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385,552 | 391,152 | 74,870 | 8 |
Rohmer has made much better , but this is still very good
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Not one of Rohmer's best , especially from a writing standpoint . It seems to me that he wasn't particularly interested in this project , or at least he is unable to make the story as interesting as I find most of his other films . However , several points elevate this film far beyond what it could have been . First thing , the cinematography , by Néstor Almendros , is stunning . Rohmer pays particular attention to the composition , something which he isn't generally known for . I think it hurts the film , but one thing can't be denied : it looks as painterly as possible . Also , the performances are generally great . Bruno Ganz kind of disappointed me , but that's mainly because I consider him one of the greatest actors . His performance here is good , but not at the level of the other films in which I've seen him . On the other hand , the star of the film , Edith Clever , is amazing as the titular character . She becomes pregnant even though she has not had relations with a man since her husband died a couple of years earlier . She must face the prejudices of the time ( a good story of a woman up against society , though it's been done better before ) . The Marquise's parents are played by Peter Lühr and Edda Seippel , and they both give excellent performances as well . All in all , a beautiful experience , if not the most exciting .
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384,872 | 391,152 | 87,015 | 8 |
Shockingly good ' 80s horror movie - which deserves far better than a 4 . 8 rating !
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Not that there aren't a good number of decent ' 80s horror movies , but I had always been lead to believe that C . H . U . D . was a piece of crap , at most a so-bad-it's-good type of flick . Maybe it's because I came in with low expectations , or because the day before I slogged through the truly awful Silent Night , Deadly Night , compared to which almost anything semi-competent would look like a masterpiece , but I was marvelously entertained by C . H . U . D . It's more than just semi-competent , thankfully . While certainly a B-movie , C . H . U . D . succeeds in the areas where most horror movies fail . The direction and editing are good . That is , the filmmakers actually understand how to build suspense . That suspense also couldn't have existed without a screenwriter who knew how to create those suspenseful situations , as well as characters whom we care about , at least a little . The film has three heroes : John Heard , a photographer who is clued into the existence of monsters living in the sewers , Christopher Curry , a police detective investigating several disappearances , and Daniel Stern , who runs a soup kitchen where many underground-dwelling homeless people tell him about the weird happenings below . Heard's character seems a little extraneous at times , but he does provide the movie's female interest , Kim Greist . If they were going to stick in a horrible actor anywhere in the film , it would have been a bimbo in this role of the damsel in distress , but no : Greist's character comes off as a real person , and the actress doesn't even have to take off her clothes to keep our attention ( not much anyway ? she does play a model , but she's never denuded ) . The main reason to see a movie like this is of course the monsters , and the C . H . U . D . s are delightfully gross and frightening . The movie is pretty gory , but not arbitrarily so . I'm not saying the movie is any kind of masterpiece or anything , and it has its share of the ' 80s cheese , but it was a big surprise how entertaining it was .
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384,846 | 391,152 | 40,064 | 8 |
A solid effort by John Ford
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No masterpiece , but a fine piece of work . Three bank robbers in the old West , played by John Wayne , Pedro Armendáriz , and Harry Carey Jr . , run from the sheriff of Welcome , Arizona ( Ward Bond ) . The first forty minutes or so consist of this simple but entertaining tale of bandits trying to survive the desert and an intelligent sheriff who tries to get one step ahead of him . Then the film takes an interesting turn . The three bandits find a dying pregnant woman , help deliver her child , and then are forced to keep him ( and themselves ) alive . Like many Ford films , there is a ton of religious allegory . Some might consider it heavy-handed , but to me it seemed well done . Instead of just setting up parallels with the Biblical tales of the infancy of Christ for those in the know , the three bandits themselves discover the parallels and are convinced that they have to get the baby to a town called Jerusalem . The story is often very harrowing . I don't think that the characters are very believable bandits . They're too nice . The other thing I really don't like is the end , which seems inconsistent with the mood of the rest of the film . It's a bit anticlimactic . John Ford's direction is good , but , compared with his previous two films , My Darling Clementine and The Fugitive , it doesn't register as one of his best . The performers are generally good . Harry Carey Jr . , in his screen debut , is the best ( the picture is also dedicated to his father , who had recently died ) . Ward Bond is also quite good . .
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384,939 | 391,152 | 84,654 | 8 |
Quite good
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A man runs into a pretty but aging woman in the middle of a rainstorm . He politely protects her from the downpour with his umbrella , and even lifts her over a fence so she can get to her bus . He also gets on the bus , and , beginning to pant , she declares that she can't go near anyone else on the bus , because she's a famous actress and she'll be thronged . The other passengers on the bus look up at the exasperated woman , but don't pay her any more mind than that . A bit later , the woman proudly tells the man that she is Veronika Voss , and all he can do is politely nod . She hasn't been in a movie for three years , and hasn't been in a good one for longer than that . Veronika has to try really hard to pin the man , Robert , down and seduce him , and even when she accomplishes this feat he doesn't seem particularly interested . Robert's interest does grow when he begins to discover some nasty secrets about her life , notably that she is addicted to morphine . A strange doctor seems to be little more than a local drug dealer when he begins to look into the situation . The plot is decent ; it would have been a really good one for a classic Hollywood film starring Joan Crawford or Bette Davis or someone like that . Its greatest worth is in the performance of Rosel Zech , who has the titular role . Cornelia Froboess as Robert's girlfriend and Annemarie Düringer as the wicked doctor are also good . The character of Robert is never very interesting . The black and white cinematography ( Xaver Schwarzenberger ) and the unconventional score ( Peer Raben ) are very good . The tape I watched was not in a very good condition , so I may have liked it more if I had seen a better copy . .
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384,713 | 391,152 | 74,906 | 8 |
Much better than most would have you believe
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This film has suffered some pretty undue criticism . It gets the dreaded ' BOMB ' rating in Leonard Maltin's guide , followed by ' The worst film of a great director . ' I haven't seen more than a couple of Penn's other films , so I can't comment on that , but it is hardly a bomb . Sure , it is a little slow moving , and it doesn't quite feel like the themes of the film were totally panned out , but most of the film is very good . I'm assuming Brando's the problem with most of the film's detractors . Wow , is his performance weird here . If you ever wanted to find the missing link between The Godfather and Apocalypse Now , here it is . He plays a bounty hunter of sorts hired to discover some horse thieves and murderers . This character is very eccentric , and I'm guessing that Brando had a lot of artistic input on this one based on his later career . He's basically a psycho killer , and he seems much more lawless than the criminals he's seeking . He also speaks with an Irish brogue , some of the time . Personally , the waxing and waning accent is my only real problem with the role , and I'm not a big accent baby anyway . It's a tiny flaw in what is otherwise a very interesting performance . Brando creates a very memorable character . Jack Nicholson plays his rival . He's almost ready to go straight , having found a nice , small ranch and a girlfriend ( Kathleen Lloyd ) . His performance is subdued , and I really think Nicholson is best when he's like that . This isn't his greatest performance , but it is subtle and it's very good . The flaws of the film are offset by the number of great scenes in it . Almost every single actor gets one scene alone with Brando , and both Randy Quaid and Harry Dean Stanton deliver excellent performances especially in those scenes . Nicholson's two best scenes are also alone with Brando . I would guess than he had something to do with their co-star ; I do think Brando deserves some credit for the excellence of these scenes . Penn's direction is nothing to write home about . I love the two other films I've seen by him , Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde , but , let's face it , he was more or less ripping off the Italian and French cinemas of the time , respectively . Missouri Breaks is much more straighforward in that respect , and perhaps it is here that it could have used a boost of energy . .
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384,590 | 391,152 | 787,475 | 8 |
Utterly hilarious
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I had flirted with the idea of seeing this film when it was in theaters , then again when it hit DVD , but somehow never got around to it . I don't even remember why I put it up at the top of my Netflix queue . Must have seen it referenced somewhere and my interest was renewed . I'm ecstatic that I finally caught up to it , though . It's hilarious ! This generation of Saturday Night Live is pretty dismal , but one of the few good things about it is Andy Sandberg and his digital shorts . They aren't always great , but they're weird and frequently inspired . He stars in this movie about a man who wants to follow in his dead father's footsteps and become a stuntman . In a very common plot for SNL players , Sandberg's stepfather is going to die if he doesn't get a heart transplant . That'll cost 50 grand , and Sandberg thinks that , if he completes one awesome stunt , he'll make the money needed . Much as all of the movies like this ( e . g . , Dirty Work , which starred Norm MacDonald ) , the plot is very secondary . Jokes are first . And jokes about the lameness of the plot are hugely encouraged . In fact , Sandberg only wants to heal his stepdad ( Ian McShane ) because he wants to kick his butt just once in a fair fight before he dies . Isla Fisher plays Sandberg's love interest , but his desires are thwarted by ultra-windbag Will Arnet , one of the funniest men on Earth . He brings this stereotypical character to ridiculous heights of meta-comedy . Danny McBride , Bill Hader and Jorma Taccone co-star as Sandberg's wacky crew . McBride and Hader have become sure-fire signs of a great comedy . There are so many great bits in Hot Rod : the crazy dancing Asian guy , Bill Hader's calm recollection of his acid trip , a fight between a taco and a grilled cheese sandwich , Sandberg " punch-dancing " his rage out . Little of it comes close to being describable . It's weird and wild , and sure to be something of a cult comedy classic .
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385,108 | 391,152 | 62,041 | 8 |
Gripping depiction of obscure WWII history
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I had thought the title of this one was an American invention to capitalize off of the American film The Longest Day , but I do believe " Japan's Longest Day " is the actual title . It has nothing to do with the other film . It , in fact , depicts perhaps the most tense day in modern Japanese history , the 24 hours between August 14th and 15th , 1945 . The simplified version of WWII history has the Japanese quickly surrendering with their tales between their legs after the Allies dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki , but a nation so wound up in nationalistic and militaristic pride wasn't ready to give up that easily . The film doesn't depict the citizenry ? one could imagine they would be mostly sick of war . But the military certainly was ready to go all the way , to have every person in Japan martyred . Emperor Hirohito , who is supposed to be looked upon as divine by his people , decided that his empire must surrender . Many of the heads of military only agree grudgingly . Many of their underlings rebel . Hirohito makes a recording of his surrender message , to be played at noon on the 15th . A group of soldiers tries to rally others not to listen , and they attempt a coup and try to steal the record . The film is long ? 2 hours and 37 minutes . We are given the names of every single character in the film ? I would venture to guess that over 100 names are thrown at us over the film , right up until the end . It's difficult to follow , but I don't believe it's necessary to understand every nuance of what was happening . The previous year , Kihachi Okamoto made what is probably his best ( and best-known ) film , Sword of Doom . Why choose him for this project ? Well , there is at least one scene where that is pretty much answered ( just remember that the Japanese soldiers still had samurai swords ) . Really , though , I don't think the direction is that impressive . As a film , it's nothing fantastic . But for the depiction of the minutiae of history , it's well worth watching . Toshiro Mifune , Takashi Shimura and Chishu Ryu all have large roles , but I honestly didn't even recognize them . They fade into these historical characters perfectly .
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385,241 | 391,152 | 317,648 | 8 |
Well made adventure yarn
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A great action / adventure movie ! I was surprised at just how good it was , as it has received so little attention . Viggo Mortensen of Lord of the Rings plays Frank Hopkins , a real-life cowboy , although probably much fictionalized in this movie . He is a half-breed , part Native American and part white . In the film's prologue , he works for the cavalry and witnesses the massacre of his people at Wounded Knee . The event scars him and he becomes a lush . For some easy money , he and his horse , Hidalgo , enter Buffalo Bill's roadshow . Hidalgo is so famous that a sheik has sent a servant to invite him to participate in a race across the Arabian desert , which he accepts , it being a better alternative to the humiliating performances . It's really a classical adventure movie , with princesses and scimitars and sandstorms and swarms of locusts . Omar Sharif co-stars as the sheik . Its nice to see a movie like this made with care . It never gets stupid , and , while it moves quickly , it isn't too fast , either . The director is Joe Johnston , whom I think is an undervalued filmmaker who specializes in these kinds of enjoyable yarns . His previous films include Jurassic Park 3 , which is my favorite of that series , Jumanji , The Rocketeer , Honey I Shrunk the Kids , as well as episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles , which I loved in my tween years . He also made October Sky , which I haven't seen , but has been recommended . The film also features good performances from Zuleikha Robinson , soon to be a star , I'm sure , Louise Lombard , and Adam Alexi-Malle , one of my favorite character actors ( he was the guy who wrote Chubby Rain in the movie Bowfinger ) . .
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385,585 | 391,152 | 49,456 | 8 |
Very good , for the most part
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A biopic of Vincent Van Gogh , played with much passion by Kirk Douglas in one of his very best performances . Douglas perfectly captures Van Gogh's intensity and twitchy genius . I really can't believe he lost to Yul Brynner's iconic but ridiculous performance in The King and I . Anthony Quinn won an Oscar for his performance as Van Gogh's friend and fellow painter , Paul Gaugin . The best scenes in the film are when the two get together and argue over painting techniques , styles , and worth . James Donald is also very good as Theo Van Gogh , Vincent's brother and art dealer . Add to that the marvelous score by Miklos Rozsa and beautiful cinematography , which attempts to mimic the painter's work , by Russell Harlan and Freddie Young . Yet , with all these great elements , the film disappointed me . It lacks the power that its title suggests ; there really isn't a lust for anything . Minnelli fails at capturing the force of Van Gogh's painting , even when all the other artists involved were so on the mark . Perhaps I shouldn't blame the director , but rather the screenwriter , Norman Corwin , or the original novelist , Irving Stone . Yeah , I suppose Stone is to blame , judging from the other adaptation of his I've seen , The Agony and the Ecstasy , a biopic of another artist , Michelangelo . It was similarly weak , although I'd really have to read the original novels to know if he was more to blame than the screenwriters . The concentration on the narrative and not the emotions is the biggest mistake . Really , Van Gogh didn't have any more interesting life than I did , so to concentrate on what happens isn't the best choice . But Minnelli could have chosen to change the focus . His better films , most notably An American in Paris , are more abstract than general Hollywood fare . Still , with all the greatness that can be found in the film , it should not be missed . .
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385,669 | 391,152 | 86,837 | 8 |
Certainly not on the level of 2001 , but it complements Kubrick's film well
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I usually refer to 2001 : A Space Odyssey as my favorite film of all time . I always balked at this sequel , which I attempted to watch many years ago but gave up quickly . Finally watching it all the way through , I don't know what exactly I was objecting to so strenuously . I was afraid , I think , that this film would take away the mystery of the Kubrick film . It is true that 2010 is a much more straightforward film , but I'm happy to say it's far from stupid . It's actually quite intelligent science fiction . This film emphasizes a major but often overlooked theme of the first film , the Cold War . In 2010 , Dr . Heywood Floyd , here played by Roy Scheider , along with two other American scientists ( Bob Balaban and John Lithgow ) accompany a ship of Russian cosmonauts ( among them Helen Mirren ) to the moons of Jupiter on an expedition to recover the Discovery . The movie lacks 2001's sense of awe , but it has its own sense of dread that I quite liked . And while the climax and end are somewhat confusing , it kind of captures the mystery of the original film . This is hardly the insult to 2001 : A Space Odyssey I always expected , and in fact I think it compliments it quite well .
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385,257 | 391,152 | 16,473 | 8 |
Odd and Engaging
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This Lon Chaney vehicle , directed by the great Tod Browning , is the story of three circus performers who begin to thieve jewels . They open a shop that sells parrots as a front . Chaney , a ventriloquist , dresses up as an old woman , one of his cohorts a man posing as the old woman's son , and the third , a midget , as his infant son ( one of the major reasons to see this flick is that the same midget , here named Tweedledeedee , also plays Hans , the midget who marries the acrobat Cleopatra in Browning's later masterpiece , Freaks ; in this film he actually is seen smoking a giant cigar , which , in Freaks , his fiancee suggested that he shouldn't smoke ) . One other circus performer , a woman , knows about their plans . Chaney loves her , but she doesn't reciprocate his feelings . The Unholy Three also hire a young dufus to help with the store . In case they get into trouble , they can always pin it on that guy . The store also sports a chimpanzee , humorously filmed so that he seems as big as a gorilla ( when it is to walk through a doorway , it walks through a smaller doorway , for instance , than the actors do ) . The story of the film is very interesting . It can also can be quite funny , quite suspenseful , and quite pathetic , especially when Chaney is trying to court the young woman . There's at least one masterful sequence , where a policeman almost discovers the jewels the gang has stolen . They hide it in a toy elephant , which amuses the officer very much . The film also uses ventriloquism quite marvelously - I assume that a lot of the audience of this film in 1925 only knew of ventriloquism by second-hand knowledge - they just knew that ventriloquists could throw their voices , not knowing what it would actually look or sound like . In a silent movie then , you could take full advantage of the audience's ignorance . When Madame O'Grady ( Chaney's aka ) is trying to sell parrots that don't actually talk as talking parrots , she throws her voice to fool the customers . Browning actually shows that the parrots are supposed to be speaking by drawing speech bubbles on the film in front of the birds ! The climax also uses ventriloquism wonderfully : Chaney throws his voice to a man who is on the stand , apparently testifying - he moves his lips , but Chaney supplies the voice . Of course , we know that's ridiculous , but only a few in 1925 would have scoffed . .
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384,557 | 391,152 | 417,243 | 8 |
Not Tsukamoto's best work , but still quite good
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It's his least wild , though it does have a certain sense of weirdness to it . The story involves a medical student ( Ichi the Killer's Tadanobu Asano ) who experiences a bout of amnesia after a car accident . When he re-enrolls in school , he finds himself in a dissection class taking apart his former girlfriend , who was in the passenger seat during the accident . There's a subtext of necrophilia , which Tsukamoto explores in the film's first half . But he ends up veering away from any taboos and into more conventional drama . Actually , it's still pretty unconventional . It gets a bit too ponderous in the second half , and there are some scenes that drag . But Tsukamoto captures some brilliant images , and his infamous editing style pops up frequently , and is put to great use . There are some truly wonderful sequences . I especially loved all the sequences where the protagonist visits his dead lover in a fantasy landscape . The film ends beautifully . I really liked Asano's two female co-stars , Nami Tsukamoto ( not sure if she's any relation to the director ) and Kiki . Both are gorgeous , though each of them could eat the occasional burger . They're absolutely skeletal . Thank God for companies like Tartan Asian Extreme . This DVD is an especially nice edition with quite a few worthwhile extras .
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385,120 | 391,152 | 756,729 | 8 |
I don't have much new to add , but this film is unfortunately being overlooked
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I'm a sucker for movies about people and their pets . This film stars former SNL player Molly Shannon as a secretary whose personal life revolves around her beagle , Pencil . When he passes away unexpectedly , she has to find another reason to go on . The film first hints that she'll discover the world of humans around her , particularly men , as two new ones ( John C . Reilly & Peter Saarsgard ) enter her life . But it smartly steers away from the obvious and veers into a more original voyage of self-discovery . My only real problem with the film is that a lot of the supporting characters are a little too caricature-esquire ( notably Shannon's boss , played by Josh Pais ) , but writer / director White does a good job of redeeming them for the most part . A very touching , gentle film that's well worth your time .
