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Outside Providence does not seem like much from the preview , but it turns out to be a surprisingly good comedy .
Outside Providence seems like just another low budget , goofy high school comedy from the preview , but it is really a good movie . Timothy Dunphy is the lovable high school screw-up whose father sends him off to boarding school after he is involved in an accident with a parked police cruiser while smoking pot with his...
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What happens in Europe stays in Europe . . .
One thing I've noticed about nearly all of Woody Allen's movies is that , regardless of how good the rest of the movie is , the dialogue is generally written and performed with a nearly flawless realism that pushes the surprisingly intricate stories along at a pretty fast pace , often leaving me with the feeling that t...
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A comedy that is very well thought out and very intelligent . This is often difficult to watch , but it works because it has heart .
Funny Bones is not a traditional comedy . It starts off being deliberately unamusing , yet it later becomes evident that this was done not only to establish reason for the events that occur during the rest of the movie , but also to create good character development . Oliver Platt proves that he is not only a great com...
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Hell yes .
The remake of Ocean's 11 is a tremendously entertaining movie . I personally find Brad Pitt and George Clooney to be among the most watchable actors working today , so I found the movie to be hugely appealing despite numerous plot holes , an almost nonstop barrage of clichés , a ridiculous ending , and Don Cheadle . Be...
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The true meaning of Christmas is in your heart ?
I read a review by another IMDb user who compared the look of the film to illustrations in old children's books , the ones that , for certain generations , bring back warm and much - cherished memories , and while The Polar Express didn't exactly knock my socks off like I expected it would , this is exactly what it loo...
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What is insanity truly like ? Watch In Dreams and you'll find out .
The color red is very significant in In Dreams , in everything from the apples that seem to represent Claire's ( Annette Bening ) fears to the red dress that she is dressed in the numerous times that she ' dies ' to the weird red color of Vivian's ( Robert Downey Jr . ) hair towards the end of the film . The color red ...
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A cross section of Chaplin's first year in film-making .
It is no secret that Charlie Chaplin spent most of his first year in film-making churning out simple short comedies for Keystone Studios , in which he spent most of his time either kicking , punching , and throwing bricks at people or planting kisses on uncomfortable women . Laffing Gas is kind of a cross section of Ch...
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The Bourne Identity is a taut psychological thriller that explores the genre from a variety of new standpoints , but doesn't quite manage to be as great as it could have and should have been .
In one of the more anticipated thrillers released this year , Matt Damon takes on the role of a CIA assassin who has failed an assassination mission only to wake up and find himself on a strange fishing boat with no memory of who or where he is or how he even got there . It starts off under this immediately interesting...
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Eventually , Airport presents a very interesting and intricate story .
I had never heard of this movie when I watched it recently , and I actually thought that it was a spoof of Airplane , and not the other way around , until I noticed that it was made a decade earlier . Although Airport starts off with nearly 45 minutes of mind-numbing boredom , it builds up a number of separate stories ...
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Keaton steals the show .
I may be biased toward Buster Keaton since I have seen so many more of his films than of Fatty Arbuckle's , but I think that he was a far better physical comedian than Fatty was . Arbuckle performs some astonishing tricks as the cook , flipping pancakes behind his back and tossing utensils and such , and he should be r...
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A quality re-make , but still not nearly as good as Thunderball .
I'm sick and tired of people complaining that Never Say Never Again is just a weak remake of Thunderball . Yes , that movie's influence is unmistakable , but the tremendous and almost universal inferiority of re-made films is reserved for such thoughtless and unintelligent films like the 1998 re-make of Psycho . While ...
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Genuinely heartwarming but truly unrealistic . . .
The overarching tendency that I noticed in I Am Sam is that it is so good at making the audience root for Sam and his daughter Lucy to be able to stay together , but the better it is at that , the further it gets from reality . Very little is revealed about Lucy's conception beyond the fact that she was born from a hom...
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Smarter than A Bug's Life but not quite as fun .
