DoubleML/multimodal_confounding huggingface dataset:
Like many western Pennsylvania history buffs, I had been really looking forward to this much-heralded PBS program that was produced by Pittsburgh's WQED. However, I must say now that I was somewhat disappointed. On the positive side, I believe that overall this film did a fair job of explaining the main issues and describing the events of the so-called French and Indian War. In particular, its presentation of the Indians' point of view was somewhat new and quite interesting, although it certainly was at time over-emphasized. Also on the positive side, the blend of narrative and action scenes was well done and came across somewhat better than many of these typical documentaries made up of "experts" interviews and picture stills (a la Ken Burns). On the negative side, many of the battles did have a somewhat "staged" look and many important aspects of the war were overlooked. Most of all I was very disappointed and frustrated by how little importance was given to Forbes's successful campaign of 1758 against Fort Duquesne as compared to the earlier failures of 1754 by Washington and 1755 by Braddock. In particular, I was somewhat incredulous that there was NO mention of Colonel Henry Bouquet, the Swiss mercenary in the British service who was most responsible for Forbes' success. Finally I could not believe the complete omission of the 1763 Battle of Bushy Run that started as a re-run of Braddock's defeat but ended up as the victory that decided the outcome of Pontiac's War thanks to the wiles of the same Colonel Bouquet who certainly must rank as one of the most successful British commanders of this war.

Sentiment: negative
I get tired of my 4 and 5 year old daughters constantly being subjected to watch Nickelodeon, Disney and the like. It all seems to be the same old tired cartoons rehashed over and over again. When my daughters couldn't go to the fair this afternoon because one of them was sick, I wanted them to just relax and rest for a while. I flipped the TV on and in searching for something different, I flipped the channels. My finger stopped channel surfing the moment I heard Harvey's voice. I adore every single solitary thing this man has done and when I saw that he was doing voice-over work for a little duck ... well, I couldn't change the channel! My daughters were instantly mesmerized by the cartoon and the more we watched the show TOGETHER, the more I grew to love it along with the message that was being portrayed. It's not necessarily a proponent for "gay rights" but rather for anyone who has ever been ostracized as a child for ANYTHING. I had friends who were picked on for one thing or another .... too fat, too skinny, too feminine, being a bully, not being smart enough, only having one parent .... you name it! Kids, as a rule, can be very very cruel to one another so I was happy to see an entertaining cartoon that actually conveyed a LIFE MESSAGE to its audience. My girls already accept others as they are and don't pick on others for being different. My older daughter actually stands up for her friends if they're picked on (one happens to have a single Mom and that little girl is picked on quite often -- it warms my heart when Kassie stands up for her!).

So, those of you who are condemning this show because you feel that it's an advocate for "gay rights" or are being forced to "accept certain views", you clearly and completely missed the point of this poignant little cartoon.

And if you need it explained to you .... well, you need more help than any television show could ever offer.

Sentiment: positive
When I borrowed this movie from a friend (thankfully I did not buy it) on the package (which truly looked bad and ugly) was printed "The ultimate vampire horror". After watching it I thought that the marketing campaign was probably more expensive than the film itself. The "story" begins when a teenager (surprise!) is chased by some vampire/zombie-creatures.

Lighting, sound and everything reminded me of my first attempt to make a holiday-video on a ten year old VHS-system if not worse. I gave the movie a 2 out of 10 and only because the promo-T-shirts looked kind of cool. I don't want to dis' film-students or splatter-movies generally but I've seen Braindead and I've seen a 20-dollar-budget movie from students that was ten times better than this crap.

Sentiment: negative
"A young woman suffers from the delusion that she is a werewolf, based upon a family legend of an ancestor accused of and killed for allegedly being one. Due to her past treatment by men, she travels the countryside seducing and killing the men she meets. Falling in love with a kind man, her life appears to take a turn for the better when she is raped and her lover is killed by a band of thugs. Traumatized again by these latest events, the woman returns to her violent ways and seeks revenge on the thugs," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Rino Di Silvestro's "La lupa mannara" begins with full frontal, writhing, moaning dance by shapely blonde Annik Borel, who (as Daniella Neseri) mistakenly believes she is a werewolf. The hottest part is when the camera catches background fire between her legs. The opening "flashback" reveals her hairy ancestor was (probably) a lycanthropic creature. Ms. Borel is, unfortunately, not a werewolf; she is merely a very strong lunatic.

As a film, "Werewolf Woman" (in English) would have been better if Borel's character really was a female werewolf; with her sexual victimization a great bit of characterization. But, as far as 1970s skin and blood flicks go, this one is hard to beat. Bouncy Borel is either nude or sexily clad throughout the film, which features a fair amount of gratuitous gore. Dazzling Dagmar Lassander (as Elena) and hunky Howard Ross (as Luca) are good supporting players.