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384,838 | 391,152 | 100,234 | 8 |
A little overrated , but certainly very good
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Although probably not one of the greatest and most profound films ever made , as many have claimed , Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up is certainly a notable achievement , a very interesting and often fascinating film . Either a pseudo - or semi-documentary , Kiarostami keeps everything very ambiguous . The " story " is a true one . Hossain Sabzian is unemployed , divorced , and a pathetic human being . He enjoys the cinema very much and , when the chance presents itself , he tells an aging woman , Mahrokh Ahankhah , that he is the famed director Mohsen Makhmalbaf . She and her family had recently enjoyed one of his films , and she invites him to dinner . At the Ahankhahs ' home he continues his charade , and begins to lie about wanting to make a film starring the family , using their home as the setting . He searches through their house and the surrounding area and even borrows money from the youngest son . Their relationship continues , but soon they are tipped off to the fraud he is committing . They have him arrested and take him to court on fraud charges . Now a good portion of this narrative that I've described is not shown on screen . Close-Up begins with Sabzian's arrest as viewed from the outside . I don't know when else I can do it in this review , but I'd like to express my fondness for the two scenes where the camera watches an empty can of spray paint roll down the street . I'm not sure if it's supposed to represent something or not , but the camera captures it beautifully as it rolls over top of a couple of dried leaves , lifting them up and tossing them mere centimeters in the air . Moving on , we watch Abbas Kiarostami ask Sabzian if he can document his trial on film . Of course , as a huge film lover , he agrees . Most of the film takes place at the trial , where Sabzian defends himself and the youngest member of the Ahankhah family prosecutes him . A judge presides . It is never really revealed whether the footage of the trial is real or a recreation . I read up on the film a little , and both circumstances are claimed by different reviews . Personally , I think it's all a recreation for a couple of different reasons ( that I don't feel like going over ; it's not really that important ) . A couple of times the film goes into flashback . We see Sabzian and Mrs . Ahankhah on the bus . We also see the arrest again , but this time from the inside . During the trial , Sabzian explains his reasons for impersonating Makhmalbaf , which are actually very touching . The film also has some subtle humor and it refrains from making fun of its subject . Questions are raised on the cult of identity and on the power of the cinema . They aren't really fully explored however . I think Kiarostami's biggest problem is his undying faith in his film's utter ambiguity . The idea is interesting and rather successful , but it shouldn't be taken as profundity . Other films have explored the documentary genre with as much or more success . Orson Welles ' final film , F for Fake , is a lot more entertaining than Close-Up , although it has its flaws , as well . The best film like this that I've seen is Victor Erice's masterpiece Dream of Light ( aka Quince Tree of the Sun ) , which was made a couple of years later . That film left me with more to think about , both in its themes and its playfulness with the documentary genre , than this one does . However , Close-Up , as I've said , is an achievement , not to be scoffed at . .
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385,916 | 391,152 | 129,167 | 8 |
A Lesson that Ought to be Learned by American Animators
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Don't get me wrong , I did really enjoy this film , but it is also a good example of why I think American animation is far inferior to Japanese animation . And I am talking solely about the animation ( i . e . , character design , movement , and scenery ) , not the story complexity . There is no doubt that the stories of Japanese animated films are more complex than those of American animated films . The Iron Giant's story is basically taken straight from E . T . Anyhow , watch how mannered the designs of the characters ' faces are in this film . Check out how large Hogarth's ears are . And check out how exaggerated the characters ' movements are . This becomes staggeringly unrealistic very quickly . It begins to look , well , just plain goofy . People don't really look like this . They don't make these sorts of expressions . People always complain about the eye size of Japanese anime characters . Their eyes are big for a simple reason which was stated in ancient Rome by the neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus : the eyes are the windows of the soul . The sculptors of the later Roman Empire always made the eyes on statues enormous , just like the Japanese animators do . Most human expression comes from the eyes , so Japanese animators made the eyes on their characters bigger . What most critics of the Japanese anime eye-size have failed to notice is how large the American animators have made the eyes on their characters . The Americans are obviously learning something from the Japanese . Disney animators have said that there is not a work day that goes by where they do not watch parts of films by Hayao Miyazaki . These films have influenced them greatly . But what American animators have missed in the Japanese animation is that the other pieces of their characters ' faces are extremely downplayed . Their mouths , ears , and nose are all very small . Humans express much less in these areas of their faces than the characters of American animated films . This over-exaggeration has occurred in all Disney movies after The Little Mermaid , The Iron Giant , The Road to El Dorado , and I can even see that this is a problem in the upcoming animated flick Titan A . E . It is a big problem , and it must be solved . As for the film itself , after I got around those technicalities , I was quite touched . I liked the anti-violence theme a lot . I think it is a very good film for children . I give it an .
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384,638 | 391,152 | 1,045,670 | 8 |
Kind of unfocused , but Sally Hawkins can melt even the most frozen of hearts
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Loose , even for a Mike Leigh film . It's focus is on an extraordinarily joyful woman named Poppy ( Sally Hawkins ) , who will not allow the weight of the world to wear down her natural high . Plot-wise , not much happens except for that her attitude is challenged by a few people she runs into , most notably her mean-spirited driving instructor ( Eddie Marsan ) . I'd probably rank this last among all the Leigh films I've seen . It's just too unfocused . That said , I have to admit that , while I assumed from the previews that I'd end up utterly annoyed by Hawkins ' manic state of existence , she captured my heart from the beginning . Poppy's happy-go-luckiness is infectious , and I was not immune . And I'm a pretty cynical guy . I would predict that this infectiousness will lead Hawkins to a deserved Oscar nomination in January . I also think Marsan is award-worthy . The climactic scene where his increasing anger finally erupts raises the film to a higher level .
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385,722 | 391,152 | 106,452 | 8 |
Third best version ( though I haven't seen the new one yet ) , but still undervalued
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The third version of Jack Finney's novel is actually quite good , too . It sets the action in a military base , where a man from the EPA and his family have just arrived to do some tests . The protagonist of the film is the man's teenage daughter ( played by the luminous Gabrielle Anwar ) . There's little set-up in this version . When it begins , the pods have already started to spread . This speeds up the proceedings . I might even complain that things happen too fast . The film is more action oriented ? which is especially proved in its hilarious final sequence . Let's just say that , unlike the other versions , which take place in urban areas , they have lots of big weapons at a military base . Despite this , the film is quite effective as horror . A lot of scenes are recycled , always intelligently , from the previous two films ( love the take on the " I didn't tell you my name ! " scene from the ' 78 version , as well as " You can fool them . " ) . They also come up with some really good new ones , like the day care sequence , where the 6 year-old son of the EPA investigator figures out that something's going on . The direction in general is gorgeous . Some of the performances are a bit weak . I especially didn't care for Billy Wirth , the hero , who may be incredibly handsome , but he's handsome in a way that says : " I am a New Kids on the Block reject ! " Recognizable faces include Forest Whitaker and R . Lee Ermey ( who tends to pop up whenever a film needs authentic military-type persons ) , as well as Meg Tilly , who has the film's most memorable line . Undervalued .
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385,702 | 391,152 | 73,424 | 8 |
Good Fassbinder with a great Brigitte Mira
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Good Fassbinder , if a little lethargic . Brigitte Mira , who just passed away earlier this month , plays a housewife who has long settled in her uneventful life . One day , however , her husband commits murder-suicide at the factory in which he works . Suddenly she has to deal with the media , as well as her uncaring family . She can't really figure out why her husband did what he did . Luckily , some local communists show up to help her figure it out . Soon she's a pawn in their politics . And , when they don't satisfy her need for an explanation , a group of anarchists steps in to use her for their own political purposes . The film ends twice ? once we read Fassbinder's original scripted ending , then we see the ending he did use . Both work , though I think the first , unfilmed one is a lot more Fassbinder-esque . Mira is wonderful , as usual ; some of the family material is too close to Fear Eats the Soul , and is rendered somewhat ineffective because of that .
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384,836 | 391,152 | 102,138 | 8 |
Mostly great , with a few bad sequences that significantly harm the film
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I'm not especially familiar with all aspects of the Kennedy assassination ( it was well before my time ) , but one thing's for sure : the Warren Commission's final word is more than a little incredible . I don't know how much of Oliver Stone's film is provable fact , how much of it is loony conjecture , or how much he just plain made up ( he says none , but others have denied that ) . What I do know is that the film , even though it runs at 3 and a half hours , is engaging , exciting , gripping and suspenseful . I'm not a big fan of movies that follow investigations , but it's great here . And I especially hate courtroom dramas , but the final sequences of the movie represent an extremely tight tour-de-force . The film is at its best when it's exploring the mystery , and , confoundingly , at its very worst when it takes time to develop its characters . There are two scenes particularly when Jim Garrison's wife ( played by Sissy Spacek at her very worst ) accosts him for not spending enough time with his family . I'm thinking , " HELLO ! Most important investigation in American history going on here ! " I think his kids would forgive him in the future for being a bit inattentive at the time . The second of these scenes , where Costner explains to his kids that he won't be leaving their mommy , almost had me throwing stuff at the screen it was so sappy . Kevin Costner isn't very interesting , and , besides , from what I've read Stone really softened the character of Jim Garrison , so any character development on that front is dishonest . Most of the best acting comes from the massive supporting cast , where almost anybody is liable to show up . I was quite happy when John Larroquette showed up , and even happier when Donald Sutherland appeared . And Brian Doyle Murray as Jack Ruby ? Awesome . My favorite performance by far was Kevin Bacon . I always feel bad for the guy , because he's spent such a long career acting in middling roles . He really is a fine actor , which he gets to prove every so often . He only has five or six minutes in this film , but he's great .
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385,543 | 391,152 | 33,874 | 8 |
Pretty funny
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The Man Who Came to Dinner is a little uneven , but it's mostly entertaining . The unevenness comes mainly from the dullness of the budding relationship which the film holds in focus . The original play is very well written , especially the dialogue . It was actually performed at my high school when I was there . But its the cast here that excels . Monty Woolley is great in the titular role . He plays Sheridan Whiteside to absolute perfection . Bette Davis is quite good as his secretary , but the role is actually somewhat below her standards . I'm sure she took the role because she loved the play so much and was sure it'd be a hit , but that role is pretty dull . Ann Sheridan perhaps gives the film's most memorable performance as an egotistical Hollywood diva who's not sure whether she wants to marry British nobility for money or just chase around cute guys . Also noteworthy are Billie Burke as Mrs . Stanley , the Ohio society woman who invites Whiteside to dinner , Reginald Gardiner as an eloquent celebrity friend of Whiteside ( far underused ) , and the incredibly insane Jimmy Durante as Banjo . He comes into the film very late , but he very nearly steals the show . .
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385,258 | 391,152 | 362,004 | 8 |
The central gimmick is confusing , but the film is quite good anyway
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Solondz's most recent film ( he's supposedly returning later in 2009 ) is about a 13 year-old girl , Aviva , who wants nothing more than to have a baby . The plot line of the movie is quite surprising , and I don't want to spoil anything . Much like his other films , Solondz is a master of manipulating the audience's emotions , and also a master of making the audience examine exactly why they feel like they feel . This might have been his best work , but the central gimmick of the film is too confounding and doesn't strike me as anything besides an art-house gimmick : Aviva is played by eight different actresses who generally exchange roles from chapter to chapter . These actresses range from a six year-old black girl to Jennifer Jason Leigh . For the life of me , I never could think of a good reason for Solondz to have done it this way . Various critics have expressed their theories , none of them the same , it seems , and none of them satisfactory to me . The DVD could really use some kind of participation from Solondz , just so he could have defended this concept ( perhaps he did have a reason ) , but there's nothing . With that major flaw , it's quite amazing that the film succeeds so well . The film is also a semi-sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse , and some of that film's characters return in surprising ways .
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384,821 | 391,152 | 55,558 | 8 |
Rather good John Ford Western
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It's no classic , but it is quite a good film . Jimmy Stewart plays a gruff , old , drunken sheriff who can speak Comanche and Richard Widmark plays a cavalryman assigned to accompany him on a mission to buy white captives away from the Comanches . The first half of the film can be called Searchers-lite . They buy back two captives , a young white man stolen in his youth and a Mexican woman stolen five years earlier . Other non-Comanches they find are unsalvageable . Now , The Searchers ends ambiguously . We're not sure what is going to happen with Natalie Wood's character . Two Rode Together goes into that part of the story a bit more . Stewart falls in love with the Mexican girl , but she cannot take the way other white people treat her . The boy is so far gone that he is entirely violent to everyone around him . The second half of the film is actually quite great , and the film has an extremely powerful climax . Jimmy Stewart is beyond excellent in the film . Could you ever imagine a bad performance from this man ? It's rare that he plays such a cheating btard , but he's no villain , either . The actress who plays the Mexican girl is very good , too . The rest of the cast is more than adequate . There's a funny scene where Ford regulars Andy Devine and Ken Curtis fight in a slapstick fashion . Ford's direction is rather flat . The story goes that he did this only as a favor , not by any real choice . Frank Nugent's script is quite good , especially in the second half . The score is excellent . The photography is weak , but good sets and costumes make the visual aspect of the film decent if not great . .
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384,864 | 391,152 | 404,390 | 8 |
Highly recommended for fans of depravity and outlandish cinema
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I think I'd probably categorize this as a guilty pleasure . It has an amazing amount of flaws and general silliness . It's incredibly violent , nasty and dark . The plot is way too complicated and there's a last-minute twist ( more like cop-out ) that is incredibly stupid . But , hell , it's a lot of fun . Paul Walker plays a gangster given a gun to hide after a shootout . His son's best friend steals the gun in order to shoot his abusive father . The kid runs away and Walker desperately searches for him and the weapon . The adventures that the characters go through turn out almost like a demented version of Alice in Wonderland . While most of the film is constantly dark ( the bulk of the film takes place during a single night ) , the creepiest part of the film enters a brightly colored world , a den of child pornography . The film is also notable for having one of the most memorable pimps in cinema history ( David Warshofsky ) . Paul Walker , best known for being that boring guy who tries to take down Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious , just swears his way through this movie . The real acting honors belong to the two kids . Cameron Bright has been good in several movies now , most notably in the film Birth . Alex Neuberger is a newcomer , but he has great potential .
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385,011 | 391,152 | 861,689 | 8 |
Flawed , but mostly excellent
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Up front I must admit that I have a certain weakness for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios . I can't think of a single movie in that genre that I dislike , and several are among my favorite movies ever . I liked Blindness , very much . A man suddenly goes blind in the middle of rush hour traffic . Every person with whom he comes in contact catches whatever strange disease he has , and suddenly , within a few hours . It spreads like wildfire , and the government ( undefined ) hastily throws the first wave of victims into an abandoned hospital , guarded by military personnel in biohazard suits . They have weapons and aren't afraid to use them if any of the infected , who of course , can't see a thing , stumble toward them . Among the prisoners are Mark Ruffalo , an eye doctor , and his wife , Julianne Moore . Moore , for some reason , has not lost her sight . She pretends to have so she can stay with her husband . She keeps her sight hidden from the rest of the victims , but does as much as possible to help them . Eventually , the hospital is filled to capacity , and food is scarce , so the situation devolves into a Lord of the Flies-like state of humanity . Gael Garcia Bernal plays a man who declares himself king of the compound , and demands payment for food , first in the form of whatever possessions his " subjects " have brought with them , and , once that has been spent , sex . This is perhaps the most bothersome part of the film . At this point , and even at the point where Bernal first takes over , I was wondering why Moore didn't just put an end to this nonsense . Meirelles doesn't do a good job in convincing me that Bernal and those who side with him couldn't easily be defeated by someone who could see . I can understand that Moore would have a difficult time committing murder , but as soon as food is cut off , it would be a matter of survival . Once sex is on the table , it's absolutely ridiculous that she just submits to it , and lets the other women do so , too . The possibility that the women could get pregnant is never mentioned , but it surely would have to be an issue . By this point , the hospital has become a trash-ridden hellhole , and it would be doubtful for anyone to even survive childbirth , mother or child . The fact that Moore doesn't do anything about it is just upsetting . And then there's the rape sequence itself , which made me feel about as uncomfortable as any scene ever has , and I've seen Salo ! Meirelles completely fails with this sequence . Yeah , it's meant to be hard to watch , but that doesn't forgive the seedy way in which he films it , or the godawful score ( which is sometimes good , but often horrible , elsewhere ) , which is almost jaunty . I'm also mixed on the ending of the film , which seems abrupt . But there are some things I like about it , too , especially Danny Glover's subtle last moment . A lot of reviewers have complained that Meirelles visual style is too showy . I didn't find it so . I thought it was pretty much the perfect way to put the viewer in the position of being blind . It's perfectly disorienting . The film is clearly an allegory . I'm not exactly sure about all the symbolism , but I've been assured by many reviewers that it's obvious . Strange , though , that they all give different interpretations on what it's about .
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385,223 | 391,152 | 465,624 | 8 |
Underrated - one of the funniest films of the year
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A big surprise , probably because I was expecting it to suck . The reviews were pretty dismissive of it , even though they all seemed to agree that the concept was golden : a man finds out his new girlfriend is a super hero , and finds , when he wants to break up with her , that she's kind of a psycho . I kept expecting it to fall apart , but it never really did . Sure , it doesn't make as much of its awesome premise as it could , and chooses to be short when it might have been better to expand the film's universe . But I can't blame it for that . Uma Thurman is great as the bipolar superhero , G-Girl . And I've discovered , after several years of disliking him , that Luke Wilson can be absolutely perfect when cast as a schlub . He's given two of the best comic performances of 2006 ( the other in the pretty much unreleased Idiocracy ) . I absolutely cracked up at the expressions on his face when he and Thurman first have sex . It's one of the funniest sex scenes ever . My only real complaint is that they make G-Girl a bit too much of a psycho , like almost unbelievably so . Maybe with some background I could have accepted it better . I can forgive its flaws , though , because I had a really good time watching it . Underrated , for sure .
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385,155 | 391,152 | 46,912 | 8 |
Pretty good Hitchcock .
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Hitch is the Master , hands down . His Dial M for Murder is generally considered to be a good but mediocre effort . I myself give it an , which is good but low for Hitchcock . It basically consists of a murder plot gone wrong , and it's a good example of one . The writing is often amazing , and you're always trying to guess what's coming next . What results is quite spectacular . Dramatic irony is used to the max . I happened to see it in 3D before I saw it in regularD , which I was glad to get a chance to do . Unfortunately , the Master does not use it very well . I cannot imagine a single film of his that would benefit from such a gimmick . To do so , it would have to be rather light , which this one is , and also contain action . Perhaps To Catch a Thief would be best . Maybe North By Northwest , but that one is probably far too good for that . Dial M for Murder is one of Hitch's talkiest films , and only during the murder scene is the 3D used to great effect . Otherwise , it just distracts .
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385,361 | 391,152 | 473,308 | 8 |
Sweet , fun , and lovable . With at least one deadly flaw .
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A flawed but lovable little indie comedy about an unhappily married waitress and pie-making genius ( Keri Russell ) who begins an affair with her gynecologist ( Nathan Fillion ) after discovering that she's pregnant . Let's get the film's biggest flaw out of the way first : Russell's husband ( Jeremy Sisto ) is such a tremendously despicable character that he feels like he was just written to be hissed at . And I actually heard people hissing . Surely people as cruel and as ape-like as this man exist , but in the film it feels so easy and obvious that I ended up becoming enraged whenever he would pop up on screen . Really , if this character had been toned-down , or at least if he didn't have so much screen time , this would have been a shoo-in for my top 10 list this year . After the husband , the only other fault I could find is that it ends a tad too patly . Otherwise , I pretty much loved this movie . I love the quirky dialogue , and the comic performances are just perfect . Russell's and Fillion's initially awkward relationship is especially hilarious . And there are wonderful supporting performances by the director herself , Cheryl Hines and Andy Griffith ( so nice to have him still around , although with an actor that age you can guess what happens to him in the end ! ) . Of course the film can hardly be mentioned without bringing up Adirenne Shelly's tragic death . She was murdered this past November . It felt especially sad after the film was over . Waitress was such a lovely confection , you just want more .
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384,937 | 391,152 | 88,678 | 8 |
Hadn't seen this since I was in grade school , and surprisingly it held up wonderfully !
