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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 , especially when you have the romantic faces of Clift and Taylor swooning together in extreme close-up . I'm not a fan of doing book to movie comparisons . I figure that film and literature are two different art forms , so I shouldn't compare their rendering of the story anymore than I would compare the same story as presented in a painting as opposed to a ballet . So I tried to take the film on its own merits ( admittedly difficult to do , since I watched the movie on the same day I finished the book ) , but even at that , I think the movie falls short . Clift plays George Eastman , poor nephew to a rich , socially elite family in a small New York state factory town . He's been invited by his uncle to come and work in the Eastman factory , giving him an entre into a world of luxury that has always been out of his grasp due to his family's humble position ( they run a mission and preach on the streets ) . George strikes up a love affair with Alice Tripp ( Shelley Winters ) , a girl who works with him in the factory , but his attentions for her quickly fade when he becomes interested in Angela Vickers , another member of the rich set , played by Liz Taylor . Complications ensue , and George finds himself and his situation spiraling drastically out of control , with an ending more tragic than he ever thought possible . George Stevens directs the film with a sure hand , and there are some breathtaking displays of directorial skill . For example , one that stands out in my mind comes when the camera focuses on a radio reporting a possible murder , while the young , rich kids with whom George has struck up a friendship goof off in the water in the background . There are also some great uses of dissolve editing , though the technique is somewhat overused . But there are many problems with the film , notably its pacing . Much time is spent on George's love triangle with Alice and Angela , while the script races through the trial and George's ultimate fate , as if the screenwriter realized he only had two hours to tell his story when he'd already wasted an hour and a half on front-end material . Rushing through the end blunts much of the story's original intent and power , as that is where the majority of moral questions arise . Also , the character Shelley Winters plays is so drab and mousy , that one doesn't understand why George would entangle himself with her in the first place . But Clift does a great job with the lead role , delivering a performance of raw nerve . It befuddles me somewhat as to why this movie is quite so acclaimed . I can only imagine that its reception has to do with cultural moods at the time it was released and that it just hasn't aged well . It came out in 1951 , a big year for literary adaptations ( " A Streetcar Named Desire " and " Death of a Salesman " were both given big-screen treatments that year ) , and you only need to compare " Sun " to " Streetcar " to see how short it falls at capturing the essence of a true literary classic . |
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 sort of wise Asian adviser - - I guess Pat Morita wasn't available . Gotta love those days before political correctness , when we felt no qualms at all about reducing people to cultural stereotypes . This is the kind of movie that winds up now on Cine de las Estrellas , dubbed into Spanish . |
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 of the action is confined to the creepy hallways and staircases of the house itself . We know the killer is there , we know sooner or later he ( or she ) wants to get his ( or her ) hands on McGuire , it's just a matter of when . All I can say is thank God for Ethel Barrymore . Her character , despite being confined to a bed for the majority of the film , is the only one who I cared a thing about . There's a lot of subplot involving dark family secrets , jilted lovers , etc . , but none of it is very interesting , and McGuire is such a ninny that you almost end up rooting for the killer . Also starring Elsa Lanchester as ( what else ? ) the family maid . |
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 sanctimonious crap about how much the artistic life is better than the corporate one ( though not one of them has ever had a corporate job , so how would they know ? ) is just too much for this 30-year-old ( who doesn't have a choice about not working in order to pay for a mortgage ) to take . On stage , " Rent " was fresh and exhilarating . It was about the freedom to be whatever you choose to be and a celebration of art of all kinds . It didn't feel preachy , condescending or smug . It took place in an artificial world and a hefty dose of melodrama and unlikely plot contrivances were easier to accept given the fact that it was 1 . ) a piece of theatre and so by necessity an illusion to begin with and 2 . ) based on an opera where melodramatics are readily accepted . In bringing the musical to the film , and adding an ill-fitting realistic structure to the material , much gets lost in the translation . The plot contrivances are not easy to overlook , and everything feels arbitrary ( let's see , who's sleeping with who now ? ) The music still sounds great and the cast does have a lot of chemistry . Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Idina Menzel are the two original cast members who make the easiest jump to the big screen . Adam Pascal looks lost and Jesse L . Martin mugs too much . Of the newcomers , Tracie Thoms is the best addition as Joanne . Rosario Dawson is fine in the role of Mimi , but that character doesn't seem like much of a character on screen . And Taye Diggs ' role is nearly written out of the film . Really , to be honest , none of the characters is much more than a type , easily summarized in a sentence . This was true of the stage version as well , but there the music was allowed to define the characters . On screen , Columbus must come up with things for the actors to do and images for the audience to look at , and he comes up with nothing memorable . Not every single play , book or musical needs to be made into a film , and I wish producers would figure that out . I love movies , but I love movies when they're cinematic or tell a story in a way that could only be told via the medium of film . I'm all for people who don't have access to " Rent " in its stage version being able to see it , but perhaps a filmed version of the stage production would have been a better way to go . This film will make people who don't already know the material wonder what all the fuss is about . |
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 and intricate narrative in the book . " A Place in the Sun " did much the same thing to " An American Tragedy . " I've grown to like Burt Lancaster as I've seen him in more and more movies , and I think he got better as he got older , but he's at his hammy worst in roles like this . Though he's a big , rugged looking man , I can't take him seriously in these macho , stud roles . He overacts and never once convinces . Montgomery Clift does much better with his role as the sensitive and moony Pruitt ; these were exactly the kinds of roles Clift was born to play . Frank Sinatra , again , could be a fine actor , but his role here is boiled down to a couple of aw-shucks moments before he kicks off in a sentimental death scene . Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed are largely wasted ; they're definitely women adrift in a male-dominated film . I don't know about Fred Zinneman . I used to think he was a good director who made socially relevant films at a time when Hollywood would have been content churning out widescreen Technicolor junk , and he did do that . But his films during the 1950s all feel very pompous , like he was aware that he was making ART while everyone else was making MOVIES . I have the same feeling to an extent about George Stevens , though I think overall his films are more fascinating than Zinneman's . " From Here to Eternity " is certainly no where near the worst that the 1950s had to offer , but it has been overpraised . The fact that Pearl Harbor was still a very distinct memory for so many people probably had much to do with its popular and critical reception at the time , and for its lasting appeal . Watching it now , one kind of wonders what the big deal is . |
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 magic secrets from falling into the hands of an evil goblin ( played by Nick Nolte , because who else would play an evil goblin ? ) The movie never gives us a great deal of reason to care about anything going on , and the special effects are numerous and unimpressive , but I was moderately engaged anyway . It probably helps that I saw it on a flight from Hawaii to Chicago and had little else to do , but still . . . . |
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 every even moderately good looking man in the joint , inviting them over to her house for " dinner " and to discuss business , only to halt the shop talk mid-way through and throw a pillow suggestively on the floor while the camera discreetly fades to black . All of this changes when she meets George Brent , an engineer hired by the company who is completely immune to Chatterton's dubious charms . Once she realizes that Brent isn't buying what she's selling , she revamps her product , opting instead to act like a typical woman , which means asking Brent's help in starting fires and speaking in a high-pitched sing-song . By the end , she's decided to chuck the business and hand it over to Brent so that she can be his dutiful wife . This film is absolutely absurd , even by 1933 standards , and you'll have to sit through about 40 feminist film seminars to wash the taste of it out of your mouth , but it's rather fun to see just how backwards it can possibly be . Chatterton is a likable actress and she's got a lot of spunk . The car manufacturing setting means that the screenwriter can create all sorts of double entrendes using car part lingo , and the whole thing's only about an hour long anyway , so it breezes right by . |
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 this song sung in this context struck quite a chord , and I can't hear it to this day without thinking of this scene . As for the rest of the musical , it's typical MGM frothy stuff , sticky sweet and wholesome , filmed in garish Technicolor . It doesn't have the same sexy humour of some of MGM's other musicals , like " Seven Brides for Seven Brothers " and opts instead for a bland family-friendly approach . There's no denying the talent involved , but if you find yourself gagging easily on sugary family entertainment , this movie may not be for you . |
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 because director George Cukor does not take as cinematic an approach as Edmund Goulding . In " Grand Hotel , " the camera went sweeping around the vast interior of that film's magnificent set , and the viewer comes away from that movie remembering images as well as characters . Cukor takes a much more stagebound approach with his film , and visuals are too hampered by small and static sets . Even the actors perform as if on stage , pausing at their entrances for applause they would have received had they been performing in front of a live audience . And even though the cast is comprised of the best MGM had to offer at the time , it doesn't gel like the cast in " Grand Hotel " did . Lionel Barrymore uncharacteristically seems to be on shaky ground ; Billie Burke and her fussy performance are more distracting than funny ; and Jean Harlow and her on-again-off-again Southern accent are all wrong . One can't help but imagine what Ginger Rogers could have done with the Harlow part if only Rogers had been a big enough name when this film was released . Only Marie Dressler truly delights , so much so that whenever she isn't on screen , you fidget waiting for her to come back . As for the material itself , the play takes on some strong themes but handles them awkwardly . The set up seems to go on forever - - an hour into the film , I felt like the movie was still introducing characters and main plot threads . The ending has a hurried quality , as if the screenwriters decided they had spent all of their time on plot set up and couldn't afford any for actual resolutions . If the film is faithful to the play , the play must have been a fairly minor one . So , certainly not a bad film by any means , and worth seeing for some of the most famous names in the early ' 30s , but it doesn't surprise me that the movie hasn't had the longevity of " Grand Hotel . " |
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 above your standard comic book to screen adaptation . Unfortunately , the story is so uninvolving that it never puts the characters in situations that really engage the viewer , so the acting talent much of the time feels wasted . This film looks great , too , but come on , by now don't all Hollywood action films look pretty good , and shouldn't they , given the amount of money thrown at them . No , the makers of " Hellboy " have all the ingredients for a spicy , rich , delicious stew but only manage to muster up a mediocre broth that needs a lot of salt . |
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 starlet in this case is Scarlett Johannsson , who plays the role Diane Keaton would have played had she been young enough to appear in this film . In fact , the whole movie brings to mind Allen's " Manhattan Murder Mystery , " only this time set in London , mixed with a healthy dose of last year's fabulously entertaining " Match Point , " had that film been played as a zany farce . For me , Woody Allen films are the cinematic equivalent of P . G . Wodehouse novels : I don't come to them expecting surprises - - I come to them because they are cosy and mostly reliable for at least a good chuckle or two . Allen's humour is as comfortable to me as a broken-in pair of shoes , and I frankly don't care whether or not he stretches himself artistically at this point in his career . When he does , as with " Match Point , " he proves that he still has the capacity to make not just good but great movies ; when he doesn't , as in " Scoop , " the results are perhaps more modestly entertaining , but entertaining nonetheless . Allen himself gets most of this movie's best lines , though honestly he could just stand there and look mournfully at the screen and I would laugh . Johannssen has trouble easing into her role , and I felt her struggling with the screwball comedy elements . Hugh Jackman , as the is-he-or-isn't-he villain , convinces as a slice of refined beefcake , but who could take him seriously as any kind of killer , serial or otherwise ? However , everyone is good enough to make this film a painless experience . |
