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573,533 | 4,532,636 | 69,995 | 1 | Like Having Glass Ground Into Your Eyeballs | Heed the warning of this movie's title and don't look at it now . . . or ever . This atrocious psychological thriller is neither psychologically complex nor especially thrilling . Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play parents mourning the accidental death of their daughter , wandering around Venice while Sutherland is engaged in the renovation of an old cathedral . They run into a blind psychic and her sister , and their encounters with them bring Christie some solace about her daughter , but send Sutherland into a paranoid spiral which culminates in him following who he thinks is his dead daughter into the bell tower of a church and then . . . . . well , much hype has been built around the " shocking " ending to this movie , but let's just see if you give a damn about what happens by the time you get to it . My description of the plot makes it sound like it makes much more sense than it does when you're actually watching the film , because I've left out all of the utterly gratuitous and boring scenes that bring nothing to the party . Director Nicholas Roeg never met a trendy 1970s film trick that he didn't like , and so this movie is full of zooms , both in and out , jarring camera work and harsh , ear-splitting sound effects . I guess he's trying for a nerve-jangling effect , but it all seems like a lot of fuss and bother over nothing . This is an assemblage of disconnected scenes badly in need of a story . The most frightening thing about " Don't Look Now " is the extended love-making scene that assaults us with a fully nude Donald Sutherland . Now that's what will make you turn your eyes away in horror . |
573,440 | 4,532,636 | 785,007 | 1 | Eva Longoria Deserves the Flames of Hell | Much of " Over Her Dead Body " is so painfully unfunny that I was actually squirming in my seat out of embarrassment for the actors . Eva Longoria proves that she can't carry a film in this terrible romantic comedy , and further , that she doesn't really even have any comedic timing . She's grating and annoying as a ghost who returns to earth to keep a cooky psychic from dating her widower fiancé . The fiancé is played by Paul Rudd , drippy and charmless , while the psychic is played by Lake Bell , bringing the movie whatever anemic energy it has . I felt most sorry for Bell , as she appears to have some comic abilities and was working overtime in an effort to make the material work . Unfortunately , she is up against the insurmountable task of making any movie that features Jason Biggs tolerable , and she is dragged down with the rest of the cast like Leo DiCaprio at the end of " Titanic . " " Over Her Dead Body " actually pied me off , because of its laziness and utter lack of effort . I started to think of all the interesting projects that can't get funded because vast amounts of money are being funneled into bland crap like this . Seriously , does Hollywood think movies like this are good enough ? How stupid do they really think the movie-going public is ? |
573,531 | 4,532,636 | 80,761 | 1 | When Slasher Films Were Innocent | How did this movie ever get the reputation as a horror classic ? I've been re-watching the " Friday the 13th " series recently and have been struck by how awfully incompetent they are as films . This first installment I guess has the advantage of being novel , though not really , since it doesn't use any formula conventions that " Halloween " didn't use two years earlier . And the actual film making technique in " Halloween " makes it seem like " Lawrence of Arabia " compared to this . Still , there is something nostalgically satisfying about these movies . Seeing dopey teenagers get axed in the face and knifed through the throat brings a little glow to my heart . This was made at a time when slasher movies had a kind of innocence that horror movies now have lost . These films were nasty at the time , but they're absolutely quaint when compared to the nasty cinema coming out now in the same genre , a sad testament to just how jaded we've become . As far as rating this particular movie , not all of the movies in the series are as bad as this one , but I can't bring myself to give the original anything other than a big fat F . |
573,946 | 4,532,636 | 74,749 | 1 | A Terrible Cassavetes Film | I found this film to be nearly intolerable . John Cassavetes in many ways was a love him or leave him director . His films were never easy - - he definitely required his audience to work , not sit passively and let his films quietly come at them . I don't mind this approach to film-making , but I do require that the rewards I receive are worth the effort I bring to the experience . Not so here . " The Killing of a Chinese Bookie " simply wore me out , until by the end of the movie I could not have cared less what happened to anyone in it or to the story itself . This is Cassavetes at his self-indulgent worst . The only thing I liked about this movie was Ben Gazarra , who I've always thought was a fine and overlooked actor . |
573,317 | 4,532,636 | 414,993 | 1 | This Tree of Life Would Be Put to Better Use as Firewood | The only compliment I can pay " The Fountain " is that it's not ordinary . However , a little ordinariness might have helped this nearly unwatchable mess of a movie . Darren Aronofsky has made a cerebral , abstract film completely lacking any ounce of emotional significance . It comes across as one of those films that one person had too much control of . I can't believe for a second that there weren't people around Aronofsky who thought this movie was completely indigestible bilge ; unfortunately , none of them had the balls to tell him so . In " The Fountain , " Hugh Jackman plays some sort of doctor in the near future who is engaged in research to slow the aging process ( or something - - I was never entirely clear on this point ) . His wife ( Rachel Weisz , a long way away from " The Constant Gardener " ) is dying of a brain tumor , and curing her with these new but unperfected methods becomes an obsession of Jackman's . Meanwhile , she has written a book about a Spanish Conquistador during the inquisitions ( Jackman again ) who is sent by Queen Isabella ( Weisz again ) to find the famed tree of life . And as if that weren't enough , another version of Jackman ( this one bald , looking like a cross between Kevin Spacey and Dr . Evil ) floats around space in a big bubble with said tree of life ( which I think we are meant to think at this point is Weisz in her immortal form ) pausing occasionally to break off pieces of its bark to eat . All of this is treated with utmost seriousness and earnestness , and the results are ridiculous . The tone of the film is one of unrelenting gloom , with sombre music and muted line readings . Jackman is not nearly a capable enough actor to handle this role , though to be fair , I don't know that anyone else would be either . He mostly just looks sad and harried , and the only difference between any of the incarnations of him is in how much hair he has on his head and face ( there's the hairy Jackman , the moderately hairy Jackman and the shaved Jackman ) . Weisz mostly floats around in a stranded role as no more than something for Jackman to respond to . Arronofsky apparently was able to convince both of them to take this nonsense seriously , and the results are simply embarrassing at times . My wife and I laughed out loud more than once , and trust me , nothing in this movie was meant to be funny . But the climax , in which the Conquistador begins to gobble sap from the tree of life , only to have flowers erupt from all of his bodily orifices , is a tour de force of unintentional screen comedy . Ellen Burstyn inexplicably shows up in a small role as Jackman's boss . I have to believe she only agreed to do so as a favor to Aronofsky for giving her such a good role in his " Requiem for a Dream . " |
573,547 | 4,532,636 | 73,540 | 1 | Pretentious and Dull - - The Worst Combination | Ugh . . . an endless and interminable movie about a batch of oppressed school girls who go missing during a picnic at the eponymous rock formation . There seem to be plenty of viewers armed with psycho-babble to defend this film's deeper meaning , its undertones of sexuality , power , repression , etc . , etc . , blah , blah , blah . Whatever . I'm sure director Peter Weir knew what point he was trying to make , but this movie is a monotonous , droning bore , and I was left with no incentive to make sense of it . On top of all of that , it's also unforgivably pretentious , proof that Weir is better off sticking to the mainstream fare that has made him famous ( " Dead Poets Society , " " Witness , " " Master and Commander " ) and leave the art film to others . |
574,193 | 4,532,636 | 430,304 | 1 | What's the Point ? | What's the point of reviewing a movie like this ? It's painfully and embarrassingly bad , not even in a way that allows you to make fun of it . Movies like " Little Man " depress me . They represent film at its most disposable . This movie was made for a bunch of 18-24 year old dipsht frat boys who the studio was hoping would come out and see it on opening night before word leaked out about how bad it was , so that the film could quickly recoup its investment . A hundred other filmmakers with great ideas probably couldn't get their films made because resources were going toward making this puddle of vomit . |
573,360 | 4,532,636 | 170,016 | 1 | Atrocious | Ron Howard , who never met a story he couldn't screw up , takes the delightful holiday cartoon classic and turns it into something gormless , vulgar and awful . The cartoon used imaginative language and iconic animation to create its magical effect . Howard replaces all of that with gaudy art direction and stupid physical humour . The makeup effects are creepy , not cute ; the Whovillians are anonymous drones - - and it doesn't help that they look like half pig / half human lab creations . Jim Carrey , who on paper seems like he would be perfect casting , overplays to the hilt , creating exactly the opposite effect to that inspired by the original droll creation of animator Chuck Jones and actor Boris Karloff . The only positive attribute Carrey could have brought to the film , that rubber face with which he could have created any number of comic moments , is buried underneath heaps of prosthetic makeup . This is a foul , terrible movie , and I can't believe that anyone could possibly like it . How it even rated a 5 . 6 here at IMDb is beyond me . |
574,246 | 4,532,636 | 51,658 | 1 | Wretched Piece of Instantly Disposable Crap | I hate this movie . I hate the way it looks . I hate the way the actors ( especially Leslie Caron ) sound . I hate the way it's dubbed . I hate how irrelevant it is . Is it just me , or is there something incredibly distasteful ( not to mention creepy ) to see an 80-something Maurice Chevalier singing " Thank Heaven for Little Girls " while ogling them in a park ? Maybe pedophilia didn't exist in turn-of-the-century Paris . I can't believe this gloopy piece of cotton eye candy came out in the same year as Orson Welles ' " Touch of Evil . " And don't even get me started on the fact that it won what was then a record number of Oscars ( including Best Picture ) . If nothing else in its dubious history convinces one to ignore the Motion Picture Academy , that should . Can anyone honestly tell me they cared at all about how this movie ended ? If you can , I never want to meet you . |
573,627 | 4,532,636 | 92,646 | 1 | Beyond Watchable | I've been having my own little Altman revival over the past months , watching all of his available movies in chronological order , both his masterpieces and his duds . I'm up to 1987 , and I think I may have finally found it - - that elusive thing known as Robert Altman's absolutely worst film . If you know about Altman , you know that all of his movies were an experiment to a greater or lesser extent and that some of them misfired dismally . In re-watching them with a fresh eye , I've found that none ( not even some really bad ones , like " A Wedding " , " Quintet " , or " Popeye " ) misfired quite as egregiously as " Beyond Therapy " . A farcical romp lampooning modern-day ( for the time ) romance , sexual preferences , neurotics and the analysts who are crazier than they are , " Beyond Therapy " has nothing to recommend it . The two leads , Jeff Goldblum and Julie Hagerty , make their characters instantly unlikable and never recover . Tom Conti and Glenda Jackson are probably the best members of the cast , as two whacked out therapists , but the parts they're given to play feel random and arbitrary . Christopher Guest basically plays the petulant gay man he would reprise so classically ten years later in " Waiting for Guffman " . I don't know how Christopher Durang's stage play would read in a different context . It seems paper thin judging by this version , but knowing Altman , I have a feeling he dealt with the source material liberally , and who knows how much of Durang's original play remains . This film certainly has Altman's footprints all over it , and in this case that's not a good thing . |
573,785 | 4,532,636 | 83,972 | 1 | Adding 3-D Doesn't Help | If possible , the third installment in the hit hack-up derby is even worse than the first film , which is really saying something . The entire " Friday the 13th " series is like a ten-car pile-up for me : I know I should avert my eyes , but something compels me to stare . These movies are an insult to my intelligence , yet I keep coming back for more , mostly because I remember these from being a kid and so they have a nostalgic tug to them . At least this one is the most 80s of the series . . . it's like a slasher version of " Roller Boogie . " We get punk motorcycle gang members with puffy hair and chains . . . one of them looks suspiciously like Debbie Allen . We also get a groovy disco space-agey them playing over the opening credits , announcing that the series has officially accepted its place as pure camp . Jason dons his trademark hockey mask for the first time , and proceeds to do quickly away with another batch of teens , who for their pure lack of anything intelligent to do or say deserve to die , if for no other reason . The 3-D effects are a riot in this - - especially when you watch the film in 2-D and can realize just how far out of their way the film makers went to work 3-D into the film . Some of the effects were inventive : Jason shoots an arrow into a girl's eye , and the arrow comes right at the screen ; he squeezes a guy's head until his eye comes squiggling out toward the camera . But I have to assume that some of the other 3-D effects , like an overhead shot of exploding popcorn ( Oh my God , it's coming right at us ! ) were less than terrifying to experience . Jason outdoes himself with the body count this time around - - whole scenes exist for the purpose of introducing someone he can poke , prod or skewer . Is he working on commission ? |
573,719 | 4,532,636 | 95,179 | 1 | Dreck | Saying that " Friday the 13th Part VII : The New Blood " is god awful is like saying the sun rises in the East . It's just an objective fact , and there's not anything anyone can possibly say to refute it . I have about as much energy to muster up a comment about this film as the filmmakers had in creating it , and believe me , that's not much . This movie doesn't have one redeemable quality about it - - the acting , writing , directing and editing are remedial . My friends and I made movies as good as this in college goofing around on a Saturday with nothing more than a camcorder . Even the " kills " ( to use fanboy parlance ) , which I'm assuming are the primary motivating factor behind most people watching this at all , are dull and unimaginative , and gorehounds will be supremely disappointed , as they're censored to the point where you don't see much of anything at all . After Part VI , I didn't think the " Friday the 13th " series could get much worse - - this movie proves that there's always the opportunity to achieve a higher level of incompetency . |
574,082 | 4,532,636 | 203,009 | 1 | Ugh ! | Well , I guess I didn't " get it , " since that's how everyone who loves this stinking movie explains away those of us who don't . Couldn't have anything to do with the ridiculous performances ( who else wanted to see John Leguizamo take a long walk off a short pier , and who else but me felt embarrassed for poor Jim Broadbent , terrific in so many other things ) , Baz Luhrmann's irritating directorial style ( his target audience would appear to be 14-year old girls with ADS ) , or the banal music ( " Hedwig and the Angry Inch , " a REAL musical , made fun of " I Will Always Love You . " " Moulin Rouge " pays homage to it ) . This film is vapid eye candy stretched out over an exhausting 2 hours . Congrats , Baz - - - you've succeeded in inventing a new genre - - - the feature-length MTV video . And for those of you who think we've all missed the point - - - - Baz ain't exactly Ingmar Bergman . |
574,036 | 4,532,636 | 70,423 | 2 | Hold on to Your Artichokes | Here at IMDb it's called " The Mutations " ; the version I saw was called " The Freakmaker . " No matter what title you give it , the result is one pretty bad movie . Donald Pleasance slums mightily in the role of a college professor / mad scientist whose ultimate dream is to create a race of half plant / half human creatures . He enlists the help of a horribly deformed owner of a carnie freak show to find human subjects for him to experiment on . These subjects end up looking like artichokes and cabbages , and are played by actors wearing rubbery costumes that don't look remotely realistic . Meanwhile , a group of students begin to unravel the mystery of the professor's doings , while the members of the carnie freak show ( played by actual circus sideshow members , in an homage to Todd Browning's 1932 classic " Freaks " ) become increasingly angered by their boss's abuse and take revenge . This sounds like the makings of a juicy cult classic , one that if nothing else would be in the " so-bad-it's-good " category . Indeed , this is why I watched it . Let me save you the time and trouble of finding out on your own that it's not so-bad-it's-good - - it's just bad . Bad as in fairly boring , poorly acted , poorly written . Much of it doesn't make any sense . It's almost unbelievable that Jack Cardiff , a film artist with a number of prestigious credits to his name , directed this . This is the sort of thing my wife and I might make using a video camera and some friends . Actually , I think we could make a better movie than this . And am I the only one to wonder why the color in the film is so bright as to actually hurt my eyes at times ? |
