reviewId int64 363k 588k | userId int64 33.9k 15.9M | itemId int64 1 1.42M | rating float64 1 10 | title stringlengths 1 10.9k ⌀ | content stringlengths 81 11.6k ⌀ |
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574,130 | 4,532,636 | 43,924 | 6 | Tragedy as Melodrama | It was probably inevitable that " An American Tragedy , " in its evolution to screen , would become more about the doomed love affair of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor than the moral and ethical dilemmas that really form the foundation of Theodore Dreiser's novel . After all , doomed love is a bigger sell , espe... |
573,813 | 4,532,636 | 89,901 | 6 | Fun for a Ten Year Old Boy , at Least | I'm sure if I saw this now I would find it atrocious ( or maybe not - - maybe it holds up , who knows ? ) , but at the time of its release , I was all of ten years old , and I ate this thing up with a spoon . This second-tier action flick stars Fred Ward as the eponymous hero , and Joel Grey in Confucius makeup as some... |
574,300 | 4,532,636 | 38,975 | 6 | Gothic Thriller Is Short on Thrills | This instantly forgettable minor Gothic thriller finds Dorothy McGuire as a young woman who's lost both her parents and her voice , living in a country estate and caring for that estate's invalid dowager ( Ethel Barrymore ) . A killer is loose , one who preys on women with disabilities of one kind or another , and most... |
574,107 | 4,532,636 | 294,870 | 6 | Why Does It Seem So Much Whinier Than It Did on Stage ? | They waited too long to adapt " Rent " to the screen , and as a result Chris Columbus's film seems dated and irrelevant . A bunch of 30 something's ( perhaps it was unwise to use the original , now too old , cast members ) complaining about having to pay their rent , refusing to work for a living and spouting sanctimon... |
574,076 | 4,532,636 | 45,793 | 6 | A Serious Sudser , But a Sudser Nonetheless | No amount of black and white art-house tastefulness can hide the fact that " From Here to Eternity " is one big splashy soap opera of a movie . I've not read the James Jones book on which it is based , but it wouldn't surprise me to find that the romantic subplots that dominate the film are only a part of a much larger... |
573,491 | 4,532,636 | 416,236 | 6 | Nothing New , But Enjoyable Enough | This film's not half bad , even if it does have a " been there , done that " quality to it in the wake of the recent glut of fantasy films based on children's books . Freddie Highmore is a good little actor , and he carries this movie about three children who unwittingly become involved in a battle to keep a book of ma... |
573,460 | 4,532,636 | 24,008 | 6 | Is That a Gearshift in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me ? | In " Female , " Michael Curtiz's schizophrenic 1933 nothing , the lovely Ruth Chatterton plays the president of an auto manufacturing company who has put business and power above womanly advantages ( which in this film means she'd rather be independent than be barefoot and pregnant ) . She has her way with just about e... |
573,661 | 4,532,636 | 37,059 | 6 | Don't Watch if You Gag Easily | There are a couple of touching moments in " Meet Me in St . Louis , " most notably the scene where Judy Garland sings a little Margaret O'Brien " Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas " to soothe the girl who's upset about having to leave the only home she's known to that point . To a war-weary audience , I'm sure thi... |
574,437 | 4,532,636 | 23,948 | 6 | This Dinner Is Served Lukewarm | MGM , inventor of the all-star big-budget soap opera extravaganza , sought to follow up their smashing success , " Grand Hotel " ( 1932 ) , with another high-power ensemble film , and turned to this popular stage play for the material . If " Dinner at Eight " is ultimately not as satisfying as " Grand Hotel , " it's be... |
573,671 | 4,532,636 | 167,190 | 6 | Great Acting , Lousy Story | How many times do you come away from an action movie ( and one based on a comic book series no less ) remembering the characterizations more than anything else ? This was the case for me in watching " Hellboy . " I was totally impressed with Ron Perlman's dry as vermouth performance , and that alone elevates this film ... |
574,445 | 4,532,636 | 457,513 | 6 | Woody Allen Back to His Old Habits | Woody Allen returns as an actor to his latest frothy comedy , but this time he appears to have figured out that making himself the love interest of the hot Hollywood starlet is too creepy to bear , so he instead settles into a new role , that of the paternal , dithering mentor , and he fits it well . Said Hollywood sta... |
574,317 | 4,532,636 | 420,609 | 6 | Yet Another Version of the Capote Story Fails to Set Itself Apart | Bennett Miller's " Capote " ( 2005 ) gave us what I thought was a fascinating look into the artistic process , and asked tough questions about the relationship between and the responsibility toward an artist and his subject . The film was neither a recreation of the tragic events that served as the subject of " In Cold... |
