reviewId int64 363k 588k | userId int64 33.9k 15.9M | itemId int64 1 1.42M | rating float64 1 10 | title stringlengths 1 10.9k ⌀ | content stringlengths 81 11.6k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
442,679 | 819,382 | 132,477 | 5 | Warms the Cockles of Your Heart . | There's not much original in this story of a high school kid who yearns to send rockets into the sky rather than work in the local coal mine . It's all pretty formulaic . But formulas are in such common use because they are dependable . Who would argue with A squared plus B squared equals C squared ? They get the job d... |
441,790 | 819,382 | 50,383 | 5 | Is there such a thing as trying too hard ? | A based-on-fact story of Jimmy Piersall , a major league player of the 1950s who suffered what looks like a major depression with some paranoid ideas . Not much could be done with major league mental illnesses at the time , before the French accidentally discovered anti-psychotic meds . The movie ends , as all such mov... |
442,521 | 819,382 | 91,541 | 5 | Sometimes Funny , Always Loud and Fast . | Back in the 1950s there were a series of films dealing with problems encountered by an increasingly prosperous and suburban America . Building a house , having your daughter get married , your first child , your first grandchild . Most of them were well written and amusing . " The Money Pit " belongs to that series but... |
442,616 | 819,382 | 120,787 | 5 | A Regular Sheepshank | SPOILERS . It's hard to imagine why they keep remaking classics , aside from the desire to make more money . Frederick Knott's mystery can be played a number of different ways . A TV production some years ago used Anthony Quayle , a splendid actor , as Chief Inspector Hubbard . It followed the script precisely and was ... |
443,593 | 819,382 | 431,420 | 5 | A random walk through serial killer territory . | I kind of enjoyed this although it meandered all over the place and its characters were as lugubrious as the weather of the Canadian coast where the film was shot . It's extraordinary how little laughter is to be found in this sullen setting . Oh , there's sarcasm . Some of the characters trade wisecracks , but nobody ... |
442,331 | 819,382 | 105,391 | 5 | Moderately Entertaining WWII Spy Drama | Melanie Griffith is am ambitious , quick-witted , German-speaking , young secretary at the Office of Strategic Services who is enlisted by her boss , Michael Douglas , and sent to Berlin to work for high-ranking Germans and uncover secrets concerning their V-2 rockets now being built at Penemunde . She winds up as a na... |
442,698 | 819,382 | 418,763 | 5 | Jarheads Can Take It . | There's a scene in which Swofford and his fellow Marines are watching the scene in " Apocalypse Now " in which the Vietnamese village is attacked by napalm-bearing helicopters and the gooks are all blown to pieces in a shower of bullets and jellied gasoline . The Marines are cheering wildly and the killing . They could... |
442,099 | 819,382 | 292,506 | 5 | Didactic spy thriller . | It's the kind of movie that's likely to have started off with someone asking , " Have they made any action movies or , er , spy thrillers that take you through the CIA boot camp at Langley ? You know , like " 13 Rue Madeleine " ? The one where Richard Conte is a Gestapo agent who enrolls and has to get found out ? Ever... |
442,807 | 819,382 | 283,897 | 5 | Slow plot , sparkling dance . | Robert Duvall has turned in such interesting performances in films like " The Godfather , " " MASH " , and " True Grit " that " Assassination Tango " comes across as a disappointment . The plot , the direction , and the performances are weaker than we might have hoped . As an actor , Duvall lapses into too many of his ... |
442,042 | 819,382 | 182,361 | 5 | The Adventure of the Cornish Fraud . | David Suchet as Poirot , and Hugh Frazer as Captain Hastings , take a vacation at a resort in Cornwall , where they meet Magdalena " Nick " Buckley , the beautiful young woman with the startling gray eyes ( Polly Walker ) who lives in the mansion called End House next door . The three are having tea al fresco when Nick... |
443,286 | 819,382 | 120,749 | 5 | Bruce Willis as Loose Cannon Cop . | In this one , the FBI are the good guys , more or less . A little naive maybe , except for Bruce Willis . The National Security Agency ( NSA ) are a supersecret group who plant spies all over the place and want to kill a little autistic boy who has accidentally cracked their top secret code . The NSA as a secretive org... |
443,579 | 819,382 | 45,877 | 5 | Insubstantial Kidnapping Thriller . | Two ordinary guys - - Frank Lovejoy and Edmund O'Brien - - are driving to Mexico to do some fishing and they pick up a hitch hiker , William Talman , who later became Hamilton Berger on the old Perry Mason TV show . That was a big mistake . Talman , with a hideous and slightly deformed face and a voice like Jason Robar... |