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This is a movie that I watched a lot as a kid , having taped it off ( I presume ) HBO . It's one of those movies that stays with you . I haven't seen it since I was in grade school , but , watching it now , I'm not sure if I forgot even a second of it . It was the first feature film made entirely with clay . Mark Twain plans to fly his airship to meet up with Halley's Comet . Three of his most famous characters , Tom Sawyer , Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher , stow away on the ship . When discovered , Twain makes them his crew . On the ship , they are told some of Twain's stories , and here plenty of his famous witticisms ( almost all of Twain's dialogue is made up of his nuggets of wisdom ) . The movie starts off pretty slow , and some of the comedy early on is only moderately amusing . However , as it moves on , the film becomes darker , discovering the cynicism and sadness that exists in the works of Mark Twain . The most memorable sequence has the children meeting Satan , inspired by the posthumously published work The Mysterious Stranger . My other favorite segment is from The Diaries of Captain Stormfield , where a man arrives at an alien version of Heaven . Thanks go to the Onion's A . V . Club for pointing out that this was released on DVD a while back . I never would have caught that myself .
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385,514 | 391,152 | 38,160 | 8 |
Quite good , but I was expecting a little better
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They Were Expendable opens on December 7th , 1941 and takes us through the opening of the Pacific leg of WWII ( from the point of view of the U . S . ) . Most of the film takes place in the Philippines . Most of the major characters are sailors on P . T . boats , which the navy doesn't believe are going to be very useful . The film is handsomely produced , with some of the best battle scenes of its time ( the boats take on destroyers and planes ) . The battles with the planes are spectacular and gripping . The film should be better than it is , but there are some major doldrums in its run . Unlike some of John Ford's better films , They Were Expendable is only sporadically great ; several individual scenes are beautiful . John Wayne is great in it ; it's definitely one of his best performances . Perhaps I might like it better if I watched it a second time ; I had a long break in the middle , and that can always harm films . .
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385,639 | 391,152 | 96,257 | 8 |
A film that can really , really make you angry
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The Thin Blue line shows how wrong our legal system is here in the US . Trials are run not as a celebration of justice but as a purveyor of revenge . Prosecuting attorneys are not men who believe in doing what's right , but what will most successfully add to their reputation . A psychologist testifies against over 99 % of those criminals he interviews so that they will get the death penalty . The police choose to believe a juvenile delinquent's testimony against a man who has never done anything majorly illegal in his life just because they cannot send a 16 year old to the chair , and they cannot fail to execute someone over the death of a police officer . Every single police officer and witness who had anything to do with the trial was discreditable , yet no discrediting evidence was ever allowed in the court . You may have guessed that this all takes place in Texas . Even with the power it carries , The Thin Blue Line has some structural problems . I wish that we had been given some more information on Randall Adams ( although maybe there just wasn't too much to say ) . And I wish that we would have been able to hear the " thin blue line " closing argument of the prosecuting attorney , a speech that made the judge's eyes water . If you like this film , search out Paradise Lost : The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills , a documentary obviously inspired by this . That one is a little more convincing and powerful than The Thin Blue Line ( although this one apparently helped to get Adams off the hook ; of course , with the amount of evidence that the film amassed , it is difficult to let the man rot without one more chance ) .
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385,078 | 391,152 | 296,042 | 8 |
Very strange film indeed by iconoclast filmmaker Takashi Miike
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This is the second of his films that I've seen , after Audition , and , while I wouldn't call him a genius after seeing these two films , he's clearly got a lot of talent . He's an original artist , that's for sure . Ichi is rather undescribable . It's actually a bit difficult to get into ; the plot is difficult to understand for a while . It's more or less a yakuza film , perhaps mixed with a bit of superhero story . A gang boss has been murdered , and his men , lead by the sado-masochistic Kakihara ( Tadanobu Asano ) , are out for revenge . They know only the name of the killer , Ichi , and that he's a very messy murderer ( the room where the first murder has blood spattered everywhere ; even the ceiling is covered , and there's nothing on the ground by guts ) . Ichi himself takes a while to show up , but when he does he is a snivelling mess ( played by Nao Omori ) . Working as a waiter in a restaurant , he cries when his boss yells at him . It seems that his super killing ability comes from outside , from a man who is controlling him , Jijii ( film director Shinya Tsukamoto , whose films appeal much more to me more than Miike's ) . Having developed a suit with special powers , he gives it to Ichi and convinces him to kill ' bullies , ' because the same kind of bullies beat him up in high school and even raped his girlfriend . Ichi's memories are sketchy at best ; in reality , Jijii invented them , but Ichi is a very impressionable person . I really liked the inventive villain and hero in the film . Kakihara is one of the all-time great bad guys . His character design ( which appears on the DVD cover ) is wholly original . Even though Ichi is also a very original character , most viewers , I think , will go away with the memory of Kakihara's open maw . I don't know , though . There are so many moments of utter brilliance here , but I really can't get into Miike's sense of pacing . It's certainly unique . People have gone so far as to compare Audition with Ozu . That's simplistic . Miike's films are probably slower to develop than Ozu's ! I can appreciate it , but , man , when I'm in the mood to watch something culty and violent , I really would rather watch a faster film , like the ones made by Shinya Tsukamoto . I did have a level of fascination with Ichi the Killer and certainly plan to watch other Miike films in the future ( I know at least one more that my video store has so I'll have to pick that up soon ) .
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385,724 | 391,152 | 369,702 | 8 |
Mostly excellent story of a man who wants out of life
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The true story of a Spanish paraplegic , Ramón Sampedro , who fought for decades for the right to be euthenized . This film , along with the Best Picture winner of the same year , Million Dollar Baby , caused a stir that year with their depictions of disabled persons desiring death . Both advocates for the disabled and ( unfortunately for the disability advocates ) conservative pro-life groups protested both films , and their Oscar nominations . The nominations also came during the entire Terry Schiavo debacle , just to put it all in some historical perspective . The protests , especially from the disability groups , against Million Dollar Baby make some sense ? the film clearly depicted , without wavering , the life of a paraplegic as worthless . The film's central character , Maggie Fitzgerald , becomes a paraplegic , doesn't seem to get any counseling whatsoever , no help whatsoever , and immediately wants to die . The film is , honestly , pretty dumb and uncomplex . The Sea Inside , based on the true story , is certainly a lot more thoughtful on the subject . It most likely got railroaded into the same category as Million Dollar Baby without its protesters having even seen it , an incredibly common phenomenon . The film does give time to many different sides of the argument . And it immediately declares that the wish to die is that of the protagonist and the protagonist alone . It is guilty of a couple of crimes , though , and I'd still understand why disability groups could have a problem with it . First and foremost , there's the protagonist's meeting with a paraplegic bishop . I don't look kindly on the way he's depicted . His orally operated wheelchair is depicted as absurd , and there's almost a comic sequence where his effeminate , boy-toy servants are dragging him , in his chair , up the stairs . He can't even reach the room in which Ramón is located , and one of the boy-toys is forced to carry the conversation between them . I had to think , gee , maybe if Ramón lived in a slightly more wheelchair-accessible household , he wouldn't spend his entire life in bed , and might find life more fulfilling ( who knows how closely the film depicts the reality ) . Director Amenábar ( The Others ) also includes some laughable scenes that try to make this film about suicide more life-affirming , like a cross-cut sequence where Ramón looks thoughtful and his lawyer's baby is born . But besides a few ugly moments , the film is very good . It hurts that someone may want to die when they have the ability to bring so much joy and insight into the lives of others . However , in the end , our lives do belong to us . Shouldn't we have the right to choose ? The film's strongest asset is its supporting characters , and the actors who play them . It depicts how Ramón's fight and decisions affect those around him with a beautiful precision . The family members in particular are great , and Ramón's final departure from them is absolutely heartbreaking , and had me in tears . My favorite performance in the film comes from Lola Dueñas , whom I also felt gave the best , or at least certainly most undervalued , performance in Almodóvar's Volver last year .
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385,185 | 391,152 | 46,998 | 8 |
Fun and pretty ! Françoise Arnoul - Ou la la !
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Although it doesn't seem very promising for a long stretch , Renoir's French Cancan ends up being an effortlessly charming film . The story is cliché : a laundry girl , Nini ( Françoise Arnoul ) , is discovered by a night club owner , Danglard ( Jean Gabin ) . Danglard steals her from her baker boyfriend and drops his current girlfriend , both of whom come back for their former lovers . Nini has to choose whether to go back to her humble life with the baker , go on with the show with her employer , oh , or become a princess , as a prince falls in love with her at one point , too . I'm glad the film didn't go for the most obvious choice , as a lesser film certainly would have . The film ends with the opening of Danglard's new night club , the Moulin Rouge , and a couple of gorgeous song and dance numbers . The first of them , " Complainte de la Butte , " which also provides the base of most of the film's musical score , is simply one of the most gorgeous songs ever written , and Renoir himself wrote it . If you're a fan of Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film Moulin Rouge ! , you'll recognize the tune , as it comes up near the beginning of that film , sung by Rufus Wainwright . Although it isn't very prominent in that film , everyone I know who owns the soundtrack loves it . In addition to having one of the most lovely songs ever written , French Cancan also boasts one of the cutest leading ladies ever to grace the screen . It's hard not to fall head-over-heels in love with that girl . .
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385,492 | 391,152 | 205,271 | 8 |
Solid work from Altman . A very good film indeed . ( and Andy Richter is thy God ) Contains Spoilers
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I haven't read through the other comments yet to see why such a sharp animosity for Dr . T exists ( 19 % of voters gave it a 1 , the lowest score ) , but I really liked it . I am a Robert Altman lover myself , but have not been afraid to criticize his films in the past . I'm probably the only one who will say that I hated The Player . I felt it was a rather childish lash out at Hollywood . I also criticized greatly Short Cuts and Brewster McCloud ( although I ultimately gave them the thumbs up ) . But he has made at least one of the best films ever made , Nashville , a masterpiece through and through , and several other very good films , including MASH , McCabe and Mrs . Miller , and his previous film , Cookie's Fortune , which I would deem wonderful . Doctor T struck me as also very excellent , and I'm giving it an , which , in four-star criticism , equals a stars . First , before I discuss why I liked the film , I must point out its most glaring fault , the one which , I think , must sour the film for most of its viewers . This is the whole " Hestia Complex " deal to which Dr T's wife , played by Farrah Fawcett , becomes subjected . Obviously a made-up complex , it seemingly insults our intelligence . According to her psychiatrist , it is a complex which crops up when a woman is " loved too much . " When she has everything she could possibly want . It happens because " the mystery " of existence no longer exists . Thus , a woman with this complex reverts to a childlike state . This whole complex thing pops up within the film's first act , and , since we don't believe it , we just say , " Oh , that's so stupid . That could never happen . " And then we just block it out of our minds for the rest of the film . Whenever it crops up again , we just try to ignore it . Fawcett's acting skills make the whole thing seem even more stupid . This is not the right attitude to take . It is not stupid , per se , but what is truthful to say about it is that it is contrived . Contrivances are not a no-no when it comes to art . If you think they are , then you obviously don't remember Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette , among others . You have to just accept the contrivances as much as you can , suspend your disbelief a little . This whole Hestia Complex thing is utterly important for your understanding of Dr . T . Now , onto the rest of the film . Another reason why , it seems to me , people would complain is the lack of a plot , or a conventionaly plot , anyway . These people would have to fully admit that they are completely unfamiliar with Robert Altman . Even if they are not , they still have a semi-legitimate complaint . The film's meaning takes a long , long time to reveal itself . One could easily get lost in the meantime , especially if that person has chosen to disregard the Hestia Complex portion of the film . I still don't see how it's all that different from films like Nashville and Brewster McCloud and Short Cuts . Nashville is a very difficult film , and , as Pauline Kael asks in her famous review of it , " What does it mean ? " Actually , I think I myself have figured that out ( and I'd be willing to share my views on it upon request ) . But for several of his other films , I have not . To tell you the truth , that is why I have always been so ambivalent towards Brewster McCloud and Short Cuts . I may have liked a lot of both of them , but , when it all comes down to it , I never really saw the point . However , I still enjoyed them . With Dr . T , I believe I did get the point . It's just that it isn't revealed until the film's climax , the wedding scene . By then , I'm sure a lot of viewers have already thrown up their hands . Yes , it is a long time to wait , but you just have to be patient sometimes . Altman is not interested in spoon-feeding us any answers . Okay , so here's my interpretation , so maybe you should skip this paragraph and the next if you want to figure it out for yourself or if you are just so angry that you don't give a care what some other idiot thinks it means : it's all about stability , to put it simply , the possession of it and its lack . To be stable may seem like a wonderful thing , but it can also get mighty boring . Dr . T appears to be a near-perfect human being . While it would have been simple to make a stupid comedy about a sexy male gynecologist ( see the Saturday Night Live sketch , Mel Gibson : World's Sexiest Gynecologist , to see how it could have turned out ) , this is just not done here . Women crowd to get into his office not because he is sexy , but because he is just so good to them all . He's warm , and he obviously cares for everyone around him , strangers included . The rich-and-unsatisfied wife is a stock character in drama . We don't ever see Dr . T's wife in that characterization , but she was obviously in that position . Dr . T's daughters , Connie and Dee Dee , appear at first to be pretty stable . They're a doctor's daughters and dress very beautifully . Dee Dee is a cheerleader , kind of a dream profession , but she's not very good . She's also about to get married , but she will regrettably have to abandon a more rewarding relationship to do so . To get married is , of course , the American symbol of stability and normalcy . Connie is in bundles , although she constantly asserts to her father , " Don't worry about me . I'm fine . " Hardly . She is constantly in knots over her sister's foolhearty decision and she obsesses about JFK's assassination ( the film takes place in Dallas ) . To boot , Dr . T's sister , Peggy , has arrived at his home , divorce pending , with her three daughters . Peggy is completely unstable ; she can hardly deal with her young daughters and she drinks like a fish . Dr . T also has an assistant , Carolyn , who constantly interrupts personal conversations and rest time with the pretext of anxious patients ; the truth is that she is lonely and secretly in love with her boss . Dr . T is being crowded by these and many other women in his life , and , like any doctor , relaxes on the golf course . There , he meets Bree , a woman pro golfer who has decided to relax a little herself . With all of his burdens , Dr . T immediately becomes involved with this source of stability , someone who is confident in her current decisions . All of this may seem like a mess to many , but it shouldn't be if you know a film like Nashville . As Altman likes to do , the climax takes place at a marvelous setpiece , Dee Dee's wedding . It is outside , and it's threatening to storm . A bundle of problems are arising , and , as it begins to pour , chaos ensues . Dr . T's experiences an epiphany : stability is overrated . Not everything can be perfect , so it is pointless to exhaust oneself trying to make it so . A similar theme runs through Cast Away of the same year . Dr . T embraces the chaos and jumps into a covertible . As he puts the top up , the wind rips it apart . He laughs and drives off in the rain towards Bree's apartment . He has chosen to convince her to run away with him . She wants no part in it . She is happy where she is , is stable . She knows that she cannot control her life perfectly , but she knows that she must exert some control . Hurt but not destroyed , Dr . T drives away . We don't know where he's going , and I doubt he does either . As he drives , a tornado descends upon him and sucks him away . This part probably angers a lot of viewers also because it is so random and untelegraphed . But I think it works . Fantastically , Dr . T survives the tornado , but has ended up in an isolated area of Mexico . The village nearby is isolated and in need of a doctor to deliver a baby . He does so . He is there to begin a new life . Again , he exists in a state of possible stability as the town doctor , but also there exists the possibility for random events , i . e . , the mystery .
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385,833 | 391,152 | 167,404 | 9 |
I think the surprise ending hurts the overall greatness of the film
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I saw this film months ago when it first came out , and I never stopped thinking about it . It is the only film of this year that deserved to make a lot of money ( The Matrix and The Phantom Menace disappointed me terribly ) . It is unlike the rest of the movies Hollywood throws out . Unlike the empty Matrix and the Phantom Menace , the Sixth Sense is a character driven drama . It comes to a conclusion that no other ghost movie ( that I've ever seen ) has touched on . I think the film has a good chance to snatch up some Oscar noms . I think it deserves nods for script and definitely Best Supporting Actor in Osment ( though he really is the main character , he is pushed to second string because of the bigger star ) . I wouldn't even be offended if Willis got a nom , seeing that this is his best film besides maybe 12 Monkeys and Pulp Fiction . Now for the ending that I mentioned in my summary . Most people will know about it this late in the game , but I won't tell . I think it pulls attention away from the true greatness of the film , which is the characters . It is what we were talking about after we left the theater , and I'm disappointed at myself for doing so . Sure it was neat , but I have gone through it in my mind several times , finding flaws within the film . Surprise endings are almost always detractors . If you remember a film just because of its surprise ending , it is a worthless film , just like The Usual Suspects , a very bad film if anyone would actually think about something besides the ending . overall , being a 9 originally , but losing 1 point for its supposed hook .
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384,607 | 391,152 | 44,000 | 9 |
Incredibly sweet and charming film
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This is Federico Fellini's first solo effort , his first film , Variety Lights , having been co-directed by Alberto Lattuada ( although it is unmistakably in the style of Fellini's early films ) . The White Sheik is quite underrated - there's no reason why it should be so much less respected than the other early films , particularly La Strada and Nights of Cabiria , the two most often cited as masterpieces ( and I'd agree ) . I actually like The White Sheik quite a bit better than I Vitelloni , Fellini's next film ( Il Bidone is the only one from his early period that I have not yet seen ) . The White Sheik is quite humorous , perhaps Fellini's funniest ( although so many of his films contain a great amount of comedy ) . No Fellini fan should go without seeing it , because so many of his themes and images are established in it . In fact , no one should miss Variety Lights , either , for the same reason . But The White Sheik , unlike Variety Lights , stands by itself as a great film . .
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385,921 | 391,152 | 56,444 | 9 |
The Ozu that I've heard so much about but couldn't find in his other films
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Not that I've seen too many Ozu films . This is only my third , after Bakushu and Tokyo Story . Both of those I found dull , even Tokyo Story , which is often considered one of the best films ever made . I don't know the critical reputation of Autumn Afternoon , but I liked it a lot . In fact , it continues with Ozus favorite themes ( which I do sincerely hope aren't the same in all his films , and that I've just accidentally picked similar ones ) : aging , marriage , and Westernization . Autumn Afternoon is less pushy than those other two films . I thought that Ozu was making a lot of judgements in those films ( although others have said that Ozu less judgemental than any other auteur ; I don't believe it ) . In Autumn Afternoon , everything is observed without judgement . It's about life , it's about Japanese culture , and it's about human beings . I won't go into a deep examination of the film . I'd like to praise the musical score specifically , which is very charming and beautiful . Other than that , I'd just like to say that Autumn Afternoon is a delightful and touching film . See it if you're an Ozu fan , see it if you are not one . .
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384,940 | 391,152 | 73,817 | 9 |
Keeps reinventing itself ; highly recommended
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A film that's exceedingly difficult to pin down . It would be easy to dismiss it , but it's just as easy to be startled and amazed by it . The story's simple enough : a shaggy , dark-skinned man ( played by Giancarlo Gianni ) works under the thumb of the bourgoisie on a hired yacht . He despises them , and they despise him . One of these rich people is particularly annoying , a blonde woman ( Mariangelo Melato ) , who spends her days incessantly bitching , spouting capitalist slogans , and putting down the servant class . These two characters , not surprisingly , end up together on a dinghy whose motor has broken . She never shuts up , he stares at her murderously . They eventually land on a deserted island , where he refuses to help her whatsoever . She eventually has to submit to whatever abuses he chooses to dish out . Yes , that does include physical and eventually a near-rape , which will certainly disgust and upset a lot of the film's audience . The film can actually be sort of perverse . I'm sure many have marvelled that , with some of the film's crueller scenes , the film was directed by a woman . It is actually , in its way , nearly as perverse at some times as The Night Porter , directed in the very same year in Italy , also by a woman . That film's merits are more dubious than Swept Away's , however . The film is unexpectedly hilarious , at least for the first forty-five minutes or so . When the abuse starts , the film begins to shift to a social issues picture . Class issues are important , as well as racial issues ( which kind of amount to the same thing ) . I didn't mind seeing the woman verbally abused - she spent the first forty-five minutes doing the same to the guy . The smackings she receives were hard for even me to take , however . The politics are nevertheless exceedingly interesting . The film has some very good material on the social constructions of class . After this section of the film , the story shifts to erotica , and it is very erotic at times . In this section , the film is a direct descendent of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris ( as was The Night Porter , incidentally ) . After that , the film shifts once again to romantic melodrama , as the two are rescued . The man makes the decision to signal a yacht that he sees in the distance simply because he wants to test the deep love that the woman swears by . These shifts in narrative can be clearly felt , like upshifting in a manual transmission vehicle , but it works rather well . I was always right with the film with its emotions ( although it took me a good twenty minutes to get into the film ) . I ended up rather loving it , despite its flaws . Now I actually want to see the Madonna version to see how bad that hack Guy Ritchie screwed it up . At one point in the film the man tells the woman that she looks like the Madonna . Pretty funny , no ? .
