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 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
409,400 | 2,567,136 | 383,995 | 2 | How The Quest Was Lost | I can't say I wasn't warned : Everybody and his Uncle Max told me not to waste time on this merde but I wouldn't be told , the lure of a dozen or so French actors playing cameos proved too strong . At a stretch and inasmuch as what passes for a plot involves writer-director-actor Laurent Baffie looking for his car keys... |
409,394 | 2,567,136 | 354,848 | 2 | What A Trial | Were I not so lion-hearted dross like this could turn me against French cinema completely . Somehow Christian Leigh has contrived to shoot something that is WORSE than Jean-Luc Godard or Peter Greenaway which is quite a trick . Leigh's idea of film-making is to let his camera linger on a given scene til it runs out of ... |
409,401 | 2,567,136 | 60,959 | 3 | Dud Czech | I seem to be a lone dissenting voice in a chorus of approval . So be it . Whilst it seems clear that there is a strong satirical element at work here I have to confess that my knowledge of the political situation in what used to be called Czechoslovakia is non-existent so that all the barbs eluded me . On the other han... |
409,794 | 2,567,136 | 91,495 | 3 | Crock Of Bull | The NFT in London are currently holding an Almodovar season - what else would pseuds do - and the best you can give it is that at least it's not New Voices From The Rain Forest : Some Recent Films From Jivaro Directors , which is probably scheduled for Next year . Having failed to ' see ' anything in Almodovar's recent... |
409,916 | 2,567,136 | 45,989 | 3 | Lawd , Jim | There are Golden Turkeys and Platinum Turkeys and then there is Laughing Anne . I doubt if four leads have ever been more mis-matched in a movie . Wendell ' Mahogany ' Corey gets top-billing over Margaret Lockwood whose best days were behind her whilst even more bizarrely Forest Tucker and Ronald Shiner share third and... |
409,379 | 2,567,136 | 475,331 | 3 | Nice Flute , Shame About The Magic | Kenneth Branagh could well have subtitled his second turkey in as many weeks and his third this year The Cranes Are Flying for yes , folks , our Ken has discovered a thing that you can mount the camera on and it will then climb in the air and allow you to shoot the film from the point of view of a cloud and that's his ... |
409,030 | 2,567,136 | 381,690 | 3 | Heading South , Gone West | Here's a new twist ; an out-and-out sex film with an 18 rating and not even a topless shot . Maybe it's meant to appeal to intellectuals , who knows . As someone who has never seen ANYTHING at all in Charlotte Rampling I looked in amazement at her narrow beady eyes , thin lips and wondered how anyone can describe her a... |
408,872 | 2,567,136 | 383,694 | 3 | Tough Roe To Hoe | Having been concerned that Mike Leigh was ' borrowing ' liberally from Claude Chabrol's ' Une affaire de femmes ' , which won Isabelle Huppert a Best Actress gong at the Venice Film Festival , and having admired the bulk of Leigh's work , both stage and film , I tried to approach this as neutrally as possible but ultim... |
409,515 | 2,567,136 | 69,243 | 3 | Booby Prize | This film makes as good a case as I know against dubbing rather than using subtitles ; clearly it would have been dire even with the actor's own voices but equally clearly the dubbing was supervised by someone who instructed the speakers to scrupulously remove all colour and nuance from their voices and maintain an eve... |
409,521 | 2,567,136 | 44,849 | 3 | Forget It | This is a prime example of Lead Soufflé School Of Light Entertainment . How dire is it ? Let me count the ways . On second thought better not , wed be here all day . It's from that school of Realism where scrap metal dealers wear bow ties and carnations in the lapel whilst presiding over huge totally empty warehouses t... |
409,608 | 2,567,136 | 61,955 | 3 | So Would The Audience If They'd Known | I didn't see this film under ideal circumstances because due to structural problems with the cinema the seats were facing the screen . I really should know better than to expect anything resembling entertainment from Truffaut but I keep bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt . From frame # 1 this h... |
409,503 | 2,567,136 | 55,506 | 3 | A Waste Of Money | Margaret Leighton fan Shelagh Delaney went to see Leighton in Terence Rattigan's Variation On A Theme and having done so declared that 1 ) the play was rubbish - by Rattigan's high standards she was right - and 2 ) that she could write better than Rattigan - by anyone's standards she was hopelessly wrong . So she went ... |
