219 | 391,152 | 473,444 | 7 |
Visually impressive , but I wasn't that interested in the story
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I think it may be time for Zhang Yimou to give up the martial arts epic genre . Honestly , I think Hero was enough . I like his new film , Curse of the Golden Flower , about as much as House of Flying Daggers . It has its moments , and the design is absolutely fantastic , but it's not much after that . The story is one of court intrigue at the Forbidden City . Gong Li is the empress and Chow Yun Fat the emperor . She discovers that he is slowly poisoning her , and plans a coup . It takes forever for anything exciting to happen . Yeah , I love the action , I'll admit , but I would have been happy enough for a slightly more involving story . While the sets and costumes are outrageously beautiful to look at , the actual cinema isn't anything special . By the time the story does get going , it becomes a lot of fun . If you like violence , that is . If you're the kind of person to wonder how many of those soldiers and ninjas that got wasted had kids , this film probably isn't for you !
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385,612 | 391,152 | 42,958 | 7 |
Lesser Kurosawa , now available on ( a legitimate ) DV
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The new Eclipse set Postwar Kurosawa might be more accurately titled Lesser Kurosawa . I mean , Kurosawa didn't make any pre-war movies , and he only made two or three during the war . Scandal is most famous for being released the same year as Rashomon and being infinitely inferior . It's definitely one of the director's more forgettable films . In fact , I'd probably say it's my personal least favorite so far ( there are three more in this set that I haven't yet seen ) . But it's not that bad . Pretty good , really . Toshiro Mifune plays a pipe smoking , motorcycle riding painter who gets photographed by paparazzi hanging out with a famous singer ( Yoshiko " Shirley " Yamaguchi , who also starred in Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo ) . A tabloid spins the story out of control , so Mifune decides to sue . He hires pathetic failure Takashi Shimura to be his lawyer , mostly because he feels sorry for him and his daughter , who has tuberculosis . But being a weak man , Shimura is susceptible to temptations from the other side of the lawsuit . There are a few very good scenes , especially the one in the bar where Shimura has a breakdown and gets the whole place to join him in a Japanese version of Auld Lang Syne . The courtroom drama is one of my least favorite genres , and while this film mostly takes place outside of that setting , the scenes that do take place there are poor . The film includes one of my most hated clichés , that of the courtroom audience bursting into laughter and / or applause during the testimonies . The final twist is lame , too . Let's just say checks are always a bad idea when you're attempting to bribe someone .
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385,841 | 391,152 | 959,337 | 7 |
Well acted and made , but it's really just a turgid melodrama
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Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star in this film about an unhappily married couple . When they met , they were idealistic youths , but when they arrive in the suburbs , he working in sales and she a housewife , life seems dreary . The film offers no new insights on marriage or life . It is set in the 1950s , so you might think it's like , say , Far from Heaven in that it attempts to exploit the inadequacies of an era so beloved by a certain group of our society . But , no , Revolutionary Road doesn't make much of its ' 50s setting . I think it wants to be more universally about marriage . It's set in the ' 50s , I think , so there's a better reason these two people who just plain dislike each other have to stay together . So , taking place in the 1950s actually dates the problems that these couple are having for the most part . The story just doesn't feel relevant to a modern audience . Or me , at least . The film isn't that bad in the end . The acting is quite good , especially from Kate Winslet . Though I am a big fan of Michael Shannon , I found his two scenes in the movie very poorly written , mostly concerning his character , who comes off as a mere plot tool rather than a real person . The film is very gorgeous to look at , thanks to Roger Deakins , and I liked Thomas Newton's score ( he provided an even better one for Wall-E earlier in 2008 ) .
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385,034 | 391,152 | 461,770 | 7 |
Slight but quite amusing
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Not a great movie , but a delightful one . It's nice to see Disney playing with their own formula , even if it is with kids ' gloves . So many other films and TV series have ripped it apart quite meanly , but few have done it as well and as poignantly . Enchanted still wants to rely in the happily-ever-after thing in the end , but at least they acknowledge the real world here . The lead actor plays a divorce attorney , for instance . He's a single father , and for the longest time I was expecting the story of how he became a widower , but then it's revealed that his wife left him . And it's nice to see the traditional princess and damsel in distress , played by Amy Adams , become the hero during the climax . Adams is the main reason to watch . She's such a charmer . James Marsden is also quite funny as the prince who has come to rescue her , and Timothy Spall has a nice , hammy role similar to the one he also played in Sweeney Todd last year . And it's nice to see Susan Sarandon turn into a dragon . It's about time she revealed her true form to the world .
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384,951 | 391,152 | 855,824 | 7 |
Probably my least favorite Tsai film , but still very good
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This may be Tsai's first film set and made in his homeland of Malaysia , but he doesn't stray at all from Tsaiville . Which isn't much of a problem , really , if you're a fan of the director . Sure , we could complain that he's been hitting the same notes for eight features now , but there are artists in every medium that are like this . Either we get sick of it , or we like it and we stick with it . I'm sticking with Tsai . His moods and rhythms haunt my mind . He captures images like no other director , and he's definitely one auteur whose work you could identify from just one shot ( granted , you have about ten times as many frames in that one shot as you do in your average auteur's work ! ) . I Don't Want to Sleep Alone is probably my least favorite of all of his films ( all of which I've seen except his previous , The Wayward Cloud ? I've seen the first five minutes and am aching to finish it ) . This is mostly because I wasn't too sure what was going on through much of it . The plot seems to concern a young Chinese man ( played by Tsai's boytoy / regular Lee Kang-sheng ) who gets beaten senseless in Kuala Lumpur . A construction worker saves him and nurses him back to health , mostly with lustful intentions . But when the Chinese man is up and about , he goes off and sleeps with some women , which understandably pisses off his savior . Then there was a bunch of stuff I didn't quite understand , notably a guy in a coma ( also played by Lee Kang-sheng ) . A lot of my favorite shots involved that guy , but I'm not 100 % sure what was going on in that plot line . The images here are top notch , and though there is little dialogue , Tsai's use of sound ? and music ? is wonderful . Much as Tsai uses Taipei , Kuala Lumpur is an area of urban alienation . Late in the film smoke drifts over from a nearby Sumatran forest fire , covering the city with a thick haze . Many of the scenes are set in a crumbling building ( not quite sure what this was all about , really ) , which reminds me of the post-apocalyptic landscape in my favorite Tsai film , The Hole . I actually think I might have enjoyed this more had I watched it when I was less tired . Unfortunately , I'm not sure I want to give it another chance with the awful DVD , courtesy of Strand Releasing . It's cropped , for one thing . The image also looks a lot less crisp than any of Tsai's other films , though that may have been his stylistic choice this time around .
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384,904 | 391,152 | 923,752 | 7 |
Loved it - but then discovered that it was completely fabricated
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This is the kind of documentary that makes me really dislike the entire medium . I tell you , I hate to say that , because when I was watching it , it seemed like an amazing movie . I love the picture of the competitive video gaming subculture , and it tells a compelling story about a lovable , meek fellow battling against a debonair villain and an evil empire . This was the only documentary ever to bring a tear to my eye ( well , okay , let's not count ones about the holocaust and other such horrors ) . The problem is , I found out the day after , the underdog story was completely fabricated . Seth Gordon manipulates facts and events ridiculously . I suspected that there might be some manipulation while watching it , but Gordon is really inventing a fictional story involving real people . Which must suck for some of the people , especially video game champion Billy Mitchell , whom the film makes look like an utter jerk . Some of his meanness might have been real , for all I know , but with all the stuff I now know Gordon did to make him look worse , you can't trust the movie whatsoever . The real story isn't bad , and if Gordon had stuck to the facts and not tried to create a gamer version of Pumping Iron ( which at least never made any pretenses about not being phony ) , it wouldn't have irked me so much . The depiction of the subculture and the detail into which the film explores Donkey Kong still make it worthwhile .