443,350 | 819,382 | 37,193 | 5 | Frenetic Hope Comedy . | This is a splashy Technicolor comedy with Bob Hope as an impersonator on the run , Virginia Mayo as a kidnapped princess , Victor McLaglan as " The Hook " , and Walter Slezak as the ruler of an island that serves as a pirate's rest stop . It should be funnier than it is , and I was trying to figure out why it doesn't c... |
442,483 | 819,382 | 43,660 | 5 | Woman in Jeopardy . | Valentina Cortese has an interesting face rather than a conventionally beautiful one . Startling eyes - - the right eye looks straight ahead while the left is canted somewhat outward , lending her every expression a kind of fey quality . From most angles her big features are full of bone structure , dominated by an aqu... |
443,568 | 819,382 | 46,035 | 5 | Glen Ford : Sniveling Coward ? | Travis , Crockett , Bowie and the rest are back behind the barricades at the Alamo in 1836 . Budd Boetticher directed this tale of Glen Ford , the only escapee and survivor . Of course , Glen Ford would not have left except that he and a dozen other heroic defenders had families and ranches up there around Oxbow and th... |
443,276 | 819,382 | 47,947 | 5 | Not a bad period SF . | There is a space wheel in orbit around the earth , not unlike Kubrick's that came fourteen years later . Half a dozen of the crew are being trained for an exploratory trip to the moon . They take off as scheduled , but at the last minute their orders are changed . They will land on the planet Mars to find out if it is ... |
443,155 | 819,382 | 23,793 | 5 | Underwater . | Something about a U-boat that sinks with a million dollars in gold bullion . After the war , the skipper enlists the help of an amoral floozie and an expert underwater diver ( Ralph Bellamy ) to retrieve the gold . They inveigle their way into the crew of a ship that is on a scientific expedition , with Fay Wray a prom... |
442,253 | 819,382 | 39,211 | 5 | Cheapt , nicely written drama . | It's really Claire Trevor's movie . She probably has more screen time than anyone else and hers is the only character that shows any development at all . The plot engine begins when she stumbles on two freshly killed bodies - - Lawrence Tierney is the executioner - - picks up the phone to call the cops , hesitates , th... |
442,037 | 819,382 | 32,412 | 5 | The Incredible Shrinking Busybodies . | Albert Dekker is a reclusive mad scientist hiding away in a laboratory in the Peruvian jungle . Boy , are three scientists back in the states surprised to get an invitation from Dekker to join him . The three surprised scientists are Charles Holton , Janice Logan , and Thomas Coley . They make the arduous journey to Pe... |
443,477 | 819,382 | 6,177 | 5 | The Tramp's First Steps | Not much to be said about this Chaplin short . Charlie was introducing the tramp character , it was early in his career ( 1915 ) , he had responsibility for everything and was working like a coolie . So it isn't surprising that " The Tramp " lacks the wit , sophistication , sentimentality , and innovative quality of so... |
442,928 | 819,382 | 68,395 | 5 | The One With Patrick O'Neal as Villainous Architect | Peter Falk , as Lieutenant Columbo , the sartorial shambles , is always stumbling into some elitist milieu - - championship chess , haute cuisine , oenology , Beverley Hills , or whatnot . This time it's architecture . And Peter O'Neal , perennial heavy with the gargling baritone , is the bad guy who murders a client t... |
441,818 | 819,382 | 26,393 | 5 | Cagney as Good Guy | Until this movie appeared in 1935 , Jimmy Cagney had played roles in which he was a con man or a gangster of some sort . The formula having grown a little weary , Warners put him in " G Men , " in which he joins the FBI and pursues murderers and other people guilty of moral terpitude . Saw this for the first time tonig... |
442,809 | 819,382 | 149,898 | 5 | Expectable rogue cop fare . | There are a couple of good things about this thoroughly routine cop mystery . Some of the performances are really pretty polished but they mostly come from actors in minor parts , such as Ron Silver and James Handy . And Silver looks great . His hair is combed back and up in what might be called a long brush cut . He's... |
442,216 | 819,382 | 23,775 | 5 | Iron Face in the Velvet Glove . | Whew , Barbara Stanwyck plays one tough babe in this film . She begins as a waitress in a saloon owned by her father ( who has been pimping her out since she turned fourteen ) . Yes , he's heartless . So's a professor who gives her a book , " The Power of Will " by Nietzsche , advising her to go to the big city and USE... |
442,565 | 819,382 | 47,878 | 5 | Rather routine late noir . | Maybe some of us have been spoiled by more modern ethnographies of hoodlumism . " Goodfellas , " for instance , showed us just how it worked on the streets . " The Big Combo , " solidly noir though it is , deals with the big boys at the top , like many others of the genre , including " The Big Heat . " Richard Conte pl... |