I always love a good animated film or TV show that can entertain both children and adults , like Toy Story or Shrek or The Simpsons , and while Antz is definitely aimed at pleasing both its older and younger audience members , there is something about it that is not quite as fun as its animated counterpart . There were...
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A surprisingly delightful romantic comedy about the horrors of marriage !
SPOILERS I was remarkably uninterested in this movie when I first heard about it . I just can't say that a romantic comedy starring Chris O'Donnell held any appeal for me , and to be perfectly honest , I can't even remember why I decided to watch it . Whatever led me to watch this film , I'm glad , because it was surpr...
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Not bad . . .
I've seen better Buster Keaton short films , but this one still manages to portray the rather dreary fate of a man who finds himself in prison because an escaped convict switched clothes with him after he knocked himself unconscious with a golf ball . His is ultimately to be hung , and I think the film deserves respect...
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The Cane Mutiny ! !
The unnatural history of the introduction of cane toads into Australia is a hilarious documentary about what is certainly one of the most foolish of history's human attempts at changing their environment for their own advantage . It is almost sickening to consider the sheer numbers of these hideous creatures that were ...
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Note to self : Don't write anything down . Wait , maybe I better not write this ?
The Butterfly Effect , unfortunately marketed as most notable because of a turn from idiot comedy to strong dramatic performance by Ashton Kutcher , begins with a title explaining one of the tenets of Chaos Theory , specifically that a butterfly flapping its wings starts a chain reaction of events that can result in a ...
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Objection ! ! Leading !
I almost didn't watch Murder By Numbers , for two reasons . First , I'm not the biggest Sandra Bullock fan , but second and more importantly , the trailer does not do the movie justice at all . In fact , I would advise against watching the trailer , because it will almost destroy all interest in watching the movie , li...
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Excellent story , but a little slow and boring at some points .
Kiss of the Spider Woman takes the classic man undercover story and throws just about every twist into it that you can think of . William Hurt plays Luis Molina , a homosexual who is being held in a South American prison peppered with political prisoners , and is sharing a cell with Valentin Arregui , who happens to be...
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Morgan Spurlock continues the 30 days theme , with spotty success .
Given the sheer brilliance and immediate importance of Super Size Me , I was eager to see Morgan Spurlock's next project , the unscripted documentary series " 30 Days . " Within a few minutes into the first episode , it becomes clear that he is going to use the same structure as he used in his feature documentary , but...
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You can't hold the cheesiness against it .
Orgazmo is the kind of movie that is cheesy to the point that it's obviously meant to be that way . You can't watch a movie like this and think even for a second that it is meant to be taken seriously , or even that it takes itself seriously . And all of this is clear just from looking at the cover box , so you know fr...
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Welcome to the jungle , baby ?
Consider that so many of the roles that Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on are so similar , including Predator , and yet this film is so much better than most of the others . I enjoy watching his movies just because he's such a watch-able guy , even in his bad movies ( which are many ) , but I think the thing that really m...
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Faster , pussycat . . .
This is a surprisingly effective horror film , since I got it on a collection of 10 old horror movies for $15 . I have three or four other ten horror movie collections and have only seen one or two films from them . I wonder how many more are actually worth watching ? I have a love of really old and even really bad hor...
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That nativity scene is too much for me !
In a lot of ways I am surprised at the sheer simplicity of these old Bean TV shows , but that nativity scene was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in one of his shows . It reminds me of Chaplin's dance of the dinner rolls . It is so simple , but clearly a stroke of true genius . Recently I watched all of Chap...
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Classic action ?
Paul Verhoeven's ambitious action masterpiece was a huge success at the time of its release in 1987 , but I tend to think that it would not be nearly a successful if a film like it had been released today . Action and science fiction movies have come a long way since the 80's , and it's also no secret that the success ...
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No wonder Hayden Christensen got that role in Episode II ?