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385,411 | 391,152 | 44,672 | 7 |
The film is about as entertaining as a real circus , i . e . , it's moderately entertaining
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DeMille's Best Picture winning circus epic , generally considered one of the worst winners of the big prize . I have to admit that DeMille's films are a guilty pleasure of mine . He's really an awful director , maybe the single worst of the major Hollywood directors , ham-fisted and in love with giant , fake-looking spectacle and bland performances . But his films provide me with some cheesy fun , and I do enjoy me some spectacle . The Greatest Show on Earth provides it nicely . It focuses on Barnum and Bailey's Circus . Charlton Heston plays the manager of the circus , who is one of those classic " business always first " type of characters . He has a romantic relationship with the show's trapeze star , played by Betty Hutton . But he jeopardizes the relationship in the name of business when he hires Italian playboy Cornel Wilde to take center ring from her . Enter the love triangle . Or love square , if you count Gloria Grahame , who tries to move in on Heston . Also in the mix are Jimmy Stewart as a clown who is hiding something and Dorothy Lamour as , well , Dorothy Lamour . She's not given much to do , although during her big musical number there's a cute cameo by Crosby and Hope . The story may not be all that interesting ( although I liked the Hutton-Heston-Wilde triangle ) , but it's pretty to look at . The costumes and cinematography are fine . So it's not one of the worst Best Picture winners , but certainly a mediocre one . I do prefer it to its two more famous competitors for that title , High Noon and The Quiet Man . Eh , maybe not The Quiet Man , but I don't have much love for that one , though I should try it again some day .
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384,594 | 391,152 | 25,523 | 7 |
Uneven melodrama , but it ends up being fairly good
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Pauline Lord plays Mrs . Wiggs , a poor , single mother whose husband is supposedly up looking for gold in the Klondike . She has five children , one of whom is very sickly . They have almost no money and their landlord is about to give them the boot , but luckily a benevolent rich couple takes an interest in them . Sometimes the relationship between the Wiggs and these two works out well . The couple's deeds seem sincere most of the time . But at odd times their behavior seems , well , not reprehensible , exactly , but questionable . It's almost as if they're treating the Wiggs as pets . How should we feel when the woman , Lucy , brings them a couple of baskets containing Thanksgiving dinner . Nice , yes , but does Lucy really have to be wearing a $5000 outfit made almost exclusively of fox fur ? I suppose this element didn't mean anything to those who were suffering through the Depression : Lucy was nice and that's that . From this vantage point , though , I don't know ; my knee jerked a little . The melodrama kind of fades near the end as good ol ' W . C . Fields wanders into the picture . He plays a sort of a mail-order husband to Mrs . Wiggs ' neighbor , Ms . Hazy ( well played by Greed star Zasu Pitts ) . Fields is as humorous as ever , and there's a very amusing scene where the Wiggs family helps Ms . Hazy trick him into thinking she's a great cook . Donald Meek ( best known as the whiskey salesman from Stagecoach a few years later ) shows up in a quick role that doesn't work out too well . .
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385,296 | 391,152 | 109,781 | 7 |
Interesting adaptation of Faust
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Personally , I like this film . It's an imaginitive adaptation , and it definitely begs to be seen . I think , though , that Jan Svankmajer fans are likely to be disappointed . People unfamiliar with his work are likely to hate it . Now , I'm no expert in his work . I've seen three shorts and his version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , just called Alice in the U . S . The three shorts are all masterpieces in their own ways ( my favorite being The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia ) and Alice is a near-masterpiece . Faust is not nearly as inventive as those other works . Svankmajer is known as a stop-motion animator , but his Faust contains little animation . The animation that there is is universally stunning . I will bet that any fan of the medium will just love the sequence with the baby , and will probably wish that it were longer . Actually , the medium that is most abundant in Faust is marionettes . Most of the film is live action , as well . The marionettes are often replaced with actors wearing gigantic papier-mache heads . This isn't as interesting as stop-motion animation , but it still works . Some of the puppets can be annoying , especially the jester . I believe that the puppet characters are done in the kind of exaggerated style familiar to puppet shows . .
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385,672 | 391,152 | 839,980 | 7 |
Not Ferrell's best work , but still pretty funny
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Another Will Ferrell sports movie . Sigh , right ? Personally , I think the guy's funny . And I think his vehicles are funnier than most comedies being made right now . The previous one , Blades of Glory , I thought was completely undervalued . Semi-Pro , unfortunately , is a step down . It's not bad , to be sure . I laughed plenty , and I'd give it a moderate recommendation . Ferrell fans should definitely take it in . They won't be sorry they did . But there just aren't enough great jokes to make it a must-see comedy . And you know that when there aren't a ton of great jokes 90 % of the good ones you've already seen in the commercials . There's a lot of half-baked material , too . I think , for instance , that Will Arnet's character was particularly hilarious , but they just don't give him enough to do . Ditto Matt Walsh , who plays a pastor moonlighting as a referee . Good jokes to be made there , but they are given a pass .
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385,721 | 391,152 | 381,849 | 7 |
The original is in general better
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I guess you can't complain too much that they remade 3 : 10 to Yuma . After all , the original is a pretty shameless rip-off of High Noon . As much as a rip-off as it is , though , I thought it was better than High Noon . And , while Delmer Daves ' original is fantastic , it's not like it's perfect or anything . It can be improved upon , I suppose . Unfortunately , James Mangold's remake doesn't improve upon it , except for maybe one bit , which I'll get to in a minute . The remake adds over 20 minutes , but it doesn't bother to flesh out the characters . In fact , the roles are flatter here than they were in the original . The extra plot points are unnecessary . They should especially have excised an entire sequence in which Luke Wilson makes a cameo . Not only does that sequence have the distracting , " Hey , look ! That's Luke Wilson " factor , it just doesn't add anything . It has been a while since I've seen the original , but , as I recall , it was pretty close to a real-time thriller , with Dan Evans guarding Ben Wade until the 3 : 10 arrives for most of the film . This is only a short portion of the new one . It is the best portion , though . It doesn't solve the problems of the original , although I don't personally consider the characters ' actions too problematic in either version , as many people do . The reason that the remake might be worth seeing is the ending . It's quite a bit different than the original ( unless I'm misremembering ) , and it brings the story to a higher level than the original achieved . As for the acting , it's mostly passable . But again it pales in comparison to the original . Both Van Heflin and Glenn Ford have some great movies and performances to their names , but I think 3 : 10 to Yuma was the peak of both their careers . I'm not a huge fan of either Christian Bale or Russell Crowe , but they've both done better . Crowe is great in that final sequence , however . As for the other actors , most are not worth remembering . I did really like the kid who played Dan Evans ' son , Logan Lerman . Watch for him in the future . And Ben Foster can add his name to the list of the classic superbad henchman characters in Westerns . He was wonderfully evil . I probably sounded like I didn't like the film much . That's not true . It's just that it's not as good as its predecessor , which , to me , means it doesn't have much reason to exist .
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385,028 | 391,152 | 96,256 | 7 |
Not one of John Carpenter's best , in my opinion
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Some find it to be so , but to me it feels almost like a throw-off . Too simplistic . But that doesn't mean it isn't entertaining . Roddy Piper , the WWF wrestler , plays a drifter who stumbles upon a huge secret : the powerful elite on Earth are really aliens who exploit the working man . They are disguised as people , but with a pair of special sunglasses , he can see which ones are which . Without a second's worth of questioning , he grabs a shotgun and starts blasting away at every one of the ugly s . o . b . ' s . It's silly , but entertainingly so . As an action picture , it's serviceable . Unfortunately , there are long stretches where nothing much happens , and it takes forever for the plot to start moving , instead treating the whole thing as a mystery for about a half-hour , which Carpenter executes badly . By the time Piper starts to see the aliens , I was the only person of four watching it left awake .
