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I loved this movie when it first came out(but i was just 12 years old then - and I had forgotten this film existed until one day I found a used copy for sale at a gas station. I bought it and I couldn't wait to watch this film that had I loved as a kid, and then as I saw this film again many years later,it hit me.... Why in the world did I like this film as a Kid, watching it again as an adult I realized that this film is terrible. The saddest part about this film is that they had everything in place to make the greatest western ever and they blew it!!! the costumes are perfect,good actors, there are 2 music scores the orchestrail score is wonderful, and keeps with the classic spirit of the old timey Lone Ranger alive, the second score is a series of songs by country music artest like Merle Haggerd, and The Statler Brothers and those songs like "The Man in the Mask" are so bad that they are funny. This movies Strongest point is that it had a Briliant Storyline, and one of the best Western plots ever, and for a while its fun to watch as John Reid is nursed back to health,after he and his fellow Rangers are ambushed.Its fun to see him grow into his new life and Identity as the Lone Ranger,as he concels his identity, and goes on a revenge run to get the gang responsible for killing his brother and all his fellow rangers to whom he rode with. But unfortunatly,as good as the storyline is, its all ruined by Merle Haggard Narrating everything as you are watching it happen(for the love of God why did they do that?) between Merle Haggard's Narration and The Statler Brothers singing corny(stupid) songs like "Ride little cowboy" being playing in the backgound make this movie impossible to take serious. I would Love to see a really good producer take this same script and story and re-do this film right,because at the heart of this silly film is a great western.---I would descibe this film as a beautiful woman dress in the ugliest clothing. I give it 4 stars out of 10 --if your 12 years old, and dont know better, then you might love it. | 0 |
I give this movie an A+ for the sheer camp of it! As Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva wrote in the book on her mother, "If one sees The Garden of Allah in the context of high camp, it can be very amusing." And how! I laughed with delight at the overwrought score and the astoundingly, ridiculously, fantastically melodramatic dialogue. Viewers who've read the accounts of Boyer's toupee (it kept coming unstuck in the heat) will snicker every time it makes an appearance.<br /><br />Dietrich and Boyer rarely look at each other when giving their lines -- instead they gaze dreamily off into the distance, presumably so their faces can be photographed at the best angle and with the most advantageous light (if you're starring in a turkey might as well look good!). Dietrich's costumes are out of this world. As Riva notes in her book, Dietrich managed to steal Paramount's Travis Banton and have him design some of the most divine gowns, such as the chiffon beige dress & cape.<br /><br />I heartily agree with the other reviewers who rave about the Technicolor. It really is hard to believe the film was done in 1936 -- the color is fantastic.<br /><br />In short, if you watch The Garden of Allah with a lenient attitude and embrace its silliness, you can't help but enjoy it. | 1 |
I was not very excited to see this movie in the first place but a group of us decided to go see it on opening night. I felt like getting up and walking out and attempting to get my money back 20 minutes into this film. I felt that the movie was very boring, uninteresting, and not true in many aspects including "gaming". I tried my best not to fall asleep during the movie as i watched one of the worst horror films i have ever seen. The scary movie series was scarier than this movie. The sad attempt to pull in a Gothic girl, an overworked business man, and 15 year old geek, and some random guy into a video game that kills you is a bad plot to begin with. Then they try to throw in a very horrible love scene where the main character kisses another girl after saving her 10 minutes after his girlfriend was murdered. The theater was packed when the movie started by then end a little over half of the people had left before it was over. If you feel the need to waste only 1 hour and 16 minutes of your time seeing this movie ... prepare to feel cheated. | 0 |
One night I stumbled upon this on the satellite station Bravo.Initially out of curiosity i decided to watch it.To be perfectly honest i wasn't disappointed.The main character is beautiful and her body is shown off well.You would think her talents would be wasted as a executioner but apparently not after watching the whole film!My only real gripe is the acting of the supporting cast particularly the actor who plays Melnik.Christ its bad!The prison guard Hank is woeful too.All he ever does is get drunk and make ill attempted passes at his co-guard Wanda though fortunately for us the viewer and for Hank he gets down and dirty with Wanda near the end. The music used is pretty tense and creates the perfect atmosphere for the executions. This movie is well watching alone for the beautiful,talented and very sexy Jennifer Thomas | 1 |
I'll just be vague about my potential spoiling comments. There are enough canned plot elements in this movie that it's essentially pre-spoiled.<br /><br />This movie derives a few ideas from a Southern classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. I suppose maybe TKOM got its ideas from some source.... at any rate, after you watch this, you'll say, "Oh yeah, that is a ripoff".<br /><br />I think the truly entertaining thing about these McMovies is once you've identified a plot element, is to figure out whether they'll stick with the original, or try to twist it around. Not a lot of twists in this one. | 0 |
If you are looking for a sonic-boom-special-effects monster, click the BACK button on your browser.<br /><br />Deathtrap was written by Ira Levin (Sliver, The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby). It's a stage play, adapted for the screen. 95% of the movie takes place in the gorgeous home of playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine). He's the author of a fabulously successful Broadway play, but his last 4 efforts have flopped - horribly.<br /><br />An aspiring playwright, Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), who attended a play-writing workshop given by Sydney, has sent him a copy of the play he has written. Sydney tells his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon) the play is fabulous - a sure-fire hit. But is it good enough to die for? Time will tell.<br /><br />Clever dialog and numerous twists and turns in the plot keep this movie entertaining from beginning to end. The whole cast seems to have a good time. It's reminiscent of another fun Michael Caine mystery: Sleuth. Worth watching.<br /><br /> | 1 |
MINOR PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!<br /><br />How did such talented actors get involved in such mindless retreaded<br /><br />drivel? Robert DeNiro plays a Dumb Hollywood version of the standard<br /><br />violence prone tough cop (i.e., he beats up the bad guys and rolls his<br /><br />eyes at cops who prefer to stick by the book), and Eddie Murphy plays a<br /><br />not so tough cop who would rather be an actor (i.e., he screams out,<br /><br />"Freeze, police!" and has his "tough look" down pat). Naturally, they<br /><br />are partnered when Bobby's loose cannon tactics get him in hot water<br /><br />with the media and he is essentially blackmailed into starring in a<br /><br />"Cops"-like reality show. Take a breath, cuz that's as funny as it<br /><br />gets.<br /><br />No energy was put into the script - it feels like a pale retread of<br /><br />every copy buddy movie tossed into a blender with "15 Minutes" starring,<br /><br />yes, DeNiro himself as, pretty much the character he is playing here. <br /><br />The jokes fall flat, the action feels listless, and no one seems to be<br /><br />having a good time. It's dead on the screen.<br /><br />Please don't waste your time. Even if you have an overwheming affinity<br /><br />for one of the actors - avoid it and do them a favor. Becauze if this<br /><br />makes money, these kinda of scripts will be deeemed perfectly acceptable<br /><br />for actors of their quality.<br /><br />And to Mr. DeNiro. You used to make serious films. I remember them -<br /><br />they were good. You were nominated for awards for them - remember how<br /><br />much fun that was? Now after "Analyze This" (which was good), "Meet the<br /><br />Parents" (which was also good), and "The Adventures of Rocky and<br /><br />Bullwinkle" (which was NOT good), I think we need to see you parodying<br /><br />yourself less, and BEING yourself more. "Casino" feels like a long time<br /><br />ago. And no, I don't count "15 Minutes" as serious Bobby. Anyone who<br /><br />took that media satire seriously must get their weekly world news | 0 |
Surface was awesome, I don't know how many Mondays I survived at school just by thinking about the new episode of surface. I loved it, sometimes I had to call home and tell my mom to tape it for me. I was pretty upset when I heard it was cancelled, I mean jeez way to let us hang. So,they can have their new Tina fay comedy(you couldn't pay me to watch that, I think seeing the commercials made me dumber). I'm gonna miss my Monday night fix of Surface, even if my sister did make fun of me. although,kidnapped does look good and, they still have L&O: SVU (i think, i still have to check) (i only wrote the 2 lines above, because they said i needed ten lines). | 1 |
It's amazing to think that this movie came out only one year before Star Wars but seems a million years behind it in sophistication and special effects. Actually, the art direction and set design (nice Victorian space ship) aren't bad; it's the monster costumes that are the most laughable, resembling the "guy in a rubber suit" monsters from the LOST IN SPACE TV show. The evil cave-man makeup reminded me of some of the aliens from ancient TWILIGHT ZONE reruns.<br /><br />The script is stilted, and outside of Peter Cushing's comic relief the acting is pretty miserable too. This movie is only recommended if you really enjoy bad kitschy SF. And the music...yikes! A horrible 70s experiment with synthesizers that doesn't fit the time period of the film and which sounds like someone rambling with a Minimoog and a 2-track tape machine. | 0 |
This movie wasn't awful but it wasn't very good. I am a big fan Toni Collette I think she is a very beautiful and talented actress. The movie starts off about Robin Williams who is a writer and gets a book from a 14 year old kid. The book is great and he cant't believe a kid wrote it. Toni Collette plays the kids guardian who you don't know if this kid really exists or if she's making it all up. I am not gonna ruin the movie but I will say this the movie is not scary.<br /><br />The acting is pretty good and Toni Collette's performance was awesome as well as Robin Williams. <br /><br />The movie was a huge disappointment in my opinion I would wait for it to come to DVD. | 0 |
In THE FAN Robert De Niro plays Gil Renard . Or is it Travis Bickle ? or Rupert Pupkin ? Or Max Cady ? You see the problem with this type of role is that De Niro has played very very similar characters in TAXI DRIVER , THE KING OF COMEDY and CAPE FEAR and unfortunately the characters were better developed and had better scripts . I found it slightly difficult to believe that Renard would have started out as a frustrated obsessive sports fan into being an out and out psycho<br /><br />The character arc isn't the only problem with this script - It also lacks a character focus ( A problem I had with THE UNTOUCHABLES where De Niro should have been superb but ended up slightly flat ) , for several stretches of the movie I kept thinking that Bobby Rayburn was the main character then the story switches back to Renard . It also seems to have disappointed a lot of sports fans who seem to think this should have concentrated a bit more on baseball . I'm not sure if this was meant to appeal to baseball fans originally but again there are elements which hint it might have if the producers had made up their minds has to who and what the story should focus upon <br /><br />I will admit I was entertained by THE FAN ( Especially by the soundtrack ) but it is a very flawed film and it should be remembered that by the mid 1990s characters being stalked by nutters as in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE , UNLAWFUL ENTRY etc had run out of steam a long time ago | 0 |
OK, I read the director's comment about this movie (featured as the 'frontmost comment'), and I have to admit that I can identify with his position.<br /><br />Micheal, I hope your career recovered from this particular setback and you went on to other, better things. I've seen this movie in the MST3K form. Even with all the chopped continuity and snotty remarks being tossed out by the robots, I saw a potentially decent movie with an ambitious set of ideas trying to struggle out from under the limited budget and limited actors available to it. And this is one of those films ("Mitchell" is another) where the MST3K crew took a lot of cheap shots at the lead character even when she actually deserved better. You know they had some unfair fun at the actress' expense because it made for a livelier episode.<br /><br />IMO, the fact that the movie actually tried to be ABOUT something, and had a few decent, effective moments here and there, should keep it out of the 'Bottom 100' ("Tangents/Time Chasers" is another movie with a plot and a heart that doesn't deserve to be there either).<br /><br />But it is still not a very good movie. I don't blame the writer/lead actress for being who she is. It's just that her acting and writing skills needed a few more years to mature before she could pull off a vanity project such as this or carry a feature film. The writing and characterization is amateurish and slapdash, and the dialog is often barely up to ABC Afterschool Special standards. The cast sincerely gives it their best effort, and the acting in general is definitely head-and-shoulders above abortions like "Future War" or "Space Mutiny", but there aren't any really professional level performances here, with the exception of 'Big Joe' Estevez, who is hammy but suitably intense. I never saw the full original cut, but MST's sampling of "Soultaker" was representative enough to make these facts plain.<br /><br />Oh, and the film has Robert Z'Dar in it. That is, IMO, a real 'Kiss Of Death' for any movie that hopes to be taken seriously. Yes, he's big and scary looking in his role, but I just hate the guy as an actor. (In real life, I wish him well and hope he is financially comfortable).<br /><br />There were little things I liked about the film. For instance, the camaraderie between the male lead and his dead buddy added some warmth and humor to the movie and made it a lot more watchable. The idea of an elevator in the hospital that opened its doors to the Afterlife was an inspired way to invoke some spooky vibes without springing for special effects, and I respected whoever worked that into the script in attempt to keep the budget manageable. It didn't really work, but it might have with just a little more tweaking.<br /><br />So anyway, Mr. Rissi, better luck with your other projects - your involvement with this misfire wouldn't keep me from watching something else you did if the 'buzz' was good. And Ms. Miller has nothing to be ashamed of - she was young and ambitious, and the movie wasn't THAT bad. | 0 |
I wouldn't say this is a *bad* movie. Unfortunately for me, I get the feeling that the more you know about fencing, the worse it gets simply due to the fact that it becomes totally unrealistic. I've been fencing since i was 14 years old, and this movie portrays it very poorly. F. Murray Abraham is good (and appears to have some fencing background), but most of the other actors--especially the students--just seem to be lost. | 0 |