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 Blood , " nor was it a strict bio-pic about Truman Capote himself . It was something unique , and in my opinion said all there was to say about Capote's journey in writing " In Cold Blood . " Then " Infamous " came along , in one of the most unfortunate cases of bad timing ever to afflict a movie , and had to justify its own existence . Does it have anything to offer that " Capote " or , for that matter the movie " In Cold Blood " or the novel " In Cold Blood , " don't ? The answer is . . . . . not really . " Infamous " isn't a bad film , but it feels awfully unnecessary , and this isn't simply because " Capote " came out first . It's a much more straightforward , and therefore less interesting , version of the same story . It shouldn't be less interesting , given its cast . Toby Jones actually looks and acts more like Truman Capote than Philip Seymour Hoffman did , but his performance is more of an impersonation than it is a creation of a living breathing character . Sandra Bullock plays Harper Lee , and the movie strands her with nothing to do . The down to earth Lee is supposedly responsible for getting the people of Holcomb , Kansas to open up to the otherwise too strange and effeminate invader from the big city ; but the movie doesn't show this . Lee instead sits around and waits for Capote to come back and update her on interviews he has with his subjects . Jeff Daniels plays the chief inspector in the Cutter family killings . The movie's best scenes are the ones showing how Capote used his familiarity with Hollywood and household name stars to delight the Kansas townspeople , and namely the inspector's family , into confiding in him . Daniel Craig plays Perry Smith , one of the two Cutter family killers , and the movie's biggest factual divergence from other versions of the story is its explicitness in suggesting that Smith and Capote actually fell in love with one another . The film's biggest asset , and most missed opportunity , is the cast assembled to play Capote's high-society friends . Peter Bogdanovich plays Capote's " New Yorker " editor , and a female ensemble that includes Sigourney Weaver , Hope Davis , Isabella Rosselini and Juliet Stevenson plays his various gossip-monger friends . This aspect of the Capote story - - how his " project " was viewed by New York's upper crust , far removed from the world that includes out of the way places like Holcomb , Kansas - - could have made this version unique , but the writers decide instead to focus the entire second half of the film on the Smith / Capote relationship , leaving the New York world in the background . A shame , because it's the New York scenes that inject " Infamous " with the energy its other scenes lack . If " Infamous " isn't a failure , it's also not a resounding success , and not a movie that I would encourage anyone to rush out and see . |
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 ( even " The Manchurian Candidate , " now considered a classic , was underrated at the time ) , but " Seconds " is one of his weaker efforts . I liked the sterling black and white cinematography , always one of the greatest assets in any Frankenheimer film , but I just didn't feel that the movie itself held together as well as some of Frankenheimer's efforts . Part of this is due to Hudson , who , though one admires his effort , was simply too limited an actor to pull a role like this off . But much of the blame lies with Frankenheimer himself , who was just " off " on this one . |
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 meant to be much more shocking . The little girl spreads rumors that the two teachers are involved in a lesbian relationship , though the word " lesbian " is never stated outright . Complicating matters is the fact that MacLaine's character actually does harbor lesbian tendencies , and does have feelings for Hepburn , even though she's got the hots for James Garner . Wyler wants us to take all of this very seriously , and he deserves credit for tackling a subject like homophobia and the hysteria it can produce before it was vogue to do so . But something gets lost in the translation . The movie feels over-emphatic and teeters on the brink of silliness , and the ending especially , with its doomsday music and shadowy lighting , comes across as very heavy handed , an unusual complaint about this usually reliable and sensitive director . Veronica Cartwright cries and slobbers her way through an early role as one of the children ; she's as unwatchable as ever . Character actress Fay Bainter blusters her way imperiously through the film as grandmother of the hateful little brat who starts the whole thing . Hers is the only performance that solidly lands where it's supposed to . |
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 . " Slumdog Millionaire " is a fake . An accomplished fake , to be sure , but a fake nonetheless . The film tells the story of Jamal , who grows up in the slums of Mumbai , India , only to find himself in the hot seat on the popular Indian television version of " Who Wants to Be a Millionaire . " Each question he's asked during the game show triggers a flashback sequence that fills in a little bit more of his story - - we see him become estranged from his brother , who gives himself over to the life of a gangster , and we see him stay true through all of his adversity to his one love , a girl named Latika . It's fairly clear that director Danny Boyle intends this film to be a fairy tale , with the love story providing the film its heart . But much of the film is nasty and unpleasant , reveling in every distasteful detail about Jamal's childhood . Within the first 20 minutes of the film , we've seen Jamal tortured with electricity , Jamal jumping into a vile pit of human excrement in order to get an autograph from his favorite Bollywood star ( this scene is played for laughs , because isn't someone covered in sht always good for a laugh ? ) and we see his mother bludgeoned to death by anti-Muslim extremists right before Jamal's and his brother's eyes . Later , we see small children getting their eyes burned out with hot spoons in order to make them more effective beggars . Everyone in the movie but Jamal and Latika , who remain blank slates as characters , is hateful and repellent . Boyle heaps calamity on top of calamity for so much of the film that its facile , simplistic conclusion wrings impossibly false . You can't have it both ways . You can't have your film be both a gritty , slice-of-life indictment and a frothy romantic soufflé . The end product is like " City of God " meets " Moulin Rouge ! " This isn't the first time I've felt this way about Danny Boyle movies . He frequently strikes me as a director who's not in control of his own films . His brand of film-making mistakes the fast and furious for interesting and compelling , and he gets in the way of his own narratives , distracting us when he should be drawing us in . A lot of people might mistake this for a great film . And who knows ? - - maybe it is . After all , greatness is a matter of opinion . But my opinion is that this film falls very short of greatness . |
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 with whatever partner he happens to be paired with at that moment , you can't imagine him dancing with anyone else . Directors always treated Audrey Hepburn like a china doll - - they required that she move her stately way through their films with the utmost grace and poise . It's a treat , therefore , to see Stanley Donen let her have some fun , and cut loose in some jazzy dance numbers , which she handles quite well , thank you very much . Kay Thompson , as a blowzy fashion editor , provides nearly all of the comedy , blaring her way through the movie in supreme Eve Arden mode . There's nothing especially memorable about this movie , but then again it's also a harmless enough way to spend a couple of hours . |
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 empresario Willy Wonka . It's not that I was comparing this to the Gene Wilder original ; I didn't much like that version either ( though I liked Wilder's performance more ) and thought Roald Dahl's book was due for a retry . And in the first 20 minutes , leading up to the day actually spent in the chocolate factory , Burton nails Dahl's story just right . In many ways it's a perfect matching of artist and source material , and the cordial relationship shows for a while . But once Depp enters the picture , Burton gives him free reign to walk away with it , but I didn't like where he took it . People have said Depp reminds them of both Carol Burnett and Michael Jackson . Throw Carol Channing and Frances McDormand from " Fargo " into the mix and you get a pretty good idea of how he plays the character . The thing is , the writers screwed up big time in giving Wonka so much back story and making him a character that begs for redemption . The great thing about Wonka in the book was that he wasn't explained ; he was a candy genius , his life was devoted to making great candy , end of story . The point Dahl was making was about proper ways for children to behave , not about reconnecting with your family , father / son relationships , blah , blah , blah . Dahl's book was perfection , so why mess with it ? Other than the awful additions , however , this film stays much truer to the book than the 1971 version . There are some great songs by Danny Elfman for the Oompah-Loompahs to perform , the bad kids are deliciously bratty , and Freddie Highmore is really winning as Charlie . Maybe in another 30 years they'll try to adapt this book again and get it right . Or people could just stop trying to make movies of the book and ( gasp ! ) actually read it instead . |
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 disaster . It's one of his big ensemble comedies that probably largely came together in the editing room , but it doesn't cohere the way " Nashville " or " Short Cuts " does . I get the mental image of Robert Altman throwing darts at a dart board and seeing what sticks , and with this film not much does . This is Altman's attempt at a French sex farce , and he gives his film an international flavor by casting big-time stars like Sophia Loren , Marcello Mastroianni and Anouk Aimee , but he acts like simply casting them is enough and forgets to give them any material to work with . Perhaps the biggest problem with " Pret a Porter " is that Altman satirizes something that itself is already largely a satire : the world of high fashion . Fashion is a big industry , no doubt , but it makes a rather meager subject for satire , and Altman doesn't seem to have much of a point to make about the industry anyway . It's fun for a while to just watch goofy people walking around saying and doing goofy things , but without a stronger script to anchor the action , the fun in people watching wears thin after a while . The large cast features a ton of famous faces , some of them actors Altman had worked with before ( Tim Robbins , Sally Kellerman , Lili Taylor , Richard E . Grant ) and many new to Altman's world ( Julia Roberts , Tracy Ullmann , Stephen Rea , Linda Hunt , Danny Aiello , Teri Garr ) . But really , the only one who made much impression on me was Kim Basinger , who gets the Geraldine Chaplin role from " Nashville , " playing a fish-out-of-water reporter who seems to be everywhere at once and sidelines unsuspecting subjects with impromptu interviews . It's a riot to watch Basinger's reporter stumble her way through interviews about a subject she knows nothing about , all the while doing so with a twangy Texan accent , and Basinger damn near steals the show . |
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 in that film clunky ) . " Airport " had the misfortune of appearing at a time when American cinema was FINALLY becoming more daring , and it now seems like a dinosaur compared to many of its contemporaries . But it is notable for creating the prototype for the all-star disaster film that has been a staple of the movie-going experience ever since . This all-star cast includes Burt Lancaster , slumming it mightily ; Dean Martin ( God , who'd want HIM piloting your plane ? ) ; George Kennedy ; Helen Hayes , cute as a button in the twinkly little old lady role ( can you feel my sarcasm from where you're sitting ? ) ; Van Heflin , as a middle-aged mad bomber ; and Maureen Stapleton , as the mad bomber's wife , who has the dubious job of running around for nearly the duration of the film's running time looking perplexed . Character development is not this kind of film's strong suit , and neither is credibility in any other regard . But it makes for a rather cozy viewing experience , because you know the plane and everyone on it is going to be safe , there are old-fashioned heroes to root for , there's a marvelous John Williams score before all of his scores started sounding the same , and you get to see Helen Hayes socked in the face . If that's not worth the price of a Netflix rental , I don't know what is . |
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 sophistication of your own , you realize what an empty-headed exercise it is . Federico Fellini is one of the most self-indulgent filmmakers who ever got behind a movie camera , and I simply don't have the interest or patience for the films of his later career . " 8 " , again like " La Dolce Vita , " is dazzling to sit through once , because it looks gorgeous and there's the promise that on a second viewing , once you're no longer distracted by the flamboyant and beautiful visuals , you'll be able to sink your teeth into the rich substance of the film . But then you realize that there isn't any substance , and the film's beauty is only , and sadly , skin deep . And then you're just cheesed that you wasted so much time on it in the first place . . . . |
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 stagey look that I liked , and it's self-consciously campy . It's got a cast that knows how to pull off the material , notably Rick Moranis as Seymour , the flower shop owner , Ellen Greene as Audrey , the hot-to-trot girl of his dreams , and Steve Martin , as a demented dentist . It also features toe-tapping tunes and pretty cool plant effects . Overall , not a bad time . |
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 her at the end feels less like a romantic comedy convention and more like a complete no-brainer : " DUH ! " Who wouldn't end up with Isla Fisher if he had the choice ? " Definitely , Maybe " is an all right movie , but it doesn't add up to much . It's one of those films where we watch our leading man ( Reynolds in this case ) stumble through a lot of relationship mistakes , act too immature for his age , and finally reach the conclusion the audience reached five minutes into the movie . I mostly just got tired of his drippy character and wanted him to stop acting like a petulant boy . I haven't decided yet whether or not Reynolds has what it takes to be a big star . He's certainly good looking enough , even if in a bland sort of way , and he has charm and presence . But he's missing an inherent something that would allow him to make a character like this likable even while he's being a baby , and without that , he just comes across as aggravating . The other two women in Reynolds ' life are played by Rachel Weisz and Elizabeth Banks , and Kevin Kline shows up looking smelly and scraggly in what amounts to a series of rather pointless cameos . Abigail Breslin plays Reynolds ' daughter , and while she's a cute enough little actress , I didn't for a second believe that she and Reynolds were really father and daughter . I can't say I was disappointed in this film , because I didn't expect it to be any more than it was , but without the performance of Isla Fisher , there really would have been no reason to watch it . |