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385,381 | 391,152 | 97,576 | 9 |
As good as the first two
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The Last Crusade is the Indiana Jones film I've seen least . In fact , I may be lying if I were to say I've seen it more than once all the way through before this viewing . Having watched all three of the original trilogy last week , I have to say , there isn't a great gap between them in quality . They're all three excellent movies with brilliant direction by Spielberg , and pitch-perfect action sequences , paced just so as not to overwhelm the viewer . The Last Crusade is the most comic of the three films , adding Sean Connery as Indy's father and pairing the two as a kind of Abbot and Costello team . It's shocking just how well it works ? if I hadn't seen the movie and you told me Harrison Ford and Sean Connery would be the perfect comic duo , I'd have been more than a little dubious . Connery isn't known for his comic chops , but , if he didn't have them before , he definitely earned them here . I think , after James Bond ( and I'd say unfortunately so ) , his Henry Jones Sr . will prove to be his most remembered performance . Denholm Elliot and John Rhys-Davies both return from Raiders , and both are more comic characters this time around ( Elliot in particular is hilarious ; I think Sallah is kind of wasted in this one ) . Alison Doody plays Indy's double-crossing love interest . I had remembered her as being particularly forgettable , but this time around I thought she was quite good . I still have to wonder what happened to Karen Allen ( which is kind of explained in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ) , who was by far the best of the Indy girls , but Doody is good at what she does . River Phoenix appears in the brilliant opening sequence as young Indiana Jones . What a sad waste his death was .
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384,921 | 391,152 | 32,554 | 9 |
Nearly equal to Sturges ' more acknowledged classics
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The Great McGinty is Preston Sturges ' first film , and an oddity amongst them . This is the closest that I've seen that he got to drama . And herein lies its biggest problem , although , in my opinion , it is not a very big problem at all : Sturges ' patent slapstick comedy is still present in great force . It does not always mix well with the melodrama of the rest of the film . The other problem is the relatively weak resolution . I had come to know and love these characters , and I would have liked a little more at the end . SPOILERSStill , it works quite well . The story , reminiscent of Citizen Kane , though released the year before , is about a bum from the streets , McGinty , who is recruited to illegally vote for the incumbent mayor . In exchange he will get $2 for every vote . He not only does this , but does it an amazing 37 times . The same political party , impressed with his abilities , hires him as muscle . From there , the party decides to get him elected as mayor . There is one condition : he must be married . Women can vote , and they will not vote for a bachelor . His secretary , a divorcee with two children , agrees to a marriage of convenience with him . This is the relationship in the film which manages to touch deeply . It is entirely believable because of Sturges ' writing and the two wonderful actors . The film has a basic rise-and-fall structure , and McGinty's fall is truly heartbreaking . The Great McGinty deserves to be up there with Sturges ' other masterpieces .
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384,933 | 391,152 | 462,504 | 9 |
Outstanding tale of survival
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If you're a big fan of the mad German genius Werner Herzog , you might be disappointed in this , his first foray into Hollywood film-making . This is polished and not at all experimental . However , to me it feels like Herzog , when he stepped up to the plate , said to himself , " Well , I can make an American film . And I can make a better one than 95 % of American films . " And there's nothing wrong with that . The film is a dramatization of the events retold in Herzog's earlier documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly . Christian Bale plays Dieter Dengler , an American citizen and German emigré who had one of the most impressive survival instincts ever seen in a human being . Shot down in Laos in the opening throes of the Vietnam War , he was taken to a brutal POW camp where he met two other American POWs ( Jeremy Davies and Steven Zahn in the film ) and three Asian men who had worked with the enemy . The two Americans had been there for an average of a couple of years , and had all but given up hope ( the Davies character is sure there will be peace soon enough ) . Through his amazing ingenuity , Dieter planned a heroic escape . Most of the movie takes place in the POW camp . Most of what I remember from Little Dieter Needs to Fly , which I saw around two years ago , is the escape . It's a disturbing , horrifying tale of survival . I would have liked this part to be the longer , but it works very well . It's certainly harrowing . I was disappointed that one of the images I really remember from the original film did not appear : the bear that stalked Dieter during his final days wandering in the jungle . He considered it almost a friend , but in the back of his mind realized it was following him because it wanted to eat him . Herzog keeps things extremely subtle , telling them very much the way they happened . The story develops more like real life , not like a movie . It keeps melodrama to a minimum . My only problem is how it ends . The ending is way too boisterous and uplifting . Dieter Dengler was most definitely an upbeat kind of guy , but his suffering and the awful things that he saw ? heck , with the awful things that we just experienced with him , so vivid is this movie ? don't lead well to the celebration that ends the movie . I very much liked this film , and think it is one of the best I've seen so far this year .
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385,373 | 391,152 | 95,627 | 9 |
An excellent film
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It begins with a scene without context , and then proceeds for a good quarter of an hour somewhat randomly , but then it pulls itself together and ends up being very good . Actually , I now have an inkling that , if I were to see it again , those opening 20 minutes or so would seem a lot better and the film would be nearly a masterpiece . Mestizo ( a word that I don't remember ever being defined , by the way ) is a Venezuelan film about the son of a wealthy , white man and a poor black woman whose people are fishermen . This boy is named Jose Ramon , and he lives in an extremely confusing society . He is brought up as a white man , though he is visibly mulatto . The aristocratic community , with whom his father is trying to assimilate him , does not entirely trust him . Later in the film , when he tries to live amongst the community of black fishermen , they trust him even less . SPOILERS : Eventually , Jose's boss , a judge , leads his wife , Gregorina , into sleeping with Jose , which arouses the judge . This is Jose's first sexual experience , and from that point on sex runs his life . He believes that he loves Gregorina , and he convinces her and three other white women , daughters and wives of rich , white men , to take a boat ride with him and another black man . The sequence in the boat , where the six of them play a game where they similize the moon convinced me that the film was very good ; it's a brilliantly edited sequence . Soon , Jose figures out that Gregorina and the other white women were only slumming . And because he took his relationship with her so far , his boss fires him . His father , who wants to mold him into a respectable aristocrat despite his African roots , verbally assaults him over the affair . Jose runs away to his mother , who also kicks him out of the fishing village when he allows the other fishermen to rip off his share of the profits . He does this , obviously , because he has never needed money . Now he does , and he won't take it . His mother is offended that her son is just a chump , and that he is treating the fisherman's life as only a game . With both of his potential homes off limits , he becomes a homeless man on the beach . It's an idyllic life , but he misses people , well , more specifically , sex with women . In the film's most amusing scene , he builds a woman out of sand . When the scene opens , you see Jose resting in the sun , but there's an odd lump of sand closer to the camera with some bits of driftwood or seaweed on top of it . Then Jose begins to caress the sand , and we realize that he has sculpted a woman ( we only see it from the hips down ) . He has used driftwood and seaweed as pubic hair ! He brushes his hand and fingers over the faux crotch , but he sharply pulls his hand off of it . The pubes fall off , and under them is a crippled tarantula , pushing itself along with its few working legs . It is a spectacular scene , lasting only a minute , if even that long . Eventually , he is convinced to come home ( by sex ) , and his father apologizes . He has planned to send Jose to Caracas ( I can't remember the name of their town ( maybe it's Mestizo ! ) , but it's a rather small fishing village ) to learn law . Before Jose leaves , he visits his mother , who also forgives him and wishes him good luck . As he stands on the ship to Caracas ( which is contrasted with the small fisherman's boat that he has used so often elsewhere in the film , including the preceding scene ) , his racial conflict has been solved : he is now a white man , in a white suit and smoking a cigar . He tips a black man for helping him . But the solution has rough edges : he begins to hear the sounds of the city in his head , and they disturb him greatly . We end with this notion . END SPOILER : The style and rhythm of the film is akin to French New Wave films , which means it's quite choppy . Some shots are on and off so quickly that they never have time to register , which is a problem a few times during the film . The acting is exquisite . Marcos Moreno plays Jose Ramon Vargas to perfection , and everyone else is as good . The direction , by Mario Handler , is quite good , especially during the boat ride I mentioned and the sex scenes that follow it . Perhaps someday others will have a chance to see it . I implore you to do so . I myself really want to see it once more , to see if the beginning was as bad as I perceived it to be . My guess is that the previous film that I had watched , the awful Natal da Portelo from Brazil , was still influencing my mind for the first 20 or 30 minutes of Mestizo , because I had a lot of the same criticisms . To think , I nearly left the theater ( it was a double feature ) after Natal da Portelo ended ! Thank God I was too lazy to get up off my butt ! I give it a .
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385,509 | 391,152 | 89,960 | 9 |
Uncompromising masterpiece from perhaps the cinema's greatest female director
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Vagabond begins with the discovery of a woman's corpse in a ditch . She has frozen to death in the night . Police officers lift the lifeless body out of the ditch as if it were a rigid statue . The rest of the film follows the last leg of this woman's life . We drop in on interviews with people who had come into contact with her in the recent past . Sometimes it is a police officer interviewing , sometimes the bits of information are given without solicitation , as an aside to the camera . Agnes Varda's presence is always felt behind the camera . She speaks aloud at the beginning of the film , announcing the subject of the film . Vagabond is a study of this woman , Mona , and also of the different thoughts projected on her by different people . To some , she was a piece of meat , to be screwed . To others , she represented freedom . " I wish I were free like her " we hear from a couple of speakers ( incidentally , not all of the interviewees know that she is dead ; the interview structure is never clearly defined , giving it a ghostly feeling ; oh , and also incidentally , the structure of the film is co-opted from Citizen Kane ; that's not something that most will notice ( the film is too strong on its own to be reduced like that ) , and it's not something that's at all important , but it's kind of a neat fact ) . To others , she represents a lost cause . Yet others feel pity towards her . A college professor whom Mona meets gives her a long lift in her car . Later , when this professor has a near-death experience , she violently regrets that she left her alone on the side of the road . Varda refuses to judge Mona or to idolize her . The film is not very emotionally draining . Neorealism isn't the goal here . If you do want to see a related film more in the melodramatic style of Neorealism ( and there's nothing wrong with that , of course ) , try Erick Zonka's excellent 1997 film The Dreamlife of Angels . But not Vagabond , no . I'm guessing that this film is actually based on a real person . It certainly could be , anyway . Varda's only purpose seems to be the questioning of how this could happen . What kind of person is Mona ? How did she end up where she did ? Bringing back Citizen Kane , Vagabond's point isn't too different from that all-time great masterpiece . As much as you can possibly learn about Charles Foster Kane or Mona , you can never know enough to understand them .
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385,084 | 391,152 | 50,658 | 9 |
Lovely
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I suppose I should be embarrassed after going off on director Billy Wilder last week over his overrated 1957 film Witness for the Prosecution , because I absolutely loved his other 1957 film , Love in the Afternoon . I guess when he gets it right , he gets it right , because the direction here is fantastic . This is one of the most romantic romances , and one of the funniest comedies I've seen in a while , told with such a sense of style and wit that I enjoyed it more than I believed possible . Audrey Hepburn stars as a young student of the cello . Her father ( Maurice Chevalier ) is a private detective , and she loves to follow his sordid cases . One particular character appears in many of his cases as a cuckold , Gary Cooper . When one of Chevalier's clients plans to shoot Cooper , Hepurn overhears and sets out to warn him . Afterwards , they begin a romance . She's very inexperienced , and obviously a little afraid that he'll so thoroughly outclass and manipulate her that she decides to play some head games with him , telling him that she has had many lovers . By driving him to insane jealousy , she thinks she can see if he can possibly be in love for real . The biggest fault of the film , one that everyone agrees on no matter at what degree they love the movie , is that Gary Cooper is horrendously miscast . This has got to be one of the worst cases of casting in history . He's a thousand years older than Hepburn . Well , a lot of Hepburn's co-stars were far too old for her , and it harms any number of her films . Weren't there any actors in their 20s , 30s , or , heck , even 40s who were good enough to match Audrey ? Why did directors and producers of her films think she would rather sleep with someone 30 years her senior ? Has it something to do with her as a person ? You know , this might have been the perfect opportunity to put Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn together again for a reunion . Fortunately , Cooper's presence ( or poor performance ) doesn't hurt the film anywhere near as much as you would suppose , or as some have suggested . I guess Cooper is such a blank actor that you can more or less ignore him . The movie is , after all , about Audrey ; Audrey is everything to the film . And she is perfect . She plays it so subtly and wonderfully ; it's really one of her greatest performances . The humor is very good . I love the picnic scene , the way that chicken leg is used as a prop . And those gypsies are great . I might have been annoyed at them in a lesser movie , but they are always used very well . The scene where Cooper is becoming obsessed with a recording that Audrey has made , which lists all of her love affairs , is a highlight , with Cooper and the gypsies rolling a cart full of alcoholic drinks on it back and forth in his hotel room . This is a gem , one of the best romances ever . .
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384,974 | 391,152 | 95,715 | 9 |
Wanna give your kiddies nightmares for the rest of their lives ?
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About five years ago , when I had just graduated from high school , a friend of mine who had been to college introduced me to the works of Jan Svankmajer . He had checked out a VHS copy of three short films , Darkness / Light / Darkness , Male Games , and The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia . All three of them were works of great genius , and I immediately stored Svankmajer's name in my vault . So it's sad that it took me all five of these years to see another one of his works . I had thought about buying his Faust back when DVDs were dirt-cheap ( do you remember those happy days ? ) , but had passed over it for something else . Now I finally found another one of his films , Alice , this one a feature , his adaptation of Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures of Wonderland . And , wow , this is one frightening little film , a mix of live-action ( well , one little girl ) and stop-motion animation of characters like the White Rabbit , the Mad Hatter , and the Queen of Hearts . Stop-motion animation has always looked creepy , and Sankmajer knows it . He also knows that dead animals are scary , and he incorporates their bones into his animation . It makes the whole film more visceral and surreal . There are two parts of this film that deserve particular attention . 1 ) the soundtrack . There is no musical score , and the only music at all is the tiny piece that plays over the closing credits . No , by soundtrack I am referring to the sound effects , and they are absolutely amazing . 2 ) the setting . The original novel and the Disney film set the story in a bizarre forest . Sankmajer sets the story in a delapidated house , with rotting and filthy wooden beams everywhere , creaky doors , and old cabinets . The setting is what makes the film particularly creepy . As for standout scenes , the caterpillar is pretty awesome . The very best scene , though , is definitely the tea party , with the Mad Hatter and March Hare . Svankmajer's conception of those two characters and of the tea party is truly inspired , and ranks among the best scenes in cinema , in my opinion . So is it perfect ? No . The idea to have Alice speak all the lines , and then show her lips speaking such words as : " The Mad Hatter said " every two minutes grows annoying quickly , and the film would perhaps have been a masterpiece had this flaw been avoided . It seems to be in there for adding time , and it's truly unfortunate . I also wish that Svankmajer would have hurried up the beginning of the film , so as to get to other great scenes in the novel . It takes a half hour before Alice gets into Wonderland , and that's the only time the film grows boring . Whatever . This is still a great film . .
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384,766 | 391,152 | 36,969 | 9 |
Far more entertaining than I expected !
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I love unexpected surprises . I was expecting a dull , 19th Century affair . Instead , I got one of the biggest melodramatic potboilers of all time . It's passionate , pulling me along and hardly letting me catch my breath . It's powerful , and it's actually hugely entertaining . Joan Fontaine plays the title character . Treated like garbage her whole life ( we follow a few of her childhood adventures ) , Jane finally ends up in a tolerable place , hired as a governess . Well , it might not be Heaven , but Thornfield is , if nothing else , an interesting place . A cute , little French girl ( Margaret O'Brien ) ; an overbearing master of the house ( Orson Welles ) ; creepy halls ; unexplained fires and a frightening entity hiding behind a gothic wooden door , bolted tightly shut . Heck , this film is a good 60 % horror film . 1943's best film , I Walked with a Zombie , is also based on the novel Jane Eyre . That film is pure poetry , but the 1944 version might actually be scarier ! The black and white cinematography is awe-inspiring , some of the best ever captured . It can be very , very eerie . It's actually inspired - perhaps even pilfered - by Orson Welles ' films to date . I wonder if he thought he was being ripped off ? The acting is not perfect . Joan Fontaine , as a thousand other people have probably pointed out , is anything but plain , as the character is supposed to be ( I've never read the novel - hell , I probably should now ! - but her plainness is expressed in the film ) . It's also easy to point out that she wears one expression throughout the film . However , I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing . The backstory is so well done that that expression seems to fit the character quite well . Orson Welles either seems to be not in the mood to star in this film or he seems too eager to be superb . I can't decide , but the result is curious . I wouldn't call it a bad performance , certainly , but it is not especially satisfactory , either . Whatever other criticisms could be expressed , he certainly never comes off as actually experiencing these situations with true emotions , unlike Fontaine . Perhaps the best performance in the film comes from young Peggy Ann Garner , who plays Jane as a young girl . She's simply amazing . Elizabeth Taylor appears in a small , uncredited role . Wow , she's young . All in all , I really loved Jane Eyre . While I recognize its imperfections , I wouldn't be surprised if my cable box gets stuck on Turner Classic Movies the next time it airs . .
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385,573 | 391,152 | 39,152 | 9 |
Very highly recommended
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Fun movie about a cowboy named Quirt ( John Wayne ) who is wants to reform his ways after he meets a sweet Quaker girl . When he is shot , the Quaker family takes care of him , and after he wakes up the daughter ( Gail Russell ) falls in love with him . It's goofy and cliché , sure , but there's a really fine movie to be found in the familiar setup . Writer / director Grant create many good vignettes . There are several wonderful supporting characters who add a lot of worth to the proceedings , including Harry Carey as a marshall , Lee Dixon as one of Quirt's friends and old partners in crime , Tom Powers as the local , scientific , atheist doctor , and Olin Howlin as the town telegrapher . Howlin's character is pure comic relief , very humorously claiming a long friendship with Quirt , though he only saw him once when he was almost unconscious . Then Carey's character is wryly comedic : as the marshall , he's constantly stalking Quirt . He's sure that someday he'll get to hang the guy , and he harps on it constantly . The chemistry between Wayne and Russell adds an unexpected poignancy to the film . The scene where the two pick blackberries is simply beautiful , and their wordless climactic exchange is perfectly performed . Good action sequences , as well . .
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384,688 | 391,152 | 83,642 | 9 |
Everyone has their guilty pleasures , don't they ?
