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384,908 | 391,152 | 112,661 | 8 |
Great animated short
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This is a very funny short . There is no dialogue , and the animation is quite unique - especially the way photographs of people are integrated into the animation ( possibly the greatest moment , the space chicken shoots his laser , hits a photo of a guy , and it turns out crooked , with the guy's hair standing straight up ) . It is too bad they had to go and make a stupid series out of this short . Cartoon Network is almost completely worthless . . . have to stay up until 4 AM to see anything good , otherwise we just get Cartoon Cartoons .
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385,767 | 391,152 | 19,777 | 8 |
How funny are the Marx Brothers ?
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Oh , man are they funny . And The Cocoanuts is one of their best , right up there with Duck Soup . 99 % of the jokes hit the bull's eye . Groucho , Chico , and Harpo are masters . Who the hell is Zeppo anyway ? He always looks like he's horning in on his brothers ' antics . In a lesser Marx Brothers movie , the song and dance numbers are annoying , the non-Marx actors are boring , and Chico's piano number and Harpo's harp number are agonizing . You can see the differences in this one : the song and dance numbers are amazing with especially good dancing ( and great Irving Berlin songs ) , the non-Marx actors are mostly charming ( Margaret Dumont is always great ; what a sport ! ) , and , well , I have always liked Chico's piano numbers . Most don't . However , the low point of The Cocoanuts is the harp number . It's shocking what a lull it is in the pacing . The only one of those I've liked so far is the one in A Day at the Races . .
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385,564 | 391,152 | 45,907 | 8 |
Very amusing Mexican Bunuel !
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Two streetcar conductors whose streetcar is set to be dismantled sneak into the station late one night to take it for one last spin . They spend all night and most of the next day having small adventured throughout Mexico City . Agustin Isunza is the film's standout as an old man , Papa Pinillos , who worked for the streetcar company most of his life . He was laid off a while back , but he does little with his time besides get on random streetcars to see if their drivers are competent . When he jumps on the 133 , he quickly realizes that it's stolen and he spends the rest of the film desperately trying to get the company to believe him . It's a fun movie and very charming . Not a necessary Bunuel film , but fans should certainly catch it . .
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385,385 | 391,152 | 83,944 | 8 |
Don't F with Rambo !
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I was surprised to find that I had never seen a moment of the first Rambo movie . I always thought I had seen bits , if not all , of the original three films . I guess I've seen bits of parts 2 and 3 , but not 1 . I was also surprised that First Blood was a really good movie , well made , well acted and with some kick-ass action . It's definitely in the mode of nastier , more depressing movies of the 1970s . It reminds me at times of Deliverance . The body count is actually pretty low , but the movie is extremely violent . Sylvester Stallone plays Vietnam vet John Rambo , a former Green Beret , now on the road looking for old friends , all of whom seem to be dead when he finally finds them . When passing through a small town , he is picked up by the sheriff , played by Brian Dennehy , and hassled for no good reason . Dennehy and the rest of his police force soon realize that they've screwed with the wrong man , as Stallone goes all Vietnam on their asses , escaping into the nearby forest and attacking all who follow . After causing some general havoc , the National Guard is called in . Also , Richard Crenna , Rambo's former commanding officer , shows up warning Dennehy that Rambo's gonna kill ' em all if they don't call it off .
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385,663 | 391,152 | 56,687 | 8 |
Some rough spots , but overall a very good film
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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane ? has a lot of clunky spots . Even the acting is sometimes strained . Both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford have moments of extreme overacting , even though they are mostly great . The script also has some poor spots , especially the fate of the maid . Te final revelation is disappointing also and adds nothing to the film . That's especially poorly done . And one of the major flaws of the film is that the musical score is intrusive and often completely wrong for the film . However , most of the film is quite excellent . It overcomes its flaws quite well . As I've said , Crawford and Davis have plenty of good scenes . Victor Buono , who plays Edwin Flagg , a pianist whom Jane hires to work for her , is especially excellent . He has a couple of scenes that are just hilarious . The film itself contains more than half a dozen scenes that can be described as nothing but brilliant . Robert Aldrich's direction is amazing at times . The photography , by Ernest Haller , is beautiful and adds a horrific mood to the film . The film is very much worth seeing . If you liked it , may I suggest the other Robert Aldrich film I've seen , which is quite a ways above this , actually , Kiss Me Deadly . It's not the same - it's film noir . But the direction is similarly great . .
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385,004 | 391,152 | 365,376 | 8 |
Overcomes its own weaker elements
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I'm not entirely satisfied with this horror film , but it certainly has its moments . Actually , it is the horror aspect that doesn't work entirely . It comes off as too much like the recent strain of horror films from Japan like The Ring , and even like some American movies , like The Others and The Sixth Sense . In fact , in a lot of its most horrific moments , the direction is rather mediocre , relying on very cheap horror tricks like stings in the music . The rest of the film-making is really good , fortunately . The film really redeems itself in that final sequence , where the film sorts out its twists . It throws the shadow of an effective drama over the rest of the film . I'd love to see the story reconstructed with some of the weaker horror moments eliminated . Su-jeong Lim is brilliant in the film . And I love that maudlin theme music .
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384,798 | 391,152 | 455,590 | 8 |
Fine film
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Historical horror movie about General Idi Amin , the brutal Ugandan dictator of the 1970s . It's told through the eyes of a fictional person ( as far as I can tell ) , Nicholas Garrigan . In the film , he's a Scot who comes to Uganda as a doctor . Upon a chance meeting with the new President , Garrigan is taken to the country's capital to be his head physician . Garrigan is more or less in isolation . He's having a ball while the rest of the country is going to Hell . Amin treats him well , and by the time it becomes apparent that he's hardly the benevolent dictator he presents himself as , Garrigan can't get away . Perhaps it's disingenuous to create a fictional character in this situation , but Idi Amin himself is too much of a beast to focus the entire film on . It works better to make him the monster at the edge of the frame . I wouldn't say Whitaker gives the very best performance of 2006 , but he is excellent , and deserving of his eventual Oscar . It's not a great film , but I really liked it . It's scary and gripping from first to last .
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385,033 | 391,152 | 912,592 | 8 |
An average documentary that excels because of an interesting subject
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Not a particularly well done documentary ? the director doesn't get good enough footage to assemble a " complete " documentary , and it feels a little sloppy in the end . But Bar-Lev , whose second feature documentary this is , was lucky enough to chance upon an controversy that engages the audience nicely . I've certainly been thinking about it a lot for the past couple of days . The film is about a four year-old artist , Marla Olmstead , who took the art world by storm in 2005 with her amazingly sophisticated and beautiful abstract paintings . Marla's output produced a good $200 , 000 between ' 05 and ' 06 . Bar-Lev wanted to document this child prodigy , but in the middle of his time spent with the family , the infotainment show , just one of a host of television news shows that covered the story , broke the angle that Marla's father , an amateur painter himself , may have coached the girl . All Hell breaks loose , the parents become pariahs , and they look to Bar-Lev as a possible savior . Unfortunately for them , Bar-Lev , who all the time has been trying and failing to get film of Marla painting one of her " masterpieces " , is swayed by . It's a lot of fun to look at the evidence provided , to try to read the body language of the parents and try to read between the lines with them . You also have the issue about whether Marla herself was being exploited , which can raise a lot of debate . The film also works as an exploration of modern and abstract art . I myself am a fan of it , and I think there have been plenty of truly beautiful works of non-representational art . But , yeah , there are definitely paintings , some on display at an art auction going for millions of dollars in this film , where even I think the title of the documentary puts it perfectly . Most people are far less accepting than I . The film shows just how much the genre sticks in the craw of the general American public , and , in a sequence where the parents share a host of nasty e-mails with Bar-Lev , many seem just as angry that any of these paintings sold in the first place as they do that the paintings may be a sham . Even the segment angles itself as an attack on non-representational art . Also featured are clips of a John Stossel news documentary about abstract art that I remember seeing a while back that really got my goat and has literally been making me angry for years now . Like many documentaries , the film benefits greatly from its DVD extras , which include a 30 + minute followup ( which actually caused me to lose some sympathy for the parents ; I seemed to be one of the few people who watched this movie and sympathized with them ) , and a great 15 + minute defense of abstract art by New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman .
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384,835 | 391,152 | 400,525 | 8 |
Underrated noir / crime caper with a comic edge
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John Cusack stars , and his performance is pretty much what you expect from him : quick-witted and cynical . But , as far as I'm concerned , as long as that's what the role calls for , he's always good . He plays a mob lawyer who has just stolen over $2 million from his boss ( Randy Quaid ) with the help of a strip club owner ( Billy Bob Thornton ) . For a good ways into the picture , I thought I was seeing one of the best films of last year . It does start to stumble after about the halfway point , but it still finishes pretty strong . All the actors are strong , but I have to give special kudos to Oliver Platt , who is always a delight . He plays a drunk friend of Cusack's who is now miserably married to Cusack's ex-wife . I don't normally praise drunk acts , but Platt is particularly believable ? and hilarious . This movie is a lot of fun and well worth seeing .
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385,001 | 391,152 | 223,577 | 8 |
Interesting obscurity from Japan , on DVD from the good people at Artsmagic
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There's so much obscure Japanese cinema that I long to see . Thank God for niche suppliers like Tokyo Shock and Artsmagic . The latter has resurrected a five film series of Nikkatsu pink films entitled Angel Guts . High School Co-ed is the first of these films , all of which center around a brutal act of rape , around which a moral tale unfolds . This one has a group of three bikers who attack young women . One of them , Kawashima , has a small bit of conscious , though . Outside of his friends , he lives for his young sister and realizes that the violence he and his friends enact upon others could just as easily be applied to her . While I've seen more graphic material before , the actual rape scenes are very disturbing . The artistic merit is certainly questionable , and the acts are played for stimulation . However , the script is very good , and the characters come across as people . There is at least one character whose situation is only hinted at and never explained ? I would have liked to know more about him . And the ending is very odd . Otherwise , definitely a film of interest , if not for those who are easily shocked .
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385,855 | 391,152 | 74,102 | 8 |
Holy Cow
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This is no masterpiece , but it has a great distinction amongst the world of film . One can never go beyond this one in audacity . Never . If I described some of the stuff that you will only ever find here , this review would never be posted . They went so far a couple of times that I had to clap . Some of it is just so great . Besides its audacity , the two leads are very good . Even though the movie consists of very little besides the sex scenes ( and what little it does is not worth it ; the weakest part of the film is its script ) , the main characters are pretty complex . But if you're looking to see something which is erotic and beautiful , stay away and rent one of my all time favorites , Last Tango in Paris . In the Realm of the Senses is surely erotic , but it is not beautiful . It's main function is to disturb .
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385,844 | 391,152 | 918,927 | 8 |
A battle of wits
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I was a little wary of this one , but I was pleasantly surprised by it . It's much like another one of my favorite 2008 films , Frost / Nixon , which is also based on a play . Both are extremely well acted battles of wits . It's almost like watching a great wrestling match . The biggest muscles here belong to the venerable Meryl Streep , an actress who never ceases to surprise me . It's weird , because she's just given so many great performances . You don't think she'll be able to do anything new , but then she pops up here with a great character , one that doesn't really resemble anything else she's done . She's equally matched by Philip Seymour Hoffman , one of the finest actors of his generation . And I , for one , thought Amy Adams held her own against these two powerhouses . It helps that she's perfectly cast as the innocent , trusting nun . It fits her like a glove . And like everyone else who's reviewed the film , I'd give high praise to Viola Davis . It's pretty much a kind of one-scene-wonder performance , but it's certainly memorable . I have a couple of complaints that keep this film from the highest ranks of my year-end list . I thought Shanley's direction just plain sucked much of the time . Yeah , his script is brilliant , but he hasn't directed a film since 1990 ( and it was Joe Versus the Volcano ) , and it shows . He resorts to some extremely cheap tricks in order to distance the story from its stage-bound origins . He likes to tilt his camera , like he's making The Third Man , and it feels ridiculous . During the climactic sequence , Shanley inserts a thunderstorm that keeps growing until the scene hits its peak . Just cheap and unnecessary . As is the sequence demonstrating Hoffman's sermon about gossip . There's so much power in the simple confrontations between the characters , all these flourishes should just have been dropped . The film is going to be accused of being stagy in any case . Shanley should have just accepted that . I also wasn't quite sold on the final moment of the film . It feels out of character for Sister Aloysius ( Streep ) . I think I understood it , but it feels kind of false to me .
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385,922 | 391,152 | 83,922 | 8 |
Very strange
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SPOILERSI'm not exactly sure I get Fanny and Alexander . On the surface , it looks most like yet another dig , the ultimate dig , at the Protestantism with which Bergman was tortured as a child ( his father was a clergyman ) . But there're also some other things , or so it would seem . I really like all the scenes with the big , extended family and their servants , who are nearly equal to their employers . I don't know what Bergman's point is with this stuff , but it's excellent . Fanny and Alexander begins with this family's Christmas celebration . Soon afterwards , Alexander's father dies . A bishop consoles the mother and eventually proposes to her . When the family moves in with the bishop , they realize all to late that he is a cruel and evil man , a slavedriver whose punishments far exceed the crimes . This part of the film , which is probably the longest , is also the weakest . Edvard , the bishop , is so evil he's reminiscent of the emperor from Return of the Jedi , able to shoot bolts of lightning from his fingertips . I personally despise religion . It's the bane of the world , all religions . However , this wicked bishop seems far too easy . Other religious figures in Bergman films strike me as more interesting . For instance , Gunnar Bjornstrand's role in Winter Light . Finally the children and their mother escape from the bishop . The film's best scenes occur after the local moneylender ( played by the excellent Bergman regular Erland Josephson ) steals them away from Edvard . He brings them to his home , where he and his son Aaron make marionettes . All of these scenes are extremely frightening , especially when Alexander runs into the moneylender's other son , Ishmael , a hermaphroditic shut-in with supernatural powers . The final act brings the family back together ( and kills off Edvard and the rest of his family ) , but there is an enormously uneasy feeling about the whole situation . Like I said , I don't exactly understand this film . It's in need of a restoration and a DVD release , neither of which I think it'll get anytime soon . MGM owns it , and their business is in dire straits right now . I hope that they'll let Criterion buy it . I'd love to hear a full commentary on the film . Its level of difficulty would benefit from one . Right now I'm giving it an .
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384,714 | 391,152 | 17,809 | 8 |
Very charming , very cute
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This movie is really cute . Unfortunately , that adjective has a rather derogatory connotation , especially when referring to a work of art . I certainly don't mean it that way . Frankly , I could use a little delight of the sort The Girl with the Hat Box provided me . It's an utterly charming story about a young girl who makes hats . The comedy of errors is complicated , and is not worth telling in whole . Anna Sten stars in the lead . Does that name ring any bells ? Well , I didn't recognize the name , but I clicked on it and read up on her . Apparently Samuel Goldwyn brought her over to the United States ( surely based on her performance in Hat Box ) to be the next Garbo in the early 1930s . She starred in Nana ( Dorothy Arzner & George Fitzmaurice , 1934 ) , We Live Again ( Rouben Mamoulien , 1934 ; also starring Frederic March ) , and The Wedding Night ( King Vidor , 1935 , and she starred opposite Gary Cooper ) . All were enormous bombs , each more astronomical than the last . Afterwards , she appeared in several more Hollywood films in secondary roles . I really , really want to see any of her Hollywood films to see what her problem was . You'd never know there was one from The Girl with the Hat Box . She's gorgeous , charming , and very funny . The male lead is played , also delightfully , by Ivan Koval-Samborsky , who had a major role in 1926's Mother by Pudovkin . He plays a homeless student whom Sten at first pities and tries to help , but they soon find love in each other . The villains in the film are played by Serafima Birman and P . Paul . They are both exceptional . The latter doesn't seem to have any other film credits , but the former later played Efrosinia , Ivan the Terrible's aunt in Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible movies . I didn't recognize her , as this was 18 years earlier . Plus , in Ivan she is always covered in huge robes . But you can recognize her from the nose .
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384,584 | 391,152 | 23,590 | 8 |
Great performance by Dvorak , and a great ending . Awful kid .
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This probably mostly gets watched by Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart completists . But , while Bette Davis is one of the titular three smokers , her role is relatively minor . Bogart plays the typical gangster he played so many times before The Maltese Falcon . The stars of this film are Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell . The story is about former classmates who meet again as adults . Dvorak grew up a goody-two-shoes who was always secretly jealous of the more popular troublemaker Blondell . Blondell has had a bad life , been in a reform institution and hangs out with gangsters . Dvorak , on the other hand , went to college and is raising a son with her high-powered attorney husband . When the two meet again , Dvorak is still jealous of Blondell's exciting lifestyle . She's bored with her husband , and ends up leaving him . Blondell tries to save her by going to her husband , but that plans goes awry when the husband falls for Blondell . The two women basically exchange lives , and Dvorak goes through Hell . I have to admit , the main reason this movie is memorable is because of the gasp-inducing ending . It's just one of the most shocking things I've ever seen in a classic movie . The story is pretty good , and Dvorak in particular is excellent . The thing that hurts the film enormously , though , is that freakin ' little brat who plays Dvorak's son . Kids in classic movies are so often terrible , but this one takes the cake . Since a lot of the plot is about how hurt one parent is because the child is with the other , it doesn't always work . You want to shove that kid's face in a blender .