Sentiment: negative
This is one of the greatest movies ever maybe even the greatest movie ever. I had forgotten about the movie for about 12 years. Until I saw an add on TV for ADGTH and it brought back fond memories of me watching it when I was a little kid. And when I watched it a few nights ago I became addicted to the movie. Usually I don't like animated family movies but this one is special it is the perfect family movie.

The ending of the movie always touches my heart and saddens me very much but that is what makes this movie amazing better than all of the garbage that is coming out for kid movies today. I mean the movie is G rated and it is about 2 dogs who are involved with gambling, there is a lot of smoking, drinking, murder, death and hell depicted in the movie. Which I Believe makes the movie from good to great. I mean movies today don't bring reality to kids and in this movie they did.

RIP Judith Barsi & Dom DeLuise

Sentiment: positive
Just re-saw this movie after thirty seven years. I was eleven years old and caught this flick on South Beach at the long gone Cinema Theater on Washington Avenue. In 1969, I thought Where it's At! was a very good movie. Now, however, after almost forty years, it's not as good as it was. Times have changed, and this movie is now a tired old re-hash of the war between the generations. It did however, catch a place in time which is just a memory. It's really interesting to see the mod fashions, the old Vegas, a slim Don Rickles, chain smoking, and a hip opening song. The acting was decent, the script somewhat out-dated, but the memories were still fresh. Where it's At, may not be where it's at for you, but for me, it was still a nice and entertaining trip down memory lane.

Sentiment: positive
1) Men over the age of 25 that refer to themselves, without irony, as having "game", or being either a "player" or a "baller". Gentlemen, from here on in it's a swift descent into starring in your own real-life version of "A Night at the Roxbury". 

2) Saying "The V.I.P." The term "V.I.P." in and of itself isn't bad, but when preceded by "The" it instantly becomes part of the Douchebag Dictionary. This goes double for white people. 

3) People that make TV shows based on stuff that they don't know isn't cool and then go on IMDb posing as "fans", (...right...) moreover, one of whom is from the "United States" (hey, me too!) to bitterly insult members of their potential audience for inevitably thinking their show sucks. Minus 1 additional demerit point if they employ any variation on the oh-snap-nice-one-bro justification that "If you don't like the show you obviously can't get laid." 

4) Canadian Hip-Hop/R&B sensation Massari...a random addition to the list at first glance, but at the end of the day Massari gets the gas face for the simple reason that his particular brand of low-rent American-aping uncool and general Aqua Velva douchebaggery dovetails with the overall sensibility of "Keys to the V.I.P." 

5) Last but not least, "Keys to the V.I.P."...for all the above reasons and more.

Sentiment: negative
Okay, now I know where all those boring cop/homicide TV shows came from. I do believe they can be traced back to this movie. "Scene Of The Crime" feels more like a TV episode, or an episode of a serial. Complete with stock characters and situations - the hotshot cop who clashes with his superiors... the aging cop who doesn't want a desk job, despite failing eyesight... the reckless rookie... the double-crossing dame, etc.

I like many of the actors here, and they do a good job, but overall I found this movie dull as I'm not a fan of the genre. I kept tuning out when they were discussing the case ...something about bookies and informers. And oh yeah, there was a stripper, played by the previously wholesome Gloria DeHaven. What I want to know is: Why did she keep calling Van Johnson "Uncle Wiggly"? Wasn't Uncle Wiggly a rabbit? A character from a children's book? What the heck does that have to do with anything? I guess I just don't get tough-guy Film Noir-ish kinda jargon.

In fact, much of the dialogue made me mutter "nobody talks like that!" However, I could relate to one scene where the cop's wife (Arlene Dahl), who worries every time he goes to work, realizes that maybe she shouldn't have made her husband the center of her life. Yeah, I know that feeling of loving someone so much, being so dependent on them, that there's a constant fear for their safety. So there are moments of truth in this film, underneath the stylized dialogue and atmosphere which is trying so self-consciously to be gritty and REAL, that it actually seems unreal to me.

A little background: this movie was made when Dore Schary took over MGM from Louis B. Mayer, and began to put an end to the wholesome musicals that made MGM so great. Dore Schary was determined to bring more "realism" to movies. I kinda hate Dore Schary. Maybe we can blame him for all the pretentious, bleak movies being made today, wallowing in the ugly "truths" about life, focusing on (and, in my opinion, helping to perpetuate) the worst of humanity rather than the best. No longer uplifting us the way classic movies were designed to do - providing a necessary distraction during the Great Depression and World War II.

Well, damn it, we still need that kind of distraction today! There's still plenty of depression and plenty of war. And what are people turning to nowadays when they want to escape? Trashy, brain-deadening Reality TV. Thanks a lot, Dore!

Sentiment: negative
I really don't understand why people get so upset and pan this movie! Remember folks, this is an SNL movie, not anything that is supposed to be unpredictable and original in plot or direction! The Ladies Man is a hilarious movie, albeit stupid at times, with a wacked-out cast and, as usual, WONDERFUL performances by Will Ferrel and Tim Meadows. Yes some of the jokes are stupid, and yes, the characters are unbelievable but its comedy! I really don't understand how anyone couldn't laugh a lot during this hilarious film. Anyway, all I ask is that people take this as it is--an SNL, silly and irreverent comedy. Nothing that will win awards, but nonetheless, some modern comedy gold. "10-4 Apricot!"

