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tt0074806 | The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane | Rynn (Jodie Foster) is a 13-year-old girl who lives in a semi-isolated cottage near the ocean. We see her preparing a birthday cake for herself, although there is nobody with her to celebrate. She is unexpectedly visited by a man named Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen), and before letting him in, Rynn lights a clove cigarette and blows some of the smoke around the living room. Rynn is uncomfortable with his visit, and we can sense right away that his intentions are predatory. They have an uncomfortable verbal sparring match; Hallet attempts frighten Rynn, and then invites himself into her house. It is Halloween, and he has arrived ahead of his own children, who are out trick-or-treating. Rynn has no Halloween candy to offer, so she cuts them each a piece of birthday cake. Hallet seems to understand something about Rynn's situation; although he comments on the smell of cigarettes and Rynn says her father is upstairs in his study, Hallet makes a number of bold advances on Rynn and touches her inappropriately before leaving. Rynn takes comfort in her hamster, Gordon. Rynn is also visited by a kind policeman, Officer Miglioriti (Mort Shuman). Miglioriti seems genuinely concerned with Rynn, although she gives him the same runaround about her father being indisposed. Miglioriti seems to be aware of Frank Hallet's pedophilia, although Rynn oddly does not mention to him that Hallet has been acting this way toward her.Rynn's confrontation with Frank is followed up the next day by a visit from his mother, Mrs. Hallet (Alexis Smith). Mrs. Hallet is Rynn's landlady, and her attitude is extremely abrasive. She barges into Rynn's house without asking, and she rearranges furniture in the house as if she lives there. When Rynn's father is not available to speak to her, Mrs. Hallet makes a vague threat about her connections with the school board; she wonders why Rynn is never in school with the other children of the town. It becomes clear that Mrs. Hallet's concerns are not about Rynn's education, but rather the fact that she is in this isolated house alone and her son is making advances toward her. Mrs. Hallet says she wants to collect a case of empty jars that are in Rynn's basement; Rynn refuses to allow her to go into the basement and tells her to come back later for the jars.After this confrontation, Rynn goes to the town and looks up public records at the library, and she discovers that Mrs. Hallet was lying about her connections to the school board. Rynn sees Frank again in town, but Frank is frightened away by the sudden appearance of Miglioriti. The policeman gives her a ride home and they have a friendly conversation; Miglioriti comes to understand that Rynn is much wiser than her actual age. She speaks a number of languages and has a level of cunning and awareness that would normally belong to an adult.When Mrs. Hallet returns to collect the jelly jars, she demands to speak to Rynn's father. Rynn refuses and says her father is out. This time Rynn is blunt with Mrs. Hallet, indicating that she will not be intimidated by the woman and that she knows she is simply protecting her pedophile son. Mrs. Hallet is enraged, especially when Rynn tells her that she knows she lied about the school board. Mrs. Hallet goes to leave and realizes that the jars do not have any lids; Rynn forgot them in the cellar. When she heads toward the cellar, which is accessed by a trap door in the floor, Rynn becomes panicked and screams at Mrs. Hallet to get out. Instead, she pushes her way past Rynn and goes into the cellar. From the basement, we hear her scream and she rushes back upstairs in terror, but she knocks the door loose and it crashes down on her head. Rynn looks down and sees Mrs. Hallet lying on the cellar steps, dead.Rynn attempts to cover up the evidence of Mrs. Hallet's visit; she hides her umbrella and tries to start her car to move it. The car won't start, and it attracts the attention of Mario (Scott Jacoby), a boy who is passing by on a bicycle. Mario is around Rynn's age, and he is on his way to a birthday party where he is to perform magic tricks. Mario is a gentle young man who walks with a cane due to an instance of polio in his childhood. Mario promises to help Rynn later, and he returns later to help her hide the car. Rynn makes him dinner, and when his uncle drops by to check on Rynn, Mario tells him Rynn's father was there but has gone to bed. Rynn is grateful that Mario has helped her keep the illusion going, although she doesn't open up to Mario right away about the reasons for her deceitfulness.Frank Hallet also shows up that night and interrupts their dinner; he is looking for his missing mother. Rynn refuses to discuss it with him, even though he kills her hamster by burning it to death with a cigarette. He also humiliates Mario, until Mario suddenly turns on him by revealing a knife hidden inside his cane. Frank runs off, but it is clear he will return.Rynn then tells Mario her secrets. She allows him to go into the cellar and he sees the corpses of both Mrs. Hallet and Rynn's mother. Rynn explains that her father was terminally ill, and that he was concerned about Rynn's estranged mother showing up to collect her if it became known that he was dead. Rynn and her father conspired to make sure that his death would be as inconspicuous as possible; Rynn's rent is paid for the next three years, and her funds are secured in a safety deposit box in the local bank. Almost every aspect of her existence is accounted for, and the only variable was her mother. Rynn's father gave Rynn a vial of white powder and told her to put it into her mother's tea if she ever showed up looking for her. It was cyanide, and Rynn began to suspect this even before her mother collapsed and died. Afterwards she hid her mother's body in the basement.Mario seems to understand and accept Rynn's situation, and he becomes her co-conspirator. He helps Rynn to bury the bodies outside the house, but catches a serious cold in the process. Later Rynn is visited by Miglioriti again, and he is on the verge of exposing Rynn's lies about her father. Suddenly Rynn's father appears and talks to Miglioriti, who is now embarassed that he ever doubted the man's existence. Miglioriti doesn't know that he is actually talking to Mario, who is wearing a disguise including a rubber mask. Miglioriti leaves, satisfied that Rynn's father will take care of any further problems.Mario's condition worsens, and he is hospitalized for pneumonia. Rynn visits him but he is sleeping and cannot hear her. She now understands that even though she has tried to be entirely self-sufficient, she has come to depend on Mario.When Rynn returns home, she is confronted by Frank Hallet, who has emerged from her own basement, giving her quite a shock. Hallet still suspects that Rynn is responsible for the disappearance of his mother because he has found one of his mother's hairpins, and half of a bright red fingernail in the cellar. Frank seems to not really mind that his mother is gone, and he implies that he will use this information to blackmail Rynn into a sexual relationship with him.Rynn now knows what she must do. She offers to fix them some tea, and she puts cyanide into one of the cups. Before they drink, Frank becomes suspicious and makes Rynn drink the cup that was meant for him. Rynn, however, is too smart for that: she herself had taken the poisoned cup, knowing that Frank would switch them. Frank drinks the tea and Rynn watches as the cyanide kills him. | murder | train | imdb | Rynn Jacobs is a lonely, but well equipped 13-year old girl who lives with her poet father, while keeping a dark secret in the cellar.
This is when Rynn goes to any lengths to keep this lifestyle with the help from a local crippled boy Mario, to herself.This noteworthy gem of small-scale, mystery-thriller incorporates a fascinating slow-drifting character study that has certain believability in its characterizations and manipulative suspense.
It's just really hard to categorise this unique film (which, was originally intended to be a TV movie), because it goes down oh so many paths, but it's successful in gelling them together.Jodie Foster in the lead role makes the character her own by providing a maturely astute performance as the independent girl Rynn Jacobs.
Unwisely advertised as a horror movie, "Little Girl" is instead an amazing psychological thriller, rich with atmosphere and featuring a lead performance by Jodie Foster that is deft and incredibly assured.
Jodi Foster is very good as Rynn, a mysterious 13 year old who lives alone in a seaside town, somewhere off the coast of Massachusetts.
Martin Sheen, as always, is excellent as a neighborhood creep, interested in Rynn, (he has some sort of criminal history against children).Scott Jacoby is her peer, trying to help her live alone, and stay in the house her father has provided, although her father and mother have both mysteriously disappeared.All in all an interesting theme, with some beautiful landscapes of the New England, and the beaches during winter.
The Little Girl who Lives Down the Lane is an intriguing mystery, an intense character portrait and a dark, brooding thriller all rolled into one rather odd little package - and on a personal note, I liked it a lot!