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 ) , but it's a one-note and monotonous film , and the central relationship that the film explores remains cloudy and obscure . Altman isn't interested in making a straight biopic about Van Gogh , and for that I'm grateful . The last thing the world needs is another tortured artist biopic . He instead focuses , as the film's title implies , on the relationship between Vincent and his brother , Theo . Tim Roth plays Vincent as a portrait of the artist as a mad man ; in his hands , Vincent is mentally ill to the point that he can barely function . This gives Roth lots of scenery to chew , and it may even be an accurate portrayal , but it doesn't make for a very interesting character . It falls to Paul Rhys , playing Theo , to develop a character around which the film can anchor itself , but I'm not sure I ever fully understood Theo either . He seems as troubled as Vincent , but we're never sure why . He seems to regard himself as a failure , in business and the bedroom . He spends his working hours selling bad art to people with no artistic sensibility and harboring feelings of guilt at not being able to sell his brother's paintings . His love life is hampered by syphilis . The script suggests that the two brothers had a love / hate relationship - - they couldn't get along , yet each got from the other something he couldn't get anywhere else . What that something is is never clear , and without that , the film unfolds as a series of scenes in which the men flare out in erratic bursts of anger , over and over and over again , until both die , miserable and alone . Visually , the film looks terrific . The art director suggests Van Gogh in his production design , and it's fun to pick out the locations that would become the subjects of some of Van Gogh's most famous paintings . Gabriel Yared provides the weird electronic score , which sometimes is too much and other times is just right . Whatever its flaws , " Vincent & Theo " is miles ahead of that other Van Gogh film , Vincente Minellie's hopelessly dull and overacted " Lust for Life " from 1956 . |
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 fishing trip discover the body of a dead woman floating in the river . Rather than report their finding to the police immediately ( this was in the days before cell phones ) , the men finish their trip and notify police after their weekend vacation . When the wife of one of them finds out how callously , in her eyes , her husband behaved , a rift develops between them , and the wife begins to question how much she actually knows about the man she married . In typical Carver fashion , the story is unsettling and inconclusive ; there aren't heroes and there aren't villains , just everyday people dealing with the stuff of life . More than anything , the story served as an illustration of the difference between men and women and how they communicate . In " Jindabyne , " the basics of the Carver story are retained , but Lawrence has filled out the film with numerous subplots that expand the story to feature film length . The simplicity of the story can't sustain this , and its power is therefore diluted . Laura Linney plays the wife , Claire , and Gabriel Byrne her husband , Stuart . The screenplay fills out their back stories with marital tension and mental illness so that the discovery of the dead girl serves more as a catalyst for unearthing a rot that was already there . Lawrence also adds a racial dynamic to the film ; the dead girl was an aboriginal Australian , and her family insist that the white men would have behaved differently had they discovered a white girl . In the Carver story , we see things only from Claire's and Stuart's point of view ; in " Jindabyne , " the discovery becomes an issue that nearly tears the small town apart , and it just feels like the reaction is out of all proportion . I will say in the movie's defense that I could have missed much of the point due to a lack of understanding about Australian , and especially aboriginal , cultures . The thing I liked least about " Jindabyne " was the inclusion of a creepy serial killer who we know is responsible for the girl's death . His presence is unnecessary , and I think the enigmatic nature of Carver's original story is served better by never knowing who the girl was or how she died . For a much better screen treatment of the same story , rent Robert Altman's " Short Cuts , " in which this tale is intertwined with several other Carver stories to much greater effect . |
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 early on in this film ( the one in the deserted rest stop bathroom , most notably ) , but this movie really exists for the sole purpose of having Jamie Lee Curtis kick Michael Myers's ass , and the catharsis in watching her do so is worth the price of admission . There are some obligatory killings , but they go for gruesome rather than frightening , which was not John Carpenter's approach . But when Laurie Strode takes matters into her own hands and comes after Michael with guns blazing ( so to speak ) , hold on to yourselves - - violent tendencies seem to run in this family . The producers of this movie use a bigger budget to add some modern " scary " sound effects for atmosphere and fill out John Carpenter's original score with a sweeping orchestra - - it's like John Williams ' version of the Halloween theme . The whole thing feels like it's running on an I . V . drip of pure adrenaline . But fans of the series , or at least of the first two films , should enjoy it . LL Cool J is totally wasted in the token black character role , and Janet Leigh makes a pointless appearance as well , but listen for the brief strain of Bernard Herrman's " Psycho " score in one scene with her . |
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 , it's otherwise rather boring . The nominal plot focuses on Zeke , who lives with his large family and helps with their cotton-picking business . We watch him struggle with the demons that plague mortal man - - like gambling and horniness - - give into them , repent , give into them again , repent , and so on , until he comes back at the end to the family who loves him . Indeed , family and religion are the two dominant pillars around which these poor folk anchor themselves , much as they are in any culture . Much of the film consists of long scenes depicting a sermon , a baptism , a local dance . There are countless scenes of characters lifting their hands to heaven , praying to Jesus to guide them . It's all rather dramatically inert , and the film is too long . If you are religious yourself , I imagine these scenes might have a certain power to them . I found all of the weeping and wailing tiresome after a while . Credit must go to Vidor , though , for even bothering to make this film at a time when much of America didn't care all that much about the black people . The movie is a memento of the role film can play in leading cultural progress . |
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 . Jack Nicholson is humorous enough as the dolt of a hit-man , and Kathleen Turner was at a career high when she made this film and just about runs the show . Creepy William Hickey gets a few scenes as don of a mafia family , and Anjelica Huston became the first actress ( and I think to date only actress ) to be directed to an Academy Award by a parent , but her role doesn't consist of much more than her walking around , decked out like a bird of prey . Maybe it's because Huston was reaching the end of his illustrious career ( this was one of the last movies he made ) , but the movie feels plodding and lifeless . |
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 capture in literal terms the figurative idea of " falling in love " with the movies , and it succeeds on its own modest terms , but those terms are very modest . I never like Allen's movies as much when he's not actually in them , and that's the case here . Though Mia Farrow adds yet one more versatile character to her resume , a far cry from the blowzy broad she had played the year before in Allen's " Broadway Danny Rose . " |
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 , Marion ( Ida Lupino ) , wants her husband back , and tries to persuade him to refuse . The wife ( Jean Hagen ) of his agent comes on to him ; a floozy studio bit player ( Shelley Winters ) wants him too . Everybody has something on him and tries to use it to get him to do what he / she wants . The film is a bitter and caustic expose of the Hollywood studio system as it existed in 1955 , and how selling yourself to the bigwigs was akin to selling your soul to the devil . The film is too talky by far , and it's marred by sub-par acting , especially from Palance himself , who isn't right for the role , and Steiger , who's absolutely atrocious , screaming his way through an unwatchably mannered performance . Aldrich does his best to lend some visual variety to what is essentially a one-set movie , but it feels restricted . While it's satisfyingly sordid , it doesn't have the fascinating depravity so prominent in Aldrich's other 1955 release , " Kiss Me Deadly . " |
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 . This film , based on a true story , stars Richard Basehart as a man who threatens to jump from a city skyscraper . Paul Douglas is the cop who works overtime to prevent him from doing so . Over the course of the film , a whole bunch of psychobabble involving the man's childhood emerges to explain his actions , and late in the film , his one-time fiancée ( played by Barbara Bel Geddes ) shows up to shed even more light on the matter . This is serviceable if not overly remarkable film-making . It will probably engage your interest , but I doubt it will linger in your mind . I will forever remember this film as the one I was watching when my wife went into labor with our son . The movie received a rather random Academy Award nomination for its black and white art direction . |
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 American munitions dealer who finds himself the target of an assassination attempt by a group of Nazis . Much of the picture takes place on a seedy steamer intended to carry Cotten to safety . The film's got some nice touches , and there's a pretty exciting shoot-out finale that's something right out of Hitchcock , but the overall package isn't that memorable . Welles has a supporting role as a Turkish police chief and Welles regular Agnes Moorehead appears as a grumpy French woman . Cotten , the go-to actor for playing Americans stuck in the middle of foreign intrigues , wrote the screenplay . |
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 people she comes in contact with during her modest little soul-discovery journey . Farrow is a very underrated actress , and she's very good here , but she suffers from what many an actor has suffered in Woody Allen movies - - too often his films feel like caprices and they're not developed enough to let any one actor really sink his / her teeth into the material . That's " Alice . " |
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 really compelling characters ; he should stick with his gorgeous visuals and dance-like fight choreography . Only once - - during a scene in an atmospheric bamboo forest - - does this movie take flight , figuratively and literally . I have to say for much of the rest of the time I thought it was fairly boring . |
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 hard-boiled style of playing off one another works for you , then you're going to love this movie and any of their other films . But if not , then there's not much else here to keep your interest . This is the first time I'd ever seen Lauren Bacall as a young actress , and I was astounded at how deep her voice was . There's a scene in which a large group of men and Bacall are gathered around a piano , and this deep voice begins a song . I kept looking around the frame , trying to find the man who was singing , only to realize that it was Bacall . My goodness , that woman ate her spinach ! |
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 . Pat Morita plays Miyagi with a wink and smile , and he's the heart and soul of the movie , though I'm not sure the performance was worthy of the Academy Award nomination bestowed upon it . With a young Elisabeth Shue before she had her adventures in babysitting and Martin Kove as a karate dojo master straight from the flames of hell . |
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 role , who's perfectly cast as the lovable but snobbish title character . All of Paltrow's acclaim has rested on one performance , which also happens to be one of her weakest - - that for which she won her Oscar , " Shakespeare in Love . " This has served to make many of us forget that she's actually a fine actress , even if her most praise-worthy roles go unnoticed : " Sylvia , " " Proof , " and here in " Emma . " She's unfortunately not backed by a stellar cast - - or maybe the problem is not so much with the cast , as all of them have proved themselves to be fine actors in other things - - as with the direction , which never makes the most of the possibilities inherent in Austen's story . The actors don't have a lot of chemistry with one another , and the movie overall feels like a tasteful and dutiful Cliff Notes version of the novel , where plot points are ticked off like a checklist and the whole thing rushes by in a flurry of names and faces . It has none of the cinematic feel that the recent version of " Pride and Prejudice " had , which was able to make a done-to-death story feel entirely new . Without Paltrow , this movie would be DOA . |
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 elephants for the rest of my life . Otherwise , this is pretty standard-issue Disney . Like many early Disney films , it's almost sadistic in its attempts to feed off of the emotional response provoked by separating a child from its mother . None of the songs or any other scenes are especially memorable , and there's nothing in the artistry to launch it into the same field as other early Disney films like " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs " or " Pinocchio . " |
