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Terry Gilliam's fantastic, twisted story of a virus destroying all but a handful of people across the Earth and forcing them to move underground and the man sent back in time to gather information about it is a fantastic, dizzying, and highly stylized film that boasts Bruce Willis' best performance ever.<br /><br />What sets 12 Monkeys apart from most time-travel sci-fi movies is that Bruce Willis character actually deals with what the psychological effects of time-travel, that is, not knowing what reality is actual reality: the place that the time-traveler comes from or goes to. Also, the film recognizes that things that have past cannot be altered and that the prevention of a cataclysmic event, in this case the release of said virus, cannot be stopped or changed. As Willis asserts "It's already happened," while he's in a mental hospital, the major dilemma the film trudges into is not a trite, overdone plot to save the world; instead it's Willis' inner struggle to simply survive himself. It's a fresh, innovative concept, and it works beautifully thanks to a tautly written script by Peoples and Gilliam's unique brand of dementia.<br /><br />Besides this, 12 Monkey's storytelling is totally non-linear and instead opts to distort and bend the way the story is told skillfully incorporating a bevy of different time sequences: flashbacks, dreams, memories, the present, the past, the future, and even a scene that is lifted out of Hitchcock's Vertigo. All serve to envelop the viewer into its disturbing cacophony of madness and futility.<br /><br />Visually, Gilliam is a master of desolate umbrage and shadow rivalling Tim Burton in his strikingly despondent scenery and imagery. With cold, wide, and immersing cinematography, Gilliam plunges into the colorless surroundings and darkness of his characters. The scenes are often bathed in a strangely antiseptic, dead white and help serve as a contrast to the often veering-on-madness characters.<br /><br />Performance-wise, Brad Pitt steals most scenes, filling them with a patented loony, off-the-wall performance that deservedly garnered him an Oscar nomination. As mentioned, Bruce Willis gives the best performance of his career, not reverting to his heroic cliches and cardboard hero and instead portraying Cole as a simple, poignant, tragic everyman. Equally good is Madeline Stowe as Willis' psychologist. She holds her own, injecting her character with both wild energy and strength as she collapses under the weight of what she comes to believe is a false 'religion.'<br /><br />Gilliam's expert, overwhelming, and complex handling of what could have been a routine action/sci-fi film makes 12 Monkeys a compelling vision of a nightmarish, futuristic landscape. Its rich, well-thought out, intricate storyline along with bravura performances from the entire cast and its brooding, bleak cinematography make it a masterpiece of madness. Ranking in my top 10 of all time, 12 Monkeys is a darkly lavish spectacle of a film brimming with brilliance.<br /><br />10 out of 10
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As far as I can tell you, in spite of earlier comments posted by other commentors, this film IS currently available on DVD. I found it only a few weeks ago.<br /><br />It is on the Value DVD label and I paid the grand total of 98 cents plus tax for it. I found it at a 98 cent store among racks of plastic bowls and disposable chopsticks. Now don't you people who shelled out beau coup bucks for the super-duper Swedish import limited edition version feel like you were had??? I thought so.<br /><br />This film was indeed well worth 98 cents. 99 cents, I might start to argue with you. But clearly worth 98 cents. And remember that saying about getting what you pay for. For slasher film mavens only.
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Like the 5-year old protagonists of his latest opus, Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo" enchants with its unbridled innocence as though the anime-meister has become a child himself in weaving a narrative that relishes in its simplicity and emits an infectious charm in the process. Miyazaki, recalling his earlier works, paints a brightly-colored world obviously geared for the younger audiences and the raw effervescence gleefully strips off the grim thematic elements that distinguish its immediate predecessors.<br /><br />Ponyo (voiced lovably by Yuria Nara), a fish with a young girl's face (making her look like a cuddly child in a pink overgrown Halloween costume), escapes away from her underwater home and her school of siblings to explore the surface. Stranded ashore, she is rescued by Sosuke (Hiroki Doi), a five-year old boy who, along with his mom Risa (Tomoko Yamaguchi), resides in a house on the nearby cliff. This initial encounter and, eventually, friendship, has a profound effect on Ponyo who now wishes to become human, but by becoming so inadvertently tips nature's balance and unleashes a maelstrom on land. With Sosuke's help, Ponyo must pass a test to lift this curse and completely become a human.<br /><br />Despite the plot lacking the philosophical sophistication of, say, his most recent "Spirited Away," "Ponyo" is nothing short of an astounding follow-up, characterized by the extremely diligent attention to detail and masterful balancing of the real and the fantastic, and of the simple joys and great fears. It's a straightforward tale that, though at times stalled by its tendency to ramble like a toddler, keeps in tune with its youthful pedigree to magically enthrall. "I will protect you," Sosuke tells Ponyo matter-of-factly, a childlike assertion not unlike the manner in which Miyazaki endows his story with artful spirit.
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An anonymous film which could have been directed by anyone at all.Where is Anthony Mann,the director of such classics as "El Cid" " the naked spur" or "the man from Laramie"?<br /><br />There are marvelous shots of planes in the clouds,lovingly filmed.The story is very trite ,and almost completely devoid of dramatization.The couple lives an almost routine life and the user who complains about June Allyson's choice for the wife ,IMHO,totally misses the point.With her less-than-attractive look,her hoarse voice,she was the perfect housewife the screenplay needed.At the time,women were barefoot and pregnant:there 's not one single woman among the base staff,even in the desk jobs -.All they had to do was worrying about their hubbies ,who were fighting for democracy and against an Enemy whose name we never hear ,but in 1955,it was not hard to guess it.<br /><br />One wonders why a young person who has never seen a Mann movie should choose this one among all the great movies he made.
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If Todd Sheets were to come out and admit that this movie was intended to spoof the zombie genre, I would change my rating to an eight. Try to imagine a movie where every scene, line, and even every acting nuance was designed to be a parody. I could probably crap out alphabet soup, rearrange what was left of the letters, and still have a better script. Two scenes in particular come to mind when I think of this movie. SPOILER ALERT! One is when Mike's dad and the other dad walk, I repeat walk down a staircase jam packed with zombies. This is a small staircase and even though they brush up against the flailing undead, nothing happens to them. When they reach the end, the ex-marine turns around, says "God you're a horny bastard", and shoots only one. The other is in the military complex. The girl stabs a zombie with a machete and is immediately surrounded. The camera moves around her for roughly forty seconds, while she is surrounded by zombies at an arm's length away. She then almost casually runs out from the crowd and joins the other humans. SPOILER ALERT OVER! These scenes must be seen to be believed. Still, I enjoy this movie as much as almost any comedy just because it's so damn funny. Kudos to Todd Sheets for getting so many people in his movie and having the drive to make it but not really for anything else.
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This 1919 to 1933 Germany looks hardly like a post WWII Czech capitol. Oh sorry, it is the Czech capitol and it is 2003, how funny.<br /><br />This is one of the most awful history movies in the nearest past. Röhm is a head higher than Adolf and looks so damned good, Göring looks like 40 when he just is 23 and the "Führer" always seems to look like 56. And the buildings, folks, even buildings have been young, sometimes. Especially 1919 were a lot of houses in Germany nearly new (the WWI does not reach German cities!). No crumbling plaster! Then the Reichstagsbuilding. There have never been urban canyons around this building, never. And this may sound to you all like a miracle: in the year 1933 the Greater Berlin fire brigade owns a lot of vehicles with engines, some even with turntable ladders, but none with a hand pump.<br /><br />One last thing: What kind of PLAYMOBIL castle was this at the final sequence? For me this was a kind of "Adolf's Adventures in Wonderland"
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Aside from Frankie Muniz chattering too fast to understand (Malcolm in the Middle flashbacks?) this film still cannot conjure up a scare. The idea with the "Countess" and the history surrounding her placed into the story was fun but the plot, and many side plots, just don't tie together. Plot synopsis: murdering ghost lures victims through video game. Toss in some blood spatters and a special effects and you've got yourself another bombed out would be horror flick. The ghost cronies resemble the ghost in "The Ring Two" far too much. The acting and constant and dramatic change in everyone's emotions is unbelievable. Save your money.
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Almost as tedious to watch as it was to read, Evening is a gorgeously produced failure...until Meryl Streep walks in and quietly shows her other cast members how to act this kind of stuff. Vanessa Redgrave is shockingly off in her role as the dying Ann and Claire Danes is a cipher. Perhaps if Vanessa and Claire had switched roles we could have seen the vibrancy in the young Ann that gave her entrée to the rarefied world of the story and we could have imagined that the older Ann actually was dying. <br /><br />I was hoping the addition of Michael Cunningham to the writing credits would smooth out the jumpy storytelling but alas. It gave me a headache.
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There are so many words I want to use to describe this movie, but can't really do that can I? This movie is a movie to watch if you just want to sit, laugh, cry and then pee. I'm serious. Don't watch this movie if you're easily offended by profanity, sex, nudity, homosexuality...and everything else associated with nature. Being a woman, and that might not even be a factor, I can watch this movie over and over again. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are absolutely brilliant. Along with all their other debuts, I think Baseketball is the prize winner. I'm laughing now just thinking about some of the stupid things they do in the movie. Watch the movie!! That's all I'm going to say. It's sort of hard for me to leave this comment because I'm one of those people, like Ozzy Osbourne, who has a curse word in almost every line that blurts out of their mouth when they speak. So I'm keeping it professional. Best movie. Heck yeah!!
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Oh, what a bad, bad, very bad movie! Cowritten by and starring Sylvester Stallonethat should have been enoughand featuring too many rock-climbing scenes, vertigo, falling, and scene-chewing villains and a botched airborne heist. There are two plots, both lame. One involves a traumatic failed rescue, and the other involves bad people wrecking an airplane for booty, and killing various harmless people whenever possible. The usually reliable John Lithgow, perhaps depressed by the sheer awfulness of the product, is reduced to sneering and calling those for whom he doesn't care "Bostid!" in a vague approximation of an English accent. Janine Turner, who was sprightly and enigmatic when she played Maggie on Northern Exposure, is sadly wasted in the part of a rescue climber and pilot. Stallone is stolid and muscle-headed. No deathless lines in this one. No living lines, either.
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The spoilers in this review are offered as a public service, because the only way to enjoy this costume melodrama is to know that our protagonist, the Lady Barbara Skelton, gets raped and gunned down in the end. And not a moment too soon. I'd have shot the screen myself but I was afraid I'd hit James Mason.<br /><br />The original 1943 novel, called "The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton" (I guess people didn't whine about spoilers back then), was written by a woman, an English navy brat who was either troubled or cynical or both. Her heroine is devastatingly beautiful, and the author seems to think that if you have beauty, nothing else matters. But other things do matter, such as the fact that Lady Barbara's immediate and only response when someone gets in her way is homicide. She murders three men in five attempts. A serial femme fatale, she's got a case of dissocial personality disorder that should have landed her in either Bedlam or Newgate. <br /><br />Lockwood plays her as a narcissistic vamp, wearing so much makeup that I thought of her as a Restoration-era Joan Rivers (or a restoration-era Joan Rivers, ha!). Yet Lady B. is irresistible to all three principal male characters-- Michael Rennie, James Mason, and Griffith Jones, all of whom do good work, as does Patricia Roc. Of course, all three admirers realize in short order what a psychotic bitch Barbara is, but the plot keeps them all in her orbit until one of them finally does gun her down - accidentally, in what is meant to be either irony or just desserts. Given the dramatic death scene with a boom lifting the camera out through the windows and heavenward, I presume we're meant to give a damn about her death. But hers is the first corpse we don't care about.
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Two funeral directors in a Welsh village? English humour as opposed to that other stuff from over the Atlantic? How could I resist. My wife and I saw it on March the 6th for our belated Valentines day celebration and both of us enjoyed some good belly laughs. We were going to see another movie later but decided not to because we wanted the experience of THIS movie to stay with us for the evening.<br /><br />The mortuary scene in the last 20 minutes of the film is worth the wait. It raises issues rarely talked about in the community, but I know three funeral directors, and the humour is right on the money<br /><br />Highly recommended and congratulations to the writers. Without you all the actors, directors and the others havn't a job on any Monday.
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I'm not sure where to start with this. In short, it was a disappointing movie. Having taught the novella, I was aware that it would be a hard story to turn into a movie. The movie has a couple of interesting lines (mainly between Alfred and Aschenbach) but it doesn't represent the debate on art that basically shapes the novella. <br /><br />For one, I was expecting an older Aschenbach and a younger Tadzio. In the book, Tadzio is fourteen, but he is described as pure, ideal, innocent, whereas in the movie he reeks of sexuality and is a tease. He is an accomplice to Aschenbach, he always looks back at him, almost provokingly. In the book, it is Aschenbach who steals glances at the boy. As for Aschenbach, I imagined something closer to the professor-turned-clown in The Blue Angel (based on a story by Thomas Mann's brother Heinrich) than this forty-year old with hardly any gray hair. In all fairness, I do think that Dirk Bogarde did a good job, but either someone else should have done that, or he should have made to look older at the beginning. <br /><br />I know that the discovery of homosexuality is important to the story, but the movie minimizes the talk about art and the duality between the Apollonian and Dyonisian inspirations and focuses instead on Aschenbach's obsession of Tadzio and does not justify it. I liked the fact that Mahler's music was used, because ultimately he did inspire Mann to write his story. I'm not sure turning Aschenbach into a musician was a particularly good move. Or the creation of Alfred who I don't remember in the book.<br /><br />And one thing that really got to me was the sound and how it did not match the actors' lips. I was wondering if it was dubbed because I expected it to be in Italian. But then I remembered that each Italian movie I have watched has this problem. It just bothers me because these directors (Fellini is the other person I'm thinking of) are supposed to epitomize perfection in Italian cinema, and here are their characters laughing without sound, then you hear a noise that doesn't correspond to their faces (I'm thinking of the scenes when Aschenbach almost collapses and starts laughing. This scene could/should have been the strongest, but it was annoying instead).