409,762 | 2,567,136 | 320,159 | 3 | The Day They Called It A Film ? | When this opened in London - today - I attended the first performance and found myself alone . I had reservations just from the casting , I mean come on , Dennis Hopper , the epitome of hippie / rock playing Sinatra , the epitome of sophisticated cool ? What next , Eminem as Cliff Richard . I hoped at least for a gener... |
409,398 | 2,567,136 | 291,392 | 3 | No-Go Novo | It's difficult to decide who or what is the target audience for this film . Jean-Pierre Limousin presumably had the chance to explore the problems of amnesia on a serious level and opted instead to use it as an excuse to make a soft-porn movie . Having seen , loved , admired and respected Se Souvenir des belles choses ... |
409,838 | 2,567,136 | 160,689 | 4 | Blueprint For Breathless | It has to be said that there are some wicked people in this world who would have you believe that after failing as an actor - two films in - and a director - one film , THIS , in 1931 - Jean Godard retired to lick his wounds and swear revenge on a film going public and after biding his time - revenge is , after all , a... |
409,871 | 2,567,136 | 56,467 | 4 | Deadly Affairs | There's clearly a lot of mileage in the seven deadly sins as the several film versions testify . There was a half-decent version in 1952 , ten years earlier than this entry , one that had the advantage of talents like Michele Morgan going for it . It's hard to find anything to like here ; certainly not the Godard segme... |
409,992 | 2,567,136 | 422,720 | 4 | Versailles Cake-walk | Sophia Coppola is clearly a disciple of the Baz Lurhman school of Sloppy Film-making in which the main purpose is to reinvent an actual historical period complete with real characters , some of whom have entered the history / reference books and impose upon it a juvenile ego which is blithely indifferent to facts and m... |
409,540 | 2,567,136 | 61,398 | 4 | Barnum & Bailey Won't You Please Come Home | It's a truth universally acknowledged that to bring out star quality you need star opposition ; put Roger Federer in with Rafael Nadal and he'll pull out that little something extra , put him in with Tim Henman and he'll phone it in . As it is with athletes so it is with actors , put Joan Crawford up against Bette Davi... |
409,678 | 2,567,136 | 91,538 | 4 | There Goes Mr . Jordan | Neil Jordan is a graduate of the Ken Loach I-Hate-England school of film-making which means that like Loach he spurns no opportunity to explore its worst aspects in loving detail . This time around it's the sex industry that sleazes its way into his spotlight . The story is improbable-to-ridiculous , one leave it out ,... |
408,746 | 2,567,136 | 996,605 | 4 | It's Always Foul Weather | It is , of course , possible that I watched a different film to the previous posters , it is equally possible that the previous posters have never seen a Real musical or , indeed a Real French film . Suffice it to say that were it not for Brigitte Rouan and Chirara Mastroianni this would have been a total disaster . If... |
409,159 | 2,567,136 | 61,075 | 4 | Ten New Ways To Grow Old | Like the earlier version of Agatha Christie's novel this remake takes similar liberties with the ' perfect ' crime . Writing , Directing and Acting are all undistinguished and the cast is typical of low-budget product at the time ; a couple of one-time leading men on the way down , a couple of excellent character actor... |
410,068 | 2,567,136 | 91,497 | 4 | Rhesus NEGATIVE ? In Spades | Seems I'm in the minority here but I'll take it on the chin and won't open a vein just yet . Carax clearly has his admirers and we can only guess at the reasons . Mabe youthful rebellion against a mainstream way of telling a story ; maybe disciples of the ' new'different-is - automatically-BETTER school . Who knows . I... |
409,703 | 2,567,136 | 72,305 | 4 | Is There REALLY A Market For This . . . | . . . other than Les Halles - the ' stomach of Paris ' had recently been razed to the ground and this . . . I hesitate to use the word film . . . was filmed in the space created . Fereira acknowledges no rules of logic ; time and again we are told we are in Washington DC or in Dakota , scene of the Little Big Horn aka ... |
410,093 | 2,567,136 | 64,679 | 4 | Woodman , Woodman , DON'T Spare THESE Trees | Jacques Demy has one hell of a sense of humor ; he took Anouk Aimee to California and signed up a team of Sequoias to play opposite her , in support of Gary Redwood ( oops , sorry , Lockwood ) . This has to set some kind of record for the most wooden screen acting EVER . By comparison Lola , the earlier Demy film featu... |
409,709 | 2,567,136 | 62,893 | 4 | So Is Vaudeville | This is one for the Accatone set , those pseuds petrified in the Nouvelle Vague who haunt the movie theatre just off Boul ' Mich sharing eternal spliffs and wondering why no one does Jump Cuts anymore . Michel Piccoli - alone on screen for over half the running time - does nothing all at once . Piccoli , who once starr... |