<br /><br />JURASSIC PARK III *___ Adventure <br /><br />Sam Nell (The Dish), William Macy (Happy Texas, Fargo), TZ(a Leoni (Family Man)<br /><br />A better title would be: ESCAPE FROM THE ISLAND OF REALLY MEAN DINOSAURS. But then no one would need to see the film. In this sequel, a rag-tag group pays a visit to the island of dinosaurs to rescue the teenage victim of a hang-gliding accident.<br /><br />ACCESS HOLLYWOOD reports JP3 began filming without a completed script. That explains why the film seems to have little or no purpose other than to demonstrate state-of-the-art special effects. Sure, there are a few clever scenes and some moderately funny bits, but no meaningful plot line to tie them together. The dinosaur puppets and animation in JP3 are very good to excellent, and more numerous than ever. But the overall film experience can not hold a candle to the original JURASSIC PARK or even JP2.<br /><br />JP3 is a mercifully short 90 minutes -- the last 10 minutes of which is credits. Even at that, I found myself frequently checking my wristwatch. The audience I saw it with left the theater in silence.<br /><br />A better bet: see the movie LEGALLY BLONDE.<br /><br />Dave | 0 |
When I was engaged, my fiance and I would frequent the adult bookstores. He would look for his favorite mags, and on occasion a video that caught the eye. As much as I enjoyed the one-on-one with him that the media caused, there was never a video that I really enjoyed. I had seen only one other movie way back when there was a satellite channel called XXX (it dealt with a private eye unraveling a case) that actually had a proper plot and was enjoyable. All the others were grunting and puffing and blowing and whatnot. There's only so many times you can watch a blonde bimbo faking 'it'.<br /><br />This movie caught my eye, and I migrated to it, allowing him to wander the shop. He noticed (how hard was it not too? grins. I was actually interested in something, lol(!) in the video section!) and came over, buying the slightly used copy for me. We took it home and I loved it. Here was a "Porno" with a plot. I wasn't sure it even classified as porno, but I use the word loosely.<br /><br />The librarian was a character I could identify with. Alice rejected her boyfriend's advances. She was not comfortable with her own sexuality and prudish in her comments. Bill went away, and she continued to check in books. The White Rabbit ran through the library (one book, if you notice closely, I believe (it's been ten years since I saw the movie) was by Lewis C.) and Alice, for that same reason that propels teenagers to run into the woods when a chainsaw wielding maniac is behind them rather than towards populated areas, follows. It's the best way to get the plot forward. Alice finds herself in Wonderland.<br /><br />I barely recall all the details, but I do remember clearly the swim in the lake, and how she was "dried" off. I liked how they got Humpty Dumpty Up again, the Mad Hatter's size of member being on his hat to wear it proudly, and the brother sister team of Dum and Dee (which did disturb me slightly--then again, they could have been husband wife, but I never could tell no matter how many times I watched it). The woman on the knight who told Alice go away and find your own Knight (What's a A Nice Girl Like You Doing on a Knight Like This?).<br /><br />The part that really caught my attention when I watched it about a year or so later was one of the cards (3 of hearts, I think) who resembled my ex's current wife exactly! We couldn't help but tease her about being in the movie! The King of Hearts was interesting, and the Queen was even more so. Due to the openness of the forum, I can't go into details, just say it was "orgy" based and we'll leave it at that!<br /><br />When we split up, I was allowed to take the video--he knew I liked it--but in the time since it's been lost in borrowing. Someday I'll find another copy.<br /><br />Btw, if anyone could tell me offlist what scene was cut from the Amazon version, I'd really appreciate it.<br /><br />I heartily recommend this movie for the over 18 crowd. It was soft, sweet, and really 70's, but I liked it immensely.<br /><br />***** out of 5. D. | 1 |
But George and Gracie's are not among them. The movie is fun and the pool table scene with WC Fields has to be among the funniest I have ever seen but Gracie and George are more irritating than comical in their roles, partly from script deficiency and partly from their interpretation. I gave it a 7 out of 10 for the rest of the cast, WC is a treasure of comedic timing and energy in this one. | 1 |
The Sensuous Nurse (1975) was a Italian sexual comedy that starred the one time Bond girl Ursula Andress. Man was she hot in this movie.. She was stacked and built like a *@#% brick house. Ursula was smoking hot in this movie. I have never seen a nurse's outfit that filled out before. <br /><br />Ms. Andress stars as a nurse who is hired to take care of a rich elderly man. Even one in the house seems to be knocking the boots. One night, the nurse decides to take the grandson's temperature and give some needed T.L.C. to her ancient client. The old man takes to his nurse and this angers the rest of the family. What kind of job did the family hire her out to do? Will the geezer fall for her car giver? How can she deal with the octogenarian crone and the rest of the family? To find out you need to find a copy of the SENSUOUS NURSE!! Italian but badly dubbed into English.<br /><br />Highly recommended. | 1 |
Kudos to the writers of this film for creating a supremely engaging drama. The curious character development is indicative of a nuanced and well schooled writing team. The audience member cannot but help but to feel that (s)he must make wrenching emotional decisions pitting the cerebral against the libidinal. The viewer has an opportunity to develop the character herself, though her predictions are rarely validated.<br /><br />Credit is also due to the filmmakers for breathing life into the setting. The wood-shop is transformed into a unique persona as the film unfolds, with its own traits, faults, a variety of highly charged relationships, and of course a fate inexorably tied to that of the other principals.<br /><br />Make sure to catch this one at your local art-house. | 1 |
As an avid fan of Christian film, and a person trying to maintain a keen eye for improvements in the realm of Christian film-making, I was excited to get a chance to see this film. I was ready to see something that would make a new mark in quality movies. I was left disappointed.<br /><br />The beginning scene is excellent, though a slight rip-off of Leon - The Professional on the angle, it showcases some great cinematography in the early goings... everything after that was pretty much downhill.<br /><br />I was barely able to sit through this one, I was tempted multiple times just to shut it off.<br /><br />The acting, while quite possibly sincere, was incredibly awful. But then again, the heart of the problem was the screenplay itself. The dialog was worse than anything I have ever seen, and even my amateurish screenplay "The Awakening" (soon to be an independent film) looked like a Hitchcock-thriller next to this. (Which isn't saying much.) The bright side of this film is that it was filmed on Sony's brand new High-Definition 900 cameras shooting in 24P. This film and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones were the first movies ever to use these new technology cameras that year. Unfortunately, the camera's performance seemed to be wasted with bad lighting, poor angles, and awkward handling.<br /><br />The only good feeling I got coming out of watching this movie was how good my rookie indie film is going to look next to it. ; ) 4/10 | 0 |
Once the slow beginning gets underway, the film kicks off and really becomes quite a lot of fun in many unexpected ways. The ensemble cast is really good, with Heather Graham perhaps being the weakest of them. Casey Affleck as her brother is really good and extremely likeable , if you catch my drift.<br /><br />I highly recommend the film if you just want to have to good hours. Teenagers should really enjoy this film - it says a lot about relationships. | 1 |
This movie was advertised on radio, television, magazines, etc. Almost every hour or every issue. So when we went to the Kinnepolis multiplex our expectations were very high. But oh boy, how sad this movie is! It is a movie in Hollywood style about a movie in a movie. Shades shows so clear we aren't ready to produce 'big Hollywood movies'. I am not a movie critic, but I think a good movie starts with a good script. And the script is a nightmare. Like my subject line says, it is nothing, and then looped. You could just stare to the television as well, without really seeing anything. That was the feeling we've got when we saw Shades. Shades is a BAD PRODUCTION!!! | 0 |
Uh, oh! I just said the this "classic" film has a plot that STINKS! Well, it's true,...so get over it! This film was a vanity project for Joseph P. Kennedy in which his mistress starred and money flowed to make her an even bigger star. Today, only a fragmentary copy exists--one that was retored a few years back. However, even if the film had been in perfect shape, it STILL would have stunk for many reasons. And, without further ado, here are some of my reasons: <br /><br />First, Gloria Swanson, aged 31 plays a girl in a convent school--perhaps aged 16 or 18! Come on--she looks old enough to be the mother of many of the kids.<br /><br />Second, the movie all hinges on the stupid concept of "love at first sight". While some people believe it this, it is ridiculous to believe that a prince would throw away EVERYTHING on a woman he didn't even know! What a lot of hooey! <br /><br />Third, the movie is histrionic and the plot is nuts! After leaving the school, Kelly goes off to East Africa and then becomes "Queen of the Whores"--and later, after the evil queen back in Europe dies (that's convenient), the prince is able to get out of prison, actually finds Kelly and marries her and she then becomes queen of a real honest-to-goodness country! Gimme a break--this is RIDICULOUS, even in the days of silent film this plot was a groaner!<br /><br />So, in summary, this is a poor film with great production values (mistresses need to LOOK good) that is parading around as a classic! There are so many BETTER silent films out there--see them first and avoid this tripe. | 0 |
I've seen both movies and I saw without a doubt the re-make is the best, I know a lot of people would disagree those who have become fans of the original will most probably not like this re-make, but i thought it was well thought out and definitely scary, It was so good I'm going to see it again tonight, the original creeped me out because they kill the children, i mean who does that in movies anyway....but in this one the children have at least half a chance...The only bad part about this movie is when the babysitter (Jill) Walks towards the sounds she hears and runs outside into the bushes to check for someone, clearly no one in their right mind would do that whilst babysitting, so that is the only thing i found wrong with the movie, and even so they probably had to put that in there to build suspense, i don't want to give too much away for all those who have not seen it, i recommend you do instead of listening to all these people saying its crap and worse than the original, it would be a better movie for teenagers, as it displays things that most of us are scared of, but when i was in the movies there were at least 10 adults over the age of 70 in there watching it, and they enjoyed it, if they enjoyed it i think you will to! I give it a 9 out of 10! | 1 |
I saw this video at a friends house, and it was the lamest thing i have seen ever. i lost a lot of the little respect i had for NIN. very boring, and the music is as equally interesting. dont waste your time unless you are a hardcore NIN "fan" | 0 |
i didn't even bother finishing the movie because i was so bored i thought i was going to pass out i was watching it in the movie theaters and me and my friends just got tired so we got up and left to another movie if i ever have to sit through 2 min. of that movie again i think I'm going to shoot myself...and i do know the whole entire movie because my friend told me what happened at the end and i wasn't surprised at all i mean who didn't know she was going to do the right thing and let him be happy i mean for real you would have to be a complete idiot not to know that. i know i didn't miss anything and if somebody ask's me to see that movie i would say "over my dead body". | 0 |
I saw Bandit Queen in 2005, over a decade after it was made amidst widespread controversy in India. The language, the stark treatment and the natural acting (by a relatively unknown cast for that time) might have been even more shocking at that time for an Indian populace more familiar with fantasy cinema. The film, the cast, and Shekhar Kapoor, deserve accolades for the breakthrough effort.<br /><br />The plot is not very different from a typical revenge drama made in various forms in India. In fact, there have been several fictional accounts of this particular story itself. The reason why this stands out is that it's supposed to be a first person account of someone who actually went through all this, and a lot else that doesn't find place on the screen, and survived to tell the tale. Survived long enough to see her story made into a movie at least. Phoolan Devi didn't live very long after being released from prison in 1994.<br /><br />The film scores on several counts. The cinematography is brilliant. The music is apt. The cast, many of whom became more familiar names later, is very good. But the screenplay is patchy. Things move too fast and in jerks at times. It's understandable though, because there are just too many strands that need to be tied together to make it all cohesive. Or maybe I felt that because I have read Mala Sen's book, which is a more detailed and better, though obviously not as shocking as the visual, account of Phoolan Devi's travails, and which is purported to be one of the main sources for the film.<br /><br />There are some factual ambiguities too. According to Phoolan Devi, she wasn't present when the Behmai massacre took place, and despite claiming to be the dictated account of Phoolan herself, she is shown to participate, and in fact initiate, the massacre. Then the final scene where Phoolan surrenders shows her touching the feet of the Chief Minister, while in reality she had surrendered to a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. Symbolic value only, but shows that Phoolan didn't want to show servitude to a living, ordinary person. It would have been nice to show the Chief Minister to have some resemblance to Arjun Singh, who many remember was the CM of Madhya Pradesh then.<br /><br />But these are small chinks in this eminently well-made movie, a rare gem to come out from the mainstream Indian film industry, made by a man who before this was known best for the ultimate masala movie of the late 80s - Mr India. | 1 |
I remember when this came out it was the first kung fu film ever seen around our way and we were all excited about seeing it for sure .Although the action was mediocre at best it gave us our first taste of kung fu and our first taste of bad dubbing as well as bad film making or more precisely the way Chinese people were making films at the time . They were admittedly inferior wlthout question but there was entertainment value here and that caught on for sure . The kung fu craze had begun and Bruce Lee and ''The Chinese Connection'' would soon follow either that or ''The Chinese Boxer'' with Jimmy Wang Yu . In any case this film was chosen to lead the way . | 0 |
By convincing the Prime Minister to back the totally unsuitable Ali G as a candidate for Staines in the local elections, nasty chancellor David Carlton (Charles Dance) hopes to discredit his party's current leader, thus enabling him to seize power. To his surprise, however, the plan backfires, Ali is embraced by the nation, and Carlton is forced to find other ways to try and guarantee his political future.<br /><br />Puerile, crude, misogynistic, and always outrageous: Ali G Indahouse, the big-screen debut outing for Sascha Baron Cohen's middle-class Berkshire gangsta, is all of these things and much moremeaning it's my kind of film!!<br /><br />Obviously, there are those who are simply not going to get the joke, and there will definitely be people who find risqué jokes about oral sex, homosexuality, recreational drug use, hardcore pornography, and The Queen's nether regions offensive in the extreme (needless to say, they should stay well away!), but if you find such juvenile humour side-splittingly hilarious, are a fan of Baron Cohen in general, or just want to see hottie Rhona Mitra in her underwear (and you shud, cuz she iz well fit!), then I fully recommend spending an hour and a half in the company of Ali G and the West Staines Massive.<br /><br />They iz wicked! | 1 |