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The social commentary was way overblown and the mystery itself is built and solved through a series of implausible coincidences that were entirely unbelievable. Nothing has changed in Fitz's personal life in the past decade that makes it remotely interesting. <br /><br />I even had trouble understanding why he was complaining about his stay in Australia as compared to the opportunities to solve mysteries that he has in England. Can he not insinuate himself on the Australian police? It seems like a very artificial plot point to get him involved in a crime investigation.<br /><br />The latter episodes of the original series were pretty melodramatic and implausible, sometimes bordering on silliness, and this one picks up that mantle rather than returning to the focus of series one. Sad.
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Oh my god what a story! This movie is very good and it had to be God who had this happen! You did a awesome job.The acting was really good you picked the right actors for sure. This movie is so good I am really glad you made this because if you had not then I would have never ever known about this story because I am not a big golf fan and I think it is kinda boring so thank you. I really enjoyed it and that is why I gave the movie a 10\10.I liked Shia Labouf too he was perfect for the roll of Fransis Quimet. I hope most of that stuff you put in there was true also. Oh and some parts were funny and others I was just really happy.
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It is not as great a film as many people believe (including my late aunt, who said it was her favorite movie). But due to the better sections of this film noir, particularly that justifiably famous "fun house" finale, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI has gained a position of importance beyond it's actual worth as a key to the saga of Orson Welles' failure to conquer Hollywood.<br /><br />By 1946 Welles' position as a Hollywood figure was mixed. CITIZEN KANE was not recognized as the great movie it has since been seen as due to the way it was attacked by the Hearst press and by Hollywood insiders themselves. Welles' attempt at total control (direction and production and acting) of his movies seemed to threaten the whole system. His best job in this period was as Edward Rochester in JANE EYRE, supposedly shot by Robert Stevenson, but actually shot in large measure (with Stevenson's blessing) by Welles. But the credit went to Stevenson. Only THE STRANGER, a film benefiting from a postwar interest in fleeing Nazi war criminals, made a profit. For five years in Hollywood it was barely a great record.<br /><br />Welles returned to Broadway in 1946, hoping to recapture his critical abilities by his production of AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. But despite the assistance Mike Todd, and Cole Porter composing the score, the musical was a failure. His failure occurred just at the same time that his wife, Rita Hayworth, was on the rise with her portrayal of GILDA. So the marriage was going on the rocks as well.<br /><br />Welles had to make money - his Broadway production had led to his personal bankruptcy. He sold his interest in the possible movie rights to AROUND THE WORLD to Todd (which he would eventually rue), and he also sold the idea of a film about the career of Henri Desire Landru to Charlie Chaplin, who was supposed to be directed in it (and who turned it into MONSIEUR VERDOUX).<br /><br />The story goes that Welles, with a $10,000.00 tax bill to worry about, called Cohn and offered to do a film with Rita for a down payment. Cohn was willing to do so, but naturally asked what the film was. It was a wise question. Welles was on a pay phone in New York in a pharmacy that had a book department. He grabbed a book with the title THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, and raved that it was a great thriller. Somehow Welles convinced the normally astute Cohn that Welles knew what he was talking about. Cohn said he'd look into getting the rights, and sent Welles his down-payment of $10,000.00. After Cohn hung up Welles bought the book and read it - and found it was really pretty bad. He spent time rewriting a treatment and screenplay that would build up Rita's character of Elsa Bannister.<br /><br />Certainly it has a curious plot development. Michael O'Hara is a seaman/longshoreman. He rescues Elsa Bannister, when she is apparently attacked by gangsters in a park in San Francisco. Elsa is married to Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) a crippled criminal lawyer with a great reputation. She convinces him to hire Michael as the skipper of their yacht. The cruise also contains Bannister's sinister partner George Grisby (Glenn Anders) and one Sidney Broome (Ted De Corsia) who turns out to be a detective hired by Bannister to watch Elsa. When they can Michael and Elsa try to find time together, but Broome or Grisby keeps showing up.<br /><br />Grisby makes Michael an offer - he wants (for reasons connected to his so-called fatalistic view of modern society) to drop out of it, pretending to be dead. According to Grisby (the plot becomes murky here) he can still collect his life insurance (although dead?) and use it to run off to the South Seas. He will pay Michael $10,000.00 if he will pretend to shoot Grisby. This includes actually signing a document admitting to the murder (Michael does not realize that such an admission would wipe out the need to produce a corpse if all the other evidence suggests that Grisby is probably dead).<br /><br />Of course Grisby is killed, and Michael is arrested for that, and for the murder of Broome (shot with Michael's gun). Michael is tried with Bannister defending him, and discovers that the latter is doing a second rate job because he wants Michael to be convicted. Michael is convinced that Bannister is the actual murderer, and manages to escape just before the jury verdict. He is knocked out and deposited in a deserted carnival, and this leads to the famous "fun house" sequence and the conclusion of the film.<br /><br />It's a terribly confusing movie (as I have had commented on). That does not mean it's not worth seeing - visually it is striking. Witness the fight between Michael and the police in the trial judge's quarters, where he knocks the bailiff into the judge's bookcase, shattering glass. Or the clever use of photography to capture Hayworth diving from a rock, reflected on the lecherous Grisby's binoculars.<br /><br />The acting is pretty good, in particular Sloane (possibly that fine actor's best film role). Glenn Anders was a leading Broadway performer. He rarely made movies before THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, and his slimy Grisby is unforgettable. Also Ted De Corsia does very nicely with Broome - a detective who is really looking for his own interests, to his own cost.<br /><br />As for Hayworth, she turns in a performance that was unlike most of what she had done before (BLOOD AND SAND, TALES OF MANHATTAN, and THE STRAWBERRY BLOND are exceptions), and is a memorable siren. Welles' O'Hara is a very unusual character for the actor - a likable but naive man who learns the hard way not to believe what he secretly wants to believe. It's not KANE, AMBERSOMS, OTHELLO, TOUCH OF EVIL, or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, but it is a good film for all that.
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This is probably the worst excuse for television programming since, oh, I don't know, WHATS HAPPENING NOW? NOTHING ever happened on this ridiculous "series". Even though it's mostly shot by Britney and Kevin themselves, you don't get any good details into their personal lives. It's mostly just them making stupid, jokey small talk and acting like white trash. Look, I love Britney's music as much as the next babe, but this show is just pure filler for a nation so addicted to Britney that they would watch her clip her toenails (yes, that could be an actual episode). Thank God these two broke up, because they were PAINFULLY dull together. This show is TOXIC!
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Swedish action movies have over the past few years evolved into something that imitate American hardened action movies like "Heat" but with a low budget. This movie follows the same prescription as "Noll Tolerans" and "Livvakterna". However, it is obvious that they are trying too hard to make a cool and tough movie.<br /><br />The story has been seen before, the dialogue feels artificial and the acting is very poor, especially from the main actress. The movie tries to paint a picture of hard-boiled military-like robbers with no remorse at all and a female investigator who has completely lost it with problems of the past but at the same time acts completely rational. It does not succeed very well.<br /><br />The bluish-cast photo style does not seem fresh anymore, and it is not even done well in this picture. Only a very few scenes actually look good. Also, the sound is quite weird and it sounds like a lot of the actual dialogue is recorded afterward.<br /><br />The main quality of this movie is Stefan Sauk, though not making a convincing portrait of a SWAT-team leader, has some really funny lines. Also, the music is quite well.
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Having spent the six years previous writing and producing, Luc Besson returns to the directors chair with Angel-A. I'm a huge fan of Léon, and quite liked the prospect of a black and white French film from the same chap.<br /><br />André is a liar and gambling addict, owing money to almost every loan shark in Paris. Unable to repay his debts, and fed up with being held over the edge of the Eiffel Tower, he decides to kill himself. He happens to do so at the same time as a mysterious woman, who he decides to save. Determined to thank him, she begins to help him fix his own life.<br /><br />The film starts with some laughs, which run well throughout. The visuals are quite nice and work well with the sights of Paris. But that is it. That's all the film has got going for it. And these mere two facets can do nothing to hold back the torrent of terrible film-making the movie unleashes. Though I can't hugely fault the main character (his inconsistencies are close though), the eponymous one is ghastly. A terrible screen presence and bitterly annoying. The plot is ridiculously inconsistent itself, and at times bizarrely silly, particularly the ending; an ending which completely bloodied the fledgling redemption engendered by the scenes immediately prior to it. Perhaps the most ridiculous scene I've had the ignominy of observing, it is stupid, indulgent, melodramatic, and considerably too awful to be "so bad it's funny". The overall premise of the film could conceivably have once held potential, but it is brutally massacred by the unendingly terrible implementation of its ideas. The film really was a task to watch, and one which had me screaming at the screen the whole way through.<br /><br />Massively and immeasurably flawed, Angel-A is just plain bad. Though its occasionally fun dialogue manages to draw out chortles at rare intervals, by the end it is clear that this film is nothing more than repugnant.
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Man about the house is a true situation comedy in every sense of the word. The comedy concerns a character called Robin Tripp (played by the great Richard O' Sullivan) who finds himself after a wild party, ending up at the home of two ladies called Jo and Chrissy. Ironically the party was held to say goodbye to their old flatmate. The obvious ends up happening as he moves in.<br /><br />Man about the house was a pre-cursor to Cooke and Mortimer's spin off show George and Mildred which featured the 2 characters who were landlords to Jo, Chrissy and Robin. These two characters would actually turn out to be the linchpins of man about the house with Mildred (the late and much missed Yootha Joyce) in particular getting some of the best lines of the series. A semi-regular character was Larry (Doug Fisher) a useless person who was always on the scrounge and only ever came round when he wanted to borrow something (and never to return it).<br /><br />The American's did a version called three's company but it doesn't stand a chance when compared to this far funnier original. Thames took a risk in producing a comedy about a man sharing a flat with 2 women at a very conservative time but they should worry as the ratings at the time suggest that around 20 million people just wanted to watch a good old fashioned bit of comedy with inspired casting and a sharp script. What a pity modern comedy can't reach that high standard.<br /><br />This programme is available on network DVD
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Truly shows that hype is not everything. Shows by and by what a crappy actor abhishek is and is only getting movies because of his dad and his wife. Amitabh as always is solid. Ajay Devgan as always is shitty and useless and the new guy is a joke. The leading lady is such a waste of an actor. Such pathetic movie from such a revered director and from such a big industry. With movies as such I have decreased the amount of bollywood movies I watch.<br /><br />RGV has been making very crappy movies for a while now. Time to get different actors. Hrithek anyone? Bollywood needs Madhuri and Kajol back. Every other leading lady is a half-naked wanna be. Pffffft.
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I knew it wasn't gunna work out between me and D-wars from the moment we met. First its title was lazy. D war. Like writing out Dragon was too much for them. Also... you really can't be that blatant with your title unless your Blue Monkey. Blue Monkey can do whatever the hell it wants. <br /><br />The second sign of a rocky relationship between us was the story's insane progression. Here's the film, dreamy reporter guy reports on big snake tracks, flashes back to a time he and dad wandered into what must have been the competition for the store in gremlins and dreamy kid reporter finds a box that glows. Old shop keep reveals several terrible truths. That Bauraki a supposedly evil snake was cheated out of his chance to be a god. tells the kid that he's a reincarnated warrior and that somewhere in LA is his reincarnated lover and gives him a junk piece of jewelry. Shop keep also reveals that despite his obvious whiteness he's a 500 year old Asian. <br /><br />fifteen years later dreamy reporter remembers this perfectly and starts acting half crazy trying to find this random girl. cgi hijinks follow and in the last ten minutes my brain melts out of my nose. Why? Continue on dear reader if you have the Balls.<br /><br />so Sarah, the reincarnated lover, has her own flashbacks. I have the benefit of having an Asian best friend and in the scene where she starts to freak out and make a bunch of posters with Asian characters on them he tells me that whoever made this movie has no idea what their doing. Its a Korean legend and she's reincarnated from a Korean princess but everything is in Chinese. Later that night her dragon tat starts to hurt, she calls the police cause it looks like she's having a heart attack. See, in this mixed up crazy world they apparently handle heart attacks differently because the next time we see her she's locked in her room with a guard outside and a nurse claims she's crazy. I have a new phobia now, and its that if i'm ever in trouble the first responders will just assume i'm crazy. <br /><br />I have another point of contention with my harsh mistress, Dwar. There is a scene when Patrick Dempsey Jr (Dreamy Reporter) is in a café' with sassy black friend. In the scenes prior Miffed Near divinity Bauraki has killed an elephant, slithered through a suburb and killed one of Sarah's friends. See, people were afraid to come out after 9-11 happened but we must have all toughened up after that deciding coffee and pastries were worth risking our lives for. Business as usual, no way a giant snake will stop me from getting my caffeine on. If i stay inside and fear for my life the terrorists and serpentine divinities win. <br /><br />After being given a satisfying dragon on Helicopter battle my cruel lover Dwar treats me to a pi$$ and vinegar filled scene to end it all with. Bauraki has a fortress of his own and its right under LA i guess. They don't really say but Dreamy Reporter and Sarah get knocked out in a car crash that would kill lesser men and when they wake up, yep dragon palace. some retarded dialog later a good dragon snake god pops out of nowhere and the snakes wrestle/make love whatever. And i'm not kidding good snake out of nowhere. Maybe you think i'm blowing it out of proportion, i'm not there is no mention of this thing in the movie then suddenly... there! Few seconds later and good dragon becomes dragon god, sets Baurki on fire, Sarah turns into a ghost and goes with Dragon-god, dreamy reporter left in the middle of nowhere roll credits... thank god<br /><br />Now our relationship as rocky as it was had its good times. There was a guy that look like shredder from turtles and talked exactly like a tuskan raider from star wars. I'll call him Tuskan Shredder. He could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to it just could never be useful. He could walk through a wall in a scene where that wasn't helpful. He could go in your dreams when that wouldn't do any good and he could light ten random soldier guys on fire but not when it mattered. He was also allergic to touching that junk jewelry. I like him cause he was hit by a car twice in the same scene and made fantastic tuskan raider noises. <br /><br />The actors for the most part were great... if great somehow meant terrible. Jason Behr, whom i thought was awesome in Roswell i slowly find out can only act one way and that's pretentious, spacey and Patrick Dempsey"ish".<br /><br />The one thing i love about this filthy prostitute Dwars is its lead actor, Bauraki. That Giant snake acted his heart out. I'd dare to say that he was better at playing a cgi serpentine demi-god of evil then John Barrymore was at playing Richard the III or Hamlet. There was emotion in every scene, stealing the thunder from his lesser mortal supporting cast. When he ate an elephant i felt like no one past, present or future would ever eat an elephant with as much feeling. He was more then an actor, he was a force of nature and he put his heart and soul into every second of this cursed project. Yes damn it, my favorite actor in this film was a cgi snake. I've got the balls to admit that, do you?<br /><br />Here's to hoping Bauraki get's more work and isn't type cast, that Jason Behr finds a range of emotion other then dreamy stare, and that i never have to watch Blue Monkey again. <br /><br />So, D-War its over. I want my CDs back and let's just be friends
| 0
| 2,743
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After seeing the DVD release of the Blues Brothers, and their mention of "Wired" on Belushi's bio, my boyfriend and I were hungry for more information on John Belushi. I had heard of "Wired" but didn't know too much about it and found it way in the back of the local rental store. I understand that Dan Akroyd was really p***ed over this movie and I thought it was because it didn't portray them in a good light. But that had nothing to do with it.<br /><br />The movie starts out okay, until they wheel in John's body to the morgue. When he wakes up on the autopsy table, and decides to run for it, then begins the utter tastelessness of this movie. John is subjected to viewing his life and all of the turmoil he created with "Angel," a Puerto Rican cab driver with a wicked sense of humor -- subjecting him to criticism and attempting to try to get him to cross over.<br /><br />The two actors who portray John and Dan look nothing even remotely close to the real actors, (let alone anyone else related for that matter, i.e., Lorne Michaels,) making it difficult to really try to concentrate on them and how they were in real life... but that is the tip of the iceberg.<br /><br />I believe this was supposed to be an "artsy" film -- John constantly being tormented by drugs (i.e., the powdered soap in the bathroom being cocaine,) in such a way that was also difficult to follow. The flashbacks are choppy, also making it difficult to understand.<br /><br />Probably the most tasteless scene was when John is (literally,) forced to undergo his autopsy and is in pain while they remove his heart to weigh it, saying that it was abnormally large due to drug use, obesity, yeah, we get the point without the grotesque portrayal.<br /><br />There are very few other actors we know of in the movie, (where's Carrie Fisher for instance? They were incredibly close. And Jim Belushi would have been a great person to show,) it looks VERY cheaply made, (we felt it looked as if the graphics were from the early 80s or late 70s,) it felt as if it was filmed in about a week and all in all, didn't show the side to John at all. I felt I knew a little bit more about him from watching episodes of Saturday Night Live.<br /><br />On one last note, Bob Woodward comes across narcissistic by placing himself in the movie, arguing with John about writing his life story. For someone who was supposed to be very highbrow, concerning the bust on Nixon, his calibur of person could match any writer in the National Enquirer, and therefore losing my interest in any of his work from this point forward.<br /><br />SKIP THIS MOVIE. If you want to see more on John, watch his movies, see clips of Dan Akroyd talking about him or hope someone has the taste to make another movie on John that goes along the lines of "Man on the Moon," which is ultimately what we were expecting. I guess this was a "moral" kind of movie -- you know, don't do drugs, but I guess the creators of this film didn't understand that his death made a number of people (like Carrie Fisher,) stop doing drugs altogether for that reason.