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 the ability , and even the desire , to make dramatically heftier movies , but he seems at the same time to feel under obligation to deliver broad satire , and what we end up with is something that's neither fully emotionally affecting nor sharp and funny . Much of " Consideration " is humorous , but little of it is hilarious in the way that " Waiting for Guffman " is . I thought Guest's ensemble of actors was stretched as thin as it could get in " A Mighty Wind , " but it's stretched even thinner here . People like Bob Balaban , Michael McKean , and Michael Hitchcock get criminally little screen time . Even some of Guest's favorites , like Eugene Levy and Fred Willard , are stranded with roles they can't make much of . Guest's films have always relied on a squirmy brand of humour , the kind that walks a fine line between funny and pathetic , and this is the first film where the balance tips toward the latter . Some scenes , especially those featuring Willard as a vacuous entertainment-show host who tracks down non-nominees the morning after Ocscar nominations are announced to get their candid reactions , are so uncomfortable as to be nearly unwatchable . But fighting her way through this morass , and single-handedly making this film worth watching , is Catherine O'Hara , playing Marilyn Hack , an actress whose name mentioned in association with the words " Oscar buzz " on an Internet site sets off a frenzy of hope for a cast of unknowns or has-beens making a small movie that one doubts anyone will see . O'Hara's early scenes , in which she struggles to ignore the Oscar hype and keep her expectations realistically in check , are small gems of subtle acting . And her reaction to the Oscar nominations themselves , when her category comes and goes without any mention of her name , is devastating . Against all odds , she delivers a powerfully authentic performance in a movie that remains mostly superficial . The ultimate irony of course would be if O'Hara herself is recognized by the Academy . |
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 enough for him , no matter what the reaction might be . " Imprint " does have a certain fascinating quality about it . I know this may sound like a stretch , but it reminded me of " Rashomon " in the way it circled enigmatically around the truth . However , too frequently the images Miike puts on the screen make you want to turn away , so how engaged can you ultimately be in his story ? If he can just lose the childish obsession with torture and the desire to constantly shock for shock's sake , Miike might settle down into making consistently good movies . |
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 Jackson : make a movie that clocks in at under three hours . I just want to see if he can do it . Come on , if you can't remake a movie with as little story as " King Kong " in under three hours , you need to hire yourself a new editor . Thank God Jackson doesn't make television ads , or we'd have a four hour commercial for Domino's Pizza . Special effects fiends might just drop dead from bliss during " Kong . " Everyone else might find themselves looking at their watches . Jackson has approached this fable with the same dogged seriousness he brought to his " Lord of the Rings " trilogy , but it seems awfully unnecessary in this case . He and his fellow screenwriters have freighted their beauty and the beast tale with a lot of psychobabble about fate , bravery , honor and other such nonsense . As the film making team headed by Jack Black ( who gives the film's best performance , by the way ) lands on Skull Island , a young crew member named Jimmy ( yes , Jimmy ) is talking to an older crew member about Conrad's " Heart of Darkness . " " It's not really an adventure story at all , is it ? " he asks . " No , Jimmy , it's not , " the other replies . Gee whillickers , I knew we were on shaky ground from that point forward . And what was the point of Jimmy's subplot anyway , or any of the other subplots ? Jackson spends about an hour of our time developing all of these characters and dropping these portentous hints , but as soon as they hit the island and all hell breaks loose , he throws everything else out the window and brings on the giant bugs . Then we get another hour ( though it felt much longer - - - I think I grew some grey hairs along the way ) on the island , during which we watch " Jurassic Park 4 : The Dinosaurs They Didn't Find the First Time . " For a while , it's fun to watch how Jackson will one up himself in one outrageous set piece after another , but it all grows monotonous before long ( let's see , how many giant grasshoppers do we still need to kill ? ) At one point , my wife leaned over to me and whispered , " They haven't even gone to New York yet . " My already numb butt gave a whimper of dismay . I needn't have worried though . It seems that even Jackson realized he had spent way too much time on Skull Island , so we whip right through the New York sequence and get Kong on top of that Empire State Building as quickly as we can ( though not until he and Naomi Watts have re-enacted the ice skating sequence from " The Bishop's Wife . " ) Some people have called " King Kong " too much of a good thing . I just call it too much . Some of the scenes are amazing , like Kong's fight with a bevy of T-Rex's . Others , like the dreadful oogie-boogie moments with the island natives , teeter on the brink of plain awfulness . And Jackson needs to resist the urge to turn absolutely every single moment into an action scene . When the character of the writer , played by Adrien Brody , realizes that the boat with the film crew is setting sail with him still on it , he tries to get off and we get an action scene . Then we get an action scene when they land on the island . Then an action scene when they're kidnapped by natives . Then action scene after action scene while they're fighting off dinosaurs and bugs . Then an action scene when they capture Kong . Then an . . . . . . . . you get the idea . I half expected Jackson to give us an action scene revolving around Watts walking down to the convenience store to buy some milk . I thought a lot of the effects looked pretty cheesy . And shame on you Mr . Jackson for killing off the token black guy and the token Asian guy on the ship's crew . Have we made no social progress since 1933 ? The truly entertaining parts of " King Kong " are truly entertaining . And the bad parts are fun to laugh at for a while . But before this movie is over , you may just find yourself wishing that the damn gorilla would just die already . |
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 don't know anything about Johnny Cash , or what it was about his music that makes him such a legendary figure , you won't learn it here . As played by Joaquin Phoenix in a horribly mannered performance , Cash started out his career barely able to function from one day to the next , and never really improved until the love of a good woman ( enter June Carter ) turned him around . Phoenix's performance is one-note , all mumbled lines and eye-rolling freak out scenes . There's absolutely nothing interesting about Cash in this version of events , and there's no explanation of what it was about him that June Carter was so drawn to . Reese Witherspoon gives the better performance , but the material she's given limits the impact she can make . Johnny and June's relationship is muddled and ambiguous . I could never tell whether they were involved or not until his final freak out scene when he clumsily gets her to agree to marry him ( don't even ask me why she'd want to ) . The biggest tragedy of this movie is that it doesn't provide any insight into what made Cash a genius , or how the demons he was working through influenced the kind of music he wanted to make . Tepid as I thought " Ray " was , it at least accomplished that much . I've heard some people say that the performances in " Walk the Line " are better than the movie itself . Revise that to read Reese Witherspoon's performance is better than the movie , and I'll agree . |
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 both tone and visual style , is drenched in nostalgia , but it's too episodic to be involving as a story . It's like a Woody Allen essay sprinkled with one-liners more than a narrative film . There are a lot of recognizable faces in this , but few large roles , so most of them don't register much . |
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 , who finds things to do with the character that a lesser actress wouldn't have . It's also notable for showcasing John Travolta on the cusp of stardom . And Piper Laurie , who hadn't been seen by movie audiences since her appearance in " The Hustler " fifteen years earlier , pops up as a whacked out religious nutjob who would give Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford a run for her money as worst movie mom ever . De Palma uses funky split screens to stage the film's big set piece , the prom in which Carrie lets her telekinetic powers loose on her tormentors . The device looks hopelessly dated today , but yet somehow works well in context and makes the scene more disturbing than it otherwise might have been . |
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 separate elements of film-making brought together to create such a cohesive whole . And the last quarter or so of the film is admittedly exciting , and Griffith shows he knows how to use editing in ways that no one before him did . So the movie is interesting from a film history standpoint , but otherwise you've been warned . ( for its importance to film history ) but C ( for its watchability ) |
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 formal beginning or end . If that is the case , tell me what street these people's houses sit on , and remind me never to live there . This relentlessly sombre film gives us nine vignettes , each focusing on a moment in the life of a woman . Characters from one segment will appear in another , a gimmick that ties into the film's theme of connectedness but that otherwise has become one big mighty cliché in this day of Tarantinos , PT Andersons and Innaritus ( who serves as producer on this film , by the way ) . The biggest flaw is that this gimmick remains just that - - it forces a structured narrative on a film that doesn't need one , but it doesn't bring any additional nuance to the film . For instance , in a segment featuring Lisa Gay Hamilton as a deeply disturbed woman who comes home to settle scores with her father , we find that the character of the father has already appeared in the film's first segment , as a prison warden , but the connection doesn't tell us anything about him , his daughter or their relationship . Hamilton appears as a nurse in a later segment in which a woman ( Kathy Baker ) is being prepped for a mastectomy , but again , there's no continuity of character - - we don't know how to relate this calm and sedate nurse to the frantic young woman we saw earlier , and Garcia offers no help - - Hamilton could be playing completely different characters . Worst of all , Garcia's vision of life is unnecessarily gloomy and sad . Each woman deals with her own private demon , whether it be lost love , fear of death , loss of a loved one , murderous rage , guilt , regret , bitterness . But the movie is seriously lacking any message of hope . According to Garcia , life is a struggle , but he never illuminates what makes the struggle worthwhile . In any movie like this , the selling point is the acting , and it's no surprise that the performances are what make this film most worth watching . Robin Wright Penn , Kathy Baker and Glenn Close , in particular , do smashing work , and Close's segment , which closes the film , may just take your breath away . Nice try , but not an unequivocal success . |
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 song , but when they do , the song looks more like a music video than anything else . Some of those songs are terrific ( like the iconic title number performed by Irene Cara ) , and some are just stupid , like the lunchroom number . The movie is full of hot-button issues and melodramatic subplots that would make any tweener salivate , but the film is nearly impossible to take seriously once you're past the age of , say , 25 . Still , it's directed with a fair amount of style by Alan Parker , and it goes down easily enough . |
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 for this movie's creators , the actors deliver . Audrey Hepburn makes this a much better movie than it has any right being , and Alan Arkin delivers a weird but effective performance as the off-kilter psycho who comes after her for some heroin he believes is stashed in her apartment . The film gives away its stage origins - - most of the action is confined to Hepburn's apartment , and director Terence Young doesn't do a lot to give his movie a cinematic quality . But Hepburn and Arkin make this worth watching , and some moments toward the end do succeed in generating some truly nail-biting suspense . |
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 and so begins a fight with the hospital's staff to convince them that he's not a raving nutjob and merely seeks the truth of what happened . We know he's not guilty , mostly because he's played by Robert Taylor , and the female doctor assigned to his case ( played by the lovely Audrey Totter ) begins to realize that too , right around the time she starts to fall in love with him . The film looks like a noir , but's its really just a piece of melodramatic hokum in noir clothing . Taylor and Totter make a rather stiff pairing . I've come to adore Totter , a rather unknown actress who seems to have made her mark mainly in " B " offerings , but I like her better as a hotsy-totsy spitfire , like the one she played in " Tension . " Here she's asked to be straight-laced and professional , and she's not nearly as much fun . Herbert Marshall makes an effectively oily villain though , and he provides the movie the majority of whatever pizazz it has . Released shortly after WWII , the film more than anything is a laughable " warning " about what happens when men go off to war and the womenfolk stay behind . They get bored and set out to find ( gasp ! ) jobs , but they of course eventually have affairs with their bosses and are murdered as punishment . Ah , how far we've come . . . . . |