Life As A House tells the story of an aging man diagnosed with terminal cancer who makes one of those deathbed conversions from a hopeless slob and absentee father into someone who wants to reunite himself with his son and rebuild the shack that he has been living in for most of his life , much of which was spent with ...
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Amusing short Pink Panther cartoon .
The Pink Blueprint involves the Pink Panther's efforts to replace a construction workers boring blueprints with one of his own , which would result in the construction of a crazy looking futuristic house . He and the worker get into a funny competition of sorts , each trying to use the same construction site to build t...
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Mr . Bean stumbles belligerently through a series of routine daily events , each one going horribly wrong and treating the audience to another dose of unintentional hilarity as only Bean can .
This is the first time I have seen any of the old Bean TV shows that aired in the UK before the movie was released here in the states in 1997 . I was reminded of some of Roberto Benigni's older films , such as Johnny Stecchino , which I watched because I was endlessly impressed with Life Is Beautiful . As in Benigni's ...
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One of the better plots . . .
For about the first two thirds of The Landlady's Pet ( that's the real title , by the way - The Star Boarder was the former title , but ultimately it was changed ) it seems that it is going to come across as three distinctly separate parts - the first third , where Charlie is the " star boarder , " the landlady's favor...
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007 entering the computerized age ?
The Spy Who Loved Me starts off slow with a less than impressive opening scene but ultimately is one of the better films in the series . It's about a supervillain named Karl Stromberg who has isolated himself from society in a massive underwater lair that reminds me of the Nautilus from Jules Verne's " 20 , 000 Leagues...
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In a time when horror movies have become direct-to-video crap or cheesy first-run crap , how is it that the Hellraiser movies are among the least noticed and yet probably the most clever and impressive sequel
The beginning of the fifth Hellraiser sequel raises something of a moral dilemma , which is extremely rare for a horror movie . After the car crash , Trevor , our hero , escapes from the car after it sinks to the bottom of the river and he rushes to the surface to get air , then returns to attempt to save his wife . At...
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Second best animated feature of the year ! !
The evolution of the martial arts genre has been of particular interest to me lately , as I recently bought a Bruce Lee collection and have been watching a few of his old classics and comparing them to the newer species of movies like Crouching Tiger , Hidden Dragon and Shaolin Soccer . I wasn't all that excited about ...
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So cutesy but so good ! !
I haven't seen Short Circuit for some time now , but it is such a huge milestone in my childhood that I have to say something about it . Maturer audiences will have a hard time overlooking some of the childish nuances of the movie , but it is such a fun and entertaining family film that all of those things can be easil...
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Stallone's take on the Great Escape .
So I'm no expert on World War II , but the idea of some German prison officers being even remotely interested in a game of soccer between themselves and their prisoners seems pretty ludicrous to me . Nonetheless , this movie does a good job of justifying that idea , presenting it as a huge propaganda event , something ...
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An entertaining look behind the scenes of the movie star romances .
Normally , who is married to / engaged to / dating who in the movie world is something that I couldn't possibly care less about , and I still don't care , but America's Sweethearts manages to make that very subject amusing and entertaining . John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones play Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harrison , two...
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Great chronology !
( spoilers ) I had spotted a spectacular editing failure when I noticed that Wayne Hayes ( Robert Redford ) and his captor Arnold ( Willem Dafoe ) remained in the same day while his wife and family and team of investigators passed through several days . The story switches back and forth between Wayne and Arnold and the...
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Deceptively cute . . .
I'm reminded of the shallow complaints that I heard about Runaway Bride , since it starred Richard Gere and Julia Roberts , who had already starred in the astronomically successful Pretty Woman together . Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are teamed up again in a nice little romantic comedy and the producers no doubt hope that pe...
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Based on the BOOK !
Maybe that declaration in the opening credits just struck me as funny because a documentary like this seems to ham-handed and primal to me that it's hard to imagine the movie having been based on a book version of it , as though they translated the plotline of a book about body-building to a movie . At any rate , now t...