| 0
| 10,433
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I was invited to view this film at a small art museum screening. I had no clue what to expect. I was initially optimistic in the opening credits to see Judd Nelson, Bill Paxton, Wayne Newton, James Cann, Rob Lowe, and Lara-Flynn-Boyle listed. However after some very disturbing grossed-out scenes (that did not add much to the story advancement), this film quickly became a weapon of torture. The gimmick of the vestigial growing arm storyline is never really developed. I patiently kept waiting for this film to cash-in. There was a small payoff in the end, but having to invest and sit through the the endless gross, crude, sexually-perverted, in-your-face screaming, unfunny gore cost too much for me (even for a free viewing). What were these established actors doing in this awful film? The art direction was very convincing and creepy. At the very minimum, it should only be a 75-minute film. This is a film that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would embrace.
| 0
| 7,137
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The undoubted highlight of this movie is Peter O'Toole's performance. In turn wildly comical and terribly terribly tragic. Does anybody do it better than O'Toole? I don't think so. What a great face that man has!<br /><br />The story is an odd one and quite disturbing and emotionally intense in parts (especially toward the end) but it is also oddly touching and does succeed on many levels. However, I felt the film basically revolved around Peter O'Toole's luminous performance and I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it even half as much if he hadn't been in it.
| 1
| 19,735
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I think the "Bone Snatcher" should go after anyone associated with this movie. Watching this will seem like the longest 90 minutes or so of your entire life. The plot is boring and stupid. There were no scenes that were horrifying, even remotely. If you manage to endure this fine piece of cinema art all the way to the end, you're either going to be highly disappointed or die laughing hysterically. I bought this movie based on some other reviews I'd read. I wish I had my money back. What a skunker. If you're looking for a horror movie that will hold your interest, watch "U Turn". It may be based on a kooky plot, but it's full of those creepy scenes that keep you jumping from beginning to end.
| 0
| 9,811
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Having been a fan of 'Columbo', I was sorely disappointed in 'Corky Romano'. While certainly a funny movie, Falk's mob boss character was a far cry from the lovable lieutenant he's played for so many years, especially with the offensive language he used. After 'Corky Romano', I was honestly both surprised by and soured on Mr. Peter Falk. HOWEVER, having just seen 'Finding John Christmas' and its predecessor, 'A Town Without Christmas', for the first time within a week of each other, I have to say that 'Max', Peter's Falk's delightful character in both movies, is surely as memorable and lovable as 'Columbo'. While parts of the movie are quite predictable, such scenes in no way take away from the enjoyment of seeing the story played out. I too wish I had recorded both of these heartwarming Christmas movies, and I highly recommend them whether you're a Falk fan, a Christmas nut, or simply someone who enjoys the occasional feel-good movie of the week. This movie may end up lost among the throngs of made-for-TV holiday flicks, so be sure to find 'Finding John Christmas' before it's too late.
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| 13,500
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This is easily the most underrated film inn the Brooks cannon. Sure, its flawed. It does not give a realistic view of homelessness (unlike, say, how Citizen Kane gave a realistic view of lounge singers, or Titanic gave a realistic view of Italians YOU IDIOTS). Many of the jokes fall flat. But still, this film is very lovable in a way many comedies are not, and to pull that off in a story about some of the most traditionally reviled members of society is truly impressive. Its not The Fisher King, but its not crap, either. My only complaint is that Brooks should have cast someone else in the lead (I love Mel as a Director and Writer, not so much as a lead).
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| 22,593
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I was into the movie right away. I've seen the other Coen movies, with the exception of Raising Arizona, and I've noticed that each of their movies has a color. Fargo is gray/white, Lebowski is bright orange, and this movie is a pleasant yellow.<br /><br />The bright pleasant qualities of this movie start right away. Soon the look is accompanied by the great, great music. It's the old folk sound, the kind of music that was written during a time when music was enjoyed as a part of day to day life. Enjoyed by everyone, chain-gangs, church choirs, and even prison escapees.<br /><br />Now, about the prison escapees. I don't know what crime their characters could have possibly committed, as they are a very very friendly group of guys. Clooney is fantastic, completely nailing his role.<br /><br />Go see this as soon as possible. I believe that it can be enjoyed by anyone at some level. For some reason, the theater I was in was full of old ladies and old men, and they loved it.<br /><br />You'll love it too, I promise. I was compelled to get my hands on the soundtrack right away.
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| 16,933
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This is exactly what Australian Television and Australian Politics needs, people with a sense of humour!!! Good on ABC for supporting these guys. The show is based around a couple of Aussie blokes who know how to take the mickey out of politicians or other people in the limelight. The boys use Sydney as their main base for making a splash in the public. Keep an eye out for the Crazy Wharehouse Guy or Mr Ten Questions. The guys who perform these acts are the same guys that presented CNNN. If you enjoyed CNNNN and the Glasshouse then you will love this show. I am still interested in knowing which stunts are real and which are purely acting because there are some questionable actions made by the guys...
| 1
| 21,767
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I own Ralph Bakshis forgotten masterpiece Fire & Ice on an old OOP rental videotape.<br /><br /> Well for one thing, this is better than any other Conan-esque film you'll ever see. Sure, it's cheesy, but who cares? It stood the test of time, and the only way it started to look cheesy is in comparisons to modern fantasy epics like LOTR:FOTR (though I love that film.)<br /><br /> The plot goes like this: After a battle between Fire & Ice, a kings daughter is kidnapped by Jarols (Ice) subhuman creatures, while a sole survivor of a victimized village rescues her.<br /><br /> Yeah it doesn't sound as a original as Nurse Betty, but that's not the point. It is really to bring to life an interesting idea of a world of two enemies: Fire & Ice. And it succeeds.<br /><br /> As for the action scenes: superb. They are well handled, have terrific suspence, and have plenty of loud noises. Just check out the climatic battle, now THAT'S an ending!<br /><br /> The acting and dialogue: competent. Really. They aren't gonna be nominated for an Oscar, but they are OK and don't get on your nerves.<br /><br /> The animation is quite good. Shot on 3D and rotoscoped (I THINK), it looks pretty good. A lot of the backgrounds look really detailed and well drawn, and although the character designs feel a little 1-dimentional, they are OK.<br /><br /> Overall, this is a fine neglected little gem and will entertain you more than any of the superfical "entertainment". 10/10
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| 19,872
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I watched about 30 minutes into this film before I finally got sick of getting bludgeoned over the head with this movie. The soundtrack, the so-called 'plot', and each and every actor. It's like they all think they're the main part of the movie and scream "NOTICE ME!" over and over again. The bad guy has his bad-guy music going on and says sinister bad-guy-like things, just in case you didn't quite catch on. The good guy does brave and noble things just in case you didn't know he was the good guy. And oh lord, the plane scene. "MY HUSBAND IS MISSING! OH MY GOD! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE THAT HE GOT UP TO STRETCH HIS LEGS OR GO TO THE TOILET OR ANYTHING, HE MUST BE MISSING!" (And yes, I know, his clothes were still there, but honestly, she woke up and started to panic before she even had time to look at the damn seat he'd been in.)<br /><br />As a religious girl, I want to apologize to the world for wasting the film this was printed on.<br /><br />And I want my 30 minutes back.
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| 6,135
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Had this movie been made just a few years later, I would have knocked down the score a point or two because the sound quality was rather poor. At times, the movie appeared to be a silent film during the in-between-scenes (normal ambient sounds are missing). But, given it was 1931 and a French movie, this is quite forgivable. Especially since this also occurs in later French films--by which time the sound difficulties should have been worked out completely (such as in L'Atalante from 1934).<br /><br />Okay, apart from some minor sound problems, this is a cute little film about a missing winning lottery ticket and a long list of people trying to get it. And, during the search there are lots of jaunty little songs that you can't help but like. A nice charming film all-in-all.
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| 18,185
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In this horrible attempt at a Blair Witch mockumentary, a bunch of people go to Africa to investigate a creature called the Half-Caste. It's pretty obvious that there was no script to speak of, and that everything was improvised. That can work if you have good actors, which this film didn't. <br /><br />This movie tries to gain points for originality by exploring a more obscure myth and an exotic culture. As a result, there are a lot of scenes out in the bush where characters do "quirky African stuff" like eating elephant dung. There is also some pretty good footage of lions eating (from a National Geographic perspective) but there's not a single scare in the whole movie. <br /><br />If you've seen Cannibal Holocaust or the Blair Witch Project, this movie will hold no surprises for you, and you can probably watch better lion footage on the Discovery Channel.<br /><br />Definitely a Half- Aste effort. <br /><br />A note to the filmmakers: guys, do us all a favor and next time save the "How I spent my African Vacation" home movie for your family and close friends. Nobody else wants to see it.
| 0
| 4,625
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The beginning of the movie was confusing and the rest of it was predictable. It was just one of those movies that I came across in my netflix instant queue and I thought it would be interesting to see Brad Renfro and Bijou Phillips team up together again since Bully. Unfortunately "interesting" never happened in this movie. Swain plays an invisible girl at a private school whose best friend is rich and does anything she wants at any time (Phillips). But Swain likes one of the boys (Renfro) from the "in crowd" and eventually starts hanging with them. And, of course, like all other movies things are good (or so you assume since the movie never hints on that things are good) and then things become not so good by hanging with the rich kids.<br /><br />The problem with the movie is that there are absolutely no peaks and valleys. It is just a dead lifeless movie that after you've watched it, you feel you could have done anything better. Some scenes (the ones with Renfro's parents) don't even make sense as to being in the movie because the director and writer didn't follow up on it, at all.<br /><br />All the interesting things that COULD have played out was just completely ignore and this is almost like watching a before they were stars episode (Mischa Barton and Rachel Bison from the OC). <br /><br />The only shining light in this movie, and the reason it doesn't get a ONE rating from me is Phillips. They needed more scenes with her in it. Renfro just look like he brought over a bit of his character from Bully. And, for pete's sake, the Title is BS, change the name.
