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train_17092 | This movie made me very angry. I wanted desperately to throttle the "scientists" and unseen film-makers during the course of it. Very, very painful to sit through. Sophomoric and pretentious in the worst way. The little good information on brain function/chemistry and quantum theory is lost in a sea of new agey horse sh*t. The worst offenders were the crack-pot charlatans Ramtha and Joseph Dispenza. Mr. Dispenza informs us that most people lead lives of mediocrity and clearly implies that he, on the other hand, is living on a higher plane. Even the ideas and attitudes that I basically agree with are presented in such a heavy handed, clumsy, superior, pretentious, preachy manner that I felt the desire to disavow them. I think that's what made me so angry, the fact that they've taken what are indeed profound aspects of established scientific thought and marred them with their new age hokum. Much of it is based around the fallacy of applying concepts of quantum theory to the macro world. Fittingly, the dramatized portions with Marlee Matlin are amateurish and cliché ridden.I would refer people instead to Bill Bryson's excellent survey of science: "A Brief History of Nearly Everything." There's plenty of profound wonder about life and the universe in the actual, established science. | 0 |
train_20730 | I'm dumbfounded. Yes that's right. I'm really caught here. No way did I find it awful, but on the other hand it was a frustrating experience in macabre hysterical and murky incoherency. The idea behind such a trim, minimal low-budget Indie production isn't bad, but it's a confused muddle and in the end didn't do anything for me. It's amateurish and simple; it wants to exploit beyond reasoning and do so in that of-late fashionably rapid filming style. We have the documentary laced (hand-held) camera moving everywhere (despite never leaving the van), and sometimes feeling unfocused and blurry making certain details hard to figure out. Lately you kind of get use to it, but there are times when it does become too distracting and even nauseating. Keeping it still will help. The context has little groundwork (which has five teenage girls on their way home from a football game late at night and becoming lost on the back roads. At a road-side store they become involved in a minor accident which smashes an unoccupied SUV headlight. Scared, they flee and not too long that one-light SUV appears behind them. Soon to make their night an unforgettable ordeal in terror) spending most of the time playing out a drawn out, noisy and relentless cat and mouse game. As for being disturbing
I guess that depends. Some moments can make you squirm with its attention to pain, desperation and demented brutality (with good use of piercing sound FX that seem to be more favoured over the imagery and not forgetting the alienating background sound effects), but also I found myself snickering too. In passages it can be repellent and intense with a real gradual rush, but hardly believable. The injuries of random characters never seem as serious like you were to believe, despite obviously they should be. Watch how blood runs freely, but it's not entirely convincing and can get dull. The constant nocturnal car chase could only do so much before getting repetitive. We get screaming, spewing, bleeding, running, cursing, body fluids and so on. Quite unpleasant details followed too. With little really to do, it needed a much stronger script than the measly forced one that was penned up. Too many cringe-moments arose from it, and there was not much in the way of depth for the characters and situation they were in. It was about set-pieces, waiting for next torturous encounter and it drew it out long enough. Helping out is it had an unpredictable pattern. The performances; Jennifer Barnett, Angela Brunda, Danielle Lilley, Sandra Paduch and Mia Yi are workman-like with their distraught characters and draw an authentic chemistry to make up for the script's weaknesses in its character-foundation . Veronica Garcia's flipped-out, bug-eyed intensity as the loony driver of the SUV was something
yeah something. Her character's real motivation for terrorising the girls and her unstable state of mind is virtually non-existent. I guess being psychotic was good enough. Now probably the most unnerving thing I came across in the feature was that hideous soundtrack. Terrible techno music, to cheesy hard-rock and an overwrought closing score. It never felt overdone or got in the way, but it did stick out like a sore thumb. Co-directors Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen try to get the most out of their slight resources, but even with it edgy spirit it ends up being something quite ramshackle. Maybe it was enjoyable to make, but watching it just wasn't the case. | 0 |
train_447 | This is one of the best movies. It is one of my favorites. A movie with good acting. The story is very sensitive and touching. Good camera work also.The names of the actresses and actors are not at the top of the American Star list. However, they give equal or better performances than the top of the list.It is such a pleasure to see a movie about true love, romance, friendship without having to endure watching someone having to kick-box their way to save the world.If you don't like this movie then you have no heart or feelings. Then go watch a sports movie. There is no killing or horror here. See the movie. It is a must. TH | 1 |
train_7452 | I am a big fan a Faerie Tale Theatre and I've seen them all and this is one of the best! It's funny, romantic, and a classic. I recommend this for all ages. It's great for little kids because it's well, Cinderella and great for adults and teen because it's funny and not over the top. I watched it when I was little and I still watch it now. It has great lines that my family and I quote all the time. The acting is great and it never gets old. If you like fairy tales and romances you will love this. I've watched many a Cinderella movie in my time and this is the best of them all. (Sorry Disney) I highly recommend this movie and all the Faerie Tale Theatre shows. They all appeal to all ages and are all unique and very entertaining. | 1 |
train_6775 | This was a very well scripted movie. Great fun if you just want a stupid film. Not great production value (ok, the sound really sucked) but the performance of Danny Masterson more than makes up for it.Watch this movie and laugh out loud! | 1 |
train_16518 | This film is too skeletal. It's a fairly low-budget film (I hope!) which excuses it somewhat, but the lack of a decent cast and a fleshed out plot hurts it too much. Phillips is quite believable in his role as a torn-apart son of a well-off family who's searching for himself (though his family is...er...well, a little too white...), but the rest of the cast is grasping at straws. Every moment that has potential is ruined by excessive melodrama, and there are *way* too many sub-plots (which is an obvious sign of plot-deficiency. They needed filler...) I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone who isn't either a hard-core Phillips fan, or who has absolutely *nothing* to do. 4/10. | 0 |
train_160 | A funny comedy from beginning to end! There are several hilarious scenes but it's also loaded with many subtle comedic moments which is what made the movie for me. Creative story line with a very talented cast. I thoroughly enjoyed it! | 1 |
train_24324 | This tear-teaser, written by Steve Martin himself, is so unbelievably bad, it makes you sick to your stomach!The plot is pathetic, the acting awful, and the dialogue is even more predictable than the ending.Avoid at all costs! | 0 |
train_14420 | I am not saying that Night of the Twisters was horrible, but it was far from great. Mediocre at absolute best. I seems though that every time one type of movie is released, a second must be around the same time. (Think about Armageddon and Deep Impact, Volcano and Dante's Peak) Night of the Twisters is really just Twister except worse and with mundane special effects.I have nothing against the actors who starred in it, even if they weren't great, it was the movie itself, the directing, the special effects, the whole storyline was just too strange to interpret. A series of tornadoes strike a town and basically the movie is about people trying to find family and friends and deal with the damage.I really don't know why it seems as though duplicates of disaster movies are released almost in sync with each other, but this one would have been better with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. | 0 |
train_23645 | Where to start ?! . . . I feel ... violated! Thats right, violated! I just spent 1.5hrs of my life, 1.5hrs that I could have spent doing something more useful, like watching paint dry, on this so called horror flick.Its not scary, its not funny, its not dramatic, its no action, its nothing...Its predictable, its boring, its tragic...I might come of a bit harsh here, but watch this movie and you will feel the same way ... or ... no, don't watch it...unless you want to feel violated also. | 0 |
train_21368 | Absolutely one of the worst movies I have ever seen! The acting, the dialog, the manuscript, the sound, the lighting, the plot line. I actually can't say anything positive about this, although I enjoy Swedish movies. The fighting scenes are so ridiculous that it's impossible to take it seriously. And when the lead character just happens to loose his shirt, while dodging bullets in a strip bar, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a joke, or if someone really thinks these are ingredients in a good film?! Regina Lund is the only half descent actor, but she disappears in a flood of laughable pronunciations and unbelievable reactions. It leaves you horrified that someone actually spent time and money on something like this... | 0 |
train_18524 | I watched about 30 minutes into this film before I finally got sick of getting bludgeoned over the head with this movie. The soundtrack, the so-called 'plot', and each and every actor. It's like they all think they're the main part of the movie and scream "NOTICE ME!" over and over again. The bad guy has his bad-guy music going on and says sinister bad-guy-like things, just in case you didn't quite catch on. The good guy does brave and noble things just in case you didn't know he was the good guy. And oh lord, the plane scene. "MY HUSBAND IS MISSING! OH MY GOD! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE THAT HE GOT UP TO STRETCH HIS LEGS OR GO TO THE TOILET OR ANYTHING, HE MUST BE MISSING!" (And yes, I know, his clothes were still there, but honestly, she woke up and started to panic before she even had time to look at the damn seat he'd been in.)As a religious girl, I want to apologize to the world for wasting the film this was printed on.And I want my 30 minutes back. | 0 |
train_9467 | I was drawn to DAN IN REAL LIFE from the excellent reviews and the thirst for a Dramedy that was well written-thank you Peter Hedges-and because when Steve Carell stars in the film, you know an audience is going to find like in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, a performance that is very entertaining and rewarding. DAN IN REAL LIFE delivered that promise.The film is so real to many families world wide that have lost a member and yet have gone on with their lives in search of something that will give them the magic back before their loss. With Steve Carell and the wondrous Juliette Binoche, their relationship was so beautifully done and written that their scenes were so real to their characters and to their journeys. The cast, sets and story made DAN IN REAL LIFE one to remember as we head into the holidays ahead. | 1 |
train_1394 | I watched SHORE LEAVE the other day. I've seen it so many times, and I never get tired of it. Strangely enough, every time I watch it lately, it takes me right back to the very first time I saw it. Including this time. Must be that sense of mystery and "What IS going on here?" about it.Oddly enough, the one part of the story that ALWAYS felt awkward and uncomfortable for me, this time, actually had a HUGE effect on me-- Ruth. I think a lot of it was Gerald Fried's score. A real masterpiece, that! The romantic section was reused-- much more extensively-- in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE. But of course, it debuted here. I get the impression that, out of all the girls Kirk knew over the years, she may have been the "sweetest". When she said, "Do you have to go?", combined with the music, I could really feel the pain she must have felt at not being able to have him stay with her.Someone commented online that Ruth looked older than he was, yet she wasn't supposed to have aged at all in 15 years. Which makes me think... MAYBE she was one of the teachers at the academy. Kirk had an affair with an older woman! (Perhaps he thought back to this in "MIRI" when he told Janice, "I never get involved with older women." Maybe he meant, "...anymore."Reading ST reviews the other day, I see where someone compared WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF? with I, MUDD. But it seems SHORE LEAVE oughta be in there, too. What are all those "people" if not androids? And could "The Caretaker" be related to "The Old Ones" from the earlier episode? Whoever he is, he seems to be one of the RARE cases in ST where you have a race that is actually "superior" as opposed to merely thinking they are.Yeoman Barrows seems to be filling in for Yeoman Rand. Considering how much attention Dr. McCoy showered on her, it's just one more frustrating example of a potentially good character who appears once and then never shows up again! Sheesh.One thing missing from the last several I've watched that snuck back in here was, Spock smiling. He was! I saw him. I really prefer knowing there's 2 sides to him going on inside all the time, rather than this "submerged" business. When he said, "Enjoy yourself, sir." near the beginning, you could see it wasn't just his addressing his superior officer, but talking to his friend. And at the end, when he needlessly says, "Totally illogical!", I can't help but think he does it purely to provoke a reaction. He may not be smiling or laughing, but I think he likes seeing his fellow crew members around him happy. | 1 |
train_5607 | Once I watched The Tenant and interpreted it as a horror movie. It uses many of the tropes of the genre: the sinister apartment, suspicious neighbors, apparitions, mysteries, hallucinations. The life of the hero, Trelkovsky, seemed surrounded by evil, secret forces trying to drive him mad.Last time I watched it I challenged this initial interpretation. If this movie is a horror movie, it's only horror in the sense that a Kafka novel is horror. In fact this movie can be understood on a literal level as a lonely man slowly becoming crazy without any external influence.Polanski made in his career three movies dealing with madness: Repulsion, which I don't particularly like because the development of madness in the heroine never convinced me; Rosemary's Baby, in which the heroine is driven mad by evil forces; and The Tenant, which might be the best study of paranoia ever made in cinema.Trelkovsky is a young man who rents an apartment in which a woman killed herself. He becomes obsessed with her and slowly starts becoming her: he wears her clothes, puts on makeup, talks like her. But is he being possessed by a spirit, or is he just letting his wild imagination get the best of him? It's this hesitation between what is real and imaginary, and which Polanski never resolves, that makes this such a fascinating movie. Many events in the movie can be attributed to the supernatural as easily as they can be to normal causes, and it's up to the viewer to decide what to believe in.Although this is not my favorite Polanski movie, it is nevertheless a good example of his ability to create suspense and portray madness in very convincing terms. And technically speaking, it's a marvel too. Suffice to say he collaborates with film composer Philippe Sarde and legendary director of photography Sven Nykvist (Bergman's DP) in the making of this movie. A slow pacing and sometimes uninteresting segments may make this movie difficult to enjoy, but it's an experience nevertheless. | 1 |