409,385 | 2,567,136 | 57,176 | 4 | Au Contraire , c'est ephemeral | It's difficult to believe that Tobbe-Grillet isn't taking the mickey here because he has made the ultimate movie FOR posers by making one ABOUT posers . Literally . He clearly saved a fortune on actors by just getting passers-by to stand perfectly still and expressionless . Even a DOG poses in the middle of the road . ... |
408,865 | 2,567,136 | 338,751 | 4 | Never Gets Off The Ground | It's both unbelievable and inexplicable that this movie has just picked up a Best Film Golden Globe at the expense of the hundred times superior Million Dollar Baby . Essentially what we have here are two great performances , one in the first half , Cate Blanchett , and one in the second half , Alan Alda linked by some... |
409,784 | 2,567,136 | 373,690 | 4 | Which Witch ? | As is often the way if you try to be everything to everyone you wind up being nothing to no one . Assuming that we actually needed another take on this character - who , especially in France , has been as well documented on celluloid as Sherlock Holmes , Maigret , Raffles or even Tarzan - then we could have started wit... |
409,067 | 2,567,136 | 40,175 | 4 | Oh ! Luna Rossa | I never heard of this film til it played as part of a Robert Mitchum retrospective at the National Film Theatre in London . Almost 60 years on the cast list looked tasty to say the least with seven names - in addition to top-billed Mitchum - in the public domain ; Charles McGraw , not long off The Killers , Barbara Bel... |
409,701 | 2,567,136 | 31,505 | 4 | Jamaica Out | I like to think that after shooting this drek Hitchcock left for the USA one jump ahead of a mob of discerning movie-goers handicapped by the huge amounts of tar and feathers they were carrying . It's the Romantic in me . Of course the truth is vastly different if unconvincing ; Hitch went on to become the idol of thos... |
410,017 | 2,567,136 | 92,206 | 4 | Tooty Flutey | It's well documented - not least by the man himself - that Michael Caine finds it hard to say ' no ' to any offer that comes in over the transom and as if to illustrate this an English Daily newspaper is giving away no less than 14 ' Best Of Breeds ' that today would go straight to DVD . The good news is that readers a... |
409,647 | 2,567,136 | 417,189 | 4 | When You Gotta Go You Gotta Go ( But Don't Ask Ozon The Way ) | Once again my admiration for Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi led me to a movie I would have bet money would turn out to be merde . I don't know what it is about Ozon that makes him such a favorite of the Rent-A-Pseud crowd unless it's a penchant for making pretentious garbage masquerading as movies but whatever it is he's at it... |
409,179 | 2,567,136 | 234,212 | 4 | Nothing Bard | Okay , it's well documented ( a contradiction in terms surely ) that next to nothing is known about Shakespeare the man but to cover his life in EIGHT minutes ! As it turns out the most interesting thing by far about this PR for the soon-to-be-released Romeo and Juliet is the name Jacques Tourneur on the credits and yo... |
409,700 | 2,567,136 | 47,040 | 4 | Strung-Out Quartet | All About Eve has a lot to answer for , not least the idea - which wasn't exactly new but Mank gave it a great new coat of paint - of starting the action in the present then letting a voice-over narration introduce the principals . The difference , of course , is that ' Eve ' was scripted by a pro , Mank , whose name o... |
409,638 | 2,567,136 | 42,256 | 4 | Black Joke | We all know of course that Orson was more or less reduced to turning tricks to finance his own movies and I thought he'd hit rock bottom with Ferry To Hong Kong but this has it beat a country mile . Normally I would have been aware of a Henry Hathaway-Tyrone Power entry from Fox but this one came out of Left field and ... |
408,894 | 2,567,136 | 44,008 | 5 | What A Turkey | A colourized version of this black and white film was given away with a tabloid newspaper on Sunday last which is how I came to see it and the best I can say about it is that luckily , because of a good relationship with my newsagent , I didn't have to buy the paper to get the DVD which is lucky because as it stands th... |
409,938 | 2,567,136 | 380,710 | 5 | You Can't Go Home Again | My sole reason for seeing this - about which I knew nothing - was the name of Natascha Reignier on the marquee . This German-born , Belgian-raised actress caught my eye first in Le Pont des Arts and I figured I could stand a little more of her . It's one of those stories when you find yourself saying to and / or about ... |