Let me see...I've seen every film Lou Ferrigno has made. I've seen Batman & Robin...twice. I've memorized the dances in Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo...I've watched unfinished Blade Runner rip-off student films...yet this film is the most painful thing I've ever seen.<br /><br />This was the first movie for the "straight to video market." So you can thank Blood Cult for all of those mysterious Michael Dudikoff films at your local Blockbuster. You should know that this isn't even high quality video. This is consumer grade. This is you father's video camera he never uses. This is what you have to look at for 90 minutes.<br /><br />I won't bore you with plot details since I'm getting sleepy just thinking about it, but I will tell you that watching this movie is a form of torture. I only watch this movie when I am angry at myself. So I recommend this film if you are suicidal, or if you are up for a mighty challenge.<br /><br />If you happen to rent this film (God have mercy) you will know what you are in for from the first 10 minutes. This is when you are hit by the usual horror film intro. You know the drill. There's a lot of suspense and build up before some girl dies. Yes, you've seen it before, but not like this. This is the most boring intro I've ever seen. I honestly believe that you could get a camera off ebay for ten dollars, grab the bum that most smells like gin and candy, and tell him to film your mom cooking dinner and it would be more interesting than this intro. It bored me to tears. I cried like a baby.<br /><br />Another one of the things that makes this film so unbelievably painful is its actors. Yes, I've seen bad acting. TRUST ME. I've seen 4th grade productions of Oliver Twist with more realistic dialog. The lead actor makes me ill. The "supporting" actress is a train-wreck of a human.<br /><br />I will not even comment on the boyfriend. True horror.<br /><br />So, rent this movie if you can find it. You'll never be more depressed that you spent 3 dollars on anything else. | 0 |
Man would expect that a movie shot with an approx. budget of 300,000,000 U$D should at least entertain you for the time you are spending in the cinema actally watching it. "Matrix Reloaded" proves this assumption wrong.<br /><br />"The Matrix" worked out better, despite having apparent holes concerning logic of the story. At least nobody could explain to me why beating up a bot (aka agent) inside a simulation (aka martix) would harm the responsible computer program in any way...<br /><br />Unfortunately, the Wachowski brothers made excactly this "agent-bashing" the main thing in "Matrix Reloaded": it's a beat 'em up o-rama. This fighting scenes may be work out sufficient (or even cool) in a 5 sec. trailer, but prolonged for several minutes, apparently being faked, choreographed poorly and repeated over and over again it is nothing more than boring. Despite seeing the promised spectecular stunts there is nothing more than simple low-quality, unimaginative bashing already seen (or better not) in eg. Van Damme 'movies'. The difference of post-production (etherything is 5 times faster, the camera floats around a lot and freezes on certain scenes, and this is repeated for at least 5min) doesn't help here, all this has nothing to do with the very meaning of "martial arts". Beside these 'fights', all actors do refuse to do what they are payed for: acting.<br /><br />What's up besides the fighting scenes? Few except Hollywood routine. This oh-so-multicultural bunch of hippies which sucked in "Waterworld" are recycled as citizen of "Zion" (mans last city on earth), and on the order of Morpheus they start dancing, 'cause this is a good opportunity to show a lot of barely covered tits and butts. The oh-so-popular clichée of the frog aka frenchmen talking with this "je ne sais quoi" dumb accent, who wastes his fortune because of a "liason d'amour" is bravely served. Following this (and unwanted funny) is the fight between Neo and the sinister followers of 'the frog', since it takes place in an Erroy Flynn like enterieur, luckily featuring a lot of mideaval weapons for decoration. For Neo posing with the hellebarde, just add 2 stairs and a lot of statues (for being destructed, thrown over evil guys and the like) and you get 5 more senseless, boring min. of this junk.<br /><br />Whats left to expect? The usual merchandising hell. And "revolutions" which will happen or not - certainly without me. | 0 |
James Cagney plays Richard Gargan (nicknamed "Patsy"!), a former gangster now overseeing the surly lads as the new superintendent of a state-run reform school. Tepid genre entry wherein Cagney's the whole show; he dominates the picture, but only because there's not much else of interest going on. Jimmy gives just what's expected from his hard-boiled persona, which can be satisfying if you're in for a quick fix. The direction (by Archie Mayo, though Michael Curtiz was said to have helped) is straightforward without being particularly gripping, although the narrative slips in the second-half, grinding the film down to a messy conclusion (with even Cagney's Patsy getting lost in the shuffle). Remade in 1938 as "Crime School" and again in 1939 as "Hell's Kitchen". ** from **** | 0 |
What a despairing film. Dress actors in furry rags, place in suburban wasteland, set cameras rolling and hope for the best. One can only imagine e the thanks the cast gave when their characters were killed off by sockpuppets, thus sparing them further humiliation in this dullfest. This rivals Monster a go-go as the best cure for insomnia ever made. Oh God - how can I fill up 10 lines explaining how overwhelmingly bored everybody looks in this movie? Whiney crappy plastic bungling robot who annoys everybody both on and off screen, Giant spider reduced to a single giant hairy leg pulled by string, actors desperately trying not to look at the camera while mumbling off dialogs... | 0 |
A friend and I went through a phase some (alot of) years ago of selecting the crappest horror films in the video shop for an evening's entertainment. For some reason, I ended up buying this one (probably v. v. cheap).<br /><br />The cheap synth soundtrack is a classic of its time and genre. There's also a few very amusing scenes. Among them is a scene where a man's being attacked and defends himself with a number of unlikely objects, it made me laugh at the time (doesn't seem quite so funny in retrospect but there you go).<br /><br />Apart from that it's total crap, mind you. But probably worth a watch if you like films like "Chopping Mall". Yes, I've seen that too. | 0 |
Ken Harrison, a young sculptor in his early thirties, is seriously injured in a road accident. End of story.<br /><br />"End of story", that is, in the sense of "end of any physical action". Not in the sense of "end of the film". Ken's life is saved, but he is paralysed from the neck down. When he discovers that he is unlikely ever to regain the use of his limbs he decides that he wants to die and asks the doctors to end the medical treatment which is keeping him alive. The rest of the film is essentially one long debate about the rights and wrongs of euthanasia and the right to die.<br /><br />Ken's main antagonist in this debate is his doctor, Michael Emerson. Although the case against euthanasia is often presented in religious terms, here it is presented in purely secular ones. If Dr Emerson has any deep religious convictions, these are never expressed in the film. He believes passionately, however, that death is an enemy against which it is his duty as a doctor to fight; to allow a patient effectively to take his own life would represent a surrender to that enemy and a dereliction of that duty. Ken therefore finds himself in a "Catch-22" situation. He must be able to show that he is sane and rational enough to make the decision to end his life. Emerson, however, considers that a wish to die is in itself evidence of insanity and irrationality. Ken's dilemma can only be solved by hiring a lawyer to sue the hospital.<br /><br />Richard Dreyfuss as Ken and John Cassavetes as Dr Emerson put across their respective points of view skilfully and with sincerity, but this cannot hide the fact that "Whose Life is it Anyway?" simply does not work as a film. At one time filmed versions of stage plays were done in a similar way to theatrical productions but by the seventies and eighties this was often seen as unsatisfactory because of the differences between the two media. When plays were filmed, therefore, the general tendency was to "open them up" by filming on location as well as on studio sets, by taking liberties with the playwright's text, often making significant changes to the plot and even introducing extra characters.<br /><br />I have never seen Brian Clarke's play, but I suspect that this is a story that would work better in the theatre than in the cinema. There is very little physical action; most of the action consists of lengthy discussions around a hospital bed in which the main character lies paralysed. Such a plot does not lend itself to the "opening up" device at all, and the resulting film is very static, dominated by talk at the expense of action. Although it is well written and there is some good acting, I am surprised that a film was ever made of such an uncinematic subject. 4/10 | 0 |
Many people have the irritating habit of dying before completing a vital message, thus confusing the hero, not to mention the audience...<br /><br />Dr. Ben McKenna (James Stewart) and his wife Jo, a former musical star (Doris Day) are vacationing in Morocco with their son, Hank (Christopher Olsen), when they meet Mr. and Mrs. Drayton, a British couple (Brenda de Banzie and Bernard Miles). They are also befriended by a charming Frenchman, Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin), who invites them to dinner but then cancels at the last minute...<br /><br />The MacKennas go to a restaurant and end up having their meal with the Draytons, when they spot Louis Bernard... <br /><br />The next day in the market place, they are caught in an assassination intrigue... While they are wandering in the local market, the crowds suddenly scatter to reveal an Arab fleeing from his pursuers... Dr. McKenna stands amazed as the Arab falls into his arms, a knife sticking out of his back... <br /><br />Gulping his last breath, the dying man mutters some words and collapses... Dr. McKenna is completely taken aback when the Arab's hood falls from his head and he is revealed as Bernard in disguise... McKenna is left knowing too little, but as far as the assassins are concerned, too much...<br /><br />To prevent Dr. McKenna from revealing what he knows, the conspirators kidnap his son as a hostage... The film is primarily concerned with the dilemma of kidnappinghow to get the little boy back safely... The subplot about the assassination is just the setup...<br /><br />The film is a breathless escapade... The death of Bernard comes suddenly and points out that death comes when we least expect it... <br /><br />Stewart is charged with emotion as the Midwestern doctor, accidentally involved in political intrigue... His perceptive facial expressions and indignant delivery made him convincingly humana person we could easily identify with... It is his temperament that actually sets the pace for the entire film... <br /><br />By 1956, the lovely Doris Day had won increasing esteem as an actress as well as a singer... She had been particularly strong opposite James Cagney in the Ruth Etting's biopic, 'Love Me or Leave Me,' but she was still unsure of her basic Thespian talents...<br /><br />The casting of character actor Reggie Malder as the assassin, is brilliant... The man looks like a menace and his effusive portrayal radiates evil... | 1 |
-Facts (I): "Mar Adentro" relates the well-known (at least in Spain) story of Ramón Sampedro, a Galician quadriplegic who killed himself (helped by some friends) after 28 years prostrated by his condition. Judges had denied several times his petitions of active euthanasia.<br /><br />-Facts (II): "Mar adentro" becomes THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR in Spain. Everyone talks about it: politicians, singers, ordinary people... Everyone likes it, even the critics' opinions are unanimous. The film wins a lot of prizes (Golden Globe, Oscar, Goya...) and annoys catholic community and life-lovers quadriplegics. A star is born.<br /><br />-Facts (III): The intensity and the quality of the actors in "Mar Adentro" are just amazing, and this makes mi wonder how come we have to watch the same bad young actors in the most of Spanish latest movies. I don't know if Javier Bardem is a great actor or a great imitator (there's quite a difference between one thing or the other); anyway, his job is just impressive, as well as Lola Dueñas', Belén Rueda's, or the job of all the guest starrings. This is (the actors selection) the strong point in Amenábar's movie.<br /><br />-Facts (IV): Alejandro Amenábar learned his lesson there at the Cinema School, there's no doubt about it: he's got a privileged brain. He takes good control of each and every one of the technical aspects, he knows what the audiences want, he knows how to touch the right chord, even if that turns him into such a demagogue (just like Spielberg is -one of Amenábar's idols-).<br /><br />-Facts (and V): If you criticize a movie such as "Mar Adentro" it will seem like you have any kind of trouble with the moral issue the story tells about. There's a trap in this kind of pictures: you have to differentiate between the movie itself and the moral concepts. If you don't like "Schindler's List" that does not mean that you agree with Hitler's philosophy (or do you?). So, for me, it is a good film and an extraordinary story (since it is a real story that makes it much more extraordinary). Grandiloquent, self-kind, and everything but neutral (no matter what Amenábar or Bardem have said about it: those characters that are not in favor of euthanasia come to no good at all!!). 50 % Hard / 50% way too sentimental.<br /><br />-Epilogue: "Mar Adentro" wouldn't be by no mean in my ranking of the best 50's Spanish movies of all time. Nobody has special merits in the story but Ramon Sampedro himself. He IS the movie. Now, Alejandro Amenábar is gonna become the more international Spanish director ever, maybe he'll go to live to Hollywood; but some of us would like to watch him filming a simple story, without bit final twists, without living dead nor dying alive... "The Others" is still his best movie.<br /><br />*My rate: 7/10 | 1 |
I would like to tell you just a few things before considering seeing this movie. If at one point or another you thought you've seen good camera work, be prepared to be amazed by this movie. For the record, this movie was made in 1957 in Russia, but the technique used here is probably something that we've seen much later in the western world...about 20 years later. The level of emotions through the film varies quite a lot: happiness -love-war- despair-joy, but in the end you remain with something quite unique: the joy of seeing one masterpiece of filmmaking. The young directors from our time should study more this kind of movies and maybe they will be able to create something similar..even though I think movies like this are very hard to come by... If you've seen "I am Cuba" , then this movie would appeal to you very much, but if not, be prepared for a unique experience. The Russian directors have something in common: very small budgets, great actors, and a joy of creating art...and yes, they are able to create more masterpieces than all the western world together. I am not a big fan of Russia, actually I hate everything that's communist, but the film making in that part of the world, manages to create such feelings that are hard to describe.<br /><br />Enjoy it.<br /><br /> | 1 |
This movie had me going. The title was perhaps the greatest idea that I heard. I thought it was an independent movie about a zombie outbreak and their quest to take over the US and a group of lone survivors, band together, and plan to take out the zombies. DEAD WRONG! It's about a psycho cop with a weakness for killing his female arrests gets what's coming to him when a pack of zombie women rise from their graves in order to get proper revenge. As you can see there is nothing about the nation nor a county involved. Where to begin with the severity this cinematic disaster caused our nation.<br /><br />First off, the zombie women look like Victoria Secret models with dark eyeliner and a pale face. What are zombies but mindless, debatable intelligent, cannibalistic killing machines that eat as a result of their primitive most basic needs? These zombie women walk like streetwalkers and runway models, they talk as if they are in a poor film noir movie and not do they act like real zombies. Sure the eating and killing is there, but where is the mindlessness and the horrible disfigurement? Although it is a very interesting concept and perhaps a great satire on the zombie genre, it makes fun of that genre and asks the question, "why can't zombies be beautiful vixen killing machines?" I would say that this movie would be considered a really bad indie movie that was produced and made by garage junkies. I would not recommend this movie to anybody that loves zombie genres too much, it's an insult and as for scary