574,199 | 4,532,636 | 60,955 | 6 | John Frankenheimer Doesn't Score with This Creepy Thriller | Rock Hudson deserves credit for stretching himself and taking on this unflattering role , far from the matinée-idol roles movie audiences were used to seeing him in , but the movie itself is a mixed bag . I've always been a champion of John Frankenheimer , and I think just about every movie he's made is underrated ( ev... |
573,637 | 4,532,636 | 54,743 | 6 | One Big Hissy Fit of a Movie | Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine star as fellow teachers in a girls ' school , and the targets of malicious gossip by one of the students , in this William Wyler remake of his own 1936 film , " These Three , " both based on the Lillian Hellman play . This updated version is more faithful to Hellman's play and is mea... |
573,509 | 4,532,636 | 1,010,048 | 6 | The Final Answer Is : Fake | Slumdog Millionaire is the kind of film that many people will probably rabidly adore , because it's energetic , invigorating and , at first glance at least , feels like something we haven't seen before . But a whole other group of movie goers may find themselves resistant to its questionable charms , as I did . " Slu... |
573,885 | 4,532,636 | 50,419 | 6 | Astaire Minus Rogers Plus Hepburn | This lighthearted musical soufflé doesn't make a bit of sense , but that's part of its charm . Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn didn't at first strike me as a likely pair before I saw this film , but Astaire had so much charisma and charm that he could make the oddest pairing seem perfectly natural , and as he's dancing... |
573,411 | 4,532,636 | 367,594 | 6 | Depp Nearly Ruins It | I usually like Johnny Depp's quirky approach to characters and credit him for making many films much better than they had any right being , but for once his instincts are off . In Tim Burton's new take on the classic children's story , he nearly derails the film with his weird , creepy interpretation of candy empresari... |
573,592 | 4,532,636 | 110,907 | 6 | Versace , Dior , Armani , Altman ( ? ) | A winning streak can't last forever . After making a critical comeback with " Vincent & Theo " and " The Player , " and then making one of his best films in " Short Cuts , " Robert Altman gave us this rather limp lampoon of the fashion industry . " Pret a Porter " is not one of my favorite Altman films , but it's not a... |
573,770 | 4,532,636 | 65,377 | 6 | A Big Heaping Cornball with an Extra Slice of Cheese | It's easy to sneer at " Airport " for its old-fashioned quaintness , its clunky direction and its laughably melodramatic plot . But all of the same attributes describe any number of films from , say , the 1930s that we now hail as classics ( like " Grand Hotel , " for example , except that I wouldn't call the direction... |
573,855 | 4,532,636 | 56,801 | 6 | Another Indulgent Fellini Offering | I feel much the same about Fellini's " 8 " as I do about his " La Dolce Vita . " It's a film that people tell you you should like , and it seems impressive and profound when you're a young lad studying film and don't yet have the courage to go against critical and popular opinion . But once you've gained some cinematic... |
573,633 | 4,532,636 | 91,419 | 6 | A Mean Green Mother | A watchable film version of the off-Broadway musical hit about a nerdy flower store owner who finds himself cultivating a giant venus flytrap that needs to eat people to survive . The nerd finds this to be a nifty way to get rid of those who bully him , which is just about everybody . The film has an intentionally stag... |
573,651 | 4,532,636 | 832,266 | 6 | Saved By Isla Fisher | What " Definitely , Maybe " confirms more than anything is how utterly adorable and winning Isla Fisher is . She so utterly outshines everyone else in this movie that I grew impatient whenever the film veered away from her to focus on someone else . That Ryan Reynolds ' character ultimately and predictably ends up with... |
574,285 | 4,532,636 | 100,873 | 6 | Mad Men | I found myself admiring Robert Altman's film about Vincent Van Gogh much less on my recent viewing than I had on previous ones . I will admit that there's something fascinating about it , as there almost always is with any Altman film , even his really bad ones ( and this is certainly not one of his really bad ones ) ,... |
573,427 | 4,532,636 | 382,765 | 6 | A Marvelous Short Story Becomes a Mediocre Movie | I was a big fan of Ray Lawrence's 2001 film " Lantana , " and was eager to see how he would handle a screen adaptation of a short story from one of my favorite writers , Raymond Carver . I'm not sure I like what he's done with the source material . In the story , " So Much Water So Close to Home , " four men on a fishi... |
574,018 | 4,532,636 | 120,694 | 6 | Surprisingly Good | Halloween : H20 makes an obvious effort to return to the franchise's roots and recapture the qualities that made the first one so good . It doesn't come close to succeeding , but it does manage to become , in my opinion , the second best of the series , though that's pretty faint praise . There are some creepy scenes... |