409,756 | 2,567,136 | 436,091 | 5 | The Trouble With Cinderella | The more erudite among my readers will recognize my summary as the title of one of if not THE finest autobiographies of a musician , whether ' pop ' , jazz or classical , ever published and I am more than happy to acknowledge Artie Shaw as the author . The film is the latest in a mini-genre exploring the phenomena of f... |
409,942 | 2,567,136 | 436,078 | 5 | Class Act ? You Tell Me | I not only knew the premise of this movie I also knew the joke - and I use the word loosely - at the core of it . I heard it as a teenager but compared to the versions on offer here what I heard was highly sanitized even involving as it did four incestuous couplings between a man and wife , the wife and her son , the s... |
410,059 | 2,567,136 | 382,625 | 5 | Let's Talk Turkey | As one of the 38 or so people in the world who HAVEN'T read the book and haven't the least desire to do so I'm unable to make any comparisons between page and screen ; I did , however , suspect that any film which is as hyped as this has been would have its work cut out to live up to the hype and the early reviews did ... |
409,926 | 2,567,136 | 19,486 | 5 | Fight The Good Fight | One is tempted to give this a high grade just for surfacing in what is apparently a severely abridged print . By some miracle what survives is a story that has a clearly definable beginning , middle and end and the initial conclusion is that anything up to one hour's superfluous ' padding ' has been jettisoned / lost .... |
410,049 | 2,567,136 | 19,480 | 5 | Flanc Verse | If you substitute a caserne for a desert island then what you have here is essentially The Admirable Chrighton in army fatigues ; a tale of role reversal when master and servant leave behind the status quo and find themselves in an alien world in which the master is ill equipped to survive and the servant is right at h... |
409,728 | 2,567,136 | 68,327 | 5 | Bowled Under | I think the kindest things to be said about this are 1 ) that it has been over-hyped and 2 ) it has dated badly . Watching in 2005 ( courtesy of a free DVD inserted into a newspaper ) a movie made in 1972 is , of course , fraught with built-in problems . This is true of any movie yet some - the Judy Garland vehicles Me... |
409,839 | 2,567,136 | 30,706 | 5 | Reef Knot | Between 1923 and 1952 Maurice Gleize managed to direct twenty two films in France without distinguishing himself . This one , with a screenplay by top French scriptwriter Charles Spaak , had arguably the best cast he ever got to work with ( on other occasions he directed Fenandel , Charles Vanel and Marie Bell ) from c... |
409,868 | 2,567,136 | 63,210 | 5 | Writers Blocker | With a few exceptions such as French Connection II sequels don't have a high strike-rate in terms of success and this is no exception . Whilst it is indisputable that Sinatra COULD act when he put his mind to it - From Here To Eternity , The Manchurian Candidate - the fact remains that he put his mind to it all too inf... |
410,070 | 2,567,136 | 204,700 | 5 | All That Meat And No Potatoes | In some respects Clair Denis is like Catherine Breillat-lite , equally obsessed with sex yet reluctant to emulate Breillat with full-on encounters . At first viewing - and one of the problems is that most of us won't want a second - it's not always easy to decide if this is a wind-up or an attempt at real significance ... |
408,977 | 2,567,136 | 45,631 | 5 | For Insomniacs Only | This is a mish-mosh that fits where it touches . Gig Young never really convinces as a cop of any kind let alone one flirting with corruption and Mala Powers was equally ill at ease as a hard-boiled ' dancer ' in a down-at-heels nite club . She had recently played Roxanne opposite Jose Ferrer's Cyrano de Bergerac and w... |
409,480 | 2,567,136 | 41,737 | 5 | Pardon My French | I'm guessing that at the time this film was made the Welsh Nationalists with their penchant for turning signposts around to confuse English tourists were more or less inactive but now that a national newspaper in England is giving away several vintage Ealing comedies dating from the forties / fifties it's possible to r... |
409,702 | 2,567,136 | 28,231 | 5 | Young And Guilty | Though it's always been tough for me to work up a sweat about any Hitchcock movie this one - which was also a freebie with a National newspaper - had a couple of selling points for me ; it was a film adaptation of the volume of stories by Willie Maugham which featured the character Ashenden and it top-billed Johnny Gie... |
410,120 | 2,567,136 | 37,029 | 5 | None So Blind , None So Bland | Travelling by train to Cornwall to shoot location footage Stewart Granger shared a carriage with director Leslie Arliss who asked casually what Granger thought of the script . Unaware that Arliss had a co-writer credit Granger replied succinctly ' crap ' . I have little time for Granger as an actor , finding him both s... |