not even. | 0 |
The four signs on the road say "If You're Looking For Fun.....You Don't Need A Reason....All You Need Is A Gun....It's Rabbit Season!"<br /><br />In the woods, we see hundreds of "Rabbit Season" signs posted on every tree. We see more and more signs pointing exactly to Bugs Bunny's hole. Who's putting up all these signs? Daffy Duck!<br /><br />Daffy puts the last sign up, tiptoes away and says to us, the audience, "Awfully unsporting of me, I know. But, what the hey - I gotta have some fun! Besides, it's really duck season."<br /><br />From that point, we now see Elmer Fudd, shotgun in hand.....and a war of semantics between Bugs and Daffy with Bugs winning every time. Only in cartoons, thankfully, can we see someone getting shotgun-blasted in the head five times and keep going! | 1 |
Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves return as the two dopes from San Dimas who get sent on another trip of a lifetime as someone from the future feels exactly the opposite the way it was presented in the first movie.<br /><br />The only difference is that their trip is "somewhere" between Heaven and Hell and ends up being both. When they meet the Grim Reaper, they get the chance of an after-lifetime to play him for a chance to return and stop two evil robots from ruining what future they were supposed to have. Besides playing roles they have...er...perfected, they also play (and revive a couple of extra sales in the process) some classic games (I even have my original copy of Battleship in the closet).<br /><br />The reason I liked this movie better than the original is because it deals with "what it might be like" instead of "what was." Without spoiling the movie, I can't give you anymore information about this (I guess you'll just have to watch them both and decide for yourself! 8 out of 10 stars. | 1 |
Why do the powers that be continue to cast Jennifer Lopez in unbelievable roles? She was excellent in Selena, and pretty good in Money Train, which both cast her in roles where she could basically be herself. However, roles like this just draw the line. I could never see Lopez as an FBI agent (see Out of Sight for that unremarkable performance), but as a psychotherapist? Give me a break!<br /><br />Basically, Lopez plays the aforementioned psychotherapist, who is involved in virtual reality experiments in which she enters the minds of her patients in order to help them sort out their issues. When she enters the mind of a comatose serial killer to help save one of his victims, she breaks all the rules to try and crack the insanity of his inner mind.<br /><br />Lopez's acting here is typically below average. I can't get over that high-pitched squeak of a voice she has. She's no Julia Roberts, but yet she comes across on screen as though she believes herself to be on the same playing field. Well, she's not even in the same stadium. Sure, she is a very sexy lady; however, that isn't going to carry a film, and it certainly doesn't carry this one. With anybody else cast in her role for this film it would have been excellent, especially if it was cast with someone who could lend more credibility to the character.<br /><br />Having said all that, this film is visually stunning. The colors are fabulous, and the story line isn't half bad in a B-movie kind of way. The audio here is superb as well. This movie gains some points for the fairly original storyline, and major points for how it looks and sounds. Unfortunately, the acting and poor casting bring it down a few notches.<br /><br />My Rating: 6/10 | 0 |
I first saw this film when I was in the 8th grade and I remember that it had a profound affect on me then. I saw in again about a year ago (I am now 29) and it still moved me in similar ways. This is a great movie that personifies the struggle of "principle vs. pragmistism". Voight's character is the idealist teacher that won't give in to any psuedo-racist leanings of the Superintendent, Mr. Skeffington. That story also personifies the struggle of how older people often resist change, and more specifically, cultural change. Often at the expense of children. When these battles finally come to a boil, Pat Conroy loses and pragmatism reigns triumphant. Or does it? The children that he has to leave are better off for knowing him, more exposed to the "real" world and to classical music. The other teacher at the school gained respect for him and he learned much about himself. A great film with a heart-breaking ending. I recomend that anyone who enjoyed the film to read the book, "The Water is Wide", by Pat Conroy. It will stay with you! | 1 |
Ha. without a doubt Tommy's the evil one here. i don't know why, but for some reason, little kids in horror movies tend to come across as little butt munches. and since they're kids, they won't die. because they're annoying...well..except for asylum of terror. but those are few and far between.<br /><br />Anyway onto the movie. Can't find this movie on DVD? sure you can! all you have to do is buy the Chilling classics DVD pack! not only do you get Metamorphosis on DVD for $15, but you also get 49 OTHER MOVIES! what a bargain! pff. OK. i'm done advertising for these cheesy movies. let's just say, this movie ain't worth the 15 bucks on its own.<br /><br />So we have a chemist scientist. yeah. cause all chemist scientists look as handsome as this guy playing Peter. He's trying to come up with a serum to stop deterioration of the body. the college he works at wants to pull the plug on his project, so he tries it on himself. but because this is a horror movie, he sucks it up and starts and incredibly long transformation sequence that takes nearly 3/4 of the movie.<br /><br />To pad out the movie he gets into a relationship with some woman who has a son. and she was never married! scandalous! But of course Tommy is one of the most irritating characters....no. i take it back. HE IS the most irritating character. Far worse than the old crippled guy who wants to take over peter's work and gloats over him while he's in the hospital. that's right, even as an old cripple, you can still be the villain.<br /><br />So we see Peter start to randomly kill some people in visions he has until he realizes he's the one doing it and just decides to kill everyone in his path to get back to normal. However at the end he ends up de-evolving into a lizard. yeah, i know don't ask. The ending really doesn't make any sense. And if you're hoping for any really good payoff, you're not going to get it.<br /><br />This isn't a HORRIBLE movie....it's just frustrating because of the lack of a good payoff. if you already own the 50 movie pack and this is next on your list, you're not in for a snoozer, but you're also not in for a great movie. Just sit back, relax, and eat a lot of snack food. Because this movie isn't going to be making you jump out of your skin anytime soon.<br /><br />Metamorphosis gets 4 plastic lizard heads, out of 10. | 0 |
Excerpt from TV GUIDE:<br /><br />This week on THE LOVE BOAT, Captain Stubing has his hands full when a cryptozoologist gets on board with an unexpected cargo! Join the Captain, Isaac, Gopher and Julie in a fun-filled Halloween Special. Guest starring a guy in a really bad lizard suit as the Chupacabra.<br /><br />This is typical, lame Sci-Fi Channel cut-rate fare. The Captain of a cruise ship, played by the once respectable John Rhys-Davies, is in charge of a Carnival cruise along the coast of Mexico. His daughter is along for the ride, and she's earning her keep by being the ship's kickboxing instructor. Pay attention, everyone, that kickboxing will come in handy later! It should be noted that the Captain's daughter is pretty uncoordinated and painful to watch. It would have been good if she might have taken a couple of kickboxing classes before trying to play an instructor in a movie.<br /><br />Captain Stupid and his daughter join Mrs. Thurston Howell from Gilligan's Island, a kooky cryptozoologist and a dark, mysterious stranger on this 90- minute ride into boredom.<br /><br />That's right, I said cryptozoologist. He keeps mentioning that he brought some precious cargo on board that he needs to check out. Needless to say, the box contains a Chupacabra that somebody decides to let out. From this point on, a man in the rubber Chupacabra suit runs around the ship, killing people. Captain Stupid is powerless to stop it. He decides to call in the Marines but telling them that there are a bunch of terrorists on his ship.<br /><br />The Marines respond. They say all that Marine-speak stuff like "Hooya" and "Get Some". But those silly Marines are no match for a Chupacabra. They don't really tell anyone where they're going either, so there's no help in sight. I guess no one will really miss some lame battalion of lost Marines. But don't forget... Captain Stupid's daughter is, thankfully, a Kickboxing instructor. Yay for Little Stupid! She comes in right in the nick of time, she beats up the bloodthirsty Goat Sucker and saves the day. Chupacabra means Goat Sucker. Therefore, Chupacabras suck. But there's no way that Chupacabras suck anywhere near as much as this movie. | 0 |
Where to start... If this movie had been a dark comedy, I would say it was FANNN-TASTIC! Unfortunately for me, and anyone else with free time and a buck to spare (mind you that was the price I paid, got it from Wal-Mart), this movie was meant to be a thriller. The only THRILL I got was watching Kirkland's lousy rendition of Anne Wilkes from Misery sans snowy woodland area. If you want a good laugh, on a rainy Friday night with some friends, then I highly recommend this movie. But if you want to watch something at least half way decent, then don't even bother.<br /><br />I for one enjoy crappy films, the worse the better in most cases. But Wow... I Meant WOW!! The only person in the entire film that didn't stink it up was the little boy, played by Vincent Berry. The only reason why I even give it 3 stars is because it gave me something to do. | 0 |
These days, Ridley Scott is one of the top directors and producers and can command huge sums to helm movies--especially since he has films like ALIEN, GLADIATOR and BLADE RUNNER to his credit. So from this partial list of his credits, it's obvious he's an amazing talent. However, if you watch this very early effort that he made while in film school, you'd probably have a hard time telling that he was destined for greatness. That's because although it has some nice camera-work and style, the film is hopelessly dull and uninvolving. However, considering that it wasn't meant for general release and it was only a training ground, then I am disposed to looking at it charitably--hence the score of 4.<br /><br />By the way, this film is part of the CINEMA 16: European Shorts DVD. On this DVD are 16 shorts. Most aren't great, though because it contains THE MAN WITHOUT A HEAD, COPY SHOP, RABBIT and WASP, it's an amazing DVD for lovers of short films and well worth buying. | 0 |
"Riders of Destiny" was the first of several westerns Wayne made for the Lone Star arm of Monogram Pictures between 1933 and 1935. In this entry, the producers try to make the Duke into a singing cowboy called "Singin' Sandy Saunders with hilarious results. Any Wayne fan knows that the Duke couldn't have carried a tune if his life had depended on it. His voice was apparently dubbed by Smith Ballew whose deep baritone sounds nothing like Wayne. Wayne looks awkward and uncomfortable in "performing" the musical numbers. Thank heavens the singing cowboy experiment soon ended.<br /><br />As for the movie itself, it contains a standard "B" western plot of the fight over water rights between the villain (Forrest Taylor) and the local ranchers. Duke, of course plays the hero. He had not yet developed his on screen character and still looked like a poverty row cowboy.<br /><br />Also cast in the film were George (pre-Gabby) Hayes as the heroine's father, Cecilia Parker as the heroine and Yakima Canutt as "one of the boys" who performs his "falling from the racing horses under the wagon" stunt while doubling Wayne. Both Canutt and Hayes would go on to appear with Wayne in most of the other entries in the series. Canutt, in particular would have a profound effect on Wayne's future development teaching him, among other things, how to move, fight and look comfortable on a horse.<br /><br />As "B" westerns go this one isn't too bad, however, I have to give it a failing grade because of the "singing". | 0 |
This is the only David Zucker movie that does not spoof anything the first of its kind. The funniest movie of 98 with Night at the Roxbury right behind But I did not think Theres something about mary was funny so that doesnt count except for the frank and beans thing he he. Dont listen to the critics especially Roger Ebert he does not know solid entertainment just look at his reviews.Anyway see it you wont be dissapionted | 1 |
First off, Mexican Werewolf in Texas' title is misleading as many others have pointed out. It is actually about El Chupacabra, which is a similar creature to a werewolf, but by no means the same.<br /><br />The production and editing just plain suck. When it was over, I probably wouldn't be able to give a very accurate description of what exactly the Chupacabra looked like, for whenever it was in a scene(despite one or two exceptions) the camera turned all shaky and you could only see the monster's face clearly. The special effects were laughably bad, but that has to be expected from a low budget horror movie.<br /><br />Along with the terrible production comes the bad actors. Now a couple give fairly plausible performances(Erika Fay and Martine Hughes), but then there were the bad actors(everybody else), who seemed to have no emotions whatsoever when people died. Then there's the absolutely terrible actor(Sara Erikson), who gives one of the 2 worst performances I've ever seen in a movie. I mean my god, she was indescribably bad.<br /><br />The plot was very simple. Basically, a Chupacabra is in a small Texan town killing off local residents and a group of teens look to stop it. However, even with the plot being this simple, a few plot holes managed to leak through.<br /><br />Anyways, horrible movie. However, if you are looking for a movie to make fun of and laugh at with your friends one night, this would be a pretty good one. My friends and I had a good time watching this. Probably the 2nd worst movie I've ever seen, 1/10. Awful. | 0 |
This is a treat for fans of Z-grade movies. Here you will find writing and acting bad enough to rival anything Ed Wood ever produced. Veteran bad movie actor Cameron Mitchell is a former makeup man from "Paragon Studios" who, after a nasty acid-in-the-face incident at a social gathering, becomes an embittered Mad Scientist (tm) with a rubber scar on his face who takes revenge by kidnapping Paragon actors and turning them into living statues in his Secret Laboratory (tm) handily located in the local wax museum. Or are they zombies who do his bidding? He's not sure. <br /><br />Happily, many of your favourite movie clichés are here. Check out the villain's lab! Are those mysterious steaming vats of liquid? Test tubes of coloured water with no explained purpose? Yay! And what ho, do we see spare arms and legs arranged kinda casual-like on a wooden rack? You betcha! Marvel at the bumbling detectives acting with straight out of Plan Nine! Now, enjoy a stupidly tame car chase, and hear more dizzy bimbo screaming than you could possibly want. Raise an eyebrow at the screwy plot line, made even more opaque by the totally meaningless ending that seems to have no connection to the rest of the movie. <br /><br />Cheesy trash and much fun for the bad movie connoisseur. | 0 |