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I'd like to defend this particular pleasure of mine as not particularlyguilty . I don't feel guilty when I'm enjoying it in any way . I'm one whocan really enjoy something with enormous camp value , and this isdefinitely a film that fits into that category . Its existence is bizarre . Who would ever think that anyone would want to see a musicalplay about a whorehouse ? Who would ever even think to write amusical about a whorehouse ? I assume that that musical wassuccessful , because Hollywood bought it in order to make a film ofit . And in the 1980s , long , long after the musical was long dead asa genre . I'm sure critics of the time saw it as yet another nail in thatalready much-nailed coffin . And then , who would ever think ofcasting Burt Reynolds , whose career was faltering at this point ( and yet another coffin receives yet another nail ) , and Dolly Parton , the queen of all big boob jokes , as lovers ? Dom Delouise as apudgy sensationalist , Jim Nabors as a bone-headed deputee , andCharles Durning as a politician who never gives straight answers ( perhaps just " politician " is good enough ) ? When it was released , I believe it actually did some decent business . Charles Durningwas so unforgettable that he was nominated for a Best SupportingActor Academy Award ; he's in the film for a total of 8 minutes andhe sings one song . Nowadays , it's as forgotten as almost any filmmade in the 1980s . I bought it out of an enormous bin of videos allcosting $3 . 99 . It does have enormous camp value . That's obvious ; it's why I firstsaw it . Like all films that I watch for camp value , I tend to watch iteven more than those films which I , a self-proclaimed film buff , have declared great masterpieces . And the more I watch it , themore I appreciate its other , non-campy aspects . Besides its camp , it actually works as a musical . There aren't too many songs , butthose that there are , some written by Parton herself , are uniformlyexcellent . " Texas Has a Whorehouse in It ( God Have Mercy on OurSouls ) " is very humorous ; Dom Delouise's performance is on themoney . " Sneakin ' Around with You " , the only song in which BurtReynolds participates ( along with Parton ) is quite good . DollyParton's final two songs are not only good but great : " Rock CandyChristmas " and " I Will Always Love You " . In addition to its value asa musical , it works as a very good melodrama . Take those twosongs I just mentioned . After some dozen times seeing thismovie , " Rock Candy Christmas " I find really touching . And " I WillAlways Love You " , which is , of course , the same song whichWhitney Huston sings in The Bodyguard , a film and a song whichmade enormous amounts of money , is a thousand , at least athousand times more touching here than it is in The Bodyguard . It's also hundreds of times better performed in The Best LittleWhorehouse in Texas . It actually means something here . Yes , in fact , I love this film . I will not back down from that .
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385,984 | 391,152 | 72,648 | 9 |
An unknown gem by Fassbinder , one of his best works
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Really , the plot is nothing different than your average movie on the Lifetime cable network : a woman suffers from [ I ] post-partem [ / I ] depression while no one around her seems to care much ; eventually , she becomes addicted to Valium and alcohol . But what a difference a genius can make , and Fassbinder is clearly a genius . And his lead actress , Margit Carstensen , gives an absolutely brilliant performance . It's a small and subtle picture ( made for television , actually ) , and I wonder if anyone else would be as impressed as I was . But I really felt that Fassbinder and Carstensen captured something remarkable here . The other actors are fine , as well . Ulrich Faulhaber plays her odd husband . He cares for his wife , but probably not in the way she needs . I noticed early in the film that he never touches his wife , and later in the film his mother complains that it is abnormal the way the mother hugs and kisses her children . The nosy mother-in-law is played by Brigitte Mira , looking really ugly after making me cry in Fear Eats the Soul , made the previous year . I would say that that character is a cliché if I didn't know so many people exactly like her ! Irm Herrmann plays the sister-in-law , and Adrian Hoven plays a pharmacist with whom Carstensen begins an affair after her prescription for Valium runs out . These two characters have the kind of hidden depth that make the film so good . The same can be said about Kurt Raab and Ingrid Caven , both playing other people with psychological problems , the former appearing once in a while in the streets and staring knowingly at Carstensen , the latter Carstensen's roommate at an asylum in which she undergoes some treatment ; when Carstensen is undergoing sleep therapy , Caven desperately wants to converse with her , but when she is awake the woman becomes catatonic . Peer Raben's music is excellent , as always , and Fassbinder uses the music of Leonard Cohen wonderfully ( as he also did in his more famous 1975 film , Fox and His Friends ) . .
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385,835 | 391,152 | 95,683 | 9 |
wonderful !
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I have been scouring imdb trying to find the three movies I saw of Svankmajer's . They were all perfect . I think this one was the third best of the three I saw , but that's hardly a bad thing since they were all masterpieces . This one , about a man watching soccer and drinking , is really crazy and wonderful . If you can find anything by this animator , rent it or buy it ! He's marvelous !
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384,831 | 391,152 | 210,302 | 9 |
I love Tsukamoto !
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Based on a novel by Edogawa Rampo , a Japanese author whose name transliterates to " Edgar Allen Poe " . This story is very Poe-like , covering the subject of doppelgängers much like " William Wilson " . Gemini is somewhat confusing , but overall it is a haunting film that actually generates fear and a deeper feeling of uneasiness . A rich doctor marries an amnesiac whose origins are unknown . Soon , her former lover ? who happens to be the doctor's twin brother who was abandoned and then raised in the slums ? comes back to claim what is his . The doppelgänger throws the doctor into a well and tries to win back his former wife . Soon , the twins begin to exchange personalities until , by the end , it's not entirely clear which one is the victor ? or even if the final version of the man doesn't share the minds of both brothers . The film is slow to start , but it climbs to a high level . The technical aspects are especially amazing here . The makeup , the sound , the editing ? everything is top notch . The acting is also great . Masahiro Motoki ? whose other starring roles include Miike's exceptional The Bird People of China as well as a tryptich of Rampo adaptations named after the author ? plays the doctor and his evil twin . A woman simply known as Ryo plays the doctor's wife . She's got a particularly intriguing face . She also starred in Ryuhei Kitamura's Alive . Gemini is not an easy picture , nor is it entirely satisfying . But it is great .
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385,288 | 391,152 | 210,296 | 9 |
An excellent treatment of the last days of Socrates
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Apparently , no one else has seen this . That's a pity . Anyone who has studied Plato would love it , I think . Of course , it doesn't beat the actual reading of Plato's dialogues , but it's a nice supplement . The adaptation is straightforward . The Euthyphro , Apology , Crito , and Phaedo are reduced in size , but their contents are there . Also there is to be found pieces of The Republic and many others that I probably haven't read yet ( the Protagoras and Lysias are mentioned directly ) . The Symposium , which is the only dialogue that I can say I know particularly well , is briefly alluded to . There's also a great scene where a man teases Socrates by citing Aristophanes ' The Clouds , which was the play that , according to the Apology , sowed the seeds of his death . Rosselini's direction is subtle and exquisite . The camera moves perfectly . The production design is great . A lot of research went into this to make it as accurate as possible . I don't know of any film that has done as well in these aspects . The acting is also perfect . The man who plays Socrates IS Socrates . .
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385,519 | 391,152 | 28,231 | 9 |
Underrated Hitchcock
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The only thing generic about this British thriller is its title . After that , it's a rather remarkable and suspenseful Hitchcock movie . John Gielgud plays a WWI pilot who is hired by his government as a spy . He meets up with two operatives , one who is playing the part of his wife ( Madeleine Carroll ) and one who is just Peter Lorre . I'm not sure what his cover was ( perhaps this is just a small flaw ; I think that if these were real spies they wouldn't make it very far , but I think I'm mature enough to suspend my disbelief on this kind of thing ) . They are in Switzerland to root out a German spy . Robert Young plays an American tourist who has a thing for Carroll . The script is excellent , with some fine dialogue . The characters are well developed . Hitchcock's direction is super-taut . The acting is just great here , especially Peter Lorre , who is just delicious . One thing to note in this movie , as well as Hitch's other 1936 film , Sabotage , in my opinion one of his greatest achievements , is the weight that death carries . In most of his other films , the death of a human being is treated rather cynically . One need only view The Trouble with Harry , which displays Hitch's wildest cynicism . I don't particularly mind this normally , but it's interesting to see the moral implications explored more fully in Secret Agent and Sabotage . .
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385,852 | 391,152 | 110,598 | 9 |
I loved this movie !
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I rented this movie because I loved Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense and expected it to be a pretty good Australian flick , but it was much , much better than I had ever expected . One thing I have to complain about , though , has nothing to do with the actual movie : I have to make a complaint about the box . Miramax made this film look like a goofy Aussie romantic comedy . Every critical comment on the box lauded its humor . I even think they made Collette look skinnier on the cover . These people are utter thugs ! This is a drama with some funny moments . I cried more than I laughed . There are so many beautifully drawn characters here . I never wanted this film to end . And it was wonderfully written . I have only some small complaints about the actual film . This is why I didn't give it a 10 : the annoying friend characters who pretend to like Muriel and Rhonda when it's convenient are used way too often . They should not have been brought back near the end . The third act is also kind of long . There are three separate conflicts that have to be solved , and it just takes a bit too long .
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385,553 | 391,152 | 38,969 | 9 |
Think it over before you react
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This film will never receive a clean bill of political correctness , but neither will any film made before the 1960s . In fact , Song of the South presents some of the least offensive portraits of African Americans you can find from the time . If you really need to compare , go find any other film starring Hattie McDaniel ? start with Gone With the Wind ? and note how much more dignity she has in the Disney movie . Uncle Remus ( James Baskett , who is utterly , utterly exceptional ) is perhaps the most charming character you'll find . He's much more stereotypical of an elderly man than a black man . A smart man with strong morals and a clever way of delivering them , he seems to see things more clearly than anyone else in the film . No , Uncle Remus is a kind man who loves humanity , and this love is infectious . The movie made me very happy to be alive . A more politically correct version of the film would have him rebelling against white society with violence . It's kind of sad that we can't abide blacks and whites actually getting along , preaching brotherhood . The live action bits are very good ( although I think Bobby Driscoll is a bit weak in the lead ) , but it is the animated pieces ( and the live action / animation sequences ) that make Song of the South great . Br'er Rabbit , Fox , and Bear are wonderful characters , and these three segments represent some of the best animation Disney ever did . The mixed scenes are amazing ( was this the first time it was done ? ) . I especially liked when Uncle Remus went fishing with Br'er Frog . Uncle Remus lights his pipe with an animated flame , and blows an animated smoke ring that turns into a square ( which is , of course , also politically incorrect ) . I suspect that the biggest reason this film stirs so many negative emotions is the black dialect used in the film . I think that bugs people a lot . Really , though , blacks from the rural South have and have had their own accents and ways of speaking just as they have and have had in any other region . While the accents in this film are somewhat fabricated , I'm sure , I think that it would be a far cry to think of them as harmful to anybody . The hurt that people feel over this movie is the real fabrication , induced by PC thugs who seem to want to cause rifts between peoples . I think that a re-release of Song of the South could possibly have a beneficial effect on race relations in the United States , as it does depict dear friendships and respect between the races , something that I think we quite need at the moment .
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384,938 | 391,152 | 38,975 | 9 |
Very suspenseful
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An excellent thriller about a mute girl ( Dorothy McGuire ) who is the next victim of a serial killer intent on strangling women with disabilities . Of course , the girl's muteness multiplies the suspense hugely , as she has no way to tell anyone that she's in trouble . The loudest screams are the ones that come out as silence . The production is fine , and Siodmak's direction is pretty much impeccable . The camera glides around effortlessly , and shadows and dark spaces cover the screen strategically . At one point , a strangling victim is completely covered with a splash of shadow , and all we can see are her outspread hands ( Nicholas Musuraca is responsible for the masterful photography ) . The acting is also quite good . McGuire expresses her emotions perfectly through her face . Ethel Barrymore , Gordon Oliver , Elsa Lanchester , and Sara Allgood , among others , make up a great supporting cast . Kent Smith plays McGuire's love interest ; he is probably best remembered for his lead role in the Val Lewton vehicle The Cat People ( and his reprise of the same character in Curse of the Cat People ) . I always find him rather adequate , but nothing more . There a couple of things I do dislike . There are a few hackneyed elements in the production , most notably the cliche of the dark and stormy night . The film is also a whodunit , a genre which has some major drawbacks . It seems worthless to me to sit there guessing throughout the film , as some people undoubtedly will . But people should realize that , in a whodunit , it could be any character who has been introduced . The writer doesn't even have to decide until the end if he doesn't want to . There's kind of a slip here , and the killer is revealed at least ten minutes too early if you're paying attention . It would have been better if the serial killer were just some stranger . Ah , I shouldn't end my reviews on flaws , because The Spiral Staircase surpasses them by miles . .
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385,498 | 391,152 | 52,735 | 9 |
excellent performances
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It's unfortunate that this film is so little known . I caught chunks of it on television a few months ago and found the idea of a Satan worshiping Kirk Douglas a bit more than interesting . I didn't know the title , but came upon the film again in the tv listings . Since it also included Burt Lancaster and Laurence Olivier , I figured that I could only gain something by recording it . And I'm very glad I did . The film is a historic drama set during the American Revolution with a lot of comedy thrown in . These varying aspects mix quite well in the film for the most part , and , even when they don't , there're always those three great actors to save the proceedings . Lancaster plays an American priest who is hoping that his community takes no part in the rebellion . Douglas is the self-described devil worshiper and ne'er-do-well who is the community's most outspoken rebel . Olivier has a major supporting part as an English general . These three performances are impeccable . The dialogue is also so ( it's based on a G . B . Shaw play ) . SPOILERSThe script has a couple of large problems . The biggest is that the writers seem to have no clue how to treat the role of the priest's wife , Judith , well played by Janette Scott despite the script's flaws . I have a feeling that Hollywood conventions are getting in the way here . Judith reacts violently to the cynicism and cruelty of Douglas ' character , but , for some odd reason , the screenwriters have her fall in love with him . This is pure Hollywood hokum . Even at the film's end , the writers have not decided what to do with her character : the priest , now transformed into a militiaman ( he dresses like Davy Crockett ) , hands over his wife to the devil worshiper because of a heroic deed he has accomplished . His response to the priest is confusing . I think he refused the offer . Still , Olivier asks Douglas to join him for tea with Judith , to which Douglas agrees . Instead , Judith runs off with her original husband . It is very odd . The writers should have never pushed Judith into Douglas ' arms . One other scene is very hard to watch , too : the scene where Lancaster attempts to sabotage the British troops . It is well meant to show the priest's transformation , but they play it as an action sequence . It is quite poorly staged - one of those scenes where you are always wondering why that one British soldier doesn't kill the priest when he has the chance . Anyhow , it is pointless to complain . These inconsistencies and missteps don't harm the overall effect of the film . I watched this movie for its actors , and , boy , do they give awesome performances .
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384,656 | 391,152 | 167,261 | 9 |
Huge improvement over the first installment
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I found the first installment of this series pretty good , but ultimately sloppy . It was just too repetitive , with the characters doing nothing but travelling forward , stopping sporadically to fight battles against forces of faceless monsters which ridiculously outnumbered them . The second installment , of course , picks up right where the first one ended , although it has broken into three narrative tracks . The cutting between the three makes the first half of the film rather uneven . The plotline of Aragorn , Gimli , and Legolas defending the people of Rohan is especially slow , and there isn't enough exposition to explain what the heck is going on . I'm actually glad for that , as I'd rather sit through incomprehensible plot than have to listen to twenty more minutes of explaining who the heck these people are and what the heck is going on . I turned to my friend , a long-time lover of the novels , and asked him and he quickly caught me up . Pippin and Merry , the two Hobbits who were captured by orcs at the end of the first movie , escape and run into a sacred forest and are captured by a giant talking tree called an ent . This plotline is slow , too , but the tree monsters were neat enough to hold my attention . The third plotline , the one with Frodo and Sam , is by far the most interesting . Gollum , the former owner of the ring , now obsessed with it , attacks them and is captured . He soon becomes their guide when Frodo begins to sympathize with his downfall . Gollum is by far the most interesting character in the film , like Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back . This is the first computer-generated character to work completely . Except for his eyes , I'd accept him as a physical entity . And his story and performance are just so tragic that these parts were nearly overwhelming at times . It's too bad they don't award voice characterizations ( and I can't find who did it on imdb ) . The special effects guys really , truly deserve to win an Oscar for their work here . He was so interesting , I wanted the whole movie to be based from his point of view for a lot of the film . Fortunately , the other two stories do begin to work after a while . There's a great , kinetic battle scene with some wolves that was apparently not in the novel , which , of course , angers all the nerds . This leads to some material about Liv Tyler's character which was also not in the book . My LOTR nerd friend admitted that these scenes were good , and , in my mind , that was the first real scene that got me to give the slightest care for Aragorn , who seems so important but , to me , seemed so uninteresting in the first movie and a lot of this one . The elf and dwarf also begin to come into their own , although the dwarf is often used solely for comic relief , and it's not especially funny . A lot of the movie focuses around a huge battle fought by these characters . They have armies now , so this battle scene is much less ridiculous than the ones in the first film . It's actually enormously entertaining . Pippin and Merry also become more interesting , although they're never going to be , I fear , as interesting as anyone else . The ents whom they hang around with are really cool , though . The ents ' attack on one of the towers ( I do have to admit that I didn't even realize there were two myself ) makes for a very neat scene . My biggest complaint is about the same as my biggest complaint about the first film . Why are the villains so boring ? The orcs and their kin are just dull , faceless villains . They're fodder for the good guys ' armies . They run around and yowl , and that's about it . Why can't there be a few generals or something that have interesting things to say ? Christopher Lee , who did make a bit of an impression in the first film , is totally shafted in this one . He does little more than sit in his tower and watch his troops march away . There's also a new villain , an Ozzy Osbourne-looking guy named Wormtongue , who is controlling the king of Rohan with magic . Do you really believe that they would allow a guy named Wormtongue to come into their palace , let alone advise the king ? Despite this film's numerous flaws , I can't think of another film of 2002 that really entertained me more than this one . .
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385,326 | 391,152 | 167,260 | 9 |
A legitimately great movie
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An adventure movie to match the great ones of the past , and the one to beat for the future . The culmination of this ambitious trilogy is more than fitting ; it surpasses the first two films by quite a distance . Almost nothing disappointed or bothered me . All parts of the story were equally interesting . It was sweeping , it was involving , it was beautiful . One of the few thing I would complain about is the villain . Sauron is boring and more or less unseen . He does not feel very threatening . And his army of orcs has been dull since the first film . They're just not very interesting creatures . Fortunately , The Return of the King really makes up for these monsters with a gallery of better ones . Some of them have been present in the other two films , trolls and those flying dragons that the ring wraiths ride on . They're more present here , however . Even better , though , those gigantic elephants , ten times the size of a normal one . Oh , man , those are cool . Star Wars fans might grumble that they were too much like the AT-AT walkers from Empire , and they are . One scene where Legolas , the elf , triumphs over one of them feels like a sped up version of Luke Skywalker's attack . But the very best thing is a giant spider . Everyone knows that there was originally a giant spider on skull island in King Kong , cut from the film because it really disturbed a test audience . Seeing the spider in Return of the King is like having that famous piece of lost footage restored . When all three films are finally out on their special edition DVDs , I'm going to spend a month combing through them to see whether or not the entire series of films isn't just as good as this one , or perhaps as good as many of my younger friends have sworn they were .
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385,484 | 391,152 | 87,821 | 9 |
Eric Rohmer , how did I ever exist without you ?
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Sure , other artists , countless others , have spent their lives depicting the interrelationships of men and women . But I don't know of anyone who so consistently seems to understand human relationships than Eric Rohmer . So few can build as believable characters , such believable situations . Full Moon in Paris concerns a young woman , Louise ( Pascale Ogier ) , who has arrived at a point of extreme confusion : she loves her long-time boyfriend , Rémi ( Tchéky Karyo ) , but she desperately wants to be alone for once in her life . Rémi likes his life the way he has it , living in the suburbs , doing his job , coming home to Louise . But it's all too stifling for her . She rents an apartment in Paris , but that only partly steadies her mind . Louise also has another , more ambiguous boyfriend , Octave ( Fabrice Luchini , who appears in several Rohmer films and stars in my very favorite , Perceval le Gallois ) . Their relationship is definitely on the romantic side , but both seem to be in it , at least most of the time , for each other's company . They can talk , where Rémi isn't an especially gifted conversationalist ( not a good character trait if you're in a Rohmer film ! ) . The film moves along as well as any Rohmer film , but for a long time I was pretty sure that Rohmer wouldn't be able to end it in any significant way , that it would end up being a great film ( like I say , I couldn't find one of his films any less ) , but not one of his best . Fortunately , Rohmer really does find the perfect ending , which ends up lifting the film up and making it one of the director's best . The film really benefits from its perfectly written characters and amazing acting , as well . Ogier gives one of the strongest central performances in Rohmer's canon . Fabrice Luchini , man , I love this actor ! He stars in my favorite Rohmer film and has a small roll in my second favorite ( the vastly underrated 4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle from 1987 ) . Luchini is so perfect here , so subtly hilarious that most will not notice it . During one of Octave's many conversations with Louise , he rattles off a really good line and has to stop to write it down . Louise understandingly excuses herself to the restroom to give him time to get his quip recorded . .