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The most powerful three-letter word in the English language !
OK , I have to tell you a true story , you're not gonna believe this . I tried this " yes " thing a couple years ago , in late 2006 . The first thing I did was accept an offer to teach English in China ( I'm still here ) , then I was invited into dozens of Chinese homes , I agreed to an idea to ride a bicycle from my c...
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The American people want revenge . They liked Afghanistan and they want more . ? Karl Rove .
The first decade of the 21st Century is undeniably characterized first and foremost in America , possibly even more than the lengthy wars that we have become involved in , by the atmosphere of sheer political tension . George W . Bush has been called many names , from " visionary " to " the worst President in American ...
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The poor kid would have dealt with the ordeal with the dog a lot better had he read Call of the Wild .
Then again , of course , the whole point was that he was a poor black kid , pretty much a slave to the rich white man who doesn't exactly prepare him for the University . I just couldn't help remember how vicious the beatings were that the sled dogs suffered in that book . The story focuses initially on a rich white ma...
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The most impressive thing was the cast .
Before I go on , I should mention that Mystic River is an outstandingly well-made movie . I saw it months after it was released , after it had been acclaimed one of the best movies of the year , and after it had officially been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar . So I guess I just expected more , especially from Clint...
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Yeah , Steve !
You know what I love about the Academy Awards ceremonies ? They provide insight into the personalities of so many of our favorite Hollywood stars . There was a great , although short , interview with Anthony Hopkins in the pre-show event , where an obviously star-struck reporter asked him how he did what he did and wha...
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An entertaining but very strange black comedy . Almost too strange .
Bud Cort plays the part of Harold , a young man who seems to feel that his mother does not pay enough attention to him . After not receiving much of a reaction from her after having staged numerous extremely elaborate suicide scenes , he soon loses interest , especially after meeting Maude , an eccentric 80-year-old wo...
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Charlie struggling to get a job in the movies ?
There is something uniquely charming about the short comedies that Chaplin made that poke fun at his art form or that show us a little bit of the mechanics of how these movies are made . The most notable example other than His New Job is the charming and fun Behind the Screen , although this film is a lot of fun , too ...
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A boy's best friend is his mother . . .
This strangely titled film is something that should have been presented to the horror genre years ago . Normally , you would say that this is a blatant rip off of such classics as Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs , but as the tagline says , this is a true story that took place in the ...
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Is Weird Science a piece of cinematic cheese ? Yes , undeniably . Is it a must-see ? Hell yeah !
Sure , Weird Science is not a spectacular film . It will never be mentioned in a history of film class , and watching it fifteen years after its release shows that time has not been kind to it at all . But as a good , fun comedy , it lives on forever . Just as computers were really beginning to make a big impression on...
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I'd much rather be in here than out there in that cold world . . .
It has taken me years to get around to watching Laurel Canyon , even after having lived in Los Angeles and worked in West Hollywood for a year and a half . There is more about the southern California lifestyle to dislike than can ever be explained in less than 1 , 000 words , and this movie takes on really just a tiny ...
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If you didn't love Caddyshack ( like I didn't ) , watch this documentary and maybe you will .
I didn't love Caddyshack before or after I watched this documentary , but I liked the movie more afterwards . I prefer making-of documentaries that have more recent interviews with the cast and crew , as this one did . I think there are better insights provided by people looking back at the making of the movie and thei...
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Isn't life ironic ?
I've never been a big fan of Woody Allen , although I have seen few of his films . Mostly I feel like his performances get a little old for me , since he can only really play himself , in all his awkward , stuttering glory . He has a peculiarly dry style of humor that , to me , seems to get a little routine . He sort o...
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A fun look back .
Several years after the introduction of the hilarious Bean show , it is only natural that there should be a Best Of episode . We get a look back at some of his old classic bits , and probably the only thing disappointing is that there is no way that they could fit all of the worthy skits into one episode . My favorite ...
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007 entering the computerized age ?