573,349 | 4,532,636 | 52,618 | 2 | A Nearly Unwatchable Hollywood " Classic " | Hopeless . If you can endure Charlton Heston's painful attempts at " serious " acting for nearly four ( ! ) hours , you will ultimately be done in anyway by the film's sheer unwieldy clunkiness . It lumbers along under William Wyler's direction like a crippled elephant , coming alive in only a couple of places ( the lauded chariot race scene , the sea battle sequence ) , only to ultimately collapse under its own self-important piety . I'm sure the creators of this film thought they were doing their audiences all sorts of favors by dazzling them with gigantic sets and crowd scenes . But really , their efforts backfire , because they make it futile for the actors to try and compete with the film's sheer physical size . Who can give a compelling performance when he / she's never filmed in anything more than medium close up ? Watching this film is like watching a stage production from the eighteenth row . Movies like " Ben-Hur " are the reason why people roll their eyes at the thought of watching a biblical epic . I'm not religious , but it's not the religious subject matter that turns me off from this film - - it's the way it's presented , the way it's performed and virtually everything else about it . |
574,077 | 4,532,636 | 85,959 | 2 | Downright Painful | Believe me , I did not want to dislike this movie , but ultimately I thought it was just awful . They Pythoners show none of the comedic dexterity on display in " The Holy Grail " or " Life of Brian , " and this movie put me sadly in mind of the worst " SNL " skits , when one lame joke is drawn agonizingly out over a 10 or 15 minute skit . " The Meaning of Life " is much edgier in subject matter than its predecessors , but so what ? Making something edgier does not inherently make it funnier . I have to believe the high rating this film received at IMDb is a tribute more to all of the love out there for Monty Python and not for this film in particular . A movie that may cause you to crack the barest of smiles once or twice , if it's lucky . |
574,422 | 4,532,636 | 454,841 | 2 | Needlessly Savage and Not Remotely Scary | My wife recently planned a night out with her girlfriends , so I had the T . V . to myself and the chance to watch some movies she wouldn't want to see . I had a hankering for some good old fashioned vintage porn and a good scary movie , so I rented this , " Debbie Does Dallas " and " Taboo . " Of the three films I rented , " The Hills Have Eyes " was by far the most pornographic , and the last of the bunch I'd want my child ( if I had one ) to see . It astounds me that the MPAA will give a movie like " 9 Songs " ( which does happen to be a lousy movie ) an NC-17 rating , virtually guaranteeing that no mainstream movie theatre will carry it , just because it depicts real sex between real people , and then turn around and give a movie like " Hills " an R . What kind of sick world do we live in when the sight of penetration is believed to be more damaging to our youth than the sight of people getting axe picks through their heads and their intestines ripped out ? And lest you think I'm just a cranky prude , let me say that I love horror movies , and I'm always on the outlook for good ones ( " The Descent " happened to be fantastic ) but I've nearly given up hope that today's batch of filmmakers know the first thing about what scares people . I'm not opposed to gore , and I think it can be used effectively ( again , " The Descent " ) . My objections to " The Hills Have Eyes " rest almost entirely on the fact that it's not effective horror . It's gruesome , to be sure , and it does inspire a sort of visceral reaction from the viewer , but so would a car accident . I've not seen the original Wes Craven version , but the film that this most reminded me of , 1974's " The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , " gave me close to the same feeling , except that Tobe Hooper's film is unbelievably scary in addition to being nauseating , and it uses true film-making skills to scare the pants off of you , not simply digitally enhanced makeup and sound effects . It depresses me that there's a market for movies like " The Hills Have Eyes . " I must be getting older , because I'm starting to worry about the state of our country's youth . Doesn't anyone have the attention span anymore to be scared by a clever , psychological thriller , or even a sophisticated slasher film like " Chainsaw Massacre " or " Halloween , " where your imagination did the work that computers do now ? Horror movies used to be fun - - now they're just exhausting . I used to come away from then scared but exhilarated - - now I come away just feeling bad . It's hard to have fun in a movie that shows a woman's baby being held at gunpoint so that a sadistic mutant can suck on her boobs , and then shoot her in the head anyway ; or in which a boy comes across the body of his dead mother being disemboweled and eaten . I don't believe that anyone should be stopped from making films like this ; I just wish people would have the brains to stop wanting to see them . Send a message to film directors and have them bring good horror back to the screens . |
573,401 | 4,532,636 | 56,937 | 2 | In the Running for Most Boring Movie Ever Made | I can't imagine this gargantuan historical epic being of interest to anyone . As a serious piece of film , it's far too wooden and dull to appeal to cinephiles ; but for the same reasons , it doesn't even satisfy those looking for trashy camp . In terms of its physical production , " Cleopatra " takes the " more is better " approach , and stuffs every frame with gawdy set and costume details . Everything about the film is enormous ; as a result , all of the actors are buried beneath a hopeless pile of Technicolor . Everyone walks around delivering stiff speeches , but no one really develops a character . The only person who manages to infuse the film with some life is Rex Harrison , so his departure from the film at the half-way point ( with 2 + hours still to go ! ) is utterly demoralizing . The film grinds to a slower and slower pace as the remainder progresses , like an unwound music box , until by the end you can almost literally hear the DVD player laboring to spin the DVD around . This stinker landed with a huge thud at the time of its release , and it lands with a thud now . No amount of perspective can save it . |
573,860 | 4,532,636 | 76,451 | 2 | Start Spreading the News , This Movie Is Crap | Martin Scorsese's deconstruction of the golden Hollywood musical is a meandering disaster . " New York , New York " is damn near unwatchable . It tells the VERY slight story of a jackass saxophone player ( Robert De Niro ) who falls in love with a nightclub singer ( Liza Minelli ) and proceeds to emotionally abuse her until her life is miserable . De Niro is consistently one note in his performance , creating a character without a single redeeming feature . In his early scenes , I think we're supposed to be charmed by him , and by extension understand why Minelli's character would fall for him in the first place - - unfortunately , he comes across more as a creepy sociopath than anything , Travis Bickle with some musical talent . Minelli's role is utterly thankless , but she's absolutely the only thing that kept me watching . The last 40 minutes of the film is practically a Liza Minelli concert . Her character has vaulted to film stardom and left her loser husband in the dust ; Scorsese devotes what feels like half an hour to a movie within a movie featuring Minelli in one of those epic ballet scenes that always derailed Gene Kelly musicals . It does the same to this film , but the diversion was welcome , since it meant we could enjoy a nice break from De Niro . The movie grinds on for 163 ( ! ) minutes . At the 120 minute mark I wanted to cry . At the 150 minute mark I was beaten into submission by indifference . By that point , the film had been going on for far too long , yet at the same time I couldn't believe it would be ending in 10 minutes because it didn't seem to be moving toward any kind of resolution . Scorsese seemed to be unaware that this story had already been told - - maybe he'd never heard of " A Star Is Born . " More likely , he was paying homage to that film , but he created something that on its own terms has no reason for existence . |
574,278 | 4,532,636 | 443,274 | 2 | Changing the Point of View Doesn't Make This Movie Any Better | What could have been a reasonably entertaining B-movie is instead turned into a total disaster . Here's the gimmick : the events in " Vantage Point " unfold multiple times from the perspectives of different characters . Each time we see the story , we either learn something we didn't know before , or the movie tosses us a new twist for a subsequent story to unravel . If this were made as a film noir back in the 1950s , it would have been a modest , slick little film with a clever narrative device . But blown up to Hollywood action movie proportions , with a big cast of good and wasted actors , and pretensions to some sort of intelligent commentary about the way we perceive our fragmented world , the movie stinks . A movie like this must have absolutely perfect editing , but the editing in " Vantage Point " is terrible . The first hour of the film is repetitive ; I grew quickly tired of the film rewinding itself to start over every ten minutes . The filmmakers must have grown tired of it too , because the last half hour is told through no particular point of view , and is so badly edited that nothing makes much sense . The action in " Vantage Point " never stops , yet the whole things feels oddly inert and boring . All of the characters are given back stories told in short hand to give us a reason to care about them , but the stories are hackneyed , like something high schoolers would have written . And it doesn't help that the dialogue , especially that reserved for the swarthy terrorists who put the film's action in motion , sounds like the stuff you hear on those telenovelas that air on Telemundo . This movie is a perfect example of what happens when a stupid action movie tries to be smarter than it is . From whichever point of view you choose , " Vantage Point " still sucks . |
573,327 | 4,532,636 | 32,145 | 2 | Witheringly Boring Heights | Wuthering Heights is a florid , over-heated , dull Gothic romance based on a florid , over-heated , dull Gothic novel . This movie and everything about it grated on me - - why it's considered to be such a classic ( and worthy of placement on the AFI's list of 100 greatest films of all time ) I'll never know . I guess it is unique in that it brings a level of psychological complexity to the romantic melodrama that films hadn't really seen to that point . And it introduced Laurence Olivier ( he of the massive chin dimple ) , who would go on to become one of the most admired of screen actors , to American audiences . But beyond that my praise ends . The rest is a brooding bore , with a love story I didn't give a rat's ass about . The star of the movie is the sterling black and white cinematography courtesy of Gregg Toland , who would go on to top himself in " The Grapes of Wrath " the following year and " Citizen Kane " the year after that . With simple lighting alone , he can load a shot of a clanging gate or a fluttering curtain with psychological import . But the problem with this movie is that it's ALL psychological import and zilch compelling drama . It's the kind of movie that lends itself easily to movie stills but is completely devoid of life in every other respect . Thumbs up for the cinematography . As for everything else . . . Blech ! |
574,432 | 4,532,636 | 70,047 | 2 | A Steaming Pile of Demon Puke | A ridiculous and laughable " horror " film about demonic possession . " The Exorcist " is simply terrible . William Friedkin directed with an iron fist , and there isn't the least shade of subtlety to this story . You may feel assaulted , but you won't be scared . Poor Ellen Burstyn has to wade her way through this crap in the thankless role of mother to Linda Blair's possessed daughter . The two actresses are quite effective in the film's early scenes , when the possession has yet to fully take hold , and these scenes are the creepiest in the movie . But once Blair is relegated to the bedroom , strapped down to the bed and bedecked with caked-on prosthetics , this movie gives up all claims to seriousness and becomes a procession of shameless shock moments . Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow wander around and intone imperiously as the two priests assigned to the exorcism , and Mercedes McCambridge gives the film's most lively performance as the demon's voice . Disgustingly , Friedkin actually claimed that this film was religiously significant , a ruse that worked , since it became a blockbuster . Times haven't changed . Religious fanatics turned Mel Gibson's bloodbath , " The Passion of the Christ , " into a cultural phenomenon , and they've done the same to this . If religiously-themed films have taught us anything , it's that religious people certainly do like their Sunday school messages to come packaged in pain and suffering . |
573,617 | 4,532,636 | 286,716 | 2 | The Horror , the Horror . . . . | I so wanted to give this film a better review , because if nothing else , " Hulk " at least takes a more interesting than average approach to the comic - book - turned - into - summer - blockbuster genre . Ang Lee gets kudos from me for his use of split screens to suggest the panels of a comic book , but that's about where my praise ends . Because I usually like Lee , I'm giving this two stars instead of one , but I'm doing that under duress . " Hulk " is dreadful . It's 140 minutes of nonsense , which might be o . k . if that nonsense had any notion that it was nonsense . But Lee and company seem to take their material utterly seriously , which is deadly for this kind of film . Lee uses the comic book look for his film , but he doesn't use the comic book tongue-in-cheek style of story-telling , so every single scene comes across as unintentionally silly . Even with that , the film might have been enjoyable . Hey , I enjoy a fun bad movie as much as the next guy . But this is a fun bad movie without the fun . The story takes forever to get going , and once it does it doesn't make a lot of sense anyway . I can't believe I'm saying this , but this is one case where the story overwhelms the visuals . I don't really need that much back story to the Hulk - - - what I want are cool action sequences and zingy special effects . Well , the effects in this suck . I almost have to believe the CG animation in this film was intentionally corny , otherwise the producers got seriously ripped off . The only thing I can say about the animated Hulk is that he's a better actor than Eric Bana , who plays Bruce Banner . Please don't ask this boy to act , and especially don't ask him to cry . Jennifer Connelly is starting to really get on my nerves . She's stealing the market on noble suffering away from Joan Allen . But the real booby prize goes to Nick Nolte , who has driven another nail into the coffin of his career with his appearance in this . He's absolutely putrid , chewing the scenery every chance he gets in a greasy fright wig . His big showy soliloquy toward the end might have been more effective if the viewer could understand a word he says , but I doubt it . Perhaps the filmmakers should have chosen to use a CG version of Nick Nolte instead of the real thing . And darned if this movie doesn't suffer from action movie syndrome , complete with false finale and a real finale that is jaw-droppingly wretched . $100 bucks to anyone who can make sense of what happens at the end , and who can also tell me how all of the people back at the military base were able to see the big battle between the Hulk and Nick Nolte as if they were watching it on screen as we are , even though they are miles away watching nothing more than a radar screen . Bad , bad , bad . . . . . |
573,877 | 4,532,636 | 71,803 | 2 | Ghastly | This is a terrible movie , and I'm not even sure why it's so terrible . It's ugly , for one , with that trendy 1970s visual style that maybe seemed like a good idea at the time but which now enables one to instantly recognize a film from that time period as being a 70s product . The film retains the story and songs that made the stage version of the musical such a hit , but the songs sound lifeless on screen . But mostly , the movie sucks because of the wan performance of Lucille Ball , who you'd think would be able to make something of this larger-than-life character if anyone could . She sleepwalks through the movie like a terrified actress choking on her opening night , and the film sinks with her . Even Bea Arthur , who I bet was hilarious in the best friend role onstage , can't breathe any life into this stinker . Avoid at all costs . |
573,762 | 4,532,636 | 78,504 | 2 | Do NOT Ease on Down THIS Road | A colossal misfire . My theory is that every great director had to direct at least one crappy movie musical ( think about it , John Huston did " Annie , " Robert Altman did " Popeye , " etc . ) , and " The Wiz " is Sidney Lumet's dubious contribution . An all-black , motown version of " The Wizard of Oz " isn't a bad idea , but this movie's atrocious . It's ungainly , uninspired , unengaging . The only thing it has going for it is some funky art direction and costume design , but eye candy will only get you so far in a movie as bad as this . Diana Ross and Michael Jackson look and sound so much alike that I had trouble telling them apart . |
573,815 | 4,532,636 | 88,915 | 2 | Film Almost Single Handedly Undermines the Integrity of the Pulitzer Prize | If you were to judge based on the movie alone , the committee that gave the stage musical " A Chorus Line " a Pulitzer Prize , and Broadway audiences that kept the war horse running for 15 years , were all on heavy narcotics , because one singular sensation this film certainly is NOT . What possessed anyone to think that Richard Attenborough was the right fit for this material utterly mystifies me , but he makes a musical that is almost entirely about movement just sit on the screen like a lump of clay . Not content with the original score the way it was originally written , someone decided that what the film really needed was a brand new song to give the movie some zip . Thus we are assaulted with the Oscar-nominated ( ! ) " Surprise , Surprise . " Well surprise , surprise , the song stinks , and so does the movie . |
573,827 | 4,532,636 | 71,455 | 2 | Heston's Performance Is About an 8 . 5 on the Richter Scale | 1974 was a bad year for L . A . First , its brand new skyscraper caught on fire and imperiled the likes of William Holden , Faye Dunaway , Steve McQueen and Paul Newman - - whose lives were all partially in the hands of O . J . Simpson , no less ! Then it was struck by a mega-quake that completely devastated the city and scared the bejesus out of movie audiences by subjecting them to yet another Charlton Heston performance . If I'm not mistaken , movie theatres showing this film were equipped with special sound systems that would make the auditorium rattle and shake , until the systems were all removed when the theatres started to experience actual damage . And we think we've got it bad now . . . . . . |