Sentiment: positive
I disagree with Dante portraying the Democrat-supporting zombies as creatures with an average IQ of 23. I do believe their behaviour should reflect a lower IQ than that, something in the order of a Pelosi IQ... A single-digit figure, please.

The MOH series is quite uneven, and this is the very worst episode. Dante, yet another mindless Hollywood liberal (or an apolitical nerd who sucks up to the Leftist establishment in order to re-kindle his pitiful career?), must have finally realized that his directorial pursuits had been stuck in a low gear for nearly two decades now, hence came up with this cringe-inducing, unsubtle, left-wing "satire" of the Bush administration, Republicans, and capitalism. Perhaps he felt he hadn't been overtly political before. He wouldn't exactly be the first no-talent to use asinine political propaganda to further his career, when all else fails. The maker of turds such as "Piranha", "The Howling", and "Matinee", Dante has been as useful a contributor to the horror genre as Adolf Hitler had been to world peace.

TH uses lowest-common-denominator humour, cheap and predictable gags which even the bluest of all blue-collar union members wouldn't have trouble understanding. Or have you ever seen a clever, subtle, intelligent liberal satire? Populist manure has the basest of all messages, hence the language and manner in which this message is communicated has to be as simple and basic as Sean Penn's name. And what better people to send this message to the popcorn-munching sheep than a couple of cocaine-sniffing Tinseltown losers who've all fallen so low that they're forced to write for TV...

I don't want political propaganda, either Left or Right, in any type of movie. But placing it in horror - of all genres - is a testament to the endless stupidity that reigns so supreme among Hollywood's anti-intelligentsia. So vapid was Dante that he even failed to notice the hilarious suggestion that zombies would vote Democrat... (That's what you get for finishing a movie school: not a source of wisdom or useful knowledge by any stretch of the imagination.)

Sentiment: negative
Frank Langella steals my heart in everything he has ever been in! I love watching him!! i was 10 yrs old (1979) when i seen him for the first time.i eagerly await each and everything he'll be acting in. hopefully one day i can see him in person. he's very hypnotic and mysterious and that voice is commanding and strong! he is very attractive, even now at 65 he is absolutely stunning!!!! In my opinion he is the greatest actor iv'e ever seen! i adored him in "Dracula" ( along with a lot of other girls out there) and in "god created woman","house of D","Jason and the argonauts" and many more. i thought he was genius!!!!!! can't wait to see him in "good night and good luck"

Sentiment: positive
I rented Boogie Nights last week and I could tell you, when I watched the film I had a blast. If you think that when you watch the film you will get sicked by the porn. I mean yes, if your not a porn person who can't bother being by it, than this isn't the film to see. But the thing is, the whole film isn't really about porn. Well halfway through the film is about the porn industry but the other half is about the character development and the bad situations these characters go through. The actors played there roles perfect, especially Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and William H. Macy. The sex scenes, of course are terrific but mainly focus on the character's hype in porn films until there struggles. Excellent film, one of the best! 

Hedeen's Outlook: 10/10 **** A+

Sentiment: positive
Well, this was one of those films I caught on the off-chance, and it was good enough for me to record when it showed up next time... If, like myself, you enjoy many 80's horror flicks that branched out a little from the norm (i.e. not just another glut of generic sequels) then I think you may enjoy this. When the bad guy eventually turns up in person, he was definitely not what I expected to see! All in all, I wouldn't go out of your way for this one, but if you like the genre, then watch it if it comes up and you have an hour and a half to kill, I guess. I'd give it 6.5 out of 10.

Sentiment: positive
To heighten the drama of this sudsy maternity ward story, it's set in a special ward for "difficult cases." The main story is Loretta Young's; she's on leave from a long prison stretch for murder. Will the doctors save her baby at the cost of her life, or heed her husband's plea for the opposite? Melodrama and sentiment are dominant, and they're not the honest sort, to say the least. For example, just to keep things moving, this hospital has a psycho ward next door to the maternity ward, and lets a woman with a hysterical pregnancy wander about stealing babies.

There are just enough laughs and sarcasm for this to be recognizable as a Warners film, mostly from Glenda Farrell, who swigs gin from her hot-water bottle while she waits to have twins that, to her chagrin, she finds there's now a law against selling. An example of her repartee: "Be careful." Farrell: "It's too late to be careful." Aline MacMahon is of course wonderfully authoritative as the chief nurse, but don't expect her to be given a dramatic moment.

The main theme of the film is that the sight of a baby turns anyone to mush. Even given the obvious limitations, this film should have been better than it is.