573,654 | 4,532,636 | 19,959 | 6 | Interesting Historical Document , But Not Very Entertaining | Hallelujah ! is fascinating from a film history perspective . King Vidor created the first Hollywood film with an all-black cast , and depicted in almost documentary fashion what life was like for poor blacks living in America's deep South . Alas , any interest the film held for me was purely academic - - as a film ,... |
573,745 | 4,532,636 | 89,841 | 6 | One of Huston's Last Is Sadly Not One of His Best | A dynamite conceit - - a hit-man and hit-woman fall in love and then find out that they've been hired to kill each other - - falls flat because of director John Huston's inability to settle on a consistent tone . It's not a satiric comedy , though it has satiric elements , but it's never compelling as drama either . Ja... |
573,737 | 4,532,636 | 89,853 | 6 | I Always Miss Woody Allen When He's Not in His Own Movies | One of Woody Allen's trifles that entirely hinges on a gimmick - - in this one , a dowdy starstruck woman in Depression-era New York ( Mia Farrow ) finds herself flustered when her favorite matinée idol movie star ( Jeff Daniels ) jumps off the screen and joins her in the real world . The film obviously sets out to cap... |
573,803 | 4,532,636 | 47,880 | 6 | Not Enough of That Aldrich Style | This rather over-heated Clifford Odets play gets the screen treatment by pulp specialist director Robert Aldrich . Jack Palance plays Charles Castle , a sex symbol movie star who's blackmailed into re-signing a seven-year contract with his sleazy producer / director , Stanley Hoff ( Rod Steiger ) . Charlie's wife , Mar... |
573,334 | 4,532,636 | 43,560 | 6 | Don't Jump | First things first : " Fourteen Hours " is NOT a film noir . I don't know why numerous resources about film noir ( including IMDb ) include it . It does have many of the characteristics of those police procedural docu-dramas from the late 40s and early 50s that so many noirs also shared , so maybe that accounts for it ... |
573,996 | 4,532,636 | 34,922 | 6 | Mercury Production Is No " Citizen Kane " | A rather innocuous collaboration between Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles , the final and weakest of the trio of films released by Welles ' Mercury studio ( the other two being " Citizen Kane " and " The Magnificent Ambersons " ) . " Journey Into Fear " plays like second-rate Graham Greene , with Cotten playing an Americ... |
574,058 | 4,532,636 | 99,012 | 6 | A Toss Off Comedy from Woody Allen | This is one of those lightweight Woody Allen comedies with magical realist overtones that he makes while treading water in between his more serious and better films . Mia Farrow plays a housewife who's reevaluating her life , and the movie is stuffed with a bunch of famous faces in small roles , playing the various peo... |
574,339 | 4,532,636 | 385,004 | 6 | A Less Satisfying " Hero " | Zhang Yimou's follow up to his 2002 " Hero " is a lesser film in just about every way . It forsakes the grander themes of the earlier movie for a more personal , character-driven story about love and passion that at its best is just silly and at its worst a bit of a snoozer . Yimou's skill does not lie in creating real... |
574,467 | 4,532,636 | 37,382 | 6 | I Guess You Either Like Bogie / Bacall Movies or You Don't | Another in the series of Bogie and Bacall films that others rave about , but which left me cold . I don't even remember the plot of this film , but you're not supposed to watch these films for the plots anyway . Like " The Big Sleep " two years later , the point of Bogie and Bacall films are Bogie and Bacall . If their... |
573,891 | 4,532,636 | 87,538 | 6 | A Movie That Appeals to the Dork in Us All | Holds up surprisingly well . Ralph Macchio is the little weeny who gets beaten up by the blonde school jock ( played by the actor who made a cottage industry of playing blonde school jocks in 1980s teeny-bopper movies ) and so takes karate lessons from Mr . Miyagi , the wise sage who can catch flies with chopsticks . P... |
573,970 | 4,532,636 | 116,191 | 6 | An Unexciting Emma | A fairly bland adaptation of the Jane Austen classic - - especially considering the fact that the best film adaptation of the story yet had been brought to the screen the year before as " Clueless " - - and not likely to win over any converts , but it does boast a wonderful performance by Gwyneth Paltrow in the title r... |
573,966 | 4,532,636 | 33,563 | 6 | Watch Out for White Elephants | About mid-way through this movie , the animators dropped acid and kept on working , and what resulted is a bizarre and truly frightening hallucination scene involving creepy white elephants and all other sorts of surrealist imagery . Thank God I didn't see this film when I was a kid or I would have been petrified of el... |