441,796 | 819,382 | 95,341 | 5 | Exploitation | What an infuriating documentary . Actually , as I write this , it has been almost exactly ten months since Al Qaida flew two passenger jets into the World Trade Center . A shocking event which killed more than two thousand innocent people and forever altered the skyline I admired so much as a kid . I wondered at the ti... |
443,189 | 819,382 | 32,993 | 5 | Prologue | The first of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby " Road " series , and not the best . What's wrong with it ? People have complained that it is plot heavy but that's a little hard to swallow because the plot could be used to stuff a portobello mushroom . The problem , I think , is that it's too serious , if you can believe it ... |
442,230 | 819,382 | 478,134 | 5 | Murderous Drums . | Charlize Theron's agent has finally stopped shoveling her into heavily made-up and unglamorous roles like " Monster " and " The North " . Here , she wears her dark hair short and severely pulled back with a kind of diminutive pony tail . Her features seem freshly washed , washed out even , plain and beautiful . And she... |
443,375 | 819,382 | 41,610 | 5 | Raw Rudimentary Western | We don't often get a chance to see Glenn Ford as a bad guy , but he's pretty nasty here . He's a mean German who finds a fortune in gold in the Lost Dutchman mine in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix , Arizona . Carries a Sharp's carbine . Shoots comarades in the back . Torments women while watching them die of t... |
442,903 | 819,382 | 460,792 | 5 | I'll Have the Soyburger , Thank You . | Judging from the title , I'd expected this to be something along the lines of a fable like " Supersize Me " or some documentary on The Learning Channel teaching us a lesson on hot dogs and french fries . But no . It's am ambitious drama about the illegal importation of Mexicans to work in a meat-processing plant to ser... |
443,049 | 819,382 | 387,055 | 5 | Deliberately paced , stylized , abundantly empty . | I guess I'm going to have to give Reygadas A for effort . What we see on screen certainly LOOKS good . The photography is splendid and the human or humanoid figures are memorable in one way or another . It sounds good too . There's no noticeable score but the situational music ranges from rap through military marches t... |
443,139 | 819,382 | 422,295 | 5 | Alice in Wonderland . | This is a love story . That it happens to be based on an interpretation of Diane Arbus ' life is supervenient . This could be any young woman from an artistic but conventional background living in Greenwich Village in 1958 . Or it could be Alice in Wonderland . When Nicole Kidman , as Arbus , first enters Lionel Sweene... |
442,324 | 819,382 | 83,190 | 5 | One Last Caper and I Retire . | James Caan is a thief recently released after eleven years in the slams . Somebody owes him money and he collects it - - out toughing the possessors . This boldness impresses the Big Man , Robert Prosky . Prosky , who has a finger in every meretricious pie , delivers the money personally and invites Caan to join him in... |
443,590 | 819,382 | 69,902 | 5 | The Last Refuge of Scoundrels . | One of the less interesting episodes in the otherwise splendidly amusing early series . I don't know why it doesn't quite work . If the plot were described here , in print , it would sound typically promising . Jackie Cooper is a candidate for the US Senate . He's received a couple of death threats which have prompted ... |
442,922 | 819,382 | 69,904 | 5 | Martin Landau is Twins . | In this one , Martin Landau , plays estranged identical twins who team up on the sly to knock off their rich uncle , Paul Stewart . Stewart , the old goat , plans to marry a new-age Julie Newmar who is half his age . I didn't mind so much seeing Paul Stewart die by batter mixer in his own bathtub , but throwing Julie N... |
442,830 | 819,382 | 83,169 | 5 | Kids shouldn't play with real guns . | We are at Bunker Hill Military Academy , a prep school with students ranging in age from , say , high-school seniors to boys so small that they can't possibly have experienced any of the delights of puberty . The cadet corps is run by proud Timothy Hutton . His immediate subordinates include the sensible Sean Penn - - ... |
442,950 | 819,382 | 56,931 | 5 | A puzzle wrapped in an enigma and so forth . | Unlike the original , " Village of the Damned , " this film skips the introductory stuff and begins in medias res , with the kids already six or seven years old , half a dozen of them , spread around the world in different countries . There is no explanation of how they were born except in the claim of an English mothe... |
