A Fairy Tail

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2003)

What makes this movie better then the Godfather films - The storytelling structure of the way the film is put together. The way time and space are overlapped with one another is just sheer brilliance. Kubrick in his film `The Killing' made a great attempt at it and it worked very well in that film but here in `Once Upon a Time in America' one sees and experiences it in it's most pure and perfectly conceived form as of yet ever done in any film that has been made to date. The Director frames his shots most uniquely and everything becomes interesting and important. I have never seen or experienced another film quite like this one. Being almost 4 hours long it seems to pass by like a well paced 90 min feature. That's just how good this movie is. I have seen this film many times on Video, Laser Disc, and now the long awaited DVD release. (More on the DVD in a moment) fantastic character development like the Jennifer Connelly/Elizabeth McGovern girl, the two blend so well that when I first saw the movie I thought it was the same girl, and the mythic way that Elizabeth McGovern moves thru the film, she stays the eternal myth that never ages as all else ages around her, this is conveyed brilliantly in her old age make-up - She still looks like a young girl and yet you can see the age wrinkles, it is simply genius. Then there is the back-story when they are kids, it's a film in it's self and so wonderfully presented. So many other aspects of this film have been talked about by others I will leave that and talk of the DVD release - I couldn't wait until this DVD came out, I rushed to Virgin Records and bought a copy the day it came out, it look beautiful except for the glitches and the fact that disc one ends right in the middle of a scene and does not match the index at all. Well I thought it was just a bad disc so I returned it for another DVD of the film and when I watched that one it was the same, So I'm going to return this on in the morning. Looks like they rushed this one out. Beware. Get the Video (if you can or better yet the Laser Disc) Major disappointment over this DVD. Someone Goofed on this. I hope the next DVD that I get after I return this one will prove to be better.