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385,820 | 391,152 | 154,683 | 7 |
Interesting , but I wish it were better
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The kind of film that sounds really exciting , and is interesting , but you wish it were a bit better than it is . Its reputation is based mostly on the final 40 minutes , where all the characters take a vacation to the bowels of Buddhist Hell ( pretty much like Christian Hell , but with more lotus flowers ) . The first hour or so isn't much less hellish . A college student and his wicked friend mow down a drunk gangster in their car . The student , burdened with guilt ( somewhat nonsensical guilt seeing as it wasn't his fault ) , starts seeing tragedy occur all around him . In just the next several days , all kinds of people with whom he associates die . It's never his fault , per se , but for some reason he always blames himself . That first hour is a little boring and a little confusing ? I was wondering if the guy was supposed to already be in hell . The hell part is pretty cool , but also fairly silly . What always works in Jigoku is the cinematography and art direction . This is a damn cool looking movie . I wouldn't particularly recommend it , but it's worth seeing just for the cool parts .
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385,812 | 391,152 | 71,221 | 7 |
Were you also cheesed when Jim Kelly bought it in such a crappy way in Enter the Dragon ?
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Well here's a movie for you ! Black Belt Jones is a must for aficionados of martial arts films , blaxpoitation films , and cult films in general . It boasts probably the funniest opening fight scene that I've ever seen ( unintentional or not ? it's difficult to tell in this film ; I have an acute feeling that everyone was just joking around and having a lot of fun ) , in which Jim Kelly aka Black Belt Jones ( one of the greatest character names in cinema history , to be sure ) ends the thing by shooting a bullet into a man's ass . It also boasts maybe the only fight scene where Scatman Crothers kicks some butt . And a scene where Jim Kelly kicks about a dozen guys out of train windows . And a set piece where everyone battles it out in a car wash with bubbly soap covering the scenery . The guy who plays Sidney also played the young black kid in The Omega Man , the one whom Charlton Heston tried to save . It also contains more abuse to the testicles than any film I've ever seen - none of the good guys have any qualms in the least about attacking the male package . If you see it with a bunch of guys , expect loud groaning all through the film . However much camp value there is , it does grow old during the course of the film . It's still a funny and distracting film .
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385,376 | 391,152 | 16,123 | 7 | null |
This is a bizarre little horror / comedy , mostly a comedy , the horror aspects almost parody . Lon Chaney has the top billing , but he's the evil adversary to a group of three , the leader being an amateur detective far too reminiscent of the previous year's Sherlock Jr . by the great Buster Keaton . He carries around a book called How to Be a Detective , and there are frequent zoom-ins which underline certain passages in the book . This is the ancestor to the type of film where a group of normal people are abducted into a strange house with a strange owner . As for the film's quality , its humor is generally on target , but it is never all that funny . A lot of giggles , but I never laughed out loud . It is often very slow moving , but it has a few wonderful set pieces and suspense scenes . Lon Chaney's villain is pretty entertaining ; I really wish they would have had more of him . There's much more footage of his evil henchman . The climactic scene is excellent .
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385,839 | 391,152 | 859,765 | 7 |
Gorgeous pictures , but uninteresting characters
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Zhang Ke Jia is a director who produces mixed feelings in me . On the one hand , I think he's a fantastic filmmaker as far as the technical aspects go , but I think his writing is pretty generic , especially when it comes to his characters , and he often relies on some hoary art movie clichés . Still Life is no exception , though it probably ranks as my favorite of Jia's films so far . Its worth is perhaps the result of a lucky accident more than anything . During the creation of the monumental Three Gorges Dam project in China , Jia filmed this movie while a city was being disassembled before it was to be flooded . Therefore , you get these beautiful , eerie scenes of this decaying , emptying city . The bifurcated story follows two characters , a man and a woman , as they seek for their ex-wife and current ( but estranged ) husband respectively . Structurally , it's kind of weird , because the woman's story pops up randomly in the middle of the man's story and has no relation to it . After her story ends , the film returns to the man and finishes his . I like the stories , but the characters are rather bland . I kept looking past them to the dreamy images behind .
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385,449 | 391,152 | 758,746 | 7 |
One of the better Friday the 13th movies
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I don't think anyone was particularly angry about this " remake " . Every Friday the 13th is pretty much a remake of Halloween anyway . One of them just takes place in space , that's all . So , yeah , you pretty much know what to expect here . Sexy teens ( who totally deserve to die ) stumble upon abandoned Camp Crystal Lake , where they discover that there's a hulking mongoloid with a machete hanging around . Jason has changed a little . He's a little more human , less zombie . He can walk at normal speeds and even run . He's smarter - perhaps too smart . I think that'll be the biggest complaint from fans . Jason sets traps , shoots arrows and utilizes fire in this one . It didn't bother me much , and I thought this was one of the better entries into the series . It's decently tense , and well made ( despite the image sometimes moving too fast and being unclear ) . The chicks are hot , and they have , as one male character points out at one point , " perfect nipple placement " . The kills are nasty and mostly pretty inventive . There are definitely a couple I think'll be fan favorites . Jason's a little too attached to his machete .
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384,756 | 391,152 | 63,115 | 8 |
Hilarious Peter Sellers Vehicle
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This is a very funny send up of the flower child generation . Peter Sellers plays an uptight , Jewish lawyer who falls for one of his hippie brother's girlfriends . After that , he descends into hippiedom . The film is filled with some of the funniest scenes around . The funniest part of the movie is Sellers as a hippie with hair down around his cheeks and psychedelic clothing , but still wearing horn-rimmed glasses . The musical score , which uses sitars as satire , is really great , too . It's very much worth seeing , although it overstays its welcome . Its humorous observations ( and imaginations ) about hippies get a bit repetitive in the film's second half . .
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385,825 | 391,152 | 28,219 | 8 |
Quite fun , actually ; a nice companion piece to the 1941 masterpiece
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The second version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon came in the wake of the big success of a cinematic adaptation of another of the author's novels , The Thin Man . So here we get a comic version starring a wise-cracking gentleman , Warren William ( who had played Julius Caesar in DeMille's Cleopatra ) . The comedy is sometimes desperate . It's played WAY over the top . If they had toned in down a tad , and maybe got William Powell instead of Warren William , it would have been a great film . Which would have been terrible because then , if it had been a success , Warner Brothers wouldn't have deigned to remake it five years later . We wouldn't have the 1941 masterpiece , John Huston's career might have went an entirely different way , and film noir wouldn't have developed as we know it . Film history might look damn different just because of this goofy little adaptation ! It's generally considered the worst of the three adaptations , but I really liked it . It's a heck of a lot better than the stale ' 31 version , and it stands as a nice little companion piece to the ' 41 version . A couple of the actors I really liked , notably Alison Skipworth in the Gutman role ( all character names have been changed , by the way , but I'll keep to the originals ) , Arthur Treacher as Cairo , and Maynard Holmes as Wilmer ( shockingly uncredited where several less important characters were ! ) . The best of the best , though : Marie Wilson in the Effie role . Oh . You thought I was going to say Bette Davis . Nah . She's probably the least of the three Brigids . The secretary role is expanded a bit , and she's almost made Spade's love interest . Wilson gives a very cute comic performance . Well worth checking out .
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384,797 | 391,152 | 95,652 | 8 |
I liked it ! ( and I was pretty damn close to loving it ! )
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Surprisingly good . I was very entertained throughout , and I actually found it quite scary at times . The story is very silly , but in a fun way . A quadriplegic man is given a helper monkey that has been heavily experimented on . It's super smart , and starts to develop a psychic connection with the man . The monkey is able to read his mind , and he in turn takes in some of her primitive rage . This eventually leads to the monkey murdering those with whom he becomes angry . At times the movie is campy , but during the last half hour it becomes quite an effective horror movie . I like Romero as a director , but have not found much in his movies that I've actually been frightened at . Monkey Shines , although it often uses a cheap " boo " tactic , made me jump more than once . All that really takes is a sharp sting in the score ( or a high-pitched monkey squeal ) , but Romero develops the tension so well here that those scares really hit me . The climactic scene is unintentionally hilarious , but it's a moment of hilarity that I will always cherish . Underrated and well worth watching .