442,063 | 819,382 | 412,260 | 5 | So this is Paree ? | Paris Hilton is an attractive blonde with a keen figure . She was 19 when she and her lover filmed this homemade production . But she might as well have been 9 instead of 19 . Her lover Rick and Paris , or " Paree " as he calls her , act throughout like two kids playing Doctor in a sandbox . They coyly enact the univer... |
442,169 | 819,382 | 55,031 | 5 | Verdict Guilty - - Defendants AND Movie | SPOILERS . I watch this once in a while if it happens to be on TV because the performances are as good as they are . Tracy is the epitome of rock-ribbed Republican rectitude . Widmark is good . Maximilian Schell is nothing less than great . He deserved his awards . Burt Lancaster should avoid any part that calls for an... |
442,022 | 819,382 | 116,213 | 5 | Lights , Camera , Speed , Action , Action , Action . . . . n . | In this outing , Arnold is a lone operator within the Justice Department's Witness Protection Program . His assignment : Prevent the delectable Vanessa Williams from miscreants because she has discovered a high-level plot in her defense-contractor employer to sell super-ray guns to the enemy . As it turns out , there's... |
442,987 | 819,382 | 360,717 | 5 | Gorilla My Dreams | I won't bother with the story . If you don't know it by now you have been living in Plato's cave . Kong breaks free of his shackles in a huge New York theater , bursts through the walls , and finds himself in the middle of a busy , night-time Times Square , crowded with electric lights , cabs , pedestrians , trolleys ,... |
443,202 | 819,382 | 262,699 | 5 | Its Not About Sex , It's About Power . | As I read it , this rambling film is a case study of declining potency . Jean-Pierre Leaud is surprisingly unprepossessing as a dumpy , long-haired director who's made a couple of well-received skin flicks with titles like , " I'm Hard , I Come , I Sing , " but has had - - well - - director's block since 1984 . It's a ... |
442,002 | 819,382 | 60,748 | 5 | Routine but picturesque revenge Western . | It's got most of the stuff you'd expect in a longish Western involving the moral maturation of half-breed , orphaned Steve McQueen . All he knows as an awkward and unskilled young man is that three guys blew his father's brains out , chopped up his mother and made a tobacco pouch out of her skin , and burned the house ... |
442,505 | 819,382 | 93,773 | 5 | Combat , mano a pseudopod . | As action flicks go , this one's pretty typical . Arnold leads the usual band of expert musclemen into some tropical country on a mercy mission , or was it a mercenary mission , picks up a pretty young Latina ( Elpidia Carillo ) after a furious battle with well-armed swarthy guerrillas who make easy targets , and encou... |
443,129 | 819,382 | 109,458 | 5 | Episode in Later Series Meets With Modest Success | Colombo solves this murder by figuring out that a call could not have been made from a cell phone in the mountains behind Malibu . Falk still has some dash , but the writers have slowed his intellect more than usual . He's not familiar with satellite dishes and television . He's only " heard about dem things . " And he... |
442,407 | 819,382 | 43,435 | 5 | Where's the noir ? | It's never been clear to me what a film noir is . A treacherous woman ? The traditional iconography of black sedans and snub-nosed revolvers ? Black and white ? Seedy surroundings or exotic ones ? Murder or grand larceny ? Revenge ? Charlie Chan had all of them . This one would seem to have all the proper elements thou... |
442,427 | 819,382 | 45,082 | 5 | Good Example of the Genre . | It's surprising that there isn't a decent DVD available for " Retreat , Hell ! " It's a good example of the kind of war movie that was produced during World War II and a few of the post-war years , before the war was reexamined and faced more realistically . It has elements of all the generic conventions . Frank Lovejo... |
442,655 | 819,382 | 470,705 | 5 | Folie a Deux | William Friedkin , who usually knows what he's doing , directed this unusual movie about a lonely woman , Ashley Judd , who waitresses in a lesbian bar somewhere in the ruder parts of the American Southwest . She meets a guy , Michael Shannon , at the bar and he spends the night on the floor of her dumpy motel room . S... |
443,446 | 819,382 | 111,143 | 5 | Comic Book Adventure . | I don't know why they make these kinds of movies . Just for a chance to spend a lot of money ? I can think of 57 better ways of spending it , beginning with " Send some to me . " Alec Baldwin is handsome and Penelope Ann Miller is yummy and John Lone is a good actor . The sets are phenomenal , the score epic in dimensi... |
442,857 | 819,382 | 435,705 | 5 | Leaves You Numb . | An action movie with a gimmick . Nicholas Cage is a Las Vegas illusionist who actually has the power to see into the future - - but only insofar as the events are connected with his own body sheath . He can tell , for instance , if he's about to be hit by a car while crossing the street , and thus avoid it , but he can... |