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385,982 | 391,152 | 39,416 | 8 |
Heavy-handed , but not ineffective
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Certainly the preachiest film ever to win Best Picture , and almost the preachiest film ever to be made , but that doesn't necessarily mean that Gentleman's Agreement isn't a good movie . In fact , I thought it was a fine film and an important one . It's heavy-handedness is mostly evened out by a lot of good dialogue , good filmmaking , and exceptional performances . I'll start there . I thought every principal actor succeeded with flying colors ; even when they have to deliver awful and obvious message speeches , they almost always ended up making that writing sound a lot better than it was . Gregory Peck gives one of his very best performances . I'm glad to see him give this performance , too , after being stupefied by that wooden performance in the same year's The Paradine Case . The script does well with the character of Phil Green . When he begins his quest to discover the anti-semitism around him , he is involved very impersonally . It's a job , a job he doesn't really want to do , a job he doesn't even know how to do . And when he gets his big idea , to pretend he's Jewish himself , it seems almost arrogant . How dare he , I thought . But , through the film , he does get personally involved , so deeply involved that the insults and jokes and so forth become personal attacks . I doubt he ever expected that it would hurt so much . In comparison to the other film about anti-Semitism in 1947 , Crossfire , also nominated for Best Picture , Gentleman's Agreement certainly does not hold up in terms of filmmaking and artistry . However , which film do you think had more of a chance to make a difference ? Where Gentleman's Agreement succeeds , and Crossfire fails , is its ability to make the audience look inside themselves . Sure , it has to hit its audience with a sledgehammer before they look inside themselves to find their own prejudices and shortcomings , but I really think it works .
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385,463 | 391,152 | 382,932 | 8 |
Keep in mind - I liked this movie , but my criticisms are mostly negative because I expect more from Pixar
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Good , but not at the level that I expect from Pixar . It's always fun , but it's often in danger of feeling slight . Besides the awesome setpiece of Remy , the gourmand rat , entering Gusteau's kitchen for the first time and the wonderful climax , there is little that is memorable . The characters are also pretty generic , except for food critic Anton Ego , voiced by Peter O'Toole , and Colette , voiced by an unrecognizable Jeneane Gorofolo . Remy is dull , as are a lot of cartoon heroes ( they're hardly ever the most memorable characters ) , and the other rats don't have enough screen time to make an impression . The villainous chef is a dull bad guy , and Luigi , the human who is helped by Remy , is never redeemed by the script . Even in the end , that character has taken advantage of Remy . He admits that to the other characters , but doesn't do much to make up for it . I would actually have ranked Disney's CGI film , Meet the Robinsons , above this , but the climax is so wonderful , and the aftermath so beautiful , that I ultimately felt very pleased , despite only being moderately so for the other 90 minutes .
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385,092 | 391,152 | 65,377 | 8 |
Quite an entertaining piece of filmmaking
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Airport was an enormous hit when it was first released in 1970 , the biggest blockbuster of its time . Today it's best known for being the basis for the spoof film Airplane ! . Heck , more people have probably seen Airplane II : the Sequel than have seen Airport , probably more than even know Airport exists . The film has become a joke , and that's unfortunate . It's no great masterpiece , it may not have deserved 10 Oscar nominations , it may not have deserved to make so much money and spawn several sequels , but it's certainly an engaging 140 minutes . The film mixes personal melodrama with a suspense film . There are a dozen or so characters and several big actors on the bill . Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin are the most immediately recognizable . Lancaster plays the manager of the airport , and he is quite good ( although he was better in umpteen other roles in his career ) . Dean Martin plays a pilot . Now , he probably wouldn't be my first pick to play an airplane pilot . Rumor has it that Dino has a bit of a drinking problem . But he is quite good in the role . Jean Seberg has a pretty thankless role as Lancaster's second in command . It's petty , but her hair is awful in this film . I didn't even recognize her until she put on a parka , when she began to look more like her Breathless days . Jacqueline Bisset plays Lancaster's whiny wife . She's got to be one of the least understanding spouses in cinema history . Helen Hayes plays an old woman who is able to make her way around the country by stowing away in planes . She's sure that they won't bust her - no airline wants that kind of bad publicity . The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards , and she was its only winner , for Best Supporting Actress . The film probably deserved any of the other awards before it deserved that one - she's annoying . Perhaps people found her funny in 1970 , but I was quite hoping that she would get her butt sucked out of the plane . Airport definitely suffers from some major dating , which is why hardly anyone ever mentions it anymore unless as a camp reference . Dino has knocked up a stewardess , and they have a cheesy ( but not unaffecting ) dialogue about what they should do . The film never does resolve the fact that he loves both his wife and his mistress . In his first scene in the film , Dino's dropped off at the airport by his wife who tells Lancaster confidently : " Some day he'll come home and find a reason to stay . " And it seems like he loves her back . But the end leaves us with little doubt as to whether he'll stay with the stewardess ( and be father to her child ) . A lot of the personal melodramatics seem too abundant , especially the stuff between Lancaster and Bisset . Fortunately , the suspense is much more successful . Some people may scoff at the use of split screen and similar techniques that are used to depict two separate settings , such as the cockpit and the control station . Sometimes the head of the control tower will appear in between Dino and the other pilot in a little bubble with a thick , black outline - it almost looks like the little squares in which the members of the Brady family appear at the beginning of each episode of the Brady Bunch . However , that technique works quite well . I think , if anything , the film may have deserved an Oscar for Best Editing ( I don't even know offhand if that was one of the categories in which it was nominated - nor do I know what other films were up against it in that category , although I assume MASH was , which would be an even more deserving nominee ) . .
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385,336 | 391,152 | 59,079 | 8 |
Pretty awesome !
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Having been very disappointed in King Hu's most famous film , A Touch of Zen , I was actually eager to see one of his other supposed masterpieces . I wanted to see if the guy just didn't work for me or what . Fortunately , his earlier film , Come Drink with Me , made for Shaw Brothers , impressed me a lot . I would still complain about the choppy editing during the kung fu sequences , which not only makes it difficult to understand what's going on , but also makes the martial arts magic less believable . But while there are a few brief scenes where I thought the editing was weak in such a way , there are three extended action sequences that are eye-popping and heart-stopping . Cheng Pei-Pei , best known now for her latter-day role in Crouching Tiger , Hidden Dragon , plays a powerful kung fu student trying to rescue her brother , who has been kidnapped by a gang of dissidents , led by the chalk-faced Hung Lieh Chen . He's one of the all-time great bad guys , and I love his cohorts , as well . The film is full of fantastic character design . Cheng teams up with Hua Yueh , a drunken beggar who is secretly a kung fu master . What really comes through is Hu's supreme visual sense . It definitely made me more interested in the man's works , and even in revisiting A Touch of Zen .
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385,462 | 391,152 | 479,884 | 8 |
Way better than you're probably thinking it is
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Wow , this is surprisingly excellent . I mean , it's crap , but it's good crap , and that's worth a lot . The premise is basically Speed meets D . O . A . ( the 1950 movie starring Edward O'Brien ) . Jason Statham ( of the Transporter movies ) is a hit-man who has a lethal Chinese poison coursing through his veins . If he slows down , if his adrenaline level drops , he drops dead . In his last moments , he rushes to find his killer and others responsible , snatching as many energy drinks and drugs as he can get his hands on along the way . This is some fun stuff , and hilarious , too . The editing is the MTV-style of many modern action movies , so avoid it if you can't stand that . I hope the directors , who also wrote the script , succeed even more so in the future .
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384,862 | 391,152 | 407,265 | 8 |
Excellent , complex character study
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Pre-op transsexual Bree Osbourne discovers that her one heterosexual experience produced a son , who is now in trouble . She must help him before she gets her operation , and the two end up traveling together from New York City to L . A . This film certainly has some major flaws . It's structured as a road movie , and it comes with a whole load of genre clichés . Also , the son character is at times too stupid to believe . It should become pretty obvious that Bree is his father . We should at least see him considering this possibility . He's 17 and has experienced a lot of nastiness , but he seems utterly naïve to the ways of the world ( he still has fantasies that his father lives in a mansion , for instance ) . Even with some major flaws , though , I found Transamerica quite good and very touching . The character of Bree is beautifully written . She's both believable and complex , and Felicity Huffman , who , to this point , has done most of her best work on television , really sinks her teeth into the role . I was always convinced that I was watching a transgendered person , always watching Bree Osbourne . It's an amazing performance , and one of the most justifiable Oscar nominations of last year ( it would be a toss up , if I were voting , between Huffman and Keira Knightley ? the other nominees don't come close ) . Whenever Bree is the focus of the film ? which is the vast majority of the time ? it is exceptional . Whenever she isn't , well , it ain't bad , but I was always wishing that they'd get back to Bree . The strongest portion of the film is when she has to encounter her parents and sister again for the first time in ages . While I can wish all day that the film had been better , I can also be plenty thankful for all the great moments that it provides .
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385,230 | 391,152 | 23,779 | 8 |
One of the best of W . C . Fields ' short films
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Personally , I like Fields ' features much more than the few short films he made . The Bank Dick , You Can't Cheat an Honest Man , You're Telling Me , The Old-Fashioned Way , It's a Gift , Never Give a Sucker an Even Break , and The Man on the Flying Trapeze are some of the funniest films you're ever likely to see . But most of his shorts are somewhat lame . My favorite is The Golf Specialist , which is nothing more - nor should it be - than Fields ' infamous vaudeville routine . The Dentist is famous for its sexual innuendo of the woman wrapping her legs around Fields while he pulls a tooth , but it's not very funny after that . The Barber Shop is the second funniest of these shorts . Fields is very funny in it , and so are the supporting cast members . Here Fields is in henpecked husband mode , taking it from his evil vegetarian wife . His little son likes to tell him the lamest riddles in history . The slight plot is a prelude to The Bank Dick , with a criminal on the run and Fields bragging that he'd throttle him good if he got a hold of him . A lot of good jokes here . See it on the Criterion disc of his short films . .
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385,497 | 391,152 | 171,359 | 8 |
Excellent Film Version .
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Hamlet may be the single greatest piece of English literature ever written . This modernized version of it proves that . It also proves that a modernization of a classic play is not at all a bad idea . Romeo + Juliette was just undone by overdoing and poor acting . This Hamlet is very well performed . It actually proved to me the acting talent of two whom I had considered under-average previously , Julia Styles and Ethan Hawke . Both are very effective . Also effective is Bill Murray as Polonius . The only actor who fails is Karl Geary as Horatio . He made a great character seem rather impotent . His accent makes his iambic pentameter difficult to understand . The only other problem the production has in general is the copious amounts of product placement . Marlboro cigarettes , Pepsi , and , in the most painful instance , Blockbuster Video make appearances . Hamlet speaks his " to be or not to be " speech at Blockbuster , which is , if you know the play , a contemplation over suicide . If there's anywhere that makes me want to commit suicide , it is Blockbuster video , so I guess it fits in all right .
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384,691 | 391,152 | 21,577 | 8 |
Hey , a Buñuel film that I actually like !
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Written on August 30th , upon my first viewing : I'm not saying that I love it , though . It's infinitely more watchable than the other two Buñuel " masterpieces " that I've seen , the execrably boring The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie and the somewhat lame Belle de Jour . I have been told time and time again to go back to his early stuff , that I'd be much more likely to enjoy those films . And those who pushed me were right . Of course , when I sat down to watch it , I didn't have the highest hopes . Immediately , I began to nitpick . " What is that supposed to mean ? ! ? ! " " What the heck is going on ! ? ! ? " My favorite three letters became , throughout the first half hour of this film , WT & F . But , as much as its narrative ( or anti-narrative ) was annoying me , its technical aspects were very much delighting me . The cinematography is quite good , the editing is fabulous and unique , and the use of sound is simply fantastic . Eventually , I just decided that the narrative wasn't supposed to make much sense and that Buñuel's purpose was anything but a storyteller . He was after the absurdist image and the absurdist mood . After that , I had a lot more fun and enjoyed it quite a bit . All good film watchers have to eventually train themselves away from depending on narrative . I'd still not call it a masterpiece , or even a great film , but it was very interesting and quite entertaining . I give it an . However , I do plan to rewatch it , since it is short and I do have it for another four days . Perhaps , now that I can watch it entirely prepared from the very beginning , I will raise that score . Upon watching it the next day : Nope , sorry . I didn't get anything new the second time ' round . I still liked it as much , which is a huge compliment , but I certainly didn't like it more .
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385,127 | 391,152 | 396,555 | 8 |
Not at Pixar's level , but fun nonetheless ; the " Bowler Hat Guy " rules , though
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I got to see the new Disney film in 3D , so I can't say whether it plays a lot worse without it . It certainly is a lot of fun in 3D , though ( but then , if you've seen 3D movies before , it's pretty much the same as it always has been ) . The story here is slight and somewhat nonsensical , but it moves so quickly that you don't have any time to notice . The visuals are eye-popping and everything looks like candy . And it's genuinely amusing . The villain , known as the Bowler Hat Guy , is one of the funniest characters to appear in any Disney film . In the distant future , I can imagine that he could be all that's remembered about this film , accompanied by his robotic bowler hat and pet t-rex ( the gag in the commercials where the dinosaur can't grab the protagonist is what sold me on this movie ) . It's also nice to see that Disney didn't pack the film with movie stars . Angela Bassett is the biggest name ( and you've got to wonder why they bothered to hire a big name at all for the small role she plays ) , with the next biggest being Laurie Metcalf ( you'll remember her for playing Roseanne's sister on the sitcom , um , Roseanne ) . Oh , and Adam West , Harland Williams , Tom " Songebob Squarepants " Kenny and Tom Selleck have small parts . A fun time .
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385,624 | 391,152 | 202,434 | 8 |
Quite good
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A man ( Ken Ogata ) is saddled with his three illegitimate children when his mistress skips town . This more than annoys his actual wife ( Shima Iwashita ) , who knew nothing about it and is herself childless . Ogata attempts to care for the children , but he just isn't up to it . For a while , I was expecting an Ozu-esquire domestic drama about a man and his wife who eventually come to love these children and learn responsibility . Oh , how wrong I was . I should have known that the title had something to do with the content . After thirty minutes or so the film's tone shifts as the husband and wife make plans to get rid of their unwanted bundles of joy . This is a very dark film , done very subtly . It strikes me as something Vittorio de Sica could have made perfectly . The last sequence reminds me very much of The Children Are Watching Us . As it is , The Demon is not a perfect picture . It goes on a bit too long . You can't do much besides hate the married couple , and it's just so difficult to build honest suspense around endangered children . Ogata , best known as being the star of Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine , which was made the next year , is exceptional . He goes through a range of emotions in the picture , all perfectly and subtly expressed . He is probably the titular character , but that title is ironic . He is demonic in his intentions , but he is clearly a human being . A couple of third act speeches , especially one he gives about his own past , harms the film a lot , unfortunately . Shima Iwashita is also great , although she doesn't get any chance to seem human ( she's much closer to being a demon ) . In the past she starred in two movies by Ozu ( Late Autumn and An Autumn Afternoon ) , as well as Shinoda's Double Suicide , Kobayashi's Harakiri , and Okamoto's Red Lion . I also love the musical score , though it is often used cheaply to toy with the audience's emotions . The film wins extra points by mentioning Gatchaman , one of my favorite TV series ever ( that I just found on DVD ! ) .
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385,306 | 391,152 | 85,959 | 8 |
Very Funny , but has one major problem
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And that would be that it exhausts its funniest jokes in the first half ( before it goes on to that weird but great " Middle of the Film " section ) . Everything from the short film to the British officers during the First Zulu War is gold , but after the halfway point , it is all silver . Not that that silver isn't good , it just feels week compared to the perfection of the first half .
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384,733 | 391,152 | 243,133 | 8 |
Quite good ;
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The Coen Brothers have their place in the cinematic lexicon . They're the clever jokesters of the movies and have given us many great movies . However , I really wish they would evolve . Sure , their films are a lot of fun , but they generally end up as nothing more than an entertaining joke . Only two of their films , in my opinion , achieve anything more , Barton Fink and Fargo , but even they only walk a few steps past that line . The Man Who Wasn't There for a long time suggests that it might end up being the best Coen Brothers movie . It seems to have depth past the cynical parodies and absurdities . Unfortunately , after about one third of the film has past , it loses focus and runs towards easy jokes and cutesy quirks as if it were a burly man who almost revealed something about himself after a night of heavy drinking . In particular , the UFO subplot really should have been cut . And they didn't need the young pianist's seduction near the end . It felt forced . Sure , what results in the film is very entertaining , but it felt like something profound was about to be revealed . The film is a quality product , as you would expect . Billy Bob Thornton is great . He gave two of the best performances of 2001 , the second in Monster's Ball . His character is interesting , but that is one of the major areas that the script pulled back on before it could say enough to make it fascinating . Francis MacDormand is great , but she has far too little screentime . The Brothers obviously wanted to focus on Thornton , but it should have centered less on him than his relationship with his wife . A flashback nearer the end of the film hinted at that depth once again , but it was not pursued . I haven't said too much good about the film , though I've already scored it in my summary . Truth be told , The Man Who Wasn't There is an enormously entertaining and funny film . It contains some of the Coen Brothers ' subtlest humor . It helps to be a classic Hollywood lover , especially of film noirs . The name of the store , for instance , Nirdlinger's , is a reference to Double Indemnity . It's also worth seeing for some excellent black and white cinematography . It's always been obvious that the Brothers have wanted to make a film in B & W , and here it is . It is a glorious achievement in that particular aspect of the art of filmmaking .