Dr . No , the original 007 film , was basically a murder mystery , so whenever I see a Bond film like A View to A Kill , I am always struck by how far the series has come and how much bigger the stories get . In this installment , we get a truly evil , classic Bond-style villain with Max Zorin ( played by a wonderfully...
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It's frightening how close we came . . .
K-19 has a massive cast , especially in the two lead characters of Mikhail Polenin ( Liam Neeson ) and Alexei Vostrikov ( Harrison Ford ) . My understanding is that Ford wanted to take on a role different than ones he had taken in the past to prevent type-casting , and while he does a good job in his role ( as does jus...
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Quite possibly the late Chris Farley's funniest movie .
Black Sheep is one of the two films in which Chris Farley stars alongside the constant sarcasm of David Spade ( the other being Tommy Boy , which is almost as funny ) , and the results are childish but endlessly amusing . Farley plays Mike Donnelly , the younger and nuttier brother of Al Donnelly , who is campaigning t...
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The Patriot truly was an epic film , but the effects of Hollywood were much more heavily felt than in the movie's 1995 counterpart , Braveheart .
The Patriot is a beautifully made film . It has a very engaging story and it is very well acted and directed , but it was also heavily influenced by Hollywood . Normally , the effects of Hollywood are not inherently damaging to movies in general ( although they rarely add to a film's cinematic value ) , but in the case...
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Why so serious ?
Like Part 2 , Rocky 3 starts off where the last movie left off , but things are totally different now . Rocky has the feel of a real person with a real , three dimensional life by now , but he's come a long way from the Rocky we knew in the first two movies . Most notably , he's RICH now . He has a genuine career going...
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The ultimate action b-classic !
When I was a kid I may have been the biggest Commando fan ever . I think I must have watched it at least 30 times or so , I used to watch it every day after school . It is totally cheesy and Arnold is basically a superhero not far removed from Rambo other than by the fact that he has more honorable intentions . Rambo w...
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Jim Carrey is back in yet another great comedy , although it doesn't quite live up to the spectacular Dumb & Dumber .
Liar Liar is about a boy who , after being stood up by his big-shot lawyer father one too many times , wishes that for just one day his dad couldn't lie . This wreaks havoc on his personal life and even more on his professional life as a lawyer who makes a living putting criminals back on the streets . Carrey is immedi...
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A classic thriller that deserves another look .
Hush . . . Hush , Sweet Charlotte has , over the years , deteriorated into the type of film that was clearly a tremendous experience in 1964 , but is fairly tame by today's standards . The thrill is unmistakable , but the film can hardly be called a horror film anymore , especially when we now have been subjected to fi...
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Rover , wanderer , nomad , vagabond , call me what you will ?
Chaplin starts out The Vagabond playing in a bar , basically as a street performer , but soon finds himself run out by the more fully developed band who is unhappy that he's stealing their customers . Soon he wanders out into the woods and almost aimlessly stumbles across a group of backwards country people . There is ...
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A special effects movie like Troy deserved more than 11 minutes about the special effects .
This is one of three other production documentaries included on the two-disc DVD of Troy , and it tells some interesting footage about how some of the special effects were done and how they were edited together . My favorite is how they talk about how a shot of the Greek soldiers storming across the beach toward Troy w...
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An excellent look at the history of the real Troy .
At the risk of revealing the sheer extent of my ignorance of Greek history , I must admit that before I saw this documentary I wasn't sure if Troy was a real place or if it was mythical , like Atlantis . I know that there is some debate as to whether Achilles ever lived , but this documentary gives great insight into w...
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A worthy adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel , with only the really necessary drawbacks .
The Great Gatsby is a book that is very much expected to be made into a movie , and has been adapted several times before this one . It is an intricate story that entails an enormous amount of meaning and significance to society , but the literary version is not one that is capable of being adapted into a film that can...
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You've heard of dolls that bleed ? This one pees !