I thought that Ice Age was an excellent movie! As a woman of 30, with no children, I still seem to really enjoy these humorous, witty animated movies. Sid is the best character I have seen in some time, better than Bartok in Anastasia (although he was really humorous, and I did not think that his character could be matched or even beaten) and even more humorous than Melman in Madagascar. I have seen the movie at least 15 times (I own it obviously) and I quote the movie at work (on many occasions...yes,still). My favourite scene is the part where Sid says "Oh, oh, oh, I love this game!" and Sid and Manny continue to figure out what the squirrel is trying to tell them about the "tigers"..."Pack of wolves, pack of bears, pack of fleas, pack of whiskers, pack of noses, pack a derm?, pack of lies, pack of troubles, pack a wallop, pack of birds, pack of flying fish..." or however that part goes! That is THE funniest part about the whole movie, although I also really enjoyed the humour behind "putting sloths on the map" and many other parts as well. The only animated movie that can remotely compare to Ice Age is "Brother Bear". | 1 |
but there are not too many of them. Probably the worst "major release" film I have seen in my life. Definitely the worst for this year. There is no point in commenting on the plot, the cast or the acting. The problem is beyond all that. It lays in the absolute stupidity of the annoying kind (not the funny kind) of everything that takes place on the screen. I don't know why I gave it a 2/10 instead of 1/10. Probably, because of Steven Martini. He really did try. Bottom line - 95 minutes washed down the toilet along with a few brain cells. Avoid at any cost. | 0 |
Director Edward Montagne does in a little more than one hour what other, more expensive and hyped films fail to do. Mr. Montagne shows us a police story written by Phillip H. Reisman Jr. that while, is not one of the best of the genre, it keeps the viewer involved in all that's going on.<br /><br />This is clearly a B type movie. In fact, the best thing going for "The Tattooed Stranger" is the opportunity to take a peek at the way New York looked in those years. The crystal clear cinematography by William O. Steiner, either has been kept that way through the years, or has been lovingly restored.<br /><br />There are great views of New York in the opening sequence. Later we are taken to Brooklyn to the Dumbo section and later on the film travels to the Bronx and the Gun Hill Road area with its many monument stores in the area.<br /><br />John Miles and Walter Kinsella made a great detective team. Patricia Barry is perfect as the plant expert from the Museum of Natural History. Jack Lord, who went to bigger things in his career, is seen in a non speaking role.<br /><br />It was great fun to watch a city, as it was, because it doesn't exist any more. | 1 |
This movie is finally out on DVD in Italy (completely restored). I have seen this movie so many times and I find it even actual these days (2003) when Italy suffers again from a sort of brainwashing dictatorship (or the US for that matter). I am glad there are outcasts as the one played by Mastroianni in this movie who can sing out of tune; maybe they can teach the Sophia Lorens of this world how to be strong and fight to be recognised as human beings.<br /><br />Back to the movie: as most people here already mentioned the acting is wonderful but the audio background is astonishing. I must assume that unfortunately something is lost if you don't understand the Italian language but I can assure you that the show-off of machism, the distortion of reality in that ever-present radio-chronicle of the Hitler visit to Rome can really make you shiver!<br /><br />A masterpiece!<br /><br /> | 1 |
When Marlene Dietrich was labeled box office poison in 1938 one of a handful of actresses so named by the trades papers, it was films like The Garden Of Allah. How a film could be so breathtakingly beautiful to behold and be so insipidly dull is beyond me. Also how Marlene if she was trying to expand her range and not play a sexpot got stuck with such an old fashioned story is beyond me.<br /><br />The Garden Of Allah, one of the very first films in modern technicolor was a novel set at the turn of the last century by Robert Hitchens who then collaborated on a play adaption with Mary Anderson that ran for 241 performances in 1911-12. It then got two silent screen adaptions. The story is about a monk who runs away from the monastery out in French Tunisia to see some of what he's missed in the world. He runs into a similarly sheltered woman who was unmarried and spent her prime years caring for a sick parent. She's traveling now in the desert and the two meet on a train.<br /><br />The woman is of course Marlene and the runaway monk is Charles Boyer. I'm not sure what was in David O. Selznick's mind in filming this story. Someone like Ingrid Bergman might have made it palatable for the audience. But you can bet that the movie-going public of 1936 when they plunked their money down for a ticket they expected to see Marlene as a modern day Salome rather than a saint with that title. The public still remembered Rudolph Valentino and you can bet that it was some desert romance and seduction that they were expecting.<br /><br />As for the monks you have to remember that they are self supporting in their monasteries and this particular one bottles a special wine of which Boyer happens to be the one with the secret. The monastery will have to rethink it's economics if Boyer leaves. The monks are a sincerely pious group, but from the head man Charles Waldron on down they've a right to be a little concerned with some self interest.<br /><br />Anyway a whole lot of religious platitudes get said here by a pair of leads that really are not suited for the parts. Most especially Marlene Dietrich. I would watch this film with an eye for the special color desert cinematography and forget the plot. | 0 |
You don't expect much from a PRC picture, and with rare exceptions--mainly from Edgar G. Ulmer and a few by Joseph H. Lewis or Lew Landers--that's exactly what you get: not much. This "epic" about Nazis in Africa trying to incite an Arab revolt against the British isn't much different. The script, by longtime PRC hacks Arthur St. Claire and Sherman Lowe, is trite, laughable, full of unfunny "wisecracks" and plot holes the size of Outer Mongolia. The direction, by longtime PRC no-budget specialist Al Herman, is semi-comatose at best. The performances, though--except for spectacularly incompetent and irritatingly hammy lead Walter Woolf King--aren't really half bad. Veteran comedian Parkyakarkus is actually the best thing about the film. He plays a guy from Brooklyn masquerading as a razor-blade salesman and brightens up the screen considerably when he shows up. He's got great comic timing, charm to spare and seems to be having a heck of a good time. Duncan Renaldo is fairly convincing as an Arab sheik--despite his Spanish accent--and veteran bad guy George J. Lewis as Renaldo's Arab rival does his usual fine job of villainy, even if he goes a bit over the top sometimes. Joan Woodbury is quite pretty and has a nice light touch, and she and Renaldo have great chemistry together, although--like the rest of the cast--she has none at all with King. H.B. Warner, whose career stretched back to the silent era, lends a shred of dignity to the low-rent proceedings, even though he blows his lines several times and, PRC being PRC, they weren't cut out. There's a great deal of stock footage spliced in from a big-budget silent movie with a similar Arab theme--although I have no idea which one it is--and, PRC being PRC, no effort was made to try to make it inconspicuous: I've seldom seen stock footage that was so blatantly obvious.<br /><br />"A Yank in Libya" isn't very good, of course--well, OK, it stinks--but it would be worth a look just to see Parkyakarkus in his prime. I had heard of him and knew that he was the father of actor/director Albert Brooks and Super Dave Osborne, but had never actually seen him in anything before. It was worth watching this tenth-rate PRC "extravaganza" just to see him in action. Otherwise, forget it. | 0 |
I guess that this movie is based on some kind of a true story.... It's about two young girls who molest a grown man for 48hrs.; I don't see where the terror comes into play here.... There are some "weird' and "surreal" sequences in the movie. And the two girls (Sandra Locke and...ah...oh well) play the roll of two psycho-man haters to the hilt...they do a pretty good job (although some of it is just a tad over the top). The movie's not good, and it's not horrible; it's just really really dated! I mean this thing is dripping with the 70's.... It's not really bad if you like that sort of thing...you know...that thang? | 0 |
This film is not really a remake of the 1949 O'Brien film (which is excellent). It borrows the main premise--a man has been poisoned and spends the rest of the film trying to find his killer. But I like that the writers chose an English professor, instead of a private dick, as the protagonist. The plot is also quite original. In general, the film moves along fast enough to keep you awake. But what mars this film is a strange dated quality about it (probably due to the horrendous 80's original music score)combined with an affected "noir" feel. Dennis Quaid grins inexplicably throughout the whole film at odd moments, but he's still compelling in a general way. Meg Ryan is fine as the student helper/love interest. When the film gets sort of bad is when Dex (the prof) meets the British bodyguard/chauffeur and their duels are pretty laughable. The bodyguard works for the rich widow (played by lovely Charlotte Rampling), but those scenes are too self-consciously "noir" to help the film along, even though the family "plot line" is rather interesting. Dex also keeps showing up at the same place and finding this bodyguard, which is rather coincidental. In the latter part of the film,a man is shot by a window, and from the outside you see him jump out of it--that was pretty bad direction. But aside from some of these obvious flaws, I think it still holds OK. I certainly didn't predict the ending, so that was good--there is a twist, and although some posters here think they were misled, I thought it was a fine and believable ending. Dennis Quaid, with his weird smirks and black eyes, is more likable in The Right Stuff, Great Balls of Fire, Inner Space, and Cold Creek Manor. But here as Dex, he's supposed to be somewhat of a jerk, so he did fine. Fairly decent movie. | 1 |
The title is from a passage in the Bible (Deut. 28:28). Let's just say it is taken horribly out of context - but nonetheless, that is where the title of this agonizing movie originates. The other reviewers cover the plot details so I wont rehash. But the husband, who is a psychiatrist, delivers a lecture on "Inferior function" where he discusses how a person can meet another another person and they can experience a "cataclysmic crisis" in their lives where they cease to be masters of themselves and incapable of fair judgement. He is saying this at the podium at the exact moment as he lays eyes on Leonora Vail in the audience - the woman who will become his mistress. Not very subtle for showing that this is indeed what will happen to this poor man.<br /><br />I think the whole premise of the movie is implausible and just didn't work. Here is an over-the-hill psychiatrist, and we are to believe this young, beautiful woman falls for him and comes between the happiness he and his wife shared. What's even more implausible is how the betrayed wife responds when she learns of the infidelity. Not only is she understanding, but she INSISTS her husband embark on a several month vacation with the tramp - "so we all can get a little relief from this unbearable stress". GIVE ME A BREAK!! I wanted to reach through the screen and throttle not just the adulterer but the dim-wit wife.<br /><br />The fact that the whole movie takes place as a flashback after already revealing the end of the movie at the beginning (the fact that the husband had a terrible accident) - it leaves no doubt as to the outcome of the sordid affair. I think this was a poor decision as it leaves absolutely no plot twists to look forward to, as the whole movie is completely predictable. You already know the wife's resignation to the affair at the beginning of the film as she summons the mistress to the dying man's bedside and expresses no ill will towards her.<br /><br />Not only is the script defective, but Noel Coward is horribly miscast (even though it is HIS screenplay). He and Leonora have absolutely no chemistry on screen whatsoever. Its interesting that Michael Redgrave was originally cast in that role, but was replaced during filming. I wonder what that was about? In the end, neither the husband or the wife cause you to feel any sympathy for either one of them. I do think Margaret Leighton played the part of strumpet quite well. But she couldn't possibly overcome all the negatives this film had. Also, as is the case of many British Productions of this era, the dialogue is hard to understand due to the clipped, fast speech pattern of the actors. I saw it on TV and couldn't even rely on closed captioning to fill in the blanks for me.<br /><br />Don't waste your time on this one. | 0 |
It's been a while since I've watched this movie, and the series, but now I'm refreshing my memory! This was a very funny movie based on the classic series! Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott were hilarious together. Bo and Luke Duke help Uncle Jesse run Moonshine in the General Lee. When Boss Hogg forces the Dukes off their farm, Bo and Luke sneak around Hogg's local construction site and find samples of coal. They soon realize that Boss Hogg is gonna strip-mine Hazzard County, unless the Dukes can stop him, with the help of their beautiful cousin, Daisy. My only two problems with the movie was that Burt Reynolds wasn't right for the part of Boss Hogg, and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane was way too serious. Other than that, I highly recommend THE DUKES OF HAZZARD!!! | 1 |
Barbra Streisand is a tour de force in this Hollywood story. Her performances and the songs are one-of-a-kind and are special in the halls of great movies. The scene where she is introduced to the unexpecting audience by Kristopherson, against the crowds' wishes and hers, only to turn them around with her magnificent performance of "Woman In the Moon" is one of the best examples on film of how well a great performer can win over an audience. It's real. The scene where she records Evergreen ranks with the best in the business.. all live, no lip-sync, very special. Streisand is often criticized for being a Diva, but she delivers on this one. She is majestic singing "With One More Look At You. She deserved the Oscar she and Paul Williams got for Evergreen. Kristopherson had his moments too, far above most of his movie appearances. This version of the "Born" franchise ranks with the first one of 1937 (Janet Gaynor, Frederic March)although I will always enjoy Judy Garland and James Mason musical remake of 1954. I haven't seen the DVD yet and don't know about its quality. | 1 |
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 |
I watched this movie a couple of weeks ago and must say: I was not impressed, not at all. I do side with the other posters when it comes to the fine performances, but some good performances do not make a good movie.<br /><br />On the discussion board, I found a review by an anonymous poster that captured some of the main points. It says: "'Deed Poll' is a movie that raises many questions but hardly answers even a few; a movie that is disturbing and above every attempt at categorizing; an experiment and a very conventional sexual drama despite some shocking scenes. The brilliant acting of Barbara Kowa and André Schneider, the partly very impressive editing and the good camera work (Steffen Ritter) make up for gross plot holes and some technical slips (especially in sound). However, the boredom the audiences have to deal with for 40 minutes remains." Unfortunately, this is true. I wasn't intrigued by the story at all. The protagonists are cold, ambition-less people. They do a lot of drugs and have a lot of (incestuous) sex. So what? For many times, the direction seemed to be virtually non-existent, not to mention the technical aspect: the poor sound quality was enormously disturbing.<br /><br />What's the point of the movie? What's the message behind it all? The anonymous reviewer said: "Somehow Biermann failed to make a clear point and so the movie remains hanging in mid-air without a message. Thus the boredom I blame on the movie. The movie is reserved and emotionless, cold, almost neutral and it doesn't take long to see the flaws: for long stretches the characters of Sean and Ivy are not credible (they clearly have difficulties with the English pronunciation), the character of the mute brother is not developed very well. Some moments are very promising though - in the scene where the call boy is skinned (the one and only true love scene) an intensity is reached that one would love to see the whole movie long. As a spectator one has to regret the chances given away." Again, I must agree. I did like the final scene, especially because of the beautifully captured faces of Gianni Meurer and André Schneider, but it was nothing compared to the boredom I had to suffer for the first thirty minutes. (The sex scenes, though, were aesthetically staged and perfectly edited.)<br /><br />All in all, "Deed Poll" was not my cup of tea - a good, controversial idea wasted -, but it was a interesting to see how a movie can be made with practically no money. Maybe if they had a bigger budget and a more experienced director, this would have become a better movie. | 0 |