train_95 | yes i have a copy of it on VHS uncut in great condition that i transfered to DVD and if anyone one wants to bring back the memories of a Christmas classic please emil me at dmd2222@verizon.net.i searched everywhere and i found nothing on this and i thought that i cant be the only one on this planet that has this classic on tape there has to be other people and if they do i fit in with them being that very very few that has this classic so i consider myself lucky and i have all of the muppets Christmas except one that john denver did with the muppets again i thinks its called a smokey mountain holiday im not to sure but its close. | 1 |
train_16913 | Broad enough for you? Wait till you see this heavy handedadaption of a little collegiate one act. What is shocking and wild incollege rarely holds up over time, and this is proof. To take on theCatholic Church with broadside humor just isn't shocking orinteresting or funny, it's kind of boring. The performers are allgame, giving all they've got, but it's basically a play that doesn'topen up to film well. Not a lot of fun. | 0 |
train_11796 | Just given the fact that it is based on the most infamous mass suicide incident of modern times would have been enough to give this 2-part 1980 made-for-TV film attention. But the fact is that it is a superb recreation of the life of the Rev. Jim Jones, who built a church into a virtual empire, and then encouraged it to disintegrate into a sleazy cult in which a Congressman and his entourage were assassinated, and 917 cult followers committed suicide by drinking Kool-Aid doused with cyanide.Done very tastefully but horrifying enough, unlike the excruciatingly sadistic CULT OF THE DAMNED, GUYANA TRAGEDY features an all-star cast, including Ned Beatty (as Rep. Leo Ryan), Meg Foster, Randy Quaid, Brad Dourif, Brenda Vaccaro, LeVar Burton, and Madge Sinclair. But it is Powers Boothe (in his first big role) that really stands out as Jim Jones. He actually BECOMES the man, and his performance is riveting and chilling. Thus, it is no wonder that this film still manages to attract attention after more than twenty years. | 1 |
train_16730 | Ok, I like B movies...I know what B movies are supposed to represent. But this is just awful. I am amazed it got such a decent overall score. The only redeeming qualities of this flick are the (mostly) marginal splatter effects. Don't get me wrong, gore abounds in this flick - but few effects really jumped out at me (like the anal "probe"...that was great!).I believe this movie was filmed on a camcorder. C'mon - rent a Betacam at least, I've seen porn with better production values (and better acting as well).Acting - sucked! But not in the Troma or Full Moon sort of way.Story - contrived! But thats what you get from films like these. Very loose!Sets & Props - sucked! My 16 year old brother makes more elaborate sets for our house on Halloween.Dubbing and dialogue - sucked! Horrible voice acting (I shouldn't even call it acting) and every other word is "S**t" or "F**k".There are tons of good classic and B rated horror / splatter flicks out there and they are not that hard to track down. Do yourself a favor by not wasting time on this crap! | 0 |
train_5368 | This is an awesome action film with great one liners from Arnie!. It's stylishly made, with lots of tense action to keep one satisfied. The Characters were awesome, and Richard Dawson, is very menacing as the main villain. Yes it has tons of plot holes,however it's highly highly entertaining, with a great ending as well. It had a great story, too it, and Arnie and Maria Conchita Alonso had great chemistry together. The Character development was also pretty good, with, some superb performances. The Directing is great!. Paul Michael Glaser, does a very good job here, with awesome use of colors, keeping it stylish throughout, awesome camera angles, and overall keeping the film at a very fast pace! good job. There is a little bit of gore. We get a few bloody gunshot wounds, exploding head, slit throat, bloody chainsaw slices, skinless corpses, blood, and an impaling. The Acting is great!. Arnold Schwarzenegger is AMAZING as always, he is excellent in the acting department , has tons of hilarious one liners, kicks that ass, and as always is a big physical presence!, and was tons of fun to watch! (Arnie Rules!). Maria Conchita Alonso, does well here, she was really cute, and had good chemistry with Arnie!. Yaphet Kotto, is decent here, with what he has to do, which is not much. Marvin J. McIntyre, is good as the geeky type guy, he was cool!. Richard Dawson is awesome as the main villain, and was very very menacing, and he was fun to watch. Jesse Ventura,Jim Brown,Erland van Lidth,Gus Rethwisch,and Professor Toru Tanaka, all do what they have to do very well as the stalkers. Overall a MUST see! ****1/2 out of 5 | 1 |
train_8903 | Sure, it's a 50's drive-in special, but don't let that fool you. In my little book, there are a number of intelligent touches with unexpected dollops of humor. Catch the redoubtable Mrs. Porter who's supposed to keep an eye on the doc's place. She not only steals the scene, but darn near the whole movie. And where did those indie producers come up with the bucks to film in color, a wise decision, since the blob would not show up well in b&w. Yes, the result is ragged around the edges as the number of goofs illustrate. But except for several of the teens, the non-Hollywood cast performs well. Then too, the byplay among hot-rodders and cops comes across as lively and entertaining. Pretty darn good for a couple of directors more at home in a pulpit than on a sound stage. Apparently, they wanted to portray teens in a positive light at a time when the screen was filled with "juvenile delinquents". Then again, the 27-year old McQueen hardly qualifies in the age department, but manages the hot-rodder attitude anyway. The movie was a hit at the time, helped along, no doubt, by the catchy title tune that got a lot of radio play. And except for the unfortunate final effects, the movie is still a lot of fun, drive-in or no drive-in. Meanwhile, I'm awaiting the blob's return now that the polar icecap is turning into, shall we say, refrigerator water. | 1 |
train_11190 | One of the best (if not the best) Stephen King's screenings. Dark as dark can be, surprising non-hollywood ending, terrifying atmosphere, amazing book adaptation, outstanding cast, educational (don't play with afterlife), in short - everything an excellent horror should be...My favorite horror movie, straight 10+. | 1 |
train_11141 | "Midnight Cowboy" was never a great movie to start with but it is a classic. You know it's a classic the moment its insistent theme song, 'Everybody's Talking' starts up on the soundtrack, (actually not written for the film), and the way the camera introduces us to Joe Buck, (naked and in the shower). We had seen Jon Voight before but had never really noticed him but when he tells us he's 'one helluva stud' who's to doubt him? This was a great performance that had iconic star status as well as a complete grasp of the character and if Voight had never done anything else, his performance here would still be legendary. As it is Voight has seldom disappointed on screen; even a piece of ham as well cured as his performance in that glorious rubbish "Anaconda" is a source of pleasure).The film became famous and infamous almost overnight. It was a crowd-pleaser, (even with its downbeat ending), funny and sexy and recognizably 'real'; (it was the tail-end of the sixties and all the characters rang true). It was also the first 'X' rated film to win the Oscar as the year's Best Picture. Adapted, (brilliantly), by Waldo Salt from a James Leo Herlihy novel it was probably the first main-stream commercial American movie to deal with 'taboo' subjects such as homosexuality and drug-taking in a matter-of-fact manner. Everyone is recognizably human, warts and all, and everyone is treated sympathetically. Voight's Joe Buck is an innocent abroad, a Candide who comes to New York to seek his fortune as a hustler, (a profession he sees as glamorous and not seedy; he's a cross between a gigolo and a social worker). But when he himself is hustled by a scraggy, wormy little con-man called 'Ratso' Rizzo, (Dustin Hoffman, fresh from "The Graduate" and he's a revelation), he realizes that perhaps the reality is a little different from the pipe-dream.Essentially it's a male love story, (though totally platonic), between these two not so unlikely bedfellows. Both totally alone, both totally needy each becomes the protector of the other, (Voight with his physical prowess, Hoffman with his street-wise savvy). They are misfits adrift from the mainstream, tolerant of their own peculiarities and the deviances of others. Though 'straight' Voight isn't beyond a homosexual encounter in a 42nd street cinema with a boy even lonelier than himself. (The whole film posits a strangely 'Christian' attitude).It's also magnificently acted. While Voight and Hoffman hold the screen throughout there are superb vignettes from the likes of Brenda Vaccaro and Sylvia Miles as well as John McGiver, Bob Balaban and Bernard Hughes as sundry customers and hangers-on, beautifully delineated little character studies that seem to transcend acting altogether while John Schlesinger's direction gives the film the feel of a documentary as well as an alien's totally detached eye-view of the American under-belly without rancor and without criticism. On second thoughts, maybe it is a great movie after all. | 1 |
train_19269 | A failure. The movie was just not good. It has humor that 5 year olds that will not even giggle at. I mean, sure, some parts were amusing, but most of it is not. Lindsey Lohan is a great actress (and a bad singer,) and she should be working on better movies. The movie should have been aired as a Disney Channel original movie, that is FREE.The only thing that was well done about this movie was the music. Nothing like a remade rock soundtrack to brighten up your day. These songs are so good. Especially Alyson and Amanda's Walking On Sunshine and Caleigh Peter's, Beach Boy song, Fun Fun Fun.4 out of 10. If I gave it a ten, 9 of that would be the music and 1 will be the movie. Not worth your money, but the soundtrack is. | 0 |
train_11606 | For a mature man, to admit that he shed a tear over this film is a mature response, to a mature film.If one need admit more then perhaps one could say that, "Life" can never be the same, after viewing such advent for it has moved us to the next level. | 1 |
train_14254 | Why did the histories of Mary and Rhoda have to be so dour? Divorced women with indifferent daughters. And why very little reference to the original show and characters? The daughter characters were silly and uninteresting. Why can't there ever be daughters who like their mother's on TV? It makes sense that Mary would leave Minneapolis, and Rhoda would return to NYC, but why couldn't Phyllis or Sue Ann Nivens be guest stars? It just seems a pitiful way to remember such wonderful characters. It was good to see Mary and Rhoda together of course, but it could have been better, much better. Well, there has been a Mary Tyler Moore Show Reunion, a Dick Van Dyke Show Reunion, hopefully Mary will do better next time if she revisits her old Mary Richards stomping grounds again. | 0 |
train_10153 | I caught this film at a test screening. Was very surprised to find a really sweet and fun story. Well acted. Natasha Henstridge is the next Julia Roberts. The male lead was awsome. Very funny film. Takes place in the best locations in New York. Made me want to go there. I just saw "You've got mail" I thought "It Had To Be You' was a much better story. Fresher.It was clean and great for whole family. I think it will do well. Audience I saw it with loved it. A definite recommend! | 1 |
train_11771 | Great entertainment from start to the end. Wonderful performances by Belushi, Beach, Dalton & Railsback. Some twists and many action scenes. The movie was made for me! Funny lines in the screenplay, good music. Dalton as the tough sheriff and Railsback as "redneck-villain". I must recommend this film to every action-adventure fan! 10/10 | 1 |
train_21372 | Major Payne was really not very good at all. Despite being funny here and there, the story was ridiculous and the acting was poor. Major Payne's voice and temperament were especially annoying. The idea was ridiculous and the things that the boys had to do in that film were even more ridiculous. I would not recommend this film to anyone. | 0 |
train_3289 | I do miss the company Vestron, they sure had their finger on the pulse of unique and unusual cinema back in the 1980s. This is very apparent with the astonishing Paperhouse, a film that touches me deeply each and every time I watch it.The idea of a girl manipulating a dream world with her drawings (thusly the dream world manipulating reality), and also connecting with and affecting the life of a boy she's never actually met, is fascinating and never disappoints. Charlotte Burke at first seems quite precocious and yet you warm up to her because by being a bit of a mischievous child, it makes it hard for the adults to believe what she is experiencing. She becomes very self aware and strong towards the end, even finding she doesn't "hate boys" as she so defiantly claimed at first. Through this we are treated to many touching moments and some immensely scary ones, all visually stunning with a grand score from Hans Zimmer. I'm quite proud to be an owner of the soundtrack on CD when it was released in the United States on RCA Victor. At the time of this writing there is no DVD of Paperhouse yet available in the U.S. (only in Europe), here's hoping one of my wishes will come true as I truly cherish this beautiful film and a DVD of it would be very welcome!It's satisfying watching the girl work out her thoughts like a puzzle game trying to make the dream world work for her and her newfound friend Marc (Elliot Spiers). Both Charlotte Burke and Elliot Spiers do a magnificent job throughout, I find the editorial comment on Amazon.com about it being "hammy acting" quite perplexing -- I found every aspect of Paperhouse to be exhilarating. Even in minor scenes of brilliance like when Charlotte and the girl in the classroom are staring at each other through the glass on a door, it's quite powerful.You don't have to be an arthouse type to enjoy Paperhouse, just be a person that enjoys a film that stimulates and has you wanting more. There is enough in this film to invite repeated viewings and I'm still in awe of the cinematography and sets. For me, it's never like watching the same film twice, as there are so many details to absorb and savor. A very emotional experience indeed.While there are many films I adore, there are only a few specific ones that strike a great emotional chord in me: films like Paperhouse, Static, Resurrection, and Donnie Darko. When I see so much drek out there passing as films that will easily be forgotten and in bargain bins, all I have to do is watch Paperhouse and my faith in wondrous storytelling is renewed. | 1 |
train_5389 | Sort of like a very primitive episode of "General Hospital" set in a natal ward (and one for tough cases at that), this fast-moving programmer has a satisfying emotional impact -- mainly because Eric Linden, as the distraught young husband in the main plot, is so palpably a wreck, and with such good reason. His expectant wife, Loretta Young, is brought to the ward at the beginning of a 20-year prison sentence for offing a lecher who probably had it coming to him; Ms. Young, as always, doesn't do anything to disinvite audience sympathy, and she's a little too good to be true, though sympathetic and lovely to look at, of course. Her difficult pregnancy and relationships with the other girls of the ward form the heart of the movie, and the outcome -- not an entirely happy one -- feels right. Aline MacMahon, "one of the cinema's few perfect actresses," in the apt words of film historian David Thomson, exudes warmth and authority as the head nurse, and Glenda Farrell, as a none-too-willing new mom of twins, gets to croon "Frankie and Johnny" as a drunken lullaby. Frank McHugh figures in another subplot, and he gets to show more range than Warners usually permitted him. It's scaled and paced modestly, and Linden's expectant-dad panic stays with you for days -- this sort of part was often played for laughs, but he's a terrified young kid in trouble, and very persuasive. | 1 |