The film has gained some notoriety (although not as much as it would have if it was more seen) for the scene involving a thirteen year old Jodie Foster undressing - but that never offsets the point of the film, and besides that; it's hardly like the scene has just been thrown in to satisfy the perverts in the audience.
Jodie Foster had already impressed in 1976 with her role in Martin Scorsese's hit film, Taxi Driver - but here she is far better.
Despite her young age, Foster commands the screen and despite being a child, her maturity and acting talent shine through to make this a more complete performance than most actresses manage in a lifetime.On the whole, this film was once hard to come by; but with the new DVD currently doing the rounds, the film should be seen by everyone.
Jodie Foster played Rynn, a 13 year old in the film.
This is a wonderful movie!You can reach to the "little girl" and feel her solitude and, at times, you wish you were as strong as she is!The story in itself is great but the way it was directed, the set, the actors make you feel you are a part of it!
There is no way to explain that story:you just have to discover it and you will understand,through the movie, the poetry of that "little girl"'s life who is not a "little girl",just someone who had to take care of her life from an early age surrounded by characters who just see a "bohemian child"from divorced parents in a little town where the so called low classed people have to be nobody in front of the single rich family!
Martin Sheen probably won't be happy to see his character reprised, he is not a nice guy in this film, especially with Jodie Foster.
"The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane" focuses on Rynn Jacobs (played by the brilliant Jodie Foster), a thirteen year old girl who lives in an old house a little outside of a small seaside town.
Rynn has temporary excuses to her father's whereabouts, but soon Rynn has to resort to extremes - even murder - to hide a secret from the nosy people and the landlord who are invading her home and wanting to know too much information.More of a drama thriller than a horror movie (as the film may seem), "The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane" is an interesting psychological thriller that is held very well with Jodie Foster's excellent performance (as always).
I liked the idea of this film - an isolated and lonely little girl who seems to be possibly living alone, but hiding a secret as to why her father has mysteriously disappeared.
The film concerns about a rare thirteen years old little girl(Jodie Foster: Bugsy Malone) and whose father is never at home .
Jodie Foster, at age 14, portrayed a real-world adult in her best performance in a film.
This is one of Jodie Foster's best performances, and it was given the same year she starred in "Taxi Driver" and "Freaky Friday." It is a simple story of a 13-year-old girl living along in a small New England community who must maintain the fiction that her father is alive and looking after her.
i generally don't give too many movies a high rating but after this particular viewing, i was completely floored by jodie foster's brilliant performance as thirteen year-old rynn jacobs who lives with her never seen father in a small new england town.
she is clearly independent, intelligent and capable of out witting and out smarting the adults in the town which includes a nosey neighbour and her paedophile son played by a young martin sheen, and a police officer who routinely makes visits to rynn's home.
There's not too much to recommend here, except that JODIE FOSTER was always an interesting actress, even as a young girl, but the story could have been much more gripping and taut with suspense.She never seemed to play the wholesome types, and this is no exception.
She's a bright thirteen year-old, living ostensibly with her poet father in a seaside house, very adult in her manners and interests.She doesn't like the snooping of others who ask too many questions about her quiet life in a house where her father is never seen.
There are a few unexpected plot twists, but most of the story is told in a very understated way in a style that is not likely to connect with today's audiences who want films with a faster pace.However, there is a certain subtlety to the proceedings and it does get under your skin if you let yourself fall under the spell of some very good acting.
I don't know why she doesn't like this move cuz she is great in it even with the delicate material and taboos in this film it was comfortable for me to watch not like "Taxi Driver" which disturbed me when I saw it on late night T.V. a few years later and edited for T.V. In the late 1990's I got the book as an old beat up paper back novel for 50 cents at the library and the book follows the screen play well minus "RINN'S" English accent and a few in-depth character developments and scenes that would'ave made the picture far too long the arthur and screen writer, Laird Koening, did a wonderful job with the screenplay, This is a perfect example of cooperation with the director,writer and producer.
Nicolas Gessner is very special director:an Hungarian,he made most of his career in France where he is today virtually forgotten,although his sentimental series "le château des oliviers" was a smash some fifteen years ago.After directing Mireille Darc in "la blonde de Pekin" which is pleasant but not very absorbing,he made his two best works in the seventies:"quelqu'un derrière la porte "(1971) and "little girl...." These works have many similarities:both feature American stars ,Bronson and Perkins in the former,Foster and Sheen in the latter;both sometimes look like filmed stage production,although "little girl" was not,unlike "quelqu'un ...' a play;and murders;and a mysterious character in both :Foster's and Bronson's ones.I would favor "little girl" over "quelqu'un" though.Part of the reason can be found in the fact that Foster was already a whizz kid and she carries the whole movie on her shoulders ,and it's not a small feat to make us forget the numerous plot holes.To think that at 15,she was already able to dub herself in French -like co-star Mort Shuman,who was enjoying a very successful career in France after writing for Elvis,Spector and many more-.Sheen is also impressive as a disturbing pedophile.In "quelqu'un..",Bronson was miscast and Perkins just gambled on his "psycho " prestige.A distant relative of Jack Clayton's "our mother's house" (1967),but not as haunting though..
This year's hyped-to-the-skies Internet-predator flick "Hard Candy" owes a great debt to its 30-year old precursor, "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane." A young, well-versed Jodie Foster plays the titular character, who inhabits a lonely house in the woods without any apparent parental supervision.
This is one odd little movie, a deft combination of the art-house with the “Grand Guignol” type of thriller – a character-driven mood-piece that’s undeniably gripping most of the way (it loses some momentum during the second half, when the narrative takes up the budding love story between its two young protagonists).
Also, the wintry locations and the melancholy score complement the unfolding drama admirably.The five main actors are all excellent: Jodie Foster has one of the most difficult roles ever tackled by a child (which she carries with startling aplomb); Martin Sheen is equally surprising as a slimy paedophile; Alexis Smith is wonderful as the bitchy town bigwig – apart from being Sheen’s mother and Foster’s landlady (the confrontation scenes between the two strong-willed females are terrific); Mort Shuman is an Italian cop who befriends Foster (he also contributed to the soundtrack!); and Scott Jacoby is the latter’s nephew, a crippled young magician who becomes embroiled – rather willingly – in Foster’s scheming.While considerable tension is created throughout, there’s little actual violence here; nonetheless, the brief nude scene involving the under-age Foster is mildly shocking for a PG-rated film of the time.
The creepy landlady's son Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen) comes to check on and creep on the 13 year old Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster).
In one of Jodie Foster's early roles (in fact this was the same year of her stardom role of "Taxi Driver")she is Rynn a young girl who lives in a seaside old resort house with her very reclusive father.
Jodie Foster stars as Rynn Jacobs, a 13 year old girl who seems to live in seclusion with her father, who hasn't been seen recently.
Maybe Foster doesn't like this particular film, but she is definitely an actress on the rise here.Martin Sheen plays a really creepy, sadistic pedophile, but he'll get hid just desserts, now, won't he.
Jodie Foster does a magnificently well playing Rynn Jacobs, a girl from England who lives in a very big house with her father.
Plot - Rynn Jacobs is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives in a secluded house that she and her father have rented in a quiet seaside community.
For some reason I missed viewing this film which held my interest from the very beginning to the end and I was amazed at the great acting of Jodie Foster.
Martin Sheen, (Frank Hallet) plays the role as a married man with children but he likes little girls and even puts the make on poor little Rynn.
It unavoidably draws comparisons with Albert Camus's existential novel, La Peste/The Plague (1947).I could go on and on about the film's thought-provoking theme of Traditional Child and Adult Roles and the Often-Blurry Lines Between Them (the mature, intelligent 'adults' of TLGWLDTL are the children and vice versa); the continuity errors made manifest by the fact that it was shot on at least two locations in--according to Astral Media--Knowlton, Quebec (hint: watch the windows, curtains and banisters); its plausible symbol of Rynn's pregnancy towards its end; its possible influence on Sonic Youth's 1998 double LP A Thousand Leaves--right down to the album cover; the possibility that Mario the Magician (Scott Jacoby) and the magazine rock star (in the novel version) were based on Marc 'T.