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 Tracy ( just on the verge of winning back-to-back Oscars ) and Jean Harlow , trying ( and failing , in my opinion ) to prove herself as a comedienne . Tracy plays a newspaper reporter engaged to Harlow , who can't ever quite get around to marrying her because of his devotion to his work . Loy is a society girl who is slandered in Tracy's paper . Tracy sends Powell out on a mission to put the moves on Loy so that the slander will be fact and save his paper from a libel suit , a scheme which also entails that Powell and Harlow pretend to be married . Things get complicated ( as these things do ) when Powell begins actually falling for Loy and no longer wants to trick her , and Harlow begins actually falling for Powell , much to the dismay of Tracy , whom no one seems to fall for . This all sounds like it should be the makings of a grade-A comedy , but somehow it's not . The movie is always amiable , but rarely does it take off as a screwball comedy the way other comedies from the same time , like " My Man Godfrey " or " Bringing Up Baby " , do . Much of my resistance to the film lies in the casting of Harlow , an actress I simply can't stand . Every time I see her in anything , I can't help but think how much better Ginger Rogers would be in her place - - they had the same look and played the same types , but Rogers had a graceful way with comedy and Harlow clunks around , always looking like she's trying too hard . No complaints about the other three though , especially Myrna Loy , one of my favorite actresses , who looks absolutely adorable in this . The film is worth watching , though , for one scene : William Powell trout fishing . I'll say no more . |
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 copping the documentary look with lots of hand-held camera shots and jump-cut editing . But the human story gets buried underneath the complex web of details , and despite a solid performance from Angelina Jolie as Pearl's remarkably stoic wife Mariane , I wasn't much moved by the film . Winterbottom doesn't display a lot of skill at making the details coherent to his audience , and I'm not sure even now who all of the players were or what role they played . He assumes that everyone will already come to the film knowing the story of Daniel and Mariane Pearl , and while I knew the general outline , I wasn't aware of all the specifics , and this film doesn't help . It recreates the feeling of coming into a T . V . series after having missed the opening episode , and trying to digest material without being able to put it into context . |
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 relishing the opportunity to play this droll monster , and whether or not he was deserving of the Academy Award he won for playing him , he does lend the film some much needed humor . Irons must have had a clause in his contract that stipulated he could only play creepy perverts at this stage in his career , because this followed closely on the heels of " Dead Ringers , " and indeed many felt that his award for " Reversal of Fortune " was really a way to award him for that earlier film . |
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 the artists themselves are usually rather dull . It's refreshing , then , that this film focuses much more on Vivienne and her struggles with mental illness than it does on the life of Eliot . The film's not entirely successful , but Richardson earned her Best Actress nomination and she's given able support by Rosemary Harris , who plays her mother in couple of brief scenes . |
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 instant comedy classic . There were plenty of moments that made me laugh , but usually they were the result of some minor and silly throw-away line of dialogue that felt improvised , making me want more of that . Which is why I was frustrated and rather depressed that most of the film consisted of hard-sell , aggressive gun / fistfights , car chases and other stock material normally found in buddy action movies . There's a hilarious and potentially classic addition to the stoner comedy buried somewhere within this bloated film that occasionally makes its appearance . But only occasionally . And I wasn't prepared for how graphically violent the film was going to be . It tries to play all of this awful violence for laughs but doesn't succeed . The humor just feels queasy and uncomfortable instead of outrageous . Though I did receive quite a bit of catharsis from seeing Rosie Perez crushed by a car . |
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 movie that was clearly made by a man , and it's a man's guess at what a feminist awakening would look and feel like , rather than the real thing . Therefore , it records Clayburgh's emotional development with the neatness of a house wife checking off items on a grocery list , and even throws in a lesbian daughter just to prove that there are women out there who don't need men at all , as if that's even remotely what feminism is about . Clayburgh is game , but she's better than the movie . |
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 where nothing ever changes . The characters and events in his story are influenced by the real women he meets , and the whole thing is spliced together in a dreamy , surreal fashion with a terrific , eclectic score playing constantly in the background . Sounds compelling , right ? It's not , really . The film makers haven't fashioned a story that is as captivating as the movie's visuals , so there's not a whole lot here to maintain your interest . Tony Leung's character seems to make pretty arbitrary decisions about which women he'll take and which he'll leave . He never seems to have much invested in any of the women he's with , including the ones he's supposedly so crazy about , so as a result , we don't care all that much what happens to his relationships either . And one gets the impression that director Wong is far more mesmerized with his lush compositions and languid story than we are , as he lets single shots linger long past the moment when they've made whatever dramatic impact they were intended to make . Allow me also one petty quibble : why did Wong decide to use such a large aspect ratio for his movie if he was going to constantly block half of his frame with a wall or some other stationary object , so that the subject of the shot is always crammed into the corner ? He might try to tell me that this was done for thematic purposes , but he's going to have to give me a better excuse than that . Not necessarily a bad movie , and there are things about it that are moderately interesting , but overall rather lacklustre . |
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 business starts to founder , and Charlie feels helpless to save it , until he meets Lola , a drag queen ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ) who inspires him to save the company by venturing into the niche market of boots made specifically for male cross dressers . The film claims to be inspired by a true story ( what film doesn't , these days ? ) and given its premise , it would have to be . There are some minor conflicts , but nothing gets too serious , and the happy ending , which you can call from a mile away , of course features Ejiofor and his troop of drag queen friends belting out showy songs set to disco beats . The movie is only half-baked , lots of details are left somewhat vague , everyone seems to be only going through the emotions to a certain extent , and Ejiofor makes one of the scariest women I've ever seen . But the film's message about being true to yourself and accepting others for what they are can never , in my opinion , be told enough , and though it's flimsy and lightweight , the movie is also entertaining and harmless enough . |
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 for her man - - she was such a contemporary actress that it's a shame to see her stifled behind period garb and mannerisms . Flynn is appropriately dashing as the man who loses his head over his queen , but there's not much to his role . The film was based on a stage play and it shows ; the usually reliable director Michael Curtiz couldn't seem to find a way to rid the story of its staginess . The Technicolor looks great though , and fans of production and costume design may want to check the film out for those aspects alone . |
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 . In the world of " Amores Perros , " it's eat or be eaten , a message that maybe lends itself well to gritty , grungy stylistics but isn't much of a hook on which to hang a compelling narrative . However , this movie scores in the way it tells its story , cutting back and forth between three narratives that build on one another in surprising ways . It's the same approach Inarritu uses in his first English-language film , " 21 Grams , " and it's actually used to better effect there , but it works here as well . His narratives are tangled webs rather than straight paths from point A to point B , and its a storytelling device that seems appropriate for the Internet age and the complicated ways in which we now process information . However , Inarritu should be cautious , as this approach used solely for its own sake can seem gimmicky , and it will lose its novel appeal if he uses it for every movie he makes . Needless to say , I'm not a huge fan of this movie , but I think Inarritu is a young filmmaker to watch . " 21 Grams " is more satisfying , and there's a pervading feeling of redemption to take away from that movie rather than the gloomy sense of doom " Amores Perros " offers , evidence that Inarritu is moving in the right direction . |
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 it might seem and really finds out what it means to be a dad when the toddler comes home with an armload of fireworks and begins shooting them at him and the maid . As far as Lloyd's short comedies go , this isn't one of his funniest , but it's only 25 minutes long , and hey , it's Harold Lloyd after all . You'll be able to see the ending coming practically before the movie has even started . |
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 hide herself away so that the police can't come after her for questioning , so through a twist of fate she ends up in a male boarding house where Cooper and his group of colleagues are hard at work developing an exhaustive encyclopedia . Libidos start to rumble , and the men delight in their new-found housemate , all but Cooper , who's determined to commit himself to his important work and not answer the call of the wild . Stanwyck proves too much for him , as of course she would for any red-blooded male , and the two fall for each other , which makes her situation much more complicated , as her gangster boyfriend has decided that the best way out of his mess is to marry her ( wives can't testify against husbands according to the law ) . " Ball of Fire " was not as zany or inspired as I was hoping it would be , or as it could have been given its premise . The likable group of actors who play Cooper's colleagues are responsible for much of the film's humour . They act like shy teenagers who have never seen a woman before , and fall all over each other to win Sugarpuss's favor , putting a flower on her breakfast tray or getting in arguments over who's best equipped to help her zip up her dress . Stanwyck and Cooper do generate some heat , and Stanwyck in particular has some wonderfully cute moments , like when she tries to kiss Cooper but has to erect a little footstool out of books because he's too tall for her to reach . But I wouldn't say that this movie is anything especially memorable . Rather , it's a completely serviceable comedy that doesn't really distinguish itself from any number of other serviceable comedies from the same time period . |
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 improvisation . The film stars a number of actors whose faces would become familiar but who were as yet unknown : Ron Howard , Richard Dreyfuss , Harrison Ford , Cindy Williams , and notably Mackenzie Phillips , who gives the funniest and most outrageous performance of the group . Fans of 1960s music and hot rods will also get a kick out of the soundtrack and the souped up cars these kids cruise around in , whiling away the hours before life - - and particularly the Vietnam War - - takes them in separate directions . Many lament the fact that George Lucas went on to make the " Star Wars " series when he could have instead made more films like this . I don't know . I for one enjoyed " Star Wars " a hell of a lot more . |
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 the portrayal of Persians in the film . There are at least three reasons that all of these people need to chill out about this movie : 1 . ) It's based on a graphic novel , and when was the last time we expected subtlety , realism or political correctness from a graphic novel ? 2 . ) Since it's a virtual recreation of a previously existing graphic novel , the blame for its offensiveness should rest on Frank Miller , not the film . 3 . ) The movie isn't nearly intelligent enough or important enough to be offended by . " 300 " is one long , witless , sustained shout of a movie . Sadly , the filmmakers take their purpose very seriously , so this has none of the knowing humour or kitsch value of " Sin City , " the 2005 masterpiece that also recreated a Frank Miller world on the big screen . The creators of " 300 " seem to think they have an important story to tell , and they tell it with deadly earnestness . Therefore , every single line of dialogue , every gesture , every sound effect , is pitched at the same over-emphatic level , with the results being a poundingly monotonous movie . After all the talk of the striking visual style , " 300 " ended up not being stylized enough for my taste . " Sin City " truly created a whole other world on screen ; realism was not only ignored - - it was completely shunned . In " 300 , " the artists try to create a realistic universe for their characters to move and fight in , so what we basically get in the end is an imitation of films like " Gladiator " and " Troy , " with even less brains . Not surprisingly , the movie is at its best when it's fighting . There are a couple of dazzling sequences , like the one in which our feisty band of Spartans sends a horde of Persians hurtling over a cliff ; or a montage that shows an extended series of battles including charging rhinos and elephants . But any time it slows down for plot exposition or scenes of dialogue , you might as well hit snooze , because you're not going to miss anything important . None of the actors really makes much impression , though they probably deserve credit for even doing as well as they do , considering they had nothing but blue screens to interact with . Gerard Butler is o . k . as King Leonidas , but his mush-mouthed line delivery was a constant distraction . Rodrigo Santoro gets stuck with a humiliating role as Xerxes , king of the Persians . The costume designer bedecks him in jewels and piercings , and the sound team give him an electronically fake voice that sounds ridiculous coming from such a fruit loop of a character . But no matter . The only thing you really notice about any of the actors are their sculpted abs and pecs , which are on constant and prominent display . Indeed , by the end of the film , I was identifying the characters by their torsos rather than by any distinguishing personality traits , since there aren't any . I was in the mood for a film like " 300 " and wanted desperately to like it , but it wore me down . Now I know how those Persians must have felt . |