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385,044 | 391,152 | 286,179 | 9 |
Undervalued work by one of America's greatest filmmakers
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It has generally been thought of as a minor Sayles work , but I think it demonstrates his talent to the utmost . No other filmmaker I know of is so skillful at creating a believable community , one that feels like a real place , while at the same time illuminating the sense of community throughout the entire United States . Sunshine State focuses on a Floridian community , of course , on a small island off the coast . A lot has gone on here during the last half-century . The island is populated mostly by blacks and whites , most of whom remember the old days of racial tension well . The two races still don't interact much , but they now live side by side in peace . Mostly they hold on to their values as a small community , where individuals owned the businesses and land . At least they try to hold on to those values . Corporations are threatening to turn their paradise , which is actually called Paradise Island , into strip malls and golf courses . Some choose to protest what others see as progress , others have given up . The film has two main characters , a black woman and a white woman , who never meet during the film and , though they know the same people , might never have met , they share similar life experiences . Edie Falco plays Marly Temple . She runs a local motel / restaurant that stands in a location that developers desperately want . Angela Bassett plays a woman who has just returned to Paradise Island after a long absence . Yes , the film is far from perfect . Some of the supporting characters , of which there is an enormous amount , end up as loose threads . And the climax is sort of a weak deus ex machina . But , generally , Sayles creates an utterly complex work that explores its themes in a manner that compels , teaches , and deeply satisfies . It isn't his best film , but it's one of his best . It is perhaps his most ambitious film and it certainly didn't deserve to be passed over like it was . .
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384,545 | 391,152 | 63,049 | 9 |
Why isn't this more well known ?
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I can't believe this isn't a huge cult hit . Perhaps people in 1968 , thinking of the Monkees as a silly factory-made pop band rip-off of the Beatles , refused to see it . That cynicism probably covered it from sight ever since . Don't make this mistake . _ Head _ is an amazing film that most open minded people will appreciate . It is very funny and very intelligent ( and very trippy ) .
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385,081 | 391,152 | 65,233 | 9 |
I heard the title a long time ago . How can you forget it ?
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This is one of the weirdest and most unique films I've ever seen . It's artsploitation , and like most artsploitation , its art is questionable . In the end , though , I judged that it was more art than exploitation . Others , and probably the majority , would probably feel the opposite . A shy young man follows a group of men who are dragging a woman up to his apartment building's roof . He watches quietly as they rape her . When she awakes in the morning , she asks him to kill her , for she's too unhappy to live . We discover that he himself is suicidal , and that he harbors a deep curiosity and fear around sex , which has lead him to murder before . It does cross the line several times , especially with a series of photos of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate , among which is a picture of Tate's corpse , but there's a lot of interest to grab onto . If nothing else , the stark black and white cinematography is gorgeous , and director Wakamatsu's use of music is masterful . A trip some will definitely want to take , while others , and you probably know it already , should avoid . The director later went on to produce Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses , which , while certainly a good film , is far less daring and compelling as Go Go Second Time Virgin . .
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385,760 | 391,152 | 21,800 | 9 |
Fascinating film . . . . . . . so bizarre . . .
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Most will dislike Josef von Sternberg's Dishonored . The plot is often ridiculous , and that's what most people like to comment on . I found it hypnotic . The inconsistencies didn't annoy me so much as entertain me . In a way , this could be called a camp classic . Whatever type of classic it is , though , it is an amazing film . Confer the scene nearer the beginning when Marlene Dietrich walks right up to the camera , within inches of its lense . How about the scene where she plays a Russian peasant girl to infiltrate the Russian army ( she's an Austrian spy ) ? She climbs up on a high ledge and starts meowing at the man whom she is seducing . The final sequence is stunning and audacious . I'm skipping a few lines in order to give sufficient room to write thisSPOILER ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Who else but Marlene Dietrich would insist that her lipstick were on straight before she was executed by firing squad ?
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384,993 | 391,152 | 35,160 | 9 |
Marvelous
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Visconti's first feature , Ossessione is an adaptation of James M . Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice . Now , I'm not familiar with that book or the other film versions , but I am a big fan of Cain's Double Indemnity ( much more so than I am a fan of Billy Wilder's film version of it , in fact ) . The two novellas seem like they must be very similar . Both involve an illicit love affair where a ravenous wife complains to a morally weak man that her husband is worthless and mean to her . Giovanna , the woman in this Italian version , played very well by Clara Calamai , is not evil incarnate like the wife in Double Indemnity , but she seems very spoiled . Her husband ( a great performance by Juan de Landa ) is a bit cruel to her , but she strikes me like she is at least as uncompromising with him . He's older than her and unattractive , so she's rather fickle . When Gino shows up , a young , muscular man , it takes her about five minutes to get him into bed . She sweats she wants to be with him forever , but she's stuck with her husband . They break up at first , but when they meet again , they ( apparently , although this is intentionally vague ) plan to murder the husband . They are successful , and they move back to the woman's home town to run the bar that her husband owned . Gino is very unenthusiastic about this idea . He wants Giovanna , but the one thing that he certainly doesn't want is to sit around in one place for the rest of his life . Their relationship quickly crumbles . Ossessione is a very complex film with complex characters . It's always fascinating , but it does go on a bit too long . At two hours and twenty-two minutes , I can't , for the life of me , figure out how it took that long ! This is partly due to the neorealist stylistics that Visconti was inventing within this film . It was , after all , the first film that won that label . We see a lot of the action prolonged as it would be in real life , without any hurrying to the next plot point . I've seen many of Visconti's films , and the only one I like better than this one is Rocco and His Brothers ( 1960 ) . His direction is as great as it ever was , with the camera moving brilliantly and the editing perfect . I also feel the need to point out the film's best performance , by Dhia Christiani as a young ( exotic ) dancer and part-time prostitute named Anita whom Gino meets after he begins to try to break away from Giovanna . She's only in the film for maybe five or six minutes , and she has only a few lines . It's shocking how much Visconti and Christiani are able to do with this character in such a short time . She's absolutely heartbreaking . .
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384,734 | 391,152 | 35,153 | 9 |
Marvelous
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Made in the middle of WWII , One of Our Aircraft Is Missing is quite a great film . The technical aspects and special effects are extraordinary . The script is wonderful ( Oscar winning ) and the British RAF members are all well developed . Some of the Dutch could use a little more characterization , but it's not too bad . One might think that the Archers ' strengths lie in fantasy films , but they stick to realism here , and they do a great job . If you are a fan of the Archers , don't miss it . If you are a WWII buff , also make sure you catch it . .
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385,143 | 391,152 | 390,190 | 9 |
Exceptional . Actually changed my opinion !
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Very strong documentary about Illinois Governor George Ryan , who was faced with the decision of whether to commute all of the sentences of capital punishment in his state to sentences of life in prison . I'm a liberal Democrat who actually supported the death penalty , and Deadline is a rare film that challenged my views and made me rethink my opinion , and , in only 90 minutes , almost entirely changed my mind . Not that I haven't heard most of the arguments in the film before , but the film presented it in a way that made me consider the issue on a deeper level . It hasn't convinced me 100 % that the death penalty should be abolished , but I do see how arbitrary the practice can be , and how poorly our system works at times . In that way , I am almost at the point where I think that the system perhaps should be abolished completely , because there is no way to perfect it . There will always be flaws . It's hardly a perfect film , and , at 90 minutes , it isn't nearly long enough to explore all the issues . But it is amazing how much it does in an hour and a half . One of the best movies of 2004 so far . .
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385,477 | 391,152 | 149,723 | 9 |
Fantastic . Bertolucci has not lost it .
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SLIGHT SPOILERSI can't fairly claim Bernardo Bertolucci as one of my favorite filmmakers , because I've seen relatively few of his films . However , he did make my third favorite film of all time , Last Tango in Paris . Besides Besieged , the only other film of his I'd seen was The Last Emperor , which I like very much , also . Now , I vividly remember seeing the episode of Siskel & Ebert ( or whatever it was called at the time that this film was released ) and hearing Ebert proclaim that Besieged was racist and crying , " What has happened to Bertolucci ? He used to make these beautiful and personal films ! " I want to know what the hell movie he saw in place of Besieged , because the Besieged I saw was " beautiful and personal , " and it was certainly not " racist . " The film is about an African woman ( Thandie Newton , who was later to star opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible II , which I now have to see ) whose husband was arrested for political reasons ( we're never really told in which country they lived , nor is the political climate explained or described ) . Some time late ( that , too , is unspecified ) , she immigrates to Italy where she is hired as a live-in maid by an English pianist ( David Thewlis ) . He is extraordinarily shy and inhibited ; he barely even leaves his lavish home . Soon , he is attracted to Newton's exoticism and tells her he is in love with her , even asks her to marry him . She's terribly offended and feels used : she shouts that she already has a husband , and that he was arrested in Africa . Thewlis yields from his pursuit , and , because of his guilt ( and also because he is still attracted to her ) , he begins on a quest to find and set free Newton's husband . What results is one of the more complex films of the past few years . The art film is not dead . Bertolucci's direction is filled with interesting angles , camera movements , colors , jump cuts , and all sorts of beautiful and effective tricks . The only thing I didn't like was the use of slow motion - that's one technique that is difficult to use well in the cinema , and , with hand-held cameras , it looks awful . A couple of individual scenes were clunky , especially the scene in which Thewlis declares his love for Newton . It's not bad , per se , but , well , like I said , it's a bit clunky , if you know what I mean . It doesn't work completely . The film relies on very little dialogue , which makes the whole thing more sublime . Thandie Newton and David Thewlis are both excellent . I can't wait to see Newton in other films . To answer Ebert's claim of racism , if he had said that Thewlis ' character was a racist , then that would have been understandable . His " love " is just lust , and what he is really attracted to is her Africanness , her exoticness . And also her perceived primitiveness . This is not an uncommon attraction , even if it is offensive . But these feelings are actually DEALT with , they're not just simply accepted . Ebert also said that the goal of the film , its entire point , was to get to the sex . Not so . The way Thewlis uses and manipulates Newton caused me pain . It caused HER pain . The final scene is just overflowing with power . I loved this film . Please see it and see it with an open mind . .
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385,787 | 391,152 | 23,940 | 9 |
Don't know about Coward , but I know my Lubitsch and this is a fine one
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Lubitsch's adaptation of the Noel Coward play about a ménage à trois starring Gary Cooper , Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins . The two men play a painter and a poet , and Hopkins the girl who moves in with them as their muse and critic . Edward Everett Horton plays the more down-to-Earth man who also vies for Hopkin's attention . Apparently , only the plot of Coward's play is kept here , with all of the dialogue excised because it was too dirty for 1930s Hollywood . Even with that , the film was censored on release and , after 1934 , when the Hayes Code was in stronger effect , it wasn't allowed to be shown at all . As it is , it's quite a fantastic movie , as you might expect from Lubitsch . It's funny and charming , but it's also quite a bit darker and more serious than the American films he had made before it in the sound era . I'd really like to read and / or see the original Coward play , but Lubitsch's version is undoubtedly a very good film .
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384,605 | 391,152 | 61,390 | 9 |
Beautiful peace of work
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I had never seen this ten minute long Chuck Jones cartoon before . It's one of his very best . The colors are mindbending , as are the animation and drawings . I felt alternately robbed that I had never seen it before , and happy that I finally did get to see it !
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385,103 | 391,152 | 870,111 | 9 |
Excellent all around
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Gripping account of Richard Nixon's first television interview after resigning from the Presidency . It was conducted by a man who was strictly an entertainer , Englishman David Frost , who believed it would be a great way to become famous in America . At the beginning , he has no real convictions , but the researchers he has hired ( Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell ) motivate him to attempt to give Nixon the conviction he never received from the American justice system . When the interviews begin , it turns out to be a David and Goliath story , with Frost unable to compete with Nixon . The strongest point of the film are the performances . Langella in particular hits a homerun , giving perhaps the best fictional performance of Richard Nixon yet in cinema . Much like in The Queen , which was also written by playwright Peter Morgan , Michael Sheen holds his own against a powerhouse performer . Also great are Kevin Bacon , playing Nixon's former Chief of Staff , now a defeated , hurt man desperately trying to redeem his boss , and Sam Rockwell , as Frost's most passionate researcher . Though based on a play , Frost / Nixon almost never betrays that origin . It's intimate , but open . I don't know how much you can credit director Ron Howard with the film's success ? I imagine that its success belongs more to the actors and Morgan ? but it is by quite a distance the best movie he's ever directed .
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384,546 | 391,152 | 78,239 | 9 |
It's funny reading these comments . . .
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I think this film is hilarious and classic camp . I think it is one of those so-bad-it's-good films that many people will look at and just get ticked off . I mean , for God's sake guys , have a freakin ' sense of humor ! ! ! Could anything be funnier than the Computerettes ? My God , no way ! Or how about the hilarious cameos of those such as George Burns , Steve Martin ( because of this number , " Maxwell's Silver Hammer " has always been one of my very favorite Beatles songs ) , and Alice Cooper . My favorite scene has to be where the weather vein comes to life , dances around singing " Get Back , " and brings Strawberry Fields back to life . You're right if you say this film was a disaster , but it's one that turns out to be not only watchable , but great , although not exactly in the way they meant it to be great .
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385,048 | 391,152 | 427,470 | 9 |
Best film I've seen so far from ' 07
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I'll follow Joseph Gordon-Levitt wherever he chooses to go . After two knockout performances ( Mysterious Skin and Brick ) , it was clear that he had something . With his new film The Lookout , he more or less solidifies the notion that he's one of this generation's best actors . That is , if he even needed to do a third film to prove that . But , yes , he is just as impressive here as he was in his previous two films , playing a young man who has suffered major brain trauma . He himself is responsible for the injury , having crashed his car in a silly fit of teenage romanticism , killing two of his friends and maiming his girlfriend besides what he has done to himself . Now he mainly pines for his old , normal life , and browbeats himself with guilt . He works at a small town bank as the night watchman / janitor , and his disability ( and his guilt and anger ) makes him the perfect target for conman Gary Spargo ( Matthew Goode ) . Looking at it from the outside , The Lookout contains a lot of clichés , especially in the colorful supporting characters . It also shares a lot of similarities to Christopher Nolan's Memento . But the film survives for a couple of reasons . First , the actors are all just excellent . Even though inhabiting cliché characters like the kindly Midwestern cop ( Sergio Di Zio ) , the bimbo stripper ( Isla Fisher ) or the wisecracking blind guy ( Jeff Daniels ) , every actor brings his or her A game . And I wouldn't discount writer / director Scott Frank's abilities either . I mean , these people are cliché in a lot of ways , but he brings them all a step up with his smartly written dialogue . I especially like how he gives Isla Fisher's character a very human face even while simultaneously joking about how dense she is . And that's the second reason that the film turns out to be really good , that Frank focuses so much on the characters . The protagonist , Chris Pratt , is one of the more tragic characters to come out of Hollywood in recent years . The crime film / thriller elements of the film probably wouldn't be half as involving if not for characters that I really cared about . All in all , I was extremely entertained by The Lookout . It's the best film I've seen so far this year .
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384,536 | 391,152 | 120,363 | 9 |
I'm impressed
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The original Toy Story was a pretty good animated film , especially good for kids . It was inventive and consistently entertaining , but for some reason , it never quite gelled . I'm beside myself trying to explain what was lacking . I don't know . At the end , I just went about my day without thinking about it much . And I wasn't all that excited about Toy Story 2 . I had heard that it was better than the original , but I was skeptical . Well , I finally got around to watching it , and it blew me away . It was extraordinarily good . I have hardly ever laughed as hard . It also has an amazingly intelligent script . Its only problems are a little hyperactivity , which all American animated films are guilty of ( if you don't know what I'm talking about , rent Kiki's Delivery Service or My Neighbor Totoro , both children's movies from Japan , and you'll notice how much more relaxed they are ) , and one TERRIBLE song . Oh my God , it is sickeningly sappy . Otherwise , a nearly perfect film .
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385,599 | 391,152 | 41,866 | 9 |
There's a reason why John Ford is my favorite director of all time
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Probably the least of the Cavalry Trilogy , at least in my opinion , but there's no shame in that . It's an excellent picture , and quite an entertaining one . Where Fort Apache ended with a mock fall of Custer , Ribbon begins with a voiceover announcing Custer's defeat . The younger generations of several Indian tribes , some once hostile with each other , have taken command from their elders and joined together in a war pact against the U . S . Cavalry . John Wayne plays Capt . Nathan Brittles , who has spent his whole life in the military and is just a few days from retirement . The plot of the film has the Cavalry first trying to deliver two women to an outpost where a stagecoach will pick them up and bring them back east . Unfortunately , the hostile Indians attack the outpost first . The Cavalry then has to deal with their enemy before they can do anything else . I'd rather not give away the climax , as it is quite unexpected , but I like how this installment of the Trilogy eschews the violence that I was so sure was coming . She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is perhaps most notable for having John Wayne actually cry in a beautiful scene where he addresses his troop for the final time . It's very subtle and well acted by Wayne , an actor who almost never gets his due respect nowadays . Perhaps the only scene that really fails is Victor McLaglen's slapstick fight with seven men who are trying to arrest him ( Wayne sends them after him as a joke , because he knows that not even seven could take that gorilla down ! ) . Ford often includes such moments of slapstick in his films , and usually I find them humorous , especially when they concern McLaglen . However , this scene just goes on far too long . I think I like Fort Apache and Rio Grande better at least partly because they're in black and white . Of course , I have nothing against color , but the cinematography in this particular film is a little bland . Ford made several movies in color with more brilliant photography , most notably The Searchers . But even 3 Godfathers , from 1948 , one year before Yellow Ribbon , has better color cinematography . .
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385,899 | 391,152 | 76,240 | 9 |
See it on the new Criterion disc
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Difficult to describe , but amazing as hell . Derek Jarman examines the punk aesthetic , with a framing device that Queen Elizabeth I has asked her court magician to show her England's future . And I doubt she likes what she sees , a post-apocalyptic wasteland . The prophecy follows a group of punks who rebel and murder pretty much randomly . The film's likely to disgust many ; it lives in much the same world as Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange , and , just like that film , we are expected both to revile and have fun with the horrors that are perpetrated on screen . Criticism has been all over on this film , but it's mostly been negative , with a few cultists embracing it . This is the kind of film that I can really love , as I am a kind of pseudo-revolutionary myself . I enjoy observing rebellion in all of its forms , anyway , and I like to think I would like to somehow take part in it . Yes , that could be considered pretentious , but that especially fits in with this film . Jarman was never of like mind with the movement he was depicting , and he himself is emulating what he perceives as punk . And he's partly horrified at what he's observing . I loved watching this movie , in all its simultaneous beauty and ugliness . The documentary included on the Criterion disc , Jubilee : A Time Less Golden , convinced me that the film wasn't only impressive on a primal level . It's one of the best of this kind of documentaries , in that it doesn't at all slavishly tell us how great Jarman or Jubilee is . Instead , it clearly outlines all the contradictions of the artist and the film . Strangely enough , it helps solidify the importance and greatness of the film , while pretty much quashing the many criticisms that have been leveled at it throughout the years . The review of the film at DVD Verdict ( www . dvdverdict . com / reviews / jubilee . shtml ) was also a big help . Jubilee is definitely a must-see , an outrageous and remarkable cinematic experience . .