Jodie Foster is indeed impressively good in this movie, and she is perhaps the only actress who could have pulled off such a challenging role at such a young age.
I didn't know what to expect, other than it had the (always great) Jodie Foster in it, plus a practically-unrecognisable (due to his youth) Martin Sheen (I guess he had to be young once, I've just never seen him looking like that!).Foster plays Rynn Jacobs - a 13-14 year old girl (age deliberately unclear for reasons you'll have to find out by watching the film!) who is wise beyond her years and yet never really comes across as smug or forced.
There aren't that many characters to follow, but the story is simple (and when I say 'simple' I also mean different) which will make you want to know how things turn out.I guess, if I had to try and put this film in to a genre then I'd hedge my bets and say it was a 'drama-thriller.' The drama bit is easy to classify, but don't go expecting any fast-paced thrills here.
It stars 14 year old Jodie Foster as Rynn...and it sexualizes the sh*t out her for the entire film.
Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, The (1976) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Rynn's (Jodie Foster) father's dying wish was for her to continue life without him even if this means living on her own and keeping her distance from those around her.
You know what is going on right from the beginning, or at least it takes very little to figure it out.Just to quickly summarize the story, then it is about a 13 year old girl living in a big house, allegedly with her father, although no one has ever seen him.
13-year old Rynn (Jodie Foster) supposedly shares a rented property with her poet father, but when curious locals request to meet the man of the household, they are quickly rebuffed, causing them to suspect that the girl is actually living alone.
The idea of a pretty teenage girl on her lonesome proves way too tempting for local pervert Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen), who seizes the opportunity to make a move, but resourceful Rynn isn't quite as defenceless as she might seem.Jodie Foster's confident central performance in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is absolutely mesmerising, the young star displaying all the signs of a future Oscar winner; Foster is ably supported by Martin Sheen as cold-hearted child-molester (and hamster killer) Frank, and Alexis Smith as Frank's nosey mother, whose curiosity leads to a sticky end in the cellar.
A chilling character study, a tender romance, a macabre drama, a subtle horror: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is all these and more.Only an unbelievably silly scene in which Rynn's friend Mario (Scott Jacoby) dons a rubber mask and pretends to be her father in order to fool his suspicious uncle (Mort Shuman) mars what is otherwise a very effective and surprisingly provocative little thriller..
The director handles the suspenseful atmosphere very well although the budget is very low and the scene was quite simple.Jodie Foster gives an impressive performance as this cool, mysterious and brave little girl and so is Martin Sheen, who is very convincing as the bad guy.
It's a little known movie about a 13 year old Jodie Foster who moves into a new house with her father but the father never seems to be home.
Fortunately or otherwise, we are merely spectators to the end result - a flawed, genuine oddity, with a lot going for it.A post Taxi Driver Foster plays 13 year-old Rynn Jacobs, the eponymous, wildly precocious 'Girl' living alone in a rented house by the New England coast, surviving on travellers cheques and misdirection.
All performances here are exemplary, from Foster's wise-beyond-her-years title role to Sheen's bullying child molester, a brave and potentially career-burying role coming so soon after Badlands.There's great support too from Smith, Jacoby and 'Viva Las Vegas' songwriter Shuman, also responsible for the lovely main theme - though hopefully not the dreadful incidental wah-wah, familiar from 1970s cop thrillers.Such incongruous intrusions, along with some flat, TV-movie direction and the queasy sight of Foster (or rather her body-doubling elder sister Connie) jumping naked into bed with Mario, don't do the film any favours; between this, Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone, poor Jodie had by 1976 become as prematurely sexualised as a Bratz doll.
13 year old Rynn (Jodie Foster) lives in a huge old house with her father on the outskirts of the "village" (I don't think the place is ever named).
Jody Foster is Rynn, the little girl who lives down the lane in a spotless, New England cottage, with her reclusive poet father.
It stars Jodie Foster as Rynn Jacobs, a thirteen year old girl who lives in a secluded seaside home.
Obviously based on a book with some great characters, Jodie Foster as the little girl Rynn living with her father the poem writer in a house close to the waterside.
It is an interesting thriller where Jodie Foster plays a 13 year old girl who lives by herself in a cottage in a quiet little town and hides some dark secrets that you discover as the film progresses.
THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE is such a film, an astonishing tour-de-force for a youthful Jodie Foster, cementing her shocking role in TAXI DRIVER.
Coming out in the same year as Taxi Driver, Jodie Foster is about as good in this, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (what a wordy title).
Rynn (Foster) is only a 13-year-old girl and she seems to live in her house completely alone. |
tt0988043 | One-Eyed Monster | A disclaimer in the opening shot reads: "In February 2007, ten people went to the remote mountains of Northern California to shoot an adult movie. What happened next was something no one expected, but everyone saw coming."On a snow-covered mountain, a bus, truck, and a few cars arrive at a remote camp area to film a porn film. The group makes up of professional porn actors Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart (more or less playing themselves), novice porn stars Rock (John Edward Lee), Angel (Carmen Hart), Wanda (Jenny Guy), Lance (Bart Fletcher), as well as the director and producer Jim (Jeff Denton), cameraman T.J. (Caleb Mayo), gaffer-electrician and sound guy Jonah (Jason Graham), and makeup and script girl Laura (Amber Benson).After being dropped off by the school bus driver who leaves them behind, the group settles in their living quarters for the next few days to shoot. While Laura talks with Ron about his past career days, the guys, Lance, Rock and T.J. talk about T.J.'s latest suck-and-squeeze device for carnal pleasure that Jim wants to market, while Angel and Wanda talk about their experiences on the porn sets. Radio reports begin to describe a "strange light" in the sky that has been hovering over the mountains for the last several hours as Jim gets down to directing, starting with the first scene with Ron and Veronica. During a break in filming, Jonah goes outside to get some more lights from the truck while Ron also goes out to relief himself. Suddenly, a strange light hits Ron who then collapses to the ground. Jonah helps him up and they go back inside to finish filming the scene. Ron is acting strangely and begins to exhibit strange behavior as he begins performing in the sex scene with Veronica, who begin screaming in pain as Jim tries to yell "cut" as Ron continues to have rough sex with her. The guys are forced to pull Ron off Veronica as he goes into convulsions and suddenly dies. T.J., Jeff, and Jonah try to help Veronica who begins hemorrhaging and she looses conciseness. They guys look over to help Ron and see that he is dead. But they also notice that Ron's legendary 10-inch penis is gone as well.In Angel's room, she is rehearsing her upcoming scene, when the disembodied penis attacks her. Wanda walks in on this and runs out to inform Rock, Lance and Laura who run in only to find the disembodied member gone and Angel dead, with a large and gory hole in the back of her head. While everyone runs out to tell the others, Laura has an encounter the disembodied dick which attacks her.Holding themselves up in the main cabin, Jonah, Jim, T.J., Lance, Rock, and Wanda try to make sense of what is going on, just when Laura walks in, acting strangely. After the guys carry Ron's dead body outside, they debate on what to do since they are stranded there and no one has any signal for their cell phones. Rock wants to make a run for the cars to try to get off the mountain, but when he runs outside, the disembodied penis appears and shoves itself through him. When Jonah and T.J. run outside in a futile attempt to save him, they are surprised by the appearance of a rugged mountain man, named Montz (Charles Napier) who brings them back inside to the main cabin.Resting, Jonah and T.J. make the assumption that Ron's missing dick is possessed by some kind of alien force and is wants to use it's power to destroy and possibly do worse. Jeff suggests finding a way to kill it while Laura, who continues acting strange, wants to capture it. Lance and Wanda retreat to a nearby bathroom where he tries to calm down the growing hysterical Wanda over this unbelievable turn of events. Just then, the severed penis slithers in through an crack in the bathroom window and attacks them both.Jonah and T.J. come up with a plan