Sentiment: negative
When this movie was made in 1980, I was a teenager in the football stands playing as part of the audience. This was done at Mooseheart, Illinois. The big letters spelling out "MOOSEHEART" at the top of the stands were covered up with a banner in the movie. The director would tell us to cheer loudly at certain points, as if a touchdown was being made. St. Charles juvenile correction center is a real place less than 30 miles from Mooseheart, although I think it may have closed down recently. During one scene, they show a black woman and a white man in the audience watching the game. Right below them, you can see my sister Noel's head (she was 11 at the time). In the VHS version, I can only see the top of her head, but when I saw it on TV in 1981 I could see her whole head and my sister Jacqui as well.

I thought the movie itself was OK for a made for TV movie. Since there's already a description of the movie here, I need not repeat it. It's worth seeing at least once.

Sentiment: negative
After a somewhat slow start I thought this movie about the Italian occupation of a Greek island during World War II picked up and became a quite enjoyable watch for a couple of hours, from primarily two points of view. 

The love triangle is an interesting one and strikes me as believable, because I know it happened in various places under occupation. Penelope Cruz played Pelagia, a young Greek girl engaged to be married to Mandras (Christian Bale). I had questions about the depth of their love from the start, but their future was torn apart when Italy invaded Greece, and Mandras went off to fight. After German intervention, Greece is conquered and the island Pelagia lives on comes under Italian occupation, during which Pelagia meets and begins to fall in love with Captain Corelli (Nicholas Cage.) This, of course, was a dilemma that came to many young women in occupied lands. As they got to know their occupiers, they started to see them not as the enemy but as real people, and sometimes fell in love - often to the disapproval of their neighbours. I just finished reading an interesting book about the German occupation of Britain's Channel Islands in which this was a major issue. Once Mandras returns to the island, Pelagia is torn between them.

The second background issue is the Italian occupation itself, which I thought was quite realistically portrayed. First was the contempt with which the island treated their Italian occupiers. Greece defeated Italy (quite true from a historical perspective) and was really conquered by the Germans. The refusal of the town to surrender to the Italians and instead to insist on surrendering to a German officer struck me as something that could well have happened (and was quite funny in fact. I loved the line, "we would rather surrender to this German's dog than to you Italians.") The portrayal of the Italian troops also struck me as believable. The Italian Army was never enamoured of their German ally, and never enthusiastic about fighting with them. Although Hitler and Mussolini were close friends, their soldiers tended to treat each other with contempt. Here, the Italians are more interested in singing than fighting (which the German troops on the island simply can't understand,) and are ecstatic when Italy makes peace and withdraws from the war - until they discover that this may well make them prisoners of the Germans. It was all quite well done, I thought.

It falters a bit at the end with an all too predictable finish, but still deserves praise.

7/10

Sentiment: positive
I grabbed La Bandara because it reunited Jean Gabin and Julien Duvivier, whose Pepe le Moko is a noir masterpiece. I'll give it a few points because Gabin is in it, but the clumsy plot, cheap sets and the ludicrous Annabella making like an Arab princess put the film on my `to sell' shelf. If you watch it, you'll find yourself asking, why didn't the idiots build the fort *around* the well, instead of a deadly few yards away from it. And why use tin roofs in the middle of the desert? But by then the sheer perversity of contrivance that makes up the script should numb you to any further contemplation.

Sentiment: negative
My first attempt at watching this ended in 8 minutes, roughly after the TV report scene, which I couldn't handle. It went approximately like this:

Reporter 1: Hmm, there's a pyramid in our skies. Reporter 2: I think it's aliens. *awkward silence* Reporter 1: In other news...

A few days later I watched it to the end, and it wasn't as horrible as I've imagined, but there are serious problems with this. About half of the plot can be easily discarded. And the other half should be expanded to explain the background story or something.

What use are the detective, the eugenics people, and the monsters which are disposed of momentarily by Horus? More amusing was the monopoly scene. "We're all powerful "Gods", who have lived for aeons, and of all the games in the multiverse we happen to play monopoly." Monopoly? Monopoly?! Even Erich von Dainiken looks coherent, compared to that.

The other half is terribly lacking. What did our protagonist do to get himself cryo-frozen? Why was there no big event when he was released at the end? He had those pesky followers, remember? What happened to normal humans? What's the deal with the masked guy? How did the blue-haired girl appear? What's with her eyesight? Etcetera, etcetera.

Visually it's OK, more or less, if you disregard the Egyptian Gods looking like walking turds with rotweiller heads.

Sentiment: negative
Warning: Herzog is a filmaker, and as such tends to be a bit overly dramatic. So obsessions about closing doors may or may not be a real part of the character's life, but a filmaker's dramatic embellishment - or so both agreed at the premiere in San Francisco. But Herzog's usual fascination with character, dreams and perseverance are well suited by this story first published in Soldier of Fortune, and now a full length autobiographical book. (The Soldier of Fortune comment brought loud boos from the politically correct SF audience, and both filmaker and main character had to ensure the audience who had just seen the film, that SOF's interest was misplaced - so warning, this is not Rambo, just survival.)