Contains Spoilers So here's my synopsis , I liked Bride of Chucky as much as the original , a little more than part 2 , and MUCH more than part 3 . I really think that the move toward comedy and slightly away from horror , as well as our increasing familiarity with Chucky himself , has allowed the movies , and Chucky ,...
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A Few Good Men takes a routine legal conflict , packages it in a formula film , and brilliantly makes it into a great legal thriller .
As is quite often the case with legal thrillers , A Few Good Men starts off by showing the act of violence that the rest of the movie tries to justify . It is a taut legal thriller that keeps you breathless from beginning to end as the case slowly unfolds , going into startling detail and even more surprisingly maintai...
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Ahhh , MUCH better ! !
Blade II is an exciting action film that takes the tired vampire story and adds a new twist by introducing an entirely new villain . Sure , there is sure to be some controversy ( at least among film fans and fans of the genre ) about whether or not it is right to introduce new characters in this way . Vampires are a ti...
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Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori .
The irony of this quote ( " Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland ) is what All Quiet on the Western Front is all about . The movie paints a very clear , even blindly obvious , picture of the difference between the young recruit's expectation of battlefield glory and the battle weary veteran's knowledge of ...
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Is this a spoof ?
While Shrek 2 was another great , confectionery romp like the first one , the homages to old fairy tales and other movies are approaching the area of campy spoofs . I was just waiting for Leslie Nielsen to pop up somewhere . Fiona pulls a layer of mud off of Shrek's face , kissing him upside down like Mary Jane Watson ...
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Not just another Denzel movie ?
The more Denzel Washington movies that I watch , while he remains one of my favorite actors , the more apparent it becomes that he seems to play basic variations of the same character over and over . I think I was first put off when John Q came out , I saw it , and it occurred to me that he was playing yet another desp...
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Quite possibly the scariest funny movie ever made . Or the funniest scary movie ever made .
They Live is one of those horror movies that is so scary and so good that it has become a comedy classic . Yes , comedy . There are maybe a total of five horror films that were made in the 80s that are or ever were even slightly frightening , the majority of them , particularly those which remain popular today , are po...
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And the baby goes to ?
Coming on the heels of the great writer's strike in Hollywood , the 2007 Academy Awards ceremony began amidst wonder about what it would be like , after the Golden Globes , I think , was presented as a bare bones ceremony to which few people showed up . I didn't pay much attention to the writer's strike , partly becaus...
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Looks like we're gonna need new sheets again , baby ?
It is perfectly fitting that the new X-Men movie should include " Wolverine " in the title , since none of the three previous movies explained the history of his mutation , although slightly less fitting that " X-Men " should be in the title , because it is more like a spin off for Wolverine , the franchise's most popu...
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An entertaining twist on the traditional modern romance .
As has been the case with nearly every romantic comedy ever made , Jerry ( Brad Pitt ) and Samantha ( Julia Roberts ) are in a wonderful relationship that is nearly destroyed by a lot of stupidity . There is a horribly frustrating encounter between the two in which Samantha refuses to believe that Jerry is being forced...
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Hellraiser III is by far the best of the series so far . It is the first one that has any decent acting ( although still not great ) , good direction , and even a fairly respectable story .
Pinhead has returned , and again he wants to destroy that pesky puzzle box , the door to Hell , so that he will never have to go back . His return to the world of the living is fascinatingly done with an updated version of that horrific rotating pillar that we're all so familiar with by this point . Kevin Bernhardt pla...
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Very Bruckheimer-esque ?
John Grisham is famous for constructing tight , fascinating and tense legal thrillers , and Runaway Jury is really no exception , but unfortunately it doesn't really seem to take itself very seriously , which is bad for a movie that falls in a subgenre that should really be taken seriously . The movie's basic idea is t...
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Let's start building some hurting bombs !