to capture the lethal creature by luring it through an open window, using a pair of women's panties borrowed from Laura, to try to trap it with Jeff's suck and squeeze device. Montz volunteers to kill it after he gives them a creepy but hilarious monologue about his encounter with a similar event back in Vietnam in the 1960s where he saw his platoon getting killed by a disembodied penis that came from the body of his commanding officer. T.J. volunteers to help out and has Jonah lock him and Montz in the kitchen to make sure that if they fail that Rock's dick will not be able to get them. But while their backs are turned, the disembodied "one-eyed monster" slithers into the kitchen and strangles Montz to death, while it shoves itself in rapid speed through T.J. killing him.Jim panics and runs into the nearby bathroom only to find a dead and cocooned Lance and Wanda against the wall. Panicking, he runs outside to the nearby barn and tries to start a snow speeder to try to escape. But the severed penis follows him in a super-fast chase down the mountain where it knocks him off his snow speeder and then gruesomely slices him in two from the crotch to the top of the head as it burrows through the snow.Back at the main cabin, the three survivors of Jonah, Laura, and the barely conscious Veronica are beside themselves and wait. Jonah, after being told earlier by Montz about the location of an old radio antenna atop the nearby mountain, suggests they run to a nearby cabin that Montz told them about where they is an underground passageway to the radio shack where they can travel to it and radio for help. With Veronica having regained some of her strength, they make it to the passageway, which is apparently an old mine shaft and walk through the long tunnel and make it to the radio shack where Jonah tries to get the radio to work only the severed dick follows them and lands on Laura. Jonah tries to swing at it with an axe, but the "thing" is much too fast and keeps evading his blows. Veronica then thinks of a way to fight it. She lays down on the floor and offers it to the entity which shoves itself between her legs. Veronica tells Jonah and Laura to run for safety as she will keep it occupied and use her expert thighs to drain it of it's power. Jonah and Laura flee from the radio shack cabin and down the mountain just as Veronica makes the severed dick to climax which it "blows it's load". The penis monster explodes in a massive blast, destroying itself as well as killing Veronica and blows up the radio cabin in a massive blast covering the sky with millions of particles.Jonah and Laura seek shelter in a nearby shack where they huddle for the night. At dawn, Laura hears sounds of rain, but Jonah tells her that the rain is "Ron". The remains of the penis monster is raining down semen on the entire area.At dawn, when the sounds had decapitated, Laura leaves the cabin and a sleeping Jonah where she ventures outside and to a place in the snow where she seems to be distraught over the death of the one-eyed monster. Laura reveals a massive bulge in her abdomen as she is now impregnated by the penis monster which attacked her earlier and will now be the apparent breeding chamber to the one-eye monster's off spring..... | violence | train | imdb | If you like horror, comedy or feel-good penis movies....
Thankfully, the people behind One Eyed Monster have provided a magnum (condom) opus of fun.On a remote porn shoot, a killing spree begins at the "hands" of the titular character.
His purposefully wooden acting during the porn shoot perfectly balances the bit of heart he has when commiserating with fellow veteran Veronica Hart.If you are looking for a think piece about the travesties of the justice system or the inequities of societal living, this is not your movie (you pompous pompous person).If you want some good laughs, look to One Eyed Monster to give them to you..
It's just more of the same goofy genital humor.A blazing meteorite/beam of energy type thing crashed into Ron Jeremy as he was star-gazing at the night sky.
Just so you know where I stand with the above flicks that I mentioned, I enjoyed Killer Pussy (great nudity) and Teeth (bizarre dark humor) about equal, with this next and Bad Biology (tried way too hard to be funny) last..
As B-Horror movies go, "One Eyed Monster" is a unique hit.
You have to watch "Pervert!" to find another movie where a detached penis is the serial killer.
Just that fact alone is amazing when you consider porn actresses Veronica Hart and Carmen Hart are also in the movie.
This is just simply a horror spoof comedy, in which Ron Jeremy's now possessed penis goes around on an evil killing spree.
A hostile alien wreaks havoc on the cast and crew of an adult movie.I think the plot of this film more or less explains why it is such a great horror comedy.
(For a film about a bunch of born stars, the nudity is very tame -- only one person is even partially naked, and then only for a minute.) Oh, and Charles Napier.
Lots of Fun. OK I know what many are thinking about a film called "One Eyed Monster" and you are correct, it is about that.
What I mean is that this film is about a killer penis, or to be more specific Ron Jeremy's penis.
Without giving too much away, what we have here is a film that takes Ron Jeremy's penis and turns it into a ravening monster (which I believe many girls in the adult industry say already, in a loving way).
The cast is great with adult cinema alumns Veronica Hart, Carmen Hart, and of course Ron. It also boasts actress and author extrondinaire Amber Benson along with genre vet Charles Napier.
A rather typical "monster attacks isolated group" movie becomes a lot more fun when the group is a bunch of porn film people and the monster is the penis of Ron Jeremy!And it just gets better.
Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart star in it and, before the unthinkable happens, they manage to slip some commentary on the adult business nowadays.
All the reused scenes from other movies that I would disgustedly call clichés, in this one they become omages to classic horror films.Bottom line: it makes a perfect fun beer movie with a bunch of friends.
I saw Ron Jeremy's name and thought "now that name sounds familiar..." Suffice it to say, it is indeed THAT Ron Jeremy, the all time super porn star of the 70s/80s who was known far and wide for his one-eyed monster.This is a very clever take on that theme.
A porn film crew goes to Northern California to shoot a movie and get trapped by a blizzard, a "shooting star" (no pun intended) and of course the one-eyed monster that positively terrorizes the entire crew.Believe it or not, the production values are quite good, elevating this way above cheesy.
The outstanding performance, hands down, is that of Veronica Hart, an aging porn star who eventually "saves the day." (you will NOT be well for how she does it!!!) Hate to be so cryptic but if your tastes run the gamut from the absurd to the sublime, this CERTAINLY being sublime!, this should DEFINITELY be part of your collection.
The crew shooting a pornography film head toward on old cabin in the middle of nowhere, not knowing some manner of alien is planning to invade the earth by using the genitalia of one of their members.Premise seems interesting, but unfortunately the final product while entertaining, is still far away from what could have been.
Pretty strange how those rare occasions where nudity and sexual situations are central to the theme, there's actually less than many films where such things feel completely gratuitous.
I saw Ron Jeremy's name and thought "now that name sounds familiar..." Suffice it to say, it is indeed THAT Ron Jeremy, the alltime super porn star of the 70s/80s who was known far and wide for his one-eyed monster.This is a very clever take on that theme.
A porn film crew goes to Northern California to shoot a movie and gets trapped by a blizzard, a "shooting star" (no pun intended) and of course the one-eyed monster that positively terrorizes the entire crew.
The outstanding performances, hands down, are those of Veronica Hart, an aging porn star who eventually "saves the day," (you will NOT be well for how she does it!!!), and a positively hilarious turn by none other than Charles Napier.Hate to be so cryptic but if your tastes run the gamut from the absurd to the sublime (this most assuredly being sublime), this should DEFINITELY be part of your collection.
i have only seen this once before, the last time i saw, it was silly and fun.Now seeing for second time, it feel a little tame the second times around, the jokes are still funny.Which the over the top plot, i did notice there not much gore in this movie at all, i didn't not like the fact some of the deaths scenes were off screen.did chuckle at one deaths scenes that was on screen and when that tailwager attacks the victims at first was funny, it got a bit boring as the movie went on.I really enjoyed some references to other horror pass horror movies, which were fun to watchThe acting from whole cast was really good, as they made even more silly and fun to watch.6 out of 10 for.
When I saw the trailer, I expected a slapstick horror-movie that makes fun of both the cliché's in porn and horror-genres.
I expected a little bit more entertainment from a movie about a penis that goes around killing people.The gore is also pretty nonexistent which was a letdown for me.