573,429 | 4,532,636 | 81,353 | 2 | Quintet , I Apologize - - THIS Is the Worst Altman Film Ever Made | Oh , Robert Altman , I love you and may you rest in peace , but DAMN did you make some bad movies . I've been re-watching Altman's entire oeuvre on DVD lately ( or at least the movies available ) and have had to seriously reconsider my ranking system . I had thought that " Quintet " was the nadir of his 1970s film career , but I had forgotten just how atrocious " A Wedding " is . But then I re-watched " Popeye " and think that there's a new serious contender . It's almost like after making " Nashville , " Altman set out to one-up himself in bad movies , and see just how much worse each could be than the one before it . ( Though I have to exclude " 3 Women " from this - - a remarkable film ) . " Popeye " is an example of what happens when Altman's rambling style goes completely wrong . The film is a shambling mess , with not much discernible plot , and it's almost the exact opposite of the cartoons on which it's based . Those were little jewels of narrative economy - - even a movie made for kids needs to be well written . Robin Williams is a riot as Popeye , and his constant muttering is easily the best thing about the movie . It's also worth watching to see Shelley Duvall in the role she was born to play , and she does it almost too well , making Olive Oyl just as annoying in human form as she was as a cartoon . The Harry Nilsson songs are terrible , and they're not really even songs . Characters occasionally walk around sing / talking , but the songs , like the film , have no structure and just sort of end . Ray Walston , as Popeye's pappy , infuses the film with some verve , but he enters the picture too late to save it . The set looks like the leftover remnants from " McCabe and Mrs . Miller " ( look for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to that film in a whorehouse ) , and I think many of them were resurrected for " Waterworld . " The thing with Altman's bad movies , though , is that they're so confidently and spectacularly bad that they almost become entertaining . The ending of " Popeye " is a disaster , but it's so fascinatingly disastrous that you can't look away . That's almost more of a testament to Altman's skill as a director than any of the brilliant classics he made . |
574,039 | 4,532,636 | 443,649 | 2 | Mammoths and Tigers and Bad Acting , Oh My ! ! | Thank God that Roland Emmerich is making movies and setting history straight , because without him I never would have realized that prehistoric man looked not unlike cast members from " Rent . " What is that elusive ingredient that makes a bad movie fun to watch ? Because whatever it is , " 10 , 000 B . C . " is missing it . This film skips bad and settles instead for boring - - I found myself having to struggle mighty hard to keep my attention from wandering in the film's last hour or so . On the other hand , it seems almost pointless to bother watching a film like this and then rip it apart . It's not unlike cracking open an egg you know has gone bad , and then complaining when it smells foul . |
573,658 | 4,532,636 | 44,926 | 2 | Can't Anybody Make a Good Movie About the Moulin Rouge ? | This dreary biopic about Toulouse-Lautrec , directed by the usually reliable John Huston , only proves that no one has yet been able to make a compelling movie about the famous painter or the Moulin Rouge of turn-of-the-20th-century Paris . Baz Luhrman's film from 2001 is appalling and unwatchable . Huston's film is just boring . I can't imagine why the screen writer for this film would choose someone as interesting as Toulouse-Lautrec , whose contribution to the visual arts would make a perfect subject for a movie , and then decide to make some stupid , dull romance the focus . Marie , the grating character played by Collette Marchand , is repellent . I hated her , and cringed every time she came on the screen . That awful , piercing voice and nearly unintelligible French accent . . . . . ugh ! Supposedly she made such an impact on Toulouse-Lautrec that he could never get over his unrequited love for her . WHAT ? ! ! You never see any of that take place on screen . Jose Ferrer is stiff as a board , delivering every line with the same inflection and facial expression , and Collette Marchand makes Marie so hateful and unlikable that you can't suspend disbelief for a second and believe anyone would love her . As the central story , it fails utterly . As for the details about Toulouse-Lautrec's life , what details there are , Huston and company play fast and loose with the facts , especially the events leading to the painter's death . But by that point , I was so bored with the movie I frankly didn't care how they ended it . The only redeemable aspect of this movie is its impressive production design , which recreates the look and style of Toulouse-Lautrec's instantly recognizable paintings . The scenes in the Moulin Rouge are diverting , because at least there's some energy to them , even if Huston can't film a dance number to save his life . Someone needs to tell that man about medium and long shots , and encourage him not to shoot every dancer in claustrophobic close up so that you can never really see what's going on . I can't imagine anyone really liking this movie . Not Huston fans , not fans of Toulouse-Lautrec , not even fans of 50's melodramas . How it got as high a rating as it does here is beyond me . |
574,128 | 4,532,636 | 329,575 | 2 | Use the DVD as a Coaster If You Want Your Full Money's Worth | Using your copy of " Seabiscuit " to set drinks on would be a more interesting use for it than actually playing the boring thing . Oh , what a safe , boring , dull movie this is . Gary Ross obviously went to the Ron Howard school of directing , where points are pounded home with a hammer and anvil and manipulated emotions are manufactured with assembly-line rapidity . This is the kind of movie where everyone delivers lines that sound like they should be on self-help bumper stickers ; homilies are handed out like parking tickets . And the movie doesn't end until each character gets to deliver at least one clunker , and most of them get to deliver many more . " Seabiscuit " isn't even really a bad movie - - it's an uninteresting movie , which is much worse . Even bad movies can be fascinating , but the filmmakers here aim so low at trying to please the lowest common denominator of viewer that they've put together a batch of pandering mush that has not one genuine emotion in it . Yuck . . . |
573,756 | 4,532,636 | 62,362 | 2 | This Is What They Make You Watch in Hell | I was going to give this movie 1 star until I realized that I gave " Moulin Rouge " that ranking , and I can't possibly hate a movie as much as that one . You might think from my ratings of these two movie musicals that I don't like movie musicals . Not so . I like GOOD movie musicals , not stinky ones like this . I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the powers that be sat around the table planning this one . There must have been a lot of acid in that conference room . If this movie had ended at intermission , it wouldn't have been so bad . As it is , this one is deadly , and it doesn't help that it comes in at a ass-numbing 2 hours . No one , but no one comes out the better for having been involved with this movie . Let's just start with Julie Andrews , since she is the star of the show . She's completely miscast , and about 15 years too old for the part . She does her best to make something of this mess , but too frequently simply gives up and resorts to playing her part like Maria from " The Sound of Music " ( a movie musical I liked , by the way ) . James Fox , who plays her love interest , is almost unbearably mannered in his performance , with a full repertoire of facial contortions and nervous tics that will send you to the kitchen for countless refills of popcorn , long after the popcorn is gone . Mary Tyler Moore is simply dreadful in the most thankless role ever put to screen . I was going to chalk her disastrous performance up to being a novice , but then I remembered that she had already been in the " Dick Van Dyke Show " and was starring in " The Mary Tyler Moore Show " even as this film was released , so she has no excuse for being rotten . Beatrice Lillie as the villianess might have been funny if she was given anything funny to do . Carol Channing is Carol Channing , weird and hyper . However , she alone of the cast seems to know what the hell she's doing , and any scene involving her ends up being a highlight of the film . I don't know why they decided to make this a musical . Musicals were gasping for breath by 1967 anyway ; for every " My Fair Lady " or " The Sound of Music , " there was a " Doctor Dolittle " and " Camelot . " The music in " Millie " seems added on as an afterthought , since hardly any of the songs have anything to do with the plot , and director George Roy Hill couldn't direct a musical number if his life depended on it . Speaking of Hill , I'll save my last comments for him . He's all wrong for this film . I'm assuming the movie was intended to be a satirical send-up of 20's silent melodramas , since it comes complete with reaction shots aimed directly at the camera and title cards elaborating on characters ' emotions . But if that's so , why does Hill set everything to such a plodding pace ? The thing staggers along like a rabid dog before finally collapsing under the weight of its inanity . One wishes Atticus Finch would emerge from behind a tree and put this particular rabid dog ( and the audience ) out of its misery . You know what the most memorable thing about this movie is ? The title song . You'll be singing it for days and days and days and days afterwards . Enjoy . ( because only " Moulin Rouge " is entitled to a grade of F ) |
574,000 | 4,532,636 | 92,644 | 2 | Unnecessary Sequel Does Everything Wrong | A terrible and unpleasant sequel to the surprise hit from 1984 . Though it reassembles most of the cast from the original , including Eddie Murphy in the role that made him a big-screen movie star , all of the other elements that made the first one so enjoyable are gone . Director Tony Scott seems to be absolutely clueless about what made the first one so popular and fresh - - in other words , the comedy - - and instead focuses on aggressive violence and action . The song " Shakedown " was nominated for an Academy Award , but otherwise the film doesn't even boast as good a soundtrack as the original . |
573,954 | 4,532,636 | 48,960 | 2 | As Unnecessary as It Could Possibly Be | Around the World in 80 Days recreates the sensation of looking through someone else's vacation pictures . Some of them may be pretty , but by the time you've seen your fifth picture of palm trees and sand , you're ready to move on . This movie existed solely as a big F YOU to the television industry and the threat it was making to film box office in the mid-50s . Hollywood wanted to show what film could do that T . V . couldn't , which meant BIG films in exotic locations on enormous screens . Unfortunately , these added " benefits " came at the expense of just about everything else that makes films good - - pacing , character development , dramatic tension , etc . David Niven sleepwalks through this film , Cantinflas is only slightly less irritating that Roberto Benigni , and spotting celebrity cameos may keep you interested for the first half hour , but they're not the hook on which to hang a three-hour movie . Think of all the things you could do in three hours and do any of them instead of watching this film . |
573,938 | 4,532,636 | 443,489 | 2 | Really , Really Bad ( I Mean , Really ) | What ? . . . . What did you say ? . . . . Sorry , I'm having a little trouble hearing you . . . . I think all of the caterwauling in this movie gave me permanent hearing loss . . . . . . . I'm suing Bill Condon . . . . . Either the stage version of " Dreamgirls " sucked royally and they made a very faithful ( and sucky ) film version of it , or the team responsible for transferring the stage hit to screen totally butchered what was at one time a good thing . I doubt I'll ever know , because having sat through this mess once , almost nothing could induce me to come within 10 miles of anything remotely " Dreamgirls " - related in future . Beyonce Knowles looks gorgeous but completely fades into the background as the lead singer in a black trio loosely based on the Supremes . The group's manager , played with a mumble and a sneer by Jamie Foxx , wants to bring black music to a mainstream white audience , but instead sells out to the man and makes the black performers and the music they sing progressively whiter . One of the trio , Effie , doesn't fit into this scheme . She's too black , too loud , too . . . . er , everything , so she's booted . But never fear , Beyonce sees the error of her ways , makes up with Effie and gives Foxx a what for . This whiff of a plot plays out over two hours , all of it whirling by in a nauseating barrage of images and songs that all sound the same , making one wonder if Bill Condon was trying to break some kind of record for how fast he can make a movie plot move . Someone needs to tell Condon that simply making a film move fast does not make it inherently interesting . Indeed , " Dreamgirls " is a leaden bore , and what little plot there is is ridiculously hard to follow , because scenes just charge from one to another seemingly at random , songs bleed into one another , and whole decades flash by during montages that don't clearly indicate how much time is supposed to be passing . Jennifer Hudson , who received idolatrous praise for this movie , gives a one-note performance as big-mouthed Effie . I think she was meant to be endearing and spunky , but instead she's aggravating as hell . She sings every song at the same ear-splitting volume , and gives no indication that she's taken the time to understand the words she's singing . It doesn't really matter though , as the songs here do nothing to further the plot , and don't match the characters that sing them . The only songs I remotely liked were " Love You I Do , " one of the handful written directly for the film , and the pseudo-rap song that Eddie Murphy's character sings at one point ( which ends with him dropping his pants ! ) . Effie's big number , " And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going , " is intolerable and actually laughable . Beyonce's big number , " Listen , " recreates the sound of a pussycat being slowly squeezed through a meat grinder . Speaking of Eddie Murphy , he's the only thing that makes " Dreamgirls " watchable , and that's really only because he spends all of his screen time doing his Little Richard impression from Saturday Night Live ( " I'm getting ' in the hot tub ! " ) . Everything else about this movie is a total disaster . |
574,254 | 4,532,636 | 48,316 | 2 | Love Is a Syrupy , Schmaltzy Thing | This film looks great , and that's about where my praise ends . " Love Is a Many Splendored Thing " came out in the very schizophrenic year of 1955 , when candy-coloured nonsense like this co-existed with trail-blazing artistic fair like " Kiss Me Deadly . " As a trend toward smaller , socially conscious films like " On the Waterfront " and " Marty " established itself in the mid-50's , other directors felt the need to stick with the unchallenging , pandering melodrama that classifies so many other films from that decade , and " Love " is one of the latter . This is the kind of 50's movie where the Technicolor is used to its garish utmost and the lighting is invariably high-key ; even scenes taking place in a dark room or at night are brighter than the average sunny day . I never want to hear the theme song again , as it's played frequently enough over the course of the film to last anyone a lifetime , and I certainly don't want to hear it sung by the shrill , ear-piercing choir that belts it out over the end titles . Jennifer Jones and William Holden are passable , but really anybody could have played these parts . Jones ' role is horribly written - - her character is incredibly inconsistent , and it seems as if whenever her character is required to make a decision about something , the screenwriters flipped a coin to decide what that decision would be . People will undoubtedly tell me I'm taking this film too seriously , that I'm unromantic , etc . But I loved " All That Heaven Allows , " released the same year and just as cornball in its own way , except that Douglas Sirk is able to turn melodrama into an art form , whereas Henry King ( director of " Love " ) is not . I'm usually able to enjoy bad melodrama , but in this case I was just bored . |
573,315 | 4,532,636 | 448,134 | 2 | I've Rarely Seen a Movie So Utterly Ruined by Its Ending | Sunshine is an hour of pretty good movie completely ruined by a disastrously terrible final 30 minutes . Danny Boyle's latest exercise in feel-bad cinema finds a crew of astronauts on their way to launch a mega-bomb at Earth's dying sun , hoping to revive it and save the fate of humanity . They're the second crew to attempt this feat ; no one knows what happened to the first crew other than that they didn't succeed in their mission . Cillian Murpy of the other-worldly eyes plays Capa , the crew's physicist and only one who knows how to actually launch the bomb itself . Chris Evans is Mace , the crew's hyper-male maintenance guy . Michelle Yeoh cares tenderly for the ship's oxygen garden , which needs to provide the crew members with enough oxygen to get them to the sun and back . There are other crew members , like a stoic captain , a psych officer who's obsessed with staring at the sun , and a sensitive female , but really none of the characters ever amount to much and they're all virtually interchangeable . This wasn't especially troublesome to me , because I don't expect strong characterizations in movies like this , and also because the science fiction element of the film's first half is interesting enough to stand on its own . Boyle creates a feeling of impending dread ; we know something bad is going to happen , and there's a squirmy but not unpleasant sense of tension in waiting to find out what that something is going to be . All of this opening action is reminiscent of " 2001 : A Space Odyssey . " Boyle focuses on the silence and oppression of space , and the claustrophobia of space life . But when the crew accidentally locates the spaceship sent out on the first mission and boards it in search of clues of what happened , the film switches into " Alien " mode and things get noticeably more jumpy . Even though I had no idea where this movie was going , I was willing to go along for the ride , and was even enjoying the unpredictability . Then , about half an hour from the end , the screenplay veers into ludicrous , shlocky slasher-film horror , and the utter awfulness of the movie's remainder completely canceled out anything good that came out of its early half . I'm repeatedly amazed at Boyle's inability to NOT royally screw up every movie he makes . I don't know what he was thinking here . This movie's screenplay is a disaster , and it's clear he had no idea what kind of movie he wanted to make . It's like he wanted a little bit of everything , but instead of forcing himself to pick and choose , he tries to include it all . By the time the credits role , this movie has lapsed into near incomprehensibility . It's a shame , because this movie had some original things going for it , and Boyle does know how to put haunting images on screen . But what I ultimately felt like I got for my ten dollars was a montage of rejected scenes from every other sci-fi / horror film produced up to now . |