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 Roberts , I might be tempted to dabble in the flesh trade myself . Unfortunatelty , most of them look more like Jason Alexander . Entertaining , harmless and mostly forgettable . |
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 time , set to period rock ' n roll tunes that makes for a better soundtrack than it does a movie . It's ably acted by a cast of young actors ( the late River Phoenix among them ) , and it's a solid effort overall , but it's not a movie that really spoke to me in any way or which I even really remember much all these years later . This movie did , however , trigger my repulsion for Kiefer Sutherland , which I nurture to this day . |
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 studio than of the auteur . Never again , for better or worse , would Altman relinquish control of his films , a tenacity that won him an instantly recognizable style not afforded to many other directors . So " Countdown " isn't terribly interesting formally and feels like it could have been directed by anybody , but that's not to say it isn't an interesting movie . Released a year before man actually landed on the moon , it provides a remarkably accurate guess at what such a feat would look like , and the film is played with conviction by a strong cast of actors led by James Caan , Robert Duvall and Michael Murphy . Duvall and Murphy would appear again in " MASH , " and Murphy would go on to become an Altman regular . Barbara Baxley , known to Altman devotees as Haven Hamilton's wife in " Nashville , " fulfills wifely duties in this film as well , though women may as well not even exist for all the attention the screenplay affords them . As a studio film , " Countdown " isn't half bad . As an Altman film , it's one of his weakest . But nevertheless , it's well worth seeking out , especially for fans of the iconoclastic director . |
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 introduced his film as the final entry in a trilogy that includes " Amores Perros " and " 21 Grams . " Inarritu , in a comment that surprised me , said that his intent with this trilogy was not to focus on politics or social commentary , but rather to look at the modern family and what it means to be a father , son , mother , daughter , etc . This may have been his intention , but I don't feel that over the course of three entire films Inarritu did say much about these issues . Instead , he has painted a portrait of the world as he apparently sees it as a pretty bleak , uncaring and unforgiving place to live . I thought " Amore Perros " was so pessimistic as to border on nihilism ; " 21 Grams " came closer to finding a sense of peace and redemption among the general human crappiness . " Babel " sticks closer to the sentiments of the first film than the latter . " Babel " is of course about communication , or more exactly miscommunication , in the modern world . It's a theme that has engaged the interest of many a filmmaker lately - - the idea that technology has made instant communication so much easier , yet people seem to be more than ever incapable of understanding one another . It's a conceit that greatly interests me , but Inarritu doesn't exploit its potential here . " Babel " consists of a monotonous series of scenes in which people shout , storm , fight and talk over one another , always in a hurry to be understood without taking the time to understand . Very well , point taken . But Inarritu makes this point within the film's first half hour - - you only need see one or two scenes of this kind of frustrating verbal gridlock to understand what he's trying to say ; after that , the frustration just mounts without any kind of pay off . People are mean to one another , some are unbelievably callous ( I didn't buy for a second that the group of tourists who accompany Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's characters to a remote Moroccan village after Blanchett is accidentally shot would be so uncaring as Inarritu depicts them ) . In Inarritu's world , all authority figures are to be justifiably feared , as they go around beating everybody up and pulling guns on innocent people . There's no nuance here ; Inarritu pounds his message into you . For example , he obviously feels strongly about the mistreatment of illegal immigrants , especially those from Mexico , but instead of engaging in an intelligent debate about the topic , he sets up such an implausible , not to mention one-sided , scenario in this film that you can't help but agree with him . The biggest disappointment in " Babel " is his failure to fully utilize a couple of wonderful actors he has assembled . Cate Blanchett is utterly wasted as the caustic American wife whose shooting sets off the chain of events . And Gael Garcia Bernal likewise gets nothing to do as a hot-headed Mexican whose attempts to run from border patrol creates a sad ending for one of the major characters . Brad Pitt does better than expected with the frenzied , frustrated husband of Blanchett . But these people have no history . We know virtually nothing about anybody in the film , yet are expected to care deeply about what happens to them . Maybe that's part of Inarritu's point - - that we're all connected to one another even if we don't know it , and that the world has become so small that there are no longer such things as strangers in it . But this is a film narrative , not real life , and you can't build a compelling one out of anonymous characters . After " 21 Grams " I thought I was warming up to Inarritu , but this film has sent me back to the detractors ' camp . He certainly knows how to put a movie together , and he finds engaging ways to tell his stories . But his attitudes and approach to the modern world are so depressing and fatalistic that his films push me away rather than draw me in . |
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 heartbreaking performance as Apple Annie , a sidewalk peddler who writes to her daughter , living abroad , of her luxurious lifestyle among New York's upper crust . When the daughter announces that she'll be visiting with her fiancé and father-in-law , who wants to meet his son's intended in-laws before giving his approval to his marriage , Annie is in a panic , and even considers having someone tell her daughter that she is dead . But a gangster acquaintance and his minions come to her aid , making her over and posing as her staff and high society friends . This is a fairy tale as only Frank Capra could tell it . On the surface is a heart-warming story about people who are willing to help others , but at the same time , the very real chasms that separate class from class are never far away . And like " It Happened One Night , " though the film isn't directly about the Great Depression , the spectre of it hovers over all . The film also stars Guy Kibbee as a pool hustler who stands in as Annie's husband . |
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 thought , as good as Myrna Loy was in the original " Thin Man " film , that she was underused and that William Powell dominated the movie . That is even more the case here , with Loy a decidedly supporting character . But it's still entertaining , and not many films are as good as the first " Thin Man , " so it had very high standards to meet . And the last scene of this film , providing a sort of cliff hanger segue into the next film in the series , is especially memorable . |
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 company , whose life is being threatened for unknown reasons . Of course it's not long before we and Tierney realize that he's been set up to be the fall guy for a crooked plot to swindle the company away from the old lady , and he helps crack the case with the help of his girl Friday Priscilla Lane . " Bodyguard " is almost laughingly short and inconsequential , but it's an awful lot of fun . There's nothing especially striking about the writing or visual style , but yet it doesn't feel anonymous either . There are some clever set pieces to distinguish the film , most notably a scene that takes place in an optometrist's office and that uses some clever lighting and framing . And Tierney has a cute relationship with Lane , and it's refreshing to see a woman in a film like this take an active role in solving the crime rather than simply be someone the leading man has to rescue . Robert Altman ( credited as Robert B . Altman ) wrote the story for this film at the ripe old age of 25 . Far from a must see , but enjoyable if you can find it . |
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 fantasy . Hot damn ! ! Their perfect woman is Kelly Le Brock , who wouldn't necessarily be my choice , but she'll do . John Hughes was on a roll with his teen comedy genre , and this film preserves the memorable performances of Anthony Michael Hall and a young Bill Paxton as the world's most obnoxious older brother . |
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 basically an all-female version of " Police Academy " or " Stripes " ( which would come out a year later ) . I don't have anything else to say about this movie but I have to have ten lines of text to get my comment approved . |
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 is very interesting from a historical standpoint . Simply knowing that this short film played in mainstream movie houses , and addressed the Depression head on , shows how different a world we live in today , when mass entertainment seeks to do anything but make its audiences think about current events . And there's a chilling moment when Tracy says that the war they're currently waging ( the Depression ) makes the war they just lived through ( WWI ) seem like a cake walk - - - this wouldn't have been chilling at the time , but from today's vantage point , knowing WWII was just around the corner , it gives this little nothing of a film a prophetic quality . |
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 war on terror as a backdrop . It imagines a quite possible scenario - - a group of Muslim extremists infiltrate the U . S . and plan to coordinate fifty suicide missions so that fifty buses around the country will explode at the same moment . The man in charge of the mission ( Don Cheadle ) is actually working for the C . I . A , but the F . B . I . doesn't know that , so they're after him . Meanwhile , he's trying to keep his true identity as an informant from his fellow terrorists while at the same time suffering from increasingly frequent attacks of conscience - - in order to infiltrate the network , he must continue to carry out real attacks that result in the deaths of real people . Don Cheadle is a tremendous actor , and he pulls off this material capably , but it's not worthy of him . The film is full of obvious moral observations , such as the thesis that the United States and the Muslim extremists aren't that different from one another , as both are willing to kill innocent people in their respective efforts to fight one another , and both claim that God is on their side of the battle . These are given lowest common denominator treatment , so that while the film is moderately exciting , it's not very intelligent . It's the kind of movie that fades from memory immediately after viewing . Also starring Guy Pearce , perhaps the most versatile actor in the world , here playing a Southern Baptist F . B . I . agent ; and Jeff Daniels , hopelessly underused as Cheadle's C . I . A . contact . |
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 with the movie is that it only flirts with these themes ; it doesn't fully flesh them out . The film has become eerily prescient in today's social climate in which everyone is in search of physical perfection - - and will do nearly anything to obtain it - - but it doesn't really explore this idea and come up with any conclusions about it . The whole film seems like set up for a finale intended to shock with its starkness and brutality , but it comes off instead as merely heavy handed . Not a bad movie by any means , just not a great one either . |
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 have my review . This took the " Full Monty " slot at the 1994 Academy Awards . The little indie comedy from the UK that developed a following and found itself in competition with major Hollywood products ( like " Forrest Gump " ) . I have a feeling I'd watch it now and find it pretty unremarkable . |
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 she overacts her way through one emotional freak out after another as a hot and bothered teen trying to deal with raging hormones . Warren Beatty appears in an early film role , but doesn't do much more beyond giving the ladies something to look at . The teen angst films that dominated in the mid-1950s blow this film out of the water . |
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 , the ladies parted ways to headline their own campy star vehicles . Crawford did " Strait-Jacket , " in which she got to work lopping off heads before the opening credits even began rolling . Davis got " Hush . . . Hush , Sweet Charlotte , " in which she did some pre-credits hacking away of her own . . . . . . or did she ? Of course she didn't , and I'm not giving anything away by stating that outright . The movie doesn't for a second try to convince anyone that there's any real mystery around whether or not Davis truly murdered her fiancé , who we find out in a prologue is actually already married . The mystery revolves around who , some thirty odd years later , is trying to drive her crazy by making her think that she was her fiancé's murderer , and why they would be doing such a thing . It's a pretty good bet that Olivia de Havilland , in a performance that's a far cry from Melanie Wilkes , and Joseph Cotten have something to do with it . At least , housekeeper and Davis confidant Agnes Moorehead thinks so , and takes a tumble for her efforts to expose the dastardly goings on . Moorehead gives the film's best performance , and some life goes out of the film when she makes her exit . This isn't a very good movie . It's enjoyable enough for what it is , but it's far too long ( " Strait-Jacket " knew enough to keep its running time down to a trim 90 minutes ) , and it's not especially clever . There's never any real mystery to it , and we really spend most of the time hoping ( and knowing ) that Davis will eventually catch up with us . It's fun to see de Havilland in such a bitchy role , and even more fun to see her and Cotten meet their end when Davis upends a giant concrete flower pot on their heads . That also makes up for the atrocious title song , one of those warbly numbers that sounds completely out of place in a Southern Gothic tale like this . |