Another Rocky movie is definitely a long shot , to say the least . Stallone came out with a new Rocky movie and a new Rambo movie pretty close to each other , so it's pretty easy to assume that he's having career trouble and desperate for a couple of new hits . I haven't seen the new Rambo yet , but I just watched Rock...
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. and the Star Wars saga makes a massive comeback ! !
It was no small task for George Lucas to make up for that ridiculous mess that bore the title of Episode I . While Episode II : Attack of the Clones was far from unflawed , it is vastly superior to its predecessor , providing for some serious entertainment and a huge relief for Star Wars fans around the world . Sadly ,...
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8
A dark look at the subconscious mind of the typical American male .
American Psycho seems to be concerned with what it is that Americans really think about , and puts forth a rather disturbing assertion . This movie reminds me of an old video I saw of Jim Carrey back when he was a stand-up comedian . I think this was even before his Saturday Night Live days . He was talking about how w...
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326,614
8
That's it , I'm getting a job at a hotel . . .
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron's lesser known brother , Carlos , Wedding Night reveals a shared interest in sex and comedy between the two brothers , although with slightly less tragedy than Alfonso tends to portray . While Alfonso mixes sex and tragedy and gets comedy as a result , Carlos goes straight for sex and comedy ...
544,610
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42,707
8
Much better than expected !
As it is described in the collection in which it now appears , The Man Who Cheated Himself is definitely a classic piece of textbook film noir . I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of Lee Cobb until I saw him in 12 Angry Men a couple months ago . He was an astonishingly busy actor between the 1930s and 1970s...
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220,506
8
Hey , at least the series isn't sinking as precipitously as the Hellraiser series . Just kidding . This movie rocked . Seriously . You're hearing this from a dedicated Halloween fan . Resurrection deserves to be w
I read another reviewer's comments about Halloween : Resurrection , and one of the things that he said in his review is that hardcore Halloween fans will be disappointed . On the contrary , I think that hardcore Halloween fans , a brilliant group of movie buffs with whom I proudly associate myself , are among the few t...
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300,556
8
Never underestimate the importance of release forms ! !
Speaking of time travel , there is an interesting paradox that seems to surround movies that involve time travel ( The Time Machine ( namely the remake ) , Timeline , Time Cop ( for obvious reasons , admittedly ) , etc ) , in that no one seems to like them but they keep getting made . Well , maybe no one likes them but...
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8
A classic crime comedy that evidently can't be updated .
The humor in this movie is not only British , which is notoriously misunderstood by American audiences ( and vice versa ) , which is odd because both the writer and director were American , but it is also now five decades old . Only the best American comedies have lasted anywhere near that long ( consider , for example...
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805,570
8
Models and Boy Scouts advised to avoid riding subways alone after 2am ?
It is one of my unwritten principles about film criticism never to say things like " Such-and - such movie could only have come from the mind of so-and-so . " It's a self-congratulatory phrase that sell-out critics ( film critics and books critics alike ) use in efforts to get their names on movie or book covers , and ...
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8
Pretty interesting look behind the scenes of the Flight of the Phoenix remake .
The first thing that really struck me about this documentary was how much of an , ah , emotional man John Moore is . There are some great looks behind the scenes of the making of the movie , which are almost always overshadowed by the occasional tempter tantrums the John Moore throws . Granted , he's in the middle of m...
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127,723
8
A surprise classic !
I just read a review of Can't Hardly Wait on the IMDb by a user who mentioned that he has walked by the movie in his local video store countless times before finally renting it . Personally , I saw it countless times when it was released because I worked at a video store at the time , but it is probably the one movie t...
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8
It's too bad that Sean Connery foresaw the succession of awful movies that were to eventually follow , because he was by far the best James Bond ever .
Dr . No is the film that introduced the movie world to James Bond , the world's most famous ' secret ' agent . This is where we first see most of the things that have come to be traditional in 007 movies , such as Bond's indestructibility , his blatant but perpetually uneventful flirtatious exchanges with Moneypenny , ...
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8
It begins . . .