Sentiment: positive
As someone who has never condescended Adam Sandler in terms of talent, as is done to him and many comic actors like him, I walked in to Reign Over Me expecting a great film, not simply because of his presence in the movie but because I thought that it looked very good overall. Even someone who already thought that Sandler could deliver an effective dramatic performance is writing here that I was surprised at how fantastic he is in it. He will make you weep, especially in his purposefully sudden and unexpected monologue. What's amazing about his role is that it's a character it's hard to say we've seen before. We've seen many emotionally scarred characters, many mentally retarded people, many loners, many passionate self-centered artists, but Sandler's Charlie Fineman is none of these. He may have a taste of each of them in some ways, but his character is truly unpredictable and completely individual. It's a joy for the audience to be drawn in emotionally by him and be tugged every which way by someone whose problems, mindset, and provocations are completely different from most characters like him.

Don Cheadle delivers an interesting performance on a completely different level. He is every man. He is the most normal possible person in the world, so much so that you will hardly find many characters like his either, or at least any that are played the way he plays Alan Johnson, whose name is even found on the assembly line. Cheadle is brilliant in that he is funny, jolting, smart, and stupid the way so many normal people are.

The rest of the cast is populated by actors and actresses who've hardly done anything in awhile in smaller but quite colorful roles. Jada Pinkett-Smith is the overly refined upper middle class wife, Donald Sutherland is the impatient but surprising judge, Robert Klein is Sandler's desensitized father-in-law.

Mike Binder's script is quite brilliant because it says something quite profound about the wonders of communication in all of its guises. It's much more subtle than, say, Babel, and has a much more close-to-home ideal.

The camera is only interested in the reality of its images as opposed to the mere style. This film struck me as sort of a sendback to the kitchen-sink style of the 1970s. Cinematography was grainy and unfastened, but that was its charm. It wasn't about attracting us to the camera itself and the gloss that would've diluted its stories with such.

The music, which plays a major role in the film, and its title, is very powerful. Near the beginning, you feel like you're in for another About Schmidt or Little Miss Sunshine sort of soundtrack, but you soon realize you're in for more than that. In fact, the film is packed with lots of music that stimulates a lot of the most emotional scenes.

Reign Over Me is a major statement not only for society but also for film itself. It goes to show that even the director of Blankman is capable of wonders.

Sentiment: positive
Honestly,the concept behind "Masters of Horror" had something going for it. Big-time horror directors that are now left aside by the industry being given a chance to direct horror again, I was all for it from the start. That is, until I watched some episodes... Oh boy, it's really bad TV. Not only does it seem like the directors are being given very little budgets to direct their skits, but there seems to be guidelines as well, like shooting in HD for example. To make a long story short, it's bad both for artistic and reasons financial reasons. I cannot help but compare to the "Tales From The Crypt", and the M.o.H. episodes really don't stand the comparison. TFTC was good, MOH is bad; according to me here are a few keys to explain it: TFTC was shorter (around 25 minutes for each episode) than MOH (50 minutes per episode), I believe it allowed denser screenplays, with good ideas reoccurring more often, better overview of an episode, less chances to let the plot be confusing or boring. Duration might have been also the reason why the budget was better spent on TFTC: directors got to have REAL film music composers (composers on MOH are if inexistent, very bad), REAL actors (whereas on MOH it's nothing but unknown actor after unknown actor!), REAL directors of photography and, it can help sometimes, REAL film cameras (while MOH is shot on HD cameras with very wrongly chosen lens-pieces), the result of which being that the episodes of TFTC looked and felt "cinematographic" in the sense that there was real actors being casted, ranging from Michael J. Fox to Tim Roth to Kyle McLachlan to Kirk Douglas, but there were also film composers behind it, of the range of Alan Silvestri, great directors of photography like Dean Cundey, high-end screenplay writers, and in that sense each "Tale" was a little movie of its own true kind. Compared to TFTC, the "Masters of Horrors" is quite a lame approach to TV horror. It's very hard to stand looking at it if your standards regarding cinematography are just a little above average, because it looks the same as any ugly TV serial, if not worse. It gets boring and even annoying incredibly fast, within the first 10 minutes usually. The actors are never-heard before wannabes (except for Fairuza Balk, Robert Englund, Angela Bettis and a few, but even there, they are the only famous actors of their episodes). The director base for MoH was good in the beginning, but it's getting worst and worst with every episode: now if even the directors are unknown to the world, what remains? Nothing! And it's funny how they are starting to have complete unknown directors while they haven't even had, say, Stan Winston, Dick Maas, William Lustig, Sam Raimi, Eric Red, Robert Harmon, William Friedkin, Jim Muro, Stuart Gordon, Russell Mulcahy... If even "Masters of Horror" cannot bring dead directors back to life, who will? Maybe a rerun of Tales from the Crypt will.