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385,032 | 391,152 | 842,929 | 8 |
Van Sant extends his stay as the laureate of the American art film
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Gus Van Sant continues his trend of making dreamy , artsy mood-pieces with Paranoid Park , a film about a skateboarding teen who accidentally causes the death of a security guard . In some ways , it almost feels like a continuation of Elephant , where kids are shot walking through school hallways in slow motion ( here photographed by the legendary Christopher Doyle ) , and their actions and reactions are observed quietly . No , no literal shooting in those hallways this time , thank God , just the thick sense of guilt weighing down on young Alex ( Gabe Nevins ) . From what I had read about this film , I had gathered that it was about a disaffected teenager who doesn't really care about the death he caused ( and , reading some words written over Paranoid Park , it seems that that is a common interpretation , which I think is entirely incorrect ) . Van Sant thankfully isn't going the " don't teenagers suck ? " route that many filmmakers would probably go . Alex is depicted as a boy wounded , and who understands what he has wrought . Van Sant perfectly captures that high school feeling of being lost in your own life , visualized in gorgeous footage of skateboarders dreamily gliding up ramps and walls . The chronology is disassembled , but not quite in the same , Béla Tarr-inspired way as it was in the director's previous two films . Disassembled chronology is becoming quite a cliché nowadays , but a director like Van Sant knows how to use it , how it adds to the mood and meaning of the picture .
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384,828 | 391,152 | 109,020 | 8 |
My spoilers , I should say , are pretty much spoiled by the film's opening scrawl
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This strikes me as Haneke's least successful film . Still , it's more than worthwhile , and I would still nearly call it great . Several different , seemingly random stories are mixed together . We watch vignettes of varying length . Among them are the stories of a homeless Romanian boy who has illegally crossed into Austria , a lovingly married couple adopting a new foster child , another married couple at odds with each other , an old man starved for attention , and a group of frustrated college students . We are told at the beginning that one of these students will murder three people at a bank , and we immediately realize that at least some of the other people we have met will be at that bank . I'm not sure how I feel about this technique ; I'm certainly a bit conflicted . And I'm not 100 % sure what I'm supposed to get out of this all . I guess it's always worth being reminded of the unpredictability of life and that at any moment we could disappear from this Earth . Interspersed between the various stories there also appear long clips of the evening news , where various atrocities and tragedies are reported in a manner that desensitizes its audience to them . And the climactic event pops up right alongside them . Which of course reminds us also that these atrocities happen to real people , a fact that's so easily forgotten when watching the 10 o'clock news . Structurally , the film is brilliant . It is similar to what Altman was doing with Nashville . Haneke would improve upon this film with Code Unknown , which stands as my favorite of his films and perhaps as my favorite film of the current decade .
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385,386 | 391,152 | 80,360 | 8 |
Bizarre and eerie
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Bizarre cinematic head-trip that is far better and more entertaining than anyone could guess from a description . I put it on my Netflix queue without realizing it was directed by Ken Russell . If I had seen that earlier , I would have avoided it . Thankfully I didn't . It contains everything that is good about Russell , that is , his crazy imagery , and none of the bad stuff . That is , it's not an enormous bore . The script was written by Paddy Chayefsky , based on his own novel . Not the writer you would associate with horror or sci-fi , which is the proper genres to which Altered States belongs . He disowned the film before he even saw a cut of it , despite the fact that Russell was contractually obligated not to change a word of the script . The greatest asset of the film is the fantastic acting . William Hurt makes his screen debut as a mad scientist , a Harvard professor , actually , who is experimenting with sensory deprivation , mixed with some choice hallucinogens . He hopes to lose his modern mind in the sensory deprivation tank and regress to a primitive state . Unfortunately , some mushrooms that he finds in Mexico help him regress not only mentally , but physiologically . Blair Brown plays his estranged and worried wife , and Charles Haid and Bob Balaban ( love the Balaban ! ) play colleagues who help Hurt do his experiments . The plot is silly , but it's legitimately eerie and frightening , thanks to Russell's surprisingly excellent direction . The film ends up in territory very reminiscent of 2001 : A Space Odyssey , but I thought it all worked pretty well . Drew Barrymore makes her film debut at age 5 , and also keep an eye out for John Larroquette .
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385,703 | 391,152 | 83,694 | 8 |
If not as good as if . . . and O Lucky Man , that doesn't mean it is worthless
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This film completes the Mick Travis trilogy , of which the first two installments are if ? ( 1968 ) and O Lucky Man ( 1973 ) . You could say either that Britannia Hospital has little to do with the other two films or a lot . It depends on how you look at it . The political viewpoints are similar , but the style is much different . The three movies remind me much of Tati's first three Hulot films in the way they differ between each other while having interconnected themes . This would be Anderson's Playtime , in that , much like Hulot in Playtime , Mick Travis ( Malcolm McDowell ) becomes just one of a million different characters . Calling Britannia Hospital Anderson's Playtime oversells the film , unfortunately . The film does not work quite as well as if ? and O Lucky Man , both of which are masterpieces , in my estimation . Britannia Hospital feels like it ought to be a masterpiece . There are just so many flashes of genius . You see images and scenes that Federico Fellini or Luis Buñuel would have killed to come up with , and the film's liberal politics , while definitely somewhat confusing , are far more potent than anything Godard ever put forward . It also contains one moment of gorgeous eroticism , when Malcolm McDowell is changing clothes and a nurse gently cups both of his buttocks from behind . By the end , though , instead of being moved I was rather scratching my head . The film would probably benefit if I were to watch all three installments in a row , because there are apparently a lot of characters that are shared between them ( I only recognized Mick Travis and Professor Millar ; it's been over two years since I've seen the other films ) . But , then again , seeing how this film has been completely tossed aside by so many people , I'm hardly the only one who is confused . On the other hand , a film with so much ambition and power ought never to be shoved aside . Its dismissal is more than a little unjustified .
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385,530 | 391,152 | 52,572 | 8 |
Good final chapter .
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I have commented on both pather Panchali and Aparajito previously . After many months , I finally got to World of Apu , the final episode of the trilogy . To recap , Pather Panchali = , absolutely perfect , one of the best films ever made . Aparajito = , had a few problems , but still a thoroughly involving and beautiful film . The World of Apu I give the same rating that I did for Aparajito , . For the most part , again , it was involving and beautiful . I however have a couple of problems with the film . SPOILERSAs I complained in my review of Aparajito , when tragedies arise in this series , they tend to repeat themselves . I was most affected by the first two of these major tragedies . The third one , at the beginning of Aparajito , affected me a lot , although its power was diminished . By the fourth one , I knew it was coming from miles away , and I felt unaffected . Now the major tragedy in this film seems a bit contrived . I think the development between Apu and his wife was incredibly powerful . The situation which led them to be married lends to a lot of interesting options . The option that was chosen , to kill his wife off , was definitely the wrong one . I am actually hypothesizing that the novel had some more episodes , or at least some more fleshed-out episodes , than does the final film . The events of The World of Apu , at least after the tragedy , seem crammed into a short period of time . It never feels like five years have passed . Still , this is a great movie . Though I stick by these complaints , the film as it stands is very worth watching , since , once you have watched Pather Panchali , one of the very best films ever made , you cannot help but watch Aparajito and The World of Apu .