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 women must now navigate very tricky terrain . A relationship that had been maternal in one way has now become maternal in a very different way . The therapist loves Rafi and thinks she's a wonderful person , but she also knows much about her that prospective mothers-in-law don't necessarily know about their sons ' girlfriends , things that compound the problems raised by Rafi's not only being 14 years older than the son , but also decidedly NOT Jewish . I wish more of " Prime " had been about this relationship , the one between Thurman and Streep . As it is , the movie feels like it has two separate halves that the young director / writer Ben Younger doesn't successfully bring together into a comprehensive whole . The rest of the film follows Rafi and her boyfriend as they try to build a relationship despite the age difference . Nothing about this half of the movie is new or fresh , and Younger never convinced me why I should care . I was too distracted by the fact that he had a wonderful actress like Streep in his film and didn't seem to know what to do with her . " Prime " is far from a bad film , and given its indifferent reception when it was released in theatres , I actually expected it to be worse than it was . But it is a rather half-baked film , and not one you need to spend a lot of mental energy on , which in this case is a criticism , because it raises a lot of interesting ideas that it never explores . |
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 nothing role , and earned her sixth Academy Award nomination for her efforts . Beyond Hepburn , there's not a whole lot to this film . It consists mostly of scenes in which Hepburn and Rosanno Brazzi , as an Italian paramour , make tentative gestures toward one another . David Lean provides solid if uninspired direction . The movie looks nice - - Venice especially looks beautiful , and really what's going on in the background almost always holds more interest than anything going on in the foreground - - but one wishes they had splurged on CinemaScope . Subsequent Lean films would not have this problem - - he was about to embark upon his transition to massive epics that would keep him busy for the next thirty years . |
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 themselves at the subject matter - - homosexuality , cannibalism , lobotomies . Choose your psychological depravity , it's here . But now it all just seems so SILLY . All of the actors take the affair dreadfully seriously , and I don't know whether that makes the movie better or worse . Katharine Hepburn is the only one who you might suspect is in on the joke . She does an impersonation of Katharine Hepburn doing an impersonation of a loony Southern matriarch who likes to fondle venus fly traps while talking about turtles having their bellies plucked out by seagulls . Her nose pointed at the ceiling while delivering all of her lines in that haughty Eastern aristocratic accent makes you wonder if she showed up on the set , realized what she was in for , and decided to have some fun with it . Montgomery Clift delivers a zoned-out performance and wanders through the film like a zombie - - with all the talk about lobotomies , you wonder if his character has already had one . And it's a wonder there was any scenery left after Elizabeth Taylor was done chomping up her role as the young lass who saw her gay boyfriend eaten by a bunch of Italian hunks . Can't imagine why she would have any neuroses after that . Ah , well . For all of its ridiculousness , " Suddenly , Last Summer " does have a certain fascinating quality about it , mostly due to its lurid subject matter . You keep watching to see how much farther over the edge the film can possibly go . This doesn't make it a good movie , but it does make it watchable . |
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 actors to explore the depths of the musical's book . Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones were fine as perky country folk in " Oklahoma ! " from a year earlier , but MacRae is not a dangerous enough presence to pull off the rough character of Billy Bigelow . Still , as mentioned , the score sounds wonderful and remains mostly intact for the film . And Agnes DeMille provides some characteristically stunning screen choreography , especially in the trademark R & H ballet sequence . |
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 " Party Girl " she plays a variation of herself , but that's just fine with me . She appears in virtually every frame of the film , but the movie isn't much of anything without her , so I welcomed the overdose of Posey . The script for " Party Girl " feels half-assed , though I did appreciate the existential crisis faced by Posey's character and the shelter she seeks in the Dewey Decimal System as a way of bringing order to her chaotic existence . I wish the screenwriters had taken clever hooks like that further . And the ending had a conventional , all-loose-ends-tied-up quality that would better suit a television sitcom than an out-there indie film . But none of these faults take anything away from Posey herself , so really , how serious can they be ? |
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 it just feels lazy , like no attempt was really made to make sense out of the screenplay , especially near the end . But then again , " Suspiria " ' s strengths did not rest in its logic and character development . Argento is a master of style , and " Tenebre " has that if nothing else . It's not a scary or even a very suspenseful movie , but there's no denying that it does have a sort of unsettling effect on the viewer . Argento approaches horror with the exact opposite aesthetic of other horror directors ; instead of using shadows and murky lighting to create ominous scenes , he instead stages his movies ' most horrific moments in brightly lit , sterile-looking rooms , frequently with disco music pulsing on the soundtrack . In Argento's world , even scenes taking place at night look like they're being filmed in broad daylight . The overall effect is disorienting when you're used to horror movies looking a certain way , and when blood flows in his films , it looks particularly red when splashed across the pristine white walls he favors . " Tenebre " doesn't make that much sense , and it tested my patience a bit , but it did hold a certain fascination for me , certainly enough to keep me watching through to the end . |
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 - - including his love - - lose their youth while he gained his . That same kind of conflict is the missing ingredient in " The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , " and without it , this wisp of a story doesn't add up to anything . This film is a three-hour journey with a blank slate of a character who doesn't seem to react much to the things that happen to him . Yes , Benjamin Button ages backwards , but the film never establishes how Benjamin's life is any different because of this quirk than if he had aged traditionally . The gimmick offers a lot of excuses for cool special and makeup effects , but otherwise this is just a long and rather boring episodic story that doesn't have anything to say about its characters . It's time for the world to face that fact that Brad Pitt is simply a limited actor , and it's a mistake to put him at the center of any film that relies on a complex performance to make it work . The same thing was wrong with last year's " The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , " but that film worked despite Pitt's presence , largely because good actors were cast in all of the other roles , and they created interesting characters to compensate for the dull one at the film's center . The same is not so here . The only other actor who gets a meaty role to play is Cate Blanchett , and though she looks lovely , she's simply not given the material with which to create a memorable performance . Taraji P . Henson , who plays Pitt's mother , just does the strong Southern mom routine that Sally Field already created in " Forrest Gump . " The best performance comes from Tilda Swinton , who has a tiny role as an enigmatic woman who shares some intimate moments with Benjamin . She was so fascinating that I would rather have left the movie I was watching to follow her story instead . That's never a good sign . It's hard to believe that the David Fincher who made last year's endlessly fascinating " Zodiac " helmed this film as well . While " Benjamin Button " is nowhere nearly as maudlin as it could have been ( and probably would have been in someone else's hands ) , it's downright gloopy compared to Fincher's other works . The sentimentality is not helped by Pitt's thunderous voice over narration that's full of machine-made homilies , the kind that start with phrases like " The funny thing about home is . . . . " or " Sometimes the people that mean the most to us . . . . " The film is as technically accomplished as they come , every scene pretty as a picture . But one wishes that Fincher and company had spent a little less time making their film look nice and more time fleshing out a story that would engage our interest for nearly three hours . |
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 , as Mary , is the " other " girl of the title , depending on your point of view . Both are paraded before King Henry VIII ( Eric Bana - - yeah right ! ) in an attempt to make one or the other his mistress and so establish the Boleyn family firmly in the king's favor . It's a vaguely feminist story - - the girls ' uncle and father pull the strings , while their mother ( Kristen Scott Thomas , underused ) stands in the background looking disapproving . But first and foremost , the film is a gussied up bit of Masterpiece Theatre starring beautiful Hollywood actors . The film is entertaining , but never fully engaging . For me , this was largely due to the casting . Natalie Portman is directed to play Anne Boleyn like a scheming villainess one moment , and a nobly suffering wife the next . The performance is uneven and unconvincing , and I'm not sure if the fault lies with Portman as an actress , the way the part is written , or the way she's directed to play it . Eric Bana does not have the physical presence or spirit to play Henry VIII , though the ladies in the audience should be happy , because the only bosoms to be seen in the movie belong to him . Let's just say that if Henry VIII had looked like Eric Bana , history might have turned out differently . The only actress who I felt truly did service to her role is Scarlett Johansson . Johansson gets a bad rap from people for some reason , but every time I see her in something , I'm impressed by how much I like her . I think she's a good actress who doesn't coast on her looks ( like she certainly could ) , and I wonder how this film would have come across if she and Portman had switched roles . Fans of elaborate costumes and production design should have fun with this movie . |
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 that his movies were destined for camp , and there's always that sense that he's laughing at his earnest spectacles right along with you . Give me " The Greatest Show on Earth " over " Ben-Hur , " or any other number of oh-so-serious Hollywood epics , any day . There was no excuse for DeMille to inflict Betty Hutton on audiences a mere 2 years after her migraine-inducing performance in " Annie Get Your Gun , " but she's about the worst you'll have to contend with in this movie . As usual , Charlton Heston's acting is so bad it's good and Cornel Wilde looks like a plastic action figure of himself . Gloria Grahame single-handedly infuses the picture with some much-needed va-va-voom , and she has more chemistry with the elephant she's paired with in one scene that any of the rest of the cast has with each other . James Stewart shows up as a homicidal doctor disguised as a clown ( I'm not kidding ) , and fills the role of the obligatory prestige actor that all such trashy ensemble films must have ( think Fred Astaire in " The Towering Inferno " or Helen Hayes in " Airport " ) . The film is ugly as all get-out ; the Technicolor looks terrible , and the costumes are tawdry . There's nothing to distinguish the entire production except for the entire cast's apparent commitment to the material and DeMille's belief that this kind of movie is worth caring about . He's such a capable , if not especially artistic director , that he almost succeeds in convincing you that it is . Plus , there's a really cool train wreck at the end . |
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 escape a society in which they feel they don't belong . Both men have persecution complexes of a sort , and feel that there's something noble in their efforts to commune with the wilderness . But " Grizzly Man " is an objective , journalistic account of Timothy Treadwell , and Herzog's fascination is with the obsessions that made him tick . " Into the Wild , " being a fictional film , is already once-removed from the real-life story of Christopher McCandless , and director Penn piles on so much bombast and padding , that the impact of the story becomes blunted under a veneer of pure Hollywood studio . My biggest obstacle in liking this film is that I didn't like the character of Christopher , nor did I like Emile Hirsch , the actor who plays him . McCandless , who gives himself the moniker Alexander Supertramp once he's set off on his odyssey , is an arrogant 20-year old who thinks he has the world figured out , and woe be to anyone who tries to tell him otherwise . His psychological troubles stem from the emotionally ( and the movie suggests at times physically ) abusive environment he grew up in . His parents are played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden as cartoonish caricatures of Southern aristocracy ; his sister , played by Jena Malone , is the only one who Christopher believes understands him , and her character provides the film with one of the most thudding voice over narrations I've ever heard in a movie . We get it - - he shuns the materialistic world as a way of shunning his affluent parents . But a two and a half hour movie built around a kid learning a lesson that many of us already knew going into it makes for a mighty tedious movie indeed . That lesson , learned too late , is that human companionship makes life worth living , and that happiness means very little if you have no one to share it with . Many recognizable actors show up throughout the film as strangers Christopher comes across and develops fleeting relationships with , and all of them have a chance to pontificate . The trouble is that all of them ( especially Catherine Keener as a hippie and Hal Holbrook as a lonely old man ) are so much more interesting than Christopher himself that we wish the movie would stay with them and let Christoper be on his merry way . This movie really copped out as far as I'm concerned . Everyone Christopher comes across is gently understanding of his plan even if they try to discourage him . Not once does someone tell him that his actions represent supreme cowardice and hypocrisy . If he was so bothered by the state of society , why didn't he do something productive to help change it rather than run away and hide ? Maybe this is the point Penn was trying to make , but I felt like Penn himself couldn't decide whether Christopher's behavior was foolish or admirable . I feel like I was meant to come away from this film moved by the tragedy of a life wasted . But I wasn't moved at all , nor did I find it all that tragic . " Grizzly Man " - - now THERE's a film that moved me . |