I thought that a movie like this would at least go all the way with the killings, but this movie is actually pretty tame except for perhaps the shots of people wrestling with a rubber dildo.
Its actually pretty amazing that the creators could make this movie boring with the plot that it has, but they did it.If you are looking for a good nonsense horror-movie to watch with your buddies like I was, then don't stop here.
It's painfully obvious that she was actually green-screened in to several scenes in post production, often with wildly different encoding/film stock than the other cast.
It's like watching a professional crew film a first draft script.It ran the gamut between clever and stupid and often found its cruising speed on the ridiculous and mundane.
So many obvious comedic dialogue opportunities were missed, plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, and story choices that defied common sense, left me with the impression of a family funded backyard film project, despite the professional production values.I would recommend this film to aspiring screenwriters to see what their 1st draft scripts would look like on screen....
This is Ron Jeremy's worst performance to date, and I'm pretty sure at some point before this, he played a dead body and loudly farted during the scene.
If permanent blindness is your idea of a good time, by all means watch this brain cell killing abortion.
The only good thing about this film is I think it killed my liver fluke about 30 minutes in..
One-Eyed Monster "borrows" from several "Aliens take over the world" movies.
ONE-EYED MONSTER is a low rent comedy horror that makes use of real-life porn-film legend, Ron Jeremy.
The plot is preposterous - an alien life force comes to each and possesses Jeremy's detached penis before going on a killing spree - but the execution is surprisingly likable given the paucity of imagination and the sheer dumbness of the premise.The story template is pretty much a rip-off of Carpenter's THE THING, with characters holed up in a snowbound cabin and finding themselves bumped off one by one by an unseen premise.
It's also tamer than you might think and rarely distasteful.Oddly enough, the best acting comes from the two genuine porn stars in the film, Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart.
B-movie fans will enjoy the presence of old-time cult star Charles Napier in a supporting role, although my favourite character is the geeky Ed Bryne-lookalike sound technician..
What could they possibly have in common?You know it's "adult" because Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart are in it.
They are off in the woods making an adult film when the strangest thing happens.Ron is invaded by the alien force which settles in his penis.
One-Eyed Monster starts as a bus-load of hardcore porn stars arrive at an isolated log cabin on a mountain, along with the crew T.J.
The trapped cast & crew assume that Ron's penis has been possessed by an alien life-force & is trying to spread it's seed throughout humanity by taking control of Ron Jeremy's penis & having sex with as many women as it can.
The only question is, can they stop it?Co-written, produced & directed by Adam Fields this comedy horror is like a ten year old dream come true, a few naked breasts's, a bit of blood & a one note joke about an alien possessed killer penis that I am sure will appeal to those with a rock bottom sense of humour but for anyone looking for a funny & witty horror comedy expect disappointment.
At less than 80 minutes long One-Eyed Monster actually drags in places, the character's have a few amusing one-liners every now & again but generally they are stupid clichés who irritate.
The killer penis gets like a minute of screen time.
For a supposed gross out horror comedy about an alien possessed killer penis running amok during a hardcore porn film shoot One-Eyed Monster is unbelievably tame & none eventful.
To give it some credit the sexual innuendos, one-liners & double entendres can be quite amusing at times but does get a little boring by the end & there's only so far penis jokes can carry a film.
I won't even bother picking holes in the script as it's clearly not a film to be taken seriously even though at times one did get the impression that the makers were treating it all very seriously, too seriously in fact.AS I already mentioned despite it's premise & situations One-Eyed Monster is amazingly tame, I think only one actress bares her breast's while no-one is killed on screen at all.
The effects are alright but on the few occasion when you do actually see the alien possessed killer penis it looks like a fresh big long brown turd.The acting isn't too bad, ageing porn stars Ron Jeremy & Veronica Hart appear while porn starlet Carmen Hart also appears & is terrible.
God knows what an old pro like Charles Napier is doing in this.One-Eyed Monster is a film that has a magnificent & simply outrageous premise that in the right hands hands could have been the gross out horror comedy of the decade, as it is it's a boring tame mess with only a few one-liners & sexual innuendo to recommend it.
Went in with low expectations, and thought the premise sounded funny, but the movie wasn't that funny at all..
While watching the film I was thinking of all the of ways it could have been better...unfortunately, this film is not funny enough to score any higher than this.
Bring in the Evil Dead bunch, re-cast Ron in his role here, maybe even add Adam Green as a director, and boost the comedy and horror aspects of this movie while still keeping it silly, and you'd have a real winner.
Ron Jeremy wasn't a good part of the movie, good thing he died in the beginning.
This is a good movie for someone mature who wants some laughs, there are a lot of bad b movies out there but this one is about an alien taking control of Ron Jeremy's dick, which makes it all the funnier..
In the film, 10 people go to the wintry mountains of northern California to make an adult film, with porn legends Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart serving as consultants.
Still, many of the picture's lines are pretty funny, the acting is surprisingly good, and there is even a sweet scene in which Ron and Veronica reflect on getting older and not so spry that is actually kinda touching.
Hard core porn legend Ron Jeremy's disembodied shlong goes on a rampage attacking the cast crew of an adult movie shoot in a mountain cabin.
This is more a gore comedy with vulgar language, most appropriate in regards to the industry this film conveys(..in other words, most of the language is of a sexually explicit kind).Ron Jeremy(..recognized as his first film, introduced to the mainstream audience)has a limited screen time, which might disappoint his fans.
Jason Graham is a crew member, a soldier during the Gulf War, who assumes the leadership role, Amber Benson(..Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the series) as a make-up girl in love with Ron, and Jeff Denton is the sleazy, cowardly a$$hole director porn casts love to hate.
Rounding out the cast is Caleb Mayo as a MacGyver-like genius whose "neural tactile simulator"(..a dick massaging machine programmed to feel like the orifice of whomever is chosen!)comes in handy, Bart Fletcher and Jenny Guy as young porn actors, and Carmen Hart as an actress who gets to worst kind of head imaginable..
I recorded ONE EYED MONSTER on a whim, as it featured Ron Jeremy in his first legitimate movie.
It's an "R" version of an adult movie being filmed away from the city, the boyfriends, girlfriends, etc.Thank goodness Ron Jeremy's screen time is limited to about 20 minutes, before his character -- he plays himself -- is killed off.
As bad as Ron Jeremy's acting is, the rest of the cast is even worse!
I know this is supposed to be funny; and, yes, some of the death scene's are reminiscent of SCARY MOVIE; but, that does little to save this film.The gag of a homicidal, detached penis gets old fast.
(Why mention that in connection with film viewing: coz even that was a disappointment coz although there is a scene in which porn star struck character (Laura / Amber Benson) is instructed (er, directed by director?) to remove her panties so to lure the disembodied 'dick' of the titular owner's, they were NOT the same!
"One Eyed Monster" is a fun and solid throwback to the monster films of the past.**SPOILERS**Traveling out to the mountains, Laura, (Amber Benson) Jonah, (Jason Graham) Jim, (Jeff Denton) T.J., (Caleb Mayo) Lance, (Bart Fletcher) Wanda, (Jenny Guy) Veronica, (Veronica Hart) Rock, (John Edward Lee) Angel, (Carmen Hart) and Ron, (Ron Jeremy) the cast and crew of an adult movie, take over an abandoned cabin to make the movie.
Trapped in by a snowstorm, they try to find a way of stopping it's sexually-potent attacks before they're all killed off one-by-one.The Good News: This one here was actually really good and enjoyable.
That's what makes those so fun, and that the whole thing is played off as one big scene is where it really gets the most enjoyment from.
Another really good encounter is a fun chase scene through the snow, where the victim on a snowmobile tries to outrun the thing burrowing through the snow, which is pretty exciting at times and concludes on a rather great kill.