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| 12,445
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There are a few scripts like this one floating around Hollywood; this one is not even close to the best--just the first. This is all production value, no substance, but the Disney name probably will help it. A good idea, a wasted opportunity.
| 0
| 154
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The first series of Lost kicked off with a bang... literally and slowly decreased in pace. This may have put some viewers off and people who started to watch halfway through would either be bored or just plain confused. <br /><br />I would advise people new to the world of Lost to simply watch from the beginning and don't get pt off by the slower episodes. The acting throughout is excellent but why have 5 series' planned... WHY??? All this means is that there will be no answers for at least 4 years, oh well, i'll keep watching if it keeps the tension up and dialogue flowing.
| 1
| 20,125
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Long, boring, blasphemous. Never have I been so glad to see ending credits roll.
| 0
| 789
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The Reader is an exceptionally well done and very sweet short. Every element of the piece assists in eliciting a pure emotional response to the script. Well acted, directed, shot and written. I was surprised to hear that there was no rehearsal before shooting, not even a read through. The performances stand as testament to some fine instinctual acting in response to a well written script. The actresses work was excellent and there was never an indication that their work would slip into the purely sentimental. Less is much better in this case. This film is a prime example of how these low budget contracts benefit actors as well as film makers.
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| 15,622
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What about Dahmer's childhood?- The double hernia operation which is believed to have sparked off his obsession with the inner workings of the human body? What about "infinity land"? - The game he invented as a child which involved stick men being annihilated when they came too close to one another, suggesting that intimacy was the ultimate danger. What about the relationship between his parents, and the emotional problems of his mother that were far more relevant than just his own relationship with his father? His feelings of neglect when his brother was born? What about his fascination with insects and animals? How he would dissect roadkill and hang it up in the woods behind his home?What about focusing more on his cannibalism? And what about his parent's divorce? These are all things that should have been included in the film. Instead the film maker chose to give us a watered down 'snapshot' from a night or two in his life, and combine it with series of confusing and at times unnecessary flashbacks, to events that weren't even particularly relevant to our understanding of Dahmer.<br /><br />Why didn't the film maker show how Dahmer was interested in people as objects rather than people? He could have made this point many times, particularly in the scenes in which he drugs his victims whilst he has sex with them (which actually took place in a health club, not a night club). Instead he just shows him ramming away at them from behind.<br /><br />Whilst I appreciate there is only so much information you can cram into 90 minutes (or however long), but why spend such a large part of the film examining his relationship with Luis Pinet? (known as Rodney in this film). My only guess is that the director was trying to build up Pinet's character, to try and make us fear for or empathise with him, but this film is supposed to be about Jeffrey Dahmer, so why couldn't he have spend those forty five minutes on something else? If the scene and their relationship was important enough to warrant such time then fair enough, but it wasn't. The scene in which he kills Steven Hicks, his first victim, is a vital part of the Jeffrey Dahmer story because it was the first killing, and because of the effect that killing had on the rest of his life. Unfortunately the film doesn't explain that it was his first killing, or that he didn't kill again for nine years. We assume, because his hair style is different, and he is wearing glasses that this is a flashback, but to when? And why? <br /><br />What about the shrine he made in his sitting room towards the end of his career?-one of the most important clues we have towards understanding Dahmer and his motivations..<br /><br />Some people may find my need for accuracy in fact and detail a bit anal, but having studied Jeffrey Dahmer in depth, it is plain to see that this film has very little in common with the person he was and the crimes he committed. Why bother to spend the time making a film loosely based on Jeffrey Dahmer rather than tackle the real issues behind his descent into madness and the carnage that ensued?<br /><br />Finally, a film with subject matter as repellent as this should carry an 18 certificate, not a 15. We needed to see his perversion in more depth, to understand just how detached he was from the rest of us. That doesn't mean showing the drill actually entering Konerak Sinthasomphone's head for instance, but at least an indication of the amount of people he killed, and what his Modus Operandi was when actually killing. Anyone watching this film who doesn't know the story of Dahmer might come away thinking he had only killed a few people. He actually killed seventeen men.<br /><br />Aside from the facts and lack of depth, the film isn't all bad. There is some nice cinematography, and good performances from the two main characters. I'd like to see this done again by a film maker who has more knowledge, more energy, and a better reason for making the film in the first place.
| 0
| 11,086
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Wonderful family film that should be a staple at Christmas time. It's a mystery to me why it isn't. A true lost film that I first encountered, flickering away on my old 19" black and white RCA, when the Million Dollar Movie was still in vogue on Channel 9 in New York City. This Rudolph Mate directed fantasy should be nestled under everyone's Christmas tree. But it has never been released on home video. Too bad. I believe I saw part of it on AMC a few years ago, before they cut many of their older films from the rotation. TCM should take up the slack and play it at Easter or on Christmas Eve. Any movie with Santa, Aunt Bee, the Hostess Cupcake Lady, and an actor with the first name King, can't be bad. Ann Blyth as "Sally" is a bundle of energy. During her school years, she rushes over to the chapel to pray for St. Ann to help and give guidance to her mixed-up and financially strapped family. It works. So, after she graduates, she places a statue of St. Ann in her own bedroom. At one point the entire O'Moyne residence is moved to another address. I think this was done to put an end to a neighbor dispute between the O'Moynes and the dastardly fellow next door. Blyth is cute as a button. Edmund Gwen can play the reclusive grandfather in his sleep. All-in-all, this is a satisfying movie experience.
| 1
| 18,909
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I have watched this movie on and off since it started playing about 1 hour ago, and i have to say, thats an hour of my life i wasted and will not be getting back, The acting is crap and the scripts need a serious look at, and whoever wrote them needs to be slapped, perhaps the TV will explode and put me out of my misery..... The only good thing about this movie is that for guys and girls it has some good eye candy in it, though, most of which i wish would disappear, as far as the movie is concerned, the special effects as sh*t, Dante? who thinks a guy dressed in skin tight leather pants and half a leather jacket is scary, he looks more feminine than most of the women in this movie, the voice of Dante is pathetic, nobody finds it threatening or scary AT ALL..... please TV i beg you to blow up!!!!!!!!!!
| 0
| 6,963
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Though I never like to be the sort of person who negates another's personal taste; if you like something, that's fine. But, this movie was horrible and there is no way around it. I don't like Ani Difranco too much, but she's a great guitarist and songwriter, that I can admit. But I can't admit to there being any redeeming qualities to this film. Many people way that it is an accurate portrayal of issues that high school students face. Maybe, but everything is portrayed too far-fetched. There seems to be an attempt at a "Naked Gun" - esque kind of comedy, but the timing is off; there is too much space between each actors line, as if they're holding for laughter (there wasn't any). Whoever wrote the script was all over the place. They tried to cram as many controversial issues together in one film, almost never fully developing any of them (especially the girl getting impregnated by a teacher). I did not laugh once throughout this entire movie. I was too insulted by this attempt at humor and satire to do anything but roll my eyes at the screen.
| 0
| 9,873
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I won't add to the plot reviews, it's not very good.<br /><br />Very improbable orphanage on Bala.<br /><br />Cushing and Lee at their height.<br /><br />Some nice scenery.<br /><br />Good for face spotting, and I quote, "look at the mouth, that is Cassie from Fools and Horses".<br /><br />Otherwise, a poor example of the British film industry.<br /><br />Fulton MacKay was far better in Fraggle Rock, Keith Barron was better in anything else and Diana Dors did what she did best.<br /><br />Redeeming feature? It was free to watch on the Horror channel prior to its going over to subscription. I won't be subscribing on this effort.
| 0
| 10,498
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Rounding out the 1929-30 all-talkie "Our Gang" release schedule, "A Tough Winter" features two storylines. First, Wheezer and Mary Ann, home alone on a wintry day, decide to make some taffy. Little Wheezer relays the directions to Mary Ann from a radio cooking show. The problem: Wheezer relays information from different shows and Mary Ann ends up putting soap in the mix! Funny moments occur when the rest of the Gang shows up to pull the taffy - and end up getting it all over the house!<br /><br />The second storyline deals with Stepin Fetchit, a neighbor/handyman of the Gang, and his interactions with the Gang.<br /><br />"A Tough Winter," to my knowledge, has never been shown on television, although it is available on home video. The reason for this is the Stepin Fetchit characterization which shows a shifty, sly, and slow-moving character. "Our Gang" producer Hal Roach called Fetchit a "skilled comic" and used this "Our Gang" entry as a pilot for a Fetchit comedy series that never saw the light of day. Understandably, Fetchit's characterization is offensive to many people today, which explains why the film has been shelved.<br /><br />Although there are some funny moments both with Fetchit and the taffy, "A Tough Winter" is a plodding and meandering effort. If one positive came out of this film, it was that the Hal Roach Studios grew confident and experienced in making talkies. The sound in the film is good, and some of the sound effects used are very funny. For this reason, this film in part paved the way for the excellent 1930-31 "Our Gang" films.<br /><br />3 out of 10.
| 0
| 9,217
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I agree with with of the messages on here that the book is not like the movie. I read the book as a sophomore in high school in Sumter SC. I instantly fell in love with the book and eagerly awaited the release of the mini series. As much as I liked the movie and thought it was very well done, I was disappointed that the movie did not follow the book. I was glad the Orry was not killed off like he was in Love and War or N&S II.<br /><br />Having grown up in SC and graduating from University of SC, I fell in love with southern history because of this mini series and book. I had the honor of meeting John Jakes at a symposium in 1988 at USC. I stayed around afterwards and meet Mr.Jakes. Unfortunately, I did not get to ask him a question. But meeting him was honor enough. I majored in accounting but got my minor in Southern Studies. In addition, I patterned a lot of my mannerisms after Orry Main. Orry and myself are very much alike. I feel I was born 150 years too late. I am a southern gentleman and very proud of this.<br /><br />Well I fell in love with 2 women in the movie....Genie Francis and Wendy Kilbourne. Man, did I have the hots for Wendy!!!! I never quite could find a real life version of her. I hope one day too!!!
| 1
| 15,894
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If I had realized John Wayne was in this movie, I would not have watched it. It's demeaning to the Japanese, unfortunate for Hollywood and embarrassing to any thinking person. But then, most John Wayne movies are like that. Hollywood in the fifties still believed that everybody in the world loved Americans when the truth was (and still is) somewhat different. The movie deals with the nineteenth century isolationism of Japan. Maybe it's Hollywood that should be isolated.To put it as succinctly as possible, this film is appalling jingoistic claptrap.(Sort of a Madama Butterfly with bad music.)
| 0
| 2,909
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Ernst Lubitsch's contribution to the American cinema is enormous. His legacy is an outstanding group of movies that will live forever, as is the case with "The Shop Around the Corner". This film has been remade into other less distinguished movies and a musical play, without the charm or elegance of Mr. Lubitsch's own, and definite version.<br /><br />Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart worked in several films together. Their characters in this movie stand out as an example of how to be in a movie without almost appearing to be acting at all. Both stars are delightful as the pen pals that don't know of one another, but who fate had them working together in the same shop in Budapest.<br /><br />The reason why these classic films worked so well is the amazing supporting casts the studios put together in picture after picture. In here, we have the wonderful Frank Morgan, playing the owner of the shop. Also, we see Joseph Schildkraut, Felix Bressart, William Tracy and Charles Smith, among others, doing impressive work in making us believe that yes, they are in Budapest.<br /><br />That is why these films will live forever!
| 1
| 14,589
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This script was mildly original when it was written in 1935, but the poor performances and the inconsistent quality level make it impossible to recommend. Some of the vignettes are absolutely terrible and the dialogue is never natural. A few of the plot twists were creative, but I was very surprised to see it so highly rated here at the IMDB. A few scenes are worthwhile, it's as a film that if fails completely to entertain. If you like this sort of montage, run don't walk and get "Tales of Manhattan" (1942) a marvelous film that follows the life and times of a topcoat.
| 0
| 6,405
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This is definitely one of the greatest Disney movies ever made. It's a real pleaser to anyone. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, and it'll put you into suspense.<br /><br />Basically, what Homeward Bound is about is three household pets who are sent to live on a farm while their owners go on vacation. They don't know what is going on, and desperately wanting to go home, they escape from the farm and try to find their way home through the wilderness.<br /><br />This is one of the last movies that Don Ameche starred in. He provided the voice of Shadow, the old, wise and friendly golden retriever. Also starring in this movie was Sally Field providing the voice of Sassy, the Himalayan cat. But seriously, what this movie is all about is Chance! Voiced by Michael J. Fox (my all-time favorite actor), Chance is basically all you'd expect from a dog, lovable, playful, energetic and goofy, and every time I crack up when watching this movie, it's because of Chance; it's like the comedy never ends! <br /><br />This movie is also very sad at times. It sometimes reminds people of the times they've been alone or when they lose their pets.<br /><br />One scene that always puts me in suspense is the scene where the trio is trying to escape from the pound; I especially feel shocked at the part where Chance gets his collar caught in the fence and almost doesn't make it. The movie had other suspenseful moments, but none to me seem more suspenseful than that one.<br /><br />Overall, it's a wonderful family movie. If you enjoyed this movie, you'll probably enjoy the sequel too. I give this movie a solid 9 out of 10!
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Shannon Lee,the daughter of Bruce Lee,delivers high kicking martial arts action in spades in this exhilarating Hong Kong movie and proves that like her late brother Brandon she is a real chip off the old block. There is high tech stuntwork to die for in this fast paced flick and the makers of the Bond movies should give it a look if they want to spice up the action quotient of the next 007 adventure as there is much innovative stuff here with some fresh and original second unit work to bolster up the already high action content of "AND NOW,YOU'RE DEAD". When you watch a movie as fast paced and entertaining as this you begin to wonder how cinema itself was able to survive before the martial arts genre was created.I genuinely believe that movies in general and action movies in particular were just marking time until the first kung fu movies made their debut. Bruce Lee was the father of modern action cinema and his legitimate surviving offspring Shannon does not let the family name down here.Although there are several pleasing performances in this movie (Michel Wong for one)it is Shannon Lee whom you will remember for a genuinely spectacular performance as Mandy the hitgirl supreme.Hell;you may well come away whistling her fights!
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Rene Clair's groundbreaking musical. If you want to see where songs first drove a story this is the place. This is the story of a starving young artist who finds he's won the lottery just as his creditors come calling. Unfortunately his ticket is in his coat, which is in his girlfriends apartment and has been given to an on the run convict who then... oh but that would be telling.<br /><br />This is a light and frothy story where much of the dialog is sung (most people think this didn't happen until Oklahoma or Andrew Lloyd Webber). Its the sort of movie that they don't make any more, and rarely did when they did. Its sound a film from the early days that plays like a movie from five or six years later. Clair moves his camera around in ways that not even Busby Berkeley was doing (though to be honest comparing the two film makers is unfair since Berkeley was doing essentially stage bound dance numbers and Clair was moving the camera through "the real world"). Its an amazing little movie. and its a charming movie that will just make you smile. Its just a fluffy piece of enjoyment.<br /><br />I'm sorry I can't say more. Its just a nice little movie and thats really all you need to know.