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384,564 | 391,152 | 65,462 | 8 |
Much better than I had expected
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As an avid fan of the original Planet of the Apes , I had always avoided the sequels ( though unfortunately not the remake ) , thinking they'd be so cheesy that they would harm the greatness of the original . I finally got around to the first sequel , Beneath the Planet of the Apes , and , frankly , I'm surprised at how good it is . I'm a big fan of corny ' 70s sci-fi anyway , and Beneath is certainly cheaper and goofier than the original . But its themes and ideas are surprisingly intelligent , and it creates suspense and excitement very well . It also expands the mythology of its universe , which is always a positive to geeks like myself . I'd say the only big faults are the much smaller budget , which causes the ape makeup to appear much less convincing than it originally was , and the casting of a Charlton Heston impersonator to play the lead . The story is that James Franciscus is another astronaut looking for Heston and his crew . And since he eventually does find Heston , I don't understand why they wanted someone who looked so much like their original star .
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385,986 | 391,152 | 50,188 | 8 |
Ambitious , uneven , but overall excellent Bollywood melodrama
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Nargis stars as a suffering woman , Radha , experiencing tragedy after tragedy , surviving it all . The first half of the film doesn't promise anything overly special . A poor community falls under the weight of a moneylender , Sukhilala . When Radha marries , her mother-in-law mortgages her farm to pay for the wedding and Radha's jewlery . Since the mother-in-law has no education whatsoever , Sukhilala , probably the only educated man in the village , is able to take advantage of her . When she challenges Sukhilala's claim , she can't do much to disprove their deal . This part of the story is pretty cliché , rather predictable and very questionable . Sukhilala is a fairly standard villain , very cartoonish and simplistic . The audience is programmed to hiss at his every appearance . The conflict is compelling , but I was hoping for something more complex . It is nice , I suppose , to see the system challenged , but the fact that the system is challenged does not necessarily mean that the film challenges the system in an insightful manner . In reality , the film's solutions to the problems are all melodramatics . Luckily , something else is brewing in the film at this point . Radha has two sons , Ramu and Birju . The story starts to focus in on Birju , who is very obnoxious . His mother loves him dearly , spoils him , and he becomes simply evil . I should say at this point that the little kid who plays him as a child , Master Sajid , is very , very annoying , not to mention a terrible little actor . As an adult , Birju is a devil . Sukhilala still runs the place , and now Birju is big enough to do something about it . Thankfully , Birju is not made a hero . Well , perhaps an anti-hero , but at least we're spared him becoming an Indian Robin Hood as I expected . Complexities begin to develop in the way Sukhilala is depicted , and , while he's still the villain , the audience is no longer programmed to despise him on site . Radha has to both protect her son and stand up for what is right . The climax is so extremely impressive that I was almost convinced that the film was great . Yet the film is not what I would call great as a whole . There were dozens of scenes that I loved , but , as the film goes on for three hours , there was plenty to dislike , as well . The fat and gristle detract . Did I mention there are great songs ? Great indeed ! I love Hindi music myself . The cinematography is also often exceptional . .
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385,099 | 391,152 | 1,139,797 | 8 |
I didn't like it as much as most do , but it's quite good
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An original entry into the vampire genre from Sweden . The film is about a 12 year-old boy , Oskar , who suffers the brutality of bullies at school every day . He has no friends until one day he meets a strange girl who has just moved into his building . Her name is Eli , and she is a vampire . Much of the film is made up of the two kids bonding . They are both very interesting characters , and I've seen very few movies about tweens that understand their psychology quite as well as this one does . Unfortunately , whenever the film wanders from the intimacy between Eli and Oskar , it stumbles . While sating her hunger , Eli causes a huge mess with a group of boneheads at the edge of town . These characters exist solely to move the plot along ( otherwise , frankly , the film wouldn't have one ) . At one point , a woman from this group becomes a vampire after Eli bites her . When she is exposed to sunlight , she bursts into flames . This doesn't seem to effect anyone else in the town save her husband . This whole subplot is just weird and underdeveloped , and drags the film down significantly .
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384,563 | 391,152 | 334,372 | 8 |
This short can now be found on the new Winstar DVD of Goodbye , Dragon Inn
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Perhaps this is best described as a curio . It's an addendum to What Time Is It There ? , Tsai's previous feature . The girl in that film ( Shiang-chyi Chen ) has returned to Taipei from Paris ( with no indication of how long she's been gone or how long she's been back ) , and she is searching for the man who sold her a watch on a skywalk ( Kang-sheng Lee ) . But , as the title states , the skywalk is gone . She never finds Lee , but Tsai eventually turns his focus to him . He lost his job because there is no more skywalk ( though , as I recall , though I haven't seen it in a couple of years , that the suitcase full of watches was stolen by a hooker ) . Now he is reduced to prostituting himself to men ( or starring in porn videos made for gay men ) . The film has little reason to exist , but any Tsai , I think , is worth watching . At 25 minutes , this short contains about five times as much dialogue as Goodbye , Dragon Inn .
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385,785 | 391,152 | 478,134 | 8 |
Powerful and well written , despite some classic bits of Haggis ham
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Paul Haggis ' followup to his Best Picture winning Crash is certainly a bit of an improvement . I'm not a Crash hater , but I'm the first to admit it's far too heavy-handed and sloppy to be considered to be a great movie . And honestly , at its worst , you can feel that old Haggis hackery popping up in Elah more than a few times , most notably in that final shot , which is the worst final shot of a film since John Sayles ' Silver City . I also have to giggle at the lame Biblical allegory from which the film gets its title ( Elah was the valley in which David fought Goliath ) , which , try as I might , I cannot get to fit any possible scenario in the film's story . For the most part , though , In the Valley of Elah is an intriguing mystery and a powerful story . Tommy Lee Jones plays a Vietnam vet whose son has gone AWOL . He drives two days to the Army base in hopes of quelling the situation before it gets any worse . Unfortunately , the reason his son is AWOL is because he has been murdered , which is discovered shortly after Jones arrives . Both the military police and the local police ( led by Jason Patrick and Charlize Theron respectively ) are on the case , but Jones , himself a former MP , decides to do his own detective work . The mystery is well crafted by Haggis and his co-screenwriter , Mark Boal . It is true that , after parts of the mystery are revealed , some parts that you learned earlier don't make much sense . But that's pretty common in mysteries in general , and I didn't feel like Haggis had cheated , although it's entirely possible he's just kind of stupid . There are several very moving moments in the film . Susan Sarandon plays Jones ' wife , and , while I usually dislike her as an actress , she brought me to tears in the scene where she learns of her son's death . Jones ' performance was nominated for an Oscar , and it's well deserved ( although I would have rather seen him get one for No Country for Old Men , where he was even better ) . I like how Haggis makes him rather unsympathetic at times . Theron is also very good .
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385,836 | 391,152 | 120,632 | 8 |
Surprisingly Good .
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First off , I love Wings of Desire . It is surely one of my ten favorite movies . But , contrary to my expectations , City of Angels did not offend my sensibilities at all . In fact , I rather enjoyed it . Even though it was based on one of the best movies ever made , it has some original ideas of its own . I really love what we're left with . The last scene is especially affecting . It also contains one of Nick Cage's best performances and , as far as I've ever seen , Meg Ryan's very best . Dennis Franz , however , is a poor excuse for Peter Faulk . Please , if you have seen Wings of Desire , don't ignore this film for that reason . See City of Angels and try not to compare it with its originator .
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385,930 | 391,152 | 23,694 | 8 |
AS YOU WISH , MASTER
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Bela Lugosi plays an evil plantation owner in Haiti who knows how to utilize black magic , like voodoo dolls and zombies . Madge Bellamy plays the woman whom Lugosi turns into a zombie , and is quite stunning in her white wedding dress and her enormous eyes ; she could have been ( possibly was ? ) a great silent movie starlette . Basically , White Zombie is a beautiful horror film that moves too slowly at times and kind of lame by the end , but the majority of it is very interesting . The direction and acting are above average , as well as the cinematography - possibly the best of any classic horror film I've seen . See it if you get a chance . .
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385,700 | 391,152 | 70,374 | 8 |
Quite good Fassbinder
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Good , nearly great Fassbinder about an adult woman who passes from the care of her controlling parents to the even tighter control of a bizarre husband . Margit Carstensen plays the woman and Karlheinz Böhm ( whom you probably remember as the protagonist of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom ) the husband . This is one of Fassbinder's better films . Jonathan Rosenbaum , who doesn't seem to be much of a Fassbinder enthusiast , cites it as his very favorite . It would rank as one of my favorites , too , but for a couple of reasons . It kind of makes its point fairly early on , especially after the marriage takes place . Then it gets a tad repetitive , and goes on for nearly two hours . The next year , Fassbinder made an even better film dealing with similar themes called Fear of Fear , which also starred Margit Carstensen . Carstensen's performance is exceptional in Martha ( and just as good in Fear of Fear ) , and Böhm is quite good , too .
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385,400 | 391,152 | 51,198 | 8 |
Excellent
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Not one of Ford's best works as a director , but it's an excellent film nonetheless . It's one of the best biopics I've ever seen . The subject is Frank " Spig " Wead , a Navy man through and through who , despite all his success in the service , was never able to make much of a connection with his wife and daughters . It was a very personal story for John Ford , who was a good friend of Wead's . Wead was the screenwriter on Ford's excellent They Were Expendable ( and also Air Mail , which I haven't seen ) . The film concentrates on the man and his relationships . John Wayne gives a downright excellent performance as Wead . Maureen O'Hara is back as his love interest , and their interactions here are marvelous . Also giving excellent performances are Ken Curtis ( maybe his best role in a Ford film ) , Dan Dailey , and Ward Bond as the first movie producer who hires Wead . Bond's performance is in loving imitation of John Ford . The Wings of Eagles is a very touching tribute to a friend . The only problem is that it is such a personal story to Ford that the most interesting part , the relationship with the wife and kids , is not treated fully in order to make Wead look better than he probably did in real life . .
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384,741 | 391,152 | 468,569 | 8 |
Ledger's Joker makes this a lot better than it probably would otherwise be
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The sequel to Christopher Nolan's much ballyhooed Batman Begins , a film which frankly I disliked . It spent way too long on Batman's well-known backstory , brought in two of the worst villains from Batman's gallery of rogues , and edited together so choppily that it gave me a headache . The Dark Knight has won even better reviews and already scored a fanbase so rabid that it's hard to tolerate . No movie deserves that , of course , but we can't hold it against the film itself . No , it's nowhere near good enough to be called the best movie ever made . It's nowhere near the best movie released so far in 2008 . It is , however , a marked improvement over Batman Begins , even while having some of the same flaws . Its editing is frequently poor , too . It has improved somewhat , but there were still some action sequences , most notably Batman's first appearance , that were difficult to follow . The biggest hole in the movie , in fact in every Batman movie so far , is Batman himself . I can't offer any advice myself on how to fix the problem , but Batman / Bruce Wayne is the dullest character . They try to inject some substance with Wayne's struggles with his own vigilantism and the way in which he keeps the cycle of criminality in revolution , but , in my opinion , it's rarely interesting . Christian Bale is a mediocre actor , and he brings nothing to the table . And the deep voice he uses as Batman is extremely grating and ridiculous . Add to that that the costume design of the current Batman makes him look like a linebacker . He just doesn't seem streamlined enough to be able to pull off any complicated martial arts moves . Of course , as you've no doubt heard , all eyes watching The Dark Knight are looking at Heath Ledger , who plays the Joker . The Joker is easily the best of Batman's villains , and Ledger has created the definitive Joker in this movie . I hate to say it , but Jack Nicholson's performance in Tim Burton's Batman is bound to be forgotten . The script overall is quite good , despite a clunky scene or two . It creates a fuller view of Gotham City and its strata of criminals and official corruption . And I love how it fits the Joker into this all , an " engine of chaos " , as he describes himself , wanting to upset the good guys and the bad guys alike until nothing is left but total anarchy . The Dark Knight veers into the horror genre at times , and does so effectively . As for the rest of the cast , Aaron Eckhart is quite good as Harvey Dent . Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are both as good as they were in the first film , in which I thought they gave by far the best performances . Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes , but unfortunately she doesn't improve this already undercooked role . Nolan's direction is fine , but I still think he's far better suited to the mystery puzzle films he's done besides the Batman flicks . I think any moderately good director could have made it .
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385,688 | 391,152 | 388,980 | 8 |
One of the better American films to be released in 2005
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I hate sports movies , but I found this one exceptionally well done . Kudos to Bill Paxton on his sophomore effort and his second good film , after the flawed but unforgettable Frailty . The Greatest Game Ever Played doesn't offer any surprises plotwise , but the level of acting and the depth that Paxton finds in the material certainly is surprising . Shia LaBeouf plays a working-class young man who is great at golf , and ends up playing against , and doing well against pros in the US Open . The film uses the class issues that come with the game of golf to add a lot of nuance . Paxton's direction and the editing during the Open ( which lasts most of the movie ) are excellent , and it is certainly one of the most gripping sports movies I've ever seen . LaBeouf is exceptional , as are many of the supporting performances . The performance that's getting all the press for the film is from Josh Flitter , a 10 year-old who plays LaBeouf's caddy . Yeah , he's cute and funny , and the energy he adds is probably needed for a lot of the audience . But , to me , he seemed pretty obviously there just to be cute , and just to keep a segment of the audience from getting bored . If not for the utterly cliché and pointless my - father - doesn't - approve - of - me subplot , this film would be one of the best of the year . As it is , if it had had a little more press , it would have been a sure-shot for the Seabiscuit slot in the Best Picture category .
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385,408 | 391,152 | 858,479 | 8 |
Familiar , but well done dramedy featuring some stellar performances
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An indie comedy about a quirky family of self-hating misfits . We've seen this before , am I right ? Well , so what , I say . When it's done well , I don't care too much whether the concept has been done before . And Smart People is done quite well . Dennis Quaid stars as a college professor and widower who hasn't been out with a woman since his wife died an unspecified ( but long ) amount of time ago . He lives alone with his daughter ( Ellen Page ) . He has a son who goes to the same college at which he teaches and an adopted brother ( Thomas Haden Church ) who likes to mooch off of him . After an accident , Church moves in with Quaid and Page . Quaid also meets a former student ( Sarah Jessica Parker ) , now a doctor , who had a crush on him . They start to date . The plot isn't anything special , but the dialogue is witty and the relationships are well observed . And this is also a case of fine actors who make something merely serviceable into something special . Quaid has never been better . My feeling about his work as an actor is that he is very uneven . He can be excellent , such as in The Right Stuff , but usually he's adequate , and often , perhaps too often , he's awful . But this is definitely one of the excellent performances . Church has kind of a sitcommy role , but that's fitting for an actor who was really good in sitcoms . He's hilarious here , too . A lot of the time , I was thinking of the movie as somewhat akin to a sitcom , but a good sitcom . There have been such things , you know . Page , fresh off her star-making turn as Juno ( though Smart People was filmed earlier ) , is an actress I've liked in a couple of movies I disliked ( Juno and Hard Candy ) . Finally , a movie with her that I actually like ! Feels good . And she's great in it . The character is similar to Juno , but not quite so despicably precious . I like how the writer and director invite the audience to dislike all four of the major characters , at least a bit . They are recognizable people , which is , unfortunately , a rarity in movies . I liked the movie , and recommend it .
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385,838 | 391,152 | 1,183,732 | 8 |
Disgusting , depraved and endlessly inventive
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Wowza ! Along the lines of Evil Dead and Dead Alive , this splatterfest is sure to be a cult classic . Eihi Shiina , famous for playing the crazy girl in Takashi Miike's Audition , stars as a member of Tokyo's police force . Her specialty is hunting " engineers " , genetically modified humans who can reconstitute their flesh wounds as weapons . I think 90 % of this film's budget was spent on red Kool-Ade and fire hoses . Every severed limb produces approximately 30 gallons of fake blood . A movie like this can easily become repetitive and thus boring , but the true worth of Tokyo Gore Police comes from its endless inventiveness . Yoshihiro Nishimura , who has spent his career up to now as a makeup artist , keeps upping the ante , showing us some horrible new thing we've never seen previously in every sequence . It's all extraordinarily disgusting and depraved , but it's the best film of this type I've seen in a while .
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385,837 | 391,152 | 169,547 | 8 |
Great , but certainly no masterpiece
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I am shocked at the great reception American Beauty has gotten on the IMDB . # 2 , only behind the Godfather ! ? ! ? Come on ! It was great , to be sure , but all of the film's sentiments have been expressed before , and better . The decaying family relationships were stated in the better film The Ice Storm . The idea that even in terrible situations , life is still beautiful was brilliantly shown in ( what else ! ) Life is Beautiful ! The one thing that the film did succeed in doing extremely well is the composition of shots . Watch the scene where the neighbor boy records Thora Burch with his video camera . We see the boy on the far left of the screen , staring at her offscreen . Burch stares out at the audience from the television . That is one perfect shot ! There are several great scenes like this . The part of the film which truly bothered me , though , was the way they handled the inevitable shooting . Throughout the film , we watch every important character talk about killing Spacey , and we see them all next to guns . This set up reminded me of the " Who Shot Mr . Burns " episode of the Simpsons . I don't know about the rest of you , but I thought it was rather obvious who the killer was going to be . I think Mendes put way too much emphasis on the murder which he set up at the beginning ( and by the way , did he have to tell us all this at the beginning in the first place ? ) . No one could have screwed up the amazing payoff at the end of the film though . i believe the main reason this film touched so many people must be the last scene . It is truly remarkable to behold !