train_19340 | While this outing certainly doesn't live up to its predecessor, it does have more than its share of memorable moments. My personal favorite, just after laying waste to a city block with his "Videodisc Cannon," we see a close up of Nimoy's face. As a single tear sheds from his left eye, we know at that point that Nimoy is more than just a killing machine. The viewer can't help but be pulled into his emotional turmoil and we understand that his previously flat affect was only a facade. Absolute brilliance!!! The sex scenes display a nice balance, carnal, but not pornographic. Afterwards, I felt I had a pretty good understanding of how to work the Magnavision Videodisc Player. Too bad they haven't produced them in over 25 years. | 0 |
train_7262 | My daughter, her friends and I have watched this movie literally dozens of times. I bought it twice and some little girlfriends absconded with it. Subsequently, I rented it so very many times. It just never gets old!!! Blockbuster doesn't even have it in their listings anymore and I have tried to buy, find, rent it for over 5 years. Without a doubt, this was and is my most favourite movie of my daughter's childhood...it has it all! We laughed, we cried, we discussed real life and how hard some children have it in the world. There was nothing pretend about this movie. We related to every second and every line Bill! Thanks a million for restoring our faith in human nature. Sincerely, Shelleen and Kailin Vandermey. Craven, Saskatchewan. CANADA,eh!!! :-)August '07 update:Who are we to judge if a rich woman falls in love with a poor man; or a man who has love chooses to raise a child who is not his own. It may not be my or your life. It is not only believable, it happens every day. Thank God! Keeps my faith in human nature alive!!! celebrate!!!! | 1 |
train_6412 | I'm certainly glad that a film was made about Carl Brashear's amazing life story. Coming as it did during the Civil Rights era, Brashear became an inspiration for people of all minority groups not willing to settle for a status expected.Brashear as played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. leads by example in the conduct of the life he has chosen. Very similar to Jackie Robinson who integrated baseball and made it stick by his character and conduct. As Brashear, Gooding knows that he does not want the sharecropper life that his father Carl Lumbly has and Lumbly makes it real clear to get more out of life than he's gotten.But while Harry Truman integrated the Armed Services after World War II, the Navy still has its restrictions. A black man can only be a cook or an officer's valet, the real fighting parts are denied him. That's not good enough for Gooding who applies to become a Navy deep sea diver.Once at the diving school at Bayonne, New Jersey, Gooding gets it all thrown at him, mostly by the Master Chief Petty Officer in charge, Robert DeNiro. DeNiro may have some leftover prejudices, but he's nevertheless a hero and one who can inspire if one can get passed racial divide.The best thing about Men Of Honor is the chemistry between DeNiro and Gooding. They certainly come from different places, but as they get to know each other, both turn out to be Men Of Honor.Other good performances to note are Charlize Theron as DeNiro's wife and Hal Holbrook as the head of the diving school, a guy the Navy just wish would retire for reasons you'll see.Men Of Honor is an inspiring story about people with courage to spare and the ability to change. | 1 |
train_10350 | I believe they were telling the truth the whole time..U cant trust anything in the wild... They family went through hell.Those poor boys too young to understand what was going on around them. But still having to deal with the rumours. As well as dealing with the lose of their little sister. I cant believe this case went on for so long.seems like the jury couldn't see the truth, even if it bit them on the ass.I feel for this family, and if i could let them know i hate what has happened to them, i would.I have no idea what they went through, i cant even imagine it. After watching this movie, i was in tears, and had to check on my little girl in bed...I think everyone should watch this. | 1 |
train_6014 | All of the reviews here about how much ZP lacks plot, the acting is wooden, the orgy scene makes no sense, etc., all miss the main point.Let's be honest. This is a movie made in the heady times of late 1960s and early 1970s Los Angeles. It is a movie meant to be watched while your are H-I-G-H out of your mind on some psychedelic substance.Find some kind bud and smoke up, or get a mild hit of acid. Seriously, these straight and sober reviews of ZP miss the point. You can't get anything out of this movie in a straight frame of mind.Until you've watched this movie on the big screen (which I am lucky to have done three times in the 1990s when ZP was quite rare) tripping out, you have no idea what this movie is all about.If you insist on watching it not intoxicated, you can at least appreciate the ending when the crap blows up to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's wonderful re-working of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," "Come in Number 51, Your Time Is Up." | 1 |
train_21049 | Okay, what the hell kind of TRASH have I been watching now? "The Witches' Mountain" has got to be one of the most incoherent and insane Spanish exploitation flicks ever and yet, at the same time, it's also strangely compelling. There's absolutely nothing that makes sense here and I even doubt there ever was a script to work with, but somehow I couldn't turn it off. The scratching your head with confusion starts right away, with an opening sequence about an angry little girl that killed her mother's cat. So you think this film revolves on children possessed by evil forces? Heck no, because after this intro, the girl and her wickedness simply aren't mentioned anymore. Then cut to a guy, with the most impressively trimmed mustache you'll ever see, who breaks up with his girlfriend in a rather unsubtle way. When she asks him to spend his vacation with her, he promptly phones his employer requesting him any type of assignment! Great move. The movie finally starts now, as he travels to an isolated mountain area to photograph some peaks. Though not before he picks up a new girl (Patty Shepard) and photographs her topless! Throughout their journey, all kind of strange events occur that you guessed it are never explained. The girl wakes up in the middle of the forest, loud petrifying music plays everywhere and someone even steals the jeep! Really, car jacking witches? Apparently a coven of silent witches owns the mountains and they practice voodoo on trespassers. That's as close as I get describing the plot, but there's a good chance I'm way off
More important here is the atmosphere! "The Witches' Mountain" is occasionally very creepy, with its spooky music and interesting cinematography. The supportive characters all look uncanny and the ravishing Patty Shepard plays a good heroine. This is the type of European horror film that could have been legendary, if only someone had bothered to write a structured screenplay. | 0 |
train_1970 | Finally, after years of awaiting a new film to continue the sexual mayhem of "Basic Instinct", we have been given a great sequel that is packed with the right elements needed for a franchise such as this! I remember everything about the original, the steam, the romance, the sex, the interrogation, the music (by the master Jerry Goldsmith), and everything else from violence and murder, to intense confrontations of all kind! Make no mistake, "Basic Instinct" was a real winner for audiences everywhere. I can remember in 2001 when we were first given the news about such a sequel. Five years later, we have it. I never would have thought it to end up such as this. When it was declared a dropped project, time sure couldn't tell if it was ever a real possibility to begin with. Well, I guess we now know anything's possible in this case. Even if the original director, or writer are not present, all we need is the glamorous, always reliable Sharon Stone, and we have a done deal! Please, hear me out...When people say that this film is bad, I think it is only due to the fact that the style is extreme, and slightly dated. I use the word "dated" only because we have not seen a certain film of the like in many years, and audiences have become adapted to the pointless, boring storytelling seen in other movies that actually make money, and the only reason they make such big numbers is because those films are family friendly. Who needs hole some and clean? Of course it's a pleasant thing to have, but c'mon! Escapism is really seldom these days, and "Basic Instinct 2" gives us real fans what we've been expecting. This film is not an Academy Award winner, nor does it try to be. It simply delivers the die-hard fans what they have been expecting. It's a film for fun. Movies today seem to take themselves way too seriously, but this film is just loose and fun, not taking itself seriously, not too seriously anyway. That said, I shall evaluate the film.The film is a fast-paced film from the first second, as we see Cathernine Tremell in a car, speeding at 110 MPH-and enjoying lustful thrills doing so. Perhaps sex and driving does not mix, because our sexy novelist takes a bad turn and...well, she gets away unharmed, but her studly partner doesn't fare too well. Once again, Tremell is the primary suspect of the accident, and will be put under analyst's and psychiatrists. Dr. Michael Glass (Morrissey) is automatically drawn to to her from the first moment he meets her. Like another criminal investigator before him, he is entranced and seduced, slowly, and surely. His denial of it all begins to crumble around him as she weaves a spell only she has the power to do. Tramell is possibly more dangerous now, than she was before,but like the first one, we'll never really know, will we? Once the seduction is in motion, jealousy, rage, drugs, and a plateful of erotic scenery ensues!This film does not recycle the first one, but rather mentions the previous films incidents briefly from time to time. This is a good thing. It lets us as an audience know that the script has been written to bring the level up a notch or two. Sharon Stone dazzles us again, as though 14 years has not come to pass. Her second run of the deceitful novelist is right on the spot as earlier. Just awesome! David Morrissey is well cast, and manages pretty well. The fact that a non-popular star was chosen, makes his performance all the more enjoyable because we as an audience have no background on him, just what we see him perform. My final thought-8.5 to 9 out of 10. So it's not the first one, nor can it live up to the first ones prize winning place. It can, however, live up to the standards set by the first film, and it does folks! It does. | 1 |
train_6819 | I found 'Time At The Top' an entertaining and stimulating experience. The acting, while not generally brilliant, was perfectly acceptable and sometimes very good. As a film obviously aimed at the younger demographic, it is certainly one of the better works in the genre (Children's Sci-Fi). Normally, I would say that Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia produce the best movies and TV shows for children, and 'Time At The Top' does nothing to discount this theory! I don't think that continuity and great acting are important to younger people. A good plot and an imaginative screenplay are far more important to them. Both are in abundance in this film. The special effects are good, without detracting from the story, or closing the viewers off from their own imaginations. It would have been very easy to inject an over-load of SFX in this film, but it would have totally destroyed its entire 'Raison D'etre'. The settings and camera work are of a very high standard in this movie, and complement the fine wardrobe and historical accuracy. Overall, this film is highly satisfactory, and I recommend it to all viewers who can see the world through children's eyes, or those that try to, like myself! Now, I really must read the original book, as soon as possible. | 1 |
train_17896 | I've read comments that you shouldn't watch this film if you're looking for stirring Shakespearian dialogue. This is true, unfortunately, because all the stirring dialogue, this wonderful play contains, has been cut, and replaced with songs. I've read this play, and recently was lucky enough to see it performed, at it remains one of my favourite Shakespearian Comedies, but this movie seems to take all that I like about it away. The Princess, though no doubt doing what she was directed to do, had no regal bearing, and all the girls seemed to lose the cleverness of their characters - also affected by unwise cuts, which not only took away the female characters already sparse dialogue, but took comments out of context - it was a little unnerving to hear the Princess proclaim; "We are wise girls to mock our lovers so!", when mocking had not taken place at all. The news reels throughout the film also disrupted the flow, and took away many excellent scenes, as they showed the information in the scenes after them, and were in modern phrasing. In conclusion, an excellent play, ruined by an odd concept, and unwise cuts. Kenneth, I usually love what you do. What were you thinking? | 0 |
train_15540 | With title like this you know you get pretty much lot of junk. Acting bad. Script bad. Director bad. Grammar bad.Movie make lot of noise that really not music and lot of people yell. Movie make bad racial stereotype. Why come every movie with black hero have drug addict? Why come hero always have to dance to be success? Why come famous rapper always have to be in dance movie? Why come letter "s" can't be in title?Hollywood need to stop dumb down audience and make movie that have people with brain who know how speak proper English.Do self favor and not go see. | 0 |
train_19688 | When I caught a glimpse of the title I thought are we going to get another try-hard hip slasher, but actually I found "7eventy 5ive" to be a mildly passable, and almost 80s throwback after a tediously slow mid-section it picks up momentum for the final half-hour leading to it's outrageously tacky climax and downright cop out ending. It won't win awards for originality, because it's as systematic as you can get and steals its thunder in the way of thrills (usual cheap jump scares), location (secluded mansion) and motivation from other films. The gleaming direction is by-the-book and the material is quite hackneyed with poorly realised red herrings within its elaborate plotting and flimsy script. Sometimes laughable, but nonetheless I was entertained mainly due to its brutal and grisly acts of pulpy violence towards some rather obnoxiously annoying college students by a psychotic killer with a battle axe. The performances weren't bad in the shape of a spunky young cast, however the characters they were portraying weren't particularly enticing. An always presentable Rutger Hauer shows up in a short supportive role as a grizzled detective. A slickly made, but a shallow and forgettable addition to the fold. | 0 |
train_24437 | Superhero movies pretty much always suck, and this is no exception. Its only redeeming quality is the fact the movie COULD have been even worse. I would put 'Batman & Robin' and 'Steel' above this movie, so yes it is that bad...If your looking for a black superhero, check out 'Blankman' its not a "serious" superhero movie but at least its entertaining. | 0 |
train_15025 | This movie was, as Homer Simpson would have put it, "more boring than church." Maybe I don't understand it well enough, and I thought it started out pretty well, but after (START OF SPOILER) Hermann Braun is sent to jail and Maria starts working/sleeping with her boss it just started to drag, and I struggled to keep awake. Again, maybe it symbolizes something, but the explosion at the end seemed very forced and out of place. (END OF SPOILER). In the end, I fail to see why others think it's so great, as I found it extremely boring. By the way, I did not watch this movie by my own free will, as I was required to see it for a Film class. | 0 |