443,268 | 819,382 | 60,814 | 5 | No , Paris is Not Burning . | I'd like to recommend this movie because it deals with a subject of such historic significance , but I found it confusing . It meanders all over the place , like the Seine . The Germans have been ordered to destroy the city , including its historical monuments , by an insane Adolf Hitler , if it is ever in danger of fa... |
442,902 | 819,382 | 116,040 | 5 | The Holland Tunnel Adventure ! | Once while being towed through the Holland Tunnel my old Ford lost a wheel that rolled placidly down the left lane before wobbling and flopping to a halt . It must have held up traffic for half an hour , but that's nothing compared to what happens to the Holland Tunnel in this typical disaster flick . Boy , if things c... |
442,697 | 819,382 | 70,074 | 5 | The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters | In the prologue , the script has James Mason , the actor , come out and show us Mary Shelley's grave and explain the origin of the story . Then the script more or less buries Shelley's original under a collapsing iceberg of additional myth , fantasy , and whimsical repetition . This TV miniseries comes in two parts . P... |
441,826 | 819,382 | 104,502 | 5 | Pedantic and sketchy police story . | The sociologist Robert E . Park wrote in the 1920s about marginal people , by which he meant individuals stuck between two statuses , neither fish nor fowl , unable to identify with either . His analysis focused on roles that stood in some shady area between " management " and " labor . " As examples he used white-coll... |
443,476 | 819,382 | 5,044 | 5 | Ab initio . | An early rendition of Chaplin's tramp that lacks much of the inventiveness of his later works . Much of what is enjoyable about it , at least for me , is the picture it yields of a Los Angeles that is underpopulated . There are beach scenes in which a background bather , heedless of the working crew and camera , runs d... |
442,265 | 819,382 | 74,452 | 5 | Perplexing war movie . | No , it's not about the first moon landings , although it sounds as if it should be . It's about a group of German soldiers led by Michael Caine and aided by Donald Southerland as an Irishman , who parachute into England in an attempt to kidnap Winston Churchill and bring an end to the war . They fail , which can't be ... |
443,525 | 819,382 | 349,467 | 5 | Tour de force for Julianne Moore | I'd like to give this a higher rating . This is a first-rate cast to begin with , and every one of them delivers the goods . And I almost always know where the writer , Richard Price , is coming from , in his screenplays and his essays . ( Haven't read any of his novel . ) But somehow this disjointed story doesn't get ... |
442,431 | 819,382 | 35,614 | 5 | Diverting Genre Film . | It conforms to all the conventions of its particular genre or rather combination of two sub-genres : ( 1 ) the training camp movie , and ( 2 ) the war movie . Two city guys grew up together but don't like each other much . The guy who turned out good is Richard Arlen . The guy who turned sort of mean is Chester Morris ... |
442,466 | 819,382 | 516,919 | 5 | Emma Goes Underground . | Like the other episodes , this one is completely unbelievable . It's fantastic , along the lines of some feature films that were appearing at the time - - " Our Man Flint " , in which the " Telephone Company " plans to take over the world ; " Funeral in Berlin , " in which Harry Palmer fights a billionaire who plans to... |
442,990 | 819,382 | 340,919 | 5 | Loose-limbed , ambitious thriller . | Basically a chase thriller in which an experienced hit man working for an unnamed government agency ( Scott Glenn ) takes personal revenge on a former friend , irritating his employers and prompting them to send a team of two other hit men ( including Harvey Keitel ) to rub him out . But the wily Glenn takes two hostag... |
442,948 | 819,382 | 35,689 | 5 | Not uninteresting but routine genre film . | Flag-waver about the training and tsuris of bombardiers during World War II . It's kind of interesting to hear about the motives of these cadets and informative to learn about their training program . The uniforms are nice , and sometimes Randy Scott as the only pilot involved in the program wears a dashing white scarf... |
442,942 | 819,382 | 41,362 | 5 | Scott Western , Routine and Reliable | Scott is arrested by James Millican , a detective for the Pleasonton Agency . The two have nothing personal against each other . When the detective is accidentally killed , someone has to cut off his hand to free Scott from the handcuffs . Scott takes the detective's place and , a bit later , is made sheriff of Lanyard... |