There's also a rather good scene, which doesn't have any action at all, where the film decides to have some fun and decides to re-write history featuring the alien's impact in a major event in history in a manner that comes off as plausible under the circumstances and actually has some rather interesting presentations because of it, and even though its just dialog all the way through, there's some enjoyment to be had from this scene.
It's also really nice to know that the film manages to have a level of cheese attached to it, mostly through the premise and how it unfolds, which is rather nice and definitely gets some good points to it.
These here are the film's good moments.The Bad News: There wasn't much at all really wrong with this one.
One of the few problems is the fact that there's a pretty large amount of kills here which either happen off-screen or are completely bloodless, which doesn't go over well with this type of film.
This is the kind of film where it's expected to go completely full-on in it's blood and gore scenes, and to have instances where scenes like the first attack are shown at an angle so as to be completely unable to witness any of it except through the dialog explaining it, which takes a lot of the fun out of the scene, or other attacks where it does the same thing and completely keeps the kill off-screen.
From the sexual innuendo while the porn shoot is going on to the constant references to his manhood and finally to the props showcasing it in action and the kill inside the bathroom, it can be something that turns off those that have no desire to see such things on-screen. |
tt0105104 | Passenger 57 | International terrorist Charles Rane (Bruce Payne) is about to undergo plastic surgery to change his appearance in order to evade the law. Outside, federal agents and SWAT teams close in to arrest him. It becomes apparent that the plastic surgeon and his staff are in on the plan. Rane becomes suspicious and makes his escape, killing the surgeon in the process. After a harrowing chase through the city streets, Rane is finally apprehended.Haunted by the shooting death of his wife in a robbery, former police officer John Cutter (Wesley Snipes) has taken a job training flight attendants and security personnel in how to deal with dangerous situations including terrorists. During this particular session, his student is Marti Slayton (Alex Datcher), a flight attendant. When Marti disobeys his instructions, the pair have a brief confrontation.After class, Cutter sees an old friend, Sly Delvecchio (Tom Sizemore), who is there with a job offer: vice-president for the anti-terrorism unit at Atlantic International Airlines, a major carrier. Cutter is at first reluctant, but Delvecchio and the airline's president (Bruce Greenwood) manage to win him over during lunch.Cutter boards Atlantic International Flight 163 to Los Angeles... and his new job. By coincidence, one of the flight attendants on this flight happens to be Marti. Also on board is Rane, in FBI custody, headed to Los Angeles to stand trial for his terrorist activities in the past. Several of Rane's people are aboard the plane, disguised as cabin crew and passengers. When Marti performs a head count after boarding is complete, Cutter happens to be passenger number 57.Mid-flight, Rane is freed when Sabrina Ritchie (Elizabeth Hurley), disguised as a flight attendant, shoots both FBI officers dead. Several other henchmen concurrently spring into action, stealing weapons from the dead officers and taking the plane's passengers hostage. Cutter, in the lavatory during the takeover, emerges and overpowers one of Rane's men. However, Rane responds by executing one of the passengers with a Berreta M9 pistol, making Cutter feel responsible for the man's death. During the confrontation, Cutter and Marti manage to escape, taking the elevator to the plane's lower deck. After a brief fight with one of Rane's men down there, Cutter initiates a fuel dump which forces the Tri Star Lockheed L-1011 to land at a small Louisiana airfield.Cutter manages to escape from the plane, but Marti is captured by another of Rane's men. On the tarmac, Cutter is quickly apprehended by local sheriff's deputies.Meanwhile, Rane has made contact with the local sheriff, Chief Biggs (Ernie Lively). Rane promises to release half the hostages in return for fuel and takeoff clearance. Rane also tells Biggs that Cutter is one of his men, a deserter. When the deputies bring Cutter before Chief Biggs, Biggs orders him taken into custody.As the passengers are being released, Rane and two of his men make their escape. Cutter overpowers the sheriff's deputies, frees himself from his handcuffs, and gives chase on a police motorcycle. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents arrive, headed by Dwight Henderson (Robert Hooks), who angrily informs Chief Biggs of Cutter's true identity.At a nearby fair, Cutter manages to kill one of the henchmen and engages Rane in a fight just as police reinforcements arrive. Though back in custody, Rane tells the FBI and police that his remaining team aboard the plane will begin to execute the rest of the hostages if he is not returned to the plane and granted takeoff clearance.Cutter, Henderson, and Chief Biggs work out a plan for FBI snipers to take down Rane as he boards the plane, upon which FBI teams will storm the plane and deal with his remaining underlings on board. As Rane boards the plane with an FBI escort, Cutter gives the order to fire. However, the sniper bullets hit Rane's FBI escort, not Rane. Rane's second henchman has taken the place of the FBI snipers (who are shown lying unconscious or dead behind him), and he begins firing at the assembled police and agents. He is killed during the gunfight, but not before Rane makes it safely aboard and the plane begins to take off.With the help of Chief Biggs, Cutter barely manages to get aboard the moving plane via its landing gear. Once aboard, he quickly dispatches Rane's remaining two henchmen, then engages Rane in a prolonged fistfight. Gunfire in the cabin causes explosive cabin decompression, resulting in the main cabin door exploding outward, leaving the cabin open to the sky. As Cutter and Rane continue to fight, they head closer to the open cabin door. Cutter eventually kicks Rane out through the open door, and Rane plunges to his death.The plane lands safely at the Louisiana airfield for the second time that day. Amid congratulations and celebration, Marti and Cutter make their quiet escape into the distance hand in hand. | murder, cult, violence, flashback, good versus evil, humor, action, suspenseful | train | imdb | When I first saw P57, rented on video in the mid nineties, I wasn't expecting a re-run of Die Hard, but i was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable an action flick it was.Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne spark well off each other as the troubled hero and psychotic villain.
That said, Ernie Lively does a nice turn as the local police chief and Robert Hooks (father of director Kevin Hooks) is good as an FBI Agent.Essentially, Passenger 57 is a solid little action movie which is well paced and has enough intriguing characters and good action scenes to keep you interested right through to the finale.
The story is perhaps a little thin and the script could have used a bit more depth to develop the characters, but it's very enjoyable none the less.Don't view this expecting a great movie, but if you have an hour and a half to kill this film is well worth a watch..
Although there is not too much of a storyline, the slick action scenes combined with some very good performances from Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne kept me entertained from start to finish.While Passenger 57 offers nothing really new to the action genre, it does offer plenty of fast paced chaos and explosions and combined with some entertaining hand-to-hand combat skills by Snipes, it is certainly better than a lot of other standard action fares out there.Snipes gives a very good performance as the lead and Bruce Payne is brilliant as the mentally unstable villain.
The story follows Wesley Snipes' airline security expert John Cutter, who whilst undertaking a flight to L.A. gets embroiled in a hostage takeover led by evil bad man with a troubled childhood, Charles Rane.
Meanwhile , Cutter contacts with his airline chiefs (Tom Sizemore and Bruce Greenwood) who want to hide the events .The film packs nonstop action , suspense , tension , lots of violence when the murders and fighting happen , being quite entertaining .
The one thing he doesn't reckon on is the presence of Passenger 57, maverick sky marshal John Cutter (Wesley Snipes), who knows a trick or two when it comes to dishing out pain to the bad guys.
Payne as the villain is as camp as Christmas; hero Snipes plays it with utter indifference; the plot rattles along with no rhyme or reason making it awfully hard to care about any of the protagonists; and the climax is such a rushed muddle of a sequence that it comes over more as an anticlimax than anything.
It's easy to knock action movies, especially if you prefer something with a bit of depth and believability, but even champions of the "big, cheesy action flick" are likely to come away from Passenger 57 feeling disappointed..
The tag; "Die Hard" on a plane is pretty much true when describing this uninspired Wesley Snipes action vehicle of the early nineties.
This entry might not make much of the dent in Snipes' portfolio, but for the undemanding just wanting some simple action moving at a brisk pace with some venomously psychotic villain performances (led by the exceptional Bruce Payne and an early part for Elizabeth Hurley) and fine support (Tom Sizemore and Ernie Lively).