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384,879 | 391,152 | 32,553 | 8 |
Pretty good Chaplin film with extraordinarily powerful final moments
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I once caught about a 20 minute portion of this movie on Turner Classic Movies about 6 months back . I thought every minute of what I was watching was gold , and , because it was somewhere in the film's middle and I didn't want to spoil the whole thing if I were to watch it from the start , I decided that I would rent it immediately . Well , the video store which I frequent did not have a copy , so it took me six months to finally go somewhere else and rent it . I had previous to that experience only seen some Chaplin shorts , funny but not greatly artful , but after I saw the snippet of The Great Dictator , I checked out three of his other films , City Lights , The Gold Rush , and Modern Times ( City Lights was great , I found the Gold Rush a little overrated , but still worthwhile , and I found Modern Times to be one of the funniest films I've ever seen ( second funniest , behind Keaton's Sherlock Jr . , more exactly ) . Finally , the whole of the Great Dictator . Well , to be honest , it had its moments , both of comedy and of drama . But these moments don't always mix well . Chaplin's comedy worked well when mixed with melodrama ( City Lights is the best example of this ) , but it didn't always work with social commentary . Plus , the fact that there was dialogue lessened the impressiveness of Chaplin's talent . Don't get me wrong , I liked the movie as a whole , but I thought it of little consequence . I would have given it a solid on the ratings scale . . . if not for the ending . The final speech that the Jewish barber gives is enormously powerful . Yes , it is adressed to the tempora et mores of 1940 , but his message is perfectly applicable to the world today . The speech brought me to tears , and I consider it one of the best endings I've ever seen . Final score : .
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385,887 | 391,152 | 23,876 | 8 |
Although not the best film of 1933 , certainly not an unworthy Best Picture winner
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A sloppy but beautiful British family saga chronicling the lives of two families , the Marryots and the Bridges , the former upper class and the latter their servants , from the end of the 19th Century up to 1933 . A few major events are portrayed . At the beginning of the film , the patriarchs of the two families go off to fight the Boer War . Much later on in the film we experience WWI , and in between we see the Titanic sink . The film is filled to the brink with good characters , all of them being portrayed by very good actors , as well . There are a few very bad scenes , most notably the one on the Titanic ( I know it was an important event in this time period , but it's handled very poorly and predictably in the screenplay ) . The final speech , a necessary element in every film of this sub-genre , is particularly bad , too . The film ends during a worldwide depression , and there is a half-attempt to provide the audience with hope . Unfortunately , there is none to be found . I would have hated to be an audience member at this film in 1933 ! The many good scenes do far outweigh the bad ones , though . There are a couple that are really masterful . The very long montage that paints a portrait of WWI is gorgeously done , and appropriately harrowing . The scene in which the matriarch of the Marryot family watches her youngest son go off to war is exquisite . After he leaves , she attempts to light a cigarette . At that moment , a young nurse and a wounded man in a stretcher pass by ; the nurse lights a cigarette for the wounded man . The match goes out between the matriarch's fingers as she stares at them . This very economical scene expresses both the cold fear she has for her son and the ways in which the boundaries between the classes were fading . The theme of class in Cavalcade is important , although I wish it had been developed further . Early in the film , the Bridges family moves away and amasses something of a fortune of their own . As history marches on , we do see the class lines falter a bit . Cavalcade may actually have been an influence on none other than Jean Renoir , at least in The Grand Illusion . That film also deals with the melding of the classes as a result of wars . There is one scene in Cavalcade that is simply too close to one in The Grand Illusion to be a coincidence . A theater show is interrupted to announce that the Boer War is over and that the troops are coming back . Together , the audience members stand up and begin singing . It looks very much like the scene where the P . O . W . s sing " The Marseilles " in The Grand Illusion . .
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385,636 | 391,152 | 47,840 | 8 |
Very funny , if you can stand Jerry Lewis
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I had never seen a Jerry Lewis vehicle before this one ( not counting Scorsese's King of Comedy ) , and I was annoyed as hell for the first fifteen minutes . I even considered walking out , that's how irate I was getting at Lewis ' mugging . But then there was a scene in which he was hilarious , so I hung onto it a bit . And it got funnier and funnier . Jerry Lewis isn't getting a clean bill of health from me ; he still annoyed me once in a while . But in at least an equal amount of scenes , and probably a bit more , he was very funny . He and Dean Martin play " roommates " who met each other way back when they were Boy Scouts , sleep in separate twin beds in the same room , take baths with the door open , and at one point talk about getting a divorce . At one point the semi-retarded Lewis ( and he admits as much himself ) says to Martin : " I can't keep my dickie down , Ricky . " Um , he's putting on a tuxedo I think . Similarly , Dorothy Malone lives in the apartment directly above them , unmarried with thick , black glasses and earning a good living on her own . She spends her time dressing the barely adult Shirley MacLaine , who has a cute little butch cut , up as the Bat Lady . The homosexual content seems to me almost too obvious to be meant . It's usually much subtler in Hollywood movies of the era . Then again , it's impossible to miss it , even you're a 1950s housewife . Eventually , the two gay couples meet and change partners , Martin getting Malone and Lewis MacLaine . MacLaine , in her second ( or maybe third ) role , is probably the film's standout , but Eddie Mayehoff , playing a comic book publisher who wants ever more violent comic books to sell , lands the highest percentage of the laughs . Eva Gabor has a decent part as a Soviet spy ( a Cold War plotline appears out of thin air in the latter half of the film ) , and Anita Ekberg , later to co-star in Fellini's La Dolce Vita , also has a tiny role as a model . The non-Lewis related comedy is frivolous but excellent . The film also contains several great musical numbers . Dean Martin at one point starts dancing with a little girl on the street in a scene stolen from An American in Paris . The girl , though , is an excellent back-up singer and the song itself - I believe it's called " The Lucky Song " - is quite entertaining . .
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384,848 | 391,152 | 105,151 | 8 |
My pick for Robert Altman's worst film
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Well , maybe I can't say that . There are plenty I haven't seen , and , well , Popeye at least has to be worse . The Player is one of the bitterest , most heavy-handed satires ever made . The sad part is that the focus of Altman's attack is not even close to being completely culpable for the crap it churns out . The cinema is an industry . It has to make money or it will go out of business . The crumminess of most movies only exists because the American public is made up of swine : they want to root in troughs and walk through feces . And it is so expensive to make movies nowadays , that , if a movie doesn't make money , it could destroy many people . Of course , with Hollywood's willingness to bow to the lowest common denominator , it works as a downward spiral . It's getting harder and harder to insult America's intelligence nowadays . Pearl Harbor is # 1 at the box office , and plenty of people attest to its greatness . Heck , Shrek , a pile of crap , is being touted , even by critics , as a great piece of filmmaking . What's worse , the media works as a catalyst to it all , angling all reports of success around the money which is made . For an intellectual like Altman to be mad at Hollywood is pointless . Be mad at America . Instead of making The Player , about people just doing their job , why not make a Nashville-style ensemble piece about the idiocy of the common man . They're not going to see it anyway .
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385,642 | 391,152 | 54,460 | 8 | null |
At least as good a Shakespeare adaptation as Throne of Blood , though nowhere near Ran , The Bad Sleep Well is a Japanese Hamlet set in the present . It is especially worth seeing because it contains Kurosawa's best black and white cinematography , better than Rashomon , The Seven Samurai , Throne of Blood , or Yojimbo . Unfortunately , Toshiro Mifune was never lamer in a Kurosawa epic ( although all the other actors are superb ) , and its epic length also detracts from its overall effect . Still , if you're a Kurosawa fan , you really shouldn't forget this great film .
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384,999 | 391,152 | 120,448 | 8 |
Well worth seeing
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I was wary of this one . It seemed a lot like this trend in recent world cinema that I don't like , where the camera observes unemployed losers who do little besides screw , smoke , and ride around on mopeds not looking for jobs . These films rarely provide any interesting insights , or even interesting characters . So the subject matter had me prejudiced against this movie from the start . Fortunately , Dumont does have some insight into these people . I wouldn't say it's a lot of insight , nor would I say that the film has much new to say . However , the characters come off as real people . A couple of minor complaints : I thought that the lead actress , Marjorie Cottreel , was far too beautiful to fit in with the rest of this picture . And the hardcore sex scenes were entirely unnecessary . And I didn't need to see Mom's vagina , either .