409,232 | 2,567,136 | 47,681 | 5 | Pay The Two Dollars | It may be just as well that Robert Aldrich is uncredited as director here because it would add little to his CV in terms of lustre . It's a ho-hum caper movie in an exotic-on-paper location , in this case a Singapore that makes no mention of Raffles hotel and was possibly inspired by and remains a poor-man's Macao , wh... |
408,997 | 2,567,136 | 52,695 | 5 | What A Carry On | Gerald Thomas directed five ho-hum films in the nineteen fifties before Carry On , Sergeant struck a chord with the brain-dead pre-Multiplexers of the day and this was one of them . Raymond Chandler famously said that the easiest murders to solve are the ones that someone tried too hard with and such is the case here .... |
409,280 | 2,567,136 | 59,263 | 5 | Heavy Water-Lite | Twenty years after the end of the war they were still churning out stuff like this , more or less scraping the bottom of the barrel for ' unknown ' incidents to exploit . The events depicted here may well have been true but Anthony Mann does little or nothing to inject any life or excitement into things . For me the at... |
410,110 | 2,567,136 | 189,192 | 5 | Just A Waste Of Time Travel | Perhaps as good a definition as any of the expression the triumph of hope over experience is people - and I am one myself - who persist in watching Hollywood remakes of decent French films in spite of tinseltown's abysmal track record in that department . In my case I persist on the theory that sooner or later the Law ... |
409,646 | 2,567,136 | 420,555 | 5 | Answer : Not a lot | For non French-speakers the title translates as HowMuch Do You Love Me , ergo my summary . Normally I'm prepared to go a long way to avoid Monica Bellucci but against that I'm equally prepared to go as far again to see Gerard Depardieu so there you have the problem in a nutshell . Blier has been , of course , associate... |
409,520 | 2,567,136 | 47,673 | 5 | Snow Joke | Once again I appear to have watched a different film from the majority of posters making it a contest between the hard to please and the easily pleased . I watched it as I watch any and every movie i . e . with the best of intentions and hoping to like more than I dislike . On paper it had plenty going for it beginning... |
410,109 | 2,567,136 | 61,395 | 5 | Beautiful Empty Days | I've just been reading several of the comments on this film - as I invariably do before adding my own - and the thing that comes across most strongly is a need for deep analysis that I am unable to share because frankly I don't CARE enough about the characters , plot , etc , to waste good analysis on it . Yes , it was ... |
410,072 | 2,567,136 | 110,958 | 5 | See How They Fail | This was the first film by Jacques Audiard whose father Michel wrote more than 120 screenplays , mostly pedestrian though he did work , for instance on Les Tontons Flinguers . Jacques himself eased his way into directing via writing and won a minor writing credit on Toni Marshall's Venus Beaute though it's difficult to... |
410,175 | 2,567,136 | 457,513 | 5 | Waugh And Piece | I have to say I was disappointed by this , mostly because of the sloppy writing and one Glaring error in the plot . The one-liners were up to snuff as in this exchange between Scarlett and Woody : I think he may ask me to marry him . But your family are orthodox , would they accept a serial killer ? To explain my beef ... |
409,386 | 2,567,136 | 37,175 | 5 | Hard To Pin Down | This is arguably the worst movie Betty Grable ever made once she became a star . It is , of course , quite possible that in 1944 it would have filled a gap in a world hungry for escapist entertainment but today almost nothing earns any praise from Grable herself , who does what she can with a lacklustre script and scor... |
409,663 | 2,567,136 | 56,696 | 5 | Room At The Halls Of Residence | For some reason this Room At The Top clone has eluded me up to now , not that I missed much . The parallels are striking ; ' working class ' lad slightly out of his element when thrown into contact with a class above his own , involved with two women , one ' nice ' girl his own age and one older married woman . For Joe... |
409,659 | 2,567,136 | 52,249 | 5 | Gaughin , Gaughin , Gone | Ralph Habib was not only an inept director he was also stupid , so stupid that he plays his only Ace in the very first reel thus leaving discriminating viewers no solid reason to keep watching . The Ace in question is Arletty who , in addition to being an Icon , was one of the finest actresses in French cinema . Habib ... |
409,062 | 2,567,136 | 41,530 | 5 | Alien Corn or The Magnificent Hamberson | As sequels go this is probably as good as any and it's notable for the novel way they got around the lack of new material ; they devoted the second half of the sequel to the MAKING of the original , The Jolson Story . Quite a trick . Against the odds The Jolson Story , released in 1946 , cleaned up at a Box Office well... |