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In September 2003 36-year-old Jonny Kennedy died. He had a terrible genetic condition called Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) - which meant that his skin literally fell off at the slightest touch, leaving his body covered in agonising sores and leading to a final fight against skin cancer. In his last months Jonny decided to work with filmmaker Patrick Collerton to document his life and death, and the result was a film, first broadcast in March, that was an uplifting, confounding and provocatively humorous story of a singular man. Not shying away from the grim reality of EB, the film was also a celebration of a life lived to the full. Produced and directed by Patrick Collerton and first shown in March 2004 The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off has become the most talked about documentary of that year. It attracted nearly five million viewers and after the screening the public donated over half a million pounds to Jonny's charity, DEBRA. A Jonny Kennedy Memorial Fund has been set up to raise another half a million with the aim of ensuring that Jonny Kennedy left a one million pound legacy.
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I really didn't like this movie because it didn't really bring across the messages and ideas L'Engle brought out in her novel. We had read the novel in our English class and i absolutely loved it, i'm afraid i can't say the same for the film. There were some serious differences between the novel and the adapted version and it just didn't do any credit to the imaginative genius that is Madeleine L'Engle! This is the reason i gave it such a poor rating. Don't see this movie if you are a big fan of L'Engle's texts because you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you are watching the movie for entertainment purposes (or educational as was my case) then it is an alright movie!
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To me this film is just a very very lame teen party movie with all the normal clichés and boring stereotyped characters (Nerds, Jocks, Popular girls, Sleezy guys, etc) but with an underlying anti drug/drinking theme. <br /><br />If you ever have the unfortunate chance of seeing this film, keep an eye out for all the references to responsibility and keeping it real (dunno how else to word it) I guess the only thing that'd make this film cool, would be if they TV playing it was on fire. That, or DVD it was on exploded...<br /><br />1 out of 10000 - Watch Animal House instead.
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The film is very complete in what it is, keeping one continuously interested with the flashbacks to childhood and growing up with such a bizarre father, and interspersing it with the tails of serial murder, one simply cannot go wrong. The very plot in itself, the very story and essence of the film, is entertaining. It is the sort of story that the director (Bill Paxton) could do so much with, and in this case, he really did do a lot with it.<br /><br />From beginning to end you are kept anticipating more and more about what is happening and where the film is going, and the creativity that is behind this story is first class. I felt as if this film was exquisitely done from start to finish, and one of those rare gems that seemed to be without any boring lulls -- the action flowing neatly, quickly, and tightly from one scene to the next. <br /><br />It demonstrates just how far people can go: so as to do such horrible things to their loved ones, and to do such acts of evil, in the name of 'God' when they are disillusioned as in this case. It also is sometimes interesting in its' twists & takes on the concept of morality as a whole.<br /><br />Overall, this is the sort of film that one easily overlooks, but I would recommend you to not do likewise and to check this film out -- it is very much so worth your time.
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I rented it because the second segment traumatized me as a little kid. I snuck downstairs really early one morning, started watching HBO, and The Raft (segment 2) terrorized me good. This time around, I still enjoyed The Raft, although I couldn't tell whether it was for nostalgic reasons or if it was actually a good short. The other two segments were complete trash. I can't believe a producer somewhere payed to make this junk. All I've accomplished by watching this was to ruin one more childhood memory. Creepshow 2 will now join Rad among my list of tainted childhood classics. 4/10
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Holy cow, what a piece of sh*t this movie is. I didn't how these filmmakers could take a 250 word book and turn it into a movie. I guess they didn't know either! I don't remember any farting or belching in the book, do you?<br /><br />They took this all times childrens classic, added some farting, belching and sexual inuindo, and prostituted it into a KAKA joke. This should give you a good idea of what these hollywood producers think like. I have to say, visually it was interesting, but the brilliant visual story is ruined by toilet humor (if you even think that kind of thing is funny) I DON'T want the kids that I know to think it is.<br /><br />Don't take your kids to see, don't rent the DVD. I hope the ghost of Doctor Suess ghost comes and haunts the people that made this movie.
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I've been going through the AFI's list of the top 100 comedies, and I must say that this is truly one of the worst. Not just of the 90 movies on the list I've seen, but of any movie I've ever seen. Drunks are funny sometimes, Dudley isn't. Liza almost made it worthwhile, but alas... just go watch Arrested Development if you want to see her in something good. Seriously, Dudley laughing and drinking is supposed to be funny? I would highly recommend almost ANY other movie on the AFI's top 100 comedies for more laughs than this. If you want to see a funnier "drunk", try The Thin Man. Funnier movie in general, any Marx Brothers movie will kill (especially if you're as drunk as Arthur).
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I saw this film at the Chicago Reeling film festival. To pick up on the previous reviewer's remarks, the claustrophobic feel and off colors of the film is I sense quite intentional and conveys the sense of limited space, drab architecture, overall drabness that constitutes the urban environment of most people in Eastern and Central Europe. A bit shabby housing project style is how I'd describe it, and this is how many people live on the outskirts of larger cities. I can't say that I'm familiar with Bucharest, Romania where the action unfolded, but I have visited and lived in Eastern Europe for six months. <br /><br />When I visited Russia as a student for a semester, my entire group had to drag their luggage seven stories up the staircase of a shabby student dorm building, just as the heroine does when moving in with a woman, because the elevators weren't working. But, I do concur with the reviewer, that the claustrophobia and muted colors, it's overdone, for there are, to be sure, beautiful historic buildings, parks, squares you can find in Bucharest or in any historic city center of Eastern Europe, and Bucharest's didn't get much of any footage in this film. For me watching this film conveys well the claustrophobia that I would feel during my half-year stay there, feeling trapped and limited. (It makes you see why someone would want to immigrate and find a better life, just as people if hope to escape from a United States urban ghetto.) <br /><br />Also, given the climate of homophobia, say, circa, US in the 1980s, the two young women who fall in love with one another are forced to keep their love a very private matter; hence, the focus on their interaction in the apartment.<br /><br />It's remarkable and commendable in my view that this queer themed film was even made in Romania, and I find the complaint of the previous reviewer about the poor film quality quite uninformed and patronizing. It's unlikely that the director and producer drummed up much government support and funding for their film, and they did the best they could with their likely limited resources. The actors were fairly good and believable; the dialog was overall well done, and I could identity with these women.<br /><br />The film offers an added twist to that of forbidden love between two young women, Kiki, an energetic, fun-loving free spirit with a dark, troubling secret (her admiration and love for an abusive, incestuous brother, Sandu) falls in love with Alexandra, a bright, bookish, idealistic young woman who moves to Bucharest to begin her college studies. Opposites attract, and their personalities seem to complement one another, though there is some tension between the ambitious, studious, intellectual Alexandra and Kiki, who seems to be attending college to please her parents. Keeping their love hidden from their parents seems manageable, though we don't get any sense of the tension it requires, nor do we ever see or meet any other students--hard to believe--and the tension keeping their love secret would have entailed. The chief threat to their love is Kiki's brother and her difficulty in trying to severe her relation to him. But Kiki's love for Alexandra seems to give her the strength she needs to finally severe this bond, or does it? That's what the suspense of the film focuses on as the narrative develops, and I won't say how it concludes.<br /><br />Ironically, Kiki's love "sickness" isn't love for another woman, but her illicit, incestuous love for her brother. Thus, loving a woman offers the potential cure to the sickness of loving a sibling. <br /><br />Though this feel of this film is stifling and claustrophobic, overly confined to interactions between Kiki and Alexandra, it was still engaging and moving to watch, so I'll give it a 7.
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This movie is one of the most wildly distorted portrayals of history. Horribly inaccurate, this movie does nothing to honor the hundreds of thousands of Dutch, British, Chinese, American and indigenous enslaved laborers that the sadistic Japanese killed and tortured to death. The bridge was to be built "over the bodies of the white man" as stated by the head Japanese engineer. It is disgusting that such unspeakable horrors committed by the Japanese captors is the source of a movie, where the bridge itself, isn't even close to accurate to the actual bridge. The actual bridge was built of steel and concrete, not wood. What of the survivors who are still alive today? They hate the movie and all that it is supposed to represent. Their friends were starved, tortured, and murdered by cruel sadists. Those that didn't die of dysantry, starvation, or disease are deeply hurt by the movie that makes such light of their dark times.
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I think I am some kind of Road Runner fan. I don't care how predictable it is, I laugh anyway. 'Beep, Beep' is predictable most of the time, although it is pretty ingenious at the same time as well. Of course the Road Runner is chased by the Coyote and of course the Coyote fails to catch the Road Runner with every new attempt. The plans the Coyote comes up with are very funny. You see exactly where it will go wrong and you will not disappointed. Well, one time you are sort of disappointed, what you think will happen does not, but it makes the joke even funnier.<br /><br />If you like the Road Runner shorts you will love this one. The predictable gags work and the animation is great and pretty original at times.
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Telling the story wouldn't be the point at all, would it? Barnens ö, spelled almost like "booné aww" is the title for that brilliant novel of the late seventies that shocked a lot of people, including myself.<br /><br />Children's Island is the title, and what an island. In the book, Raine, the main character has The Guiness World Record Book as his own Bible. And he's keen on breaking new records himself. In particular the youngest person under water for three minutes.<br /><br />The story is, as most Swedish films and books of the time, deep, consciously provocative and awe inspiring. Bergman was beginning his final film and Cries and Whispers was barely out. expectations for any Swedish film were pretty high. They taught us then that great theatre, great actors, superb writers and gifted directors made a veritable team of perfection in cinema.<br /><br />All this said, Barnens Ö is a story of discovery. It is, too, a story of alienation: cities are alienating and living in one of them make us aliens to most of its residents. It is a story of revelations and sudden encounters with our own destiny. It is a film of overwhelming hope and desperation. Of feelings buried under layers and layers of isolation and insulation from a world that couldn't care less...<br /><br />This approach, in itself, is a pretty difficult way to weave a convincing narrative. Here, the masterful guidance of Kay Pollak on Ola Olsson's script of P C Jersilds novel, turns it not only in a possibility, but in one of those master pieces of cinema.<br /><br />I may disagree a bit with someone who said that this work was all but forgotten. It is not. Even as I write this in 2009, discussions on P C Jersild's story are conducted all over the world, and the film shown at many film schools and small theatres.<br /><br />Why? Waxing philosophical on all of it would be difficult and many have already done it scholarly through writing and lectures. The reason why Barnens Ö was and IS a special story is the cosy feeling you get from the start when you discover that everything is told through the eyes of a small child. And that's where it ends, too. Maybe it's a clinical view, as someone else pointed out. But deeply disturbing, moving and satisfying. The concept is deep: as long as we have no pubic hair, we still can live one more day as an angel. Afterwards, we'll become what Raine reflects as the colophon of his experiences: "Men are Pigs". He finds his fears when he's fearless. He finds love when the world is crumbling around him. He discovers a reason not to behave like the grown-ups because he refrains from committing crimes. He let go his inner purity and confidence in others without reservation, just to learn how rotten the soul of a man can be.<br /><br />Where love is expected, he finds hatred. Where compassion is needed, he finds suspicion and cold hearts. It's a film of metaphors. A film to think and to raise questions that are hard to ask but harder to answer.<br /><br />In the end, the satisfaction of witnessing such a superb work (that really upped the ante for any other Swedish film after) is a ride of joy and hope. Be aware that it is a film full with the dark side of our nature. But, alas!, a film of hope and deep joy. Reine will still be an Island in Stockholm, but there is the big hope of living today in full, even when we found our first signs of sexual maturity show.
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Artificial melodrama with a screenplay adapted by Mel Dinelli from his play "The Man" concerns a boarding-house proprietress taking in a troubled handyman who may be homicidal. Despite solid work from Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan (both trying their best), this tedious yarn isn't very inventive within its one primary set (which quickly becomes visually dull) and underpopulated cast of characters (there is however a smart pooch who senses the worst!). Hokey and humorless, with a stilted direction from Harry Horner (perhaps Lupino should have directed?). Where's all the suspense promised by the ads? Dinelli also served as a co-producer. *1/2 from ****
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I was invited to an early screening of the movie about four months before it was released. I had to watch the film and later fill out a packet on my thoughts. It was THE hardest thing to sit through on earth. The show just crawls by, and you quickly begin wishing you were dead. The thing is, there are two types of Mormon films. The good ones with actual good stories, and the crappy ones that just plain stink. Saints and Soldiers, now there is a good movie. But, with these wannabe-comedies, the writers and the actors just try too hard. Basically, they try to be funny when they are not. No wonder why there is such a small target audience for these films; they're filled with 'inside jokes' that aren't funny to begin with, and they just try to poke fun at average things. It's the story that makes the movie, and the stories for these movies are just weak. I bet you can guess what my packet looked like when I was told to fill it out after the movie. ;)
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I can't believe I rarely ever see this title mentioned by all you eighties horror freaks and I definitely won't be joining all my fellow reviewers here in saying that 'Bloody Birthday' is awful viewing. On the contrary, I enjoyed it very much and I was pleasantly surprised by the ingeniousness and surprise twists it offers. Don't just refer to this film as being 'another 80's slasher' because the victims here are rather unlikely and so are the killers. We're introduced to three cherubic-looking youngsters who were all born during a solar eclipse. At the moment they were delivered, planet Saturn was blocked by both the sun and the moon and, due to this, the kids are emotionless and seemly without conscience. This really starts to show around their tenth birthday as they go on a merciless killing spree.<br /><br />Granted, this stuff is incredibility far-fetched and even slightly offensive but, seriously, who cares? Unlike many other horror films from this period, it at least attempts to bring something original and imaginative. For once, the kids' acting is good and the entire film has a creepy atmosphere and grizzly music. The murders sequences are grim and tense, and it's always eerie to see them getting committed by angel-faced kids. I don't know who hired the 3 kids but they did a good job. Especially the girl and the kid with glasses are highly memorable. The bleak images of the heartless trio remind you of classic highlights, such as 'Village of the Damned', 'The Bad Seed' and 'Children of the Damned'. This film is nowhere near as memorable as these milestones but great fun and not one horror lover will regret watching this. <br /><br />Bloody Birthday was written and directed by Ed Hunt. Not particularly the greatest genius in cinema, but a pleasantly deranged fella who also brought us immensely entertaining cheesefests like 'The Brain' and 'Starship Invasions'. If all this isn't enough to convince you yet, Bloody Birthday has a lot of nudity. And not just any nudity, but a topless dance-act by MTV-VJ Julie Brown. Oh, and keep your eyes open for a completely redundant cameo by Joe Penny, later the star of TV-series 'Jake and the Fatman'. Check it out!!