573,368 | 4,532,636 | 470,765 | 6 | Sensational O'Hara Performance in a Mostly Forgettable Guest Comedy | Somewhere at the center of Christopher Guest's new film , " For Your Consideration , " is a serious and even scathing indictment of awards-season vulgarity , but it's mostly lost underneath the movie's glib exterior . Which is a shame . Guest proved with " A Mighty Wind " and at moments in " Consideration " that he has... |
574,181 | 4,532,636 | 757,061 | 6 | A Fixation on Human Suffering Hurts This Stylish Episode | Imprint is far more disturbing and difficult to watch than Takashi Miike's notorious feature film " Audition , " but it's also much more juvenile and gratuitous . Miike needs to learn that making a film repulsive is not the same as making it compelling ; simply getting a reaction out of his audience seems to be enoug... |
573,352 | 4,532,636 | 360,717 | 6 | Lord of the Rings , King of the Jungle | A word of advice before sitting down to watch " King Kong " : make sure you've gone to the bathroom first . You might also want to make sure you have an emergency supply of snacks and some bottled water in case you find yourself weakened from malnourishment about half way through . I issue a challenge to director Peter... |
574,108 | 4,532,636 | 358,273 | 6 | Same Old , Same Old | Walk the Line is a warmed over version of " Ray , " trotted out just in time for Oscar consideration , shrewd timing since the Academy never saw a biopic it didn't like . The problem is that " Walk the Line " is inferior to " Ray " in just about every way , and I wasn't even a huge fan of the latter picture . If you ... |
574,005 | 4,532,636 | 93,818 | 6 | Allen Looks Back on the Golden Years | Not one of Woody Allen's more memorable films ( I can't really remember a single scene from it , except for one in which a crazy neighbor chases people around with a butcher knife ) , " Radio Days " is Allen's paean to a more innocent time when radio , rather than television , brought people together . The film , in bo... |
573,694 | 4,532,636 | 74,285 | 6 | Stephen King's First Novel Makes It to the Big Screen | Brian De Palma's assured adaptation of Stephen King's first novel does the book justice , but it falls short of a horror classic for me . Actually , this is one of those movies that maybe really wouldn't even be remembered today if it had not had the luck of casting an actress as good as Sissy Spacek in the title role ... |
574,477 | 4,532,636 | 4,972 | 6 | Yikes ! | A must see for any student of film studies , but not easy to sit through . It's long , it's antique , and by today's standards it's reprehensible in its portrayal of the KKK and blacks . But it's also the movie that virtually invented the entire vocabulary of film language . Not before Griffith's film were all the sepa... |
573,955 | 4,532,636 | 420,015 | 6 | Dreary Ensemble Film with Some Terrific Performances | In a question and answer session with director Rodrigo Garcia and a handful of the film's cast members ( available as a special feature on the DVD release ) , Garcia says that the motivation behind " Nine Lives " was the idea of looking into people's windows and capturing a moment of their lives in real time , without ... |
574,499 | 4,532,636 | 80,716 | 6 | Silly , Contrived , But Somehow Lovable | Nobody broke out into spontaneous song and dance at my high school . Of course , I also didn't go to Juilliard . " Fame " was a sort of transition film , bridging the gap between the more traditional movie musicals of the 1960s and 70s and the MTV-style musicals of the 1980s . In " Fame , " characters do break into son... |
574,461 | 4,532,636 | 62,467 | 6 | A Thriller That Would Be Nothing Without Hepburn and Arkin | One of those high-concept suspense thrillers that falls apart the second you start analyzing its plot , " Wait Until Dark " goes around the world and back again in order to set up its premise - - blind woman being stalked by criminal thugs - - and then sits back and lets the actors do all of the work . And , luckily fo... |
573,862 | 4,532,636 | 39,464 | 6 | See What Happens When Women Join the Workforce | A mildly engaging if unremarkable psychodrama about a man returning from WWII with a head injury who is accused of killing his wife . He's committed to a mental institution until he's able to regain control of his faculties . Once he does , he begins to suspect that he wasn't responsible for his wife's death after all ... |
573,435 | 4,532,636 | 27,884 | 6 | A Screwball Comedy That Never Quite Delivers | A moderately funny film that tries for a screwball zaniness that it just can't quite deliver . Its biggest selling point is the quartet of stars that headline it , four of the biggest MGM had to offer at the time : William Powell and Myrna Loy ( who had already struck gold as a team in " The Thin Man " ) , Spencer Trac... |
573,844 | 4,532,636 | 829,459 | 6 | A Mighty Heart Is Lacking Just That | Though based on a horrifying and tragic event , " A Mighty Heart " is a strangely unmoving film . Director Michael Winterbottom throws plenty of details at us about the investigation into the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl by radical Muslims in Pakistan , and the film plays almost like a documentary , even coppi... |