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384,918 | 391,152 | 25,799 | 8 |
Wonderful 1930s comedy
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I watched Six of a Kind for W . C . Fields - he's only in it for around 10 minutes and has one long scene , the infamous pool sequence he made famous in vaudeville , and several other great moments . The reamaining 55 minutes are also delightful , thankfully , mostly due to the hilarious Charlie Ruggles as the bumbling banker J . Pinkham Whinney . He is everyone's foil . He stutters and stumbles about to our pleasure . Also , his comedy partner , Mary Boland plays his wife , Flora . Joining in the proceedings are George Burns and Gracie Allen . Boland is particularly funny near the beginning and near the end , but Gracie and Ruggles use up most of the picture . Gracie's funny , quite , but she can also get tiring . And poor George Burns has absolutely nothing to do except repeat Gracie all the time . I don't remember laughing at him once ( although he has one great scene with Ruggles , where Ruggles tries desperately to get George to take Gracie and leave him and his wife alone for a while , and one with Fields , where he asks Fields to sell him a sweater ; that bit is exclusively Fields ' , though ) . The situation is constantly funny : the Whinneys are going to drive to California , but to help them with expenses , George and Gracie are recruited . .
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385,834 | 391,152 | 100,802 | 8 |
Great premise reduced to a pretty good action flick .
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When I first saw Total Recall , only a bit over a year ago , I thought it was a fun action flick and nothing more . I remember being a bit disappointed at it . The scene where Edgecomb enters Quaid's hotel room and tells him that he is trapped in his own mind made me think how much better the film could have been if the writers had tried to make the audience think that maybe the whole movie ( after Quaid visits Rekall ) was just an accident in the memory implant . Well , after watching the film twice in one week , I have discovered some things . The writers did try to make the film ambiguous . There are two huge clues to this fact right before Quaid is knocked out in the Rekall lab : 1 . the picture on the screen is obviously Melina . 2 . One of the technicians says , right before Quaid falls asleep : " Blue skies on Mars . That's new . " ( the second chapter to the end of the DVD is titled " Blue Skies on Mars ) . So there we are . The story is ambiguous . Or is it ? Very few people have even noticed this . I'm sure there are plenty of fans of the film who would violently argue that most of the film takes place in Quaid's head . These people should take the next step . There are huge problems with the last two acts of the film if it is just a dream . The biggest problem , the one which makes the whole dream theory fall utterly apart , is that at least a third of the scenes after Quaid is sedated take place without him on screen . One cannot dream without being present at the events which are unfolding . I also think the writers were confused about the whole backstory . Hauser , is he supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy ? Most people will pick up that we're supposed to think he is a good guy at the beginning , then near the end of the film he is revealed to have been involved in the whole plot against Kuato . It seemed like a really good plot twist the first time I saw it , and it felt like a kick in the stomach . The last time I watched it though , there is an interesting scene where Richter and Cohegan talk . Cohegan seems very frightened that Quaid might reveal the secrets he has found . He then tells Richter that he has a plan to capture him , and says , " I have a plan , if you're willing to play along . " The plan he is talking about has to be the creation of Hauser as a bad guy who was only turned to Quaid so he could infiltrate the mutant rebellion . We can also see that Hauser was a rebel sympathizer earlier when Richter complains to his companions ( not to Quaid ) , " We should have killed Quaid on Mars . " Why would he say this unless Hauser had actually been an enemy before ? If one thinks this back story out , it makes no sense whatsoever ( notice that Benny infiltrated the mutant headquarters without any complex plot , thus they didn't really need Hauser to get to Kuato ) . Cohegan could have easily created a video with a fake Hauser ( just as Quaid appeared as a fake fat woman ) . He could have easily implanted a fake memory in Quaid to make him believe that he had always been Hauser . The writers must have been confusing each other , though , because it seems that near the end they completely forgot that Hauser's evil persona was false . Cohegan persists in saying that he wants the old Hauser back . This makes no sense with what has come before . The consensus : great premise that failed because of the screenwriters . It turns out to be just a fun action movie . The only thing the film did completely right : the Tri-Breasted Hooker and the Midget Hooker . I think they should get their own television series .
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385,051 | 391,152 | 468,492 | 8 |
Should have cut back on the non-monster stuff , but otherwise excellent
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It's been a long time since they made a really good monster movie , one that's lean and fun and scary . Maybe it's just because I saw it for the first time in a while last week ( and on the big screen no less ) , but Spielberg's Jaws strikes me as just about the perfect film of that sort . Much of The Host seems like it could come pretty close to Jaws . Unfortunately , while it is fun and scary , it can't in any way be called lean . When The Host is focusing on the monster , or the people hunting the monster , it's just plain awesome . The monster is original , cool-looking , scary , and it acts like an animal . Bong Joon-Ho's direction in these sequences is very close to being as good as Spielberg's . The one big complaint I would have with the monster is that there is little suspense built up to the revelation ? there's a backstory ( that frankly should have been scrapped , for both time and utter stupidity , not to mention pointless anti-Americanism ? even if it is arguably a joke ) , but only a couple of minutes into the main story it appears and starts wreaking havoc . But , my lord , that scene where the monster is running up and down the park chasing people is one of the all-time great sequences of horror . It made me giddy , while I gritted my teeth at the same time . The big problem with the film is that , whenever it wanders away from the monster , it gets fairly weak . I liked some of the quirky family comedy ( the plot is basically as follows : a father is after his daughter , who was eaten by the beast but later regurgitated alive ; with him are his own father , his brother and his sister , but they are hunted by the government who thinks they're diseased ) , but there are too many scenes where the four adult family members are standing around shouting at each other or at the bureaucratic doctors who keep them imprisoned . It gets incredibly obnoxious at times . In short , it's reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine in its worst moments ( they even ride around in a van together ) . The worst part of the film is the whole satire / criticism of South Korean government , law-enforcement , bureaucracy , and the big-bad Americans , who are of course behind the whole thing . Much like Bong's last film , Memories of a Murder , figures of authority are nothing but idiotic goofballs who want nothing more than to screw the common man over . Where the cops in Memories of a Murder miss out on solving the case , the people whom you'd think would be trying to get the monster don't even seem to be looking for him . After all , it'd be easy to find , as the four heroes of the pic find it numerous times using very simple logic . Instead , they are more worried about quarantining everyone who came in contact with the beast the first time it appeared , without any proof , or even reason to believe they might be infected with anything . After the heroes escape from the quarantine , they have a fight with the monster , which several military guys with machine guns witness . But they only pull out their guns after the monster leaves . Maybe Bong was hinting at some Alien-like plot line , but he never attempts to give us any idea what anybody is thinking about the situation outside the family members . Another sequence has the younger brother escape from about fifty cops after they get locked behind a glass door and some huge glass widows , which any of them could have kicked through . There's also this whole thing with " Agent Yellow " , a noxious gas that's supposed to kill the virus or something , and people are protesting it , but Bong never lets the audience into what that's all about . I say , if you're going to keep us in the dark , just drop it all together . There's just so much Bong could have cut back on . I realize he wanted to make it more than just a monster movie , but unfortunately he isn't nearly as talented in other departments as he is in that one . Whatever my complaints , though , I did enjoy the film and it's easily the best 2007 release I've seen so far . P . S . I hadn't had a chance to read up on the film before I wrote this review , so I completely missed that the prologue was based on a true story . Read the IMDb trivia section for further details . Of course that means I am wrong in some of my sentiments above , but I'll let my review stand as my initial reaction .
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384,710 | 391,152 | 74,285 | 8 |
Conflicted , but it works
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I am usually one who has little problem deciding how I feel about a movie . Carrie is a rare movie that completely conflicts me . A good half of the movie I found excellent . The other half I found execrable . I was highly suspicious right from the second scene , where the camera pans through a high school girls ' locker room in slow motion , and no detail is spared . Okay , so none of the girls in the film were under 25 , but that doesn't take away from the fact that they're supposed to be 18 and under and we can see their naked breasts and even pubic hair . This is very bothersome . And then we find the source of the title character's problems : her religious zealot of a mother , played by Piper Laurie . This role is so poorly written , and so poorly performed that it veers very close to being hugely offensive . Even if not offensive , it's annoyingly one-dimensional and adds absolutely no depth to the picture . And then there's the climactic sequence . If you haven't seen the film , egregious SPOILERS follow . I've always known how this film turns out , for the most part ( I had never heard about the ultra-religious mother , which is probably wisely kept a secret by the film's fans ) . I expected the whole film to be little more than a revenge fantasy , and I was mostly correct . I especially didn't like the scene where Travolta and Nancy Allen got killed , despite the fact that I've always secretly wanted to see John Travolta die in an exploding car . But it would have been better to let them survive , to allow some of the guilt exist on with them ( they had already escaped the prom , so it almost seems like they were supposed to live ) . Yet the actual climactic scene in the high school gym is not merely a revenge fantasy . If it were , the audience would be allowed to enjoy the violence and take part in the joy of it , which is the way revenge fantasies generally work . But , no , our emotions are purposely conflicted when Carrie ends up killing several people who neither meant harm to her nor did harm to her . She even kills her gym teacher ( Betty Buckley ) , who is more benign to her than any other character in the film , brutally and intentionally . These deaths were not playing into the audience's desire , but rather worked against it , raising uncomfortable questions . Unfortunately , we then have to follow Carrie home . On the way , she kills those who did her , and , consequently , everyone else , the most harm , and that is a death scene we're meant to revel in . Then she gets to have revenge on the cartoon character of her mother ( who speaks with a fake Southern accent because anyone who would be that into Jesus would have to be a Southerner , I guess ) , where she dies in the same position as Carrie's demonic-looking Christ figurine , a ham-fisted attempt at satire . Along the way De Palma foolishly throws in his entire bag of tricks , which don't really encompass anything that Hitchcock hadn't perfected years earlier , and perhaps even fall far short of what Hitchcock could achieve , and he has composer Pino Donaggio write what has to be one of the worst musical scores of all time . It frequently steals the sharp violin notes that punctuate Janet Leigh's death in Psycho , and uses them in an incredibly inept manner , at that . And then , and then the film has such a remarkably knowing center , the cruelty and pain of a young girl's existence in high school . Throughout the movie , so many perfect notes are hit , from the embarrassment Carrie feels when her gym teacher , either thinking the girl can't hear her or forgetting the fact that she can , is telling the principal about Carrie's period ( hey , maybe that's why she gets crushed at the end ! ) , to the way Carrie refuses Tommy when he first asks her to the prom , to the beautiful spinning dance ? not so much the actual dance , which is another of De Palma's moments of unneeded inventiveness , but the sweet , natural dialogue between Tommy and Carrie . At that point we don't know yet that Tommy and his girlfriend , Sue , aren't in on the prank , but Tommy's dialogue sounds so unforced that I was unsure of whether he was just an exceptional actor ( William Katt does an excellent job in the role ) or whether he might actually like Carrie . I found myself actively hoping for the latter and , though we never do find out the exact truth of the matter , I was at least relieved that it wasn't the former , or at least that the act he was putting on wasn't an act of unadulterated cruelty ( perhaps , at the most , unintentional cruelty ) . In the middle of this mess of a film is the beautiful , brilliant , powerful performance by Sissy Spacek . She was a decade or more older than the character she was playing , but she captures that look of a tortured teenage soul with those cavernous , blue eyes and the hangdog lips . And she gives such perfect readings of her lines . Spacek breaks my heart with every word she says in the movie , even during the bad scenes with Piper Laurie . And knowing what awaits Carrie at the prom makes some of the film almost unbearable emotionally . As many problems as I had with the film , I had tears in my eyes through most of it . Indeed , I was very involved with the film emotionally through its entire run . When , in Sue's dream sequence in the end of the film , an event occurs that would have been entirely predictable ? even if this was the first time it had ever happened ( which I doubt anyway ) , I was startled , badly . I , who claim to recognize nearly every cinematic trick and cliché in the book . And I sat there and chastised myself in my mind for being that gullible . But the simple fact was that it made me jump . That's higher praise than I can give a good number of the best films .
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385,805 | 391,152 | 366,777 | 8 |
Has some problems , but mostly soars above them
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Often wonderful film about children from the director who brought us such family-friendly fare as Shallow Grave , Trainspotting , and 28 Days Later ? Just a joke , not a knock . Boyle is very much deserving of praise for his broad directorial talent . Millions is very good . The story concerns two young boys who find a bag of money . The younger is obsessed with saints and religion , and wants to be charitable with it . The elder wants to use it to increase his status . The film is in the style of magical realism . It is first and foremost very entertaining , and infectious . I do have some complaints that knock the film down a couple of pegs . First off , the last time Boyle had characters coming upon a surprising amount of cash , the situation consisted of hammers against teeth , plastic bags over heads , and bullet holes through attic floors . Eventually in Millions , a criminal comes looking for his money , threatening violence upon the children . This feels like it's from another movie altogether ( namely Shallow Grave ) , and it throws a dark and unpleasant tinge over the movie . There had to be other ways to get the money in their hands without resorting to that old cliché . My second main complaint is that the film likes to veer into schmaltz every once in a while . The climactic sequence is especially vomit-inducing . I also have some smaller complaints , like John Murphy's score ? too Elfmanesque . I also think the movie could have benefited from a slightly less frenetic pacing . The relationship between the brothers could have been especially satisfying if Boyle weren't so eager to shove the story forward . Still , the movie is a lot of fun and well worth seeing .
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385,259 | 391,152 | 250,081 | 8 |
Hardly perfect , but strong
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After re-watching Happiness for the first time in over a decade , I decided finally to catch up with Solondz's two follow-ups . Storytelling finds Solondz in a self-critical and defensive mood , taking on both his own weaknesses as a writer and his critics , who were ubiquitous after Happiness . That aspect of Storytelling didn't really work for me , because , honestly , I don't find Solondz as shallow as many critics did . His characters are sometimes grotesque , but I think he does uncover some uncomfortable truths about people with his technique . Storytelling is comprised of two parts . The first , entitled Fiction , is really a short film . Selma Blair plays a college student who is enrolled , alongside her disabled boyfriend , in a creative writing course . Their professor is a cynical , controversial and angry black novelist . After their professor gives a scathing criticism of the boyfriend's story , he and Blair break up angrily which leads Blair right into her professor's bed . It's hard to see exactly what Solondz is trying to say with this story . It's easy to say he's just trying to stir controversy and make the audience uncomfortable , at which he obviously excels . But the thing is , the uncomfortableness only arises because the emotions of the film are so precise . The second part of the film , Non-Fiction , is a little stronger . Paul Giamatti plays a documentarian who finds his ideal subject in the form of pothead Mark Webber , a high school student who has no ambition . Whatever Giamatti does with his film , it seems like he's making fun of his subject . I liked this part of the film better , because it deals with a subject that I think about often , that being the way documentaries work . There were a few bits of the film that I didn't like , but mostly I found it pretty strong . The film is bolstered by original songs by Belle & Sebastian .
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384,654 | 391,152 | 297,884 | 8 |
Moore is outstanding
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I don't know if this film has anything all that useful or original to say . We know , or at the very least we've heard that 1950s folks didn't much care for homosexuals and black people . Todd Haynes is certainly not taking any brave new stands in this film . It's a tribute to Sirk , who would never overtly deal with these exact same subjects . But he did make a good study of racial attitudes in Imitation of Life in 1959 , so he was no coward . Fortunately , Far From Heaven does manage to work itself up to something quite worthwhile . The film is subtle in the same way as Sirk's were : throwing florid melodrama in your face while secretly depicting the truth under that cloud . Haynes probably wouldn't have succeeded half as well as he did if he weren't working with Julianne Moore and , to a slightly lesser extent , Dennis Quaid . Moore has been a powerhouse actress for more than a decade now , and this could be her strongest performance yet . I might prefer her in Boogie Nights slightly , but this is close . She's great as a sheltered 1950s housewife coming out of her protective shell . Her husband ( Quaid ) has been fighting his homosexual lust his whole life , and he's beginning to lose the battle . Rejected , Moore befriends her gardener , an educated black man ( Dennis Haysbert ) . It's not love , at least right away . Moore is just enthused to have found someone outside of her own world who understands her and will talk with her in an honest manner . The color cinematography , set design , and costume design are full of transcendent Sirk-influenced colors . Perhaps my favorite aspect of the film is the musical score , by Elmer Bernstein . It would be a shame to see it go without an Academy Award nomination . .