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384,910 | 391,152 | 32,599 | 8 |
It's difficult to dislike
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When people tell me that classical Hollywood films do not appeal to them , I understand it . Except for Citizen Kane , that is . It's hard to argue in any case with that film . But if someone says " I don't like Casablanca , " I can understand that . Not that I don't like Casablanca . I like it quite a lot . It's just that , well , as much as I like Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart , I just don't think that their skills as actors are very high ( well , Bergman's good , while I would pick any number of actresses from foreign films or silent films or more modern films ) . This is because I do not think true acting , at least for the American talkies , came about until the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando . Acting before seems only to have been born from the style of acting you see in the theater . I have never been a huge fan of the theater because of this same reason . Actors act only with their voices . They have to get what they are saying heard , so nothing ever sounds sincere . There are so few silent moments . His Girl Friday is a great example of this . There is not a second where people aren't talking a mile a minute . Even when the dialogue is great , it starts to grate on your patience . But this is just a small criticism of mine . Although I would completely sympathize with someone disliking this film , I liked it a lot . Even if the dialogue does grate , it is still great . And the actors , even if they do act as if they're on a stage and not as if they were human beings , are very good . Cary Grant is always great to watch . His abilities are effortless . I could never imagine him in a serious role ( I'm sure he had to have had a few ; my only other Cary Grant experiences are two of his Hitchcock films : To Catch a Thief and North By Northwest ) . He's a lot like Bogart , and any number of other stars ( as opposed to actors ) , whose persona is so fun that we go along with him wherever he goes . Rosalind Russel is an actress I've never seen before . If I ever do , I won't be able to see much beyond the persona she establishes as Hildy Johnson . She may have been a very popular actress , for all I know , but even if this were her first film , she holds her own with Grant . The supporting character actors , especially the other newsmen , the gangster , the sheriff , the mayor , etc , are all very good . My only other complaint is that the few dramatic moments in the film tend to work against the overall comedic mood of the picture . The entire execution part of the plot seems almost as if it is from another movie . And especially the suicide attempt of Molly Malloy ( what a terrible name , by the way ) hurts the film . In fact , the rest of the movie is so good , that it almost cancels out these creaks . Almost . .
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385,059 | 391,152 | 65,146 | 8 |
A beautiful film
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This unknown film is a real gem . I wasn't expecting much , since Claude Lelouch has kind of a weak reputation ( I do love his version of Les Miserables , though ) , but , I figured that Jean-Paul Belmondo is always reason enough to see a film . Definitely , he pushes it far beyond what it could have been otherwise , but also helping him is the wonderful performance of Annie Girardot , an actress about whom I know not a thing , and the great but modest direction of Lelouch . The film begins as if it were going to be one of those run-of-the-mill French dramas where married people cheat on each other . After a while , though the two new lovers go on a cross-country trip from L . A . to NYC ( although they don't quite make it there in their rented car ) . What I would compare this film most to is Linklater's Before Sunrise . I give the film an .
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384,783 | 391,152 | 87,985 | 8 |
Despite its goofy , paranoid plot , it's a good movie
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Infamous piece of right-wing paranoia , involving a group of teens fighting a guerrilla war against invading Russians , Cubans and Nicaraguans . It's a joke of a film , one of those you'd only watch if you want to see a movie that's so bad it's good , right ? Well , no , actually . If you can look past the ridiculousness of the setup , it's a good movie . A darn good movie , really . Milius , most famous for being the screenwriter for Apocalypse Now and the director of Conan the Barbarian , may not be the best director who ever lived , but he is a good one . If the film were nothing but reactionary propaganda , it wouldn't be remembered quite as well today . Shows like South Park and Family Guy couldn't do take-offs on particular scenes if it had been a forgettable movie . The story is quite gripping , and the characters are fairly well written and performed by an excellent young cast ( among them Patrick Swayze , Charlie Sheen , Jennifer Grey , Lea Thompson , and C . Thomas Howell ) . I do think there might have been a bit more of a relationship between the kids . Some of the film's strongest sequences have to do with the moral questions they ask themselves , and the fights they have with each other . If we knew a bit more about the characters , it might be stronger there .
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385,589 | 391,152 | 24,034 | 8 |
Wonderful
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If only there could have been more musical and dance numbers ! All of them ( not counting practices ) occur at the very end of the film , and there are only three of them there . Luckily , the non-musical parts were really good , too . The plot was just a pretty standard behind-the-scenes of a play movie . It actually reminded me a lot of two films about plays that I have just seen recently , Micheal Powell's _ The Red Shoes _ and Tim Robbins ' _ Cradle Will Rock _ . While the plot may be a bit common , the dialogue is exceptionally good . It is snappy and witty and clever at all times . Also , the ensemble cast was extremely good . I love Dick Powell . He's not in this film too much , but he's perfect in every scene he's in . I was first introduced to him in the guise of Phillip Marlowe ( and I am among the small group of people who consider him the best incarnation of Phillip Marlowe ) , and he's just as great in the genre which brought him his fame . This is also the first movie that I've ever seen involving Bubsy Berkely , and I have to say , WOW ! ! ! Those musical sequences are ingenious ! One thing I find funny , though , is that , if you think about it , the audience who would be watching the play from below wouldn't be able to see any of the fancy designs the dancers make with their legs ! Too bad for them ! I give this film a !
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385,734 | 391,152 | 15,175 | 8 |
Excellent cinematic adaptation ; Excellent cinema
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I'll say this up front : this film can move very slowly at points . Also , I saw it in a theater with live piano accompaniment , and it's likely to be much less impressive on a smaller screen . I doubt the video print is very good , since I am familiar with other tapes that that company has distributed . Despite its slow points , when Lang and crew create the numerous set pieces , watch out : you're in for some of the greatest scenes of filmdom . I'd also like to point out that , as someone who is quite familiar with the original poem , I'll tell you that source material often moves a lot slower than this film does . As a technical marvel , I don't think some of the stuff here was surpassed until very recently , except maybe in King Kong . It's even more amazing to behold than Metropolis , Lang's next and much more famous film . All of the effects might seem dated now , but anyone who appreciates early cinema will easily fall in love . The film opens with Siegfried's infamous battle against the dragon . A bit of trivia : this scene is not in The Nibelungenlied . It is briefly mentioned in the first lay by Hagen as having happened a while ago . However , this is the one scene from this movie which is widely remembered , and for good reason . The dragon is amazingly created , nearly on the level of the dinosaurs from The Lost World and King Kong . Unlike them , though , it is a puppet and not stop motion . As far as puppetry goes , it surpasses most of the muppets of Return of the Jedi by leaps and bounds . Unfortunately , as lifelike as they made it , the dragon is not at all that fierce . It almost looks like a friendly dog ( it even wags its tail as Siegfried valiantly rushes at it , sword aloft ) . When it is supposed to be roaring at Siegfried , the audience was giggling ; it looked more like it was yelping . As a result , the depiction of Siegfried begins to come off as satirical ( probably not intended , but it makes things more interesting ) . There is a major strain of Niebelungenlied scholarship which sees Siegfried not as the hero , but as the aggressor . The second major set piece involves the battle with Alberich , the Nibelung , an episode that occurs a bit later in the poem , from whom he wins the cloak of invisibility , a horde of treasure , and Balmung , his famous sword . The mythological characters in this episode are awesome to behold in their costuming ( and simply in the casting , which is perfect throughout ; the creatues in the film's first scene , in which Siegfried is forging his sword , are great , too ) , especially the dwarves who balance the pot full of treasure on their backs . The best scene in the film occurs in the next chapter , the dream of Kriemhild , which is animation done in sand . Other great scenes in the film include the crossing of the lake of fire , the battle between Brunhild and Gunther ( with an invisible Siegfried helping him ) , the wooing of Brunhild , the quarrel between the queens , and the hunt . As far as I remember , only the war with Denmark is left out , which happens in the poem before they go to Iceland for Brunhild . It's not missed . Special attention must be given to the miraculous casting . Paul Richter plays Siegfried as the hero to beat all heroes . With his blonde , flowing hair , he marches across the world blindly performing great deeds and talking to birds ( the look on Richter's face when he starts to hear birds talk is priceless ) . He's too naive to see the trouble he causes as he dishes out treasure to the poor ( a wonderful touch ; Lang doesn't even draw attention to how this angers the Burgundians in their dialogue , but only in their expressions ) . As many scholars have proposed , Siegfried's actions all suggest that Worms is in iminent danger of being usurped by him . Margarethe Schoen may not have been the best choice for Kriemhild . The actress is so manly that I assumed that an actor was playing her . She is supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world . The actress does emote quite well , however . Now , Hannah Ralph , who plays Brunhild , exudes a manliness that her part requires . She's supposed to be a warrior maiden . Ralph does a great job conveying Brunhild's cunning , bitterness , and cruelty . Theodor Loos , who plays King Gunther , is absolutely perfect . I couldn't have imagined him better . His face exhibits both his moral predicament and his supreme inadequacy that the poem spells out so clearly . Hans Adalbert Schlettow plays Hagen . His costume may be a bit overwrought ( a huge , gnarly beard , a furry eye patch , and an enormous helmet with eagle wings reaching a foot and a half upwards ) , but the actor's perfect for the role , although he might be too old . His age makes me wonder how he's going to fight like a demon in Kriemhild's Wrath , the second part of the film , which I'll see tomorrow . I'm very eager to see how Lang and Thea von Harbou , his wife ans screenwriter , will make the remaining half of the epic interesting on film . It's nothing but battles . Volker and Gunther's brothers are also well cast , although they'll probably be more important in the second half , that is , if the poem is followed as closely as it is here . .