574,063 | 4,532,636 | 100,486 | 6 | A Bit Chilly in Here , Don't You Think ? | Part chilly murder mystery , part chilly courtroom drama , the operative word when discussing this film is " chilly . " Jeremy Irons gives a chilly ( I couldn't resist ) performance as Claus van Bulow , suspected of being responsible for sending his wife ( Glenn Close ) into a coma . You can tell that Irons is relishin... |
573,936 | 4,532,636 | 111,454 | 6 | Tom & Viv & Willem & Miranda | The Tom and Viv of the title are T . S . Eliot and his wife , Vivienne Haigh-Wood , played by Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson in an Oscar-nominated performance . I always come away from bio pics about artists thinking that the people around the artist would make a much more interesting subject for a film , because ... |
573,795 | 4,532,636 | 910,936 | 6 | A Minor Classic Is Buried Beneath a Lot of Big Budget Hollywood Garbage | How much you enjoy " Pineapple Express " may depend largely on how funny you think Seth Rogen is and / or how high you happen to be when you watch it . I wasn't high , and I think Seth Rogen has eked about as much mileage as he can out of his doofus schlub routine , so needless to say I didn't find this film to be an i... |
573,765 | 4,532,636 | 78,444 | 6 | Phony Feminism | Jill Clayburgh plays an affluent New Yorker whose life crumbles when her husband reveals that's he's having an affair and wants a divorce . What's a woman to do when everything she's built her life around is suddenly whisked away ? This feminist anthem from Paul Mazursky is well meaning but also condescending . It's a ... |
574,266 | 4,532,636 | 212,712 | 6 | Compelling Visuals ; Wish I Could Say the Same for the Story | A laconic writer recounts the numerous women he's either loved or who have loved him as he drifts around Hong Kong and Singapore in the mid to late 1960s . In the meantime , he's writing a story set in the future , in which people can take a train to a far-off place ( 2046 ) where they can regain lost memories and wher... |
574,525 | 4,532,636 | 434,124 | 6 | As Kinky as Sunday School | This fuzzy , feel-good message movie tells the tale of Charlie Price ( Joel Edgerton ) , a strait-laced , uptight fellow from the English village of Northampton , who inherits his father's shoe factory . He doesn't really want to make shoes , but feels obligated to continue his late and beloved father's legacy . The bu... |
573,465 | 4,532,636 | 31,826 | 6 | Simmers When It Should Sizzle | A talky and rather dramatically inert period drama starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn . The sparks are apparently supposed to fly between these two big-time stars , but they instead only intermittently flicker . Davis gives a one-note performance as the woman who struggles between her duties as a queen and her love f... |
573,546 | 4,532,636 | 245,712 | 6 | Dog Eats Dog , End of Story | Too many filmmakers seem to feel that a movie must be ugly and unpleasant in order to be realistic , and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is one of them . This movie is nearly unrelentingly grim , and left me just feeling bad - - bad about people , bad about the world in which we live , bad about the human race in general .... |
574,336 | 4,532,636 | 12,303 | 6 | Harold Lloyd Meets His Match | In this Harold Lloyd short , Lloyd and Mildred Davis play a newlywed couple who get stuck watching their two nephews . One is a baby , the other a toddler , and they proceed to drive Lloyd crazy as only little children can . Lloyd finds his slippers nailed to the floor , finds that preparing a bottle isn't as easy as i... |
573,836 | 4,532,636 | 33,373 | 6 | Stanwyck and Cooper in a Serviceable 40s Comedy | Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper give funny , sexy performances as a gangster moll and a nerdy professor , respectively , in this lightweight Howard Hawks offering from 1941 . Stanwyck plays Sugarpuss O'Shea , girlfriend of a thug ( Dana Andrews ) who finds himself in hot water after a dead body turns up . She needs to... |
573,396 | 4,532,636 | 69,704 | 6 | Movie's Appeal Is Lost on Me | Maybe I'm just not the right age to fully appreciate the nostalgic tug of this film , but I've never warmed to the charms of " American Graffiti . " I usually like movies with loose , improvisational styles , which " Graffiti " certainly has . But here it feels more like pointless meandering than it does hip improvisat... |
573,984 | 4,532,636 | 416,449 | 6 | Gird Your Loins , Men ! | It's amazing to me that " 300 " is being taken seriously enough to stir up so much controversy . Some say it's homoerotic , others that it's homophobic . Some say it's an indictment of the Bush Administration's attitudes about war , others that it's a right-wing , pro-war diatribe . Iranians are apparently offended by ... |