In the years following its release, many of the action flicks have borrowed the basic premise of "Die Hard", making it film about a cop or someone along those lines fighting the bad guys in a limited location, whether its on a bus (Speed), a battleship (Under Siege), a hockey stadium (Sudden Death).
But when I see the kind of action this film has to offer, it doesn't make me feel like I wanna do it in real life to someone I hate.One thing that wasn't too shabby was the soundtrack and the composers skill to at least save the action scenes from falling apart completely.I wouldn't call this "boring" to watch, but it's just a little bland and uninteresting, in fact its got a less than 90 minute runtime, so you could watch it if you REALLY, REALLY don't have anything to do..
It doesn't feel like they have payed much attention to the characters, the dialogs or even the plot.Charles Rane, a terrorist feared everywhere for his many hijackings and bombings, is being transported to jail by plane.
Passenger 57 is really cheese and absolutely silly unrealistic not logical entertaining trash.This movie completely rips off Die Hard and Die Hard 2.A group of terrorist take over the plane (Die Hard 2) a terrorists took over control of Dulles International Airport in passenger 57 they took over the plane.A black man airline security is the hero in the movie, who is an ex cop now his name is John Cutter by the way the first name was rip off from John McClane - Bruce Willis Die Hard.Starts okay, but than it feels the movie is too rushed and turn's out cheese corny bad.I am just wondering how an ex cop and martial airline security and instructor can effort to buy such a beautiful car Wesley was driving?
I noticed two scenes on the end of the movie that copied the first Die Hard: After Wesley Snipes kills the third terrorist Forget (Michael Horse) on a plane he put's him in elevator and he pushes the button for up stairs the floor to the distraction Rane (Bruce Payne), Rane open's the door and he see Forget (Michael Horse) bloody dead and Marti (Alex Datcher) screams after seen Forget dead.
That scene was ripped off from Die Hard, John McClane kill's the first terrorist Tony (Andreas Wisniewski) and put's him in a elevator and send's a message down the stairs and a terrorist and a lady sees him bloody dead and the lady screams.Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne are fighting on a plane and Wesley kick's him three times in the stomach until Rane (Bruce Payne) fall's down.
In general, though, the movie repeatedly insists on descending into silliness, with a story that makes very little sense, even as actions movies go.Snipes plays John Cutter, a security expert who's just been hired to be chief of security for Atlantic International Airlines.
The opening scenes involving terrorist Charles Rane (Bruce Payne) and his attempt to escape the FBI by fleeing a plastic surgeon's office, where he was apparently going to have his appearance changed, was pretty dramatic and established the nature of that character reasonably well.
The music sounds like it came from a 1990s soft porn made-for-TV flick, so Stanley Clarke gets a special mention for the difficult task of making a rubbish film even worse.Can't help thinking Bruce Willis would have done this better, with more humour, and probably made it watchable, which this isn't..
Need I go on?The (bad/pathetic/weak) plot: John Cutter (Wesley Snipes) is an ex-cop trained in martial arts (or some form of punching and kicking) aboard flight 163 from somewhere to somewhere else.
Mid-flight the plane is taken over by terrorists, led by Charles Rane (Bruce Payne), a man who has had some experience with Cutter in the past and who is pleased to see him onboard.
However, once again he manages to escape from the grasp of confinement and he slips away on a motorcycle to a big fairground where Charles Rane and his cronies just, by matter of convenience, happen to be!If you think this movie sounds a lot like "Air Force One," you're right.
The director, Kevin Hooks, doesn't seem to know how to carry a film along at a reasonable pace while keeping audiences' interest.The writers of this movie, Dan Gordon and David Lougery, need a little lesson in how to craft a good action movie.
That's just called garbage--a genre "Passenger 57" fits nicely into.Director: Kevin Hooks John Cutter: Wesley Snipes Charlies Rane: Bruce Payne Sly Delvecchio: Tom Sizemore Sabrina Ritchie: Elizabeth HurleyWritten by David Lougery and Dan Gordon1.5/5 stars.John Ulmer.
I tried to watch this movie without thinking at all and to just relax but it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do.A few things made this movie really great: Wesley Snipes, the music, some of the lines, the action.Other than those, the movie could have been much better.Wesley Snipes plays John Cutter, a former airline security expert who is flying on a plane when terrorists happen to take over.
As it stands we are left with a movie that has a cliche-ridden plot, weak characters and lacking in excitement.Bruce Payne is reasonably good as the bad guy but the 84 minutes really didn't allow him time to explore the character's possibilities.
Wesley Snipes isn't on best form here either.If you want to see a well-produced aeroplane hostage movie, take a look at Air Force One and give this a miss..
Although Wesley Snipes, an amazing action-flick star, plays the lead in this film, it lacks the entertaining qualities that his other films have.
But really, what better way to begin your action career than with this fairly by- numbers, yet highly entertaining exercise.What kind of surprised me was how good this ended up being, and how for some reason it never received the type of status or hype as other "Die Hard style" action films did, like Under Siege for example.
Passenger 57 is directed by Kevin Hooks, who up until this point had previously only worked in television, with the exception of the urban comedy Strictly Business the year before, yet did such a fantastic job handling a big budget action film his first time out.
Who could forget "Always bet on black" or "Charles Rane is not insane".The characters here are paper thin and basically stereotypes .Wesley Snipes makes a good action hero in style of Axel Foley from "Beverly Hills cop".
When terrorists take over a passenger plane while he is in the bathroom, it is up to an airline security specialist to thwart them in this action thriller clearly modeled on 'Die Hard'.
Given the familiarity of the basic scenario, 'Passenger 57' is a surprisingly entertaining affair with Bruce Payne making for a memorable charismatic chief villain, plus there are several well coordinated action scenes that take into account the inherent claustrophobia of being in a plane.
What a bad guy!His fellow colleagues are very convincing and I like Elizabeth Hurley in the film as part of his team!Tom Sizemore was good.The music was very good and it was very 80s like which was very cool!If you like terrorist films on air planes and like Wesley Snipes and especially Bruce Payne then see Passenger 57!.
The character that yells the title quote of this review highlights the general stupidity of the entire premise, while Snipes (an air security chief who's afraid of flying) attempts to leave by cutting it's fuel then jumping off.About 20 minutes later, after a vaguely entertaining if pointless run-around a fairground, Wesley gets back on the hijacked plane - by driving a car parallel to it's takeoff then jumping on the front wheel in mid air.
All this far-fetched, testosterone-fuelled daftness irritated me when I first saw the film upon it's release, but seeing it all again I've come to realise that maybe Passenger 57 is more fun if you don't take it so seriously.Okay, this is treadmill stuff for Snipes - Rising Sun had a decent plot and I think he gives a better performance when camp, as in Demolition Man, but here he does sort of okay in a very silly film.
Now John is forced to deal with the dangerous situation.Directed by Kevin Hooks (Fled) made an reasonably entertaining action-thriller, which it is basically "Die Hard" on a plane.
The terrorists who seize the plane appear to have been transported from Die Hard, down to Eurotrash psychopath Charles Rane (Bruce Payne), played in stereotypical fashion by the actor.We get the normal blend of suspense, thrills, action, and just enough pauses for witty dialogue between hero and villain.
It was 1992 and Wesley Snipes was a hot actor but he had yet to show off his action movie talents until Passenger 57.The Die Hard-esque bad guy Charles Rane (Bruce Payne) was an international terrorist in the hands of the FBI.
The film has an excellent cast starring Wesley Snipes as John Cutter, Bruce Payne as Charles Rane, Tom Sizemore as Sly Delvecchio, Alex Datcher as Marti Slayton, Elizabeth Hurley as Sabrina Ritchie, Michael Horse as Forget and Marc Macaulay as Vincent.
Wesley Snipes acting as Airline Security Expert John Cutter is absolutely brilliant and his Martial Arts moves were awesome.