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384,740 | 391,152 | 780,536 | 9 |
Exceptional !
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This is McDonagh's first feature , and it's a sure bet that he's a writer / director to watch in the future . In Bruges was advertised as a straight comedy featuring gangsters who like to shoot at each other , so the three-dimensional characters and emotional depth come as a nice surprise . Colin Farrell , who , if he hadn't already convinced me he was a great actor , certainly wins that title now , stars as a green hit-man with a short attention span who messes up his first job by killing an innocent bystander . Things seem to be okay with the boss ( Ralph Fiennes ) , who sends Farrell and his partner , Brendan Gleeson , to the beautiful Belgian town of Bruges to wait for their next instructions . The fact is , Fiennes plans for Gleeson to snuff out Farrell . That's the basic set-up , and it would be criminal to reveal too much more . McDonagh's script is a thing of beauty , quick-witted , smart and frequently touching . I did think that the final twists were a bit overly clever . Jordan Prentice , who plays the dwarf Jimmy in the film , began his career as one of several dwarfs inhabiting the Howard the Duck costume in the film of the same name .
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385,926 | 391,152 | 285,742 | 9 |
An enormously sensitive film about human beings
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MINOR SPOILERSAmong the many virtues of Monster's Ball is its amazingly well structured narrative . It begins with a slew of tragedies , and the first half climaxes with a stunning sex scene that people are going to be talking about , whether in shock or criticism , for years . After that , the drama is very level . Nothing all that dramatically weighty happens , at least compared to the first half . But all the little things that do happen are moments of beauty and humanity . The film even avoids a melodramatic denouement that I thought was sure to come . The setup is there , but the screenplay allows the film to end in a way more perfect than was imaginable moments beforehand . The screenplay represents something extremely original , and , although people have certainly responded to the writing ( it was nominated for an Oscar ) , I think people might overlook how well written it is . Of course , people are going to go see this because of Halle Berry's Oscar . She deserved it . I think her acceptance speech was curious , almost racist itself , as if The Man were secretly pulling strings to keep her down . I think it's unfortunate that she implied what she implied in that speech , because the film is about acceptance and togetherness . This is her first good role , at least that I've seen . I've definitely seen her in several bad roles , and you could always tell she was acting far below her ability . This is the kind of role every actress wants , and I'm glad that she did come into her own . Now let's just hope she doesn't go back to doing bad films ! Hint : Halle , whatever you do , turn down B . A . P . S . 2 ! What's painful about the Oscar success is that Berry's co-star in the film , Billy-Bob Thornton , was not honored with a nomination . That's an insult . His performance is at least is strong . Thornton's acting ability is no secret - he's been nominated before , one for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting ( for A Simple Plan , for which he really deserved the award ) . But why would they turn him down ? He does a lot of garbage , too , but he's generally had a good career , both as actor and director . The supporting cast is also excellent here . Though their roles are small , Sean Combs ( yes , Puff Daddy ) and Heath Ledger ( you know , the guy whom David Manning called " this year's hottest new actor " or something like that ) give award-worthy performances . Also , Peter Boyle , best known as the monster from Young Frankenstein or as Grandpa Munster , or maybe even as Raymond's dad in Everybody Loves Raymond , is excellent as the bitter and dying patriarch . That sex scene is going to be argued over forever , I think . I've heard some refer to it as pornography , and some as a very dramatically effective scene . I say that it is impossible to deny that that scene is not awkward . However , I think that its awkwardness is part of the point . The film really doesn't idealize any of its characters or situations . What one should notice about that sex scene is how it changes midstream from screwing to lovemaking . The second sex scene is very adult . I think it embarrasses some men because it depicts oral sex on a female . Usually when that sex act is performed on screen it is treated as a joke . I just think that men , who really do control the entire industry , find that act less erotic because they don't want to see themselves as a submissive sexual partner on film . Monster's Ball is not a perfect film , but any little flaws along the way don't harm much . It's certainly a film that must be seen , and I hope others love it as much as I did . .
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385,701 | 391,152 | 340,012 | 9 |
Surprisingly great !
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A big surprise . It wasn't especially heralded by critics , and pretty much thought of as just a vehicle for the talents of Annette Bening . Though Bening is the film's strongest virtue , it's a fine work in all departments . Based on a Somerset Maugham novel , this is the story of Julia , a famous actress on the London stage in the days before WWII . Julia is a fantastic actress , and she knows it , but she also knows that she's aging and that she won't be in the limelight forever . Furthermore , her husband ( Jeremy Irons ) is distant . She becomes romantically involved with a young American man ( Shaun Evans ) , but he's only using her . Julia is one of the most well developed characters to be found in 2004 movies . Bening's performance is absolutely flawless , and easily the best of last year . I had a couple of problems with the movie . First off , the spector of Julia's acting teacher appears at times and coaches her on her performances ( mostly her real life performances ) . This technique is becoming a cliché , I think . However , it does help get into Julia's mind a bit more . It would have been impossible to communicate her inner mind in any other way , so that's forgiven . The outcome of the film's main conflict also should have been a little more complex . What happens is satisfactory , but I don't believe there wouldn't be a little more hurt spread around . Small quibbles , really . The film is exceptional , and Bening should have won the Oscar .
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384,712 | 391,152 | 74,084 | 9 |
Flawed , yet great
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An epic about Italian political history of the first half of the 20th Century , detailing the lives of two men born on the same day . Olmo ( played by Gerard Depardieu as an adult ) is the bastard child of peasants and is raised to be a socialist . Alfredo ( Robert De Niro ) is the son of a wealthy family and will someday become lord and master of all the peasants on his land . He's a pleasant man , not cruel like his father , but he won't go out of his way to help those below him in status ( including Olmo , who is his closest friend and companion ) . It's a huge film , and very sloppy . I would guess it would be very sloppy even in its original version ( the English language version is an hour shorter at least ) . My biggest problem with the film is the character of Olmo . As a child ( played by Roberto Maccanti ) , he exhibits daring and independence . As an adult , he seems like a sponge and he kind of drops out of the last third of the picture , it seemed to me . My interest dropped in the character because , first , the character does not seem to follow from childhood to adulthood , and , second , Depardieu gives a dull performance . He's handsome , but in the kind of way that makes you forget that he even exists . Maccanti , as young Olmo , leaves a much bigger impression . My second biggest problem with the film is the treatment of politics . It's no secret where Bertolucci's sympathy lies , with the communists . That's fine by me , and it's good that he has Alfredo not as the villain but as a man who turns his back and continues to live his life as a wealthy man . But there are Fascists in the film , and they are lead by Donald Sutherland . Sutherland is so evil in this film it becomes amusing . He'll do anything to get what he wants , including killing old women , children , and he even headbutts a cat ! I have no real problem with showing the Italian Fascists as evil , but this is cartoonishly evil . Sutherland's character's name : Attila . No sht ! On the other hand , I cannot help but admit that Donald Sutherland has all the most memorable scenes in the film . He may be more or less one dimensional , but I'll never forget his wicked grin , and I'll never forget the splattered blood on his forehead from that cat ! Robert De Niro does a lot with his role , which is the most complex in the film , probably . His performance here matches his best work . Alfredo's wife is played by Dominique Sanda . She also gives an exceptional performance , although her character could have been ( and might have been , in the full version ) better developed . While I have some major problems with the overall substance of the film , there's no doubt there's a genius at work here . Several , actually . Bertolucci's direction is as good as it ever was , and his ambition seems , at least for a while , peerless . He may have had several better films , but this is as much a peak in his direction as Last Tango in Paris or The Conformist . Helping him achieve greatness far beyond what should have resulted are Vittorio Storaro , providing gorgeous , sweeping photography , and Ennio Moricone , ever the trooper with another exceptional musical score . 1900 , despite heavy flaws , is indeed a great film .
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384,825 | 391,152 | 63,415 | 9 |
Hilarious ! One of Peter Sellers ' best films ! .
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The Party begins with a kind of lame parody of Gunga Din's final scene ( I guess you might consider it a SPOILER to Gunga Din , so consider that before you check this one out ) . Hrundi Bakshi ( Sellers ) is playing the main character of the new film production Son of Gunga Din , but he's little more than a series of accidents waiting to happen . He ends up ruining a set piece , which gets him fired . The producer of that film tells a studio exec to blacklist him . That exec accidentally adds Hrundi's name to the bottom of a party list . He goes , and , as you might expect , ends up destroying everything around him like a small tornado . Most of the film takes place at this party ( and the film only really gets funny when Hrundi gets to the party ) , where we meet various Hollywood phonies and stars who are full of themselves , as well as a few innocent newcomers being beckoned to the infamous casting couch . All these people react in different ways to Hrundi , but most like him and see him as a nice guy who probably doesn't belong there anyway . He becomes enraptured by a young French newcomer named Michelle ( Claudine Longet ) . Peter Sellers made a lot of films , and I have to admit that I haven't seen many . What I particularly like about The Party is the character of Hrundi and Sellers ' performance . Sellers ' films are usually very funny , but the characters are often just caricatures . I really like Hrundi . He could have easily been a gross stereotype . Sellers wears dark makeup to appear Indian , and he speaks in an accent . But Hrundi is not just a stereotype . He is a genuinely lovable person . He does some stupid things , but he always means well . I actually think the character would have been worth sequels . I am sure that Sellers and Blake Edwards were studying the French comedic filmmaker Jacques Tati when they were making this film . There are several scenes very , very reminiscent of M . Hulot's Holiday , Mon Oncle , and Playtime . Hrundi seems to be clearly based on M . Hulot . Of course , I am not accusing The Party of stealing or anything . I'm just happy that someone in Hollywood was a fan of Tati's films , and felt that his formulae would work in an American film . I wonder how well this film did financially . It's not well known at all today . One more note : my Lord , Claudine Longet may be the single cutest girl I've ever seen ! I don't know if I've seen her elsewhere . I can see why she didn't become a huge star . She's not imposing like others . Nor , truth be told , is she a great actress . But wowza ! I think my heart just stopped !
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384,746 | 391,152 | 50,407 | 9 |
Highly underrated
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Sam Fuller's reworking of the Tombstone story , with the Earp family replaced by the Bonnells ( Barry Sullivan , Gene Barry and Robert Dix ) and the Clanton family replaced by cattle baroness Barbara Stanwyck , her wild younger brother , John Ericson , and forty loyal servants who together run the Arizona town . The Bonnells come to Tombstone to be federal marshals , to the chagrin of Stanwyck , who made the town and runs it under her own charm . Eventually Sullivan captivates her , but she still has to protect her law breaking brother and her other underlings . The film runs a brisk 79 minutes , but there's enough plot to fill an epic . Amazingly , Fuller never messes things up : not a moment is wasted , but the film never feels too fast or overstuffed . The director is at the top of his game here , and this is easily one of his best movies .
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384,799 | 391,152 | 396,688 | 9 |
Fantastic in every way
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Possibly the gentlest movie about incest and murder ever made . Gael García Bernal stars as Elvis , a man who has just been released from the Navy . He has no one , so he seeks out his father , a man whom he has never met . He discovers the man ( played by William Hurt ) is an evangelical priest with the perfect American family ( wife : Laura Harring ; children : Paul Dano and Pell James ) , and that he doesn't want to acknowledge Elvis as his son . Meanwhile , Elvis starts up a flirtation with his half sister ( who doesn't know ) . We realize quickly that there's something not quite right about the guy mentally . The film plays kind of like a really low key Cape Fear . Except that Elvis seems , for all practical purposes , a really sweet and gentle man . The movie got some flack for its treatment of evangelical Christians , but I can't think of any movie that's more fair about the subject . Sure , William Hurt is kind of a hypocrite , but when he tries to make amends , he's sincere about it . Not much happens in the film , but the characters ' relationships are drawn masterfully with few brushstrokes . The acting is excellent ( if the film had been better received , Pell James would have been a breakout star ) , and it has the second best musical score of 2006 ( after The Fountain ) . It's an extremely sad picture , and one that I'm sure will haunt me for a long while afterward . One of the best of the year .
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385,674 | 391,152 | 757,361 | 9 |
I liked this even more than The Squid and the Whale
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A box office flop , even for an independent film . It's not hard to see why . This is one of the most emotionally violent movies I've ever seen , and I'm sure many people would find it more than a little unpleasant . But for those of us who can appreciate this kind of material , Margot at the Wedding is a great movie . Even if for no other reason , Nicole Kidman delivers her very finest performance in it . She's kind of going through a Katharine Hepburn-esquire box office poison thing right now , but , as with Hepburn , she's as strong , if not stronger , than ever . Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black , as well as the rest of the cast , also deliver excellent performances . There are some issues in the periphery that are kind of weird and underdeveloped , especially concerning the bizarre , half-seen activities of the neighbors . On the other hand , there are some other bits that sit perfectly in the distance , only partly explained , like the entire portrait of Margot's and Pauline's childhood . The movie leaves a lot to ponder about these beautifully written characters . It's rough around the edges , but wonderful for that .
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385,039 | 391,152 | 328,538 | 9 |
Well observed teen drama
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A stunning directorial debut by production designer Catherine Hardwicke . She collaborated with Nikki Reed , a thirteen year-old girl who had been experiencing some major hardships . What results is a very honest portrayal of a teenager going down a steep slope to hell . Reed herself plays the most attractive girl in her middle school , Evie . A slightly nerdy girl , Tracy , played by Evan Rachel Wood , is sick of being ignored and courts her friendship . She fails repeatedly until she proves her worth by stealing a woman's handbag . The two become hopelessly entangled . Evie's past is unclear , as she can never be trusted to tell the truth . In one story , her mother's dead , in the next , her mother's addicted to crack . We know that she lives with a somewhat irresponsible , probably too young cousin who raises her in a way that she maybe wishes that she herself could have been raised , that is , with complete freedom to do whatever she wants . Tracy lives in a typically broken family . Her mother , played by Holly Hunter , is a recovering alcoholic who clings to a man who was recently released from a halfway house ; he has had a past addiction to drugs . Hunter is a loving mother , but her own problems make it difficult for her to take care of her two children ( Tracy also has a brother , who is himself doing drugs and drinking a lot ) . The two central relationships in the film , Tracy / Evie and Tracy / her mother , are perfectly observed . The three characters are remarkably written . It's easy to see Evie as some kind of demon ? she's a vile manipulator in all respects ? but the screenplay never loses her humanity . She may lie about her past , but it's obvious she's been broken down at an early age . And , as the story progresses , she is as emotionally attached to Tracy as Tracy is to her . The film also captures a particular jealousy that Tracy has for Evie . In a way , it's kind of a love / hate relationship . And then the mother / daughter relationship is just heartbreaking . I suppose it is the more cliché relationship , but it's only cliché because everyone , boy or girl and no matter how far the teenager descends into the abyss , experiences . Since the characters are all so perfectly observed , the relationship transcends its commonality . The script has a few clunks along the way , which isn't too surprising seeing as its Hardwicke's first screenplay ( my guess is that Hardwicke created the basic structure and Reed provided the anecdotes ) . The racial attitudes may cause a specific pause for some viewers . Evie and Tracy start to flirt with and date a couple of older black boys , and it feels like the interracial relationship is one of the steps down to hell . However , racial attitudes in the United States are too complex to insist on this simplistic reading . I think this issue is too complex to go into here , and , if I were to elaborate on my feelings about this part of the film here , it would double the size of this review . .
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385,658 | 391,152 | 105,438 | 9 |
Truly beautiful and unique film
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If you can find this film , and can take slow-moving cinema , definitely pick it up . I came to it via Spirit of the Beehive , Victor Erice's first film , made in 1973 . This film was his third , made nearly twenty years later . It's somewhat sad that such a marvelous artist as Erice has only produced three films in almost thirty years now , but I think Quince Tree of the Sun works in one way as a forgiveness for that fact . This film teaches nothing if not patience , not only in the viewer , but in the artist . It is a documentary about a painter who spends September through December painting a quince tree . Not a picture of one , mind you , or even one he has memorized . He sets up an elaborate system so that he can paint the tree as it exists before him . We see him working well at first , with the sun hitting the tree and its fruit exactly how the painter wishes . But then the weather becomes uncooperative for a long period of time . It's cloudy or rainy , and the sun is not working the way that it's supposed to . By the time it becomes sunny again , the Earth has moved , and all hope of painting it in the way he originally intedended is squandered . Of course he can't just wait until the next year . The fruit and leaves will be different . During the film , there are several discussions about art and life . All are interesting . Too bad the subtitles on the Facets video are kind of hard to read at times . There is a lot to get out of it , surely more than I did in one viewing . A second viewing is definitely in order if I have time before I have to return the video . It is one of those films that suggests that there is a ton more under the surface that will take just a tiny bit of digging . Of course , this film would bore the socks off of 99 % or more of the population . I definitely suggest it to fans of Spirit of the Beehive . Also , fans of Andrei Tarkovsky should check it out , this and Spirit of the Beehive . I generally think of Tarkovsky as the most original of all film artists , but Erice may be the most similar . He's a very good auteur for Tarkovsky fans because he is similar , but he has a remarkable essence all his own . Perhaps I would consider him above Tarkovsky , if only Erice would make more films . But , as this film has delicately taught me , an artist must work at his own pace . .
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384,822 | 391,152 | 162,346 | 9 |
Bittersweet coming-of-age story
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It's actually a bit difficult for me to pull myself out of this material . Enid's life is a lot like my own experience , or at least my own attitude , when I reached the end of high school . And now , half a decade later , I'm growing into Seymour at a rapid rate ( with movies instead of music ) . I imagine that Seymour is a lot like Zwigoff , and I feel like I must be like him . His misanthropy is very much like my own . You stare at everyone , and they all seem to fit into a specific slot so entirely well . The concept of individuality seems like a joke . How about the guy with the nunchucks ? A character who should have seemed like a gross cartoon , hell , can anyone honestly say they haven't seen people just like him ? You think you're the only person who differs at all from all the others . Do you hear the kind of crappy music they listen to ? The kind of bad films they watch ? But then , take a step back . That is what this film does for me . Seymour and Enid think they don't fit into a slot , but , well , unfortunately they do . Which is why I can so easily fit myself into their places at different times in my own life . And make sure to note that Seymour says to Enid several times during the film , " Yeah , I felt like that when I was your age , too . " Sometimes it's sickening how no one seems to differ . The film is not perfect , however . Enid's schitck does get old after a while . My biggest problem , though , is the ending . SPOILERS . The trip on the mystery bus seems like a poetic ending at first , but , really , to me it seems more like a cop-out . The film isn't exactly going for realism . There is a lot of exaggeration . However , I think that it needed a more down-to-earth ending , one where some sort of decision was made . That would show that Enid has passed a point of no return , that she has grown . That magical bus ride is nothing more than an escape , an easy way out , an evasion . END SPOILERSThis film was directed by Terry Zwigoff , who directed one of my favorite films of all time , Crumb . Crumb , in my not-so-very-humble opinion , is one of the most perfect films ever made , and easily the best documentary I've ever seen . That film was released in 1994 . Zwigoff made one documentary before that , I think in the mid-1980s , but I'm not sure . I haven't seen it , but perhaps I should seek it out . Anyhow , please , please , please , Terry , don't let another seven years pass before you direct another film . I'm pretty sure that Ghost World was relatively successful . It has been a critical smash , at any rate ( well , that hardly matters ) . Please , find something or write something that you find worthy and make another film out of it . Trust me , if you send out another one as good as this in a couple of years , you'll be a household name . .
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385,657 | 391,152 | 120,737 | 9 |
If this is the Star Wars of my generation . . .