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385,733 | 391,152 | 15,174 | 8 |
An equal to the first part ;
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In some ways , The Wrath of Kriemhild surpasses Siegfried's Death , but it also loses some of that film's greatness . The plot of this one is more cohesive than the first , which is quite amazing . The second half of the actual poem is a lot sloppier and a lot harder to tread through , until , that is , you get to the climactic battle scenes ; only the Iliad's are better . Lang and Harbou embellished the Huns . The poet-compiler of the Nibelungenlied didn't know a Hun from his right ball , and as a result they are , more or less , the same as the Burgundians in custom . For example , although the poet clearly describes Etzel as a heathen ( which is Kriemhild's main concern as Rudiger tries to persuade her to marry him ) , when she gets to Hunland , the first thing she does is go to mass . The Huns here are clearly heathens ; they're almost like caveman . The depiction of them is hilarious , especially Verbal , the jester , who has two marvelous scenes . Etzel's character has been given more weight . He is much more formidable . All he does is bemoan his fate in the original poem . Lang and Harbou are masterful at building suspense , especially at the banquet scene , which is intercut with Verbal's second performance to an amazing effect . However , as is the nature of this half of the poem , the film's amazing technical accomplishments are missing in this one , for the most part , except for a dazzling sequence where Etzel's hall burns down with the Nibelungs inside . The one thing I do have to object to is the way Harbou changes the ending . SPOILERS : in the poem , after Hildebrand captures Hagen and Gunther , they are imprisoned . Kriemhild visits Hagen in his cell and demands that he reveal where he has hidden the horde . He refuses and she herself decapitates her brother . When Hagen still refuses , she decapitates him . Hildebrand ( or possibly Dietrich ) is so disgusted that a woman would presume to murder a great warrior that he , in turn , decapitates her , calling her a " Devil Woman " . Etzel , who is much weaker in the poem than he is here , says something silly like : " Ah me ! " I can understand why they would want to keep a unity of time and place as Hildebrand brings them from the castle ; to retain the prison settings of the two deaths would make the film very anticlimactic . I also understand why they didn't have Hildebrand kill Kriemhild : his character is much reduced here ; his name is only mentioned once . But , to have Kriemhild kill herself , adopting Brynhild's death from the Icelandic sources , is just catering to the audience instead of challenging them . The point of the poem is that Kriemhild's wrath goes far beyond it should into the realm of pure evil . Here , we simply have her die for her lost love . It's not as interesting .
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385,601 | 391,152 | 33,152 | 8 |
Great fun
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A fantastic Arabian adventure . A former king , Ahmad , and his best friend , the thief Abu ( played by Sabu of Black Narcissus ) search for Ahmad's love interest , who has been stolen by the new king , Jaffar ( Conrad Veidt ) . There's hardly a down moment here . It's always inventing new adventures for the heroes . Personally , I found Ahmad and his princess a little boring ( there's no need to ask why John Justin , who plays Ahmad , is listed fourth in the credits ) . Conrad Veidt , always a fun actor , makes a great villain , and Sabu is a lot of fun as the prince of thieves , who at one point finds a genie in a bottle . I also really loved Miles Malleson as the Sultan of Basra , the father of the princess . He collects amazing toys from around the world . Jaffar bribes him for his daughter's hand with a mechanical flying horse . This probably would count as one of the great children's films of all time , but the special effects are horribly dated nowadays . Kids will certainly deride the superimposed images when Abu and the genie are on screen together . And the scene with the giant spider looks especially awful . Although most of the younger generation probably thinks that King Kong looks bad at this point in time , Willis O'Brien's stop-motion animation is a thousand times better than a puppet on a string that doesn't even look remotely like a spider . .
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384,588 | 391,152 | 409,459 | 8 |
Very good adaptation
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This might be the only movie that interested me so much with its previews that I read the book on which it was based before the movie was released . I had always heard about Watchmen , and , though not a comic book guy , I checked it out . It was good , quite good , though I balk , more than just a little , whenever anyone refers to it as great literature . That it was included in Time magazine's top 100 best novels of the 20th Century seems ludicrous to me . I found it rather sloppy overall and so in tune with its non-literary medium that I don't think it was an especially good work of literature . But I did like it . Now I've finally seen the movie . And I liked it . Very much , in fact . I thought it was a cracking adaptation of the comic book , and it moved along seamlessly . Its screenplay is surprisingly well adapted . Many of the film's flaws are inherent in the source material . There are some incredibly stupid scenes , like the sex scene and Dr . Manhattan's interview . Both are identical in the book . I might complain that the violence is a little more in focus in the movie . I wonder how well someone who hasn't read the original would understand this . The friend I saw it with said he had no problems , so maybe it's just in the details that it becomes obscure . The end of this film is far better than that of the original work , which comes out of left field and makes little sense . Actually , I did kind of like that , because it was enjoyably weird , but the film version works much better . As for the cast , I was surprised by how well Patrick Wilson played Night Owl II ? I didn't think he had it in him . As everyone seems to agree , the weakest link was Malin Akerman as Laurie Jupiter . Akerman comes off as kind of a bimbo , at least with how she speaks , which is nothing like the book's Jupiter .