Sentiment: negative
No wonder most of the cast wished they never made this movie. It's just plain ridiculous and embarrassing to watch. Bad actors reading cheesy lines while shiny classic showroom cars continuously circle a diner that looks more like a Disneyland attraction. Students fist-fight with the deranged principal as he tries to stop them from setting fire to a bronze civil war statue. The Watts riots with a cast of...ugh...10?? Dermot Mulroney tries not to gag while he makes out with a Mary Hartman look-alike with the most annoying smile since 'Mr. Sardonicus'. Noah Wyle reads Bob Dylan lyrics to the wicked teacher with a swinging pointer and very bad face lift. Drunken virgin Rick Schroder sits in a kiddie rocket on his last night before entering the service. Silly, giggling school girls dress up in leopard stretch pants and walk on the set of 'Shindig', sing horribly off key, and actually make it big in the music business. And who wrote this compelling dialog?: "I'm going to Burkley and wear flowers in my hair"...."I think I found someone to buy Stick's woody!"...."These people are 'animals'!" "These people are my 'family'! as the Shirelles sing "Mama Said". Oh brother, What a mess. This is like a 'Reefer Madness' of the 60's except it's not even funny.

Sentiment: negative
This movie was terrible!I rented it not knowing what to expect.I watched the 1st 5 minutes and the movie and knew it was a bomb.The acting was bad and there was no plot.The monster is soooooo fake.It growls and its mouth doesnt move.Also why would they have a doctor playing a xylophone to kill the monster.Just plain bad don't even waste your time.(1 out of 10)

Sentiment: negative
The King Maker is a film about a series of real (citation needed) events that occurred during the Portuguese Occupation in Indochina.

Although the costumes and art direction are commendable, the movie still fails to impress the viewer. The acting, in particular, was extremely poor. Some of the actors are trying hard to let tears down and the accents, both real and fake, are extremely irritating. The storyline was also too dumb and too stupid to be true and it seemed more like a history lesson. The movie couldn't even capture that sort of regal and century-old air and it looked more like a botched attempt to make an Asian version of Elizabeth.

Final say? Costumes and art direction give the film a breath of fresh air, but the execution was extremely poor and the actors couldn't even give natural bursts of emotion. In short, the movie sounded more like hullabaloo than a script.

Sentiment: negative
Enjoyable movie although I think it had the potential to be even better if it had more depth to it. It is a mystery halfway through the film as to knowing why Elly is such a recluse. Then, when we are finally given an explanation going back to her childhood there still isn't much detail. Perhaps had they shown flashbacks or something.

Anyway, it is still a good movie that I'd watch again. 7/10



Sentiment: positive
The movie had an interesting surprise. Somewhat psychologically gripping. And the makers could have ended it tastefully without making it just another of a rash of movies put out by Hollywood promoting homosexuality and/or other sexual deviances. This could have ended with a "pay-off", but there were other motives behind the pen. What torques me off is that the mud slung in your face AFTER you've seen the whole movie. Like the disappointing "The Talented Mr. Ripley". Yeah sure, I'm just another puritan. This gay content tarnished the whole film. I wouldn't positively judge a movie for artistic or entertainment value if its sole purpose was to promote an ulterior political motivation, more so for this.

Sentiment: negative
OK - I ADORE this film...I will credit this movie - alone - for making me such a die-hard horror fanatic. I could never watch this movie alone. I've also heard many many stories of the effect it had in it's original release at the theatres , on its viewers. Incredible masterpiece.... Horrible , psychological stuff scares the pants off me .Oh bless their hearts, whoever made this awesome film. I love it. I thought the whole film was decent and interesting. This movie is SO scary - this is the scariest movie I have ever seen in my life! Not that what happens in the film and the idea of the film are not scary enough , but what always got me - was Brendan's fabulous acting. Best horror film EVER. Nothing can ever be this scary again. Halloween viewing at its evilest.

Sentiment: negative
I'm always interested to see neglected movies that appear to have good credentials, but in this case the film's neglect appears justified. Evidently based on some actual incidents during WWII, the film just doesn't connect with the viewer for some reason that it is not quite clear to me. One very likely reason is that - in the print I saw on TCM, anyway - none of the scenes where the Germans talked among themselves were given titles. This interesting directorial concept - to let the non-German speaking viewer just guess from "context" what the Germans are saying to each other - is, in my book, an utter flop and helps to lock the viewer out. Also, the way the movie begins - just dropping us into a very confused situation without much setup - is disorienting. Brian Keith is pretty good here, but the reputations of "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17" will not be challenged by this flick.

Sentiment: negative
I found this movie to be extremely delightful.I am biased I suppose.I happen to adore Kathy Bates.I found her singing an added pleasure.She has a very nice voice.

Ms Bates plays Grace Beasley.The film takes you from her doledrums married life in Chicago to England,the home of her recently murdered singing idol Victor Fox.There she meets his three surviving uppity sisters.She also discovers that Victor leaves behind a male lover,Dirk Simpson.

The story leads you on to some surprisingly comedic and heartwarming situations as Grace and Dirk develop a true fondness for each other,after an initial rather rude rejection,on his part.They return to Chicago where they team up with Grace's pint-sized,hilarious daughter-in-law,Maudie,to find the serial killer who murdered Victor.