It takes an eternity for this typically over-simplistic and idiotic Stephen King-based film to finally get out of the starting blocks. About half-an-hour is spent on needless introductions to various boring characters and their irrelevant little personal problems that might excite bored housewives and apathetic pensioners in soapy dramas, but this is supposed to be the horror genre (or so I naively thought). The mutt fails to look all that fearsome, which Leonard Maltin, the notoriously clueless/hopeless and always grinning film critic, would disagree with: he considers Cujo to be "genuinely frightening". (I often do have to wonder if Maltin is genuinely thick - or merely likes to do favors for his Hollywood friends...) It's both illogical and inconsistent the way Wallace survives an attack with only a leg injury. And, naturally, her car breaks down just when she needs it to save her life: this is one of the oldest horror-film clichés; trust King to use it to minimum effect. The premise is imbecilic, too banal, even for a horror film: a rabid mutt attacks a family. Is that it? This sort of thing barely constitutes a 3-minute sub-sub-plot in your average zombie film. I think even Cujo must have sensed that he was starring in a turkey. Mutts have terrible agents... But what I really don't understand is how people can actually throw themselves at the "Cujo" book and read it from cover to cover? These SK fans must be immortal: that's the only explanation, i.e. why they treat time as such a meaningless commodity.<br /><br />Bodycount: 3. | 0 |
Watching this on Comcast On-Demand.<br /><br />Every time I see this musical, I am amazed at the songs...one show-stopper after another.<br /><br />This interpretation is, for me, magical. The songs sparkle...the vocals, orchestrations, and choreography are amazing for a "made-for-TV" movie...better than many stage versions I have seen.<br /><br />The debate over Bette just doesn't make sense. She is Mamma. Her voice is brilliant and yet full of the pathos of the stage mother living through her daughters. I still get tears at the end when she finally has her moment of glory, no matter how faded that glory is.<br /><br />The Tulsa/Louise duet/dance is on now. Fabulous.<br /><br />Stephen Sondheim is the King of musical theatre. His lyrics just roll off the tongue like silk...Styne's music is perhaps the best ever penned for the stage/screen.<br /><br />Thank God we have this masterpiece of the American Musical Theatre captured on DVD. | 1 |
This movie starts off promisingly enough, but it gets a little to convoluted and caught up in its stylistic charm. The set designs, costumes, and music were wonderful- as close to perfect as one can get. But the more I got into the movie, the more I felt like all this effort was for the director's entertainment, not the audience. Although, I loved looking at it, except for a few brief musical scenes, I can't say I enjoyed it. The director shows enormous imagination, but if he had fun with this film, he failed to share that with the audience, or at least with me. I didn't get a sense of whimsy and I didn't get sucked into this universe.<br /><br />A big cause of this was (surprisingly) Zhang Ziyi. You can tell she's trying very hard, but she seems to have been so miscast that she comes off almost amateurish. She's a capable actress but she has her limitations. I've noticed in her acting, that she has yet to truly react to her fellow co-stars, a flaw that creates a void of chemistry. The language barrier in this film seems to have only exacerbate matters. She and Odagiri act as if they're on separate planets. She's also not a very good singer which made me cringe every time she sang, but thankfully there weren't too many scenes of that. Odagiri was OK but doesn't make much of an impression.<br /><br />I didn't even care for the characters separately. There really is a sore lack of characterization. The only reason to care about them seems to be that they're good-looking royalty. Without the compelling love story at the center of the film though, it's hard to care what happens. The film also takes detours into minor scenes that added nothing to the story and was actually distracting. I had to rewind because after going into a subplot I couldn't remember what the heck they we're doing in the main storyline. There were also scenes where it was hard to tell what the action occurring was because it was so stylized.<br /><br />Mostly I'm just disappointed because I really like the concept behind this and there are a lot of things I do like. The music and dance choreography are really great.The supporting performances are uniformly excellent, fantastic in both the acting aspect and the singing. It's just too bad the lead actors were so bland. | 0 |
I was just lucky I found this movie. I've been taking advantage of Walmart's $5.50 DVDs, because I watch a lot of movies (and very seldom watch television). I graduated from high school in 1968 - so I have family and many friends who served in Vietnam. This movie really illustrates the pain I've seen in my friends in dealing with what happened to them over there. I wish more people would see this movie - I think maybe more people could understand what happened to our Vietnam vets by watching these excellent actors in the portrayal of one family damaged by that war. The story felt realistic - it isn't mushy, but made me feel what they were going through. I think it helped that Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez were playing father and son - it made their relationship more believable, | 1 |
I haven't laughed this hard at a movie in a long time. I got to go to an advance screening, and was thrilled because I had been dying to see it. I had tears in my eyes from laughter throughout a lot of the movie. The audience all shared my laughter, and was clapping and yelling throughout most of the movie.<br /><br />Kudos to Steve Carrell(who I had already been a fan of). He proves in this movie his tremendous talent for comedy. He has a style that I haven't seen before. And Catherine Keener is excellent as always. Thank God there wasn't a cameo from Will Ferrell(love him, but saw him too much this summer).<br /><br />There were parts of comedic genius in this movie. Partly thanks to Carrell, and partly thanks to the writing(also Carrell). The waxing scene and the speed dater with the "obvious problem" were absolutely hysterical.<br /><br />I will definitely go see '40 Year Old Virgin' when it's released. My advice: go to see it for huge laughs and an incredibly enjoyable movie on top of it. | 1 |
Peter Fonda is so intentionally enervated as an actor that his lachrymose line-readings cancel out any irony or humor in the dialogue. He trades sassy barbs and non-witty repartee with Brooke Shields as if he were a wooden block with receding hair; even his smaller touches (like fingering a non-existent mustache on his grizzled face) don't reveal a character so much as an unsure actor being directed by himself, an unsure filmmaker. In the Southwest circa 1950, a poor gambler (not above a little cheating) wins an orphaned, would-be teen Lolita in a botched poker game; after getting hold of a treasure map promising gold in the Grand Canyon, the bickering twosome become prospectors. Some lovely vistas, and an odd but interesting cameo by Henry Fonda as a grizzled canyon man, are the sole compensations in fatigued comedy-drama, with the two leads being trailed by cartoonish killers who will stop at nothing until they get their hands on that map. Shields is very pretty, but--although the camera loves her pouty, glossy beauty--she has no screen presence (and her tinny voice has no range whatsoever); every time she opens her mouth, one is inclined to either cringe or duck. *1/2 from **** | 0 |
To be fair, it has been several years since I watched the bile committed to celluloid known as "Here on Earth," so forgive me if my memory of the film is a little sketchy. I'll stick with the main points which plague the soul of the unfortunate viewer.<br /><br />Scene One: Chris Klein, after having been thrown out of prep school (because he looks like a seventeen year old--yes, very believable), gives what I assume is his valedictorian speech...to a field. Let me repeat that for you--a field. I think we're supposed to be moved by the combination of shame and eloquence he is failing to express. Klein has the delivery and facial expressions of a cardboard cutout. He is a decent looking piece of cardboard, but little more.<br /><br />Scene Two: After some joyriding and teenage pyromaniac hijinks, Chris Klein and Josh Hartnett do some damage to the local diner, of which he is forced to rebuild. Of course. Because who better to help with construction than some random moron who crashed into it/ burned it in the first place. Better yet, let's have said random moron move in on Josh Hartnett's girl, Miss Sobeski, the girl he fancies for...her equally wooden line delivery? <br /><br />Scene Three: Chris Klein's character is making out with Leelee Sobeski's character and decides to name her various body parts after the states on the eastern seaboard. My soul weeps. Really, how can this scenario turn out well? Surely you must alienate several million people if you imply their home is equivalent to Miss Sobeski's more...erm...feminine areas. Secondly, naming her breasts after New York and New Jersey prompts some confusion as to whether Miss Sobeski is actually freakishly disproportionate.<br /><br />Scene Four: Leelee is running. She falls down. This gives her...knee cancer. "We always knew it could come back," her father(?) says. Right. Knee cancer. From tripping. Perhaps I missed something. As I said, it's been a few years. Surely I missed something. Didn't I? For the love of God, please tell me the girl did not contract KNEE cancer from falling down. <br /><br />That scream you just heard was my soul dying. | 0 |
WARNING **SPOILERS**<br /><br />Lord knows I have seen some bad movies in my time and this one makes me just as angry. This is an insult to people who ARE LOOKING for a bad movie. The "story" involves a stewardess who discovers her boyfriend (badly acted by otherwise great Robert Wagner) is a murder, thief, and just an overall puke face. After the Concorde takes off, he sends guided missiles to destroy the Concorde. So while the Concorde is traveling at the speed of light, our "hero" (played with utter stupidity, George Kennedy) opens the window in the cockpit then, sticks his hand OUT THE WINDOW to fire at the missile! I'm no rocket scientist, but it seems his hand would at least get a wind burn. Then towards the final "climax" when the Concorde is headed for certain disaster and everyone will die, a passenger turns to his fiance and proposes marriage. A Priest just happens to be sitting in the next row and proceeds to marry them as the planes is crashing! (I'm not making this up) Wow, the guy who wrote the script must have been sniffing glue for a week. | 0 |
This is one of the great modern kung fu films. A lot of the reviews seem to miss the point that the comedy is based on a quite subtle at times (at other times right in your face) contrast between old and new China. Kara Hui for instance is called a country bumpkin and gets into trouble whenever she tries to adapt to the new but in the end to save her families honour dresses as an old fashioned heroine in contrast to the modern military style of Hsiao Ho. Gordon Liu seems to have played his part for laughs playing off his serious, monk persona with silly wigs and a guitar. The end fight is simply fantastic and ends in a defeat for Johnny Wang rather than death. Kwan Yung Moon should be mentioned for his great playing of a thug with 'invincible armour' - simply terrific. And Kara Hui does some magnificent acting and fighting. A great film. | 1 |
I saw this "movie" partly because of the sheer number of good reviews at Netflix, and from it I leaned a valuable lesson. Not a lesson about ethnic diversity however...the lesson I learned is "Don't trust reviews".<br /><br />Yes, racism sucks and people are complicated, but the people who actually need to see this movie are going to be the ones who are the least drawn to it and least affected by it if they DO see it. The only reason that I can think of for the number of good reviews is that it's being reviewed by people who aren't used to thinking, or who've seen their first thought-provoking movie and somehow think that Haggis invented the concept. In fact, he basically made this film, which should be called "Racism For Dummies", as emotionally wrenching as possible, seemingly to give people who don't spend a lot of time thinking the impression that they've discovered some fundamental truth that's never been covered in a film before. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence it's not... An after-school special for the unthinking masses, cut into bite-sized overwrought ham-fisted pieces to make it easier to swallow without too much introspection.<br /><br />It's as if they portrayed everyone as being the worst possible extreme, simply to make us happy that we're such good people because we don't identify with the characters. Let's face it people. NOBODY identifies with these characters because they're all cardboard cutouts and stereotypes (or predictably reverse-stereotypes). It's well acted (even if the dialog is atrocious) and cleverly executed, so much that you don't think to ask "where's the beef?" until you can tell the film is winding down. The flaming car scene was well executed, like much of the movie, but went nowhere in the end. <br /><br />The messages are very heavy-handed, and from the "behind the scenes" blurb, the producers were clearly watching a different movie, because there is very little to laugh about in this movie, even during the intended funny parts. I have to stress that this is NOT entertainment, more like a high school diversity lesson...call it the "Blood on the Highway" of racism. They could even show this in high schools if it weren't for the "side-nude" shot of Jennifer Esposito.<br /><br />In this film, everyone's a jerk and everyone learns a lesson (except for Michael Pena who gets the best role, but the most predictable storyline).<br /><br />This is a bad film, with bad writing, and good actors....an ugly cartoon crafted by Paul Haggis for people who can't handle anything but the bold strokes in storytelling....a picture painted with crayons.<br /><br />Crash is a depressing little nothing, that provokes emotion, but teaches you nothing if you already know racism and prejudice are bad things. | 0 |