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 chemistry as a romantic leading man . Barbara Stanwyck is great and sexy , so the fault doesn't lie with her . I almost feel bad about not liking this movie , because all of the elements for a good movie are there , and I can't give any rationale for my opinion . But for me it doesn't even come close to matching the allure of other screwball comedies from the 30s and 40s . |
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 merge the two approaches to storytelling , and his movies have suffered for it . His pure entertainments , like " War of the Worlds , " haven't been particularly entertaining , and his message movies , like " Saving Private Ryan , " have been short on message . " Munich " is further proof that Spielberg is just not an especially intelligent director . He wants to thrill us with a cloak and dagger story even while he's preaching to us . The problem is this : the thriller parts of " Munich " undercut the seriousness of the topic , yet they're the only really entertaining moments of the film . Tony Kushner has written a clunky screenplay that jars to a halt every twenty minutes or so to discuss the moral crisis at the center of the movie as if we've been invited to sit in on a civics class , rather than letting the crisis evolve naturally from the material or allowing the audience to do any of the work for itself , which it is entirely capable of doing . And the action movie sections , while admittedly exciting , are manipulative and reek of classic Spielberg . He just can't resist the pull of emotional bombast and resorts to cheap tricks in order to build suspense . For instance , in a scene in which the team of Israeli assassins has rigged one of their target's phones to blow up when it is answered , he goes out of his way to introduce a child into the scene to heighten the tension ; however , Spielberg is so predictable that we know a child will never die so aimlessly in one of his films . A truly original director would have made that scene suspenseful without pandering to our base emotions . And late in the film , during a scene in which Avner , the lead assassin , is making love to his wife while images of what happened to the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics flash through his head , Spielberg's histrionics derail the movie altogether into pure camp . Never mind that Avner couldn't possibly be remembering what happened since he never actually witnessed the events in the first place - - at a moment when the film should be gripping , it's instead ridiculous . The movie has a terrific look , and reminded me of those gritty paranoid films from the early seventies , like " The French Connection " and " The Conversation . " Indeed , the look of the film and the skill with which it's put together will give people the illusion that's it a more important film than it really is , and will likely get it nominated for a buttload of Oscars . But in a year of such great movies that have already covered much of the same ground , " Munich " seems even further away from being an important film than it might in a more mediocre year . " A History of Violence " pretty much had the final word on the cyclical nature of violence and how it eventually degrades human morality ; and Steven Gaghan showed with " Syriana " that a political thriller can be intelligent and exciting all at the same time . I was impressed with Eric Bana , mostly because I've only seen him in " Hulk " and " Troy " and since those two movies don't comprise the world's most stunning acting resume , I was pleasantly surprised that he has quite a bit of skill . One senses that he didn't need Spielberg and company to stop the proceedings for the periodic lectures they wedge into the film ; he could have done just fine on his own . And no other actors really get much of a chance to develop characters we care about , which has always been and probably always will be a weakness in any Spielberg movie . I'm not Jewish or Palestinian , so I think I can speak pretty objectively to the fairness with which Spielberg approaches the topic . He makes an admirable attempt to address both sides , but the film's sympathies obviously lie with the Jews , and there a few moments when it takes on a self-righteous tone that threatens to tip the balance . However , Spielberg is Jewish , so I could easily excuse this . There's a haunting , powerful film to be made from the events detailed in this film , but " Munich " isn't it . |
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 over the appearance and minds of earthlings ( but can only do so when said earthlings are asleep - - go figure ) . Maybe I missed something , but I don't understand what happens to the people whose appearance and minds the pod people take over - - shouldn't there be two of everyone walking around by this logic ? But best to leave logic at the door . At a brisk 80 minutes , this movie breezes by quickly enough , and manages to generate a small - - albeit very small - - level of suspense , but if you're expecting the sci-fi classic everyone has led you to expect , you might be disappointed . |
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 the only movies I can think of that gets more boring as it picks up speed . Watching the boiling anguish and suffering on the faces of Marisa Tomei and Sissy Spacek kept me interested for a while , but both women disappear for large portions of the film . A solid enough movie - - - - but one of the best of the year ? . . . . . |
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 the rest of us are fast asleep ? But I couldn't help but feel that the film was trying too hard , like its creators were intentionally setting out to make something that would eventually end up as a cult classic . That it did doesn't make the movie any better . The best cult classics are those that become so naturally , not those that are manufactured to be so . Griffin Dunne is on screen nearly constantly , and he does well with his role , gradually working himself up to a nearly hysterical pitch of frustration in his failed attempts to get back to the safety of his home . The supporting cast is peopled with recognizable faces in cameos : Teri Garr , Catherine O'Hara , Cheech Marin , Rosanna Arquette . But no one is really playing a character , and no one really gets much to work with . I wasn't bothered by the implausibility of the film ; implausibility is the film's point . But I did get somewhat bored by the arbitrary plot twists , and the fact that I couldn't connect with anyone in the film , not even Dunne , whose character is vaguely unlikable . I did like the film's ending , though . It nicely captures that feeling of waking from an unsettling dream into the familiar world that you know and recognize . |
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 that Americans need their humor to be broader and more obvious in order to appreciate it , but whatever . It's hard to understand now how bold this subject matter - - transvestites , openly gay lifestyles , etc . - - was for 1979 , and that probably has played a large role in the life this film has had since ( thanks largely also to the hit Broadway musical based on it ) . I bet people who saw the original first like it better than " The Birdcage , " and vice versa . |
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 costumes and identities and is allowed to ham it up as much as he wants . On the negative side , the children who serve as the film's focus are the dreariest kids to ever appear in a children's film ; the director can't drag a reaction from them to save his life . Each has one stock facial expression they use to respond to every situation : the boy widens his eyes and the girl purses her lips . The fun in the film is supposed to come from watching them foil Carrey again and again , yet I was rooting for Carrey the whole time . There's a bunch of other big names , some used more than others . Meryl Streep is a dotty aunt who's afraid of everything . Billy Connolly is a reptile expert . Mike Leigh regular Timothy Spall is the attorney in charge of seeing that the children are provided for by their legal guardian . All of these actors have a fair amount to do . However , others , like Dustin Hoffman and Jennifer Coolidge , make appearances that don't really even rate as cameos , and I'm not sure why they're in the film at all . And Jude Law , who has now proved that he was in just about every film released in 2004 , does narration duties . So overall " Lemony Snicket " is a fun but not especially memorable film . As far as children's films go , think more along the lines of Tim Burton than Walt Disney , but not as good as a Burton movie . And one more thing : this movie has the longest end credits I've ever seen . |
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 where she performs the " Voodoo " night club number wearing a gorilla costume . The plot is pure nonsense - - the point of the film is , of course , Dietrich herself , and your enjoyment of it will depend greatly on how enamored you are of the famous star . I actually thought Dietrich's sex appeal increased with age ; she looked hot and sultry in " Witness for the Prosecution " and " Touch of Evil , " made in the late 1950s . There's no reason not to see " Blonde Venus , " but I myself am not much of a follower . |
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 supposedly dead wife , who shows up alive just after Grant has remarried . The rest of the movie is about Grant promising to tell his new wife ( Gail Patrick ) about his old one and finding ways out of it , and then getting jealous when the man ( Randolph Scott ) who shared seven years with Dunne on a deserted island when they both were supposed to be dead reenters the picture and threatens to steal Dunne away . The premise is dynamite , but the humour feels somewhat strained and many of the jokes fall flat . It doesn't help that Grant's character is a bit of a weenie , and the new wife , who we're supposed to think is a bitch but whom the film never establishes as such , comes across as a victim , which makes Grant's and Dunne's antics feel more mean than funny . There is a memorable conclusion though that finds Dunne in bed and Grant dressed as Santa Claus . |
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 . Cobb ) , however , happens to be a criminal psychologist , and he begins to deconstruct Holden's psyche , eventually rendering him helpless when the ultimate showdown with the police occurs . This isn't a terribly interesting film , either in style or subject matter . A good portion of the film is spent in Cobb analyzing a recurring nightmare of Holden's , acknowledging it as the key to Holden's anti-social tendencies . But the dream itself is basic Freud , all about anger towards father figures and love for a lost mother . This all might have seemed cutting edge at the time , when psychology as an area of study had become trendy to address in film , but it has a been-there-done-that quality now . Holden isn't very good in his role , overacting to the hilt , and he's not convincing as a bad guy . But it is nice to see both he and Cobb playing against type for a change . Cobb especially is refreshing , for once playing a character quietly and reservedly rather than as a bellowing lout . Director Rudolph Mate and his screenwriter could have done all sorts of things to explore the group dynamics of a situation like this , but they don't . For a much better family-taken-hostage story , watch " Key Largo , " released the same year as this film . |
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 movies , like " Doctor Zhivago , " " The Battleship Potemkin " and " Persona . " The film culminates with a scene in which Allen's hapless Russian schmuck teams up with the cousin with whom he is desperately but unrequitedly in love ( Diane Keaton ) to assassinate Napolean , though the person they're trying to kill is actually a Napolean impostor . All of this madcap , zany comedy ends with a hat tip to Bergman's " The Seventh Seal , " of all films , as the Allen character goes dancing through a meadow with the Grim Reaper . This isn't the funniest Allen movie out there , but it's a harmless enough way to spend a quick 82 minutes . |
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 . , but for me he's not one of those actors who can single-handedly carry a movie . I've always been immune to the charms of Bacall . So all in all , this movie left little impression on me . It's enjoyable as yet one more entry in that hard-boiled detective genre that was so in vogue at the time , but it's not one of the more memorable examples of it . |
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 with more magic . I missed the character of Gaston in the Cocteau version , and I missed also the delightful assortment of animated objects . And I think this story is particularly conducive to being set to music , and I enjoyed the songs in the Disney version . However , on its own terms , the 1946 release is well done , and considered by many to be the definitive version of the beauty / beast tale . I thought the acting was bland , though Belle is indeed a beauty . And there are moments of pure movie magic : the candelabras that light Belle's way , the fireplace that watches her father eat . And for once slow motion is used in a way that doesn't feel cliché . But the relationship between Belle and the Beast isn't well developed . You don't see Belle falling in love with him over the course of the film , and when she professes her love at the end , it seems to come out of thin air . And was I the only one confused by the transformation at the end ? It doesn't get explained well at all . Though it is kind of funny at how blase Belle is when the Beast becomes a hunk and says she'll have to get used to his new face . The film is interesting in that it acknowledges the Beast's animalistic nature . He hunts wild game , he craves blood , and more than once you wonder whether or not he'd rather eat Belle than court her . There's a violent eroticism underlying this film , that I found surprising for the year it was released . I know Cocteau asks his audience at the film's beginning to watch the film with the eyes of a child and to give itself over to the enchantment of fairy tales , and I have no problem doing that . But even so , I felt like he was using fairy tale logic to explain away things that could have been explained better . |
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