410,158 | 2,567,136 | 39,365 | 5 | The Bhoys In The Band | As a biopic this one fits where it touches . Who knows the genesis ; what we DO know is that The Jolson Story had been produced the year before ( 1946 ) and had cleaned up despite having an actor portray Jolie so maybe the thinking was ' suppose we get Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey to play themselves . . . ' . Whatever , the ... |
410,038 | 2,567,136 | 50,367 | 5 | Cluedo a la Clouzot | In common , I would guess , with anyone who had seen and admired the earlier work of Clouzot beginning with Le Corbeau and culminating in Les Diaboliques , I approached this with taste buds primed for major salivation only to be disappointed . This has to be a one-off , a thriller sans thrills . At times it resembles o... |
410,013 | 2,567,136 | 32,356 | 5 | Black And Veidt | Never underestimate the power of hype and the willingness of impressionable snobs to praise the mediocre . If people were easily pleased in 1940 it seems little has changed in almost 60 years . I accept that Powell and Pressburger completists will want to see and / or own this film but just because the team turned out ... |
410,002 | 2,567,136 | 855,011 | 5 | Eastern ( Broken ) Promise | There's an outside chance that this looked promising at the pitch stage but any misgivings should have been heeded . It's fairly clear that someone involved , either the writers , who pitched it to a production company or a producer who subsequently hired writers , saw Regis Warniers Est-Ouest - a drama in which a Fren... |
408,795 | 2,567,136 | 39,220 | 5 | That OLD Gang Of Mine | Offered recently as a ' freebie ' with a UK newspaper it was just about worth the price . The name ' Terence Rattigan ' on a screenplay usually guarantees quality that fails to date - witness his masterpiece ' The Way To The Stars ' which was released two years prior to Brighton Rock and still holds up magnificently - ... |
409,475 | 2,567,136 | 409,184 | 5 | Neechi Vo | Cedric Klapisch made one excellent movie ( Un air de famille ) and one very good one ( Chacun cherche son chat ) and then he decided he could write as well as Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri and turned out the very ho-hum L'Auberge Espanol . Alas , the popcorn brigade ate it up and he was moved to sequelize it with L... |
409,963 | 2,567,136 | 39,192 | 5 | Pale Echo | Once again it appears that I watched a different film to the majority who have posted reviews here , including a very good friend of mine whose opinion I respect on the whole . The problem may be that I have just seen it for the first time just over 60 years after it was made and my overriding impression is that it has... |
409,855 | 2,567,136 | 462,679 | 5 | Role Model | If they were handing out gongs for Best Movie Made For A Stick Of Gum this would at least make the short list ; in other words any criticism needs to take into account the problems encountered by the Writer , Director , and Chief Bottle Washer . We are told that the movie was shot in dribs and drabs over a three year p... |
409,026 | 2,567,136 | 32,976 | 5 | Suspense , Drama , Great Acting . . . | . . . are all sadly lacking from what has to be one of the most overrated films that ever came down the pike . Having considered both Hitchcock and Olivier vastly overrated almost all my life I had no problem avoiding this one when it occasionally surfaced on television but recently it was given away with a newspaper a... |
409,151 | 2,567,136 | 266,391 | 5 | The Pratfall That Lost The Cream | This played for something like three performances in London a couple of years ago and is now on DVD at ' remainder ' prices both of which suggest white elephant which was the spirit in which I paid the modest freight and viewed it . What it is , in fact , is more of an off-white elephant with period , settings , etc , ... |
409,446 | 2,567,136 | 422,491 | 5 | Self Indulgence : 101 | I don't know about you but I go to the cinema - and the theatre for that matter - primarily to be entertained . Okay , if you want to wrap a message INSIDE the entertainment that I'm free to pick up on or not then fine , no problem and even if you want to get me to think a little again no problem , providing you give m... |
408,785 | 2,567,136 | 91,830 | 5 | Green For Inertia | As a movie buff weaned on the Hollywood classics of the thirties and forties via endless reruns on TV I absorbed by osmosis the ' classic ' style of film-making - Master Shot , Long Shot , Medium Shot , Close Shot , 2-Shot , Reverse Angle etc - without being able to put a name to them and this is perhaps why I find Roh... |