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Pat Conroy's autobiographical book "The Water Is Wide" proves to be something of a Southern "Up The Down Staircase", yet despite the teacher-going-against-the-odds formula, "Conrack" really does move the audience with each little breakthrough and creative flash. These students (uneducated black kids on an island off South Carolina) are actually shown learning, and their collective wide-eyed innocence is remarkably sweet. The one actual actress in the bunch (Tina Andrews, an amazing performer) plays the "tough nut" Conrack has to crack, and once she falls under his charms, it all seems a breeze. But the story is not ready-made for a happy ending, and I wasn't prepared for the quiet simplicity of the finale. It's beautifully done. The script veers off course every now and then, but director Martin Ritt is very smart to always fall back on Jon Voight's solid presence. Scenes such as the one where he drives around in his van venting his frustrations over a loudspeaker don't add up to much, but the whole film is filled with episodes which spark emotion, and the actual ending is their payoff. **1/2 out of ****
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French director Jean Rollin isn't exactly known for great films, and this confusing mess is one of the reasons why. One of the most confusing things about this production is the title. For a director who is well known for directing erotic films about lesbian vampires; you would expect a film with the word 'nude' in the title to be a particularly bare-breasted one; but in fact, there's not a lot of nudity here at all. Instead of erotic lesbian vampires with no clothes on; we've got a cumbersome plot about a man who wants to unlock the secret to immortality, a young woman whose affliction might hold the key and a suicide cult, who don't get to do much. The film starts off promisingly with a sequence that sees a young girl carried off by a mysterious bunch of people in masks under the watchful eye of a young French man, who also happens to be the son of a man of importance. Through his investigation, he soon discovers that this woman is not just a normal lady, and as he delves deeper into the cult; he discovers that cannot be killed by bullets, drinks blood and can't go out in daylight...sounds like a clear cut case of vampirism to me.<br /><br />Jean Rollin keeps the fantasy atmosphere going throughout the film, but it fails to be interesting because the plot is so badly executed. It is possible to keep up with what's going on, but only because there's so many other films that follow similar plots to this one. The director seems to know that he's messed up the plotting too, as the climax is basically an excuse to explain the film to the audience. There is a twist thrown in at the end also; but the film would have been better without it. I guess this was Jean Rollin's attempt to be a little original, but it comes off as a ham-fisted attempt at such, rather than a logical continuation of the story. The cinematography is fairly neat, with lots of the plot taking place in suitably Gothic locations. The girls on board complete what is a pretty picture, and what Rollin's film lacks in logic and consistency, it somewhat makes up for in style. In the film's defence, it was made in 1969; which somewhat explains the lack of shocks but I can't recommend this movie as it doesn't have much about it that is worth taking note of.
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Not only was this film exhilarating, but it took me back down memory lane with its true to life sound track. These were the things we were saying, and doing...these were the songs we were listening to...all during this same time period, in the same era, way down south in Alabama. I may not have been one of the skateboard set, but I was definitely one of the observers, sitting on the curb with the old transistor radio, listening to Neil Young, watching those more brave than I ever hoped to be, as they put the spin on their surfboards on wheels, applying the tricks of Alva and Adams, hoping that maybe, just maybe for a brief moment, they'd adopt the Zephyr style. It just goes to show how much alike we all were during those wonderful days. ~ KLJ
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REnted this one accidentally, it was behind the movie box of what i thought i was renting, didn't find out until i got home, watched it anyways. Absolutely FANTASTIC! a wonderful movie, and one of my top three favorite of all time, i recommend it to Everyone!<br /><br />The story is enjoyable and easy to follow, this could have been easily messed up, but the actors and director do a great job of keeping it together.<br /><br />The actors themselves are fantastic, displaying wonderful character and doing a terrific job. <br /><br />Gotta find a copy somewhere...........
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A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short. The Boys arrive to sweep the chimneys at the home of Professor Noodle, a mad scientist who's just perfected his rejuvenation serum. Stan & Ollie proceed with their DIRTY WORK, spreading destruction inside the house and on the roof. Then the Professor wants to try out his new potion...<br /><br />A very funny little film. The ending is a bit abrupt, but much of the slapstick leading up to it is terrific. Especially good is Stan & Ollie's contest of wills at opposite ends of the chimney. That's Lucien Littlefield as the Professor.
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I was expecting a documentary that focused on the tobacco industry in North Carolina. Instead I watched a man who rues the fact that his great grandfather lost his tobacco empire to the Duke family. And this went on and on. If Mr. McElwee's family had prevailed over the Dukes I doubt that Mr. McElwee would have any problems with the death toll caused by tobacco-related diseases. I grew up near the area where Mr. McElwee's family began it tobacco business ; I expected more than McEwee's continual focus on his family. I learned very little about the history of tobacco in the NC economy and the ramifications to the state's economy by tighter regulation of tobacco. The countless references to the movie "Bright Leaves" are out of place - So what if Gary Cooper played Mr. McElwee's great grandfather? Does the viewer gain any understanding of the role of tobacco in the North Carolina economy by the showing of old film clips of a fictionalized film? I didn't.
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This movie was extremely boring. I only laughed a few times. I decided to rent it when I noticed William Shatner's name on the cover. It's all about this little kid who gets picked on all the time by his classmates. When wandering the streets looking for old ladies to assist, he meets a prostitute. She takes him to a club called the Playground, where he befriends several pimps. When mayor Tony Gold (Shatner) decides to take over the pimp business, Lil' Pimp must lay down for his homies.<br /><br />The animation isn't very good in this. It looks like it was made with Macromedia, which I'm sure it was. It doesn't suck, it's just the sort of choppy flash animation that people have gotten used to over recent years. The humor in this is not very good, I didn't think any of it was funny.
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Mat Spirogolou's (Toby Malone) family know he is a talented footballer, and are pleased when he secures an audition to join a big club. They hope that when he arrives in the city his cousin will look after him.<br /><br />But the cousins are like chalk and cheese: one a naive farm boy, the other a streetwise spendthrift who has managed to get mixed up with drug dealers and gangsters. Mat is unlikely to have a quiet evening in before his big day.<br /><br />Having missed his cousin George (Damien Robertson) on arrival in the city, Mat encounters further trouble when a young biker takes him for a ride in more ways than one.<br /><br />Toby Malone, probably better known for his work in theatre, puts in a commendable performance as the bucolic teenager. There are telltale signs of a low budget, but as with so many other low-budget movies there's more fun, seemingly more spontaneity, and more charm, than there is to be seen in the average Hollywood blockbuster.
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The only reason I'm giving this a 9 is that the other kid actors who played Tadashi's tormentors were not up to the job. I presume they were just kids who happened to be the right age and handy, but they were not well coached, and their scenes were a minor annoyance. <br /><br />I say not to judge this by U.S. standards because it's full of ambiguities and the kinds of equivocations that Japanese culture readily embraces, and is not beholden to the black-hat/ white-hat moral constraints U.S. kids' films are routinely subjected to. For example, there is a preciously funny moment when Tadashi's small band of yokai companions finds themselves let down and abandoned by the other yokai, and Shojo--the avuncular Kirin herald--does what many a stressed-out Japanese adult would do. Hint: this would not happen in a Disney film. This picture also has the best product placement for beer you will ever see in a kids' movie. <br /><br />Early on, there's a moment where a school teacher smacks a couple of bullies on the head with her attendance book. There was a TV commercial in Japan a couple years before this movie came out. It was a stop-motion clay animation about a kid who's depressed and playing guitar and singing the blues in his room. His mother yells at him from downstairs to shut up. Then, someone gives him a candy bar and he cheers up and sings a happy tune, but his mother comes in and tells him to shut up again and gives him a dope slap that leaves a dent in his forehead. I mention this commercial, because it was considered funny, and I didn't hear any objections to it while I was there. There is a lot more bloodshed and physical cruelty on screen in "The Great Yokai War" than one would find in a Disney movie. As a parent, if this were a U.S. film, I would be up in arms about such things, although not necessarily the moral lessons drawn at the end of the picture, which, of course, are also not black and white. Since it's a Japanese movie, I accept that those cultural norms allow for imagery that would not get past the standards and practices cops in a U.S. production. However, I'd probably be a little uneasy taking young kids to see it without giving them some sort of pre-show briefing and/or post-show debriefing about the violence and other off- color stuff, or I'd wait till they're older to show it to them.
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To be honest, I've never been to the Congo or even Africa, and after watching the made for television movie Heart of Darkness, I do not think I'd want to. The movie completely shames the book to the highest level possible. Though the book was not the best I have read, after watching the movie, I seemed to appreciate the book a hundred times more. Nicolas Roeg, the director of the movie, did a horrible job portraying Joseph Conrad's novella into a movie. I give Roeg some credit for trying to attempt the impossible by making the book into a movie, but this may not have been the job for him. The movie was unsuccessful to express any part of the novella other than the basics of the plot. The set and scenery also lacked the beauty Conrad portrayed of Africa in the book. In the book Marlow had seen so many great wonders, but in the movie you did not get that same experience. No, I'm not blaming everything on the director; the acting in the film was just terrible. All of the actors were dull and uninteresting. Throughout the whole movie I felt as if the actors were not putting forth any emotions, as if they were reading from the script the entire time. Tim Roth, who plays Marlow, did not portray Marlow's sense of adventure for his journey into the Congo well. Marlow's journey to find Kurtz was supposed to venturesome, but I didn't experience that in the movie. I would not recommend watching this movie, especially if you have read the book already. It does not come close to doing justice for Joseph Conrad's novella. Conrad's words capture the reader and take them on the journey with Marlow, on his quest to find Mr. Kurtz, where as the film did not. A great novella, but a very poor film. Heart of Darkness, the movie, is based on the book written by Joseph Conrad also called Heart of Darkness.
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| 1,900
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I purchased this movie at a car boot sale, so I was not expecting it to be a horror movie on the same level as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or The Hills Have Eyes (1977) but I thought that it would still be fairly enjoyable to watch. However, it proved to be not at all enjoyable, but instead the acting and the general movie was mock-able, such as the ways the the 'unsees killer' murders his victims and how all of the people killed just happen to be young blonde women. It was a stereotypical horror film. I say this because of the following reasons:<br /><br />1) Three blonde women in danger, the majority get killed. 2) One survives by crawling around in the dark while being chased by the killer. 3) Surprise surprise, help arrives in the form of a shotgun!<br /><br />By using three simple points, I have saved you two odd hours by summarising this poor excuse of a horror movie, so you are now lucky enough to not have to watch it.
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| 3,451
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It seems incredible that the same decade which brought Star Wars to the silvery screen disgorged such unutterable tripe as this and many other 'adventure' movies. I am reminded of the similarly lavish, but equally wretched 'Ashanti' outlined elsewhere.<br /><br />Whatever motivated A-list actors to sign-on for such wastes of celluloid is frankly beyond this writer. They must have been very, very desperate. To be perfectly candid, Roger Moore's appearance in any movie is the kiss of death. Although extremely handsome in his youth, his entire acting career has been predicated upon an ability to raise one eyebrow. Every emotion from A to B is conveyed by this simple stratagem. His were the dog-days of James Bond. Lee Marvin on the other hand has featured in some very worthy outings, perhaps most memorably 'Paint Your Wagon' and 'The Dirty Dozen'. He has a comic streak, but he is much better when he plays it straight.<br /><br />The excellent Ian Holm is a throwaway, hardly recognisable blacked-up as a mute African. Everyone else just turned up for their pay-cheques.<br /><br />The only plausible and watchable element is the German cruiser. It looks like a very large model. But it is believably massive and appears authentic - as do its crew. The rest isn't even hokum. The childish comedy jars with the brutality and violence in a story that meanders clumsily about, as if the script itself had had too many whiffs of Lee Marvin's gin. Here is a director who simply doesn't know where he's going. There are hints of 'The African Queen', a snatch from 'The Pride & The Passion', 'Gold', and one or two other rip-offs from movies who's titles don't come readily to mind.<br /><br />Strangely, I have seen it 3 times, each occasion it has been shown on television when I have been laid low with a cold or the flu. Perhaps that is influencing my judgement - but not much.<br /><br />Compare it with any Indiana Jones movie and you will see what I mean.<br /><br />I have given it two stars; one for the battleship and the other because it finally comes to an end, though heaven knows it takes long enough to do that.<br /><br />Time for another Lemsip, I think.