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385,853 | 391,152 | 165,854 | 8 |
This Movie Was Sweeter Than Curly Fries
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This film was quite good . The acting was top-notched . Terence Stamp was excellent . Apparently , the real-life limeys thought that his Cockney accent wasn't good , but it wasn't grating . I thought that he perfectly expressed emotion . He played an extremely complex character . I felt a genuine sense of pathos for him . Even better was Peter Fonda . I think this role of his was the best I've ever seen , better than Ulee's Gold or Easy Rider ( which wasn't really an actor's movie , so don't crucify me for that comment ) . He was certainly not the standard Hollywood scumbag producer whom we see in a lot of movies which take place in that place . He was actually kind of likeable . Though he had done plenty of bad things , he seemed to have been trying make amends with his past . Notice how he acts around his girlfriend . When I saw her , I thought , " Oh boy , another Hollywood fantasy where an aging man sleeps with an extremely young girl . " But it was never like that . Fonda seemed to really care about her , as if he were trying to right the wrong that he did to Jennifer . And his girlfriend did not seem empty-headed . She was kind . She was genuinely interested in her lover's past . It was not as if she was just there for the money . But the crazy jump shots and weird editing really took away from the film . In fact , it was so annoying that I gave this film an 8 instead of the 10 it should have been . I liked the way the director narrated some of the background information over Wilson's journey to the place of illegal business to which Eddie drove Jennifer . There is this sort of editing , and it leads into a quick burst of carefully directed violence . Very effective . What I disliked was the way there would be a shot of a character standing there with his mouth shut while the same person would be speaking in a voice-over . Now that was grating ! The flashbacks were sort of hackneyed , also . Many , many movies show flashbacks in a blurry or grainy film stock . This editing was so distracting , that I bet a lot of people will hate it just for that . It takes away from the great story and acting . Without that editing , it would have been better than Out of Sight .
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385,160 | 391,152 | 424,345 | 8 |
You'll laugh until it hurts then probably spank it to Rosario Dawson
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If the tagline upsets you , stay the hell away from this movie . Kevin Smith hasn't evolved at all as a filmmaker in the past 12 years , but who really cares ? No one's going to ever nominate him for an Oscar or anything , and , Jersey Girl aside , his films are entertaining . Sometimes they're downright hilarious . I forgot just how fun the guy can be . Clerks II is probably my second favorite of his films after the original . It goes back to his old characters , Dante and Randall , who , after the Quick Stop burned down , started working at a fast food restaurant . Dante finally found the perfect woman , or at least one who will bring him opportunities and relative happiness . His dream girl is his manager ( Rosario Dawson ) , but he doesn't believe they could ever have a future together . The mushy stuff works okay , especially the friendship between Dante and Randall . This movie is played almost wholly for laughs . And there are a lot of big ones . I love their co-worker , Elias ( Trevor Fehrman ) , a 19 year-old born again Christian who lives most of his life talking about either The Transformers or Lord of the Rings . I laughed pretty much constantly at him . The only big disappointment is the climactic Tijuana donkey show , which is built up and then turns out really lame . And it's not because Smith was too Puritan about it , either . It's pretty dirty and I'm actually wondering how the MPAA let it go with an R rating ( I'm wondering if it was originally way worse , and then with a bit of editing seemed relatively tame ) . It's just not that funny . One thing is for sure : it's almost impossible to watch this movie without falling in love with Rosario Dawson . I've seen her elsewhere , but she's never made an impression . She's just out-and-out sexy here , even in a fast food uniform . It wouldn't surprised me if Smith's wife left him just for how lovingly he films her . The film is juvenile , but definitely one of my favorite movies so far in 2006 . Highly recommended to anyone who liked or loved the original .
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385,904 | 391,152 | 18,033 | 8 |
A decent romantic comedy made wonderful by the presence of Clara Bow
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I'm completely smitten with Clara Bow . After having seen Wings , and having just watched It and the TCM documentary Clara Bow : Discovering the It Girl , I have to say that she's just about the most amazing actress of the silent era . Even besides her limitless beauty , it seems like she can accomplish anything with her face . It's far too bad that she was never given a role that fully suited her immense talent . Wings is the closest she ever came to making a great film , it would seem , but , even though she steals the movie away from the other actors , the dogfights and action sequences steal the movie from her . So then It has to stand as her testament , the film that best demonstrates her legacy . And because of this , it's not surprising that Bow is all but forgotten . I mean , It certainly isn't a bad movie . It's a moderately well done romantic comedy where the shopgirl goes after her rich boss . It's fun and entertaining , but not necessarily something you'll remember for that long afterwords . Much like any romantic comedy that would be released today , among which the best is only an average movie . But then those looking to observe Clara Bow's talent don't exactly need another movie . Bow effortlessly raises the level of the project . It would have been rather average without her , but she makes it good . Quite good , in fact . I couldn't take my eyes off her , and I know that I'll visit the film again because of her . The other actors are mostly forgettable , except for William Austin . He plays the boss's best friend , and he's pretty obviously a homosexual . It's one of the more open depictions I've seen . He's quite funny , as well , and it's no mean feat that he wins any attention whatsoever away from Ms . Bow . .
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384,809 | 391,152 | 45,251 | 8 |
Has its weak points , but some strong points make it a worthy Welles film
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Orson Welles ' Othello is certainly not to be counted amongst the director's best films , which are , of course , amongst the very best ever made , but it's good . The opening is gorgeous : it begins in medias res , with Othello and Desdimona being carried away , corpses , and Iago being suspended from a castle turret in a small cage . Unfortunately , the adaptation falters all the way until the very end . I can't say that I am any kind of expert on the play , but I know that there is a lot missing . The film moves at the speed of sound , when it really shouldn't . Suspense has no time to brood . The play loses a great deal of its power through most of its run . It's simply dry of emotion for about an hour or more of the 93 minute running time . Most likely , this wasn't Welles ' fault . There were a lot of problems on the production , and it took many years to complete it ( the credits list no fewer than five photographers ) , and it's probably the case that not everything was completed by the time they edited it all together . The pace is the biggest problem . The actors , too , are not strong . Welles himself is great , of course . Unfortunately the character of Othello really doesn't have all that big a part in the original play . Well , he begins to come in more nearer the end , but , as far as the " main character , " Iago is it . Until the very end , the play is told from the point of view of Iago . The actor who plays him is decent , but decent isn't nearly good enough . Many of the other actors are weak , too . Cassio , heck , I didn't even know which actor was playing him most of the time . Desdimona is played by a truly beautiful young actress , but she isn't worthy of the role , sadly . To tell you the truth , the only character besides Othello who has a worthy actor in the role is Emilia , Iago's wife , who really , like Othello , doesn't have much to do for most of the film . So for most of the film's run , we're left to sate ourselves on Orson Welles ' beautiful visions . They're great , of course . They are better , however , almost everywhere else in Welles ' world . It only beats F for Fake , which can hardly count in this contest . Fortunately , the film pulls itself together by the climactic sequence . Welles is especially good , both as an actor and a director , in the bedroom scene . There is an absolutely stunning moment where Desdimona's white radiance fills most of the screen . Suddenly , Welles ( in black face , of course ) turns his face and reveals himself - mere centimeters above her head . I jumped .
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385,870 | 391,152 | 32,156 | 8 |
Why does Kenji Mizoguchi get a free critical pass on every film he directs ?
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No , The Story of Late Chrysanthemums is not a bad movie , not at all . In fact , it is quite good . However , it is hardly perfect . This is an Alcestis-like story about a wife , Otoku ( Kakuko Mori ) , who sacrifices herself for the sake of her husband . The man is a young actor , Kikunosuke ( Shotaro Hanayagi ) , who is living in the shadow of his famous father . The name earns him respect and praise , but only when he is present . When his back is turned , nobody hides the fact that they think he's terrible , and he knows it . Otoku , the wetnurse of his brother , is the first to give him honest criticism . The two fall in love and attempt to marry , but Kikunosuke's father and the rest of his family won't allow him , a man of noble birth , to retain the name if he should go through with it . He does it anyway , and spends many long years suffering as a nobody . Meanwhile , Otoku works at keeping things going ; she even begs acting troupes to give her husband a job . Kikunosuke doesn't appreciate her enough , but , then again , she is selfless to a fault . She becomes downright annoying as the picture progresses : always whining , and , after every major bit of dialogue , she has a coughing fit . Let me ask those who overpraise this movie : did anyone not see the ending coming from the first ten minutes ? Mizoguchi made many films that were similar in theme , but not nearly as irksome , and his actors were nearly always better . Still , the man's cinema is evolving rapidly , and his direction is downright beautiful . The cinematography flows like poetry . I like it more than I let on above , but I really do want to urge my fellow internet critics to hold the same standards to Kenji Mizoguchi that you would to any other director . .
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385,501 | 391,152 | 32,152 | 8 |
hilarious !
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W . C . Fields in top form , but Edgar Bergen and Charlie MacArthy are just as prominent ( and as funny ) . The best scene involves Fields playing ping pong - it's easily one of the funniest sequences in film history . Another great scene involves Fields BSing about his exploits as a big game hunter .
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385,792 | 391,152 | 17,961 | 8 |
Russian Silent . . . Comedy ?
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I really love silent cinema of all types , and some of my very favorite films are silent ( Voyage to the Moon , Battleship Potemkin , The Passion of Joan of Arc , Our Hospitality , Sherlock Jr . , Safety Last , City Lights , Modern Times ) . Battleship Potemkin ( and Sergei Eisenstein in general ) got me interested in Soviet silent film , so I was excited to find this particular title , Happiness , on my local video shelf ( although that is not a link , this is available for purchase , if not at Amazon , check other sites . I picked it up and put it in my VCR . I had expected something heavy and powerful like Potemkin ( and many other films that I had read about ) , but it turned out not to be exactly what I expected . Happiness is , in fact , a Russian silent comedy . No , it is quite unlike the silent comedies of Keaton , Lloyd , and Chaplin . It shares a few characteristics ( especially Chaplin's famed swift-kick-in-the-butt , so prevalent in his pre-feature-length shorts ) , but it is a lot more socially conscious . What's more , it manages to be both socially conscious ( and very much so ) AND quite humorous ( also very much so ) . The main character , actually named Loser , is just a great character . He is the archetypical lovable loser . He can't do a thing right , ends up messing things up completely in every situation . At one point he is asked to protect his farming community's storage barn , and when trying to chase a goat away from some crops , he fails to notice a bunch of people literally steal the house ! Perhaps the funniest scene in the film is the one where Loser chooses to give up his life ( strange in comedy : there are two different scenes with jokes about suicide , and both actually work ) because thieves stole his horse , the last bit of property he owned ( though it was a particularly bad horse ) . He builds a coffin , measuring it for himself by stretching out in it to see if it will be comfortable . There is a great set piece where Loser is smoothing the wood of his coffin on a workhorse , and when he moves back and forth , shaving the wood , the workhorse moves rhythmically back and forth like a real horse ( maybe you'd have to see it to understand ) . The local magistrate catches him doing this ( i . e . , planning suicide ) and he speaks a very telling line : " If the peasants start killing themselves , where will we get crops ? " " Killing yourself is illegal , " the magistrate informs him . He gets the local wing of the army , in which the commons soldiers are no longer individuals , but rather automatons with big , puffy , rubber masks ( they very much resemble the school children in the film Pink Floyd's the Wall ) . The captain of this troop , when Loser says that he can no longer live , says to his soldiers : " Beat him half to death ! " The only problem with this film is that I believe some scenes are missing . The story is sort of difficult to follow at times . Otherwise , it is a very good film , unfortunately forgotten as so many old films are .
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385,163 | 391,152 | 142,458 | 8 |
Good Miike
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Despite the title and the mean-looking cover art , Young Thugs : Innocent Blood is one of Miike's gentlest and sweetest films . That's not to say that it is entirely free of nastiness . The protagonists spend a lot of their free time getting into violent brawls . But the story is one of friendship and romance . The film follows four friends , three guys and a girl , as they exit high school . As time goes on , and as new romantic relationships arise , the friends grow apart . It's kind of like Take Care of My Cat , except for every once in a while someone gets beaten with an aluminum baseball bat . It's actually quite touching , and frequently very funny . The climactic event in the film is extremely goofy in a way that only Miike could accomplish ? it's not quite on the level as the end of Dead or Alive 1 , but it's something you're guaranteed not to see outside of this man's filmography .
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384,655 | 391,152 | 299,658 | 8 |
Dazzle me , baby !
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A hugely entertaining musical about a woman , Roxie Hart ( Renée Zellweger ) , who kills her lover when he reveals that he was lying about a guy who could make her famous . She's up for murder and might be hanged , but she and her wishy-washy , pushover husband ( John C . Reilly ) hire a fast-talking lawyer ( Richard Gere ) to defend her . The high-profile defense makes Roxie famous , and she plans to start an act after her inevitable release from prison . The film is all flash , and I wouldn't have it any other way . The point , that fame can come and go without warning , isn't anything new , but the film has a lot of energy to drive its theme home . The great musical numbers can be attributed to the original play's original director , Bob Fosse . As a Fosse fan , I could immediately identify his style . The numbers all arise out of the characters ' fantasies , which works very well . The music itself is somewhat less impressive . Sure , every song is at least good , but there are so many songs that they tend to run into each other . Zellweger has been around for several years now , since Jerry MacGuire , and she's always been good . This is the first time she's been fantastic , and I'm guessing that she will be nominated for Best Actress . I've seen a few people praise Richard Gere's performance , but his , I think , is the least special in the film . He just didn't seem right to me , and I'm not sure I could explain why . I like Reilly in this film as well . He's had a thousand great roles in the last decade , and everyone tends to ignore him . His character in the film is constantly forgotten , so much so that his one musical number is " Mr . Celophane , " in which he laments his invisibility . I hope the Academy doesn't look right through him this year . I've left out Catherine Zeta-Jones , who looks like she's really important on the posters . She's less so in the actual film . She plays another murderess , having killed her husband and sister when she found them together . She was the night club star whom Roxie was watching when she was seduced by the man whom she eventually killed . I wish that her character had been given more screen time . Even more deserving of extra screen time is Queen Latifah , who has one of the most impressive musical numbers early in the film . She also kind of drops away as the film progresses , unfortunately . .
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385,305 | 391,152 | 89,530 | 8 |
I can't believe how low the imdb rating is on this film !
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Sure it's probably the least good of the Mad Max films , but it is still entertaining as heck ! It is maybe a little more Hollywood ( which is a bad thing ) than the first two . The music is overbearing at times , and some of the attempts at jokes were very cheap and American blockbusterish . One of the main faults that has to be sited with this one is that the last thirty minutes or so are basically taken straight from The Road Warrior . The car chase and then the speech about how a stranger helped them establish a new society were taken right out of the 2nd installment . It still is very creative , and the action has a wonderful momentum . I love the whole society that finds Max in the desert . I loved the recitation of their foundation , and I loved their dialect . I loved Masterblaster . And Tina Turner was actually cool , too .
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384,609 | 391,152 | 53,168 | 8 |
Good , but overrated
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This is the first Robert Bresson movie I've watched , and perhaps I did miss something . It is usually considered a masterpiece , one of the best films ever made . I personally liked a lot of it , found a couple of individual parts amazing , and felt unsatisfied when it ended after only 75 minutes . I don't know , it could even be an edited copy that I watched ( although I did see the New Yorker version of the VHS ) . I would like to praise over everything the performances , especially by the pickpocket himself and the woman who played Jean . They are both excellent . I also found the editing in a couple of the pickpocket montages remarkable . I give it an . If I hadn't been expecting a masterpiece , I might have liked it more .
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385,903 | 391,152 | 67,677 | 8 |
Well worth checking out
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Excellent early Fassbinder about two shiftless young men who decide , seemingly on the spur of a moment , that the next big step in their lives will be an extended expedition for treasure in Peru's Rio das Mortes region . One of their fiancées ( Hanna Schygulla , as gorgeous and as great as ever ) finds the notion stupid and wants to put a stop to it . It's a droll comedy and has a ton of great sequences . This is the first film in a Fassbinder bender I'm going on . I'm planning on seeing all of the films of his that have recently been released on DVD . I've been thinking a lot about this particular auteur lately . I don't think that enough time has passed since his untimely death to allow his career to be taken into proper perspective . Fassbinder reminds me a lot of Rohmer , Ozu , Godard and Bresson . He's in his own little world in his films ( a world which changed a lot in the 13 or so years during which he was active ) , and a lot of people are still misunderstanding it as overly theatrical , or stilted , or otherwise . The more films one sees by him , the more one gets adjusted to this universe . I think Rio das Mortes is best appreciated by Fassbinder's fans , and is unlikely to make any new converts ( start with Ali : Fear Eats the Soul , Fox and His Friends , and The Marriage of Maria Braun ) .
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384,934 | 391,152 | 93,894 | 8 |
A heck of a lot of fun
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Awesome , cheesy 1980s action / sci-fi flick starring the one , the only Arnold Schwarzenegger . You know , say what you might about Schwarzenegger , but he made some damn entertaining movies in his day . The story here is pretty clever , actually . It probably had been done before , but I can't think of anything specifically . It certainly has been done afterward . The Japanese cult classic Battle Royale is pretty close to the same concept . The ideas in the film pretty much take a back seat to the nonstop action . And one-liners . This movie has some of the best ( meaning most hilariously cheesy ) one-liners in action movie history . Some of them are moderately amusing , like when , after he kills the guy with the chainsaw , Schwarzenegger says , " He had to split . " But the one that had me rolling on account of its pure awfulness was after he dispatched of Sub-Zero : " Now he's just plain zero . " You feel like there should be crickets chirping after that one . I also love how much the future looks like the ' 80s , especially the freshly permed dancers . And whosever idea it was to cast Richard Dawson as the villainous , scumbag gameshow host deserves a medal . The film also features my former governor , Jesse Ventura . This is probably the only movie where you can see two real-life United States governors fight each other to the death .