train_20349 | The film picks up after last years remake with the military setting up electronic surveillance equipment in the desert where the attacks in the first film happened. The crew is killed not long before a group of soldiers on a training exercise show up to find no one around. You can fill in the rest.This is a paycheck picture all around. There seems to be no passion in anyone's performances, nor in anyone behind the camera. This is a movie that was made for the money and nothing else. On some level this should have worked, it could have been a more horrific Southern Comfort (where National Guardsmen run afoul of some people in the swamps), but instead its not much of anything. In large part you can blame the script, written unbelievably in part by Wes Craven, which hits the same old targets again and again. Add to the mess the fact that the direction is dull and the set up of sequences is so lack luster as to remove any inherent tension in any scene.Its not bad as such, but badly made and dull. Let me put my feelings into context: The reason I saw this film was because a local multiplex screwed up and ran this film instead of the kids flick the Last Mimzy and I wanted to see what caused the out cry(I mean the films have so much in common-he says sarcastically). I'm convinced that this film will only scare those who like the last Mimzy. | 0 |
train_12137 | How amazing this film is! I've seen it over and over throughout the years and I'm always spellbound by it. The reason why the film is so easy to re-watch is, of course, the arresting performance given by the young Bette Davis. She not only steals every scene that she's in, but is actually much prettier and better photographed here (not to mention sexier) than she was in any of the films that she had made thus far at her home studio, Warner Brothers (this film was made by R.K.O. Radio Pictures). She wears a very flattering make-up and has very attractive hairstyles and oh, those lovely big eyes (especially, in the restaurant scenes that take place in London's Soho). Her body was so curvy when she was young. Get a load of it in the cheap negligee that she wears for her big explosive confrontation scene with Leslie Howard. And oh boy, she is an absolute powerhouse in that scene. Howard is a little too nervous throughout, but he does captures the hero's sensitivity. Frances Dee scores as the sweet, pretty young Sally who truly loves him. Max Steiner's score is both charming and poignant. Splendid performances and thirties flavor make this the must see version of the classic novel. | 1 |
train_14572 | I rented this movie tonight because it looked like a fun movie. I figured that you really couldn't go wrong with a concept of Ex Girlfriend with super powers. ... but the movie was confused and pointless ...it seemed that at every turn the writer kept throwing junk in. Also the writer kept throwing in way too much toilet humor and sexual situations that only a teenage boy could love.It seems that it could have been so simple to draw a story out of Fatal Attraction Super hero .. but I guess not. This is not a fun romantic comedy it was advertised to be. You could not take a child to see it and you would be embarrassed seeing it a date. If the writer could have done a basic story around the high concept and cleaned it up - the movie might have a fighting chance. A serious waste of time.B | 0 |
train_2500 | ...would probably be the best word to describe this film (in my opinion). besides one great heck of a fan service for fan girls (well, that was redundant~), it was the story that blew me away. hurray for Takahisa Zeze and Gackt! and i know some people will disagree with me on this one, but it wasn't any of the big three actors (the guys that played Sho, son, and Kei) that gave the best performance (for me, anyway). it was Taro Yamamoto, boy #5 from battle Royale! don't get me wrong, i like Hyde, i worship his voice, but the problem was that some of his scenes came a little bit 'off', but i loved that scene where he danced with the dead guy's body killing the other guys. and Gackt wasn't at all that bad too, i preferred how his character was kind of aloof from the start. nothing much i can say about my background on lee-Hom Wang, i won't pretend to know him, but he carried his own weight with the star-studded cast. this movie paved the way for one of the best collaborations I've ever heard, Orenji No Taiyou (forgive my spelling if it's wrong). while the complete song lasts about nine minutes, you wouldn't notice the length because you'd be enjoying hearing Gackt and Hyde together. anyway, this movie is a must-see not only for the fans (huge fan base~) but for those who enjoy sci-fi, futuristic movies, Asian-style. | 1 |
train_23779 | Words really can't describe how bad this film is. I thought Zandalee was bad, but at least that had some nice shots and the occasional good chin stroking moment here and there to stop you from nodding off. This is just laughable! Terrible script, poor direction, awful acting and you know what? I can't think of a single thing to recommend about it other than the fact that it isn't too long. If you want 100 minutes worth of entertainment, book yourself in at the dentist and have some root canal work - far more enjoyable and much better value for money (assuming that you need it!). Incidentally, I need to type 10 lines of text to complete this review - PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS MOVIE. IT IS TERRIBLE! | 0 |
train_17453 | I have never commented on IMDb before, but I feel I have to after watching The Batman animation. Its absolute rubbish! Warner Brothers had the perfect animation series in Batman in the early 90s so what the hell are they doing trying to mess with the winning formula? I feel like writing a complaint letter to WB. The original animation was dark and brooding, exactly the way Batman was intended to be. WB had to mess this up with some tripe Batman of the Future. Now they produce this drivel. The Joker doesn't remotely resemble the Joker from DC comics. DC should sue. I urge everyone who agrees with me to email or write to WB and use people power to get back the original formula | 0 |
train_401 | I just came back from Hong Kong on my summer vacation and saw the Legend of ZU. I thought it kicked a*s! It was so creative and unique. It's the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon with a lot less drama. Even if some thought there was too much special FX(yeah right!), you can't complain about the cast. Zhang Ziyi and Cecilia Cheung are so fine!!! The Legend of ZU.....kicks a*s!!!!!!!! | 1 |
train_893 | Sammo Hung's 1989 film Pedicab Driver is considered by many to be his masterpiece. I have to agree to some extent as the film in its greatest parts really gets as incredible and fantastic as any Hong Kong film ever has. It is a combination of pretty good and well written drama, interesting and sympathetic (and also non-sympathetic) characters, some genuinely funny humor and truly over-the-top hyper kung fu that is guaranteed to make many jaws drop when someone not familiar with Hong Kong cinema watches the film as well as it does to the experienced enthusiasts of the unique industry.Sammo and Max Mok Siu Chung play two pedicab drivers who live in Hong Kong in the middle part of the last century, I think. They drive their cabs and are also desperate for love. Sammo is interested in local baker girl Ping (Nina Li Chi) while Max one day meets a mysterious and beautiful Fennie Yuen Kit-Ying he falls madly in love with. Many other characters get introduced, too, and they remain pretty clear all the time if the viewer really concentrates on the film and its plot so I cannot say the film is confusing as it could be much worse especially in Hong Kong! Soon we get to know, for instance, that a ruthless gangster family is terrorizing the neighborhood and of course their violent acts affect our protagonists, too, and so the premise for some of the most incredibly choreographed kung fu fight sequences has been created. As well as some nice drama.The film has a great cast. The leads are all very good and restrained (not as painfully awful over-acting and "humor" as in Sammo's otherwise great Eastern Condors (1987), for example) and they are also, thanks to the carefully written screenplay, pretty likable and easy to identify with. The cast includes many familiar HK cinema faces and directors in small roles like Corey Yuen Kwai (the legendary action director and director of films like Saviour of the Soul 1 and 2, Ninja in the Dragon's Den and Fong Sai Yuk 1 and 2), the masterful composer Lowell Lo Koon-Ting (John Woo's The Killer and Ringo Lam's School on Fire and Prison on Fire among many others, Pedicab Driver included!), the Shaw veteran Liu Chia Liang (whom with Sammo has a furious fight with sticks), Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting (the director of dark HK noir classic On the Run from 1988), the late great Lam Ching Ying (best known for his friendly face in various HK vampire horror/kung fu/comedies) to name just a few. In fact, the cast in Pedicab Driver is one of the most interesting I've seen in any other HK production.The film has some interesting peaceful moments most notably about the love affair between Max Mok and Fennie Yuen and one crisis they confront thanks to Lowell Lo's character. They really could have done this a completely serious piece if they had wanted as the discussions about human values and meaning of love, no matter what's your past or what you've done for living, get so serious and genuinely effective at the middle part that the film immediately gets much more noteworthy than our average kung fu spectacle actioner. Also the other characters' efforts to cure things is very touching and tells delightfully much about right human relations and friendship, and of course love. Still I think what Fennie says to Max (about the future "bad cooking") is very unnecessary and tones the potential of the whole segment and its themes down pretty effectively, unfortunately.But then we get to the thing the film makers were interested the most in. Which is the action, the outrageous and over-the-top action. The fight scenes include traditional kung fu, some sticks, meat cleavers and the like and they're used here as hysterically as in the most mind blowing kung fu scene I've seen in any film ever, Jackie Chan's Drunken Master II (1994), they really are that great! There are wires and they're used very cleverly and people literally fly to the opposite corner of the room when they get kicked or punched. Simply amazing and again something ONLY Hong Kong cinema can deliver. Also the dangerous stunts make the viewer hold his/her breath as the film has one fast car vs. pedicab chase sequence and various dangerous looking jumps and twisting bodies flying through the air and crushing with force to the hard destination. Still the film makers seem not to "accept" the violence of the film as Sammo is, like the late Bruce Lee, willing to give himself up after the final murderous mayhem at the gangster villa, and I think this kind of morale, no matter how obvious or shallow it may be, is a good thing even in a harmless film like this, as cinema is meant to be much more than just brainless entertainment.The film has also some very witty bits of humor that I'm not sure everyone in Hollywood or America (for example) would understand or like at all. The hilarious Star Wars gag at the beginning is definitely among these and it literally forced me to laugh when I realized what I was seeing. Also some funny scenes are created out of Sammo's passion for Ping. Still, the greatest amazement-filled laugh came during the scenes depicted in the former pharagraph as the imagery of big and tall men flying with great force over the screen to the walls or furniture is simply INSANE and so breathtaking I just cannot hide my feelings and thoughts about these Eastern film makers when I witness something like this, and this is nothing but positive and appreciating reaction, of course.Pedicab Driver is among the most incredible Hong Kong action films that I have ever seen and easily among Sammo's greatest achievements. If the few minor flaws were not there, this could rate even brighter and higher. 8/10 | 1 |
train_3652 | I began watching a replay of this TV movie on a Sunday afternoon, thinking it was just another dumb airplane disaster flick. I was wrong."Pandora's Clock" is an intelligent political thriller that is far beyond the quality of most TV movies. It could just as easily have made its debut on the big screen.The cast is excellent, including veteran actors Richard Dean Anderson, Edward Herrmann, Robert Guillaume, and Robert Loggia. Daphne Zuniga turns in one of her best performances as a medical specialist working for the CIA, and Frasier's Jane Leeves is also very good. The dialogue is well-written and the story is compelling throughout. In fact, the final hour is so filled with plot twists and suspense that you can't leave your seat for a second. If you get a chance to see this movie, invest the time -- nearly four hours. You will be richly rewarded! | 1 |
train_7407 | This movie took me by complete surprise. I watched it 2 or 3 times. I really liked this film. There were many truths this movie brought up. I love all the characters in this film as well. This movie makes a lot of sense because as society "becomes more advance" What does the culture loose? Not to sound preachy. I can really relate to this movie from my child hood and loosing apart of my life that will never come back or ever been the same. This film is on my top 5 movies I have ever watched. There is just such a raw truth that I feel when I watch the movie and its not the kind of truth that you have to dig for its right in front of your face. The creators of this film did a great job and I enjoyed this movie very much. This movie may not be for every one but if you have an open mind I think you will love it. | 1 |
train_1525 | Having seen the Peter O'Toole version recently, I was ready to be awed by the smart writing in this version. Little time is spent on the fighting, which I prefer. Instead, we are shown all the many motives underlying both the French and English (who held Normandy) politicos and priests who put her to death. Even the worst hypocrite of them all, the archbishop, leaves us with the thought that "Of course, she was innocent. The innocent have always had to suffer for the ambitions of the mighty. She had no idea what she was saying, no idea of the implications of blasphemy or going against the church. Unschooled, she had no idea of what the church's stand on such matters even was."Preminger was true to the myths surrounding her death, and I appreciated the preview on the tape that showed the flames reaching up and burning her. Why? They used gas jets in the movie, and 2 of them were stopped up. Suddenly, the air pressure blew out the stoppage and the flames leaped up right on her. Thankfully for her, they didn't have to repeat the shot as it was SO realistic: she WAS being burned!! Pretty traumatic introduction for an Iowa girl to her new career of acting.John Gielgud performed outstandingly. He is the English politico who is orchestrating the show. He also makes the point that once you condemn someone to death, you don't want to be around to watch them die. You might shrink from your 'duty' the next time...not that such delicacies bother the soul of our would-be president. We Christians, even the most anti-Semitic have no problem with falling back on the Old Testament when it comes to capital punishment, even though it was overridden by Jesus' words. Bring on public executions like this little girl's. Smelling burnt flesh might bring us respectable folks to our souls' senses.The only little 'pick' I have about this film is that we are not shown why the priest who has been so adamantly urging her burning becomes so suddenly so contrite, even to the point of madness. There should have been more expansion of his character, more dialogue--as the sudden 'coming to his senses' doesn't make sense.And, whether Graham Greene does this deliberately or not, St. Joan is such a self-assured little upstart, you almost but not quite, are glad she meets her come-uppance. And, when she turned down life in prison, for some reason I thought of Anne Sexton, the poet who accused Sylvia Plath of 'stealing her death' when she committed suicide ...knowing such an action guarantees immortality. You gotta wonder!!If ever there was a good example of obsessive thought and logic-tight compartments, this is one. St. Joan should have turned Buddhist and quieted the 'voices in her mind'. | 1 |