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and Harry Potter is the Wizard of Oz of my generation , then my generation is truly pathetic . Okay , it's not like FotR is a bad movie . In my opinion , the first two hours are flawed but very entertaining . It is the third hour where it gets really clunky , repetitive , and nonsensical . First off , I have not read the books . I claim that as an advantage , since I cannot criticize the filmmakers for skipping my favorite parts . No one else should be doing this either , but it is inevitable . But my first major criticism has to do with the novels . This film has the same setback that all fantasy novels do - too many characters . It works better in novels , to be sure , but it certainly is a disadvantage to a film . I knew only about three or four names among the main characters by the end . Also , character development is impossible here . I knew only two characters by the end of the movie : Gandolf and Bilbo . You wanna know why ? Because the actors who played them , Ian McKellen and Ian Holm , are masters . Their characters are not developed in dialogue , but by acting . Elijah Wood is almost there . None of the others comes close , although Liv Tyler didn't seem too bad ( her character was too small here to judge well ) . It's also true that none of the situations were at all well developed . The whole film feels rushed , which we might expect in a movie based on a long novel . That still isn't forgivable . A lot of references get thrown out in the air with little explanation , and I heard several groups of viewers talking amongst themselves to see what was going on . But that's not all . There's plenty to criticize elsewhere as well . The story itself is lame . Let me guess : another uber-evil villain wants to control the world . How uninteresting can you get ? I guess these novels may have started that trend , although I doubt that . Still , it was lame when Tolkien invented it and it's still lame in fantasy novels today . Then there's the cinematography : it's repetitive . The novel's structure is basically one of an endless parade of locales , and the basic shot is an aerial view of the umpteen good guys walking in a straight line across whatever locale they've reached . Peter Jackson must have spent at least half of the 16 months it took to make these three films sitting in a helicopter ! Also , the battle scenes are ridiculous . Anyone who complains when the rebels live in the battle scenes in Star Wars , or how the Storm Troopers always miss is going to laugh themselves silly when they see these nine fellows , four of whom barely fight ( the hobbits ) , dispatch hundreds of drooling orcs in a matter of ten minutes . So what did I like ? Well , some of the action sequences are awfully entertaining , despite their ludicrousness . I especially like the special effects of the troll , and his fight with the group . That was very exciting . To further criticize the poor structure , I felt that the Balrog sequence was quite boring after that . It looked far too much like the devil from Fantasia's Night on Bald Mountain number . The Balrog in the Ralph Bakshi cartoon looked much cooler , actually . The showdown between Balrog and Gandolf was rather lame considering . I also liked the lovingly created and detailed locales , except for the Shire , which is boring . But most of everything else was great . The Ring Wraiths were pretty cool . I especially liked the way everything looked when Frodo puts on the ring . Other than those scant things , this was a huge disappointment considering the recent imdb fiasco . This truly is a blight on our great site . Embarrassing to the highest degree . .
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385,640 | 391,152 | 72,443 | 9 |
Keep in mind that the VHS I watched was in awful quality
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I'd like to suggest that this is Tarkovsky's least successful film that I've seen ( the others are Andrei Rublev , Solaris , and Stalker ) . It is a masterpiece in a lot of ways , especially visually , but , where you can hook onto a mood in the other three films of his that I've seen , I found Mirror impersonal , or , at least , introspective and abstruse . Compared to those other three , this one is short , yet I had a lot of trouble keeping my mind on the film . And I only finished it on the third attempt . Now , after I have not only finished it but read up on it , also ( basically you have to do so ; maybe if you watched it several dozen times ) , I feel that the themes are still difficult to understand well . But you still have to see it , if you are a Tarkovsky fan . I will remember it for several reasons : 1 ) the wind blowing through the field 2 ) the barn burning in the rain 3 ) a man prepares to die as he jumps on a grenadeI give it , for now , an . Perhaps the poor quality of my video , which didn't translate , it seemed , more than of the lines , has hindered what would be my passion for this film . If I ever see a better version , I hope I like it a lot more .
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385,517 | 391,152 | 156,587 | 9 |
A visual feast
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I don't like Hou Hsiao-Hsien much . He's not a very well known director , but those who do know him often praise him as if he were Christ risen on Earth for the second time . It gets very out of hand . I personally liked two of his earlier films , Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness , but found them rather flawed . The other films I've seen of his , A Time to Live and a Time to Die , The Puppetmaster , Good Men Good Women , and Goodbye South Goodbye , are profoundly flawed with only a little worth each . I wasn't too excited to see Flowers from Shanghai , but its gotten such continuous praise , even from those who had seen only it from Hou , that I decided to give it a chance . I'm happy I did . Very happy , indeed . I had dismissed the burgeoning camera movements in Goodbye South Goodbye as a phony advance in Hou's style . I'm glad I was wrong . In Flowers of Shanghai , Hou effectively pans his camera back and forth and around in spirals in every single shot ( and , of course , " shot " in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's vocabulary is a synonym of " scene ; " most shots last a very long time ) . The cinematography , too , is a lot better than it has been ( although he has plenty of beautiful shots in his other films , as well ) . The film seems tinted with gold , and beautiful reds take up most of the space in each frame , until a beautiful blotch of yellow or blue arrives . Mixed with that slowly panning camera ( sometimes it's a bit reminiscent of Tarkovsky's shots ) , that makes for pure sensuousness . It can be simply orgasmic at times . The mise-en-scene is also fabulous . The film takes place in a Shanghai brothel ( the " flowers " of the title are the prostitutes ) , and every inch of the each set is decorated perfectly . And aurally , man , the subtle music is just powerful . It's all so damn beautiful that I kind of ignored what was happening with the characters on screen . It's so damn beautiful that it's rather easy to forget that there are people acting here ; their movements and actions are so elegant ( and their language sounds so beautiful ) that they might as well be thought of as objects , not people . When I finally started to pay more attention to the plot and the characters , it seemed a bit banal . The story revolves around the prostitutes and their frequent customers . The film says nothing new about the subject , and it comes off a bit trite . I'm hoping that I just didn't follow it well enough , that , if I were to buy the DVD and watch it again , I would feel the emotions more . However , I don't believe that that's true . Although his fanatics would fiecely deny it , Hou has never done very well in expressing emotions in his films . Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness are the best in that respect , but take the cheap melodramatics of A Time to Live a Time to Die in comparison . Or take The Puppetmaster : its cinematography is rather boring , and the film comes off as extremely dull . Luckily , I appreciate direction and visual splendor much more than a good story . If I wanted a good story , books would probably be a better medium . Flowers of Shanghai gets a from me . I hope that Hou evolves ever more in the future . His style seems perfected in this film ( perhaps he should even scrap his signature style and reinvent himself ; just a suggestion ) . Now he needs some substance . Hopefully he'll work again with Wu Nien-Jen , who wrote his Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness , his most substantial films ( he also wrote The Puppetmaster , though ) . I just saw Wu's own directorial debut , Dou-San , this past weekend and it had an emotionally devastating script . I'll cross my fingers !
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384,686 | 391,152 | 61,101 | 9 |
Sweet
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Having previously seen Branded to Kill on its Criterion release , and having found it to be utterly brilliant , I had to buy the Criterion release of Tokyo Drifter . It is not as good as Branded to Kill ( heck , nothing can be ) , but it is still great . The color composition is particularly masterful . So what if the story is difficult to follow ? It is still entertaining . I really wish more of Sezuki Seijun's films would be released by Criterion , or anyone else , for that matter . He's an extraordinarily interesting and gifted filmmaker who is very underappreciated in cinema history .
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384,567 | 391,152 | 65,441 | 9 |
A vastly underrated film
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Barbara Hershey plays a hippie girl who is hired to have the baby of a middle class couple ( Collin Wilcox-Horne & Sam Groom ) . The film deals with the clash of values between Hershey , along with her boyfriend ( Scott Glenn ) , and the couple . It also deals honestly and surprisingly fairly with the emotional turmoil all four characters go through . Supposedly the film was dismissed upon its released because of the way it depicted hippie culture , but it is much more positive than a good amount of the films of the day ( see Joe , for instance ) . It neither accepts nor dismisses either of the two classes , but instead deals with the four principals as individuals . The four characters are sensitively written ( director Bridges , most famous for writing and directing The China Syndrome , wrote the script here , as well ) . Hershey , Wilcox-Horne ( AKA Wilcox Paxton ) , Groom , and Glenn all give exceptional performances .
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384,624 | 391,152 | 39,195 | 9 |
Sounds kind of like a blaxploitation flick , doesn't it ?
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Actually , it's a British period piece that has many plot elements in common with a strain of movies of the 1940s , like Rebecca , Dragonwyck , and even Duel in the Sun . A woman working as a maid , Blanche Fuller ( Valerie Hobson ) , discovers that she is on the fringes of a very wealthy family , the Furies . When she arrives , she discovers a strange situation . Her family , the Fullers , who come from a lower class background , have married into the Furies , all of whom have died . The only remaining Fury , or possibly a Fury , is Philip Thorn ( Stewart Granger ) , supposedly the illegitimate son of the last living Fury . He works on their estate , called Claire , but he is trying to inherit the estate ; his lawyer is researching his lineage . He's desperate to get his hands on the place . When Blanche marries her cousin , Laurence Fury , Thorn devises to seduce her . Also in his plotting he decides to use a group of Gypsies who have come into conflict with Claire and the Furies . Though it took a while for Blanche Fury to capture my wandering attention , eventually I started to get into it . The performances are what drew me in . Granger was especially delightful as the evil , scheming Thorn . I had to laugh at his clever deviousness at times . A man after my own heart , he is ! Hobson is quite good , as is Michael Gough , who plays her weakling husband . The color cinematography and musical score are fine . The script feels like it came from a novel , but it was written for the screen , making it especially impressive . I like the character arc of Blanche Fury . She begins as a sort of a schemer herself , planning to get rich and wield her feminine power over the estate . Only when she comes into conflict with Thorn , a more clever and desperate conspirator , does she realize she herself has done wrong and will now have to do the right thing . The ending is weird , but rather haunting . This is an exceptional film . .
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385,047 | 391,152 | 30,287 | 9 |
A fine film
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Very good film from director Wyler , although it is its star , Bette Davis , upon whom its high quality mostly rests . This is perhaps Davis ' best performance that I've seen . She plays a spoiled Southern belle whose fiancé ( Henry Fonda ) leaves her after a socially embarrassing event . As he leaves her , she swears that he will return , as he has in the past . And he does , one year later , with his new Northern wife in tow . The film does wonders with its historical setting , New Orleans a short while before the Civil War . A year before Gone with the Wind cooed over the fancy lives and manners of the Ante Bellum South , Jezebel was exploring them in more detail , and with a more intelligent eye . Also lurking about is the threat of Yellow Fever , which devastated New Orleans in the 1830s and is starting to grow rampant again . Another thing I really liked about Jezebel was its ending . Perhaps when it was released in 1938 there would be a feeling that Davis ' character has turned a corner and has become more selfless , but to me her motives seemed awfully suspicious . That ambiguity is fascinating . Along with the leads , Donald Crisp and George Brent give fine supporting performances , and Max Steiner's score is one of the best of its era . .
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384,538 | 391,152 | 32,455 | 9 |
I am going to commit blasphemy here . . .
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I actually like Fantasia 2000 better than the original . OH MY GOD ! I CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEONE SAID THAT ! This is why : I do love the original Fantasia , but I find that the animated segments resemble each other too much . Only Night on Bald Mountain ( and Ave Maria , which is attached to Night on Bald Mountain ) is completely unattached from the style of the rest of the animation from the film . Everything , from the abstract Toccata and Fugue segment , the Nutcracker Suite , The Rites of Spring , even The Sorcerer's Apprentice tend to look as if they were animated by Disney artists . This is why , I assume : Disney was the greatest producer of feature-length animation . The styles of other animated films , such as Warner Brothers and UA ( e . g . , Popeye ) , were rough and obviously made for sort subjects . Disney probably did not think that his animators needed to look at other artwork in order to inspire their drawings . Therefore , everything begins to look the same , except for the final two pieces , which are completely different . This film's sequel , Fantasia 2000 , obviously searches around more to find different inspirations . You cannot tell that the Rhapsody in Blue segment , inspired by the caricatures of Al Hirschfeld , was created by the same person who did The Carnival of Animals , a work on watercolor that looks inspired by Matisse or other similar artists . The Symphony # 5 piece does not in any way resemble any other piece . This can be said about every segment in Fantasia 2000 . Different art styles , different colors , different media were used in every segment . I gave them both a , but I do think Fantasia 2000 provides more variety .
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385,591 | 391,152 | 120,601 | 9 |
The screenplay is a little screwy . . .
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And I don't mean that the movie is weird . I like that . Everyone should appreciate the freshness of this movie . What I mean is that the screenplay is a little uneven . When I first saw this film ( on opening day , luckily ) , I liked it a lot but felt that there was a major problem . It took me months to figure out why I felt this way , but I did finally figure it out , and I have confirmed it on subsequent viewings . The first half hour or so , all the screen time before the portal is found , contains an entirely different humor than the rest of the picture . And this humor is mostly childish and unfunny . The secretary and the joke about her being an expert on speaking disabilities was very unfunny . I feel embarrassed when I watch it it's so bad . The video about why the 7 floor exists is also extremely unfunny , as well as the 7 floor itself . I didn't find any of these things funny , and there were even more than that . I did like the puppet show that Craig gave on the street corner , I did like Dr . Lester's sexual rantings ( although dirty old men jokes are really commonplace ) , and I laughed a lot when Craig was guessing Maxine's name . Fortunately , when the portal is found , the childish humor pretty much completely vanishes . The rest of this movie is very intelligent . Every joke hits . There are no misses like there are in the first half hour . But what is really special about this film is how smoothly it becomes a compelling drama and character study . It is so well filmed . Watch how the Craig , Lottie , and Maxine dolls are used all through the film . I really felt it when Maxine was covering up the Lottie puppet . I actually teared up during the chase through Malkovich's subconscious , which I think is probably the single best scene that appeared in a film in 1999 . And I also wept at the very , very , very beautiful ending . The second time I saw this in a theater , they cut out the beginning of the credit sequence where Emily was swimming , and I absolutely screamed , telling everyone in the theater about the sham that had been pulled . And I found the ending even more startling on the third viewing because I hadn't realized what actually happened to Craig at the end on my first and second viewings . I love this movie , so I am very hurt by the childish humor in the first half hour . It does embarrass me . It detracts from the whole film . Overall , I have to give it a .
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385,869 | 391,152 | 357,413 | 9 |
Thank God ! A movie that is actually funny !
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I was afraid I'd be getting another Dodgeball here , especially when I saw that the completely talentless Vince Vaughn was on the payroll , but nope . This doesn't pull any punches . It's also the movie that Will Ferrell deserves to star in . He's far too funny to make crap like Old School and Elf . This is his movie and he dominates . His talent with words is unmistakable . He plays arrogant anchorman Ron Burgundy , of course . Christina Applegate wants to take his job away from him and become the first anchorwoman in the United States ( the story takes place in the 1970s ) . Applegate doesn't have too much to do here , although some of her insults are classic . She's mostly the straightman here . Most of the laughs after Ferrell come from his news team , made up of Paul Rudd , David Koechner , and Steven Carell . They're all funny , but Carell , as a weatherman with a tiny IQ , gets the most laughs . The movie is successful both when it is playing jokes on Burgundy's arrogance and when it gets entirely surreal . The funniest scene in the film involves a huge rumble between five different news teams . I could hardly breathe during this sequence . And the climactic scene is outrageous ! Anchorman also employs two devices that usually betray a sense of desperation , the celebrity cameo and outtakes during the credits . It might be the only time these cameos ever made me laugh , and the outtakes are really funny mostly because they are made up of alternative improvisations . Except for an outtake from Smoky and the Bandit that hilariously sneaks up . I can't imagine that there'll be a funnier movie this year . In fact , as it is easily the most consistently good movie I've seen in 2004 , it probably qualifies as my favorite film of the year , at least so far . .
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385,420 | 391,152 | 52,354 | 9 |
Very good , and not as wacky as has been previously suggested
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Great film about an American G . I . who quits the army to marry a German girl who saved his life in the last days of the war . She accepts , but does she do it because she really likes him , or because he can support her with easier access to food and such ? Meanwhile , her brother and an old friend form an anti-American terrorist group called the Werewolves , their purpose to drive away the occupants ( you might remember the same group playing a major part in Lars von Trier's film Europa ( Zentropa ) ) . James Best , best known for his role as Roscoe P . Coltrane in the 1980s television show The Dukes of Hazzard , is shockingly excellent as the American . He should have become a big movie star ? at this age he reminds me very much of Warren Beatty . The other main actors are good , as well . Fuller's direction is quite good , using a lot of long takes again ( although they are not nearly as complex as they were in Park Row ; the long takes more often than not consist of long scenes with a lot of dialogue ) . The only problems lie in the script , as seems to be the case with all of the Fuller films that I've seen . It's not too badly flawed , but it ought to have been expanded , fleshing out major characters and parts of the script . Helga , the wife , goes through a major change , but completely off screen . Therefore , the emotional center rests squarely on Best's shoulders . Fuller also should have killed off the sick mother early in the film . I hope that doesn't sound too harsh ! She just doesn't really do anything throughout the film except lie in bed . She has so few lines . But Fuller keeps bringing her up as the film goes on . I would have had her death solidify David and Helga's relationship myself . And the film ends too abruptly , and it lacks payoff . These aren't really the biggest flaws in the world ( the way I described them makes them sound bigger than they are ) . .
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385,287 | 391,152 | 45,963 | 9 |
Brush up your Shakespeare . . . ( wow , I bet I'm the tenth person to use that line for a summary ! )
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A spectacularly entertaining back-stage musical about a group of actors putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew . The two leads in the play , Lilli ( Kathryn Grayson ) and Fred ( Howard Keel ) , were formerly married , and have a lot to fight about . But can they keep it out of the show ? Hardly ! We see the first fifteen or so minutes of the actual play ( which is entitled Kiss Me Kate ) with Lilli and Fred following the script to a T . But when Lilli discovers that Fred's boquet , which she had thought was meant for her , was actually meant for the second most important actress ( strangely named Lois Lane , and played exquisitely by Ann Miller ) , she flips out , begins adding lines , and starts smacking Fred around in front of the audience . Fred responds by bending her over his knee and giving her a ripe spanking as the curtain falls on the first act . From there on out , it's warfare , and it's really funny . The funniest bits involve a couple of gangsters , Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore , who are at one point forced to don costumes so that they can keep Lilli from fleeing the stage in the middle of a show . Why they are there is a little too complicated to explain . There's also one very funny moment that is unintentional . Ann Miller sings a song about her three suitors ( one of whom is played by the great Bob Fosse , whose part is so sadly small ; but , man , can he dance ! ) , in which she nicknames them Tom , Dick , and Harry . When the song begins to break down , she starts chanting : " I'll take a Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick . . . " Boy , how words can change . Everything about the picture is fantastic except for the songs . The lyrics are always top notch , but the music is generally not very memorable . Ann Miller's first number , " Too Darn Hot , " is the best , and you've got to love " Brush Up Your Shakespeare , " the only song which the two gangsters participate in . I think it's just amusing to see the two thugs dance around . .
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385,450 | 391,152 | 327,597 | 9 |
Gorgeous and frightening
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Every bit as good as Henry Selick's masterpiece , The Nightmare Before Christmas . Like that one , the film finds a perfect balance between beautiful and creepy . I would describe it as a children's horror film . In fact , I think this might go down as one of the scariest children's films ever made . The story is about a young girl , Coraline , who finds an odd doorway in her new house that leads to a mirror-image world , where her parents pay attention to her and give her anything she wants . It's wonderful , but odd ? everyone has black buttons for eyeballs . Coraline's first few trips to the alternate world are fun , but soon her " other mother " insists that she get her own buttons . The story is familiar . It reminded me a lot of Pan's Labyrinth and Spirited Away . The plot also takes a couple of obvious shortcuts that don't make a lot of sense . Fortunately , these things are hard to notice when you're watching Selick's eye-popping design . Pixar's got its work cut out for it if it wants to win Best Animated Film at next year's Oscar ceremony . It also has one of the most amazing musical scores I've heard in a while , by Bruno Coulais .
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