First of all, around the time I wrote this comment, I had already read what kittiwake-1 had written about this game and was confused. This is a video game and not an actual movie. I mean, I myself would choose a good Deniro movie or playing a video game any day. But, dude, what are you talking about? Now that I have that out of the way, let's move on, shall we? The video game adaption of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is, as you may have guessed, based on the movie of the same name. What's stranger is that this was released three years after the film was released. Whether that's due to a slow development time or just plain laziness, no one really knows. At least, I don't.<br /><br />The game allows the player to play as the four main characters of the movie: Jen, Shu Lien, Li-Mu-Bi, and Dark Cloud (Whose story is a secret bonus that is unlocked for separate gameplay.) All four of these characters have fighting styles based on how they fought in the movie. However, the real eye candy is the evasion moves that allow each character to avoid the blows of an enemy's attack in the most impossible and gravity defying ways that were first showcased in the movie.<br /><br />The story is obviously based on the story told in the movie. The story in the game is told using CG movies and spoken in a subtitled Mandarin language (A nice little touch, considering I preferred the foreign language track of the film over the dubbed one.) The story goes to expand on what might've happened to the other characters during the film and even (No real surprise since pretty much all video game movie adaptions have done this) alters what officially happened in the movie to make the game have more action. I never thought Jade Fox would go so far as to actually go and get hired goons.<br /><br />The real bonus for the story is the ability to decide how the game ends. What if Jen had all the ingredients to cure Li-Mu-Bi in her possession? What if Jen had not gotten back her comb? What if Li-Mu-Bi had not gotten the green destiny back for the second time? Your actions will decide the outcome of these scenarios and the destiny of the characters in this game. This is truly the best feature of the game.<br /><br />Yet, for all it's strengths, it also showcases some flaws. The enemies often tend to become a nuisance after a while and the camera angle tends to be fixed on the most unhelpful of spots. Not even the special features (Which are unlocked after beating the game) are good enough to even forgive such hardships that are forced upon the player.<br /><br />If you loved the movie, you may enjoy the game. However, this game is the only way you're going to be able to immerse yourself into a playable version of such a beautiful and amazing movie.<br /><br />Of course, you could have just picked a Deniro movie instead. | 1 |
Acting was weak, but in a horror flick, I can live with that if the story is good. It wasn't. The initial event was an clumsy and obvious ploy to exploit most people's adoration of kids. OK, fine. Fast forward to the "place in the country" where they will recover emotionally. I like the revelation of the ghosts. OK, cool--this will be a supernatural kinda horror story, with rotting things partly in our world partly in...where ever. Then the action starts pulling like a three headed dog in a flurry of cats and birds--Is there an evil force trying to attack them directly? Is there an evil force trying to attack them INdirectly--make people do awful things they wouldn't really do? Oh, wait, no, maybe the whole REGION is some kind of psychic echo chamber where ambient discord can reverberate into murder? OK, hold on--maybe it's really just one little mentally tangled "Delbert"-style redneck boy who misses his Mommy and is on some kind of spree like a K-Tel Norman Bates knock off? Oh, yeah--extra points off: the only Black character seems to be the grandson of an "Our Gang" pullman porter. The actor plays it as straight as he can given the crummy dialogue, but the fact is, his purpose is "Y'all done betta get outa heah, Boss!" At least they wrote him smart enough to GTF outta there. The bit with the little girl being silenced and pulled away was definitely creepy, as was the chick in the shower. Those were just two of quite a few really delicious tidbits in this movie. The problem is that they are combined in disharmonious ways, like a bite of steak, a bite of chocolate and a bite of a Gummi bear. Each is great on it's own, but mixed up? Bleah! Such potential. Wasted. | 0 |
I found the documentary entitled Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control to be a fairly interesting documentary. The documentary contained four "mini" documentaries about four interesting men. Each one of these men was extremely involved with his job, showing sheer love and enjoyment for one's job.<br /><br />The sad part, I must say, would have to be the subjects in which these individuals worked/studied. They were interesting for about five minutes, afterwards becoming boring and lasting entirely too long.<br /><br />The video was filmed in a very creative way though. I very much enjoyed the film of one thing with a voice dub over another. It played out excellent and also coincided nicely with the music. | 0 |
Alright, so not every Australian movie is all that good. Yes, maybe there have actually been very few with much merit. Take Away however is an absolute bomb, qualifying as one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I wanted to like it. I figured I'd give it a fair go. I've even met one of the screen writers Dave O'neil so I feel kind of a traitor giving this movie a bad review, but... The plot is fairly thin (I won't bother relating it... read the synopsis), which I can forgive: there are plenty of movies that can cover that up with a few decent jokes. Unfortunately, Take Away's jokes cover its plot up like a $2 prostitute's skirt. Probably the only laughs that came from the 6 other people in the cinema was at the poor acting and dialogue. Take Away goes down like a week old Dim sim ... You might understand that joke if you see the film but the joke's not worth it. | 0 |
This British documentary was recently shown on Comedy Central during their "Best of
" week and can also be seen on South Park's second season DVD. I remember seeing many commercials for the DVD showing clips of this documentary, most of which occurs with Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and some other guy in a hot tub. It was funny when I saw it in the commercials, but I was used to seeing it by the time I saw the actual documentary.<br /><br />Overall, "Goin' Down to South Park" is a fairly funny and interesting look at how South Park episodes are made and of the series' history going back to when Matt and Trey came up with the idea in college. However, there was something about the tone of this documentary that actually felt sort of depressing. It's not as fast-paced, rapid-fire, and as lively as the actual South Park episodes. Instead, it kind of has a slow, dry-wit style, which at times can be funny, but most of the time you're just waiting for something to happen. If you get the chance to watch it, by all means go for it, but I don't think you're really missing much if you never see it.<br /><br />My IMDb Rating: 7/10 | 1 |
I will be short...This film is an embarrassment to everyone except its cinematographer. The very fact that it is a critique of the sex tourism industry seems valid until we are "treated" to a lingering dance scene. The plot is ridiculous no one except the most ardent fan of BAD horror will get anything out of it. And for the love of God please stop saying this film is a tale of innocence lost or even of female empowerment because it is quite clearly not (childish fumbling lesbians, what the hell?). this was by far the worst film at the Edinburgh festival (that i saw anyway), someone even collapsed halfway through the film probably because they couldn't take any more of it. this may seem like an overly critical rant but i genuinely cannot find a redeeming feature of this film except for perhaps if you take it as pure comedy. In short this film is best watched on a cocktail of class A drugs. | 0 |
This movie was cheesy and it was more than that. It was about this guy who gets a curse on him and he turns into a gorilla. I had to see how bad it was because of the title. Before this guy turns into a gorilla, he gets married. I was a little upset because she wasn't a bride of a gorilla: she is now the wife of the gorilla. She should have married him when he was a gorilla then the title would have made more sense. There are all these people in the middle of the jungle too and they all want to leave. This isn't just a B movie, it's more like a Z movie. I didn't even see any bananas for a wedding gift. Oh, right he wasn't cursed yet. | 0 |
If you overlook the fact that the plot has been done many times, this is a hilarious and gleefully enjoyable Looney Tunes cartoon. The animation is wonderful, the backgrounds so detailed and a lot of audacious colouring too. The writing is razor sharp, and the sight gags especially Daffy constantly getting his head blown off are brilliantly timed. I really did love the arguments between Daffy and Bugs, and that Bugs wins every time. I also love it that Daffy is really greedy and nasty while being uproariously funny. I do prefer him when he's manic but he is great fun here too. Bugs is still his charming and rascally self, and Elmer is funny if rather dumb too. In short, this is absolutely brilliant, and actually my personal favourite of the Hunting Trilogy for sheer entertainment value. 10/10 Bethany Cox | 1 |
I find it hard to understand why this piece of utter trash was repackaged. The only saving grace in the whole thing is the body of Ariauna in her sexy uniform. Her humour is also to be appreciated. She is a definite plus but alas it would take a magician to salvage this garbage. However she must be positively recognised for her heroic effort & true professionalism. Can't say the same for her co star Lilith with her whining voice that grates on your nervous system. Appeared disinterested & gave the impression that just her presence on the set was all that was needed. All said apart from Ariauna's performance it is indeed utter trash. | 0 |
A terrible film which is supposed to be an independent one. It needed some dependence on something.<br /><br />This totally miserable film deals with the interactions among Irish people. Were they trying to imitate the wonderful film "Crash?" If so, this film crashed entirely.<br /><br />There is just too much going on here culminated by a little brat running around and throwing rocks into buses and cars which obviously cause mayhem.<br /><br />The film is just too choppy to work. One woman loses her husband after 14 years to another while her younger sister is ripped off by a suitor. This causes the former sister to become a bitter vetch and walk around in clothes not worth believing. The older sister also becomes embittered but soon finds romance.<br /><br />Then, we have 3 losers who purchase masks to rob a bank. Obviously, the robbery goes awry but there doesn't seem to be any punishment for the crooks. Perhaps, the punishment should have been on the writers for failure to create a cohesive film. | 0 |
So this ugly guy with long, nasty hair and his girlfriend end up in this house and they argue and argue about his old girlfriend. There was suppose to be something scary in it but I didn't see anything scary at all. There is some mention of a demon from the sea but that doesn't go anywhere at all. I wish it did because then it would've taken the tension away from the jealous love triangle. The title of the movie makes it look like it would be a scary and exciting movie but it is so far from it that I couldn't believe it. I waited and waited for it to end and was so happy when it did. It did not live up to the title like it should have so boo hoo hoo. The cover had a cool picture but I shouldn't judge a cheesy movie by its cover. | 0 |
Ho, ho, homicidal maniac! This spirited tour-de-force adaptation of a great EC Comics horror tale is undoubtedly one of the best episodes of the cable TV series ever made. Director Robert ("Back to the Future") Zemeckis makes the most out of a witty script by Fred ("Night of the Creeps," "The Monster Squad") Dekker which centers on a ruthless two-timing housewife (well played by Mary Ellen Trainor, who was married to Zemeckis when she starred in this episode) who kills her jilted jerk of a husband (a nice cameo by Marshall Bell) on Christmas Eve by whacking him upside the head with a fire-poker. Complications ensue when a deranged murderous madman dressed up as jolly Kris Kringle escapes from a nearby asylum and decides to pay Trainor a decidedly unfriendly visit. Alan Silvestri's spooky, stirring score and Dean Cundey's typically polished cinematography further enhance the macabre fun. And Larry Drake (the sweet gentle giant Benny on "L.A. Law"!), with his creepy hiccuping guffaw, a demented twinkle in his bright green eyes, and a leering, truly wicked grin, makes for a sensational sanguinary Saint Nick. | 1 |
I rented this movie because Elijah Wood has done some good work and I thought this might be an overlooked treasure. It was not a treasure. I don't know if this was straight to video, but it should have been straight to the dump.<br /><br />Elijah Wood fans will like the fact that he appears shirtless in a much-too-brief shower scene. But, no sane person would like this script. Imagine Memento played by teen actors, but ten times more confusing and a hundred times less plausible. Case in point: Janeane Garofalo plays a caring psychologist (apparently `keeping the chain of mediocrity alive').<br /><br />As if false memories syndromes and mind-over-matter medicine weren't hokey enough, the movie also hinges on one of those unexplained psychic twin bonds that keep the plot moving and the audience baffled. This same twin bond creates a few too many contrived love scenes between Wood's character and the girl from She's All That, who plays the saintly sister of Wood's angry cancer-victim friend.<br /><br />Adding to the triteness of this screenplay, Wood's other friends are a mentally challenged cancer victim and Kidney, a young black boy afflicted with a mysterious kidney disease. Kidney's dying wish comes true when Dr. Garofalo gives him his own Walkman. This character's hackneyed function in the story is matched by his on-again, off-again relationship to walking. Usually bound to a wheelchair, Kidney has several inexplicable scenes showing him pushing others around in it.<br /><br />Kindey's characterization may be one small detail, but it is indicative of this film's many other flaws. The Bumblebee Flies Anyway is definitely bumbling, but it never flies. | 0 |
One of the major successes to The Decline of Western Civilization, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris' indie breakthrough, is that it can perhaps appeal to non-punk fans as to the hardcore ones. More importantly, it captures a moment in history before the movement became completely "market-worthy", when bands would play (or, at the least, try to play in some cases) in dank, dirty clubs to an audience that had as much self-respect as they had respect for the bands. For the fan, such as myself, there are precious interviews with some of the quasi-legends of LA's punk-scum, some dead, some still living and still hard-working in the scene. <br /><br />Performances and interviews include the likes of The Circle Jerks, X, Black Flag (in the pre-Henry Rollins days), Catholic Discipline, Fear, the Alice Bag Band, and most memorable (in my opinion) being the Germs. While I knew of a few of the bands and performers in the film (The Jerks and Black Flag mostly), I had only heard rumors about lead singer (the late) Darby Crash, and from the footage in the film he seems to be one of the, if not the, epitomes of the punk movement. He doesn't take himself too seriously, he loves to drink, sometimes when he speaks it's complete gibberish, and the attitude he brings on stage is both funny and in a free-form way exhilarating. A performer like that would probably scare Steve Miller and Jackson Browne out of their skins.<br /><br />Decline of Western Civilization may not turn on every non-punk fan that seeks this film out (it's hard to find on video), but it shouldn't necessarily turn them off either. Like a kind of anthropologist that's sneaked into the party, Spheeris gets the behavior of these people down pat, their motives, their likes and hatreds, and the power that was their on and off-screen personas. A few of them almost come off as normal, some don't, but they're only offensive to those who aren't too open to things. On top of that, the film is a must-see to the kinds of kids that think they're punk fans just because they listen to Good Charlotte and Blink-182: if you want to get the real scoop on the movement and genre of rock you profess to love, give the pioneers a chance. A | 1 |
Imagine spending the summer without your family or friends from school, and meeting new people. Or yet, it's your first time where you're a nobody and the only person you can count on is somebody from camp. "Meatballs" packs lots of comedy in this film. In camp, there's a eccentric counselor(Bill Murray) who knows how the boys and girls can have a good time. Enter a kid named Rudy(Chris Makepeace) who has no one to look up to. He doesn't fit in with anyone, only Tripper can make him have fun. The rest of the can are just as crazy as Tripper. Camp Northstar is an average camp with an above average team. One the other hand Camp Mohawk is an elite camp that has them running for their money. In the basketball game, the Mohawks got pantsed! And in the Olympiad the Northstar teal got the revenge they needed when one of the members take out the saboteur. And Morty(Harvey Atkin), this poor soul can never get himself in gear if he tried. A very, VERY funny comedy, and it's a big keeper I'll say. This movie shows that camp can be fun, if you wanted to be! 5 stars! | 1 |