574,360 | 4,532,636 | 42,327 | 2 | For Use in Place of Chinese Water Torture | If I were to be kidnapped by terrorists , making me watch this movie again would be more effective than any other brand of torture they could devise . If you want information out of me , just let me get a glimpse of Jeanne Crain's saccharine , dreadful performance here and I'll break faster than a ninety-year-old woman's hip . Ugh ! This movie is obnoxious , probably loved by people who like that horrible home improvement show on T . V . hosted by that twerp who screams into a bullhorn for an hour . As everyone probably knows because of the remake , Clifton Webb plays the droll father of a big batch of precocious , freckled , gooey 50s children , and the laughs I guess are supposed to come from watching him run his home with the efficiency of a drill sergeant . Myrna Loy is on hand , which you'd think would make things more tolerable , but the director pretty much shoves her into a corner and throws a dust cover over her . There's nothing funny in this movie , nothing moving , nothing even interesting : it's entirely lacking in dramatic conflict , and what drama there is ( a shameless attempt at tearjerking in the film's final moments ) doesn't work because it's so phony . Yuck . ( o . k . I'll refrain from giving it an F only because I like Myrna Loy ) |
573,707 | 4,532,636 | 66,579 | 2 | The Movie Sucks , Which Means It's a Faithful Adaptation of Its Source | Well , you might not actually SEE any women in love in this movie , but you'll certainly hear women TALKING about love , and men talking about love , and women talking about men , and men talking about women , and men talking about men , and everyone talking about death , and talking , and talking , until you yourself will want to scream and do something that requires no talking at all , like paint your bedroom or water your plants . Welcome to the world of D . H . Lawrence , where psycho-babble reigns supreme , and where no one can get down to living a productive life because everyone is too busy talking about how unproductive their lives are . Spending time with the characters in a D . H . Lawrence novel is like being locked in a closet with a group of your most self-absorbed acquaintances who you would run away from if you met them at a party . When I read " Women in Love , " I so desperately wanted to strangle every single character in it , but since I couldn't , I was hoping they would at least strangle each other . Alas , only one of them dies , not by strangulation , and I won't spoil it for you by telling which one , in case you actually give a damn about this story or any of these people . To give director Ken Russell his due , he makes this filmed version about as entertaining as it's possible to make this essentially unfilmable novel . He throws out much of the psychological mumbo-jumbo that Lawrence adored , and focuses instead on all of the naughty parts , so we get lots of histrionic lovemaking in beds and fields , two buck naked men wrestling by firelight , and one embarrassing scene featuring Alan Bates ( yup , buck naked again ) roaming around in a meadow making love to bushes and grass ( I'm not kidding ) . Glenda Jackson won an Oscar for her performance as Gudrun , the more dominant of the two sisters at the story's focus , and she certainly tries her hardest to do something with this material ; anyone would deserve an Oscar simply for having to bear Russell's decision to give her a scene where she has to dance wildly in front of a herd of mystified-looking cattle . Oliver Reed has one expression , an intense glower . The whole thing is over-written and over-directed , and it's deliriously campy . Indeed , this vies with " Mommie Dearest " as perhaps the most unintentionally hysterical movie I've ever seen . |
574,396 | 4,532,636 | 407,304 | 3 | Huge Disappointment | For all of its nonstop action set pieces and narrow escapes , " War of the Worlds " is a strangely inert piece of film-making . There's absolutely nothing in the film to retain your interest . Tom Cruise plays a completely anonymous character who you learn nothing about , and his kids serve little purpose beyond being mere plot devices and giving Tom Cruise something to do besides save himself . Steven Spielberg directs this film with a grim relentlessness ; there are scenes to frighten and disturb , but there is absolutely no sense of fun . It's as if he brought the same sensibility he did to " Saving Private Ryan " to this film , but here the approach and the material don't match . " Private Ryan " was about an actual event , and there was some value in depicting it as realistically and disturbingly as possible so that those of us who've never lived through something similar might be less inclined to treat the subject casually . But come on - - this is an alien-invasion flick , the stuff of pure fantasy . Spielberg's obvious efforts to take advantage of the movie-going public's post - jumpiness seems calculated and rather tasteless . There's no point to talk about the acting , since there isn't any . But I do have to mention Tim Robbins , who gives a ghastly performance in a pointless role . His minimal storyline should have been left on the cutting room floor , with much of the rest of this film . This is one of those movies that doesn't even follow its own logic ; the kind where all electronic devices stop working , until someone needs to be able to use a cell phone for the convenience of the plot , and then miraculously their phone works . I was actually quite surprised at how bad this movie was . It's shoddy storytelling , which is not what I've come to expect from Spielberg . He's never been one of my favorite directors , but I've always given him credit for being far more capable than he is here . Maybe he was just directing this film to pass the time before " Munich " ( his Oscar-bait movie of the year ) was ready to start filming . Whatever the reason , his heart was obviously not in this one . ( some splashy visual effects prevent it from receiving an F rating ) |
574,460 | 4,532,636 | 61,439 | 3 | This Round Table Is as Square as They Come | A lumbering screen version of the hit Broadway musical . " Camelot " came out at a time when Hollywood was losing its ability to make good screen musicals . Partly , audience taste was changing , and quaint stuff like " Camelot " just looked dated and irrelevant next to films like " The Graduate " or " Bonnie and Clyde . " But much of the blame falls to the filmmakers themselves , who tried to impose a trendy 1960s visual style on material rooted to the stage , and the results were gangly and ugly . " Camelot " is one of the worst examples of this - - it's a terrible looking film . However , the reason for its complete failure lies in its casting , which gets just about everything wrong . Vanessa Redgrave is certainly beautiful enough for the part of Guinevere , but she looks bored by her part and gives a vapid , listless performance . She also looks incredibly uncomfortable with the fake singing duties she's asked to perform . All of the same things are wrong with Richard Harris , who on paper would seem to make a perfect King Arthur . The Lerner and Loewe musical score , never one of my favorites anyway , sounds bad as it's presented here . And Joshua Logan , true to form , wields his camera like a bowling ball . Everything feels heavy , sluggish and ponderous . The 1960s had its musical hits ( " West Side Story , " " The Sound of Music " ) and its misses . Guess which category " Camelot " falls into . |
573,380 | 4,532,636 | 105,378 | 3 | One of Allen's Worst | Shadows and Fog is surely one of Woody Allen's weakest films , right up there with " September " and " Hollywood Ending " ( though nothing Allen has done equals the awfulness of " Anything Else " ) . " Shadows and Fog " is Allen's homage to the German Expressionist style of film-making , all stark and stylized light and shadow and . . . you guessed it . . . . . lots of fog . But you can tell Allen got caught up in the technique and the parody and forgot to make a movie that anyone would care about . Luckily , he made " Husbands and Wives " the same year , so things weren't a total wash for him . |
574,094 | 4,532,636 | 1,046,997 | 3 | After This Disaster , Spike Lee Needs to Keep His Mouth Shut | This God-awful mess of a movie is the last piece of proof I need to convince me that Spike Lee is pretty much worthless as a filmmaker . I have to believe that critics who gave this film even the faintest praise were merely being respectful to its subject matter and the intentions behind it . Because everything else about it is quite horrible . It's one of those movies that gets worse the more you think about it . Lee jumbles together a mish-mosh of stories into a WWII epic about the experiences of black soldiers on the front lines . The trouble is , the film isn't really about the black experience , or anything else for that matter . Oh there are some scenes of blacks being treated poorly by their white commanders , and one lengthy scene shoe-horned into the film that shows them being mistreated in an ice cream parlor back in the states , but these scenes feel as if they were inserted arbitrarily . It's as if Lee felt the need to meet a quota of obligatory racial diatribe , not like he included these scenes because they sprang organically from the story . In fact , the racial overtones become almost an afterthought under the weight of countless tangential plot lines involving Italian freedom fighters , a little boy " adopted " by one of the Americans , a traitor , a love triangle , and a valuable historical artifact . The last plot line in particular sets the stage for a clunky framing narrative set in 1983 that gives John Leguizamo , John Turturro and Joseph Gordon-Levitt pointless cameos and ends the film with one of the most embarrassingly clumsy scenes I've ever seen . What makes me most angry about Lee is his public arrogance and pomposity . He seeks to deflate the myth of the American war hero and call to task all of those famous WWII films ( " The Longest Day " specifically makes an appearance in the film ) for ignoring the black soldiers who served their country as ably as the whites . Fair enough . But then he makes a terrible movie that can't even get the war part right . Every battle scene in this feels like rejected footage from " Saving Private Ryan . " If you're going to shoot off your mouth and claim that you can do it better , you better damn well be sure you can . It's that quality about Spike Lee that makes me actually enjoy seeing a movie like this fail when I otherwise might meet it with a shrug of indifference . I've given Lee lots of chances to impress me with his film-making abilities , and this movie was beyond strike three . He's out . |
573,670 | 4,532,636 | 26,421 | 3 | A Formula Worn Thin | A tedious yawn of a film that retains nothing of the zing and raciness of its predecessor , " Gold Diggers of 1933 . " The Production Code was firmly in place by the time of this film's release , so the humour is all of the hokey , wocka-wocka variety and gone are the dry one-liners that sounded so cosmopolitan dripping off the lips of the gorgeous dames from the first film . A cast of second-tier stars and character actors go through the motions here , and the " puttin ' on a show " motif seems awfully forced ; instead of the make or break world of Broadway , the show here is a charity event hosted by a swanky hotel . Who really cares whether or not the show goes on ? The score here is bland too . Of course the movie's big number is " Lullaby of Broadway , " which accompanies a long fantasy dance number about a New York socialite's eventual demise from too much partying - - doesn't exactly have the same effect as the searing " Forgotten Man " number used as the finale in ' 33 . Busby Berkeley directs as well as choreographs this film , and whatever promise is built up in the film's fluid opening scenes quickly deteriorates . Unfortunately , no one learned any lessons from this , and there was yet another Gold Diggers movie two years later . |
573,446 | 4,532,636 | 83,833 | 3 | If I Ever Eat at This Diner , Please Seat Me Far Away from These Yahoos | Ugh , I hated " Diner . " A group of college twerps who don't want to grow up sit around and blather on incessantly . I believe we're supposed to think they're cute and lovable , shaking our heads in mock disapproval of their pesky antics . Give me a break . Nothing's more boring than watching a movie about people who want to avoid all of the responsibilities you accepted a long time ago . Maybe when I'm years older and further away from my own passage into adulthood , I will find this movie nostalgic and charming . As it is , I find it unbearable . |
574,178 | 4,532,636 | 23,730 | 3 | No Cheers for This Warners Short | This Warners short , which I presume ran on the same bill as Mervyn LeRoy's " I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang , " is a mostly tired and unfunny film . It reminded me of just about every " Saturday Night Live " skit ever made , in which all of the actors think the material is funnier than the people watching it , and push a one-note joke to the brink of exhaustion . It is sort of fun to watch this after LeRoy's movie , because it spoofs specific details from the movie rather than its premise in general . Replacing the jailers ' pack of bloodhounds with a bunch of fluffy white poodles was sort of funny , and I also liked the bellboy whose uniform was made of prison stripes . There are a lot of musical numbers incorporated into the action , performed by people I'd never heard of . The whole thing feels very patchwork and grade Z , with terrible sound and only the most cursory attention given to the actual film-making . |
574,072 | 4,532,636 | 45,963 | 3 | An Ugly Stage-to-Screen Adaptation | The Broadway musical on which this film is based may display oodles of charm , but if so , the film adaptation captures none of it . Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel prove once again that they were singers first and actors second , and exhibit less than compelling screen presence . It wouldn't matter if they created fireworks together , because they would be overwhelmed anyway by the film's ghastly , unwieldy production design , whose sole purpose is to showcase the film's fancy 3-D technology , which of course means absolutely nothing now watching it on DVD . |
574,472 | 4,532,636 | 37,536 | 3 | A Boring Do-Over | Ugh , this film is dull and tedious . It followed the huge box office success and heap of Oscars bestowed upon " Going My Way , " and virtually sets out to recreate that film with some minor changes . One of those changes is the addition of Ingrid Bergman , and thank God for her . I've never been much of a Bergman fan , but I'm so glad she was in this , or I would have slipped into a coma . The best scene in the film is when she teaches a young boy how to fight . I've never seen Bergman so breezy and happy-go-lucky on screen , and the sight of her in her nun's costume bouncing around her office in imitation of a boxer is the only moment of life and energy in this desultory film . Bing Crosby plays the same role for which he won an Oscar the year before ; that is , he plays himself . As in the previous film , he croons a sappy song ( in this case " Aren't You Glad You're You " ) . As in the previous film , there's some attempt at dramatic tension built around a curmudgeonly old man who wants to tear down the church or something . Frankly , I wasn't paying that much attention . As in the previous film . . . . . but you get the picture . When I had my wisdom teeth removed , my oral surgeon prescribed a hefty dose of Xanax an hour before the surgery to send me into a loopy stupor . This film might have had the same effect on me , and would have saved me a pharmacy co-pay . |
574,352 | 4,532,636 | 93,940 | 3 | A Deadening Woody Allen Film in the Style of Ingmar Bergman | Woody Allen's cringe-inducing " September " comes across as something a film student would make if he were given the assignment of making a movie in the style of Ingmar Bergman . It's oppressive , claustrophobic and intolerably whiny , filled with unpleasant people complaining about their boring problems . Though the film is filled with good actors , like Mia Farrow , Elaine Stritch , Dianne Wiest and Denholm Elliott , none of them gel as a cast , and the pacing is repetitive . The film is a huge misfire from Allen , and thankfully it's one of the last times he dabbled in this kind of hackneyed experiment . |
573,625 | 4,532,636 | 60,438 | 3 | Horribly Dated | With apparently no faith in the pretty strong material , the filmmakers decided to do away with most of the aspects that made the musical charming in the first place ( like , oh , most of the music ! ) and replace it with groovy 60's trickery that looks like something right out of Benny Hill ( look , the action is sped up to make everyone look like they're running really , really fast . . . isn't that funny ? ) Zero Mostel does what he can , but he can't salvage this . No one else even registers . I saw this on stage , and that version blows the film version out of the water . |
573,825 | 4,532,636 | 452,623 | 3 | A Pointless Exercise in Human Nastiness | This crabby pill of a movie takes place in the dreg districts of Boston and stars Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as a boyfriend / girlfriend detective team who are hired to search for a missing child . What follows is a twisty plot with a stupid and implausible finale . The movie is surly , everyone involved is in a bad mood , and the whole thing left me gloomy and angry . What am I supposed to take away from a movie like this ? The film thinks it's asking weighty moral questions , like what does it mean to do the right thing , what's the difference between what is right and what is legal , etc . ? But any point gets lost in the ugly , horrid world the movie lives in . Director Ben Affleck has been getting loads of praise for painting such an accurate portrait of working-class Boston , and maybe he did , but then why in God's name does anyone want to live there ? The film makes Boston look like the worst place on Earth , filled with degenerates and thugs . One scene set in a drug house - - by far the most demoralizing scene in the film - - is straight out of " The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , " inbred hillbillies and all . After a while , your only defense in this film is to laugh at the preposterous human ugliness Affleck unrelentingly heaps on you . Maybe good performances could have saved the movie - - or more accurately , good characters , because the performances are decent . But I don't know what any actors could have done with this material . I'm sick and tired of Hollywood churning out movie after movie that has no reason for existing other than to make people feel bad . What happened to movies that communicate ideas and engage in dialogue ? Now film makers seem to think that what moviegoers want more than anything is to simply wallow in human baseness and meanness . It's movies like " Gone Baby Gone " that are responsible for the insidious belief that the world is a much more nasty and violent place to live in than it really is . I'm glad this one bombed . |