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385,684 | 391,152 | 80,196 | 8 |
Hard to get through , but worth it
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Whew ! I feel like I just climbed a mountain with this one ! This is certainly one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's seminal works . I think it's key to understanding his worldview , and to understanding the director as a human being . After all , years before he made this movie , he named another character Franz Biberkopf , the hero of Fox and His Friends . Of course , Fassbinder himself , in the biggest acting role of his career , played Biberkopf in that film . I assume he must have seen himself in Alfred Döblin's protagonist . Having now watched Berlin Alexanderplatz , I find that extremely sad . The challenge of Berlin Alexanderplatz is not exactly its length ? heck , I've watched 24 episodes of Lost in half the time it took me to watch this series . It's the unpleasantness of the characters , particularly Franz Biberkopf . At the opening of the series , he is being released from prison after four years for beating his girlfriend to death in a rage . It's a moment we relive via flashback about a dozen more times in the next 15 hours , including at least one episode where it plays out twice and another where nearly the same scenario is played out with another woman . Biberkopf says he wants to stay clean from now on , but it only takes a short while before he's involved again with criminals . The main brunt of the story concerns Biberkopf's dealings with his new friend Reinhold , a gigolo and a burglar . There was never a moment in the series when I was thinking that Franz Biberkopf was at heart a good guy . No , he's a coward . He's a jerk . He's a big fat baby . Fassdbinder asks us to feel for him almost constantly . Even if he was being ironic , and I don't think he was , I couldn't appreciate that . I knew from the start that things were going to end badly . Even worse , about halfway through the series , Franz's eternal protectress , Eva , throws him a bone in the form of a young innocent named Sonia . Immediately , Franz says , " You don't look like a Sonia . I'm going to rename you Mieze . " And he treats women that shabbily throughout the film , though Mieze is the last one . As soon as such a sweet and innocent character enters the picture , I knew she was bound to end up dead . To add to these often painfully ugly characters , Fassbinder also likes to make the series purposefully annoying with grainy photography and a cacophonous musical score . There are far too many scenes of endless dialogue , often so esoteric that it becomes meaningless babble ( this is supposedly part of the point of Döbin's novel , but I never felt the point was made that well in this series ) . In short , Fassbinder wants to make this series torture to sit through . And the two hour epilogue , which enters Biberkopf's dementia-ridden mind , feels so much different from the strict realism of the rest of the series that it feels like a miscalculation . So it's a difficult watch , to be sure . But I do think it's a good series overall . Like I said , it provides valuable insights into Fassbinder's character . The cinematic prowess of the director is also on full display most of the time . Best of all , if you're one who loves great acting , you very well might experience some bits of heaven amidst the ordeal . Günter Lamprecht leads the cast , and is simply amazing . Gottfried John is Reinhold , Barbara Sukowa is Mieze and Hannah Schygulla is Eva . Franz Buchreiser plays Meck , who begins the series as Franz's closest friend and then is shoved away , has the only moment in the series that made me feel deeply for any of the characters . This was one of my longest-awaited viewings . It was a disappointment , overall , but it was worth my time .
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384,960 | 391,152 | 37,017 | 8 |
Tallulah Bankhead is TERRIBLE ! ! !
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I can't believe that so many people thought Tallulah Bankhead was great in her role in Lifeboat . In my opinion , she drags down what could have been one of Hitchcock's greatest masterpieces . She chews up every scene with her over-the-top acting style . It becomes tiresome instantly . Her character is by far the least compelling of the group . I know Hitch made the film for her , more than anything , but it would be interesting to see someone remake this film and subtract that character . Why remake Psycho ? It's perfect . Remake one that is somewhat flawed . The rest of the cast is outstanding , however . I love Hume Cronyn . He's also great in Hitch's Shadow of a Doubt , and , of course , everything else he was ever in . I am not familiar with most of the other actors , but they're all great . Besides acting , Lifeboat is one of Hitch's most interesting films in every aspect . First off , it is historically interesting . For one thing , there is an ad at the very end of the film telling you to buy war bonds in the lobby ! If you've read the Truffaut interview book , Hitch explains how angry Americans grew over this film because of its depiction of the German vs the depiction of the Allies . This film is actually incredibly brave in this way . It definitely is not anti-Ally in any way , as some interpreted when the film was first released . There are plenty of references to the inhumanity of the Germans and just a lot of general enemy-bashing . But the film also criticizes aspects of our culture , especially materialism . In the best scene of the film , the Allies form a mob , or a pack of wolves , as Hitch himself has said , and kill their enemy . It is an incredibly great moment . The ending is also one of Hitch's most complex , although he was especially gifted for creating incredible endings . Anyhow , see this film , even if you are not a Hitch fan . It is in no way his standard fare ( the typical Hitchcock film being , in my thought , Ti Catch a Thief ) . , - 2 for Tallulah Bankhead's mega-ego and terrible performance .
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384,698 | 391,152 | 50,539 | 8 |
Lives up to its reputation as one of the best Sci-Fi movies of the ' 50s
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If not for slow beginning , this would definitely be a great sci-fi adventure movie . As it is , it's certainly awesome enough in parts . When Scott Carey shrinks small enough that his pet cat is a danger , the movie becomes something of a masterpiece . Carey is knocked into the basement . His wife thinks the cat actually got him , so no one is looking for him . He must try to survive with the few items that are small enough for him to manipulate . A large spider roams the room looking for food . What Jack Arnold failed to do in Tarantula , he succeeds in doing here . This spider is damn frightening . I'm not really sure how I feel about the ponderous final sequence . I'm leaning toward not liking it very much . The strong scenes in the film are so good , though , I ended up really liking it .
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385,974 | 391,152 | 821,642 | 8 |
Wright , Downey and Foxx are good enough artists to lift this above its Oscar bait plot
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This film was supposed to be a major competitor for the Oscars last year , but Paramount bumped it to a few months later . Despite the mixed reviews the film has received , I believe it would have been a major contender . I honestly think Paramount's decision not only ruined its chances for Oscars , it gave the impression that there was something wrong with the picture . There isn't , really . The subject matter does scream " Oscar Bait " , with Robert Downey Jr . playing a newspaper columnist who writes about a schizophrenic genius musician ( Jamie Foxx ) who is homeless on the streets of L . A . We all remember Shine . Shine was pretty good ( if entirely made up , as we later discovered ) . The Soloist is probably a little better . I think it's stronger because of its exploration of the relationship between the two central characters . Both Downey and Foxx are extremely good ; both are award-worthy . This material could easily have been cheesy Oscar bait , but director Joe Wright ( Pride and Prejudice and Atonement ) is a virtuoso himself . The way he uses image and sound move the story along beautifully , not allowing the clichés to clog up the film .
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385,240 | 391,152 | 138,524 | 8 |
A gem that already needs rediscovering
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Undervalued film in the Coen Brothers canon . I liked it much more than their previous two films , The Man Who Wasn't There and O Brother , Where Art Thou ? I don't know how anyone could think they were selling out with this , because it still has that patented Coen quirk , this time revisiting the classical Hollywood romantic comedy . It's nothing like modern romantic comedies , but closer to stuff like Adam's Rib and Bringing Up Baby . George Clooney , turning in his best performance ever , is a divorce lawyer who never loses , even when the odds are stacked against him . Catherine Zeta-Jones is the gold-digging wife of a philandering , rich husband ( Edward Herrmann ) , who has in turn hired Clooney to defend him . The dialogue is perfect , and the plot takes a lot of fun and unexpected turns . All the performances are excellent ; in addition to the leads , Cedric the Entertainer , Billy Bob Thorton , Paul Adelstein , and Richard Jenkins among others are simply awesome . No movie from 2003 made me laugh nearly as hard . Actually , I think I haven't seen a comedy that was this much fun since Bowfinger in 1999 . .
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384,882 | 391,152 | 15,163 | 8 |
There's at least one scene that should go in the comedy hall of fame
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The scene where Buster and his girl , two rich youngsters who are stuck together alone on a ship , attempt to feed themselves is one of the funniest scenes I've ever watched . For about 10 minutes , I could not stop laughing . After that scene , the comedy is , well , I was going to say hit and miss , but that's not right . No joke really misses . It's just the difference between a smile , a chuckle , and a guffaw . I would say that , especially compared to my two favorite Keaton films , Our Hospitality and Sherlock Junior , The Navigator is considerably less funny ( though almost anything is considerably less funny than those two films ) . Plus , the film never reaches a solid conclusion . A situation was set up at the film's start which was never advanced at all . Still , The Navigator beats out most modern comedies . Nothing can really beat Buster Keaton . I would give it a if it lacked the food sequence , but I'll add 1 point for that , so a total of .
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