574,061 | 4,532,636 | 100,405 | 6 | Julia Does Hollywood ( And Richard Gere ) | The movie that made Julia Roberts a star and brought hope to hookers everywhere . Many condemned this movie as an irresponsible and inappropriate Cinderella fantasy , only proving how stupid they were to take a movie like this seriously enough to protest in the first place . Hell , if hookers actually looked like Julia... |
574,098 | 4,532,636 | 92,005 | 6 | Notable for Making Me Hate Kiefer Sutherland | Wow , I'm actually quite amazed at the high rating this film has at IMDb - - in the top 250 ? Really ? Based on a novella by Stephen King titled " The Body " ( hmmm , can't imagine why they changed the title for the movie ) , " Stand by Me " is one of those coming-of-age movies drenched in nostalgia for a more innocent... |
573,562 | 4,532,636 | 62,827 | 6 | Altman's First Time at Bat | Countdown , Robert Altman's first theatrical release , is the only film I've seen by the prolific director that feels nothing like an Altman project . A bit of history surrounding it reveals that Altman battled the studios over creative control , and that the final version of the film exists more as a product of the ... |
573,484 | 4,532,636 | 449,467 | 6 | An Exhausting Film | Alas , it appears that , based on other user comments here at IMDb , I am in the minority on this film . I found it to be tedious and exhausting , and the effort I put into sticking with it far outweighed any sense of closure I received from it . Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu appeared at the screening I saw and introduce... |
574,283 | 4,532,636 | 24,240 | 6 | Early Capra Film Establishes That Capra Style | Though this Frank Capra film came out a year before the beloved director would establish himself as perhaps the most famous director of the 1930s with " It Happened One Night , " " Lady for a Day " bears all the hallmarks of what would become that unmistakable Capra style . May Robson gives a sweet and at times heartbr... |
574,110 | 4,532,636 | 27,260 | 6 | Not Nearly as Good as the Original | Sadly , " After the Thin Man " is a very tepid follow up to the 1934 original . William Powell and Myrna Loy have just as much chemistry as before , but this film feels much more restricted by post-code conventions than did the first one . It's not as naughty and racy , and the pacing feels much more sluggish . I thoug... |
574,160 | 4,532,636 | 40,178 | 6 | A Fun Little Nothing | Tough-talking mug Lawrence Tierney is the hero of this quick and dirty cheapy from 1948 . He plays a detective who's kicked off the force for being a hot head , and gets a job moonlighting as the bodyguard for an elderly lady ( Elizabeth Risdon ) , matriarch and acting manager of a large and successful meat-packing com... |
573,810 | 4,532,636 | 90,305 | 6 | Brings New Meaning to " Made to Order " | I haven't seen this movie for a long time , so for all I know it's horrible , but I have nothing but good memories of it . Any red-blooded American male has to at least appreciate the premise : two horny teens discover a way to create the perfect woman , who exists for no other purpose than to fulfill their every fanta... |
574,500 | 4,532,636 | 81,375 | 6 | Didn't Bill Murray Remake This Movie ? | A harmless , cute movie that rests nearly entirely on the talents of two women : Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan . Hawn is an expert comedienne and her string of late 70s / early 80s comedies are nearly all perfectly watchable now . Brennan is a total hoot as a drill sergeant who you love to hate . The movie is basicall... |
574,447 | 4,532,636 | 20,950 | 6 | Young Tracy in an Interesting Slice of Cinema History | A very young Spencer Tracy plays the eponymous guy in this Depression-era short that starts out as a gritty slice of realism and , due to a surprise and funny ending , ends as a comedy . This kind of thing served merely as a time filler , so there's no point in reviewing it for its artistry or film techniques . But it ... |
573,607 | 4,532,636 | 988,047 | 6 | Undistinguished Genre Film | Around this time last year , Hollywood became very interested in terrorism as a movie subject , and it made a whole slew of films about the war on terror , none of them very good but few of them egregiously bad . " Traitor " could belong to that same group of films . It's a run-of-the-mill genre picture that uses the w... |
573,673 | 4,532,636 | 53,459 | 6 | Engaging , But Far from Great | Obviously , based on user comments here , people LOVE this movie , and there is indeed much to admire . It's got haunting , beautiful visuals and a creepy fun house score by the terrific Maurice Jarre . It flirts with themes such as father / daughter guilt and doctor / God complex , but I guess ultimately my problem wi... |
574,091 | 4,532,636 | 109,831 | 6 | Can't Remember Much About It Other Than That I Fell Asleep | I have to admit that I remember very little about this romantic comedy that introduced Hugh Grant to American audiences . A girl on my college dorm floor desperately wanted me to watch it ( she was very into all things English ) , so I obliged , but believe that I fell asleep through part of it . So I guess there you h... |