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384,674 | 391,152 | 65,777 | 8 |
Certainly a very good film , but not the masterpiece everyone has touted it as being ( )
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SPOILERS AHEAD : There are many , many movies about WWII , both about the battles and about the condition of life for the people involved , especially the situation of the Jews in Europe . When someone makes a movie on this latter subject , it is very difficult for anyone to criticize it . 1998's _ Life is Beautiful _ received some criticism , but mainly because it contained comic elements where people felt there should be only tragedy . But if the film is a drama , then it is basically untouchable by critics and viewers . And as for this film itself , it was directed by an old master who had been out of it for a while . Even if the film was terrible , there was no way , when it came out in the early 70s , that anyone was going to call it less than a masterpiece , an instant classic , if you will . Well , this film is in no way terrible . In fact , it is very good . It affected me enough where I did tear up a bit . I was touched at certain points . But I also was acutely aware of some of the film's shortcomings as I watched . First off , the reason why I teared up , i . e . , what I did like about the film especially : the relationship between Georgio and Micol . I connected with it instantly because I have been through similar circumstances . It is rather painful , let me tell you . I longed for Micol right along side with Georgio , and felt utterly rejected simultaneously with him . This is the way one should experience a great film . There were two more relationships that were really well developed and deeply felt by me , both involving Georgio : Georgio and his father , a very good character played by a marvelous actor , and Georgio and Malnate . The rest of the characters were very sloppily made . Did Alberto Finzi-Contini exist for any other reason than to create that great funeral procession scene ? He was barely in the movie at all . I had thought they had forgotten him for a long time , then they finally came back to him , and he was next to death . The Finzi-Contini family was hardly existent . I thought the father was a butler until very near the end of the film . A cheap joke is made about the centegenarian grandmother's inability to hear well ( although this character had a very poignant scene at the very end of the film ) . Possibly the biggest problem of the film is that the scenes dealing with anti-Semitism and the onset of war never really coalesced with the problems surrounding Micol's and Georgio's relationship . The latter theme dominated the film , while the former only appeared in the background . This structure would have been fine , but the background section of the film never seemed to influence much the foreground . Georgio could have just as easily have fallen in love with Micol without the war going on . This is not what puts stress on their relationship . Possibly the main theme that de Sica was trying to get through in the film was that our personal lives do not naturally care about what is happening in society , but society keeps trying to push its way into our personal lives . Unfortunately , it only works to a certain extent . The film was too short for its subject matter . It is only 94 minutes long . If it had been two hours or even two and a half , the two parts would have fit together better and the main theme would have been a lot more potent . One of my very favorite films has the exact same theme : _ The Unbearable Lightness of Being _ , where people attempt to love each other in Czechoslovakia while the Soviets oppress them . It is three hours long , and it works on every level . In _ The Garden of the Finzi-Contini _ , there is not even time for a proper conclusion . Micol's story is finished , or at least as finished as it needs to be , but what happened to Georgio ? His father just informs us that he left . Why can't we see him leave ? We don't need an enormous explanation from him , but just a subtle scene , as is the film's style , where he packs and talks to his mother maybe . Surely he hasn't gotten Micol out of his mind that quickly . I realize it was in his best interests to get the heck out of Italy right away , but I can't believe he doesn't at least think for a moment whether or not he should do something on Micol's behalf . I'm fine that he doesn't . I would bet that in the novel , this sort of scene appears . It should have also been in the film . I give the film an , mostly for the true-to-life pain it caused me concerning the one-sided love .
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385,718 | 391,152 | 479,537 | 8 |
Really good for most of its run , but it gets a bit too abstract at the end
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This Western was barely released near the beginning of 2007 . Too bad , really , because it is quite good . Much better than the current hit 3 : 10 to Yuma , which is similar in many ways . I suppose the aging stars , Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson , aren't big box office draws . And I think some would find it slow . The story has the pretty basic chase and revenge elements . Liam Neeson is chasing Pierce Brosnan . We're not told why until near the end , though , from a few brief flashbacks , I kind of guessed it . But we're not told with whom to sympathize for most of the picture . It's the kind of Western that's very serene most of the time , with startling photography , but that erupts with violence every once in a while . I found it entertaining as hell , but a couple of problems arose as it neared the finish . First , the backstory , which is only told in full near the end , is weak . When we get the full flashback , it kind of ruins the balance between the two characters . Plus , where director David von Ancken had done a marvelous job elsewhere , his direction in the flashback sequence is incredibly poor . Characters behave idiotically , and no one's acting like a believable human being . In short , it almost ruins the rest of the movie . Secondly , it becomes increasingly obvious as the film movies on that von Ancken and his co-screenwriter , Abby Everett Jacques , want this to be a purely symbolic film . Near the end we get a couple of overly ridiculous sequences where the two leads encounter mysterious characters who deliver cryptic speeches . The final weird character is played by Anjelica Huston , and her cameo is distracting in the extreme . If the backstory had been more well thought out ( since the filmmakers want the film to exist on a more symbolic level , it might have been preferable never to reveal what happened ) , and the symbolism were less overt , this might have been one of the great Westerns . As it is , it stands as a pretty good modern one . It does boast one of the single coolest moments in any Western ever . If you've seen it , I'm talking about the scene with the dead horse . That was sweet .
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385,394 | 391,152 | 54,847 | 8 |
Loren is awful , but everything else is good
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I resisted this for much of its run . Oh , it was always good , but , being such a huge fan of Mann's tight , emotionally and thematically complex Westerns I was disappointed in the pure spectacle and the bland characterizations . Plus , I've come to the conclusion that I find Sophia Loren to be a poor actress . I mean , she's beyond awful in this movie . But over the course of it , I became more and more impressed with the visuals , the artistry behind the cinematography and the costumes . And Miklós Rózsa's score . Holy freakin ' cow , is this one of the greatest film scores ever written . I love Henry Mancini's score to Breakfast at Tiffany's , but it is frankly ludicrous to say it's better than Rózsa's score for El Cid . Heston is Heston . He has a great presence , and he looks pretty awesome with that grayed beard . Acting-wise , I was impressed with John Fraser and Geneviève Page . I have a great love for corrupt rulers in movies . About the only thing I liked in Ridley Scott's Gladiator was Joaquim Phoenix's Commodus , and I loved Fraser and Page as the possibly incestuous brother and sister who become El Cid's undeserving king and queen . Nearer the beginning of the film , I desperately wanted Heston to dump Loren and marry Page instead . Of course , if Page wasn't there I'd rather have Heston marry the nearest rock . Far more attractive than Loren , that mutant .
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384,792 | 391,152 | 367,089 | 8 |
Good indie drama
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Quite good indie drama about intellectual New Yorkers going through a divorce , and the effect it has on their children . Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney star . This is certainly based on real life experiences . My biggest problem was that I just couldn't for the life of me find any sympathy for Jeff Daniels . He's a novelist who hasn't been published for a while . He's very cold and intellectual , and he shamelessly manipulates his children into the same mold ( thankfully only the first born follows ) . I'm one who gets his references to Godard's Breathless and Monica Vitti , but , man , did I want to smack him ! This , at least for me , gave the film unbalance . I immediately sided with the mother and the younger child , who rebels against his father and stays with his mother . She cheated on him , and he stayed faithful to her , but I was always thinking that I would have cheated on him , too ! And I only started sympathizing with the older kid when he started to see through his father . So , yeah , I never found sympathy for Daniels . I still really liked the film , though . I think Baumbach's script is very observant of human nature . As far as indie dramas of 2005 go , I think this was somewhat overrated ( according to criticstop10 . net / 2005 / , it's the seventh highest rated film of the year ) . I prefer both Junebug and Me and You and Everyone We Know , but The Squid and the Whale is at least in the same league .
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385,972 | 391,152 | 22,208 | 8 |
Excellent , though the comic drunks were a bad choice
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Another win for William Wellman ! He keeps moving up the list of my favorite directors . In this one , Barbara Stanwyck stars as a nurse who is assigned to watch two young girls . She discovers that they're illness is being exacerbated by a crooked doctor . It seems that the doctor and the kids ' mother's chauffeur ( Clark Gable , looking delightfully evil in his black chauffeur's uniform ) are conspiring to let them die . Unfortunately , Stanwyck is obliged to follow the doctor's rules , as per her profession's code of ethics ( hopefully this has changed over the past 75 years ! ) . It's a good story , and Stanwyck is fantastic in it . My major complaint is that Wellman goes for some strange comic scenes . The girls ' mother is an alcoholic ( the doctor and chauffeur are also trying to keep her inebriated , so she doesn't stop their murder plot ) , and she always has friends over for parties . The drunks are all played as comical , which grates against the more serious themes of the movie . Joan Blondell co-stars as the nurse who takes care of the kids during the day ( and apparently she's nowhere near as concerned as Stanwyck about it , or at least she doesn't do anything about it ! ) . This movie is found in Warner's Forbidden Hollywood Vol . 2 , not in Vol . 3 , which is nothing but Wellman films .
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384,957 | 391,152 | 829,459 | 8 |
I don't see too much of a point to there being a film of these events , but this is undoubtedly a good one
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The recounting of the investigation surrounding the Daniel Pearl kidnapping in Pakistan , based on the account of his wife , Mariane . Winterbottom takes much the same approach as Paul Greengrass did for United 93 last year , playing everything very subdued , very straight , and concentrating on the procedure . I'm not really sure it was necessary to make this film , honestly . United 93 worked mainly because is an event that is shared by everyone in the United States , and arguably everyone in the world . It makes sense to watch the film as a kind of catharsis , and as a kind of visual education of how things went down ( at least with the procedural part of that day ) . A Mighty Heart feels more like a peering into a private tragedy . I also question the casting of Angelina Jolie in the lead role . She's a figure who is far too associated with trash journalism , and has , for a long time now , been more of a celebrity and less of an actress . To cast her in a film like this makes you wonder , is this just a bid to win awards ? Was her casting just a ploy to lure audiences to the theater ? If the latter was the case , the producers of the film failed miserably : the movie flopped . I think it is fair to judge movies by their intentions , at least partly . But the truth of the matter is that the film is very good . It grips and moves when it is supposed to . And , yes , Angelina Jolie is award-worthy , as much as I hate to go that route . I guess I can't complain about it all too much . If Mariane Pearl hadn't wanted her story known across the world , she wouldn't have written the book .
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385,723 | 391,152 | 765,443 | 8 |
Almost great movie , with great performances
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Cronenberg follows up his critically ( and I'm guessing financially ) successful A History of Violence with another mob story , this time set amongst the Russian mafia in London . A midwife ( Naomi Watts ) delivers a baby to a dying Russian teenager . She takes her diary , in Russian , and tries to get it translated . Unfortunately , she walks straight into the people who were selling the teenager as a prostitute , a restaurateur ( Armin Mueller-Stahl ) whose business is merely a front . In reality , he's a mob boss . The mob boss's son ( Vincent Cassel ) has recently recruited his driver ( Viggo Mortensen ) into the mob . The story follows Mortensen , who becomes attracted to the midwife , while his bosses want her out of the picture . Cronenberg fans were mixed over A History of Violence . Many thought it was too mainstream . But it had a strange mood to it , and was definitely a stylized reality . That made it stand out from other films , in my opinion . I'm not sure I could fit it into Cronenberg's filmography very well , but , if I had seen it without knowing who directed it , I would certainly have known it was made by someone special . Eastern Promises , on the other hand , could easily have been made by pretty close to anyone else . Other than a couple of visceral moments , most notably the now infamous fight sequence that occurs late in the film ? certainly one of the stand-out scenes of 2007 ? the film is directed in a straightforward manner . SPOILERS in the next paragraph Steve Knight , who was nominated for an Oscar for Dirty Pretty Things several years ago , has a very good script here . I especially like the way he gets us thinking about Vincent Cassel's sexuality before the possibility is even uttered by the characters ( and it's never confirmed ) . But I honestly didn't like the big twist with Mortensen's character . Turns out he's an undercover operative for the police . Much like Cassel's sexuality , this is hinted a few times , very subtly ( I didn't notice it , but probably because I didn't want the story to go that way ) . To me , this route is uninteresting . I liked Mortensen's thug character so much , I was disappointed when it was revealed to be untrue . In addition to this , I thought the film's wrap-up didn't make much sense . Mortensen's supposed to be dead . While Mueller-Stahl is sent to prison , I don't quite believe Mortensen would be able to re-enter that society . Mueller-Stahl doesn't seem to be at the top of the Russian mafia , but he seems to be high enough up it where someone he decided to kill wouldn't last very long , even with Mueller-Stahl out of the picture . END SPOILERS All in all , I do think Eastern Promises is a very good picture , pretty close to being a great one . While the script has a couple of weaknesses , overall it's quite good . And the acting is through the roof . Mortensen , Cassel and Mueller-Stahl are all award-worthy . I don't think any of their chances are that great , though , for an Oscar nomination .
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385,779 | 391,152 | 856,288 | 8 |
Surprisingly good
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So many horror movies think that blood and gore are the scariest things about life . I'm definitely not in their camp , and take the ( I hope ) high-minded position that fear is best generated by atmosphere and tone . That said , gory horror movies can occasionally be fun in a circus geek kind of way . The French horror film Inside is a nice balance of both atmosphere and blood . It does lean more on the blood than on the atmosphere , but it has just enough of that atmosphere to break it free from those movies that are merely bloodbaths . Alysson Paradis is in her 9th month of pregnancy . It is Christmas Eve , and the next day she will go to the hospital , where they will induce labor . Unfortunately , a creepy woman ( Béatrice Dalle ) breaks into her home with the hope of stealing the baby , whether or not it has been born yet . So , yeah , if the thought of a pregnant woman in peril bothers you , avoid at all costs . The film gets every bit as tasteless as you might imagine . If you can stomach it , though , it's a perfect B-level horror movie . It actually made me queasy , and I'm not one who is easily queased .
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385,332 | 391,152 | 910,936 | 8 |
Very funny
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A stoner comedy / action movie send-up from the Apatow factory . Seth Rogen witnesses a murder and gets his drug dealer , James Franco , mixed up in the mess . The two go on the run as some gangsters search for them . It's very loose and sloppy , with an improvised feeling . There are long stretches where I didn't laugh much , and there are some plot developments that make little sense . Fortunately , much of the film is inspired silliness , and Rogen's and Franco's comic timing is great . I was frequently in tears . Danny McBride and Craig Robinson both give break-out supporting performances . The final sequence in the diner pushes this one for me from pretty good to almost great . I'm not quite sure why David Gordon Green was hired to direct this . Many of the critics who wrote about Pineapple Express went out of their way identifying the elements that belong to him . I'm not a big fan of his art films , but he's a decent director , and anyone could have shot this one , entertaining though it may be .
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385,215 | 391,152 | 57,197 | 8 |
Let me be the hundredth to praise Roy Harryhausen
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Generally Jason and the Argonauts is only passable as entertainment . The story is weak , as are the characters and the acting . I don't think many would argue that 99 % of the film's worth is to be found in Roy Harryhausen's effects ( the other 1 % probably coming from Bernard Herrmann's rousing score ) , which earn the adjective " special " a thousandfold . Talos , the Harpies , the Hydra and the skeletons , these are the four sequences that we wait for and hold our breath during . They have barely aged - partly because the CGI effects that we've spent so long inventing don't look anywhere near as good as the reliable art of Harryhausen . He himself perhaps surpassed himself , at least animation-wise , with his Medusa in Clash of the Titans , but the skeleton battle is arguably the most exciting special effects sequence I can think of . The choreography of that fight is impeccable , with the actors actually acting like they're fighting , instead of just swinging their swords at where special effects would appear in post-production ( some of the other stop-motion sequences in the film contain wild weapons flailing , most notably the Harpies sequence ; no big criticism , though ; it still looks amazing ) . As it stands , it really is a whole lot of fun and a quality picture . .
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385,350 | 391,152 | 452,623 | 8 |
Has its flaws , and some big ones , too , but still achieves something near greatness
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Ben Affleck's directorial debut , based on a novel by Dennis Lehane , who also wrote Mystic River . Affleck's direction is more than adequate . I'm sure he's aping Clint Eastwood's film version of Mystic River much of the time , and there's one scene that's way too reminiscent of Se7en , but he shows a lot of skill . He's great at capturing his hometown of Boston and the people who live there . The story revolves around the investigation of a missing girl . Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris are two of the major investigators for the police . The aunt of the missing girl hires Casey Affleck and his girlfriend , played by Michelle Monaghan , to do private investigation on the side , because they can maybe find some secrets that the girl's mother ( Amy Ryan ) might be hiding . It's a gripping mystery story , and it arrives at one quite satisfying twist . But then there's another twist . The second big twist is completely stupid , and then the previously excellent film starts to fall . This isn't unlike Mystic River , where , when we finally found out why Tim Robbins has been acting so strange all the time , I just had to slap my forehead . Gone Baby Gone is able to pull itself up a bit from its head-slapping plot revelation in its final moments , but I was still left feeling cheated . I also have to complain that Monaghan , as cute as she is , adds very little . Would Affleck's character really put his girlfriend in such dangerous situations all the time ? I'm sort of glad we're spared the whole cliché schtick where one of the two lovers fears for their significant other's safety , but bringing the hot chick into a powerful drug dealer's den sounds like a hostage situation waiting to happen . Casey Affleck delivers his second fine performance of the year , though it isn't as good as his Robert Ford , which I think might some day be considered iconic . Ed Harris is a sure thing for an Oscar nomination . The guy is such a master at his craft . It's a credit to Affleck's direction that the film can still be considered so good after some should-be fatal flaws .