train_24050 | I knew I was going to see a low budget movie, but I expected much more from an Alex Cox film. The acting by the two leading men was terrible, especially the white guy. The girl should have won an Oscar compared to those two. This movie was filled with what I guess would be inside jokes for film industry people and a few other jokes that I actually understood and made me laugh out loud, which is rare. Without these laugh-out-loud moments I would have given this film 2/10. What happened to the Alex Cox who made all the 80s classics?SPOILER:There were a couple of questions I had after the movie was over. Why did the Mexican guy go to the other guy's house at the beginning? What did his daughter say he got 100 people fired from his last job? Why was she breaking her own stuff when she was mad at him? I guess I should have gone to the Q&A after the movie, but I didn't want to get up at 10am. | 0 |
train_16481 | This movie really has no beginning or end. And it's really VERY unbelievable. Mary-K and Ashley are supposed to be interns working in a mailing room for an Italian fashion company. But, for some reason, they're put up in a 5-star hotel (conveniently located across the street from the Coliseum), and all of the other interns they work with are just as abnormally model-looking as they are. One thing that I found obvious in this movie is the way that one of the twins DOESN'T end up with the guy. I guess they tried to twist their usual plot a bit. Nice try. | 0 |
train_5188 | Steven Spielberg produced, wrote, came up with ideas for and even directed episodes of Amazing Stories, so naturally this would have to be the greatest anthology ever right? Unfortunately wrong. Some episodes are just fantastic, but all too often it was a mixed bag. In fact, that might have been it's downfall is it was way too mixed. Some episodes were light comedies, some were dramas, some were horror, and one was even animated, which made this a similar, but not as good 80s version of the Twilight Zone (which also was around).Normally I'd like having a mixture of stories in an anthology show, but they just didn't fully work here. Some of the more fantastical dramatic episodes felt like they would be better being shown late on night on the Lifetime network, like the episode "Ghost Train", which was directed by Spielberg himself. In that episode, it gave the message of hope, and gave us a fantasy story, but overall it was just a build up to the ending which didn't blow me away anyways. The horror episodes tended to work better than the drama, but there were far more dramatic ones, and they grow tiring to watch. Acting wise, this anthology got some big stars, similar to the original Twilight Zone. Kevin Costner, Kiefer Sutherland, Milton Berle, Dom Deluise, Harvey Keitel, Beau Bridges, Charlie Sheen, Forrest Whitaker, Tim Robbins, John Lithgow, Rhea Perlman, Danny Devito, Patrick Swayze, Christopher Lloyd, June Lockhart, Kathy Baker, Weird Al Yankovich and many other well knowns have been in episodes of the show. It's fun to see well known actors in almost every episode of the series. Great directors have also had part in episodes including Spielberg himself, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Bob Clark, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Paul Bartel, Joe Dante, Robert Zemeckis, Danny Devito and even Martin Scorsese. I'd actually recommend this more to fans of the directors and/or the 80s than anyone else.Amazing Stories was sometimes amazing, usually good, occasionally mediocre, and every once in a while a real stinker came out. But, this show has nostalgic value to me, and it's sort of fun to sit on boring afternoons and watch some episodes. John Williams' theme music for the show is sure to be caught in anyone's head who watches this, too.My rating: Good show. 30 mins. per episode. TVPG | 1 |
train_1234 | I grew up watching this movie ,and I still love it just as much today as when i was a kid. Don't listen to the critic reviews. They are not accurate on this film.Eddie Murphy really shines in his roll.You can sit down with your whole family and everybody will enjoy it.I recommend this movie to everybody to see. It is a comedy with a touch of fantasy.With demons ,dragons,and a little bald kid with God like powers.This movie takes you from L.A. to Tibet , of into the amazing view of the wondrous temples of the mountains in Tibet.Just a beautiful view! So go do your self a favor and snatch this one up! You wont regret it! | 1 |
train_12856 | The form of the film is that of a suspense shocker. There are surprises, twists and turns, reverses and excitements. At times, this is truly an "edge-of-the-seat" film. But it disappoints, and disappoints severely.The villain of the piece is not believeable; his character does not hold together. I refuse to "spoil" the film, but will only say that the character we meet at the beginning just could not be he whom we see at the end.The second major disappointment of the film is that--finally, it becomes little more that a bloody slasher film. There is little qualitative difference between this and one of the "Friday the 13th" films. Not that every film need always be totally tasteful, but this film does drip gore on occasion.Though the film features the magnificent Sean Connery, even he does not measure up to his usual standard, and often just seems to be walking through the paces. | 0 |
train_7699 | FORBIDDEN PLANET is one of the best examples of Hollywood SF films. Its influence was felt for more than a decade. However, certain elements relating to how this wide-screen entertainment was aimed at a mid-fifties audience that is now gone have dated it quite a bit, and the film's sometimes sluggish pacing doesn't help. But, the story's compelling central idea involving the ancient,extinct Krell civilization and "monsters from the Id" hasn't lost its appeal and continue to make this film a relevant "must see" movie. What I'm mostly interested in saying here is that the current DVD for this movie is terrible. The movie has never really looked that good on home video and it's elements are in dire need of restoration. I hope that will happen soon and we get a special edition of this SF classic. | 1 |
train_24396 | Before I start, I _love_ Eddie Izzard. I think he's one of the funniest stand-ups around today. Possibly that means I'm going into this with too high expectations, but I just didn't find Eddie funny in this outing.I think the main problem is Eddie is trying too hard to be Eddie. Everyone knows him as a completely irrelevant comic, and we all love him for it. But in Circle, he appears to be going more for irrelevant than funny, and completely lost me in places. Many of the topics he covers he has covered before - I even think I recognised a few recycled jokes in there.If you buy the DVD you'll find a behind-the-scenes look at Eddie's tour (interesting in places, but not very funny), and a French language version of one of his shows. Die-hards will enjoy seeing Eddie in a different language, but subtitled comedy isn't very funny.If you're a fan of Eddie you've either got this already or you're going to buy it whatever I say. If you're just passing through, buy Glorious or Dressed to Kill - you won't be disappointed. With Circle, you probably will. | 0 |
train_14460 | I tried to finish this film three times, but it's god awful. Case in point: mom and daughter drive up to the bed and breakfast,mom stops for gas, crazy gas station weirdos mad at her hubby whose running the B&B try to rape her. She escapes, heads to B&B and instead of hubby going ballistic and she wanting to call the cops, story just continues with lukewarm behavior on both their parts. Wow.Other action logic deficits abound. Acting is also lukewarm, and the next door neighbor's warning is delivered in a really corny, badly acted moment.Moments of intense gore/death unevenly interwoven with lukewarm scenes of time-filler interplay between characters.Less focus on gore, more focus on mood and story would have been appreciated. | 0 |
train_1142 | till HBO began rerunning it this month. I remember laughing out loud in the theater back in 1991, and now again in my living room. If I see that it's on, I have to watch it. There's just no question. This is so much more entertaining to me than other, more popular spoofs like Airplane! (which I really like, BTW). Cathy Moriarty steals the show in my opinion. Quotes like "Sudden speech! The last symptoms of brain fever! She could blow at any moment!" put me over the edge. And Whoopie Goldberg hasn't been this funny since 'Jumpin' Jack Flash'. Kevin Klein, Sally Field, Robert Downey Jr. all turn in superb performances as expected. I started out giving this 9 out of 10 stars, but then I realized that for the type of film it's supposed to be, there isn't one thing I'd change or improve upon. So 10 it is. I have to get this on DVD, that's just all there is to it. | 1 |
train_1735 | Miss DeCarlo's starring debut has everything the writers could come up with -- from the Franco-Prussian War to the US Civil War, the great American West, San Francisco in its heyday, ballet, opera, vaudeville, stage coach bandits, and a Chinese junk. Just when you thought the plot couldn't get any screwier, it does. It's magnificent, taken tongue in cheek. DeCarlo's character (here called Anna Marie -- NOT Salome, that's the role she dances) is loosely based on the career of the notorious Lola Montez, who was the mistress of the King of Prussia and caused a revolution when he gave her the crown jewels. She did escape to the American west. There is a town in Arizona called "Salome, Where She Danced," based on the historical fact that Lola Montez did dance the role of Salome there. StageCoach Cleve and the Russian nobleman who fall under her charms are not historically accurate, nor I assume is the Chinese wise man with the Scottish accent -- but it is one of my favorite all time camp classics and DeCarlo is breathtakingly beautiful throughout. | 1 |
train_24877 | Just because someone is under the age of 10 does not mean they are stupid. If your child likes this film you'd better have him/her tested. I am continually amazed at how so many people can be involved in something that turns out so bad. This "film" is a showcase for digital wizardry AND NOTHING ELSE. The writing is horrid. I can't remember when I've heard such bad dialogue. The songs are beyond wretched. The acting is sub-par but then the actors were not given much. Who decided to employ Joey Fatone? He cannot sing and he is ugly as sin.The worst thing is the obviousness of it all. It is as if the writers went out of their way to make it all as stupid as possible. Great children's movies are wicked, smart and full of wit - films like Shrek and Toy Story in recent years, Willie Wonka and The Witches to mention two of the past. But in the continual dumbing-down of American more are flocking to dreck like Finding Nemo (yes, that's right), the recent Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and eye-crossing trash like Red Riding Hood. | 0 |
train_16264 | This is definitely the worst bigfoot movie I've ever seen and quite possibly the overall worst movie I've ever seen in my life. The actors and actresses were horrible and it seemed like they were trying way too hard to play their roles as dorks, tough guys, jerks, know it alls, etc. And the bigfoot itself was terrible. It appeared to be some kind of computer generated image from the days of Atari & Intellivision. At one point near the end of the movie as an army of sasquatches were chasing after the remaining survivors, one gets shot and as it's running it looked like a poor man's version of donkey kong himself! And one gets hit by a bullet and the blood that comes out of it was just awful animation. Another thing that was annoying was the music. Way way way too much music (classical score or whatever you call it) throughout the entire film. It was never ending. Oh yeah, the movie is boring too. Absolutely one of the worst films I've ever seen. I highly recommend taking your $3 or whatever they charge to rent this movie and spending it on a gallon of gas or a value menu somewhere. TRULY AWFUL! | 0 |
train_18450 | My first question after seeing this film was, "Why is the title LIAM?" If the intent was to tell a story from the boy's perspective, it was not carried out well. Of course there was the formulaic use of camera angles in the boy's scenes, but much of the crucial action took place outside of his field of view. Having a "main" character unable to speak (obviously suggesting the mute, powerless position of a child) makes it difficult to give that character much depth.Melodrama is defined as: "dramatic or other literary work characterized by the use of stereotyped characters, exaggerated emotions and language, simplistic morality, and conflict" LIAM fits this definition to a T. The viewer is hit over the head with the typical stereotypes of the fire and brimstone Catholic Church in the stern school marm and the well-fed priest squeezing money from parishioners. (A stereotype which is becoming very tiresome.) What's more--the Jewish characters are money lenders and factory owners!Much of the film was predictable...Who didn't think that we'd see Theresa scrubbing the toilet after her mother had told her "No daughter of mine will scrub another woman's toilet!" I'm a fan of British realism if it's done well. In my opinion, LIAM is not. | 0 |
train_1199 | This is the most compelling and excellent performance that Robert Taylor ever gave. It even surpasses his wonderful performance as "Johnny Eager" coming a full 14 years after that film. His looks are still a wonder to see, but he has a maturity now that gives him the edge in this gritty, violent role. Charlie Gilson (Taylor) is the last of his breed, a buffalo hunter who kills not for the money but for the pleasure. His wild eyed killing of not only buffalo but human beings, is stunning to watch. He is basically a lonely man, needing the people around him, but they dislike him because of his sociopath behavior. His partner is Sandy McKenzie (Stewart Granger) who is sick of the hunt, and only goes along, because he is a failure at anything else. Along the way Charlie kills a family of Indians and captures the beautiful Debra Pagent. Charlie tries to seduce her to no avail, but sees that Sandy is interested in her also. Granger is kind of sad to watch, so fed up with the hunt, longing to go away with the girl and her baby. Lloyd Nolan as the drunken skinner is wonderful with his wise cracks and accordian playing. Russ Tamblyn plays the half breed trying to fit in a white world. The group is an odd mix of good and evil, young and old. In the end Taylor gets spooked by the buffalo, as many hunters before him had, and runs off leaving Sandy with the girl. Upon his return, that night Sandy leaves with the woman, setting Charlie off on a rampage of killing in a quest to get Sandy and have the girl for himself. The final confrontation comes in a snow storm and the last scene is so shocking that you will never forget it. It is Taylor's film all the way and he was truly a much underrated actor of the era. | 1 |
train_13606 | Don't waste your time on this dreck. As portrayed, the characters have no redeeming values and watching them interact is sheer torture. "Gothic" was entertainment at least, this is crap. If you like watching pretentious and spoiled poets straining to outwit each other, this may be right up your alley. Lord Byron is portrayed as a complete jerk, and why the others would choose to spend more than five minutes with him is truly bewildering. Mary Shelly appears to be the only character with any spine whatsoever, but even she comes out of the whole ordeal without an ounce of respect. What a waste of time. See Gothic instead. I also remember seeing another superior movie based on the same subject matter, but didn't catch the title. I was hoping this was it, but no such luck. Not recommended. | 0 |
train_17670 | Wow, could have been such a good movie,Starts of with Brittany Daniels tied up, Im thinking cool we are going to get a flash back, but nothing, movie starts anew with the kid filming. This movie probably would have been better if it wasn't for the acting. I mean the acting was mostly horrible.. Although with the lines the poor actors had to deal with i guess they did the best they could..Still it really ruin the movie for me.. The twins were the only ones that seem to have some acting skills.. The movie drags to long for the supposed shocking conclusion.. All in all I have seen worse low budget movies but considering this was hype with the 8 films to die for I was very disappointed.. By the way, were did some reviewers say there was gore and stuff. Did I see the same movie.. Well this is 4 out of the eight, and so far only one has been any good.. | 0 |