442,016 | 819,382 | 516,936 | 5 | St . Andrew Frowns . | Steed and Mrs . Peel find that one of their colleagues has disappeared while playing golf . Investigating the club and its management , they find that there have been several other disappearances , all at the 13th hole . They discover that the 13th hole is rigged to explode when a stranger sinks his golf ball , in orde... |
442,471 | 819,382 | 41,368 | 5 | Wendell Corey : No Vincent Bugliosi . | Not entirely without interest , this is a rather dark story of Wendell Corey , an Assistant D . A . alienated from his wife and two children , who bumps into Barbara Stanwyck by accident and falls for her . They have a secret affair . Then Stanwyck's wealthy old auntie is shot and killed during a burglary and the evide... |
441,894 | 819,382 | 382,077 | 5 | The imaginary playmate comes out of the woods . | Famke Janssen is no longer the wide-eyed teenager of her early movies but is definitely in contention for the title of World's Tallest Danish Pastry . She's ravishing . Alas , she has little to do except give a bit of good advice to Robert DeNiro's psychologist near the beginning and to show up just in time to save his... |
442,839 | 819,382 | 96,087 | 5 | By the Numbers | It starts off with an interesting if already familiar problem : How do we dig out corruption in the NYPD when there is so much crack money floating around ? In " Serpico " a Brooklyn narc hijacks the hero off the street and threatens him , saying , " This is serious money . " That's the milieu we find ourselves in here... |
441,972 | 819,382 | 20,142 | 5 | Mr . Christian - - take a hike . | Here , the director seems to be in search of a style . What we see of this love triangle on the Isle of Mann , involving an honest fisherman , his gorgeous wife , and his principled but weak friend , is all overacting . The conventions of silents like this must have been imported from the stage though , to be sure , Hi... |
442,829 | 819,382 | 33,774 | 5 | Crook Gives Up Rackets For Succulent Blond . | Robert Taylor is Johnny Eager , one of several Johnnies with strange last names to come out of Hollywood during the 1940s - - Johnny Apollo , Johnny O'Clock , Johnny Belinda , Johnny Logical Positivist , Johnny Be Good , and what not . Of course Taylor has small room for complaint when it comes to names . He was born S... |
442,895 | 819,382 | 50,963 | 5 | Scott Western , Routine | Spoilers . The story is simplicity itself . Scott is the marshal keeping the town ( referred to several times as a wild beast ) peaceful despite the efforts of two corrupt businessmen to take it over and run it on their terms . They hire a gunman ( Pate ) to come in and knock off Scott . At about the same time Scott's ... |
443,141 | 819,382 | 24,484 | 5 | Mildly Diverting Comedy . | It's the depression and everyone is hard up except the very wealthy . ( Plus ca change . . . ) Ginger Rogers is a working girl forced to share an attic or loft with Norman Foster , an artist who refuses to take any money from the society matron ( Laura Hope Crews ) who pursues him . George Sidney is Mr . Eckbaum , the ... |
443,227 | 819,382 | 20,103 | 5 | Stanwyck's Past Catches Up With Her . | Kind of a historical curiosity . Here it is , 1929 , and it's a talkie . The microphones were hidden in bouquets and under lapels . The noisy camera was hidden within a sound-resistant " blimp . " On those many occasions when people weren't walking or dashing around , they stood in staged groups facing the camera , as ... |
443,318 | 819,382 | 408,790 | 5 | Better To Listen to WGBH . | The first thing that you may notice about this film , and the last , is the sound track . It's all pretty quiet . You don't hear the big jet engines screaming . People can speak softly . The only person who shouts is Jodie Foster , and then only to scream : " WHERE'S MY BABY ? " There's no musical score worth mentionin... |
441,873 | 819,382 | 319,262 | 5 | Wretched excess . | In movies like " Twister " you only get one real disaster , although admittedly it's a doozie . In movies like " Earthquake " you can get several disasters for the price of one - - the ground shakes , dams burst and cause floods , there may be a fire . In movies like " The Day After Tomorrow " you get no end of disaste... |
442,281 | 819,382 | 62,883 | 5 | The Detective as non-Cartesian | Lee Remick , with fluffy hair and overactive glands , tells separated hubby Frank that she wishes they could get together again . She doesn't know why not . " We know the reasons , Karen , but understanding's not enough , is it ? " It's not what you think that counts , it's how you act . Boy , this movie is pretty date... |
443,190 | 819,382 | 115,964 | 5 | Autoerotic and grotesque . | Kids , read no farther . In fact , leave the room and play Nintendo . And put your dirty socks in the hamper . If you think YOU'RE warped wait until you see the characters who populate this movie . You'll not only emerge from the experience reassured , you'll wind up feeling like a paragon of normality . The story ( if... |