What a stunning episode for this fine series. This is television excellence at its best. The story takes place in 1968 and it's beautifully filmed in black & white, almost a film noir style with its deep shadows and stark images. This is a story about two men who fall in love, but I don't want to spoil this. It is a rare presentation of what homosexuals faced in the 1960s in America. Written by the superb Tom Pettit, and directed by the great Jeannot Szwarc, we move through their lives, their love for each other, and their tragedy. Taking on such a sensitive issue makes this episode all the more stunning. Our emotions are as torn and on edge as the characters. Chills ran up my spine at the end when they played Bob Dylan's gorgeous, "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now," as sung by the Byrds. This one goes far past a 10 and all the way to the stars. Beautiful. | 1 |
This film is the freshman effort of Stephanie Beaton and her new production company. While it suffers from a few problems, as every low budget production does, it is a good start for Ms. Beaton and her company.<br /><br />The story is not terribly new having been done in films like The Burning and every Friday the 13th since part 2. But, the performances are heartfelt. So many big budget movies just have the actors going through the motions, its always nice to see actors really trying to hone their craft.<br /><br />The story deals with the murder(and possible return) of a disfigured classmate. The others are sworn to secrecy, but the trauma of the event sends each person in different directions in their lifes. Ten years later, the friends are murdered one by one by a gruesome stalker known as "The Bagman". Who will survive? You have to watch.<br /><br />If you are Roger Ebert or any number of arrogant critics, you probably shouldn't bother. But if your taste run more towards Joe Bob Briggs and you want to see a group of people honing their craft, then check out "The Bagman". | 0 |
This film is absolutely stunning. A new Blade Runner - future noir at it's most gritty. The vision of Paris is superb, both recognisable and visionary, with sweeping vistas, grungy set pieces and futuristic virtual reality.<br /><br />The story line is quite simple, with few surprises, but that's not what I like most about the film. It is a visual treat. <br /><br />Done in 3D and rendered in black and white (no greys!) with only one short spot of colour, it is less hard on the eyes than it sounds. There are many "arty" camera shots - closeups and odd viewpoints - but that just adds to the temperament of the film. Overall you get the impression of a graphic novel in footage form.<br /><br />I was initially under the impression that the film had been rotoscoped, such was the level of animation and high detail in the character's facial expressions. But unlike "A Scanner Darkly" - which suffers from (or indeed is enhanced by) inconsistent character definition (just watch the way some of the hair changes shape!) - Renaissance is consistent and precise throughout. When the character is in close-up, added details and texture can bee seen, but when in mid-shot or further away details are omitted, but not to the detriment of character definition.<br /><br />For me, the only down side of the film is that in one commentary we are told that this is a one-off project. Such a shame, as I would like to see more of this futuristic film-noir storyline and especially in this cutting-edge graphic style.<br /><br />Oh, and the English dub is great too.<br /><br />All in all a great film and highly recommended. | 1 |
This is most likely the best picture not many will see. It presented a culture in a real unhollywoodized way. A must see for all who like Indie and for those who don't. I think this movie will draw more into the Indie scene. The acting was top notch! The character of Alice was portreyed so well. With perfect akwardness. This movie ahould be brought to the mainstream! I think it would do phenominally! ALICE is the most real look at an element of our culture that I have seen since GO ASK ALICE. A look that is untouched by the Hollywood hand. Movies like this show young people that these things aren't glamorous but that they are real and compelling. If you liked PIECES OF APRIL you will love this one! | 1 |
Murder and insurance fraud take an adulterous couple to "the end of the line"...<br /><br />TV was visually vulgar back in the early 1970s and this truncated, made-for-TV knock-off hurt my eyes. It can't possibly compare to the 1944 Billy Wilder Film Noir classic as anyone in their right mind ought to know -sight unseen- but that doesn't mean this update should be seen as a separate entity, either. Although based on the original Paramount screenplay, there's over half an hour cut out and the director's bland indifference makes what's left imminently forgettable. With rare exception, the younger generation wasn't interested in watching old black and white movies on TV back in 1973 (still true today, alas) so this lurid, compelling tale was new to the overwhelming majority of viewers; then as now, ratings rule and cashing in was its only reel raison d'etre. Gus Van Zandt remade Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO for similar reasons and if these redux led to the seeking out of the original films or novels, so much the better. I loved the James M. Cain source novel enough to tune in back then and I enjoyed this time capsule curio the second time around for the longish hair, halter tops, turbans, ugly decor, and lush auburn locks of "guest star" Samantha Eggar, who didn't try too hard. In addition to recognizing a few of the incidental cast from a childhood spent in front of the boob tube, Lee J. Cobb was able to hold my interest as a world-weary, tired-looking Keyes but Richard Crenna's affable and inoffensive Walter Neff only reminded me of Bill Bixby on a bad day. Improvement upon the original was, of course, never intended in a rush to make a buck but, instead of a mindless retread, a new adaptation of the novel would have been a novel idea. Cain's book differs somewhat from its celluloid incarnations and the horrific shark fins in the moonlight ending is killer. The completist in me is thankful this speeded up "Me Decade" update was included as part of the DOUBLE INDEMNITY DVD extras but the experience not only made me long to see the original, it had me nostalgic for any episode of the better-made COLUMBO TV series. I also flashed back to a very good 1973 ABC TV Movie Of The Week that I haven't seen since its initial airing: John D. Macdonald's LINDA starring the beautiful Stella Stevens as a ruthless femme fatale who murders her lover's (sexy John Saxon) wife and then frames her mild-mannered husband for the crime and, if I remember correctly, there's also an open-ended ending. Like DOUBLE INDEMNITY, it was needlessly remade with TV movie queen Virginia Madsen as the titular vixen and Richard Thomas as the milquetoast husband. | 0 |
This is probably the only female Ninja movie ever made. It's great as a B film and the action sequences are a lot of fun to watch. This movie is just so deliciously 80's. You'll never see another film like it. Check it out for some 80's retro fun. | 1 |
One word: suPURRRRb! I don't think I have see anything like this in a long time on network or cable television. Watching this show was like taking a breath of fresh air amid TV schedule filled with reality shows and boring re-runs. <br /><br />I have to say I had my reservations. After all, critics were almost unanimous in crying foul and downgrading the show. But when half an hour was over (by the way, thank you, NBC, for running a commercial-free show), I was left with the feeling of instant love, love at first glance, the true love that one feels in his guts. Everything about this show screamed EXCELLENCE.<br /><br />Graphics in this show were at least as good as Finding Nemo and Shrek. No small feat considering those movies took years to be developed.<br /><br />Cast was marvelous. I am partial to John Goodman's voice, but the rest of the team certainly were on par with John. Special mention: Lisa Kudrow's guest appearance. She was on top of the game creating neurotic, pudgy, and lovable panda with a Jewish streak in her. (Panda from Brooklyn? Only in this show.) <br /><br />Script was funny, with a lot of inside and adult jokes which were sharp, yet not tacky. A note for all parents: this is NOT for children. This show was never advertised as such, and there's a reason why it's set for 9PM, not 8PM. So if you'd like to complain about "objectionable context", save your breath. Adults deserve a comedy made just for them, and Father of the Pride is it. <br /><br />Not everything was perfect. I was a bit puzzled by Siegfried and Roy's characters. Do I sense "stereotype" when it comes to them? Yes, they are gay. Yes, they are flamboyant. Yes, they speak with German accents. But that's yesterday's news. Give us something new, something fresh, something funny. Putting the old jokes in a new show is definitely the wrong approach. I understand that the creators of this show wanted to use the "star power" that these guys have. That's fine by me. But please don't dwell on something everybody already knows by heart. Hopefully, the rest of the show is not going to play the same old record over and over. <br /><br />In general, the show is definitely a Must-See-TV. Funny, witty, with a few unexpected twists here and there -- there haven't been a comedy this good since Seinfeld. I am certainly looking forward to the next episode. | 1 |
A documentarist, like any filmmaker, must convey a compelling story. Will Pascoe fails utterly in this effort, cobbling together uninspired snippets of Chomsky's wisdom from a visit to McMaster University in Hamilton. The footage is shot amateurishly and in video. Pascoe's only effort at cohering the fragments into a whole is by periodically throwing a vague title on the screen: "9-11," "Activism," "Truth."<br /><br />Lame.<br /><br />Compare this with documentaries like "The Corporation" or "The Fog of War" which create a narrative drawing material from interviews, stock footage, and filmed footage. In the end each delivers a poignant and insightful message deftly and intelligently.<br /><br />The only saving graces of the film are Chomsky's nonchalantly delivered upendings of historical dogma, and the fact that the running time is only 74 minutes.<br /><br />One of the more interesting passages was Chomsky's recounting of his experience with National Public Radio. He describes the conservative media as more accommodating to dissenting views, while NPR's liberal dogma strait-jackets its interviewees and dramatically limits its permitted messages. Yet another media outlet to be skeptical of.<br /><br />This documentary is for Noam Chomsky completists only. | 0 |
Though this movie has a first rate roster of fine actors, special effects that are excellent, and a story line that is full of surprises, it wasn't picked up for studio distribution and went directly to DVD. Perhaps it contains too much 'anti-police force' information, or perhaps it is juts one too many action flicks released during a glut, but whatever the reason the big screens missed the opportunity, fortunately the new concept of releasing direct to DVD allows us to enjoy it.<br /><br />The theme is old: rookie reporter uncovers an inner circle of cops that are corrupt - in this case the F.R.A.T. (First Response Assault and Tactical) team, a group of well trained policeman created to clean up the mythical city of Edison from its low point of crime, drugs, prostitution etc. Working undercover the temptation of pocketing the confiscated goods and money proves too much of an opportunity and now, 15 years after its formation, FRAT is responsible for murder, drug trafficking, terrorizing innocent people etc. The lead dog is Lazerov (Dylan McDermott, who makes a terrifyingly real gangster!) and his partner Rafe Deed (LL Cool J, even more buff than usual and proving he can be a sensitive actor). Reporter Pollack (Justin Timberlake) catches wind of a 'bad mistake' and reports his theory of fraud and corruption to his paper's boss Ashford (the always reliably fine Morgan Freeman). Gradually Polack convinces Ashford and subsequently Wallace (Kevin Spacey, also a consistently fine character actor) and they aid Pollack in this investigative reporting. The closer Pollack gets to the truth the more surprises and bad incidents happen and the story runs pall mall toward a series of unexpected results.<br /><br />Timberlake lacks the charisma to carry the lead, especially in the company of such seasoned actors. But LL Cool J, Freeman, Spacey, and McDermott keep the well-oiled machine of a movie rolling to the very end. No, it is not a great movie, but it is one that makes for an edge of the seat action flick with a message. Grady Harp | 1 |
....so why on Earth would I see 'Sex Lives of the Potato Men'? Answer: Johnny vegas and Mackenzie Crook. Vegas I have seen live and thoroughly enjoyed. I think he is an intelligent and unique intellectual comic who manages to retain extreme oafishness. Crook I know only from probably the greatest comedy of the last 10 years along with 'Alan Partridge', 'The Office'. As Gareth he was simply hilarious, and I was interested in how he would convert to another character on the big screen.<br /><br />OK. So me and the boyfriend went down to the multiplex last night and the film was very funny, only because the mediocre nonsense dialogue and banter Ferris and Dave had was delivered with aplomb and enthusiasm by the talent of Vegas and Crook. They are destined for better things (have done better already infact) and I even believe Vegas would make a decent straight actor. The trite scenes where he says he misses his wife came almost close to touching, although the **SPOILER** tacked on scene at the end where he is taken back by his wife needed to be lengthened, it just wasnt believable. And throughout the film Vegas only appears to miss his wife 2 or 3 times.<br /><br />The film became grotesquely unfunny and plain old, well, grotesque, when sex was mentioned. Not, I add, when it was shown on screen. Tolly's gratuitous explanation of what was in his sandwiches and why was not even slightly funny, and just made me feel a little bit ill. Also totally unneccisary was the inclusion of the character of Jeremy picking his nose, before showing a close up of the bogey on his finger. Just him picking his nose would have raised a smile, he was a pathetic character and it would have just made him look as low as possible, but showing the snot close up was just not needed and was rank.<br /><br />One scene I did think was hilarious involving sex was Vegas in the threesome. His blokish conversation with the second bloke just highlighted the fact that threesomes arent always endless ecstasy. Not that I'd know.....<br /><br />That's about all I can say really. I will end with this, and this is actually my main critique of the film. This is supposed to revive the British film industry. It is no 'Trainspotting' that is for sure....it isn't even a 'Love Actually' (you'd have to have a heart of stone not to throw up at that one), and 3 million pounds really could have been put into a better project. 'Mike Basset England Manager' was a wonderful little known British comedy and was made for far less than 3 million. I only hope that the BFC will learn from 'Sex Lives of the Potato Men' and not get so gratuitous in future. Although the terrible reviews this film is getting are only enhancing the box office takings. :-) | 0 |
Excellent drama about 2 alienated, spoiled punks who go afoul of the federal government, each for his own reasons. One, a druggie, just wants to score some bucks for his next fix, but the other has a far more sinister agenda fueled in part by a resentment of his father. Good performances and a hot script makes this a winner. | 1 |
Bette Midler is again Divine! Raunchily humorous. In love with Burlesque. Capable of bringing you down to tears either with old jokes with new dresses or merely with old songs with more power & punch than ever. All in All Singing new ballads, power-singing the good old/perennial ones such as "The Rose"; "Stay With Me" and yes, even "Wind Beneath My Wings". The best way to appreciate the Divine Miss M has always been libe - since this is the next best thing to it, I strongly recommended to all with a mixture of adult wide-eyed enchantment and appreciation and a child's mischievous wish for pushing all boundaries! | 1 |
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