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385,775 | 391,152 | 26,029 | 8 |
Maybe not Hitchcock's best , but . . .
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I think The 39 Steps was the first Hitchcock film I ever saw . I was not impressed . However , after four years and a whole lot of education in film , I have come to respect it . I disagree with the opinion that it is one of Hitch's best , still . He possibly has more perfect films than any other director in cinema history : Rebecca , Rope , Vertigo , Psycho , Rear Window , North by Northwest , The Birds and probably many more that I have not seen . The 39 Steps does not compare to those great films . It is a fun suspense film , but it has not the layers of subtext that Hitch's greatest films have . I give it an .
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384,826 | 391,152 | 64,793 | 8 |
Great direction and great acting , but I don't really get it
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I can appreciate this film scene for scene , but I'm not sure of what the sum is meant to be . Not at all , actually . It seemed to me like an important turning point in Bergman's career , like an exact middle point between something like Persona and Scenes from a Marriage . It is probably just because I was damn tired when I watched it . However , it wasn't like I was unconscious or anything , and a great film will usually pull me out of any kind of stupor . I am determined to revisit it at some later date , perhaps when ( or if ) it is released on DVD . Like I said , scene for scene , the film is excellent . In fact , only four specific scenes fail . Every other one , taken as an excerpt , is brilliantly created . Many scenes are rather emotionally powerful . .
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385,823 | 391,152 | 64,866 | 8 |
In loving memory of Gillo Pontecorvo , who died last week
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Pontecorvo's followup to The Battle of Algiers , and probably his second most famous film . That's probably mostly because of the film's star , Marlon Brando , but the movie itself is quite good . It's a little slow , sometimes a little difficult to follow , and it hits us with no less than three third act speeches ( a speech a character makes near the end of the picture which more or less explains the film's themes , just in case you missed it ) . At it's best , though , Burn ! is a powerful treatise on the pains caused by colonialism . The story centers on a British man , Brando , who goes to the Portuguese-run island of Queimada in order to provoke a slave rebellion . He preaches freedom to the slaves , but his real aim is to get control over the island's sugar . A decade or so after the original rebellion , the natives aren't co-operating with the British anymore , and Brando returns to overthrow their leader ( Evaristo Márquez ) , whose career he fostered . Brando is , as expected , excellent . I wouldn't rank this among his very best performances ( the inevitable Italian dubbing always makes all performances a tad awkward ) , but it's definitely second tier Brando . This might be the most despicable character he ever got to play . I also liked Márquez , who often gets criticized for giving a wooden performance . The cinematography is beautiful , and Ennio Morricone provides an amazing score ( I love the song that plays after the revolution ) . Gillo Pontecorvo's direction is very good . In fact , I think I slightly prefer this to his acknowledged ( in my opinion , overrated ) masterpiece , The Battle of Algiers .
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384,955 | 391,152 | 33,397 | 8 |
Surprisingly well written and executed mystery , with a bit too much Hugh Herbert
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Surprisingly entertaining horror comedy , found on the new Best Buy exclusive horror set . This is the second movie supposedly based on the Poe story in which Bela Lugosi stars . The first one had nothing to do with the story . This one has one brief reference to it , but otherwise has nothing to do with it . It's an Old Dark House movie and a murder mystery . Broderick Crawford stars as a real estate agent ( maybe the only real estate agent hero in film history ? ) who comes upon a family of vultures waiting for their dowager grandmother to die . No one's willing to wait , so someone speeds up the job with a quick stab . Among the suspects are Basil Rathbone , Gladys Cooper , Bela Lugosi , Alan Ladd and Gale Sondergaard . With this cast , it can only be a grade A ham-athon . And it's a delightful one , at that ! The degree to which you enjoy this film will probably be determined by how much you can tolerate comic character actor Hugh Herbert ( hoo hoo ! ) . Personally , I do find him funny , even if he's in this one a bit too much . The script to this one is a cut above what you might expect .
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384,534 | 391,152 | 22,183 | 8 |
Baffling in its very existence , this film has a place in film history
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Ever wonder what European soft-core porn would look like in 1931 ? If you do , you are weird . But , if you do wonder what it'd be like , check out Maedchen in Uniform . To be fair , it is a bit more artistic than Emanuelle , but there is little subtlety to the lesbian erotica happening in this film . It turns out better than it started . I actually felt the characters ' troubles to be honest and touching by the end . I cared what happened . I also believe that this film must have been somewhat well known to European filmmakers at the time . The direction is excellent , and it reminds me a bit of such directors as Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir among others .
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384,566 | 391,152 | 65,916 | 8 |
Dated , but good
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Dennis Patrick plays a man who accidentally kills his daughter's boyfriend and then reveals his secret at a local bar . Joe ( Peter Boyle ) , a bigot who is getting drunk there , at first takes it as a joke , but then the story is confirmed on the evening news . Instead of calling the cops or the like , Joe decides that , since the guy killed a hippie , they must be kindred spirits ! He blackmails the man into becoming his pal . At first , the film seemed harsh and judgemental , but , as it revealed itself , it actually became quite a complex portrait of the current society . Yes , I think it does exaggerate a bit , but in amusing ways that don't really detract from the power of its messages . Susan Sarandon debuted in this film , and it's a shock to see how pretty she was around 23 . Well worth seeing .
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385,217 | 391,152 | 87,164 | 8 |
Quite a delightful little film
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When their mother is forced to stay in the hospital for a prolonged period of time , Ting-Ting ( a four year old girl ) and Tung-Tung ( an eleven year old boy ) are taken by their uncle to spend the summer with their grandfather , a doctor in a small , rural town . There are some cliches in the film . The strict , imposing grandfather who at first doesn't seem to like the kids ( I saw this just last week in Ford's Wee Willie Winkie ) and the crazy lady who later saves one of the children's lives come quickly to mind . A scene where Ting-Ting gives her stuffed animal to a recovering patient of her grandfather's made me cringe a bit . But other than that , it's a rather wonderful movie . The two children in particular are fantastic . When Tung-Tung first meets up with local children , they have a battle between his remote control car and another boy's pet turtle ( probably not the best scene to watch if you're a member of PETA , however ) . In another scene , the boys race their turtles . And there are more . The uncle , kind of the black sheep of the family , has a good subplot , as well . Edward Yang , the director of Yi Yi , has a small role as the children's father . It's too bad this of all of Hou's movies is unavailable . I only liked Flowers of Shanghai better . .
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385,365 | 391,152 | 67,866 | 8 |
I wouldn't call this a great movie , but it's definitely a must-see . It's finally on DVD in Region 1 !
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Saw this several years ago on a VHS bootlegged from the Japanese , blurred-pubes laser disc . It's probably because of the lousy format that I hardly remember a thing about it . Finally , after years of waiting , it gets released in Region 1 in a super-deluxe box set from Anchor Bay , which also includes The Holy Mountain , Fando y Lis , an early short ( La Cravate ) , full-length commentaries , a feature documentary about director Alejandro Jodorowsky , and the soundtracks to both El Topo and The Holy Mountain . Talk about an awesome package ! And for only $30 on Deep Discount DVD . This may just be the DVD of the year . As for the film itself , while I may not remember it very well , I remember my reaction to it , and my opinion is mostly unchanged . It's a product of its acid-laced time , and the film itself is mostly just silly and pretty much the definition of weird for the sake of weird . That's not to say I dislike it , however . Oh no , I can appreciate weird for the sake of weird , and this is a very entertaining movie in that respect . It also has some of the most amazing and imaginative images ever committed to film . My favorite sequence is probably the rabbit corral .
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385,524 | 391,152 | 12,532 | 8 |
Great French Revolution story
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Maybe I just love Griffith when he's big . This French Revolution film is flawed , certainly , but I also think it's very good . The narrative has such an excellent flow . Dorothy Gish plays the daughter of aristocrats , abandoned as a baby at the Notre Dame cathedral when her father is assassinated . A poor man wanders to the cathedral intending to abandon his newborn daughter , too , but when he sees the other bundle in the snow , he decides not only to keep his own daughter , but take up the other child as well . When she is an adult , she has lost her sight ( and her adoptive parents ) to a plague . The poor man's real daughter ( played by Lillian Gish ) takes care of her . There is an operation she can get in Paris which will reverse her blindness , and Lillian swears that she will get it for her . She also vows to remain unmarried until her sister can see once again . Unfortunately , as soon as they get to Paris , they become separated . An immoral aristocrat fancies Lillian and orders her kidnapped and brought to his midnight orgy . Poor , blind Dorothy is left alone , and a beggar woman ( Morgan Wallace ) and her two rapscallion sons ( Sheldon Lewis and Frank Puglia ) take her back to their hole in the wall , planning to use her affliction to their advantage . Everyone who passes by will have such pity on the blind girl and give them lots of their spare change . Thus the story splits into two halves ( though definitely favoring Lillian ) , following both the rich and the poor at the beginning of the Revolution . There are several exceptional sequences , including the revelries of Bastille Day and Lillian's frightful approach to the guillotine . There are some very weird connections that Griffith makes between the French Revolution and American history and present . One character he tells us ( in a footnote , no less ) is the " Abraham Lincoln of France . " The film's introductory title tells us that the French Revolution was begun by Anarchists and Bolsheviks , although they did , in fact , overthrow a [ i ] bad [ / i ] government . He also adds that we in America should never overthrow our own government , which sounds very odd . Perhaps he was so overly wary of the societal impact he had with Birth of a Nation that he thought , quite arrogantly , that his French Revolution film might stir up a revolution at home . Or perhaps he was responding to the scandals surrounding the current president , Warren G . Harding . I don't really know , but it's very interesting .
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384,763 | 391,152 | 47,472 | 8 |
Fun , with great music
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A lot of fun to be had by Seven Brides for Seven Brothers . Adam ( Howard Keel ) , the oldest of seven brothers , comes into town one day looking for some chaw and a wife . The shopkeep thinks this is ridiculous , but Adam effortlessly courts a young woman named Milly ( Jane Powell ) in only a couple of minutes . He takes her back to his rowdy brothers more as a slave than a wife , but she makes the best of it . Through her influence , the other brothers settle down a little and learn to be gentlemen . They can't keep this up forever , though , especially under the influence of the relatively untamed Adam . When his six brothers start to pine over six girls they met at a barn raising party , he convinces them , with the help of Plutarch , to kidnap them , just like the Romans did to the Sobbin ' , er , that is , Sabine women . The story's not especially great , but the musical numbers more than carry it along to its conclusion . It's never less than entertaining , and mostly it's wonderfully so . The songs vary a little in quality , but there are no bad ones ( some of Powell's ballads come close ) and there are several great ones . Howard Keel starts things off by singing " Bless Your Beautiful Hide . " Later on , he and the brothers have the great song " Sobbin ' Women . " And there's a nice double song near the end in " June Bride " fading into " Spring , Spring , Spring . " My favorite , though , is " The Lonesome Polecat , " which the six younger brothers sing while cutting up logs in the snow . Their saws and axes provide most of the sound effects , and they dance with the objects slowly and gracefully . It's a beautiful number . Most people probably remember the barn raising dance best of all . No one sings there ( the music is a reprise of " Bless Your Beautiful Hide " ) , but the choreography is a highlight in the cinema's musical genre . .
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385,955 | 391,152 | 1,093,842 | 8 |
Maddin's Winnipeg
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Guy Maddin's ninth feature is a pseudo-documentary about the director's hometown of Winnipeg . It mostly focuses on his relationship with the city , but it also includes re-enactments of his family life and famous weird things that happened in the city's past . It's a bit of a mess , but , as I've said before regarding Maddin , his films play out like dreams . A mess makes sense a lot of the time . I do think the film lacks the focus of his best work , and is , in fact , my least favorite of his features . Also contributing to my relatively low opinion of it ( i . e . , I don't think it's one of the best movies ever ) is Maddin's own narration . I loved his previous film , The Brand Upon the Brain ! , but objected to the narration . It's even worse here , taking a lot of the mystique out of the silent film pastiche Maddin has been perfecting since The Heart of the World ( I'm kind of hoping that he'll some day return to the stuff of his earlier works , which felt more like the films of the ' 30s than those of the ' 20s ) . My favorite sequences were the occult ceremony in the Masonic temple and the hockey legends game , where septuagenarians play one last game as their stadium is demolished by wrecking balls . Darcy Fehr of Cowards Bend the Knee returns as Guy Maddin , who , in the movie , is as desperate to leave his depressing hometown as he is to stay ( throughout the movie , Fehr appears dozing in a train car that never seems to get out of Winnipeg ) . And Maddin dug up Detour's Ann Savage , possibly literally , to play his mom .
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384,779 | 391,152 | 50,763 | 8 |
Maybe not on par with Mann's Westerns , but a good one anyway
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Best known as the film that ended the great Anthony Mann / Jimmy Stewart partnership . Mann either got in an argument with Stewart , hated the script or hated co-star Audie Murphy , or all of the above . No-name director James Neilson replaced him , and the results are , well , not as good as something Mann would have directed , one would imagine . But they're not as bad as many have said . I think the script is the weakest element of the film , mostly because it takes a while to get moving , it's a little cliché and predictable , and , worst of all , it doesn't give Stewart much to work with . Between Mann's Westerns and Hitchcock's films , Stewart was really broadening his horizons in the ' 50s , moving from a dependable " aw shucks " kind of guy to a seasoned thespian . His role here is closer to the " aw shucks " period than it is to the darker side of Stewart . It starts to lean a little bit toward that darker side when the film hits its stride , a little too late . If Audie Murphy was Mann's biggest problem , I have to say , except for the miscasting ( he's young enough to be Stewart's son ) , I very much enjoyed his performance . I had never seen one of his films before , but I look forward to seeing more . The two bad guys , the second one being the always dependable Dan Duryea , are more interesting than the hero here . Also making an appearance , Jay C . Flippen , always a great Western character actor . Even if this doesn't compare with the Mann / Stewart Westerns , it's a fine one itself . You can find it in Universal's new James Stewart : The Western Collection . It looks great , but the sound was kind of muffled .
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385,807 | 391,152 | 224,235 | 8 |
Slow but fascinating
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In this Nikkatsu pink film , a man who shoots erotic photography becomes obsessed with a woman he sees in a porn movie , in which she , very innocent looking and young , is raped in a classroom . He tries to convince her to work with him , and finds out that she is a prostitute and a nymphomaniac , not the pure innocent he wanted . This movie turns Japanese sexual roles on their heads . The woman , named Nami , as are all the main female characters in the Angel Guts series , saps men of their virility . In the film's most memorable sequence , she sleeps with a man once , then works hard to get him going again . After the second time , she basically rapes the guy . Still , overabundant sex ultimately proves soulless .
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385,575 | 391,152 | 39,739 | 8 |
Somewhat disappointing considering the skill involved , but still good
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Pretty good movie about a man and his wife who get caught up in murder and the police officer investigating the case . It starts off marvelously , but kind of hits a wall at a certain point . We're sure we know what happened , then a tiny plot thread that seems at first like a red herring pops back up and disappoints . Still , Clouzot's direction is great , and the acting is quite good . Louis Jouvet , who also co-starred in Marcel Carné's Drôle de Drame , gives the best performance as the clever detective . I wonder if the Coen brothers were influenced by this film when they wrote Fargo . Much like that film , the police officer doesn't appear until nearly halfway through , and then he becomes almost the focus of the film . There's also a lot of droll comedy surrounding him ( although sometimes his methods seem sort of fascist ) .
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384,535 | 391,152 | 47,444 | 8 |
This review is for at least the first two films of the Samurai Trilogy , and for the third installment unless my opinion of that is different
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The Samurai Trilogy is a very good work , very well worth watching . No , they aren't as great as Kurosawa's samurai masterpieces , The Seven Samurai , Yojimbo , or Sanjuro , but they are no much less worthy . My only major complaint is that they were filmed in color , which is a lot less good looking and elegant than the black and white of the Kurosawa films . In some scenes , especially those at night , it is very difficult to determine which character is which . The Samurai Trilogy excels in several aspects . First and foremost , Toshiro Mifune may be the single best actor who ever lived . Sure , he was typecast , but he was great in his roles . There is a huge difference in his acting jobs in these films and Rashomon or The Seven Samurai or Yojimbo and Sanjuro . His character here is very complex . The second reason to watch is for the great secondary characters . They are all quite complex . There will be characters you'll love and long for , and other characters whom you will hope will be killed by Toshiro . These secondary characters are extraordinarily complex at times . Third , watch it for the novelistic unfoldings of the story . Well , it should be novelistic , since all three films were based on a single novel . Don't worry about the three movies repeating in any way . Also , it is a good idea to watch all three in a row ( I watched the first two tonight , and plan to watch the third one tomorrow night ; hey , it's late ! ) . The story is constantly developing , and you don't want to forget anything . I give each segment of the samurai trilogy a solid ( unless the third installment is particularly great or awful ; i will most likely post a comment for that film by itself ) .