441,880 | 819,382 | 307,479 | 5 | Deep space . | At the end , George Clooney is reunited with his dead wife . He stares at her unbelievingly and asks , " Am I alive or am I dead ? " " We no longer have to think like that , " she replies with a smile . " We're together - - and we're happy . " Well I would insist on knowing if I were alive or dead . Instead of ending w... |
441,660 | 819,382 | 37,674 | 5 | A Long Movie About Flirtation and Jealousy . | I wish I had something better to say about " Les Enfants du Paradis . " I understand it was shot under almost impossible conditions during the Nazi occupation and the cast and crew are held in an esteem almost Olympian in height . Helas , it seemed to drag for me . Three hours of a mime pursuing a flirtatious woman who... |
443,449 | 819,382 | 117,883 | 5 | Effective use of clichés . | I runne to death , and death meets me as fast , wrote John Donne . In this case - - the deaths are designed to be one step removed from reality , recorded on videotapes and shown as " snuff " films . Everybody seems to runne even faster to somebody else's death , or so the movie keeps telling us . We gawk at automobi... |
442,750 | 819,382 | 102,757 | 5 | Waiting for God | SPOILERS . I'm trying to remember the story of Job . Let's see . God and Satan were having a conversation and God claimed he could test any believer without breaking him . I don't remember why he picked Job , a devout man , but , boy , did God test him . ( Woody Allan might ask why God didn't give Job a written exam in... |
442,410 | 819,382 | 416,315 | 5 | Naturalistic spooky moved turns slasher . | It starts out rather well - - an Australian guy and two British tourist girls visit a tourist spot far from anywhere , Wolf Creek , site of a huge meteor crater . The director and photographer do a splendid job of capturing the neverending vistas of the Australian outback . Majestic , yes , but strangely ominous too . ... |
442,729 | 819,382 | 50,874 | 5 | A Rorschach of a Western | The eminent , mad Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote of UFOs that there was something out there , but what it was , was a mystery . As such they permitted us to project our own thoughts and emotions onto them . They provided us with a kind of Rorschach ink blot test . We could interpret them according to our social val... |
442,811 | 819,382 | 97,880 | 5 | Where's Belafonte when you need him ? | Relaxed - - very relaxed - - murder story , with Denzel Washington as a detective ordered to find and capture his friend so the murder can be rapidly cleared up and the tourist trade flow along liquidly . Halfway through , Washington begins to believe that there is more to the case than meets the eye , and that his bud... |
441,967 | 819,382 | 109,161 | 5 | Worthy Attempt | This is a somewhat retro TV movie . It probably should have been made some years ago , when many people in the USA were unaware of these issues , basking in fantasies of every man being equal . A black cadet at West Point is victimized , is blamed for it himself , and discharged from the Army . It's hard to figure out ... |
441,817 | 819,382 | 33,455 | 5 | Parade Rest . | For Bob Hope , in the 1940s , this is pretty routine stuff . Hope pretends to enlist in order to impress his girl friend , Dorothy Lamour , and winds up in the army by mistake . I don't know why this isn't funnier than it is . It has a cast of seasoned comedy actors , of which Lynn Overman is the best , with his dry Ed... |
442,994 | 819,382 | 175,142 | 5 | A Deconstruction of Ludic Elements in Contemporary Parodistic Cinematic Syntax | I suppose there are three major elements to consider in figuring out what kind of spoof you're watching . ( 1 ) The dumbness of the gags . ( 2 ) The kind of genre being referenced . And ( 3 ) the level of self awareness of the characters . The gags can range from elegant to really visciously vulgar . The stupid ones ha... |
442,199 | 819,382 | 327,162 | 5 | Less funny than the original . | This is an updated and revised version of the 1975 original . The first version was presented to us as a serious story about the subjugation of women but , like " Mommie Dearest " , turned out to be more amusing than dramatic . In this version the comedy inherent in the conceit is out in the open . The only problem is ... |
442,148 | 819,382 | 35,369 | 5 | Rousing fight , otherwise average . | It gets off to a slow start , a story about miners being cheated out of their claims by crooked bureaucrats and gangsters . Takes an hour before you find out who the spoilers are . They do not include Marlene Dietrich , who plays the owner of the local " dance hall " or whatever it's called , and whose affections Rando... |
441,949 | 819,382 | 83,284 | 5 | Fussbol with gravitas . | This kind of football is serious business . Oh , I know it seems silly for a group of Allied prisoners during World War II to sacrifice their chance to escape just so they can go back and whup the pro team of Nazis . A ridiculous fantasy . It's just a game , after all . But there seems to be something about what Americ... |