573,534 | 4,532,636 | 95,765 | 3 | Are You Kidding Me ? | I should have known to stay away from this movie when it was recommended to me by someone who wouldn't normally be caught dead watching a foreign language film . The best way to describe the kind of movie we're dealing with here is to say that if you liked " Life Is Beautiful " you will like " Cinema Paradiso . " People who don't like foreign movies like this one because , if you take away the Italian subtitles , this film is as fake and schlocky as the worst piece of sentimental clap-trap churned out by the Hollywood myth-making machine . Not one single moment of this movie rang true for me . Subtlety was passed over on every occasion for the the most manipulative of cinematic tricks , and the love story that anchors the film is boring and completely missing any sort of sexual spark . I have a feeling that this movie is so beloved because people who in reality have pretty low-brow movie tastes can watch it and feel like they're cinematically smarter . A double feature of this and " Life Is Beautiful " might just be enough to make me lose hope in serious film forever . |
574,319 | 4,532,636 | 383,574 | 3 | YO , HO , HO and a Mixed Bag of Fun | Midway through the third installment of Walt Disney's deliriously popular pirate franchise , a character says of Capt . Jack Sparrow ( played by Johnnny Depp in what now has to qualify as one of the weirdest characterizations in screen history ) , " Is he making this up as he goes along ? " Shiver me timbers , mateys , but one has to ask director Gore Verbinski and his team of wranglers , er , writers , the same question of the entire series . I did not fall in love like so many others with the first film in the trilogy , " The Curse of the Black Pearl , " but I saw its appeal . It was far too long and sloppy , criticisms that have been leveled at parts two and three but which apply to the first movie as well . I can't even really remember the plot . It has something to do with Sparrow's beloved ship , the Black Pearl , being stolen from him by the rival pirate captain Barbossa ( the marvelous Geoffrey Rush , bringing some obligatory British class to the proceedings ) and his army of undead , and Sparrow's efforts , along with that most boring pair of screen lovers , Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom , to get it back . Depending on your perspective , that plot summary either wraps it up or barely scratches the surface , because " Pirates " is stuffed with more subplots than it can handle . Never has so much plot been shoe-horned into a movie ( or trilogy of movies ) and so much of it not mattered a bit . It turns out that Sparrow is actually undead himself , and some sort of curse need be broken if he is to regain his mortality . Well , it's not ruining anything to tell you that the curse is indeed broken , and loose ends are wrapped up while everything's left conveniently open for a sequel . That sequel , " Dead Man's Chest , " takes everything that is charming about the first episode and pushes it past the limits of the audience's endurance . What a gormless mess the second part is , all furious action and racing around with absolutely no attempt made at coherence . A tremendous amount of plot exposition occurs in this installment . Indeed , the whole film is really set up for part three , yet at the same time is paced as if the entire movie is one long climax . Our consolation is that Bill Nighy makes his first appearance as Davy Jones ( no , not the Monkey ) , looking like a serving of very angry calamari , and taking up the classy British slack that Rush left behind at the end of Part I . " Dead Man's Chest " makes no sense whatsoever , and it's not really even very fun . Even in a mindless action movie , one likes to have a vague idea of what all the fuss is about . So it pleases me to report that the third and ( maybe ? ) final entry , " At World's End , " gets more right than not , and provides a tremendous amount of fun . It doesn't even feel overly long , despite its run time of nearly three hours . The " Pirates " movies ' saving grace is the cast the filmmakers have assembled , and there are moments in this film , when the cast is all together at the same time , that rival " Star Wars " for sheer screen chemistry . Rush returns , so we get to enjoy both him and Nighy , and of course Johnny Depp is back , and returns to the inspired performance ( and surpasses the downright nuttiness ) that made the first installment so memorable . Chow-Yun Fat is this episode's most significant addition , but let's not dwell on him or the embarrassing Asian stereotype he hauls along behind him . There's a huge amount of jokey humour in this segment , perhaps the most in the series , which helps it succeed in becoming what one sensed it wanted to become all along - - a sort of Indiana Jones set on water . My prayers that the pre-pubescent Orlando Bloom would be killed off looked as if they might have a chance of being answered for a brief moment , until the writers cruelly resurrected him as a swarthy pirate captain and give him a dramatic entrance that gave me the biggest ( if most unintentional ) belly laugh of them all . Why is it that despite his swishing and mincing , Depp still gives the impression that he could kick Bloom's ass ? The " Pirates " trilogy will not go down as classics of the genre , but they'll be remembered for wedging themselves firmly in the consciousness of movie-going America . Grade : " Curse of the Black Pearl " : B " Dead Man's Chest " : " At World's End " : |
574,008 | 4,532,636 | 368,222 | 3 | Great Cast Stranded in a Lame Movie | John Turturro's terribly uneven film ranges from the fairly imaginative to the downright horrible . Much of the film reminded me way too much of the worst traits of certain Coen brothers movies : too grotesque , too jokey , too enamored of its own charm . There are moments that come close to saving it , but overall this film is a big disappointment . Set in no particular time period ( present-day cars mingle with 1960s pompadours ) , this quasi-musical tells the completely dispensable story of a big oafish lout ( James Gandolfini , so physically disgusting for so much of the movie that I actually got tired of simply looking at him ) who cheats on his wife ( Susan Sarandon ) with a crass harlot ( Kate Winslet , bringing the movie a burst of energy ) and then feels bad for it . Big deal . This exact same story could be told by anyone about anyone in any number of ways , so why should we care about this particular man and his particular story ? Well , Turturro doesn't answer that question , which is the movie's biggest flaw . The film veers all over the place in tone . For its first two-thirds , it doesn't take itself seriously at all - - every musical number is a pastiche . Then it lurches into tragedy for its final half hour and ends on a downer note completely at odds with anything else that preceded it . Turturro gathers a large and talented cast , and then wastes most of it . The film sticks too closely with Gandolfini , who isn't interesting enough to hold our interest , and completely ignores all of the marginal characters that bring pizazz to the story . Actors like Bobby Cannavale , Christopher Walken and Mary-Louise Parker simply drop out of the movie without making the slightest impression , while we're stuck following around boring schmuck Gandolfini while he mopes and moans . I guess Turturro deserves some kudos at least for creativity , but little else about this movie deserves your time or energy . |
573,847 | 4,532,636 | 356,680 | 3 | A Big Fat Holiday Turkey | If you've got a hankering for a good old fashioned feel-bad holiday movie , " The Family Stone " will be right up your alley . Then you may be able to enjoy this grueling story about an uptight and mostly unlikable yuppie , Meredith ( Sarah Jessica Parker ) , being introduced to her fiancé's mostly obnoxious and unfriendly family , led by dragon-lady mom ( Diane Keaton ) and wet noodle dad ( Craig T . Nelson , playing a complete lump of a character ) . I guess we're supposed to find the Stones charming , because they're liberal and are nice to their saintly gay ( and deaf ! ) son ( who's adopting a child with his black boyfriend , no less ) , but I just found them intolerable . Things get oh so wacky when Meredith's sister , Claire Danes , shows up to lend support and falls for Meredith's fiancé , while Meredith herself falls for the stoned slacker son ( Luke Wilson ) who we're supposed to believe , in a stretch of imagination that no amount of yoga will make possible , is a documentary film maker . Oh , and did I mention the cranky youngest daughter , played by Rachel McAdams , who you just might want to see stuffed and roasted along with the turkey ? This is perhaps one of the worst scripts ever put to the screen . Not one moment in this film feels genuine or even logically sound . The screenwriters drag Claire Danes into the film and then have absolutely nothing for her character to do ; her " love story " with Dermot Mulroney ( he of the perpetual snarl ) is not the least bit developed or believable . The middle of the film nearly grinds to a halt , then lurches queasily into a mad-cap screwball comedy mode that finds the women dropping food all over themselves in the kitchen while the brothers chase each other around the house with the intention of beating each other up . And to top everything off , there's a tacky and maudlin ending that's as cheap as it is cliché . Bah humbug to this poisonous dose of holiday cheer . |
574,323 | 4,532,636 | 69,404 | 3 | An Unforgivably Bad Adaptation of a Great Book | I'm fine with filmmakers adapting books to the screen and doing what they need to do to make the source material cinematic . But I'm always mystified by filmmakers who adapt a book to the screen and change so much that it's nearly a completely different story . I wonder why they wanted to adapt the book in the first place if they felt that so much of it was inadequate . This is a terrible adaptation of the wonderful Graham Greene novel , that even a dynamic performance from Maggie Smith in the title role cannot save . George Cukor directs this film like it's a relic from a different decade . Yes , the main character is stodgy and stuffy but that doesn't mean the movie has to be . And by the time the ending has rolled around , all vestiges of the source material have vanished completely , an unforgivable crime in my opinion when working with an author as great as Greene . |
574,120 | 4,532,636 | 35,899 | 3 | A Sorry Attempt to Capitalize on an Established Hit - - Sound Familiar ? | This woeful follow up to the accomplished 1941 original " Wolf Man " provides proof that the Hollywood of today has not cornered the market on stupid , unoriginal and unnecessary sequels . The dynamite premise behind this film - - putting Lon Chaney's wolf man and Dr . Frankenstein's monster ( here played unmenacingly by Bela Lugosi ) in the same movie and watching them duke it out - - is no more than a gimmick to get you to watch , and very little duking goes on between the two . In fact , they're not really even together for more than 5-10 minutes of screen time . The rest of the film is a talky bore driven by a plot more full of holes than a piece of Swiss cheese . The movie goes on for about 70 minutes and then just ends , like someone pulled the switch on the camera and shut things down whether or not the film had come to any kind of conclusion . |
573,669 | 4,532,636 | 68,833 | 3 | Uneven and Unscary | Notable primarily as Wes Craven's first feature film , " The Last House on the Left " does not deserve the reputation it has garnered as one of the scariest films ever made . There's really nothing scary about this movie , except for the admittedly frightening idea of being murdered in your own back yard ( figuratively speaking ) . Craven would have done better to really focus his film on either the murderers or on Mari . Instead , the focus is all over the place : first on Mari , then on the killers , then the cops , back to Mari , back to the killers , to Mari's parents . It all seems patched together and messy . And the uneasy juxtaposition of documentary-like rapings and killings ( which are indeed disturbing ) and slapstick comedy seems more like the product of a sloppy director than a tool used for its effect . No , " The Last House on the Left " is really only worthwhile viewing for horror buffs who want to have an opinion on it . Otherwise , you could produce something just as good using your home video camera . |
574,234 | 4,532,636 | 79,770 | 3 | Did Altman Even WANT Anyone to Actually Watch This ? | The best thing I can say about " Quintet " is that it's not quite as bad as I remembered it being on my first viewing . But that doesn't mean it's good . This weird , sci-fi thriller is not quite like any other movie I've ever seen , which I guess at least gives it the stamp of novelty . But it's a borderline disaster of a movie , and one of the worst Robert Altman ever made . On the DVD special feature about the making of " Quintet , " it's clear that even Altman didn't know what the hell the movie was supposed to be . It's set in some distant future when the world is in the grip of another ice age . The film was shot at the abandoned site of the Montreal Expo ' 67 , and I do have to admit that this gives the movie some interesting production design elements , even if much of it looks like it's being filmed in an iced-over shopping mall . Paul Newman , looking zonked out and absolutely disinterested in anything going on around him , and Brigitte Fossey , play drifters who wander into this futuristic city looking for Newman's brother . Soon Newman is caught up in a deadly game of " Quintet , " which all of the bored inhabitants play for lack of anything better to do , and the rules of which are never made clear to the audience . All we know is that the object of the game it to kill everyone else you're playing with and remain the only person alive . This gives these nihilistic inhabitants their only thrill , because as one of them says at one point in a psychobabblish soliloquy , only by being near to death can one appreciate being alive . The movie is slow , ugly and actually uncomfortable to watch due to its unrelenting gloominess . It's almost as if Altman was purposely setting out to make a movie no one would want to sit through . There aren't characters - - oh sure , actors walk around speaking lines , but none of the lines really means much and the impressive list of international actors Altman assembled for this register not a whit . Only Bibi Andersson gives the closest thing to a memorable performance as could possibly be found in a movie like this . But nevertheless , it does succeed in establishing an atmosphere , even if that atmosphere is one of pure awfulness , and it is oddly fascinating in the way that watching a man slowly starve himself to death would be fascinating . Altman really hit a dry spell after nearly a decade of superb films . " Quintet " followed close on the heels of the atrocious " A Wedding " and was followed in short order by the not bad but mostly forgettable " A Perfect Couple , " the by-all-accounts terrible " Health " ( which I've never seen because it's not available anywhere TO see ) and the disastrous " Popeye . " Thank God he rebounded . |
574,084 | 4,532,636 | 112,379 | 3 | Exasperating | Antonia's Line is one of those movies that's in love with its own quirkiness . This isn't always necessarily bad . Quirky films can be quite delightful when done well . However , in this case , the quirkiness comes at the expense of plot and logic . My sense is that this film's director intended Antonia and her line of female descendants to represent strong , fearless heroines imbued with the fighting feminist spirit . I get this sense because most of the men in this film are brutes , buffoons or a combination of the two , and the women kick butt , make love to each other and tell all of the men off at regular intervals . This film is insulting to anyone who truly values feminist sensibilities in our movie culture . As so often happens , the makers of this movie equate " strong " with callous and emotionally distant . It's hard to care about Antonia and her relations because they all come across as either vacuous or heinous . Antonia's daughter casually chooses a complete stranger to impregnate her because she wants a child but doesn't want to have to deal with the father . Did she ever think that maybe the child would want a father . Is selfishness like this supposed to impress me with its strength of character ? The script meanders from one incident to the next , characters you barely learn anything about appear and drop out of the movie listlessly , and the pacing of the whole thing is limpid . The film is only about 110 minutes long but feels much longer . I'm tired of the trend of thinking that propagates the belief that in order to be considered strong , women must prove that they can live entirely without men . That's such a juvenile attitude and serves no purpose . Callousness is callousness whether displayed by a man or a woman , and there's nothing weak about leaving yourself vulnerable to the complex relationships that spring between men and women . Of all the life lessons Antonia supposedly passes down to her ancestors , this is the one she forgot to include . |
574,182 | 4,532,636 | 44,030 | 4 | Impressively Large , But Unimpressive | Show Boat is one of those garish musicals from the 1950s where scope and spectacle dwarfed content and story . It's directed lethargically by George Sidney , as if he thought audiences would be so tickled by the elaborate Technicolor sets and costumes that he could just set up his camera and let it run . Said costumes , though this is supposed to be a period piece , have a distinctly late-40s / early-50s flavor . And Ava Gardner is miscast in her role ; she sort of vapidly walks through it with little conviction . It doesn't even do the sterling musical score justice , which is its greatest crime . |