573,638 | 4,532,636 | 55,471 | 6 | Kazan Stoops to Schlock | This turgid melodrama is not worthy of Elia Kazan , who abandons completely his restrained , disciplined directorial style to deliver this " Rebel Without a Cause " wannabe . Natalie Wood does what she did best in this film - - look gorgeous . But her performance , lauded in its day , is nearly embarrassing now , as sh... |
573,483 | 4,532,636 | 58,213 | 6 | Davis's Bid for Camp Queen | In 1962 , Bette Davis and Joan Crawford joined forces in that campiest of camp classics , " What Ever Happened to Baby Jane ? " , the film that offered a solution to the problem of what to do with Hollywood's aging actresses : put them in trash and let them make the trash art by virtue of their massive talent . In 1964... |
573,489 | 4,532,636 | 387,514 | 6 | Not Bad But Not Especially Compelling Either | Midway through " Prime , " there's a scene in which Uma Thurman's character , Rafi , comes to her boyfriend's ( Bryan Greenberg ) house for dinner with his family . His mom , played by Meryl Streep , as usual giving a performance better than the movie it's in , has up until very recently been Rafi's therapist . The wom... |
574,442 | 4,532,636 | 48,673 | 6 | Not Much to This David Lean Travelogue Film | One of the many " spinster " roles Katharine Hepburn played throughout the 1950s , and one of the best . She plays a woman on vacation by herself in Venice , too uptight to let her hair down and succumb to the romance of the environment , yet tired of spending her evenings alone . She succeeds in doing a lot with a not... |
573,346 | 4,532,636 | 53,318 | 6 | Give Me a Break | One has to wonder if Tennesse Williams had plum run out of ideas when he resorted to writing this ridiculous piece of Southern Gothic claptrap . I don't know if any actors could put this material over , but the ones gathered for this filmed version certainly can't . No doubt audiences at the time were fainting all over... |
573,947 | 4,532,636 | 49,055 | 6 | Not Dark Enough | The dark , brooding Rodgers & Hammerstein stage musical gets the big-budget screen treatment in this 1956 release , and the results are only moderately successful . The actors have great voices - - and certainly the score to " Carousel " is the lushest and densest R & H produced - - but they're simply not good enough a... |
574,071 | 4,532,636 | 114,095 | 6 | I Wish Parker Posey Would Get More Star Vehicles Like This | Parker Posey flashes her 1 , 000-kilowatt smile frequently in this film , and your enjoyment of the movie will rely primarily on how smitten you are by Posey's quirky charm . Count me as a follower . I think Posey is a hoot in everything she's in , incapable of giving an ordinary performance . I have a feeling that in ... |
574,304 | 4,532,636 | 84,777 | 6 | Argento Bloodbath Doesn't Make Much Sense | Anthony Franciosa stars as a popular American writer who travels to Rome on a book tour and becomes involved in an investigation into a series of murders influenced by his latest novel , " Tenebre . " This whacko movie from horror impresario Dario Argento is no where nearly as good as , say , " Suspiria , " and much of... |
573,588 | 4,532,636 | 421,715 | 6 | Maybe Brad Pitt Should Stick to Zippers | I read a book a couple of years ago called " The Confessions of Max Tivoli , " about a man who ages backwards . The book was nothing special , a moderate diversion at best , but what it did do well was explore the emotional and psychological conflicts the main character faced as he watched everyone around him - - inclu... |
574,349 | 4,532,636 | 467,200 | 6 | Where Were My Heaving Bosoms ? | I was expecting heaving bosoms and bodice rippings galore from this costume drama , but sadly , the filmmakers and actors decide to take this piece of " historical " fiction seriously , and so " The Other Boleyn Girl " is not nearly as fun as it could have been . Either Natalie Portman , as Anne , or Scarlett Johansson... |
573,686 | 4,532,636 | 44,672 | 6 | Not Quite a Train Wreck ( Though There's One in the Movie ) | If you want to do a garish , ponderous epic , Cecil B . is your man , as he proves with this " Ten Commandments " - sized circus story . " The Greatest Show on Earth " represents just about everything bad about 1950s film-making , but it also happens to be one enjoyable howler of a movie . DeMille always seemed to know... |
574,232 | 4,532,636 | 758,758 | 6 | Didn't Find This Movie Remotely Moving | It's too bad that I saw Werner Herzog's amazing documentary " Grizzly Man " before I saw " Into the Wild . " One can't help but be reminded of Herzog's film while watching Penn's , or the fact that Herzog's is so much better . Both films have as their focus troubled young men who travel to the Alaskan wilderness to esc... |