409,068 | 2,567,136 | 102,436 | 5 | Thanks For WHAT Exactly ? | I have , on occasion , praised Blier and probably I will do so again but not , I fear , this time . The box talks a good game throwing the names of Annie Girardot and Jean-Louis Trintignant around cavalierly , the implication clearly being they are featured players whereas in fact they merely provide cameos and arrive ... |
409,960 | 2,567,136 | 55,018 | 5 | The Kink And I | Following a brief scene in Michael Redgrave's ( presumably ) London home during which he offers and she accepts the post of Governess to his orphaned nephew and niece Deborah Kerr journeys by stage coach to the large country estate which is to be her new home . As she alights from the coach and we get our first full-le... |
409,973 | 2,567,136 | 197,716 | 5 | Room At The Bottom | This is , of course , an old warhorse so much so that the first film version dates back to 1912 . Marcel L'Herbier had a crack at it in 1930 and his version arguably eclipses those of Daquin and the most recent by Bruno Podalydes . This version , I fear , need trouble none of the others - though I haven't seen the Sile... |
408,787 | 2,567,136 | 470,765 | 5 | More Vine Than Sunset | First off I haven't seen any of the previous movies by Christopher Guest so he so he had neither anything to live up to / surpass nor did he have the capacity to disappoint by not living up to a given standard . As someone who was weaned on Hollywood movies when they were still about People and not chainsaws and / or c... |
408,762 | 2,567,136 | 450,972 | 5 | Actually It's NOT As I Like It . . . | Shakespeare , that is . I'm not necessarily averse to updating the time period - strangely no one ever moves them BACK in time - or making a point ( Orson Welles ' Julius Caesar , for example , produced in the thirties when Mussollini was the current dictator in Italy , or a recent RSC production of The Merchant Of Ven... |
409,705 | 2,567,136 | 27,688 | 5 | The Kosher Hearses | In a career that spanned seven decades and embraced seventy films it's hard to dispute that the 1930s was the most fruitful decade for Julien Duvivier but when it is set against such gems as Poil de Carotte , Pepe Le Moko , La Belle Equipe , Un Carnet du Bal , Le Fin du Jour , La Charrette Fantome and L'homme du jour T... |
409,054 | 2,567,136 | 287,986 | 5 | Kosher Nostra | Audrey Tautou was just beginning to happen when she made this movie ; she'd appeared in a good half dozen films of which the best by far was Tonie Marshall's Venus Beaute in which she got to play alongside Nathalie Baye , Mathilde Seigner and Micheline Presle where she couldn't help picking up some strong tips on techn... |
409,038 | 2,567,136 | 494,977 | 5 | Thirty Love | If you're going to rip off - or , as Jilly Adair would say , pay homage to - On Connait le Chanson it would help an awful lot if you had the writing and acting talent of Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri and the directorial skills of Alain Resnais . Sadly that is not the case here so what we are left with are some very... |
409,554 | 2,567,136 | 39,645 | 5 | This One Fell Off A Lorre | I thought it was too good to be true when I found this DVD in a bin where everything was £1 - also in there were the Bette Davis version of Of Human Bondage , One-Eyed Jacks and the Judy Garland Show . So far I've watched Garland which was at least ten frames out of sync and when I watched this there was more sparkle o... |
409,746 | 2,567,136 | 33,627 | 5 | You've Got To Draw The Line Somewhere | It's unbelievable that Pressburger won a Best Screenplay award for this although it was wartime I suppose and standards went out the window . Seen today it's a rambling , largely incoherent and unrealistic story of Six Nazis In Search Of A Neutral Country . The bizarre casting does little to help and it was clear that ... |
409,225 | 2,567,136 | 890,882 | 5 | Nice Work If You Can Get It | On the face of it this is every schoolboy fantasy in the world - to have women eager to pay you for sex . Of course those schoolboys think in terms of their peers rather than older dysfunctional women , indeed to a schoolboy 25 is ' old ' so that they would quickly become disabused by the lineup here , which includes a... |
409,191 | 2,567,136 | 290,002 | 5 | . . . If You Must | I didn't see the first film , Meet The Parents , and it doesn't seem that I missed much . I figured that Streisand had to be worth a look and she is , in fact she and Hoffman steal whatever there is to steal . The success of Robert de Niro has always eluded me and he does nothing here to convince me he is anything more... |
409,785 | 2,567,136 | 269,138 | 5 | Blurb For The ' Burbs | I bought this on DVD knowing next to nothing about it simply on the strength of the leading player , Ginny Ledoyen , about the best young actress of her generation . Having watched it I find I don't have a great deal to say about it . We're in L'Esquive territory here as the film takes place in La Zone , those multi-et... |