574,391 | 4,532,636 | 36,872 | 4 | For Those Who Cry at Hallmark Commercials | Slow , ponderous , almost completely lacking in dramatic significance and cavity-inducing in its sweetness . If it's not as intensely boring as its sequel , " The Bells of St . Mary's , " released a year later , that's only because this one came first and so at least has the advantage of being new . The acting is fine , such as it is . Bing Crosby was born to play roles like this one , so needless to say he does it well . Barry Fitzgerald is also effective as a curmudgeonly priest past his prime , and he and Crosby have some good scenes together . But they can't overcome the pure desultoriness of the whole affair . No doubt this film was just what a war-weary country needed , which is clear from its box office success in 1944 and the heap of Academy Awards bestowed upon it . But in 2005 it seems hopelessly dated and just plain uninteresting . |
573,941 | 4,532,636 | 35,238 | 4 | A Romantic Slog with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson | Plausibility was never a strong suit of 1940s romantic melodramas , but even at that " Random Harvest " is just too much to bear . This ridiculous twaddle finds Ronald Colman as a WWI veteran who has lost his memory and wanders out of the mental institution in which he has been living , only to be adopted by Greer Garson , an actress / singer who performs atrocious musical numbers in terrible stage revues , and who falls in love with him instantly and marries him . Years pass and they have a baby . Then one day , when Colman goes into the city on some business , he's hit by a car and regains the memories he previously lost , but loses all of the memories he's gathered since the last time he lost his memory ( following me ? ) . He then returns to his hoity-toity family , is set upon by a young step-niece who wants to marry him , becomes a big shot , and completely forgets about wife and child . Meanwhile , Garson , suffering nobly , becomes his secretary ( ! ) so that she can be close to him and help him possibly regain his memory of her . If all of this sounds like it would make for a juicy soap opera , it maybe would , if someone other than Mervyn LeRoy had directed it . Instead , this film drags pointlessly on and has no life to it . Characters come to dramatic conclusions and life changes in the blink of an eye , with no set up from the screenplay , so that plot twists seem to happen completely at random . Garson's early obsession with Colman comes across as a bit too intense and unstable ; likewise , Colman's step-niece ( Susan Peters ) attaches herself to him with a creepy obstinacy . I half wondered if she was only marrying him for the money he stood to inherit from the family fortune , and was disappointed when I found out that wasn't the case - - at least that would have explained her behavior . As it is , that whole story line could have been left out of the movie altogether without sacrificing much of anything , and it would have had the added advantage of making it about half an hour shorter . Greer Garson brings some glamorous beauty to her role , but little else . Colman sleep walks through the movie . Everything is languorous and dull , perhaps welcome attributes to a battle-weary WWII audience , but we ain't in WWII any more . The only thing I liked about the movie was its visual style , which borrows the chilly , shadowy look that was emerging as the predominant style of film noir . The early scenes even display hints of German Expressionism , I'm sure meant to be a visual representation of Colman's fragile mental state . Everything else about the movie is a slog . |
574,054 | 4,532,636 | 26,328 | 4 | An Unintentionally Creepy Short | This short film , featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his famous character creation Charlie McCarthy , appears on the DVD release of " The Public Enemy . " This was my first exposure to this popular comedy " team , " and there's just no getting around how incredibly creepy Charlie McCarthy is . Ever since I saw " Magic , " ventriloquist dummies have been ruined for me , and scenes of Charlie making suggestive and lewd comments to an optometrist's nurse don't help to sweeten the deal any . Ahhhh . . . . to think that there was a more innocent time when ventriloquist dummies and clowns did anything more than give people the willies . . . . . |
573,787 | 4,532,636 | 106,918 | 4 | At Least It's Got Holly Hunter | The Firm is the only John Grisham book I've ever read , and while I remember barely anything about it , I remember that the movie version veered far away from the plot of the book as it reached its climax . I also remember that the film is flabby , far too long and has one of the most annoying piano scores I've ever heard in a film . This belongs to Tom Cruise's cocky wonder-boy period ( or wait , maybe he's still in that period ) . What I remember most about this movie is the performance of Holly Hunter in a tiny role as a secretary . She acts like she's in a totally different movie , and that's a good thing . She brings some pizazz to all of the cloak and dagger hoo-ha . |
573,778 | 4,532,636 | 352,248 | 4 | Haven't Rocky and De Niro Pretty Much Said All There Is to Say About Boxing ? | Ron Howard has carved a niche for himself as creator of treacly populist hokum , and it seems pointless to criticize his movies again and again for being maudlin , manipulative and pandering . To his credit , he knows how to put a movie together , and by now everyone should know what to expect from a Howard film and not complain when that's exactly what they get . For the first two-thirds of " Cinderella Man , " Howard appears to be bucking his own trend . It's quite respectable , fairly reserved and well acted . O . k . , so Howard's version of Depression-era America still looks as glossy as a home decorating magazine , but I'll let that go . Russell Crowe is an actor who can make any movie better than it has any right to be , and Renee Zellweger is nowhere nearly as squinty and mealy as I thought she would be playing this character . And then we entered the final third of the film , and . . . . Oh my . Watch out " Seabiscuit , " there's another huge piece of corn coming up fast on your tail . In case you're not sure which boxer you should be rooting for in this movie , we get lots of closeup shots of big-eyed kids looking pleadingly at Russell Crowe like a bunch of little Oliver Twists . We get a scene in a church on the night of the big obligatory show-down match that all boxing movies must have , in which every pew is filled with people praying for Jim Braddock to win his fight , and we get a priest delivering the following subtle line to wife Renee Zellweger : " In a way , he's ( Braddock ) fighting for them ( the lowly downtrodden ) . " If you're still not sure who to root for , Braddock's arch nemesis , Max Baer ( played campily by Craig Bierko ) , makes lewd comments about Braddock's wife in a nightclub a few weeks before the match . And in the ring , he continues to make nasty comments in between slow-mo shots of him leering like a sadistic psycho . And if you're STILL not sure who to root for , Baer punches Braddock in the balls a couple of times during their match for good measure . Not since Rocky Balboa faced off against Drago ( or whatever that big heap of Russian was called in " Rocky IV " - - or was it " V ? " ) has a more cartoonish boxing villain stepped foot in a make-believe ring . There's some scary talk here and there about Braddock possibly dying during the big fight , because he's old and past his prime . But since his kids are listening to the fight at home , and since this is a Ron Howard movie , we're pretty sure that he's not going to die . In fact , we're pretty sure he's probably going to win , or there would be no purpose for the film's existence . Howard dutifully connects all the dots , stealing from every other boxing movie ever made , throwing in lots of rapid-fire editing and thundering sound effects to make the fight scenes exciting . It's sad and yet typical that Paul Giamatti , who gave two of the greatest film performances in the last few years ( " American Splendor " and " Sideways " ) would only be recognized by the mainstream Hollywood constituency for the hammy , dreadful role he's saddled with here . I only hope he was given a hefty paycheck to offset all the scenery he was forced to chew as Joe Gould , Braddock's wise-cracking manager . It figures that in a year that gave us hard-hitting film after hard-hitting film that took critical and thought-provoking looks at current trends in American culture , Ron Howard would deliver a product as sanitized , safe and bland as this piece of instantly forgettable " entertainment . " It looks good and has a solid performance from Crowe - - I can't recommend it for any other reasons . |
573,390 | 4,532,636 | 308,055 | 4 | A Bunch of Nothing | From its opening moments , " Bobby " announces itself as an IMPORTANT movie , and it never recovers from that most deadly of deadly movie intentions . One wishes he could get inside of writer / director Emilio Estevez's head , because I have a strong suspicion that all of the parts that were supposed to make " Bobby " interesting are still sitting inside there . Estevez clearly has a lot of passion for this story , and for Robert Kennedy the man , but very little of that passion appears on screen . What we get instead is one of those ensemble films , in which several plot strands are spliced together and converge at some momentous event , here the assassination of Senator Kennedy on the night of the Democratic primary . Is it a leap to suppose that Estevez was influenced by Altman's " Nashville , " another great American film that brings its characters together at the finale for an assassination ? The problem here is that none of the plot strands are very interesting , and the actors , though many of them are fine , aren't given much to work with or much time with which to work with the little they are given . Most of the plot lines go absolutely nowhere , like the ones featuring Harry Belafonte and Anthony Hopkins as two retired Ambassador Hotel workers reminiscing about the good ' ol days ; Helen Hunt and Martin Sheen as a couple of well-to-dos ; Heather Graham as a switchboard operator ; Demi Moore and Estevez himself as a boozy singer and her put-upon husband , respectively . I could go on . The whole movie is preachy and vaguely liberal , but its commentary never sharpens into anything concrete . Estevez obviously sees parallels between the state of the country now and the state of the country as it existed in 1968 , but he's not successful in bringing any of those parallels into focus . Instead , he tries to cover just about every hot-button issue , from racism to anti-war sentiments to body image obsessions , with the film finally ending on a diatribe against violence . The ending is the film's best asset . The assassination itself is well filmed by Estevez , and it's a real shock to find that several of the characters whose stories we've been following are also victims of the shooter ( I didn't even know there were other victims ) . But then the movie just ends , and we're left with a bunch of random pieces of film that feel like they should have come together in the editing room and didn't . And one of the film's most glaring faults is the embarrassing hero worship of Kennedy himself . If Estevez is to be believed , had Kennedy actually become president , we'd all be living in a rainbow utopia , frolicking with unicorns . Sorry , but no one politician , no matter how idealistic , can alter the world THAT much . |
574,244 | 4,532,636 | 52,225 | 4 | Dull Screen Adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Classic | Joshua Logan turns the Pulitzer-Prize-winning stage musical into a lumbering , charmless film . You can tell he doesn't know what to do with stage material , because his instincts to open the film up and take advantage of stunning South Pacific locations ( though who knows where it was actually filmed ) fight constantly with his tendency to bathe every musical number in highly stylized and saturated color . Everything feels inert , nothing about the film moves , and nobody seems to be having a good time . However , we do get Mitzi Gaynor as a consolation prize , who fights all the odds to deliver as perky a performance as Logan will allow . This is one of those movies you could watch and come away from having no idea what made the source material so beloved . |
574,186 | 4,532,636 | 388,125 | 4 | A Mawkish Bit of Utter Cheese | Poor Shirley MacLaine tries hard to lend some gravitas to this mawkish , gag-inducing " feel-good " movie , but she's trampled by the run-away sentimentality of a film that's not the least bit grounded in reality . This was directed by Curtis Hanson ? Did he have a lobotomy since we last heard from him ? Hanson can do effective drama sprinkled with comedy , as evidenced by " Wonder Boys . " So I don't know what happened to him here . This is the kind of movie that doesn't want to accept that life is messy and fussy , and that neat , tidy endings ( however implausible they might be ) might make for a nice closing shot , but come across as utterly phony if the people watching the film have been through anything remotely like what the characters in the film go through . My wife and I made a game of calling out the plot points before they occurred - - e . g . " the old man's going to teach her to read and then drop dead . " Bingo ! This is one of those movies where the characters give little speeches summarizing their emotional problems , making you wonder why they still have emotional problems if they're that aware of what's causing them . Toni Collette ( a fine actress , by the way , and one of my favorites if not given a lot to work with here ) , gives a speech early on about why she buys so many shoes and never wears them , spelling out in flashing neon the film's awkward connecting motif . At that moment , I knew what I was in for , and the film was a downward spiral from there . |
573,923 | 4,532,636 | 39,169 | 4 | Amiable But Very Slight | A rather uninspired but harmless enough movie that goes around the world and back again to establish its goofy premise . Even for movies from this time period this one stretches the boundaries of credibility . Cary Grant gets many chances to show off his flair for physical comedy , Shirley Temple is no less grating as a young adult than she was as a child , and Myrna Loy ( who I watched this for ) is in the movie a lot , but never given very much to do . I've long since decided that Myrna Loy was one of the most underused actresses of her time . I'm still looking for a film that really allows her to strut her stuff ( " The Thin Man " is the closest I've come to finding one ) . Grant fans will probably enjoy this one because there's really nothing to dislike exactly , but fans of Loy may be disappointed . |
573,632 | 4,532,636 | 91,778 | 4 | Dud Sequel to Tobe Hooper's Memorable Ghost Story | A lame follow up to the phenomenally successful and tremendously entertaining 1982 spook fest about a normal suburban family terrorized by ghouls . The same strong leads ( JoBeth Williams and Craig T . Nelson ) return , and I give this movie credit for not simply making a carbon copy of the first film the way so many sequels do , but this film is DOA . The screenplay is too obtuse and ambitious , working in a bunch of mystical hoo-hah involving Native Americans and a creepy demon who goes door to door like a traveling salesman . Not one moment in the film comes close to rivaling any number of thrilling moments in the first one . |
574,171 | 4,532,636 | 76,448 | 4 | A Grueling , Miserable Story for Kids | Does anyone still submit his children to this ? I spent 22 of the most agonizing minutes of my life watching this feel-bad puppetoon made for T . V . movie . In this charmer , Nestor is mercilessly ridiculed by everyone because of his long ears , is nearly kidnapped by Roman soldiers who are stealing donkeys for use by the Empire and runs away with the help of his mom , only to watch her freeze to death during a snowstorm . Merry freakin ' Christmas . Only watch this if you think that giving the Virgin Mary a ride into Bethlehem is gift enough to make up for a miserable , wretched existence . Cynic that I am , I didn't buy it . |
573,452 | 4,532,636 | 39,631 | 4 | Chaplin Made This ? | I find it interesting that Chaplin himself considered this to be his most clever and witty film , because I thought it was desultory and downright boring . It's supposed to be a black comedy about a cad ( Chaplin ) who plays women like violins and then murders them , but there's little to no humour to be found here . I suppose it could be one of those films you have to see more than once to appreciate - - that's happened to me before and could happen to me again ; and since I like Chaplin usually , I would be more than willing to give this another shot . But until I do , my negative review stands . |
573,319 | 4,532,636 | 74,254 | 4 | Altman's Take on the Wild West | A very weak Altman film , all the weaker because it came out the year after one of Altman's best works : " Nashville . " " Buffalo Bill . . . " is one of the most savagely satiric films from a director known for savage satire . Unfortunately , it's also a one-joke film , whose joke is given away in the first five minutes , leaving the film nowhere to go . Paul Newman plays Buffalo Bill as a complete buffoon , surrounded by yes-men and lackeys . He practically buys ex-Indian chief Sitting Bull for his Wild West show , and what we suffer through is scene after scene of white men making asses of themselves while native American Indians nobly and quietly observe and judge them . It's two hours of smug finger pointing at oblivious Caucasians for raping and pillaging the American frontier . All of Altman's films have the feel of coming together in the editing room , and many times this approach to structure results in inspired moments , but " Buffalo Bill " feels even more than usual like a film without a center . There's no narrative thread to hold it together , so it has a wandering and monotonous quality . Also , it doesn't help that Altman's shooting style is uncharacteristically distant . There are virtually no close-ups in the entire picture , so scene after scene is photographed in medium and long shots . Both the screenplay and the camera keep us at a distance ; as a result , we never become engaged in the action . A definitive misfire . |
573,309 | 4,532,636 | 78,721 | 4 | A Far from Perfect 10 | Any movie featuring Dudley Moore as an object of sexual attraction is doomed from the start , since I can't imagine anyone wanting to have sex with him . I CAN , however , imagine a lot of people wanting to have sex with Bo Derek , that is until they see her act . This Blake Edwards film is not good - - people think they remember it as being good , but what they're really remembering is a three-second slo-mo shot of Derek running through the surf . Like most of Blake Edwards ' movies , it's limp and blah . |
574,100 | 4,532,636 | 91,738 | 4 | Kathleen Turner Got Stuck in a Bad Movie | Did Francis Ford Coppola have a brain aneurysm some time after directing " Apocalypse Now " that made him absolutely incapable of making a good movie ? You have to wonder what the director of " The Godfather " and " The Conversation " was thinking when he made this flabby film . It gives Kathleen Turner a starring vehicle , playing a woman who travels back in time and gets to redo her adolescence knowing all of the things that life as an adult has taught her , and Turner , the trooper that she is , does what she can with it , but this movie couldn't be saved by anyone . It doesn't even have any style to it , and , given its director , one would expect that even if it had nothing else , it would have that . |