442,348 | 819,382 | 104,743 | 5 | Which color do you like - - the red or the green ? | Action / thriller about Pierce Brosnan as a troubled but wisecracking FBI explosive expert . There's really nothing much new here , but what you see is pretty well done . It's just another professional genre piece . There is the corrupt senator ( Ron Silver ) who's made a fortune from a crooked arms deal . There is the... |
442,036 | 819,382 | 43,129 | 5 | Modest Comedy From Ford . | You have to keep your eyes open to see John Ford as a motivating force behind this slender but still successful comedy . If it weren't for the rituals - - civil and military - - and the booze , well , it would be hard to tell . Dan Dailey is the first man from Punxatawy , West Virginia , to enlist after Pearl Harbor bu... |
442,257 | 819,382 | 41,198 | 5 | Interesting but dated crime drama . | What a dark movie ! Everything seems to happen at night . Ricardo Montalban is a member of " the Mexican FBI " and George Murphy his counterpart at the INS . They form a partnership to investigate the illegal smuggling of braceros ( Mexicans with temporary worker programs ) across the border where they are exploited by... |
443,271 | 819,382 | 50,722 | 5 | A doggy bag for this escargot ? | I managed to catch this only in snatches but , judging from those , it's not as bad as it might be . Tim Holt ( " The Treasure of the Sierra Madre " ) is the new commanding officer of a naval base on the edge of the Salton Sea in the California desert . There have been nuclear tests nearby and an earthquake releases so... |
442,599 | 819,382 | 50,720 | 5 | Rocks Around the Clock | The Monolith Monsters follows the usual scenario of Universal's 1950s monster movies . An ill-understood menace threatens the town ( or the country or mankind ) . Men wearing uniforms try to deal with it , but it's the scientists who come to the rescue . ( Sounds like the Cold War . ) In this case - - in this inexpen... |
443,325 | 819,382 | 95,836 | 5 | Who Wants to be Liberated ? Raise Your Hands . | It's hard to believe that we once took this sort of stuff seriously - - all those stale bumper-sticker slogans , the merry-go-round minds . It seems like fiction now , but it surely wasn't at the time . I enjoyed wearing funny clothes in Berkeley , getting stoned with everyone else in New York , and observing the going... |
442,632 | 819,382 | 80,402 | 5 | All this time we thought it was the big sleep . . . | This movie isn't as terrible as some reviewers have made it out to be . Let's say , overall , about average for its type . The photography is more than adequate , the locations unmistakably including Egypt . The score does its job well . And the acting is on par with Charlton Heston's usual . He can do better when he w... |
442,192 | 819,382 | 113,451 | 5 | What's Going On ? | Practically a ideal exemplar of " routine thriller . " Friedkin had a marvelous time in the 1970s , coming up with some original genre pieces like " The Exorcist " and " The French Connection . " All of his work is commercial but Exorcist was gripping because it was so successfully manipulative , and French Connection ... |
442,225 | 819,382 | 303,353 | 5 | Biography Channel , Writ Large . | Well , according to this biographical documentary , the producer Robert Evans has lived the life of an elevator , or maybe a toilet seat , with a couple of truly good highs - - " Marathon Man , " " Chinatown , " and others - - and some down periods involving cocaine , murder , and the loss of his beloved mansion in Woo... |
443,545 | 819,382 | 104,006 | 5 | I'll lend you mine if you lend me yours . | Two neighboring couples become friendly . One husband ( Spacey ) talks the other husband ( Klein ) into sneaking into each other's house one night and making love to the wives in the dark . Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his wife for a friend . Klein's wife ( Mastrantonio ) and Spacey's wife ( Miller ) ... |
442,013 | 819,382 | 164,108 | 5 | Comedy , edgy and diverting . . | Albert Brooks , who wrote this and acted in it , is a Hollywood screenwriter who's being rejected with every script he submits . He lives in a mansion with his wife , Andie MacDowell , and is going nuts because he won't be able to support his family . A successful writer friend , Jeff Bridges , puts him in touch with a... |
442,264 | 819,382 | 362,269 | 5 | Doggie Style | They took the easy way out on this one . Liam Neeson - - who , for the first time , I must judge to be in over his head - - gives us a Kinsey who is a prophet without honor in his own country , a scientist first and always , practically a saint . Beginning as an entomologist he finds himself wondering what EXACTLY goes... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.