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384,801 | 391,152 | 449,467 | 8 |
Unsuccessful , but still good
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If it weren't for the great performances in Iñárritu's previous film , 21 Grams , I think I would have called it one of the worst films of 2003 . The script was ridiculous and , even worse , chopped up chronologically in a pointless and exceedingly artificial and pretentious way . So I have not been in a hurry to catch his new film , Babel , but finally grudgingly decided to go to a matinée because I assume that it will be a contender for the Oscars . And I'm glad I did . It's imperfect , but worthwhile . And it's a huge improvement over 21 Grams . As is the vogue , Babel contains three stories connected tenuously by narrative , but more closely related by theme . That theme is the difficulty of communication , and also the inception of bridges spanning that difficulty . In one story , an American tourist in Morocco is accidentally shot by a child playing with a rifle . The second story takes place in the near future with that woman's children , as their caretaker , an illegal immigrant from Mexico , is forced to take them with her to her son's wedding across the border . The third story is about a deaf-mute Japanese teenager who is growing apart from her father , and is love-starved . Honestly , I don't think Iñárritu or his screenwriter , Guillermo Arriaga , hit a homerun with their themes . I really don't think the film ends up saying anything important . And the interlocking narratives don't end up commenting on each other very well . The Japanese story in particular feels like it's out of left field . What I do like about the film is just the stories themselves . All three stories , even though they don't connect very well , are involving and entertaining . And Iñárritu directs them very well . Using a lot of close-ups , he succeeds in putting us directly into the action , and I felt like I was experiencing what the characters were experiencing . It's thrilling to feel that culture shock when the affluent white children find themselves in the middle of Mexican wedding festivities . Or the thrill when the deaf Japanese girl enters a night club for the first time , and how frightening it is to have the strobe lights destroy your ability to contact other human beings . The film may fail on a number of levels , but it does succeed in being vivid , which is something many better films fail to do . So I quite liked it .
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385,458 | 391,152 | 67,959 | 8 |
Beautiful , but I have some problems
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A teenage British girl ( Jenny Agutter ) and her little brother are taken deep into the Australian Outback by their father for a good , old-fashioned murder-suicide . When the kids get away , the father goes ahead with his own death , figuring they'll probably die in the desert . They last by themselves long enough , but soon an Aboriginal teenager comes upon them and helps them survive . The film is more a collection of images and impressions than a narrative . Roeg likes to compare the savagery of nature with that of civilization . The big problem with the film is that a sexual tension develops between the Aboriginal boy and the white girl . That's actually the main thrust ( excuse the pun ) of the latter half of the film . Honestly , though I'm sure Roeg was being daring for his time , the conceit in itself is pretty racist . The story is basically one of interracial lust , with the white woman interested but unwilling and the black man super-horny for white meat . Really , Aboriginal women do appear in the film , and I would assume that that culture's standard of beauty must be extremely different from our own . And it's funny when the Aboriginal boy , to attract Agutter , does a goofy mating dance to attract her . Perhaps that is how they do it , but to me this little bit animalized the boy to a nasty degree . I should also say that the little white boy , played by Roeg's son Luc , is one of those painful little brats who chatters on endlessly . My thoughts at the beginning , when the father was taking pot shots at him , was that this murder-suicide was entirely justifiable on account of his son's annoyingness . Really , the boy is only there through the rest of the film so the black boy can't bone the white girl . Okay , I have a couple of seemingly major criticisms of the film . Honestly , I enjoyed Walkabout quite a bit . While it's racist attitudes toward sex might be offensive , hell , it is a genuinely erotic film . And it's simply beautiful . Its images are haunting .
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385,473 | 391,152 | 42,804 | 8 |
Brutal
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Imagine Truffaut's The 400 Blows with a more literal title , and you've got Bunuel's Los Olvidados . It's his attempt at neorealism - only twice does he delve into his surrealism . I saw it in a theater with a small audience , and there were a lot of groans , gasps , and cringes as the film progressed , all quite deserved . It's a very good film . I give it an . If I see it again , I might raise that score , since the film that I watched had a whole reel without subtitles .
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385,375 | 391,152 | 14,142 | 8 |
Excellent
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This is a Hollywood silent film of great spectacle and emotion . Lon Chaney as Quasimodo is entirely believable . He exudes a supreme sense of pathos . However , I'll remember it most because of Patsy Ruth Miller who plays Esmerelda . She is very , very good . The mob scenes at the end are unpolished - that sort of filmmaking hadn't been perfected yet , I suppose . I also dislike color tinting . I know , I know , that's what they originally did . However , I can't imagine that the photographers liked it , since it makes all their images dull and murky . It seriously looks like someone pulled the print I saw out of a recently-desecrated porcelain god . .
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385,770 | 391,152 | 58,329 | 8 |
Should have been one of Hitchcock's best , but . . .
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Marnie was made after a string of knock-out masterpieces by possibly the greatest director ever made . At the time of its release , it was considered a huge failure by critics and audiences . To be truthful , it is a failure . But it is an extremely interesting failure . The relationship that Sean Connery developes with Tippi Hedron is very complex and fascinating . Connery , a rich man who becomes sexually attracted to a woman who is a pathological thief and a hater of men , forces her to marry him with jail time as her only other option . This is quite cruel , and it makes for some very interesting narrative . Although Marnie is the title character , I think we learn more about Connery than her . His acting is nearly immaculate here , certainly the best he's ever done . Hedron is a bit disappointing . Her character has many complexities , and often Hedron is good enough to express them , but when the tension starts to get a bit much and Marnie starts to break down , Hedron is unable to make her insanity believable . Instead , it looks quite silly . A few other grave missteps wreck the film further . The flashes of red and Marnie's following spasms are not handled well at all . This is partly due to a poorly written score by Bernard Herrmann , easily the worst one he ever did for Hitchcock ( and , to my knowledge , the worst he ever did , period ) . This score , reminiscent of Vertigo ( as well as the story itself ) , forces itself into the picture at awkward times , making several scenes seem utterly ridiculous . When Marnie sees red , or hears thunder or tapping , Herrmann's score soars to unnecessary heights . His scores for such films as Vertigo and Psycho are much more subtle . Even with these smaller pieces not working , Marnie still would have finished a near-masterpiece , if not for the terrible finale . The entire resolution is entirely unsatisfying for many reasons . First off , it's too convenient that everything works out as it does . Like Scotty in Vertigo , Rutland ( Connery ) tries to force a truth out of his woman . But Vertigo had suspense in this final scene , where Marnie has none . This is because there is absolutely no danger in this final confrontation . Second , the mother is a very poor actor . She is entirely unconvincing . Third , the flashback feels very awkward . Just a few years before , they would have not been able to show or even imply what happened in this scene in a film , but in 1963 , it still wasn't entirely acceptable . I would guess that this really alienated audiences at the time . It alienates viewers now because of the odd staging of the whole situation . It all plays out in an unconvincing way . It's difficult to explain , but I think it will be self-explanatory when you see it . I actually think that Marnie could be remade into a great film . Only a few of Hitchcock's films have been remade , and all the remakes have been heavily derided . But this film , obviously flawed in many ways , could easily be improved . Just weaken the score a bit , don't use the gimicky fade to reds , and tighten up the finale . It could be great . As it stands , it's still quite good . .
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384,973 | 391,152 | 94,663 | 8 |
One of Woody's most mature and underrated dramas
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There was a certain period in Woody Allen's career when he was trying desperately to imitate Ingmar Bergman's work . It rarely worked , and often turned out disasters like the execrable September . Another Woman is a riff on Bergman's Wild Strawberries : a college professor , played by Gena Rowlands , is past fifty and looking back on and reliving key events in her life as her present life is falling apart . The film is quite stagy at times , just as it was in September , Allen's previous film . He seems to think that adds something , but it really doesn't . One other problem Another Woman has is a couple of very clunky scenes , and a few poor bit performers , which were much bigger problems in September , which was actually the last Allen film that I saw and the one that made me subconsciously avoid him for the past several months . Allen's script here is excellent . He has produced an excellent character study which is probably unsurpassed in all of his other films that I've seen . The lead actors are wonderful here , Rowlands , Ian Holms , Blythe Danner , Sandy Dennis , and Gene Hackman . Allen's use of piano music is beautifully touching . It all adds up to a very touching and sad little film . It might not be Woody's best film , but it ought to be better respected and known . .
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385,357 | 391,152 | 498,399 | 8 |
This comment may contain small spoilers , but nothing huge
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James Gray's third film , seven years after his previous , the criminally underrated The Yards . That film starred Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg . They must have realized that Gray , who also wrote the script to The Yards , gave them some damn fine roles there , so they came back , and even helped produce We Own the Night . This film belongs more to Phoenix than Wahlberg , and he's fantastic . It's kind of like the reverse of The Godfather , where Phoenix plays a man with criminal friends who gets pulled into police life . Gray's direction is superb . He gives the film the same low-key intensity that existed in The Yards . There are also two setpieces that should be included among the best sequences of the year . Especially notable is the outstanding car chase in a heavy downpour , which has been compared to the infamous French Connection sequence . This one is actually quite a bit better , and may be the scene of the year . Just the way Gray keeps the focus on Phoenix's car , even when all kinds of other stuff is happening . It gives it a horrifyingly claustrophobic tone that's amazing . The script isn't quite on the level that the rest of the film is , unfortunately . For a story about familial bonds , I don't think Gray did a good job establishing the relationships between Phoenix , Wahlberg and their father , played by Robert Duvall . The film just goes an easy route , making Phoenix a black sheep and not telling me enough to make me really care . In addition , the character of Phoenix's girlfriend , played by Eva Mendes , is underdeveloped . We never learn enough about her , and after a while it feels like she's only there for sex appeal ( she does kind of provide a vital plot point , but so what ? ) . I also didn't buy the climactic sequence at all . It doesn't make any real sense that they'd allow a newbie like Phoenix to go on a raid . One other small detail that drove me nuts : the film takes place in 1988 , but the movie opens with a Blondie song playing in a night club . Couldn't we find a better song than " Heart of Glass " to establish that it's 1988 ? And later , in the same night club , they're playing " Rapture " ! That's just odd . In my opinion , Phoenix gets pretty much all the acting honors . Wahlberg isn't given much to do . Duvall is pretty good , but he's done better . Woljciech Kilar provides a masterful score ( which is why sometimes the film seems like it's even better than it is ) , and the sound design is certainly Oscar-worthy ( keep your ears wide-open during the car chase sequence , as well as the other awesome setpiece , the drug raid ) .
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384,613 | 391,152 | 144,201 | 8 |
A lot of fun , even if a bit empty
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Style over substance can be a lot of fun , like in this movie . It's about a knife thrower ( Daniel Auteuil ) who recruits a suicidal girl ( Vanessa Paradis ) for his act . She doesn't want to live anyway , so why not die in a more interesting way than jumping off a bridge ? The story's too vapid , and that's what makes it fade from memory so quickly after it's over , but there's a ton to offer while you're watching it . Leconte's quick pace and flashy direction is aesthetically alluring . The black and white cinematography is very beautiful . Although their characters aren't especially great , the two leads turn in excellent performances . Paradis is very cute ( she could stand to get her teeth fixed , though ) , and I love Auteuil's look . He's got the most interesting nose since Jimmy Durante . Okay , so maybe its not the performers who are particularly great but their appearances . Good casting , perhaps . The script does have a nice vein of comedy running through it , too . I had thought it was going to take itself too seriously , which would have rendered the whole project rather useless .
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384,716 | 391,152 | 253,474 | 8 |
Good , but imdb voters are overrating it
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The Pianist is far from Roman Polanski's best film or his ' most personal work , ' as the back of the DVD case says . In fact , it's easily the least personal film I've seen from him ; any director who has enough clout to secure the funding for the production could have made this film and had it turn out just as well . As a director , it is a small achievement . Likewise , the screenplay writes itself ; in fact , it did write itself , as it's based on a true story . I must admit I have a bias against films dealing with WWII and especially the Jewish experience in Europe . Affecting the audience is as simple as snapping one's fingers . Or , more specifically , executing a Jew . Whenever the audience starts to get a little comfortable , all the filmmaker has to do is have a Nazi shoot a Jew in the head . It's all too easy . Any film with that subject matter is automatically deemed important in the minds of critics and audiences , which makes it difficult for anyone to propose any criticism against it . Truth be told , The Pianist is a very good film . It's well done , and , while I don't think it's Polanski's best work , he does a good job . But it's too easy , I think , to overpraise something like this . It was very entertaining that this movie caused so many upsets at the Oscars , but , after seeing the film , it doesn't surprise me . This is the kind of movie that impresses the Academy most , because it's easy . The three awards it won were not deserved , at least in my opinion . If I weren't so familiar with the Academy and their thought processes , it would really shock me that Polanski beat Scorsese , who made an original picture with verve and passion , and that Brody ( I haven't mentioned him , and he is good ) beat Daniel Day-Lewis , who , as I've just said above , creates a character that will live forever . As for the screenplay , Ronald Harwood ( and / or Polanski ) could have made the film much more than just one of ten thousand tales of survival . There are a lot of moments when more substance could have been found . I like how Szpilman has to constantly watch the action while locked up in a room , yearning to be able to do something about it , but always relegated to the spectator's role . They do do well when they introduce the character of the Nazi soldier trying to make good by helping Szpilman , but they don't do very much . Of course , I think part of the point is that this man appeared and disappeared without much pomp or circumstance . In fact , it would have been more powerful if they had never revealed that Szpilman discovered who this man was . Of course , that might have been disrespectful . I have now seen all five Best Picture nominees from last year , and I would rank them as follows : 1 ) The Hours ; 2 ) Gangs of New York ; 3 ) The Pianist ; 4 ) Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers ; 5 ) Chicago . That I rank the actual winner last shouldn't raise eyebrows , because , to tell you the truth , I don't rank The Pianist and The Two Towers that much higher . The first two were original , intelligent , and challenging . The last three were much simpler , and it's no big surprise that they are more beloved . .
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385,097 | 391,152 | 228,687 | 8 |
Quite good , but I wish Svankmajer would use more animation
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Perhaps Jan Svankmajer is sick of the medium of stop-motion animation which first made him famous . Perhaps he's trying to move into pure filmmaking . And perhaps I shouldn't criticize him for that . He's actually an excellent live-action director as well , which Little Otik ( in Czech " Otesanek , " " Greedy Guts , " the name of an Eastern European fairy tale from which the script is adapted ) demonstrates . But I'm not sure he wants to leave stop-motion animation behind . It seems to me more like he wants to use it more often in the film , but he didn't have the money . If you're interested in Svankmajer's work , start with his short stop-motion films , then move to Alice , his version of Alice in Wonderland , and then move to this film and then Faust . As for the film itself , it's imperfect . Its biggest problem is that it's overlong . There's really not enough meat in it ( well , there's enough meat literally ) . It can move slowly , especially nearer the beginning . Also , the ending is a bit abrupt . Still , there're a lot of great scenes and set pieces . It can also be very funny . It's certainly the most humorous side of Jan Svankmajer that I've seen . .
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385,691 | 391,152 | 86,998 | 8 |
Behold my awesome break dancing !
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There's something about a cheesy 80s movie that pleases me to no end , and this is one of the cheesiest . Made simply to cash in on the break dancing fad that was popular at the time , the film stars Adolfo " Shabbadoo " Quinones and Michael " Boogaloo Shrimp " Chambers as two inner city toughs who battle their enemies by lockin ' , popping ' , and , of course , breakin ' instead of with knives and guns . Lucinda Dickey plays our white suburban tour guide to the inner city as a jazz dancer who falls in love with street dancing ? and possibly a black man , though the movie is so coy about the interracial relationship romance that it is only ever implied ? even through the film's sequel ? that there is any attraction whatsoever between the two . While the cheese never stops flowing and it would be a lot of fun for no other reason , the dance sequences are actually very impressive . Boogaloo Shrimp is particularly great in his dance with the broom ( even though I can see the strings attached to it ) . The film also features Ice T , some eight years before he penned " Cop Killas " , and apparently Jean-Claude Van Damme , though I missed him . Lucinda Dickey starred in one of my other favorite cult classics in the same year , Ninja III : The Domination .
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385,687 | 391,152 | 110,074 | 8 |
Flawed , but too charming not to like a lot
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The Coen Brothers ' fifth film . It's well liked today , but was a disaster when it opened , grossing less than $3 million domestic on a budget of around $25 million . It also didn't do that well critically . It's not hard to see why . It's a film of all style and no substance . It's often easy to get lost in its labyrinthine production design and forget about the rather forgettable characters . Not to mention that it has the most forehead-slapping deus ex machina outside of Greek tragedy . Oh how I wish the Coens and co-writer Sam Raimi would have re-read the script one last time and realized how poor that whole climactic sequence really was . The characters may not be as interesting as they are in any of their other films , but they deserve better than that . Despite its massive flaws , I must say that The Hudsucker Proxy is so extremely enjoyable that it's pretty close to impossible to dislike . I for one enjoy getting lost in the art deco New York City the Coens have created . And there's something magical in the clockwork way the film runs , the mechanical dialogue and editing . It's strange , and it's not always successful , but it's so wholly original that I have a lot of affection for the picture .
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