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| 4,643
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This is a pretty interesting experiment to watch. It's the first ever, still existing attempt, to unite sight with sound. It features two men dancing to a violin player (possibly William K.L. Dickson himself), who is standing next to an Edison recording cylinder, that is capturing the sound.<br /><br />The sound and images were not linked together as one yet. And it wasn't until recently that the sound and image have been added technically together. It's probably the reason why people hesitate to call this movie the first ever sound picture.<br /><br />The movie is made by William K.L. Dickson, a assistant to Thomas Edison himself who ordered him to come up with a way to unite pictures and sound. The answer he provided was the Kinetophone, a Kinetoscope (basicly a large wooden box with a peephole in it, so people could watch the moving images) with a cylinder phonograph inside of it, for the sound. This is the first, that we know off, surviving movie-experiments that feature this technique. All of the later movies using this same technique were shot as silent movies and sound effects were recorded later and separately. So the Kinephone was not an attempt to synchronize sound and images but more an attempt to have images accompanied by sound. In some cases, people could even choose from three sound cylinders, featuring 3 different orchestral performances to accompany the images. Only 45 Kinetophones were ever made so you could hardly call the Kinephone a success. Also after this experiment, focus went off to other cinema techniques, mainly regarding movie-projectors.<br /><br />So the experiment itself obviously did not become a success, also since it took over 30 more years before the first movies with sound were made and commercially released. They just couldn't yet technically synchronize and put the sound and the images together yet at the time and even if they could and techniques would had been available, it would had been a very expensive job to do so. It therefor really isn't the most influential or historically important movies out of cinematic history but it's very interesting to watch, how people constantly tried to improve the quality and techniques of early cinema and movie-making.<br /><br />8/10
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| 21,055
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Flatliners left quite a noticeable impression in my head. The story is quick paced and leaves you constantly absorbed and at many times quite tense. Its about five remarkable student doctors (notably Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon) among whom, one of them has devised the mechanism of remaining dead (or getting flat-lined)for a few seconds and then coming back to life.<br /><br />The procedure is quite 'complex' involving a plethora of medical knick-knacks - injections, electric blankets, oxygen masks and a variety of esoteric medical terms. I strongly suspect doctors coined all these words so that they never need to get layed off. But funnily they follow the KISS (Original version for engineers: Keep It Simple, stupid) (Extended version for doctors: Keep it Stupid, Simple) philosophy as well. At the risk of getting euthanized by some revenge-taking doctor reader, let me continue.<br /><br />So the first guy who gets flat-lined hopes to find the answers to life which philosophy and religion cannot convincingly answer. He hopes to get it answered (and become famous) through applied science. He flat-lines for around two minutes and then comes back into our world left quite shaken. During death, he has a vision of an incident, when he was young, which left the strongest impression on his life. He killed another boy when he was kid, by accident, and he still feels responsible for it.<br /><br />With the success of the first flat-liner, the others follow suit each of them extending their flat-line time further and further to test the limits of how long one can remain dead and experience life after death.<br /><br />Meanwhile monsters from the past and future, keep coming back to haunt them after their flat-line experience. The first flat-liner is haunted by a young kid who tortures him when he is alone. The second who camera-ed all the women he took to bed, sees television sets all over playing his videos. The third is haunted by a young girl who he teased in school. The fourth is haunted by her suicide-dead father, for whom she feels responsible.<br /><br />All of them are driven insane by these haunting and obsessions and think that the past seems to want to take revenge on them. The main focus on getting flat-lined is that your entire life passes through your eyes, at the moment of 'dying', whatever stage that is, and you are left mostly with the strongest impressions of life in your mind. Since they didn't die these strong impressions have somehow resurfaced and have become the focus of their lives.<br /><br />All of them somehow come to terms with (and extinguish) their past demons. All of them except the first one who realizes the only way he can move on through life is getting flat-lined AGAIN. During this flat-line session, he sees himself getting flat-lined the first time and also sees the boy he killed, trying to kill him this time round. The boy kills him this time for a few minutes and in doing so has sought revenge. For a few minutes in the movie one is left wondering if he gets to come back. Thankfully (because most of us like happy endings) the boy absolves him of his past and he comes back to life again.
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| 21,474
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This is an admirable attempt from first time filmmaker Ham Tran, offering little-glanced perspective dealing with Vietnam war victims struggling for liberation, but plays out as a glorified history special. With clunky, self-consciously informative dialog and sub-par acting, even a relatively impressive budget with attention to detail will not spring to life this sagging, albeit historically worthy, melodrama. Paying no mind to the often distracting disconnect with the actors to the reality of situations on screen, and you should be left with an informative, if somewhat impersonal educational lesson in Vietnamese post-war history.
| 0
| 5,154
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The critics are dumb. This movie is funny and smart. I loved this movie a lot. Why does everyone hate this movie so much. I wish people would love this movie more than they don't. Ben Stiller and Jack Black are true comedians and they put through a lot of work to make this movie. I don't see you people out there making movies like them. So people should just watch it and not comment it. I like this movie. It is OK through it all. There are parts were it get's dumb but at least they made it. Jerry Stiller would love this because this movie has the acting just like the show King Of Queens. But this is better than that. I can't believe this was rated so low.
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Business Executive is kidnapped, made to wander miles and miles in a woodland for days and days exchanging dialog with his kidnapper.And we have got to listen to all the nonsense......<br /><br />Meanwhile his snotty wife and family are at home with the FBI wondering what to do...... .....at no time does she seem concerned about the fate of her husband except when it comes to the ransom..... A "love story"? Give me a break!<br /><br />The plot is ludicrous. And almost every scene is filled with an air of expectation that something significant is going to happen but it never does.<br /><br />The result of the kidnapping is predictable and stupid, and it becomes even more silly when we learn the fate of the kidnapper.<br /><br />This is garbage:<br /><br />2 out of 10.
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For the first couple of seasons, I thought The Apprentice was a highly engaging and exciting show. The combination between reality TV and a 16 week job-interview was innovative, and the producers of the show managed to keep the show relevant and not too "out there".<br /><br />The new season 6 is nothing more than a big joke and it has absolutely nothing to do with business - at all. In the earlier seasons they used to put a lot more emphasis on the business-related tasks - now the focus is mostly in the boardroom where the contestants are expected to do EVERYTHING to keep them on the show (that means lying, trash-talking, backstabbing etc.). The boardroom can be entertaining to watch, but it's entertainment at it's low-point - Sometimes you wonder if you are watching a repeat of an old Jerry Springer episode. The tasks on the show are, at most, boring and mostly a showcase for the companies who are dumb enough to pay NBC for the publicity. And what is the deal about half of the contestants living in tents in season 6? That is just plain stupid and has nothing to do with business in real-life. <br /><br />I have absolutely NO respect for any of the contestants this season, they all seem like idiots to me. In earlier seasons at least some of the contestants had a bit of integrity, now it seems like the contestants would kill their own mother to keep them on the show. It also seems like Donald Trump's massive ego becomes bigger and bigger for every season that pass by and to be honest, I can't see why anyone with a common sense would want to work for him. His rationality in the boardroom mostly doesn't make any sense at all and sometimes it seems he just like to trash people for what it's worth.<br /><br />R.I.P The Apprentice. Please NBC, for God's sake, get the show off the air as soon as possible. It's just too embarrassing to watch. The Apprentice was once a great TV-show, but now it's just a big fat joke.
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| 504
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The Good:<br /><br />Effective color scheme. Good costumes. Top notch set production. Well detailed CGI buildings and vehicles.<br /><br />The Bad:<br /><br />Horrible mixture of actors with all CGI actors mixes Fifth Element with Final Fantasy. The CGI actors look even worse than video games from a few years ago. Flawed logic. A giant pyramid shows up and no one researches it, no one really even questions it? And there is no explanation as to why the god Horus was even cast out, nor was there any reason why he must do something as trivial as impregnate Jill?<br /><br />The Ugly:<br /><br />Awful script. So many unnecessary subplots with too many ideas that are not fully realized. The dialog was almost laughable at some points. Random characters and events that are not needed. Dull characters. Jill is supposed to be this mystery, but apparently she was just a mystery to the writer. There is nothing to her. She is uninteresting and boring to watch. She has no substance, no texture. Her character has no redeeming qualities. In fact, there is not one character in the entire film who has any purpose, any goals (besides the obvious one of Horus), any motivation. They are weak and ill-conceived. There are no stakes - the key to screen writing. Horus will not become immortal, but, big deal, he is a bad guy. One cannot even decipher whether Horus or Jill is the main character. That is the problem: devoting half the movie to each character means the writer never fully explores one character, never brings one to fruition. They are cardboard cut-outs who walk around and talk and pretty much do nothing but explore the fine set pieces. First time director pacing. Slow, slow, slow. I am still watching the movie as I write this. I cannot pay attention because it is boring. Everything is flat. Even the action is not interesting because it is short-lived and sometimes unnecessary.<br /><br />Overall:<br /><br />Not worth a watch. Threadbare story, sub-par character development, corny CGI does not save the nice set production.
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| 7,235
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I have not seen each and every one of Chan´s movies, but this is for sure the best one I have seen so far.<br /><br />The story in it self is nothing special really, so I won´t go deeper into that. What makes it special is the stunts, the fighting, the good acting, the warm sense of humor. The movie has a raging tempo all the way through and you are just stunned seeing it. All the cool stunts (of course made by Jackie himself)makes you want jump around in the couch and scream. It´s just awesome! Even my mom was impressed by this cool movie when she saw it.<br /><br />I know this Police Story can be a bit hard to get a hold of, at least it is here in Sweden. But I can assure you, it´s worth a try.
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Ed Wood is rolling over in his grave. He could have made a hundred cult classics for the price of this waste-hole. The worst script in memory (it makes "X-Men 3" sparkle like "Citizen Kane"); the most amateur directing; pre-K cinematography; the cheesiest "special effects" (I'm talking about "Friday The 13th" sequel territory); and throw in a pointless, revolting, deeply disturbed, maternity ward sequence. The lack of any talent or sensibility that put this garbage on-screen is astounding. That the "industry" might reward anyone involved in this celluloid cess-pool with future projects ought to be cause for serious alarm.
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| 4,858
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The premise may seem goofy, but since Murphy's character doesn't take it seriously, it helps ease the audience into this mix of mysticism and modern-day hard-boiled child abduction. Excellent cast, particularly Charles Dance and Charlotte Lewis, and Murphy is at the height of his 80's peak in comedy/action. There's also some great F/X, a very surreal dream sequence, and a fairly original plot. Often overlooked in the pantheon of Murphy flicks, but this one is worth a look.
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A group of friends receive word from a pal who has found gold in an old mind shaft nearby an ancient abandoned western town of Suttersville. Despite warnings by the local sheriff, Murphy(John Phillip Law), Old Man Prichard(Richard Lynch)a bedraggled hick who swindles tourists with supposed collectible Wanted posters, and kooky superstitious Aunt Nelly(Karen Black)to stay out of the mine due to it's notorious legend(..that an evil coal miner who sold his soul to devil and murdered a priest's(Jeff Conaway)daughter will return from the dead to kill those who remove the gold from his shaft), these people only see the green, not the blood red which could potentially ooze from their slain bodies. Finding the gold of Jeremiah Stone intact, they line their pockets and carrying cases, prepared for the bright futures that supposedly lie ahead. But, when you do not heed the warnings of those you consider backwoods loons, the obvious result will be gruesome death. Jeremiah Stone, as we see, is lying merely a skeleton near an alter containing skulls lined next to each other as the candles on top of them light up, the pickax underneath awaiting it's master, with dust particles returning him to a grotesque corpse with demonic exposition, his eyes aglow with wrath. This hapless group, hoping for some fun around the campfire with gold providing them with warm prospects for life ahead, will fall prey to the vengeful ghoul and his mean pickax. Another victim will meet the nasty end of a shovel thrown through the windshield of her vehicle, directing it's path straight into her neck. Another failed attempt to retreat has Stone causing a frightened victim to drive his car into a tree, his body engulfed in flames as he fails to escape without harm. Another, a local girl searching for her new friends, worried about their well being, receives the pickax buried into her stomach. Aunt Nelly informs those still alive about the Forty-Niner and the curse on those who raids his eternal stash..and pays the price for relating such information. Will anybody survive? Or, is the entire group fated to perish at the hands of the zombie miner?<br /><br />Make-up effects artist and monster creator, John Carl Buechler directs this supernatural slasher without worrying about logic or strong story-telling, opting instead to allow his zombie miner to destroy anyone and everyone who happens to be in his path. He provides just enough back story, and this is feeble at best, for the killer allowing special guest star, Karen Black(..oh how her career has sunken into the abyss)to explain to the viewer about him. The story given to us has the miner holding a priest's daughter hostage, threatening to execute her as the Suttersville authorities warn against such an action. Startling enough, Stone plants that pickax right into her back, with the opposition unloading their guns with little effect because he sold his soul to Satan. Retreating to his domain, the mine shaft, Stone sends out a warning against anyone even attempting to take what's his, the loot. Typical of most slashers in general, this bunch of twenty-somethings are your garden variety victims, with little development other than some banter and exchanging of words provides as filler until the undead maniac pops onto the scene to slaughter them. They are the usual group, from the city, trespassing unto unfamiliar territory, resurrecting an evil that should remain dormant. Like many of the later 80's slashers, a good deal of the violence is off-screen. What is on screen, the minimal gore, is rather mundanely presented and happens rather quickly. The ghoul make-up for the killer is only shown occasionally;he's mostly shrouded in darkness, the victims' horrified faces as he catches or chases after them are given more credence than the method of destruction. One thing's for certain, stunt men were set on fire many times. At least three times, a character is burned alive by either a lantern or flaming vehicle. Martin Cove has a minor cameo as Black's former husband, Caleb, now living with a much younger, and dense, honey. Vernon Wells(..of The Road Warrior and Commando fame)has the back story role of Jeremiah Stone as a human, still capturing the same type of menace he specializes in. John Phillip Law seems to be enjoying himself as the rather polite and hospitable sheriff, welcoming the outsiders to his neck of the woods. Buechler has quite an attractive cast of actresses, all wearing tight pants and smallish shirts, showing off their sleek and athletic figures, especially Elina Madison as easy-lay Roxann, always willing to remove her clothes for greedy jerk, Hayden(Rick Majeske). Stephen Wastell(The Ghosts of Edendale) is Axl, a rather clumsy foil, used as a butt of many jokes including his "dump in the woods" scene and current unemployment status.