train_4832 | Apart from having the longest reign in British history (63 years), Queen Victoria also holds two other distinctions. She was, apart from our current Queen, the oldest ever British monarch, living to the age of 81. And she was also the youngest ever British (as opposed to English or Scottish) monarch, coming to the throne as a girl of eighteen. And yet whenever television or the cinema make a programme or film about her, they seem far more interested in the older Victoria than they do in the young girl; the version of Victoria with which modern audiences will probably be most familiar is Judi Dench in "Mrs Brown". "The Young Victoria" tries to redress the balance by showing us the events surrounding her accession and the early years of her reign. It has the rare distinction of being produced by a former Royal, Sarah Duchess of York, whose daughter Princess Beatrice makes a brief appearance as an extra.There are three main strands to the plot. The first concerns the intrigues of Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent, a highly unpopular figure even with her own daughter, largely because of the influence of her adviser Sir John Conroy, who was widely rumoured to be her lover. (According to one unfounded rumour he, and not the late Duke of Kent, was Victoria's natural father). The second strand concerns the growing romance between Victoria and her German cousin Prince Albert, and the attempts of King Leopold of Belgium, who was uncle to both of them, to influence this romance. (Leopold's hope was to increase the prestige of the House of Saxe-Coburg, to which both he and Albert belonged). The third concerns one of the strangest episodes in British political history, the Bedchamber Crisis of 1839, when supporters of the Tory Party (which had traditionally supported a strong monarchy) rioted because the young Queen was perceived to favour the Whig Party and their leader Lord Melbourne, even though the Whigs had historically supported a quasi-republican system of government, with the monarch reduced to a figurehead.Scriptwriter Julian Fellowes is known for his Conservative views, and at times I wondered if this may have coloured his treatment of political themes, as he seems to lean to the side of the Tories, the predecessors of the modern Conservative party. Their leader Robert Peel is shown as statesmanlike and dignified, whereas Melbourne, for all his dash and charm, is shown as devious and uninterested in social reform. There may be some truth is these characterisations, but Fellowes glosses over the fact that only a few years earlier the Tories had opposed the Reform Act, which ended the corrupt electoral system of rotten boroughs, and that they had benefited from William IV's unconstitutional dismissal of a Whig administration.Lessons in dynastic and constitutional history do not always transfer well to the cinema screen, and this one contains its share of inaccuracies. Prince Albert, for example, was not injured in Edward Oxford's attempt on Victoria's life, and Melbourne (in his late fifties at the time of Victoria's accession) was not as youthful as he is portrayed here by Paul Bettany. King William IV certainly disliked the Duchess of Kent (who was his sister-in-law), but I doubt if he would have gone so far as to bawl abuse at her during a state banquet, as he is shown doing here. I also failed to understand the significance of the scene in which the Duchess and Conroy try to force Victoria to sign a "Regency Order"; the Duchess's constitutional position was made clear by the Regency Act 1830, which provided that she would become Regent if her daughter was still under eighteen at the time of her accession. No piece of paper signed by Victoria could have altered the provisions of the Act.There are also occasional infelicities. In one early scene we see Victoria and Albert playing chess while comparing themselves to pawns being moved around a chessboard, a metaphor so hackneyed that the whole scene should have come complete with a "Danger! Major cliché ahead!" warning. Yet in spite of scenes like this, I came to enjoy the film. There were some good performances, especially from Miranda Richardson as the scheming Duchess and Mark Strong as the obnoxious Conroy. It is visually very attractive, being shot in sumptuous style we have come to associate with British historical drama. Jim Broadbent gives an amusing turn as King William, although he does occasionally succumb to the temptation of going over the top. (Although not as disastrously over the top as he was in "Moulin Rouge").The main reason for the film's success, however, is the performances of Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend as the two young lovers Victoria and Albert. Blunt is probably more attractive than Victoria was in real life, but in her delightful portrayal the Queen is no longer the old lady of the popular imagination, the black-clad Widow of Windsor who was perpetually not amused, but a determined, strong-minded and loving young woman. Her love for Albert, and their happy family life together, was one of the main reasons why the monarchy succeeded in reestablishing itself in the affections of the British people. (With the exception of George III, Victoria's Hanoverian ancestors had been notoriously lacking in the matrimonial virtues). Blunt and Friend make "The Young Victoria" a touching romance and a gripping human drama as well as an exploration of a key period in British history. 8/10 | 1 |
train_1039 | I have seen this film several times, and watched it today (on TCM) solely because of Geraldine Fitzgerald. She is a much underrated actress and I have to admit I have had a crush on her since I first saw her (probably in "Wuthering Heights" 40 or more years ago). The real star in this movie, however, is Paul Lukas, and he deserved all the accolades he got. He makes it clear, whether we like it or not, that the end justifies the means. Naziism had to be stopped, and anything that helped do it was good. He gave his children a line about being bad, and that they should not be bad, but as he said earlier when conversing with adults, he would do this sort of thing again without hesitation. Lukas did give an excellent portrayal of a man caught in this situation, and made it clear that what he did was a very hard thing to do.Some people think his victim was a Nazi, but I don't think so - I think he was only after the money. His Nazi associates knew this and that is why they did not have much use for him.One interesting point in the film, and presumably also in the play, is the fact that Muller (Lucas) is a German. While the anti German hysteria of WWI was not repeated in WWII, there was considerable anti-German sentiment and some Germans were interred similar to what happened in California with people of Japanese ancestry. It was something of an act of bravery for Hellman to write a play about good Germans at this time (maybe she thought they were the ones who signed the Nazi-Soviet pact!). After all, the US and British air forces were bombing German cities and having no qualms about killing innocent civilians. I think, however, that the Dresden bombing and firestorm happened later, after "Watch on the Rhine" was released.The title is something of a play on words, as the "watch" is looking west, from Germany. In fact, Watch am Rhein was a German army marching song - used in WWII, but the Nazis had their own marching song that was used as well. But Muller IS a German and he is engaged in his own "Wach am Rhein".All the other actors did an excellent job here; although Bodo was too much there are children like him. I am surprised he did not give his father's secret away. In real life, he may very well have done so. | 1 |
train_4424 | As incredible as it may seem, Gojoe is an anime- and Hong Kong-inspired samurai action flick with a pacifistic message. This ankle of the film is effectively portrayed through the protagonist (a great acting job done by Daisuke Ryu), a killer-turned-to-boddhist-monk Benkei. Benkei has sworn never to kill again, but he still takes up the sword to fight what he thinks is a demon invasion...Gojoe is a film difficult to rate. It's visual imagery is stunningly crafted and beautiful, but it uses too much trickery (circling camera and high speed drives, expressionistic shots, leeched colors, digital effects etc.), so the end result is somewhat tiring. That said, the beginning and the ending of the film are nevertheless both elegant and powerful. If only the director Sogo Ishii would have been wise enough not to overuse his bag of tricks.Other problem with Gojoe is the amount of violence. For a film with such an anti-violent message Gojoe wastes way too much energy and screen time to depict the endless battle scenes. Also, the way the violence is shown is always on the edge of being self-indulgent; in fact, a blood shower against the night sky seems to be one of the films signature images. Luckily, Ishii is wise enough to show the ugly, tragic side of violence as well. Still, it seems that Ishii is not sure whether he's making a traditional action film or a deeply moral allegory. The audience can't be sure of this, either, until the very end of the film. The powerful (albeit cynical) ending is what saves Gojoe; it clearly emphasizes that this film is something more than a mere gore-fest. | 1 |
train_8029 | I am curious of what rifle Beckett was using in the movie, and also the caliber of the bullet that he was suppose to be firing. If this is loosely based on Carlos Hathcock's sniping, I am guessing that it is a 7mm. round. I am also curious of the rifle itself. He also made a comment in the final Sniper movie about the rifle that the Vietnamese man let him use that belonged to his father. Beckett mentioned that he thought it was the best sniper rifle ever made. I would like to know which rifle that is also. I know that this particular rifle was made around WWII or beforehand. I just couldn't get a close enough look at it watching the movie to identify it.As for Mr. Hathcocks kills, his longest shot was 1.47 miles, and he had 93 confirmed kills and 14 unconfirmed kills. After his wounds somewhat healed from being burned in Vietnam, he spent the rest of his career teaching snipers in the USMC the skills that they would need in the field. His sniping career is still mentioned to our brothers and sisters that train in the USMC. I found out his name from my friend who is a former Marine. Any information would be great. | 1 |
train_22842 | Jameson Parker And Marilyn Hassett are the screen's most unbelievable couple since John Travolta and Lily Tomlin. Larry Peerce's direction wavers uncontrollably between black farce and Roman tragedy. Robert Klein certainly think it's the former and his self-centered performance in a minor role underscores the total lack of balance and chemistry between the players in the film. Normally, I don't like to let myself get so ascerbic, but The Bell Jar is one of my all-time favorite books, and to watch what they did with it makes me literally crazy. | 0 |
train_17517 | Just finished this movie... saw it on the video shelf and being a Nick Stahl fan I just had to rent it. In all honesty, it probably should have stayed on the shelf. The concept was an interesting one and there were several fairly smart twists and turns but somehow I guessed almost all of them before they came along. And the movie just went a little too far in the end in my opinion... if you have to suffer through a viewing of it you'll see what I mean!On a positive note, Nick Stahl's acting was great (especially considering what he had to work with). Eddie Kaye Thomas was also good but he always plays the same type of character... too much Paul Finch from "American Pie" coming through for my liking.And finally, the worst part of this movie has to be January Jones' emotionless performance... I guess a pretty face really is all that matters in Hollywood. | 0 |
train_19828 | I see a lot of people liked this movie. To me this was a movie made right of writing 101 and the person failed the class. From the time Lindsey Price the videographer shows up until the end the movie was very predictable. I kept on watching to see if it was going anywhere.First we have the widowed young father. Cliché #1 movies/TV always kill off the the mother parent if the child is a girl, or a brood of boys so the single father can get swoon over his dead wife and seem completely out of his element taking care of the children. Starting from from My 3 Sons to 2 1/2 Dads. These movies are usually dramas and comedies are TV shows.Cliché # 2 When a pushy woman has a video camera in her hand she will play a big part in the movie. And will always have solutions or even if that person is a airhead Cliché #3 If the person in peril is a foreigner they have to be of Latino origin. And they must be illegal. Apparently there are no legal Latino's and illegal Europeans, unless if there is a IRA element involved.Cliché #4 The said Latino must be highly educated in his native country. In this case he was a Profesor who made 200 per month. And the said highly educated Latino must now act like he hasn't brain in his head now and lets the air head side kick take over.Cliché #5 The crime the person committed really wasn't a crime but a accident. But because in this case he has lost all of the sense he had when he crossed the boarder he now acts like a blithering idiot and now has put his own daughter in peril by taking her along on a fruitless quest to the border with the idiot side kick.Cliché #6 One never runs over a hoodlum running from a crime , but some poor little cute kid. This is because the parents of the child have to play a big part of the movie, and because the the person who accidentally killed the child can have ridiculous interaction with the parents.Cliché #7 Name me one movie in which one cop is not the angry vet and they get paired up with a rookie. Even if they are homicide detectives who have to be the most experienced cops on a police Force. Sev7n and Copy cat and Law and Order come to mind right away. And the vet even though gruff on the outside has a heart of gold.Cliché #8 Let's go and round up some unemployed Soap Stars. Now I like Lindsey Price. But Susan Haskell IMO can not act her way out of a paper bag and when she use to be on One Life To Live as Marty he swayed from right to left every time she opened her mouth. It use to get me sea sick. She might be anchored on land better now, but she still cannot act.The movie might have been more insightful if it wasn't filled with clichés. I don't think a movie has to be expensive or cerebral to be good. But this was just bad.***SPOILER**** Now I am not going to spoil the ending. Oh heck I will because I feel it will be a disservice to humanity to let a person waste time they will never get back looking at this movie. It involves Cliché #6 and #7. Unless a person has never seen a movie before you had to see what was coming. The father makes even a dumber mistake runs from the cops at the end and gets shot by the angry veteran, who all of a sudden is very upset. You would think she thought the poor guy was innocent all through the movie and she shot him by mistake. When she didn't. Now for the little girl who the dad brought along with him. Guess what happen to her? Times up, she ends up living with the family whose child was killed by her father!! Come on! You all knew that was going to happen, because she is a replacement child!! That is why she did not go and live with the Lindey Price character. This movie was a insult as far as I was concerned. Because there were so many avenues this movie could of explored and went down but it chose to take the cliché ridden one. The 2 stars are for 2 of the stars, the little girl, who I thought was very good and Lindsey Price who character was annoying but she did what she could with it. My advice is take a vice and squeeze your head with it instead of looking at this dreck | 0 |
train_15855 | There were only two things that kept me interested in this film: I was waiting for Owen Wilson to die, and Catherine Zeta Jones.This was basically a one woman show. Catherine Zeta Jones was just there to provide eye-candy. Liam Neeson was totally wasted in this film. Like Jones, he had no role at all. The film was all Lily Taylor (Ransom, Ready to Wear). She was the only one that had any real part in this crappy script by David Self. OK, it was his first one and he did redeem himself with Road to Perdition.I don't know what director Jan de Bont's problem was. he did a great job with Speed and Twister. he really fell down on the job here. Maybe he was still recovering from the disaster Speed 2: Cruise Control. He should thank his lucky stars for The Wild Wild West, else this would be the worst picture of 1999.Avoid at all costs. | 0 |