573,567 | 4,532,636 | 47,123 | 4 | Holliday Leftovers | Judy Holliday struck gold in 1950 withe George Cukor's film version of " Born Yesterday , " and from that point forward , her career consisted of trying to find material good enough to allow her to strike gold again . It never happened . In " It Should Happen to You " ( I can't think of a blander title , by the way ) , Holliday does yet one more variation on the dumb blonde who's maybe not so dumb after all , but everything about this movie feels warmed over and half hearted . Even Jack Lemmon , in what I believe was his first film role , can't muster up enough energy to enliven this recycled comedy . The audience knows how the movie will end virtually from the beginning , so mostly it just sits around waiting for the film to catch up . Maybe if you're enamored of Holliday you'll enjoy this ; otherwise I wouldn't bother . |
573,784 | 4,532,636 | 87,298 | 4 | If Only the Title Were True | Maybe to save themselves the embarrassment of admitting just how many of these stinkers they sunk money into , the studio dropped the " 4 " from this sequel and gave it the cryptic subtitle " The Final Chapter . " Yeah , right . Like anybody believed that , even at the time . Someone once told me that all of the even " Star Trek " movies were good and all of the odd ones were sucky . Since I've only seen two of them ( both even by the way ) , I can't comment . But that rule seems to apply to this series . Parts 1 and 3 were beyond atrocious ; parts 2 and 4 aren't that bad , as these kinds of movies go . This movie freshens up the tired formula somewhat by adding a plot strand that features Corey Feldman and continues through the next couple of films in the series . And this one has a more unique style to it . I liked the murder that took place in silhouette , a shadow thrown on to a wall during a flash of lightning . The makeup effects were also much more accomplished , and there was some catharsis in seeing Jason get his head split open with a machete ( though why does he look like a product of radioactive fallout ? Didn't he drown originally ? ) This movie will still lower your I . Q . by a few points , but you'll be able to respect yourself in the morning . ( compared to parts 1 and 3 . It's still an F compared to virtually any other movie available to you ) |
574,011 | 4,532,636 | 89,160 | 4 | A Somnolent Experiment from Robert Altman | Fool for Love is one of the several now forgotten films Robert Altman directed throughout the 1980s . This one , a screen adaptation of a Sam Shepard play that features Shepard in the lead role , just simply isn't very good . Altman made many not-very-good films over the course of his fascinating career , and many times the fault was his . But here I think the fault lies with Shepard for writing such a flimsy play . Altman's direction is assured , the performances are o . k . given what the actors have to work with , but this inconsequential screenplay goes nowhere , and takes its time getting there . Shepard is Eddie , a stuntman who has a love / hate relationship with May ( Kim Basinger ) . The two fight endlessly over the course of an evening spent in some dusty motel in the middle of nowhere , while a mysterious man ( Harry Dean Stanton ) who may be either a figurative or literal father to both Eddie and May quietly observes . Randy Quaid rounds out the four-person cast as a gentleman caller . The only dramatic hook in the entire plot is the suggestion that Eddie's and May's relationship is incestuous . However , this hook feels more like a gimmick than anything . The screenplay doesn't explore their relationship in any detail , and it doesn't use their relationship to explore any more universal themes . Shepard and Basigner create eccentric , mannered characters who grow irritating within the first five minutes ; Stanton and Quaid have little to do but provide reaction shots . The last half hour or so of the film is especially bad , when Eddie's and May's back stories begin to play out in flashback over monotone , somnolent voice over . Chalk this up to another of Altman's experiments gone awry . |
574,067 | 4,532,636 | 47,522 | 4 | A Coma Is Induced | Oh Lord , what a long , long , long movie . Rarely will you find yourself investing so much time for so little payoff . Alcoholic husband makes wife a star . Husband dies . Wife feels sad . The end . Director George Cukor thinks he's making a Biblical epic , because he uses an enormous aspect ratio and fills it to the brim with tacky Technicolor sets and costumes . Sure , Judy Garland gives a fine performance , as does James Mason , but both were better in other things and both are dwarfed by the sheer size of the production and the wispiness of the plot . And this is one musical in which I could have done with less music . A word of warning : the restored version may sound like a good idea , because it's the most complete version of the movie to be released . But " restored " means that still photographs have been inserted into the film in a simulated reproduction of certain scenes , while a soundtrack accompanies them . This wouldn't have been so bad if there hadn't been so many scenes needing restoration , and if they hadn't been quite so long , and if they had contributed anything of value to the final product . I want these three hours of my life back . |
574,188 | 4,532,636 | 64,840 | 4 | Tell Me Why I Should Care , Miss Brodie | I felt much the same way about " The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie " the movie as I did about " The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie " the book - - so what ? Miss Brodie is an unlikable character ; she's pompous , arrogant , sometimes delusional . So when she goes too far and is brought down by one of her less impressionable female students ( who is also unlikable ) , I didn't really care at all . Nothing of grand consequence seems to hinge on the outcome of this battle of wills , one way or another . I've never understood the allure of this book . It's supposed to be a great piece of literature , but it strikes me as immensely inconsequential , and the movie didn't illuminate anything for me . Yeah , Maggie Smith's pretty good . I also enjoyed seeing Celia Johnson , as she's responsible for one of my favorite female performances of all time , in " Brief Encounter . " But the rest ? Meh . . . And by the way , the sound on this film is horrible , muddled and indistinct , not that I cared much about what anyone had to say . |
573,896 | 4,532,636 | 45,564 | 4 | Who Knew Fritz Lang Could Make a Boring Movie ? | A mediocre pseudo-noir thriller from Fritz Lang . I watched this only a few days after seeing the 1947 film " High Wall , " and was struck by how the two films tell much the same story with genders reversed . In this one , Anne Baxter plays a phone operator who goes out with a lecherous artist ( Raymond Burr ) on an impulsive whim after being jilted by her boyfriend , a soldier stationed in Korea . On their date , Burr tries to rape her , and Baxter blacks out in the ensuing struggle , only to find out the next day that Burr was found dead in his apartment . The search is on for the " Blue Gardenia , " as the unknown murderess is dubbed , and Baxter begins to unravel under the guilt of her secret . Richard Conte plays a reporter who is desperate to crack the case , and who makes an outreach to the murderess , promising to help her if she'll only come forward . Of course Baxter does , and of course it turns out that she wasn't the murderess after all , but there's absolutely no mystery surrounding who actually did it , because the real murderer isn't a character we've already met , but rather is introduced at the very last moment simply to give the film some resolution . Lang could usually be relied upon to give us stylish , memorable movies , but this film isn't particularly stylish or memorable , and feels like it could have been directed by anybody . The romance between Conte and Baxter feels perfunctory , and it doesn't go anywhere . Ann Sothern plays Baxter's roommate , and I was at first intrigued by the fact that she and Baxter look almost exactly alike - - I thought maybe the film was going to make some comment on the interchangeability of women in the eyes of male predators , or something like that , but it doesn't . It's all very straightforward , with none of the psycho-sexual subtext that makes so many other noirs so juicy , and it's all very dull . |
573,689 | 4,532,636 | 78,481 | 4 | Messy Ensemble Movie Sinks Faster Than the Time It Takes to Watch It | It never gives me pleasure to report that any Robert Altman film is a dog , but there's just no denying that " A Wedding " rolls over and dies about mid-way through . Altman tries to instill the same sort of divine chaos on his massive ensemble that he did in " Nashville " to such tremendous effect , but without the strong narrative threads that anchored the earlier movie , this one flounders around without going anywhere . Mostly to blame is the absolutely terrible script , that no fewer than four people worked on . In an interview on the DVD , Altman reveals that the script was virtually made up as it went along , with scenes planned for filming late in the day being written that morning ! Well , the improvisation shows , but in this case not in a good way . Altman has always been famous for giving his actors the freedom to experiment and build their characters in any way they'd like , but in " A Wedding " too much freedom is a bad thing . The characters in this film seem to each live and move in a universe separate from all the others ; none of them is consistent , and nearly all simply act arbitrarily in what I suppose is meant to be a zany , farcical way , but instead comes off as incoherent . Altman's project was actually probably doomed from the start , because the subject of weddings just isn't important enough for the brand of scathing satire that Altman brings to his movies . Somewhere in the unfocused mess of Altman's film is a very funny , light-hearted farce that pokes fun at an institution that Americans take very seriously , and there are some parts that work very well . But there are simply too many characters , too many plot lines , too much STUFF going on in general for the movie ever to come to any sort of conclusion . Altman's point seems to be that weddings are silly , but that's not the hook on which to hang a two + hour film . And by the end , hot-button topics like abortion , homosexuality , class differences , etc . are being introduced at whim without the slightest effort at fleshing them out or tying them into one another or the plot ( such as it is ) at large . The greatest tragedy in " A Wedding " is that a cast of marvelous actors is wasted . Carol Burnett is perhaps the biggest , most recognizable star , but unfortunately she's saddled with a terrible role that she can't do a thing with . Vittorio Gassman and Nina van Pallandt , as the parents of the groom , have a lovely moment together during which they reminisce about how they met and which is one of the film's sole attempts to build sympathetic characters with a history . John Considine has some funny moments as chief of security , one of which involves him escorting the doddery and cranky bishop to the bathroom . Pam Dawber , of all people , breezes into the film at mid-point and does some nice work as the groom's ex-girlfriend . And Lillian Gish is her usual cute self in a couple of early scenes as the family matriarch . She's lucky that her character gets to die before the movie's barely gotten started , so she can avoid the whole debacle . As for everyone else , they do the best they can , and there are throw-away moments here and there that are amusing , but they mostly get lost in the shuffle , and there are some characters whose names , let alone their relationship to anyone else , we never even learn . To his credit , Altman had been making on average a movie a year for about ten years by the time " A Wedding " was released , and it was the first out-right bad movie he directed . That's a pretty good record . However , he would make up quickly for lost time by releasing in quick succession " Quintet " and " Popeye . " I guess no one can have a winning streak forever . |
573,768 | 4,532,636 | 66,011 | 4 | Romeo and Juliet for Dummies | Start with " Romeo and Juliet , " remove the soaring Shakespearean language , the interesting characterizations and plot intricacies , and keep Romeo alive at the end , and you might get something approximating this gloopy 1970 blockbuster . " Love Story " made temporary box-office stars out of Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal , who both fooled American movie audiences into thinking they could actually act based on their performances as star-crossed lovers whose socioeconomic status threatens to keep them apart . Never fear though - - love always triumphs in the end , unless of course leukemia triumphs first . O'Neal's star would last a little longer , and at least he would choose a couple of very memorable films throughout the next few years ( " Paper Moon , " " Barry Lyndon " ) even if his performances would be instantly forgettable . To be honest , I can't come up with one other film starring Ali MacGraw . I know she recently appeared in the play " Festen , " based on the Danish film " The Celebration , " which opened on Broadway and quickly tanked . Some 37 years later , the only truly memorable thing about " Love Story " is its musical theme . |
574,454 | 4,532,636 | 41,113 | 4 | A Waste of Good Source Material | This Oscar-winning screen adaptation of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Robert Penn Warren novel feels oddly truncated , like director Robert Rossen filmed a much longer movie , and then an unqualified editor hacked it down to the movie we see . The pacing is off , scenes feel cut short and much of it is confusing , as if there are elements missing . It doesn't come close to capturing the greatness of the novel , and it's one of the weakest films to win the Best Picture Academy Award from that time period . Broderick Crawford makes a fine Willie Stark , though , I'll give the film that . He's all bluster and hot-headed arrogance , just what the character calls for . John Ireland does fine with the role of Jack Burden , but the character itself is minimized . The book is really more about Jack than Willie , but the film doesn't give Jack much of a character arc , and he feels decidedly supporting . Mercedes McCambridge nabs the role of a lifetime playing Sadie Burke , perhaps one of the most colorful female characters ever put to paper . Here again , the movie doesn't begin to make use of her character like the book does . It uses the elements of her character that are necessary for the plot , but leaves behind everything else - - - the more human dimensions of Sadie , and her own moral crises , are lost . Overall I thought this was a tepid and forgettable movie based on a landmark and compulsively readable book . If you avoid this one entirely , you won't be missing anything . |
574,137 | 4,532,636 | 37,884 | 4 | Well Below Wilder's Usual Standard | Perhaps it's inevitable that a film that appeared so shocking and candid 60 years ago would seem so hopelessly out of touch with reality today , but I don't think the ultimate failure of this film can be blamed on the passing of time alone . Billy Wilder was a fantastic director , making movies that at the time were so much more intelligent and sophisticated than their peers , so I think he simply stumbled when making this overly-simplified message movie . To be sure , Wilder does bring some creative vision to this story of a raging alcoholic struggling through his addictive demons for one long weekend . He uses the cinematic equivalent of first-person narrative to get you into Ray Milland's mind , and tries to make the audience feel what it's like when alcohol is the focus of your world . Thus , at a performance of " La Traviata , " instead of filming the stage as it might appear to the audience watching the opera , Wilder cuts from shots of Milland's face to close-ups of the fake drinks the actors are holding as they perform . At other times , he even shoots scenes from the perspective of the alcohol , so when Milland tries to hide his booze from himself , we'll get shots of him storming around the room from the vantage point of the hidden bottles . But Milland gives a histrionic performance in the lead role , as cartoonish in its own way as Nicolas Cage's was in " Leaving Las Vegas , " playing another hopeless alcoholic , and he undermines any effort at seriousness on Wilder's part . The alcohol itself is nearly personified to the point of caricature ; I half expected to see a bottle of gin stand up and twirl its silent-film villain mustache while giving a dastardly laugh . And to top everything off , Milland delivers a ridiculous inspirational speech at the film's end , a call-to-arms for other silent alcoholics to emerge and begin overcoming their disease . After a whole movie in which alcoholism is depicted as a form of demonic possession , the ending makes it seem that the decision to quit drinking is as easy as changing from 2 % milk to skim . Still , this film should be commended for admitting that alcoholism IS a disease , and that it's not simply a lack of will power or self control that causes people to abuse . I can't think of a film before this one that really treated alcoholism seriously , or even addressed it at all . Think of all those 30s comedies ( " The Thin Man " comes to mind ) where hardly a scene goes by without the leading man holding a martini , or where the stumbling drunk is a stock character included for his comic potential . So " The Lost Weekend " is a film that I can't whole-heartedly pan , because I do feel that points should be rewarded for trying to use cinema as a communication device for addressing social concerns , but if you know an alcoholic , I doubt you'll be able to do anything but laugh at the silly version of alcoholism you'll see here . Compared to other Billy Wilder films , this one seems almost bad . |
573,461 | 4,532,636 | 34,167 | 4 | Might Possibly Make You Vomit | Audiences loved this biopic about good ' ol boy Alvin York , fresh from the hills of Tennessee , who entered World War I despite his pacifist beliefs and then carried out an almost unbelievable act of bravery . It probably helped that the film came out just as America was entering WWII , and a message about someone devoting himself to God and country was just the rallying cry needed . Seen all these years later , the film is virtually intolerable . It's got the " Forrest Gump " factor . Gary Cooper plays York as such a simpleton that his bravery seems to come more from a general state of oblivion rather than courage . York and the movie spend most of their time reconciling a belief in the Bible and its pacifist teachings with the necessity of killing during wartime , and the countless sanctimonious speeches and aw-shucks American downhome-ness made me want to gag after a while . Cooper won one of his two Oscars for this , and Walter Brennan and Margaret Wycherly were nominated for playing the town preacher and York's salt-of-the-earth mom , respectively . |