573,540 | 4,532,636 | 33,804 | 6 | Didn't Do It for Me | Maybe I wasn't in the right mood , but I just didn't think this film was that special . I can't say anything bad about it exactly , because there was nothing wrong with it . It just didn't have that spark that other movies of its type have . Maybe the problem lies with Henry Fonda , who I never thought had much chemist... |
573,355 | 4,532,636 | 408,306 | 6 | Obvious Drama with Very Little Impact | At the beginning of his career , Steven Spielberg had an almost perverse desire to entertain his audiences . As a result , we were spellbound by his movies . Then he decided that he was going to make movies that were " good " for people , and he produced dreadful stuff like " Amistad . " Lately , he's been trying to me... |
574,023 | 4,532,636 | 49,366 | 6 | The Commies Strike Again | Another one of those low-budget 50's sci-fi movies that can be read as an allegory for cold war Communist paranoia . There's not much to say about this movie ; it didn't inspire much feeling in me one way or the other . Alien pods mysteriously appear on earth , and the sticky beings that ooze their way out of them take... |
573,922 | 4,532,636 | 247,425 | 6 | Lost on Me | With the exception of " Moulin Rouge , " this may very well be the most overrated film of 2001 . The first half moves along convincingly enough . Tragedy is handled well and the acting is superb . But when Tom Wilkinson's character actually begins to carry out his revenge , the film gets boring - - - - this is one of t... |
573,712 | 4,532,636 | 88,680 | 6 | An Uneasy Scorsese Experiment | I tried very hard to like " After Hours , " Martin Scorsese's surrealist head trip about a straight-laced word processor ( Griffin Dunne ) who ventures off into the SoHo night and gets trapped inside a frustrating nightmare . It's an interesting premise for a film - - what goes on out there in the nocturnal world while... |
573,820 | 4,532,636 | 77,288 | 6 | French Farce Is Short on Farce | This French farce lacks the energy and whimsy of the 1996 Mike Nichols remake , " The Birdcage . " Perhaps it's a cultural difference , but the original " La Cage aux Folles " seems to take itself too seriously , and moments that were uproarious in the Nichols version aren't very funny here . I suppose some might say t... |
573,597 | 4,532,636 | 339,291 | 6 | Movie Belongs to Carrey | I've not read the book series upon which this film is based , but I have a feeling it's just the sort of thing I would have loved when I was a kid : dark , morbid , twisted and funny . The movie benefits from a knock-out production design and a fun performance from Jim Carrey , who appears in an assortment of kooky cos... |
574,170 | 4,532,636 | 22,698 | 6 | Dietrich's Voodoo | One of the string of movies Josef von Sternberg directed for his muse , Marlene Dietrich . It seems like all of these movies can be identified by a particular scene or image that sets them apart from the others . " The Blue Angel " had the iconic image of Dietrich in top hat and tails ; " Blonde Venus " is the one wher... |
573,994 | 4,532,636 | 29,284 | 6 | The Truth Is This Grant / Dunne Vehicle Is No " Awful Truth " | This romantic screwball comedy tries to recapture the zany chemistry shared between Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in " The Awful Truth , " but the final product falls somewhat flat . Something's just missing this time around , and it's a shame , because the story has serious screwball potential . Dunne plays Grant's suppo... |
573,525 | 4,532,636 | 40,270 | 6 | Introductory Psychology Gussied Up as a Crime Film | The Dark Past is a Psych 101 class disguised as a film noir . William Holden plays Al Walker , notorious criminal who has escaped from prison and , along with his girlfriend ( Nina Foch ) and assorted goons , takes a family hostage in their country home while waiting for his getaway . The family patriarch ( Lee J . C... |
573,687 | 4,532,636 | 73,312 | 6 | Russia Beware - - Here Comes Woody Allen | The last of Woody Allen's outright screwball comedies of the 1970s is a spoof of Russian novels and drama , with a healthy dose of Ingmar Bergman thrown in as well . The references fly almost faster than you can catch them - - no one is safe , not Tolstoy , Dostoevsky , Chekhov . Watch for Allen's movie quoting other m... |
574,142 | 4,532,636 | 38,355 | 6 | Forgettable Showcase for Bogie and Bacall | By and large , your enjoyment of this film will depend upon how crazy you are about its two leads . The plot is indecipherable ( almost a parody of those byzantine film noir stories ) , and there's really not much more to the movie than Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall trading saucy , dead-pan barbs . Bogart's o . k .... |
574,252 | 4,532,636 | 38,348 | 6 | Good , But Not as Magical as Some Claim | I can't believe I'm about to say this , but I preferred the animated Disney version of this story to the 1946 Jean Cocteau film . I'm no Disney fan , and I would personally like to stop them from taking over the world ( along with Starbucks ) , but this is one case where I just thought they instilled this fairy tale wi... |
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