train_985 | This film resembles in many ways `Enemy of the State' with Will Smith and Gene Hackman, as we have an innocent (black) man being pursued by the `government' with all the modern technology known to man. Usually when storyline is copied like this the result is a disaster. That does not apply here. Of course I love everything David Morse does, so maybe my comments are not fair, but there were more good things about this film then that. The main baddy, played by Doug Hutchison, was brilliant, and the story flowed with excellent extras such as David Paymer and Robert Pastorelli. Our hero, Alvin Sanders (played by Jamie Foxx), was however irritating most of the part. He is so out of place, cracking bad jokes, evoking no sympathy from the audience. Or not to begin with, the strange thing is that he kinda grows on you (and on his followers as well!). I didn't expect much when I rented it, but was surprised with a good solid action movie with comedy bits. 7/10 | 1 |
train_3066 | Everyone is either loving or hating this film. I am going with loving. It is so well shot and so well acted. Beautiful. This film is for people who appreciate well crafted film making. If you are not a fan of well done films of course you would hate this. But if you like the tops of acting, photography, story and development, look no further then here. | 1 |
train_17003 | I admired Rob Marshall for Chicago, but Memoirs of Geisha turns out to be yet another failure of combing western and Asian arts. Overall, the scene is beautiful, but after restless emphasis on exoticism-oriented scenes some might just find himself fed up with them. The excessive cherry blossom was, frankly, overdone. It's probably the cultural difference of perception here: the ultimate beauty is not the showy type, as truly beautiful geisha would not be the over westernised pumpkin in the movie. Some other comments have rightly mentioned the biggest flaws. As a Taiwanese, I have no doubt the actress are great. An actor/actress can play any kind of role when he/she can look like it. Gong Li is great, but the power of emotions that she showed in this movie had not been translated into Japanese style. All I saw was a bittersweet and jealous Chinese WOMAN. Michlle Yeoh, one of my favourtie actress, did not even LOOK LIKE a Japanese. Some comment has mentioned the peculiar delicate, feminine characteristics of Japanese women, with which I can't agree more. These are so delicate that I assume not even all modern Japanese actresses are eligible for the roles in Geisha, let alone the two Chinese and one Malaysian actress who grew up in different cultures and probably did not know Japanese culture that much.Geisha is a good shot for arousing the curiosity of American audiences. But it would be an insult for the movie itself and for art alike if the movie wins the Oscar for best costume, best director or best picture. | 0 |
train_20360 | Martin Weisz, who directed the solid "Rohtenburg", will be taking the heat, with Wes Craven, for another shabby "The Hills Have Eyes 2". The memory of the legendary original, which boasted an unbelievable storyline and a dog having a flashback, will be erased forever by this more technically polished remake (in name only). A bunch of National Guardsmen (and women) are sent to a desert research area surrounded by hills filled with mutants. One by one the weekend soldiers are picked off. That's it. There is some hardcore violence and a reasonably brutal rape scene, but there is precious little else to get excited about. The film's "heroes" are the usual bunch of clichés and the mutants, a far cry from Craven's original "family", mostly resemble Brian Thompson from "Cobra" coupled with some creatures Stan Winston had left over from the "Wrong Turn" shoot. Much of the action takes place in caves, ala "The Descent", and is well shot by Sam McCurdy. A laughable aspect is Wes and Jonathan Craven's addition of a sympathetic mutant who skulks around his cave like Leatherface in Hooper's original "Chainsaw". Weisz will be blamed for this dull debacle, but he's not really at fault because he does his best to maintain suspense and squeeze some freshness out of the contrived situations. Not a fan, unfortunately. | 0 |
train_15631 | The Fallen Ones starts with archaeologist Matt Fletcher (Casper Van Dien) in the desert discovering the mummified remains of a 42 foot tall giant, now there's something you don't see everyday. Matt is working for property developer Morton (Robert Wagner) who wants to build a holiday resort on the land & he calls in fellow archaeologist Angela (Kristen Miller) for reasons I'm unsure of. Anyway they both try to figure out what they've got on they're hands when some of the team go missing, Morton calls in security guy Ammon (Navid Negahban) to handle the situation. Meanwhile ancient text translator the Rabbi Eli Schmidtt (Tom Bosley) translates some ancient text (as he would) & is shocked to learn of a evil prophecy in which these giants will rise up & take over the world for the Fallen One, or something like that. It's up to Matt to save the day & the whole planet...Written & directed by Kevin VanHook, who also has a small role in the film as the ancient warrior leader at the start, I personally thought The Fallen Ones was a terrible film & it's as simple & straight forward as that. There are so many things that are just plain bad about The Fallen Ones both on a technical & conceptual level, the script doesn't make a whole lot of sense & it doesn't really get going until the final 20 odd minutes by which time I had almost lost the will to live. The character's are awful & as clichéd as you like, the dialogue is bad as in very, very bad & the entire film is predictable, I mean it's not going to come as a surprise that Casper Van Dien is going to save the day is it? It's not a huge surprise that the mummified giant is going to come back to life either so why wait until over an hour into the film when most of the audience will be in some sort of comatose state. This is bad, very bad. You have been warned.Director VanHook doesn't impress, the fight scenes are absolutely awful & why dress your bad guys up in a horrible shade of purple? They look naff. To give it a bit of credit the special effects on the giant Mummy itself are actually good although there's not that many of them since he doesn't make an appearance for over an hour, there are also some normal sized Mummy's that look to have come straight from the set of The Mummy (1999), unfortunately these aren't used to any great effect & in fact are wasted as some comic relief. The mechanical Mummy was a pretty good idea but looked silly & there is no way on Earth that all those people inside could work in sync with each other to operate it, actually the more I think about the more ridiculous the idea is. Forget about any scares, tension or atmosphere & don't even think about any gore or violence because there isn't any.Technically The Fallen Ones isn't anything special & apart from the impressive giant Mummy effects there's little her to get excited about. The ghost CGI & water effects are terrible, it was made-for-TV & it's shows. The acting was poor, Wagner looks embarrassed & this is probably the only thing the likes of Dien & Bosley can get these days.The Fallen Ones is a bad film, there's no two ways about it as far as I'm concerned. Not recommended on any level or in any way, one to avoid. | 0 |
train_7808 | This is a film that everyone should watch. Quite apart from raising hugely important points (while South Africa is on the road to recovery there are still many countries in similar situations now), it is superbly directed while Denzel Washington gives, in my opinion, the best performance in his career so far. Kline also gives a good performance, although perhaps not as stunning as Washington's. John Thaw also puts in a good turn as the Chief of Police.There are so many possible areas where a film on apartheid could fall down, but all of these have been avoided. It would be easy to simply portray white people as the bad guys and black people as the good guys, but Attenborough has not done this. Sure, there were some white characters who seemed inherently evil, such as the Captain at the Soweto uprising, but to add extra dimensions to all the characters would make the film unbearably long. Some people complain about the length of the film as it is, but I think it needs the whole two and a half hours to tell the whole story, for it really is an incredible one.The best scene in the film is that of Steve Biko's funeral. When the whole crowd begins to sing the South African national anthem, it is probably one of, if not the most moving scenes I have seen.If you haven't seen this film already: watch it. It may not be comfortable viewing, but it's certainly worth it. | 1 |
train_5857 | Summary- This game is the best Spider-Man to hit the market!You fight old foes such as Scorpion,Rhino,Venom,Doctor Octopus,Carnage,...And exclusive to the game...Monster-Ock!Monster-Ock is the symbiote Carnage On Dock Ock's body.Storyline- Dock Ock was supposedly reformed and using his inventions for mankind...supposedly...He was really planing a symbiote invasion! See the rest for yourself.Features- You can play in numerous old costumes seen throughout the comics.Almost every costume has special abilities!You can collect comics in the game and then view them in a comic viewer.And last but not least..............Spidey-Armour!Collect a gold spider symbol to change into Spider-Armour.It gives you another health bar!Graphics- Great!Though they they can be rough at times.But still great!Sound- Sweet!Nice music on every level and great voice overs!Overall- 10 out of 10.This game rocks.Buy it today! | 1 |
train_8813 | Though the pieces are uneven this collection of 11 short films is truly a moving and human experience. There were some who, in the wake of the emotion on the anniversary of the bombings, took this to be anti-American. I don't think thats the case, even though some parts might be taken that way if you don't look behind the obvious. Ultimately the film is nothing except an attempt by people to express their confusion, sympathy and feelings about what happened. These are stories of people who's worlds have been shaken up by what happened on a Tuesday in September.As I said this film will move you, probably to tears. Its not always easy to watch, for example the film from Mexico is little more than a black screen with sound, but its effect is such as to lay even the strongest of people low. If you can be strong you really should see this film. It will comfort you and enlighten you and affect you... | 1 |
train_4365 | I first saw Rob Roy twelve years ago. With little money for entertainment, I rented it for my fiancé and I to watch on a bone chilling winter's night. The movie I had wanted was gone, so I rented this instead, not expecting much, and was very much surprised with how good it was. I just recently watched it again, and loved it every bit as much as the first time. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's about Scottish outlaw Robert Roy MacGregor, a cattleman and folk hero. From the little I know about the man and his story, liberties have been taken with the facts, but it's a movie, not a textbook, and so the filmmakers can be excused. Basically, the plot of the movie is that Rob Roy borrows money from the Marquis of Montrose to buy cattle which he then intends to sell and reap a large profit from. But, his plan is foiled when the friend entrusted with the money is robbed of the cash and murdered in the forest. Our hero finds himself on the run after failing to settle the matter with the Marquis, and Mary, his wife, suffers a sadistic rape at the hands of Archibald Cunningham, a smarmy Englishman with no soul. Atrocities ensue, until, in an immensely satisfying conclusion, Rob carves Archibald up like a Christmas turkey. There are many great performances in this movie, but allow me to touch specifically on a few. Liam Neeson, as usual, is fantastic, a sexy beast you can't take your eyes off of. Honestly, this man is like ice cream: even when he's bad he's good. His Rob Roy is an honourable man struggling to provide for those who depend on him, in the best way he knows how. Jessica Lange, as Mary, gives this woman a fierceness which is a nice change from the simpering, dull movie wives audiences are usually forced to endure. You just know she doesn't take any b.s from Rob, or anyone else for that matter. Tim Roth is completely over the top with his portrayal of the evil Archibald, yet somehow, it works. All the posturing and preening, combined with some wicked dialogue, result in one of the most memorable movie villains in recent memory. Combine all of this, and the stellar work by other supporting players, with the luscious scenery of Scotland, and you have what amounts to one really, really cool movie. If you haven't seen this, I highly recommend that you do. | 1 |
train_10635 | I appreciated the photography, the textures, the colours and often, unlike one comment, the lighting. What was lacking for me was a coherent storyline.I found it often disjointed, badly edited and at times difficult to follow. My version was 110 minutes, IMDb shows one at 125m. Possibly the cuts and subtitles didn't help. I applaud any films that escape from the Hollywood mould but this left me disappointed. Miss Gillain was luminous and the performances were all fine, I just wanted a little more dialogue. If anyone would like to see another film that has some affinity with this one, try 'Hideous Kinky'with Kate Winslet. | 1 |
train_14430 | Some have praised _Atlantis:_The_Lost_Empire_ as a Disney adventure for adults. I don't think so--at least not for thinking adults.This script suggests a beginning as a live-action movie, that struck someone as the type of crap you cannot sell to adults anymore. The "crack staff" of many older adventure movies has been done well before, (think _The Dirty Dozen_) but _Atlantis_ represents one of the worse films in that motif. The characters are weak. Even the background that each member trots out seems stock and awkward at best. An MD/Medicine Man, a tomboy mechanic whose father always wanted sons, if we have not at least seen these before, we have seen mix-and-match quirks before. The story about how one companion, Vinny played by Don Novello (Fr. Guido Sarducci), went from flower stores to demolitions totally unconvincing.Only the main character, Milo Thatch, a young Atlantis-obsessed academic voiced by Michael J. Fox, has any depth to him. Milo's search for Atlantis continues that of his grandfather who raised him. The opening scene shows a much younger Milo giddily perched on a knee, as his grandfather places his pith helmet on his head.And while the characters were thin at best, the best part about _Atlantis_ was the voice talent. Perhaps Milo's depth is no thicker than Fox's charm. Commander Rourke loses nothing being voiced by James Garner. Although Rourke is a pretty stock military type, Garner shows his ability to breath life into characters simply by his delivery. Garner's vocal performance is the high point. I'm sorry to say Leonard Nimoy's Dying King is nothing more than obligatory. Additionally, Don Novello as the demolition expert, Vinny Santorini, was also notable for one or two well-done, funny lines--but I've always liked Father Guido Sarducci, anyway. Also well done was the Computer Animation. The BACKGROUND animation, that is. The character animation has not been this bad for Disney since the minimalism that drove Don Bluth out the door. The character animation does nothing if not make already flat characters appear even flatter. Aside from landscapes, buildings and vehicles there isn't much to impress.The plot was the worst. Some say hackneyed or trite. I'm not so sure about that. Any serviceable plot can be made into something new with the proper treatment. Shakespeare often started from a known story and plot and was famous only for putting on a new coat of paint. So the treatment is the thing. And _Atlantis_ obviously lacks that.I cannot begin to go into all the logic gaps without a spoiler section. The plot was bad. The plot's bridges snap like twine and the ending does not make sense. To add to that, the script and the animation is peppered with annoying sloppiness.