Everyone in the picture did a fine job.Particularly enjoyed Julie Andrews,Lynn Redgrave and Barry Manilow.This movie was fun.It makes you cry.The music is absolutely charming.

Other posters here who found problems with any parts of this movie,just don't have a clue.



Sentiment: positive
A sweet little movie which would not even offend your Grandmother, "Saving Grace" seems cut from the same cloth as a half-dozen other British comedies over the past two years...underdog is faced with adversity, finds the strength to challenge and learns something about him/herself in the process.

Widowed and thus broke, Grace is a master gardener, and is enlisted to help her friend/employee Matthew grow his pot plant. He's been doing it all wrong, so Grace helps him out. They realize that she is the perfect person to harvest pot, which they can both benefit from. He enjoys smoking, she needs to raise funds to pay her mortgage. 

Highlight is Grace travelling to London to deal some of her merchandise, dressed in what looks like the white suit John Travolta wore in "Saturday Night Fever" and therefore sticking out like a sore thumb. 

Blethyn is always watchable, and you can't say that about a lot of people..well, I can't, anyway. Ferguson is very good, and Tcheky Karyo, who I liked in "La Femme Nikita", is memorable. 

Not profoundly moving or insightful, but immensely entertaining, and at a brisk 90 minutes, feels like a walk with friends. 8/10.

Sentiment: positive
I never watched the 'Next Action Hero' show, and until reading the other comments here, did not know that this movie was the 'prize' from that competition. I was just flipping channels and came across this, and found myself watching, dare eagerly, all the way to the end.

Yes, the plot's been done (The Most Dangerous Game, etc.) but I was hoping for, and almost received, the 'gotcha' - how the protagonist was going to beat the hunter in the end. I think the high-tech was overdone (GPS's) and gave me cold-sweat flashbacks of Night Rider, but it nevertheless was not too overdone.

The basic problem I had with this movie was the degree of SOD (Suspension of Disbelief) that was required of the viewer. Do we really think that someone flying in a helicopter could lob countless incendiary grenades at a public bridge and NO COPS show up to investigate? Could a limousine do countless donuts in a Las Vegas intersection and NO COPS show up? Pleeease. Way too much of that type of thing - fun to watch, but keep it at least plausible, thank you very much.

The final solution was good, but the ending was disappointing, with the after taste of a bad Star Trek episode. At least now I understand why the acting was so cheesy - except for Zane, who doesn't get near as much work as he deserves IMHO - they were winners from a reality show.

Knock me out.

Sentiment: positive
This is one of my all time favorites.

If the movie has a flaw, it's that it comes at you like a raging bull. It doesn't so much engage the viewer as assault him. ''Scarface'' is as voracious and unyielding a production as Tony Montana himself. Nothing is left to the viewer's imagination.

Moroder's languorous synthpop fits the action to a tee. Like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, it wails and gnashes, broods and tugs, a constant reminder of Tony's inexorable fate.

Not so much a tale of caution as a disaster in progress, ''Scarface'' rips across the screen with the unstoppable force of a runaway train.

Sentiment: positive
Note to all mad scientists everywhere: if you're going to turn your son into a genetically mutated monster, you need to give him a scarier name than "Paul." I don't care if he's a frightening hammerhead shark with a mouthful of dagger-sharp teeth and the ability to ambush people in the water as well as on dry land. Give the kid a more worthy name like, "Thor," "Rock," or "Tiburon." Because even if he eats me up I will probably just sit there laughing, "Ha! Get a load of this!!! Paul the Monster is ripping me to shreds!!!!!" That's the worst part about this movie is, this shark-thing is referred to as "Paul" throughout the entire flick. It makes what could have been a decent, scary horror movie just seem silly. Not that there aren't other campy and contrived parts of "Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy." The scientists spend the entire movie wandering along this island, and all of a sudden one of the girls starts itching madly from walking in the lush forest, and just HAS to pour water on her feet to relive the itching, which of course allows "Paul" to come out of the water and kill her. The one thing SciFI Channel did right in this movie was let the hottie live. But that's a small silver lining in an otherwise disappointing movie.

Sentiment: negative
An old intellectual talks about what he considers art in movies. You get your Hitchcock, your Chaplin, your Bergman and some other stuff prior to the 80ies. To disguise that he has no clue what is going on in cinemas these days, he throws in The Matrix.

But it's not only the same lame film-as-art speech all over again. This speech is reduced to outdated psychological platitudes: it-ego-super ego, anal phase, sexual insufficiency. 

It is garnished with the cheesy effect of having Zizte edited into the movies he is taking about. For someone who is supposed to know much about movies, his own is, cinematographicly speaking: yeiks.

To put it in Zizek's own words - I saw 5\-\!7 on the screen, last night, or in the words of a great movie maker:

Mr. (Zizek), what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you (two) points (only), and may God have mercy on your soul.