574,194 | 4,532,636 | 64,030 | 4 | A Limp Costume Drama to End the Decade | This drippy costume drama is the worst of the flurry of similarly-themed films that came out in the 1960s and include movies like " Becket , " " A Man for All Seasons , " and " The Lion in Winter . " When you compare " Anne of the Thousand Days " to all of the other terrific and exciting movies coming out in 1969 - - " Easy Rider , " " The Wild Bunch , " " Midnight Cowboy , " " Z " - - it's simply impossible to care a whit for something so stodgy , plodding and uninspired . Richard Burton is at his hammiest worst as Henry VIII - - he mistakes shouting for good acting , and every line is pitched to the second balcony . Genevieve Bujold , as Anne Boleyn , fares better , but really , the screen is supposed to crackle whenever she and Burton are on it together , but instead it just sort of gives an indifferent shrug , as did I when this movie was over . This is one of those movies that's so intent on being classy that it forgets to be remotely engaging . |
573,740 | 4,532,636 | 88,933 | 4 | When the Walker Is a Rockin ' . . . . . | A gooey Ron Howard film about a bunch of old people who go swimming with alien pods and begin to regain their youth and vigor . The film is a who's who of famous veteran actors like Don Ameche , Wilford Brimley , Maureen Stapleton , Hume Cronyn , Jessica Tandy and Gwen Verdon , but it's all rather embarrassing and condescending - - awww , see , little old people still like to have sex too , isn't that cute ? ! ! A no-hands sex scene between Steve Guttenberg and one of the female aliens in a swimming pool freaked me out when I saw this as a kid . One of the numerous films in Ron Howard's canon that prove what a completely untalented director he is . |
574,092 | 4,532,636 | 109,830 | 4 | The Ultimate Fad Movie | Forrest Gump is the ultimate fad movie . It came out big in 1994 and created a cultural sensation . It was easy to get swept up in its panorama of American cultural history , and all of the iconic imagery in the film made it seem like it was saying something important . But all these years later , this treacly piece of rubbish is nearly intolerable . The film is full of easy sentiment and false emotion . It depicts one thing after another ( the Kennedy assassination , Vietnam , Watergate , the AIDS crisis ) that trigger automatic emotional responses in the audience , so that the filmmakers don't have to do any work of their own to make the material effective . But underneath the lesson in American history and the admittedly terrific soundtrack , I can't help but wonder what point the movie tries to make . Are we to applaud Forrest for his pluck and resiliency when the only reason for them is the fact that he's too simple minded to understand the things that happen to him ? Are we supposed to emulate him ? Is the message that we all make life too complicated , and that we all need to buckle down to the only things that really matter , like love of country , God and our dear ol ' mama ? If so , gag . Tom Hanks is a winning presence in the film , and if anyone was going to be able to carry this story along , I imagine he did just as good a job as anyone else would have . But the only character worth watching as far as I'm concerned is poor little Jenny , played valiantly by Robin Wright Penn , who comes closer than anyone to playing an actual human being , despite the film's tendency to chew her character up and spit her out . This movie is like a box of chocolates . . . too much of it and you'll be sick . |
574,382 | 4,532,636 | 76,843 | 4 | Can Someone Justify This Film's Existence ? | Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft play one-time ballerina rivals in this pointless sudser from 1977 . MacLaine has a loving husband and comfy home , but gave up her career ; Bancroft has the career , but no one to share it with . Both re-meet when MacLaine's daughter becomes a ballerina and struggle with feelings of what could have been if each had pursued the life of the other . Congratulations if you can muster up the energy to care about any of this , because I sure as hell couldn't . The film features an Academy Award nominated performance by Mikhail Baryshnikov , whose nomination was for his dancing , not his acting , and another wonderful low-key performance from the shamelessly underrated Tom Skerritt as MacLaine's husband . The high point of the film is when MacLaine and Bancroft let loose on one another in a good old fashioned hair-pulling , face-scratching cat fight . The rest is a dull bore . |
573,863 | 4,532,636 | 49,456 | 4 | This Film Could Have Used a Little More Lust and Life | A plodding biopic about painter Vincent Van Gogh . Vincente Minelli was a terribly uninteresting director , and the day after seeing this film I had forgotten entirely about it . The most interesting thing about the film are the images of Van Gogh's actual paintings that Minelli inserts throughout , and the occasional attempt by the film's art director to recreate some of the famous scenes that Van Gogh used as his subjects . I will give the movie credit too for not shying away from some of the more unsavory characteristics of Van Gogh's story , unlike the dreadful biopic about Toulouse-Latrec that had come out four years earlier , " Moulin Rouge . " Kirk Douglas blares to the second balcony as Van Gogh , playing every moment of the film like he's recreating the transformation scene from a production of " Dr . Jekyll and Mr . Hyde . " Anthony Quinn is no less loud in his small but crucial role as rival painter Paul Gaugin . And whenever the two are on screen at the same time , you might want to have a pair of earplugs handy . |
574,299 | 4,532,636 | 73,582 | 4 | Dull Horror Film Goes Nowhere | Unfortunately , it appears that I saw Dario Argento's best film , " Suspiria , " first , and none of the ones I've seen subsequently measure up to that one . All of the imagination Argento could muster for this serial killer story went in to staging a few elaborate and gruesome murder scenes . Too bad that all of the scenes connecting those moments are a dull bore . And the movie overstays its welcome by at least half an hour . What seemed novel in " Suspiria " begins to seem like limitations when you realize that Argento couldn't do anything else . His attention to style can only go so far in making up for the lack of good plotting , acting , character development and just about everything else that separates good films from bad ones . |
574,044 | 4,532,636 | 787,523 | 4 | Lost in Translation | Towelhead , the story of a 13-year-old Lebanese girl dealing with both cultural and gender identity crises in a Texas suburb , has a distinctly autobiographical feel about it . It's based on a novel by Alicia Erian , one I have not read and so cannot comment on . But either the source material was weak to begin with , or something got lost in the translation to screen by writer Alan Ball , because the story is missing any of the adult perspective that's necessary to make something told from the point of view of a child instructional . The film focuses on Jasira , who lives with her domineering , traditional and hypocritical father , who rants about " typical " Americans and won't let his daughter date a black boy , even while he whines that he's being discriminated against for being Lebanese . Jasira's mother is played by Maria Bello as one of the top ten worst mothers in the the world . Meanwhile , Aaron Eckhart plays a next-door neighbor who takes sexual liberties with Jasira , while Toni Collette plays another neighbor who takes it upon herself to mother Jasira in the absence of anyone else who will . The film is monotonous , heaping one humiliation after another upon Jasira by a parade of awful , hateful people . The characters aren't consistent and don't make any sense , and we don't really care much about Jasira because she's played as such a drip of a character . I'm not sure what we're supposed to learn from a film like " Towelhead , " other than a lot of things we already knew , like stereotyping is bad , and calling people names is not nice . It's one thing to have your main character be a 13 year old child , but if you want the film to be watched and understood by adults , you have to communicate with them at their level . Having a lot of scenes of a teenager being sexually abused by a man probably three times her age is just sensationalistic and rather icky when they're not used to say anything of value . |
573,950 | 4,532,636 | 49,314 | 4 | Just Watch " The Philadelphia Story " Instead | A completely unnecessary remake . The casting's not half bad for what the film makers were trying to accomplish , but every time anyone delivers a line , you'll simply sit there thinking how much better the line would have been had the actor from " The Philadelphia Story " who played that particular character delivered it instead . I'd like to say that adding musical numbers makes the film different enough from its predecessor to justify remaking it , but it doesn't . Known mostly for introducing the Cole Porter tune , " True Love , " which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song . |
574,446 | 4,532,636 | 430,357 | 4 | A Joyless , Arduous Experience | With " Miami Vice , " on-again-off-again director Michael Mann gives us a grim , hateful movie , and large parts of it feel more like an endurance test than a summer entertainment . I don't care whether or not this movie accurately reimagines the original T . V . series for the screen - - I never saw the series and so have nothing to compare this film to except itself . Mann is a good enough director that no movie he directs will ever be bad without at least being interesting , and " Vice " is no exception to that rule . He does deserve credit for bringing a unique vision to a tired formula and for resisting the urge to spoon feed his audience summer blockbuster nonsense . " Miami Vice " may have many problems , but obviousness is not one of them . In fact , the film is frustratingly vague and opaque . We only know who the good guys are in this movie because they're played by actors we recognize . With a blast of techno music and a writhing female body silhouetted against pulsing neon , the movie just starts in the middle of a scene and is off and away before we know who anybody is or why we should care . This would be fine if we ever learned any more than we can glean from the film's opening few moments , but we don't . We root for Crockett and Tubbs , but only because the movie sticks with them and there's no one else to root for . The only attempt at giving them any backstory or character development comes through the women in their lives , but those parts of the movie feel obligatory , and you can feel Mann aching to get back to the good stuff ( meaning the jittery , loud stuff ) whenever the film settles into a quiet moment . The camera never stops moving , so everything rushes by in a blur of murky color and extreme close-ups ( do we need to see every individual blade of stubble on Colin Farrell's face ? ) and Mann gives the audience no anchor around which to orient itself . I only know this movie takes place largely in Miami because otherwise the title would be meaningless . At the risk of sounding like a prude , the violence in this movie really bothered me - - or more accurately , the reaction of the audience to the violence in this movie really bothered me . The movie is so relentless and humorless , no one involved seems to be having a good time , and then - - BAM - - someone gets his insides blown out against a wall , we see blood splatter , and the audience cheers . The violent moments are the only thing Mann allows us to feel anything about . The only scene in the film that remotely approaches humor involves a nasty white supremacist getting shot in the head . Sound like a good time to you ? " Miami Vice " ' s greatest offense is that it's pointless . Do we need another undercover cop story that does nothing new with the genre ? Plots to these films are always formulaic , so if you're not going to distinguish your film through your characters , what's the point of making it ? And , I don't know what critics are talking about when they say how great this film looks . The grainy , pixillated digital film may come out stellar on the DVD release , but it looks terrible on a mile-wide multiplex screen . |
573,336 | 4,532,636 | 109,579 | 4 | To Be Endured , Not Enjoyed | Death and the Maiden tells a harrowing story , one that's not meant to be pleasant . But even so , there is a difference between telling an unpleasant story and creating an unpleasant experience , and unfortunately , director Roman Polanski doesn't maintain that distinction with this film . He's proved that he knows how in other films , like " Rosemary's Baby " and " Repulsion , " neither of which dwell on pleasant themes but both of which are exhilaratingly entertaining . " Death and the Maiden " is an oppressive slog , a film that must be endured rather than enjoyed . Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley give top-notch performances , but the whole thing is too one note and aggressively depressing to be very good . |
574,139 | 4,532,636 | 395,972 | 4 | A Huge Disservice to What Should Have Been a Powerful Story | Niki Caro's follow up to her wonderful " Whale Rider " is full of good intentions , but it's a poundingly monotonous film . Charlize Theron plays Josey Aimes , poor mother of two who goes to work in a northern Minnesota mine where women are decidedly not wanted . She and her female co-workers suffer all manner of mistreatment from the men , before Josey takes a stand and brings a class-action lawsuit against the mine , the first sexual harassment class-action suit in legal history . This film obviously follows in the footsteps of " Norma Rae " and " Erin Brockovich , " though you can tell it makes an effort to stick to the gritty realism of the former rather than the slick phoniness of the latter . It's a gloomy film that makes northern Minnesota look like the last place on Earth I'd ever want to live . The color scheme is all blues and grays , and a crusty layer of snow covers glum-looking houses and trailers . Caro gives us a cartoonish version of events despite the gritty realism of the film's setting , in which nearly every man in Minnesota is presented as a leering animal , and in which every woman is dowdy and downtrodden . Any attempt at realism is thrown out the window , however , in the film's last quarter , in which we're witness to a ridiculous court-room scene that looks like something lifted from an entirely different movie , and ends with a cheesy , " Dead Poets Society " climax . For all of her efforts , Caro has failed to make a film even remotely authentic . Arbitrary plot twists occur out of thin air ( like the sudden redemption of Josey's father or her mother's decision to walk out on him ) . The timeframe isn't clear . The entire movie seems to take place over the span of a week . The acting's o . k . , but really there's only so much the actors can do with such a weak script . And poor Frances McDormand is saddled with a thankless role , that of the token dying character who the script hurries into a wheelchair only so that she can make a maudlin surprise appearance at the end of the film . If you watch the documentary that's included on the DVD of " North Country , " in which the real-life women who lived this story discuss their experiences , you will realize just how inauthentic a film this is . As one of the women says ( the one on whom Theron's character is based , in fact ) , there were only a handful of men who were the aggressors ; there were lots of normal miners who left the women alone . But you don't see that in the film , because Caro is too busy pushing with all her might every emotional button she can find in a shameless effort to win our sympathies . " Norma Rae " was able to get it right , so this film doesn't even earn an " A " for effort . |
574,343 | 4,532,636 | 118,929 | 4 | Wow , I'm Really in the Minority Here | I've read reviews of " Dark City " in many places ( and many of them here ) hailing it as a modern science fiction masterpiece , so boy was I disappointed when I watched it and came to the sober conclusion that it's just not very good . Yeah , yeah , yeah the visuals are stunning , blah , blah , blah , but as is proved time and again , visuals alone can't make a movie . At least this had an interesting story , but as befalls so many films in this mind-bending sci-fi genre ( and " The Matrix " suffers from this as well , though it's a far better movie ) , the writers have set up such a cerebral concept that the movie grinds to a halt when it has to trudge through all the exposition just so that the audience can keep track of what's going on . Though that in itself is never very clear in " Dark City . " This movie just rushes from one scene to the next , in an attempt to create a breathless and exciting tone I guess , but scenes aren't allowed to play themselves out . We're on to the next set piece before we've had time to absorb the one we just saw , and the characters get buried underneath all the furious editing . However , I don't believe there would be much chance for them anyway , since most of the actors aren't very good either . Rufus Sewell and William Hurt do o . k . but Jennifer Connelly phones in a wan performance and Kiefer Sutherland is barely watchable in a lamentable impersonation of the creepy Nazi chasing Indiana Jones in " Raiders of the Lost Ark . " His line delivery is so eccentric and monotonous that I was cringing every time he opened his mouth by the film's end . No , I'm afraid the majority is out to sea with this one . This film and " masterpiece " don't belong in the same sentence . |
574,403 | 4,532,636 | 86,425 | 4 | Pass Me a Barf Bag | Blech ! ! A gloopy soap opera starring Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger as a contentious mother / daughter duo , whose on-again / off-again relationship culminates in the daughter dying of cancer in one of the most emotionally manipulative plot developments in the history of cinema . Both MacLaine and Winger are too good to waste their talents on this , but it's only because of their wisecracking smart-ass personalities that the film is watchable at all . Jack Nicholson , as a retired astronaut who cozies up to MacLaine , gives us all an inkling of the actor he would eventually turn into , all sarcastic smirking and self-conscious mugging . I especially hate the way this movie looks . It's gauzy and padded , all big hair and bigger shoulder pads . Nothing ever looks like it's completely in focus . |
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