** SPOILERS **1. Right at the beginning when Milo reveals that runic or Celtic symbols have been wrongly transliterated and the "Coast of Ireland" should read the "Coast of Iceland", we begin to have problems. The writers of the script would need to know the British take for Eire or Eireann as "Ireland", and completely ignore the older, Latin term Hibernia. But more than this, they need to know of the Vikings conspiracy to call the greener island Iceland and the icier island Greenland. By making it the matter of a mis-tranliterated "letter", the writers have doomed themselves to requiring a runic version of English and a post-Roman date on the script. Since this is long after Atlantis was supposed to have sunk into its undersea cave. And without visible clues and less technology than Milo had, made the inscription far less trustworthy.2. The Shepard's Journal could not be written before the sinking of Atlantis, or it would know nothing about the cave or the crystal lying "in the King's eye". It must have been written after the sinking, but without even the technology that Milo's expedition had, how the heck did anybody get by the Leviathan. So how could it know more about anything after that? And why would it be written in Atlantian? Automatic writing and clairvoyance or astral travel can explain these things. However clairvoyance and astral travel do not require the shepard to write in Atlantian. So it's got to be some sort automatic writing. Since noone left in Atlantis can read, it must be the spirits of the crystal beaming messages to the surface. This would have made more sense. But could also have been explained within the movie: Milo could have discovered that this power had been calling him all his life--appeared in dreams, etc. This needed to be explored in the movie.3. The Atlantians should simply not be able to comprehend modern languages. No-one expects that the original Indo-Europeans would be able to converse in Europe, anymore than Romans would understand that hard "c"s or their day became French "ch"s (pronounced like "sh"s, no less!)4. Current Atlantians were alive before the cataclysm--when apparently they *could* read, yet now are unable to read what they used to, or operate similar machinery. 5. The Mass Illiteracy points out a crucial flaw in the movie. NOTHING seems to have happened to this culture. It seems suspended in air until Milo can rescue it. Even though it appears that life is not a constant struggle for survival, no-one wants to compose poetry or write novels and perhaps it is a combination of Atlantian school systems going downhill toward the end and lack of good fiction that caused Atlantis to fall into illiteracy.5. Kida can be excused for not knowing how to read or operate the machinery if she was so young when the Cataclysm of Stupidity set in--But ANY OF IT **HARDLY** qualifies her father for Deification!! Kashakim's foolishness almost single-handedly wiped his people from existence. Killed a bunch in the cataclysm, stalled progress (not a lot killed here, but he oversaw a massive slide in culture and progress) until someone could take the crystal to kill everybody, if they weren't boiled in lava first because the Giant Robots weren't there to protect them. A bolt of blue electricity should have shattered Kashakim's likeness, when Kida tried joining her father's image to the circle of GREAT Kings of Atlantis! 6. Even though Milo was the only one who could read Atlantian, Rourke and others knew enough to look through a book of gibberish and find a page on a crystal--which he knew to be a crystal and not some stylized astrological or "phases of the sun" diagram.7. If Milo's grandfather had told Rourke about it, it still does not explain what how Rourke would have suffered from Milo's reading it as part of the book. Ripping out the page--which was dog-eared in Rourke's hand, even though Milo found NO sign of a torn page in the book apparently--only was there to tip off the viewer that "something was not quite right". Unless the word "crystal" would have set alarms off in Milo's head that somebody would try to steal it, Milo would have suspected nothing. It's just thick-headed foreshadowing.8. The crew's "double-cross" was not a character change. We learned that Vinny, Sweet, Audrey and Cookie had been going along with Rourke from the beginning. However, the "change of heart" falls flat. It was a change, and needed to be better motivated. Hard to do with characters who weren't given anything to begin with.9. Niggling little bit that the lava flows up over the dome, instead of filling in the rest of the area that we view the sequence from. It's liquid; it will not flow over the protective dome until it fills up all lower areas.10. The ending STINKS!-- and makes no sense other than to appease political correctness. With it's powersource restored, Atlantis is no longer a weak power, needing coddling. The giant robot guardians and the sky-cycles shooting blue lightning suggest that they have less to fear from us than they might. The technology is superior to ours, and definitely to early 20th-century. In the end Milo needs to teach the Atlantians to read, for what? The whole idea is to leave their little quiet, chastened culture alone, not to send it into hyperdrive. ** END SPOILERS **Perhaps, the Lost World plot and the turn-of-the-century setting should give me a hint that this is more an homage to pulps. The failures I find with the film agree with this idea. But I am at a loss why I should pay to see thin characters and plot holes simply because many dime novels had them as well. And pulp stories is part of the "crap they can't sell adults anymore", anyway. We have become a bit more sophisticated and our pulp needs to grow up as well. Raiders of the Lost Ark lost none of its pulp feel and avoided so much badness.4 out of 10--the movie is enjoyable but as I think about the plot, it seeps ever lower. | 0 |
train_10514 | Emma is a horribly flawed film based on Jane Austens classic novel. I have not read the book so I really didn't know that much about the plot, and yet I still predicted nearly the entire plot. There were also many scenes that frustrated me because of the bad writing or directing. The film is though for some reason very entertaining and I loved it. Of course there were all the scenes I disliked but the majority was well acted and funny. Gwyneth Paltrow gives one of her best performances as the heroine in Emma. The film also stars Toni Collette(Who has okay but has been much better) Ewan Mecgreger(Who has also been better but he is still very good here) Alan Cumming(Who I have never really been impressed with and is pretty much the same here) and Jeremy Northam(Who's performance is rather wooden at first look but actually fairly subtle, even if that was not what it needed) There have been much better adaptations of Jane Austen books but this one is still very entertaining and worth watching. | 1 |
train_6894 | The men can slaver over Lollo, if they like (or her lollos--she gave her name to a slang terms for breasts in French), but the ladies have an even tastier morsel in the divine Gerard Philipe, who is not only beautiful but can act. Don't be deterred if your version has no subtitles because in this simple, dashing story of love and war, in which all is fair, they are not needed. All you need know is that, at the beginning of the film, Lollobrigida reads Philipe's palm and tells him he will marry the daughter of the king. Thereafter the story is quite plain from the Gallic gestures and the running, jumping, and swordplay.On the minus side, the obviousness of the story and the heavy-handed facetiousness of the tone become somewhat wearying, and it is annoying that the French apparently consider themselves too superior to Hollywood to bother even attempting the plausibility of its exciting stunts. And of course the non-French-speaker misses the occasional bit of ooh-la-la, such as: Virtuous girl: I must tell you that my heart belongs to Fanfan. Seducer: My dear, what made you think I was interested in that bagatelle? | 1 |
train_16496 | I don't see what everyone liked about this movie. The set-up was too long and talky, and when it was done, the main character remained as flat and opaque as he had been in the first scene. After the film finally got Cusack into the eponymous hotel room, I had to wonder, well, what's going to happen here for the next hour or so to keep me engaged. The answer: not much, just John Cusack having a long, drawn-out, mental breakdown.Maybe if the Cusack character had more depth . . maybe if his freak-out were a more thorough reworking of his everyday life . . . maybe if the film had either better developed its half-baked themes about loss and faith or had not tacked them on in the first place . . . maybe if the film had made a choice to be either psychological horror or thrill-ride horror and had fully embraced one of these styles . . . I dunno. All I do know is that I saw this movie with two other horror buffs and none of us much liked it.Except for the disquieting episode on the hotel ledge, the alarming crazy lady with the hammer, and the so-stupid-it-was-fun crypt keeper in the air duct, all three of which account for no more than five minutes of screen time, this film was a bore.By the way, this story seems to steal ideas from The Shining and use them here to much less powerful effect. Is Stephen King now reduced to stealing ideas from himself? | 0 |
train_7372 | "This Is Not A Love Song" is a brilliant example of the chase genre, which many people think has an underlying meaning. The love between the two main characters may be more than fraternal. I believe that Heaton is in love with Spike, but Spike is too naive to see this.I really feel this is portrayed with such scenes as the blow back and letter writing sequences. Heaton shows great intimacy towards Spike. With intense facial expressions and how he takes great care in writing Spike's name on the top of his letters.One thing I've noticed when looking at external reviews, is that when the film has been slated, the reviewer seems to have not fully understood the film, as they haven't even mentioned the possibility of Heaton having sexual feelings for Spike. I also get the feeling that some of the reviewers haven't recognised it, when they use phrases like: "Who is Heaton? What's he doing with a retard like Spike?" This person, however may have hit the nail on the head with their remark. Spike shows noticeable signs of having A.D.D, although I don't think this person has realised this, as he seems to be using the word "retard" as a derogatory term.I really enjoyed this film. Although it is not for the faint hearted. The film is exceedingly character based, after the shooting until the end there isn't much but dialogue between the two anti-heroes. Unless you are used to watching such deep, gritty films, stay well away. | 1 |
train_35 | When I saw the elaborate DVD box for this and the dreadful Red Queen figurine, I felt certain I was in for a big disappointment, but surprise, surprise, I loved it. Convoluted nonsense of course and unforgivable that such a complicated denouement should be rushed to the point of barely being able to read the subtitles, let alone take in the ridiculous explanation. These quibbles apart, however, the film is a dream. Fabulous ladies in fabulous outfits in wonderful settings and the whole thing constantly on the move and accompanied by a wonderful Bruno Nicolai score. He may not be Morricone but in these lighter pieces he might as well be so. Really enjoyable with lots of colour, plenty of sexiness, some gory kills and minimal police interference. Super. | 1 |
train_16665 | I'm a big fan of camp, but when every plot 'twist' is predictable and bad, while obviously not trying to be, even I lose interest. I was going to rate this a 3, but the ending dropped it a point easily. Its only saving grace is that I hated other movies more. Not enough beer in the world for this one. | 0 |
train_8594 | The Sentinel i was hoping would be a good film and boy i was right.A great story first of all from a novel and i thought this was an original story but i guess it wasn't and it was a very smart story. Michael Douglas in this film is very good and Keither Sutherland is too,but however it is very hard to shrug him off his role as Jack Bauer in 24 but eventually you do and he is very different in The Sentinel than he is in 24.also another person trying to shrug off their TV role but failed.Eva Longeria.She wasn't that good in the film and had a back seat in the entire thing.After i saw the film i had constant dreams about The Sentinel and couldn't sleep.Overall Sentinel is a good film and i would recommend it. | 1 |
train_5867 | Jacknife is a masterpiece of the 80's. It's a movie that breaths through amazing acting and a very interesting directing touch. In Jacknife both lovers of European and American cinema can find things to relate on. The screenplay is very compelling and full of beautiful characters. Ed Harris is giving one of the greatest performances up to date. He portrays his alcoholic hero superbly making us feel his broken heart in each line, in each move. Robert De Niro makes us once again think of him as one of the greatest actors of all time in one of the simplest but also most realistic performances in his career. Jacknife is never getting boring as it shows its heroes clear of any typical Hollywood's typical character elements. After the war none is a hero. Everybody is a loser, and this movie is about that simple truth. None can mend up his pieces after a war, just like the heroes of this movie. Jacknife is about the diseases of the soul that war creates. Simply magnificent movie. | 1 |
train_15743 | By far the most important requirement for any film following confidence tricksters is that they must, at least occasionally, be able to pull one over on us, as well as their dumb-witted marks, the cops, the mob and (ideally) each other. But this film NEVER pulls this off. Every scam can be seen coming a mile off (especially the biggen!) Neither are they very interesting, intricate or sophisticated. Perhaps Mammet hoped to compensate for this with snappy dialogue and complex psychological relationships. If so, he failed. The lines are alright, but they're delivered in such a stilted, unnatural, stylised way that I thought perhaps some clever point was being made about us all acting all the time... but it wasn't. As for the psychological complexity, the main character's a bit repressed and makes some ridiculously forced freudian slips about her father thinking she's a whore, but she gets over it. I really liked the street scenes though. Looked just like an Edward Hopper painting. | 0 |
train_16382 | Why do I constantly do this to myself? I mean, really, it's right there in the title - "The Incredible Melting Man". What else would I expect? I have to admit, I'm a sucker for just about anything I come across on the Monster HD channel, but the only redeeming feature of this picture would be that truly grotesque makeup job by the legendary Rick Baker. As for creepy, I'll give the nod to that horny old geezer couple sucking on lemons just before lights out. Now they were truly scary.Something I could never figure out in horror flicks was why a monster's victims wouldn't simply just run away when faced with virtual annihilation. Like the chick in the cabin. You know, there was a door completely visible right there in the kitchen that she could have run right out of at any time. Incredible Steve-O couldn't muster much more than a brisk walk, so why not just blow right by him? I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. This flick had some of the feel of a 'Tales From The Crypt' episode, but 'Tales' usually had a cool or grotesque twist which often times you didn't see coming. This was one picture that you couldn't quite get a handle on coming OR going. For example, in an early scene, you can clearly make out that Melting Man's eyeball fell out of his head, so how did he manage to get around for the rest of the story? I guess we're not supposed to ask.At eighty four minutes, this picture was about an hour and a half too long. When it was all over, I was ready to take up General Perry on his earlier suggestion - "I could really use a drink about now". | 0 |
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