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| 5,875
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I recently purchassed the very underrated Dreamcast and went off into town to find some games to use them on. I bought Soul Calibur (A classic) and then i stepped across the domain of Resident Evil Code Veronica. I have Resident Evil 1 & 2, and have played Res Evil 3 numerous occasions, and i have been impressed with all of them, especially no.1 which has to go down in history has a classic.<br /><br />But none of them 3 come anywhere near to the dreamcast attempt of Brilliant Gory Gameplay. If its just for the sake of buying a dreamcast for this game it is worth every moment of your time and effort, ive never been so enthralled over a computer game in the way this has enthralled me.<br /><br />Anyway, the story carrys on from the 2nd story in which Claire Redfield searches for her Brother (Chris - from the 1st story), who is presumed missing under the conspiracy of the dreaded umbrella corporation. Little is known about this corporation except the fact that you though you destroyed them 3 times in the previous storys.<br /><br />So aiding Claire, with the assistant of super brat Steve, u must unlock the truth of the real location of your brother. The 2nd CD enables you to control Chris, thats if you manage to get that far without running out of the room in fear.<br /><br />The control are very slick and the movement of the characters are magnificently realistic, when the character notices danger, he/she faces the direction it is coming from. PURE GENIUS!!<br /><br />Overall i gave this game 10/10 because it is simply the game of the year, game of the decade and the best game in the world full stop!!. Please purchase this game as soon as possible.
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I admit I have been a fan of Harrison Ford for many, many years now so it didn't surprise me that I enjoyed his performance here. But I also enjoyed the way the storyline developed and thought the casting was well done. I don't know whether I "buy into" Kristin Scott Thomas as a Congresswoman but she is a fine actress and a beautiful woman. I took notice of her in the first Mission Impossible. Although her part was small she stuck out on the screen.<br /><br />Here her and Ford play people whose spouses are killed in an airplane crash. They are seated together and this is where the plot takes off. Apparently Ford, a police detective in Wash D.C., discovers that his wife was having an affair. He further discovers that the affair was with the husband of a New England Congresswoman.<br /><br />The story takes on many subplots as Ford and Thomas find themselves drawn together by revelations of their marriages, the uncovering of deceipt, and the pure grief and anger over the loss of a loved one.<br /><br />I think the movie is worthwhile either renting or catching on cable.
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Let's face it, lot's of bad movies are made all the time. For those people who work in film, you have probably poured a lot of time and effort into many of these plot less wonders. Sometimes, and this is my opinion, it is the act of merely making the movie that is important to us. To tell a story, (no matter how simple and unrealistic). Also, the collaborative process is one key characteristic that is unique to film and theater. To put on a production of any caliber, requires the talents of a varying amount of people, depending on its scale, to bring its story to life. The most intriguing part of American Movie, however, is not the movie being filmed. It is the movie maker himself, as a character of his own life, which demands our attention. None of them serve as models of the filmmakers we know and have worked with. But, I will argue, they are archetypes of small parts of us which try to be a part of this cult activity of independent film-making. (Alright a very small part of us) These are the people who live under the rocks of their own lives and just so happen to be snared by the romance of cinema. This leads me to my next argument. American Movie captures the raw spirit of independent film-making. Bad stories told on (nowadays) digital film with sloppy effects and horrible performances- because this IS the best they can do with a budget of a couple thousand dollars rather than a studio budget of several million dollars a day. That is the difference between low low LOW end productions and studio productions. The independent filmmaker just wants to create a linear or even a nonlinear story to shoot as well as he can with the money he's investing in himself and the resources around him in order to see a finished product on his rundown TV. Rugged Individualism materializes in every art form. I find this film to be a brilliant document of truth for many filmmakers. And no, I'm not full of myself. Man, these people are hilarious. Their problems seem hilarious, their characteristics are hilarious. Best line of the movie: "It's alright!. . . It's okay!. . . There's something to live for!. . . Jesus told me so!!!" Said a million times by a funny old man. Hat's off to Tom Beach. Chicago Rules.
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| 18,012
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I saw this movie when it aired on Lifetime back in 2004. I have never seen it since then, but have thought of it often. It left such an impression on me I've been searching for it lately. I found it finally and realized it was made just for television. The movie is fabulous- filled with great writing and acting. William Petersen is perfect, as always. This movie left me speechless and in tears. It's a wonderful story of faith, love, and compassion. Does anybody know how I can obtain a copy of this movie for my home? Is that possible with television movies?? I really would love to see it again. This is a must-have among my collection!!
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| 17,912
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This movie is a lot like the movie Hostel, except with *BAD* acting and not much suspense. The gore elements are there, but you don't really feel anything for the characters, making the violence not very effective. Some parts are just strange... like forcing a snake down someones throat. What's up with that? Is that supposed to be scary or gory? It's just kind of stupid. As for torture, there really isn't any (except for the guy getting blow-torched in the beginning, which they don't show anyway). The main bad guy keeps saying "make them die slowly", yet the butcher kills them all very fast. The deaths are all relatively quick. Yes, I did watch the "unrated" version. So, overall, not the worst gore movie I've seen, but not at all good either. You won't miss anything if you skip this one.
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| 5,672
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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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It's hard to say which comes out on top, James Cagney's charm and energy or the mouth- opening excesses of Busby Berkeley's three grand showstoppers at the close. I give it a tie, with Footlight Parade one of the funniest and quickest of the early Thirties musicals. Although the movie clearly belongs to Cagney, Joan Blondell adds immeasurably to the good-natured story line. <br /><br />And what's the story line? It's about Chester Kent (Cagney) who produces musicals, and who now is just about out of business as the talkies take over. He starts doing Prologues, live musical entertainment offered on stage before a movie starts. He gets the idea to do bigger ones and more of them, moving them around the country. He's a ball of fire and ideas, and he needs all the ideas he can get to keep relentlessly producing these things. But a rival is spying on him and stealing his ideas; Nan Prescott (Blondell), his wise-cracking secretary, loves him but he's too busy too notice; an office girl in black-rimmed, round glasses (Ruby Keeler) wants a chance to dance; his wife turns up saying she didn't divorce him after all; a blonde gold-digger is setting her hooks in him; his partners are cheating him...my gosh, what's next? This may all sound like a lot to digest, but everything happens fast, with Cagney bouncing, strutting, striding, finger-snapping, barking orders and occasionally - until the big last number when he goes all out singing and dancing -- doing a step or two just to show how it's done. <br /><br />Instead of "Let's put on a show, gang" we have "We need to build three shows in three days, so lock the doors and let's start rehearsing." These three super Prologues are going to feature 40 chorines, spectacular effects and will mean a rich contract, with forty Kent units in deluxe movie houses...the whole Apollo movie house circuit! Exhaustion threatens, feet ache, but all those unbilled chorines in skimpy costumes (which include Ann Sothern and Dorothy Lamour; you can quickly spot Sothern but Lamour is more generic) stay the course, dancing their hearts out, giggling and chattering and looking remarkably unsweaty. <br /><br />And then the curtains go up as each Prologue is presented in separate movie houses, one after the other on the same night, with the owner of the Apollo circuit going to determine that night whether he'll save Chester's skin or not. <br /><br />First up is "Honeymoon Hotel" with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler in a 9 minute production number that features a lot of wholesome lasciviousness, with brides and grooms (some might even be married), bedrooms and beds, and doors with "Do not disturb" signs. <br /><br />Then on to the next theater and 11 minutes of "By a Waterfall" that probably had the Warner Brothers accountants worrying about bankruptcy. This number is so excessive -- dozens of swimming girls, trees, fountains, a huge grotto with waterslides, a giant pool -- you'd never think there was a Depression on. Berkeley pulls out all his tricks -- synchronization, human patterns, legs and arms doing all sorts of precision things -- and he does it in the water, with a lot of underwater photography looking up. The girls are sure game. They come up smiling with water in their eyes and still hit their marks. The whole thing must have been incredibly difficult and exhausting. Ruby Keeler, who has a couple of quick shots in the water, is the only one who looks a bit cautious. <br /><br />And finally, the smash finale...11 minutes of Cagney dancing and singing with Keeler to "Shanghai Lil," with all sorts of bar girls and their customers, unusual in that the races are mixed up. There's Cagney and Keeler dancing on the bar, dancing on a table, Cagney fighting. There are what looks like fifty or sixty marching marines, hupping back and forth, rifles tossed and caught. Then...this is true...a human picture forms of Franklin Roosevelt and the NRA eagle. This may be the only Hollywood musical production that has ever featured Roosevelt, a big federal agency and a bevy of sexy Chinese prostitutes. <br /><br />That's entertainment, folks. It's great! <br /><br />Of course, Chester's Prologues get the big contract and Nan gets Chester. The movie is full of juicy clichés that make us smile. Ruby Keeler is so endearing as she earnestly stomps out her taps with her arms flying that you want to help her along. Joan Blondell makes us forget about a lot of Hollywood females who might have been more beautiful but who had a lot less wit and personality. The movie, however, belongs to Cagney, who grabs and shakes it, and to Berkeley, a man for whom too much was never too much.
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The Ramones, whom I consider the founders of modern punk rock, lend their then-unique sounds to a terrifically twisted movie about a rowdy rock fan (P.J. Soles) who faces off against a merciless, joyless principal (Mary Woronov) for the right to rock.<br /><br />Featuring a soundtrack brimming with incredible music, RRHS is fascinating in concept and execution. It's chock full of riotous sight gags (like the mouse experiment), teenage spirit (probably my all-time favorite film opening), and bizarre, off-the-wall moments (the straitjacket scenes). If you're looking for a movie that seems to be made of pure fun on a molecular level, look no further. But if you're looking for a nice, dignified, dramatic epic, maybe you should look a wee bit further.<br /><br />"Hi everybody, I'm Riff Randell, and this is Rock & Roll High School!"
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(There are Spoilers) Driving down a lonely country road one rainy afternoon Joanna Kndall, Margaret Colin,is distracted for a brief moment and runs down a little girl riding a bicycle on the side of the roadway. Doing what she can to keep the injured youngster comfortable Joanna goes to call for help at a local service station. Before she can give her name Joanna hangs up the phone in order to get back to the girl and see if she's all right; it's then and there when the nightmare begins for Joanna. <br /><br />Heart-wrenching drama that can effect any one of us when you try to do the right thing but are influenced by the words and feelings of those around you. Getting back to the accident site Joanna sees it's cordoned off by the highway police. Before she can tell them what happened, and her involvement in it, Joanna starts to have second thought about turning herself in. <br /><br />What would at first have been a tragic accident turns out to be a hit-and-run with Joanna facing time behind bars, if caught. Even far worse she has to live with herself in what she did seeing almost every day the family of the little girl she ran down Kelly Corey, Dallas Deremer, who goes to the same school as her two daughters Mindy & Holly, Gretchen Esau & Kira Posey. Joanna's life starts to come apart as she tries to keep the truth from her friends and family, not to mention the Eaton Police, of what she was involved with in little Kelly's accident. <br /><br />You can easily see how the words of her friends and neighbors as well as her husband Doug, Drew Phillbury, about the hit and run, effected Joanna. It was those words that had Joanna unable to bring herself to admit what she did not just for her own concern but her two daughters and her husband as well. Feeling that they'll be shunned by the people that they knew as friends as well as neighbors for years. <br /><br />Joanna on the verge of losing her mind tries to implicate her friend Nancy Grayson, Sherry Hursey, in Kelly's hit-and-run accident by trying to plant her earing, that she lost in Joanna house, at the accident site. It's then that she realizes what she's doing and suddenly stops,keeping her from making an already bad situation even worse, not wanting to have Kelly's accident but also innocent Nancy's freedom and reputation on her conscience as well. <br /><br />Margraet Colin gives a stunning performance as the guilt ridden Joanna Kendall and you can really feel for her seeing how she's being eaten up inside and not knowing just what to do. Wanting at first to turn herself in to the police a series of miscalculations causes Joanna to become a fugitive from the law. When she eventually did Joanna became the most hated and despised person in Eaton. <br /><br />Not being herself, when still at large, Joanna's husband starts to feel that she's either back to smoking or even having an affair. Never in a million years would Doug have thought that Joanna was the person who ran down little Kelly and left her to die on that rain soaked road! The look on his face, with his mouth quivering, when he found out the truth said it all.<br /><br />The last few minutes of the movie took a lot out of you knowing what Joanna was going through, not to downplay the suffering of the injured Kelly Corey and her parents, and how she now has to face the music for what she did and have to live with it for the rest of her life.
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I am still shuddering at the thought of EVER seeing this movie again.<br /><br />I have seen action films, I have even liked quite a few of them, but this one goes over the top.<br /><br />Not only does it have the worst male actor ever (Sly Stallone) playing the lead role, but the plot of the movie is so stupid from the beginning (why not rob the money while the plane is on the ground, would be hell of a lot easier) that it requires a person with IQ less than his shoenumber to believe it. <br /><br />Furthermore, the plot has no real twists at all, a three year old kid could guess what comes next. It is a set of cliches (of action genre), with Sly performing even worse than his other movies (he was better even in Rambo III if you watch that movie as a comedy rather than action film). Now there is an actor who can't act A) surprised B) sad C) anything else than his basic face. <br /><br />I would still like to point out that this movie has two factors that might make some people like it. EXPLOSIONS are outstanding, but then... you can see better on the 4th of July. LANDSCAPES are magnificient, but then... there are documentaries about the Alps and Himalayas, so you can see better sights that way, rather than waste time on this flick.<br /><br />Go watch some other movie instead, there are hundreds, even thousands better action movies.
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This movie had great production values, good lighting, costumes, set, cinematography and acting. But someone, somewhere, took the script, and replaced all the dialogue with grade-school level barely literate writing. I felt my IQ dropping points any time any character spoke.<br /><br />Did they do this on purpose? Was this just an accident of Brain Dead Studio Executives? At this point, we don't know.<br /><br />All I know is, this movie was one great mistake from beginning to end. We don't even get to see how the Squad became cops, so instead of any character development, we get what feels like a bad TV-movie leftover from the 60's. Or whenever.<br /><br />Find the screenwriters, beat them with a sock full of quarters. Everyone else, nice work, but read your scripts next time.<br /><br />3/10
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