The Phantom Menace is one of those movies that I have been meaning to review since I first saw it on opening day years and years ago . I have a little book where I make notes of movies I would like to review , and when I flipped back to the page for Episode I , I noticed that the last time I jotted down a couple of poi...
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163,187
8
You know what ? Don't tell me anything about Pretty Woman , because I don't even want to hear it .
Runaway Bride is just a good romantic comedy . Yes , the director and the two big name stars are the same as the film's 1990 counterpart , but even though the two films have striking and almost offensive similarities , Runaway Bride has a good enough story that I refuse to believe that it relied on the success of its p...
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8
A worthy sequel .
( spoilers ) Ace Ventura : When Nature Calls is unmistakably a childish movie , but so is the first Ace Ventura , so what did you expect ? The opening sequence involving a raccoon suspended from a wire high up in the mountains ( in an amusing parody of Cliffhanger ) is a little too cheesy even by Ventura standards at s...
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8
Great detail from cast and crew .
The Making of Sands of Iwo Jima goes into great detail about who starred in the movie and who some of the main crew members were , presumably because so little on set footage exists . A surprising number of the original cast appear in interviews in this short documentary to talk about their experiences making the movie...
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8
Quality in this series didn't rise exponentially , like the titles , but this one is still worth seeing .
Just about everyone I talk to about the Alien movies always says the same thing , that you only need to watch the first two because the Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection are both terrible . Having just watched Alien 3 again recently for the first time in probably ten years , I'm surprised that people think it is such a te...
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8
Goodnight , Clark ?
It's easy to see the elements of this movie that led to its Luke-warm at best public reception . As Julie Ng's wonderful making-of documentary included on the DVD explains , it quietly disappeared from theaters two weeks after its release . I can easily see people being put off by a movie about a guy who raises vast nu...
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8
Interesting analysis .
The full first half of this supplemental documentary concentrates on what almost comes off as a conspiracy theory about the likelihood of a biological weapon being launched somewhere in the world , causing an epidemic of disease that wipes out a frightening number of the people on earth , similar to what happens in the...
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Much better than I expected .
30 Days of Night starts out with a fascinating introduction to its fascinating setting , Barrow , Alaska , the northernmost city in America . A quick look at Google earth with reveal this to be true ? Barrow is very near Barrow Point , the northern tip of North America . I have a strange fascination with places like th...
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8
Apollo's mad ?
So when Apollo says at the end of the first film that there isn't going to be any rematch ( sorry , " ain't gonna be no rematch " ) , I'm thinking that it was probably because no one really knew how big the movie was going to be . I think the original film was meant to be a single movie that stood on its own , but a se...
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8
A reminder that more racism is not the answer to racism .
In the movie , it is stated that the Bible says " An eye for an eye . " There is , first of all , the old saying that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind , but I think a more important concern is that an eye for an eye being applied in this case would lead to three " death by dragging " convictions . That wo...
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8
There is something to be said about the story of The Secret Garden when even such a skeletal film adaptation as this one can be so wildly entertaining .
This version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden takes the novel and eliminates all but the most crucial elements to make sure the story makes sense , but there is so much left out from the book that it takes away a lot of the magic . Rather than have the garden act as a magical entity in itself , it is more...
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8
Lost Super-Puppy , Answers to the Name of Bolt . If Found , Please Contact The Incredibles . . .
I've read that Bolt is the first computer animated feature to come from Disney Studios since Pixar's John Lasseter took control of it , and it's easy to see the Pixar presence in the movie . John Travolta and Miley Cyrus provide the celebrity voice talent for the movie , about a dog who stars in a superhero TV show but...
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8
Every installment gets worse than the last one . Except this one .
The movie starts off fairly well , relatively speaking . Tommy Jarvis has grown up into a young man and returns to Jason's grave , unable to go on living unless he can completely verify for himself that Jason is really dead . On the other hand , digging up Jason's grave and essentially freeing him ( since Tommy doesn't...