Sentiment: negative
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!

Sentiment: positive
That this film has such a low IMDb rating is not surprising. In our post-Enron era, do we really need any more reminders of America's obsession with the greed creed? The topic has become so politically charged that a lot of viewers not only are not going to be entertained by movies of this sort, but will respond with barely concealed rage. It was all I could do to sit quietly through this cinematic memo of corporate corruption without extracting the DVD and smashing it into a thousand pieces.

What's really irksome with these kinds of films, including "Purpose", is their pretense that behind the glitter, there's some meaningful message that makes the film worthwhile. In "Purpose", I found no such meaningful message. What I did find was a story that idolized the materialistic trappings of capitalistic power and wealth. The two main characters, nauseating in their glibness, do very little actual work. Instead, they party, they play golf, they strut their coolness, they sound "hip" with dialogue straight out of MTV-culture-speak: "rock my world", and "Now get back to partying; that's an order". John is smug, self-important, shallow, and smirks a lot. Robert, who wears funky little glasses, is even worse.

The film includes two youthful garage geeks, who look and sound like they're right out of the film "Antitrust" (2001). Stereotypes are played for all they're worth, and in this film also include chic-looking computer equipment, and Barbie doll chicks on hand for those occasions when our can-do future billionaires need some relaxation after all that heavy-duty partying. And with the time-bound images and dialogue that such a story necessitates, can you imagine how dated this film will be in fifteen years?

About the best I can do for this waste of cinematic celluloid is to say that it does have some nice aerial views of San Francisco. The film would have been a lot more enjoyable, a lot more entertaining, if they had ditched those odious characters and that repulsive story, and simply flown us viewers around in that little plane for the film's duration.

Sentiment: negative
Some thirty years ago, Author Numa Sadoul published a book length interview with the Belgian comic book artist Georges Remi (better known as Herge, the creator of Tintin). This movie catches up with Sadoul today as he recalls the interview, while we listen to the cassettes (Herge died in 1983) and see some old photos and footage of the man himself. Some parts of the interview were not published in the book at the request of Herge, and we now know these dealt with his separation from his wife, after he had an affair with one of his collaborators (who years later would become his second wife). An interesting thing the movie does not address well is the shift in the Tintin books from the early rightist and imperialist books (Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in the lands of the Soviets) to fairly anti-imperialist books just a few years later (The Blue Lotus). On the whole, I come out of this movie knowing a few more things about Herge and seeing him as a bit more unlikable than when I come in to the theater.

Sentiment: positive
I liked it better than House Party 2 & 3. The cast was hilarious and cool at the same time. Chris Stokes, who directed the film, has a very humorous cameo in it as a car repairman; look for his mom who plays the lead character, John John's grandmother. And you can hear her rap the title song "Down to the Last Minute" at the end of the film as the credits roll. She's very funny and a really good actress, as well. The young actors who star in it (the main trio), and who in reality are part of the music group IMx, did a superb job. Before this film I had not paid much attention to this r & b group. Now I'm a fan. The music number in the House Party scene alone is worth checking out the movie. I was pleasantly surprised. I loved it.

Sentiment: positive
There is nothing unique in either the TV Series nor the Movie. Which is a prequel to the TV Show, that isn't found everywhere else in life and entertainment. Both before David Lynches disgusting style of story telling, and after. 

From the Moment the body of a poor misguided girl washed up on the beach. And being introduced to some of the most mind numbing shady immoral character of the Twin Peaks.

To the Mind numbing almost pedophilia disgusting way the movie seems to romantically tell of the destruction of a Human Life through some random psychedelic phenomena in the Movie Twin Peak:Fire Come Walk with me. 

I watched it all just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I didn't. It's is simply one mans obvious sexual fetish extended over long series fallowed by a ridiculous overly pornographic movie. Save your self the agony the suspense and watch anything else that at least has the ability to tell a story, rather then seduce you into some kind mental porn movie.

I have heard a lot of reviews, rants and raves about how great David Lynch. Because of his ability to define misery and and tragedy and making it into some kind of a wonderful thing. This is not life imitating art, as much as it is some sick twisted version of art doing its best to inspire complete mindless life.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this garbage.

Sentiment: negative
I'm not picky with movies, oh I've seen so much crap I could watch anything. Maybe that was the reason I watched this one to the end. Im big fan of RPG games too, but this movie, its a disgrace to any self-respecting RPGer there is. The security-camera footage of a game-play would make it feel more realistic than this movie does. The lines, the cuts, the audio, everything is wrong. In some scenes you can see that it was filmed in some photo when !!!!!(spoilers ahead)!!!!!people running around does not disturb people sitting near computers. I mean would you continue your work if you got ninjas around you? oh and the jokes about pirates, that's the worst one yet in movies!!!!!(spoilers end)!!!!! At least first one felt like a documentary, now it looks like someones home video experiment. You can find better movies at youtube. Top line: Don't waste your time and money on this one, its as bad as it comes.

Sentiment: negative