408,780 | 2,567,136 | 39,428 | 5 | Gypsy Curse | When you're asking yourself pertinent questions as a film unspools before you it's usually a sign that something is sadly amiss . The first question I asked myself here is WHY , Quentin Reynolds . Okay , the film is going to be a flashback ergo Ray Milland needs someone to tell his story to but given that he is telling... |
410,053 | 2,567,136 | 113,273 | 5 | Hi Lili Hi LOW | At university I was once obliged to reply in the form of an essay to the question ' Would Moby Dick be a better or worse book if the scientific sections were omitted ' . My reply was along the lines of ' If the scientific parts were omitted Moby Dick would be a shorter bad book ' and that's how I often feel about Rivet... |
408,724 | 2,567,136 | 29,957 | 5 | Pepe de Loco | Somehow the ' greatness ' of this movie has always eluded me . The last time I saw it on the big screen was about 5 or 6 years ago when a small art house devoted one day to a Jean Gabin trilogy and I felt strongly that the other two ( Quai des Brumes and Le jour se Leve ) left this one for dead . Three Jean Gabin films... |
409,996 | 2,567,136 | 408,839 | 5 | May Be Simonized | It's a brave man with a ego bigger than Texas who thinks he can write better than Neil Simon and neither of the Farrelly brothers is fit to change Simon's typewriter ribbon . Back in 1972 Simon adapted Bruce Jay Friedman for Elaine May to direct and the result was a ball but a quarter of a century later this woeful rem... |
409,645 | 2,567,136 | 443,159 | 5 | Spick and Spanish ? Not really | First-time director has a reasonable track record as a writer with Life Is A Long Tranquil River and Tatie Danielle among her credits and I suppose she takes a decent stab at it but ultimately it's a disappointment . Trivia-buffs will note that director Bob Swaim ( Le Balance ) makes an appearance and when you're reduc... |
409,409 | 2,567,136 | 39,509 | 5 | Sassy ? Check . Brassy ? Check . Classy ? . . . Well , Two Out Of Three . . . | As a cameraman Bernard Knowles worked on some decent British films from the Silent Era through to Talkies but may have been misguided in taking on the role of Director and with only a handful of features to his credit , mostly unsatisfying - Easy Money for example - he saw out his career behind the camera on television... |
410,051 | 2,567,136 | 53,130 | 5 | Drear Duet | As the previous poster has noted this bears all the hallmarks of a Theatrical two-hander and the lion's share of the 80 minute running time features two strangers , one of each sex , in a hut in the middle of WW11 . Actor-director Robert Hossein ( the man ) enjoyed something of a vogue around the time of the new wavele... |
409,977 | 2,567,136 | 22,335 | 5 | Leaving The Bad Girls For Good | This is an early talkie from William Wellman who went on to make some excellent movies like Battleground . It's an out-an-out and unashamed meller with not a lot of originality in the one about the hooker who lucks into a good man who's prepared to help her escape justice after she murders a ' trick ' . Being a seaman ... |
409,510 | 2,567,136 | 294,279 | 5 | Daddy long-Scars | On the basis that Depardieu Senior is always watchable , Sylvie Testud is one of the finest of the younger generation of French actresses and it cost only five euros I bought this DVD knowing that the movie had bombed in the salles but little else . It seems clear that Jacob Berger , himself the son of a noted writer ,... |
409,482 | 2,567,136 | 65,772 | 5 | Creaking Joint ( s ) | For years I've heard this movie hyped out of all proportion so it was perhaps inevitable that I was less than smitten when I finally got around to seeing it . What stuck out like a sore thumb - if not a grazed knee - was Rohmer's ' new wave ' technique of ending a scene brusquely when it would no longer support the poi... |
409,934 | 2,567,136 | 85,180 | 5 | Not One False Note . . . | . . . but several , in fact virtually every performance . Bresson is known if not celebrated for finding gifted amateurs and extracting believable performances out of them ( I myself recently raved in these very boards about his ' Au Hassard , Balthazar ' ) but his touch seems to have deserted him here . He's also noth... |
409,847 | 2,567,136 | 37,630 | 5 | Bare-Faced In The Park | Movies that are pre-sold as ' classic ' , ' masterpiece ' , etc nearly always have a tough row to hoe to live up to the hype . I've seen only a handful of Bresson movies and the only one I am happy to concede is a masterpiece is Au Hasard , Balthazar , the others are just a heavy mixture of the static and the obscure .... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.