There are many more things that I like about this film, it's hard to say what they all are but I definitely can say that Passenger 57 is an absolutely brilliant Wesley Snipes film.
In Passenger 57 when John Cutter is on the plane wanting help he is seated holding a book called The Art of War. The film the Art of War starring Wesley Snipes is also an excellent film with action and awesome fight scenes.
Wesley Snipes is a real hoot as the chop-socky airline security expert who tangles with British baddie Bruce Payne in places like inside the plane itself to a tarmac area to even a carnival fair.
Aiding Snipes is pretty flight attendent Alex Datcher and airport manager Tom Sizemore, and in Payne's corner is soon-to-be popular supermodel Elizabeth Hurley, who plays a beautiful-yet-deadly terrorist posing as a stewardess."Passenger 57" is a great action flick with cool fight scenes and loud pyrotechniques.
This picture was in released in theaters on November 10 1992 starring Wesley snipes as John Cutter, Bruce Payne as Charles Rane, and Elizabeth Hurley as Sabrina Ritchie.
It's an enjoyable action-packed thriller with some nifty action and a great lead under the superb charisma of Wesley Snipes.Instead of a high-rise on an airport, the film this time takes place on an airplane, and the hero once again is a cop, this time is named John Cutter (Snipes), which actually is a decent substitute for Bruce Willis' John McLane.
As a matter of fact, many questions in logic can be asked all throughout PASSENGER 57, but it's not twice as much fun as the film's action-packed energy, as well as toying with one action movie cliché after another.Of course Rane escapes and takes over the entire plane.
Its a tight action movie that is very fun to watch with beers and friends.A weird detail i noticed..Wesley Snipes was in the "Bad!" music video facing off against Micheal Jackson.
Playing the title role in Passenger 57 is airline security expert Wesley Snipes who is on board a flight where known terrorist Bruce Payne is being transported to face justice.
This movie has a lot of action packed thriller, and the actors performances were absolutely terrific.Wesley Snipes surely kicks some terrorist ass, with martial arts moves and he had a great acting.
Passenger 57 (1992) *** (out of 4) An airline security adviser (Wesley Snipes) finds himself on board a plane that gets taken over by a notorious hijacker (Bruce Payne).
Snipes is John Cutter, a tough, kung-fu-fighting airlinesecurity expert who is forced to take on a scary terrorist namedRane (played by Bruce Payne, an actor that makes Alan Rickman'scharacter from "Die Hard" look like the fairy god-mother!) onand off board a jumbo jet.
There was plenty of action and one of Wesley Snipes great Classic films Enjoy..
Also, Lead-Star Wesley Snipes, puts up a terrific act!'Passenger 57' Synopsis: An airline security expert must take action when he finds himself trapped on a passenger jet when terrorists seize control of it.'Passenger 57' is pure popcorn entertainment.
OK,i won't waste much time getting into the specifics of the film.here's all you really need to know.great action with superb fight scenes.awesome twisted villain.
Wesley snipes plays the lead character, a no nonsense,kick ass terrorist buster.Bruce Payne portrays the truly evil baddie named Charles Rayne who has hijacked a plane which Snipes character just happens to be on.too bad for for Rayne.
Wesley Snipes plays John Cutter, an airplane security expert who finds himself in a Die Hard situation, seems Bruce Payne has taken over the friendly skies and Snipes is the only one who can take on the terrorists, in other words Die Hard on an air plane.
This isn't a bad film but it isn't exactly a great film either; Wesley Snipes does a good job as airline security expert John Cutter who is in the wrong place at the right time, Bruce Payne is okay as the psychotic terrorist and Alex Datcher is fairly forgettable as the feisty stewardess.
Once back on the plane Cutter confronts Rane one last time with the inevitable results on expects from this sort of film.This isn't a film I'd go out of my way to see but it is okay if you have eighty minutes to kill and want some fairly mindless action.
Airline security expert John Cutter(Wesley Snipes)is on a routine flight when he must rescue hostages on board from a group of terrorists led by mad bomber Charles Rane(Bruce Payne).
Wesley Snipes is airline security specialist Cutter, who is onboard a passenger flight when it is hijacked by British terrorists trying to escape the FBI (Bruce Payne as Charles Rane (who falls mainly on the plane), and a strikingly beautiful Elizabeth Hurley as his Bad Girl).
The acting is OK, Snipes is alright although the script could have used a few more one-liners to lighten his character up a bit, Payne is a decent villain while Hurley (I was just reading her IMDb bio where it says she claims she hasn't watched TV since 1979!!!!!!) looks hot in this & is probably the only time she has played a villain.Passenger 57 is a decent enough 90's action flick, it's nothing overly special & there are better films out there with similar plots, Executive Decision (1996) anyone?
Snipes is a counter-terrorist type who's a passenger on a plane that's taken over by terrorists, led by stock bad guy Bruce Payne. |
tt0034272 | That Hamilton Woman | Emma Hart, a beautiful dance hall girl who's been passed around numerous nobilities, is sent by her latest lover, Charles Greville, to stay with his uncle Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples. Emma is to learn French, Italian and upper-class manners in a month's time, then marry Charles.Sir William is a passionate art collector and considers Emma a rare piece of art he must possess. He deceives Emma, saying that Charles never intends to marry her and only sent her to Naples to get rid of her. Sir William comforts her by introducing her to Naples' elite society, offering an opportunity to enter the upper-class world. Soon Emma forgets about Charles and marries Sir William - the dance hall girl turned courtesan is now Lady Hamilton, Her Excellency.Three years later, the whole of Naples is awaken by cannon salutes from a battleship. Horatio Nelson, a famous English Naval officer, has arrived. Nelson requests that Naples honour its treaty with England and supply troops to aid the British war effort against France. Emma uses her relationship with the Queen of Naples and gets Nelson his reinforcements. Nelson leaves immediately, with a vivid impression of the most beautiful woman in Europe.The war continues for another five years, and Nelson finds himself in Naples, again in need of supplies. But this time English ships are not allowed to enter Naples, as the King does not wish to provoke an attack by the French. Seeing that Sir William is unable to persuade the King, Emma again uses her influence over the Queen and Nelson is granted permission to receive supplies from any Neapolitan port. Emma delivers the mandate to Nelson, and the ship leaves.Nelson does not stay away long. He returns to Naples after his victory in Egypt, warning the king about advancing French troops, but fails to persuade the king to take action. Exhausted and in poor health, Lord Nelson collapses and is confined to bedrest for an extended time.Emma takes charge of looking after Lord Nelson; and although Nelson, having lost an arm and an eye in battle, is not attractive or socially adept, the two fall in love. They don't have much time together though; as soon as Nelson recovers, he is ordered to return to war.The affair between Nelson and Emma grows serious, leading Nelson to disobey his orders and rescue the Hamiltons and the royal family before Napoleon takes Naples. The Admiralty orders Nelson to return to London immediately, while Sir William is instructed to take his wife to Turkey. The lovers are determined to stay together after so many partings, so Emma, her mother, and Sir William return to England with Nelson.Due to Nelson's popularity as a war hero, he is spared court martial and offered a seat in the House of Lords. Emma realises that if their affair continues she will destroy Nelson's career, and calls off their plan to divorce their respective spouses. As she is about to leave Nelson, she finds she is pregnant.Lord Nelson leaves again, to fight the Danish fleet, and returns a year later to find Emma preparing a return to the stage. Sir William's entire art collection was lost in a shipwreck and the blow proved too much for him; he died and left his inheritance to his nephew. Now penniless, Emma is abandoned by her high-society friends and has to earn her own living to support her mother and her illegimate daughter, Horatia.Disillusioned by the prime minister's decision to sign the peace treaty with France, and infuriated by his own neglect and failure to protect Emma, Lord Nelson retires and takes Emma's little family to the country. She finally achieves her fairy tale life.Emma's bliss is short-lived. Napoleon breaks the treaty and invades England, and Nelson is called out of retirement to defend his country. This time, he does not return. And Emma's life becomes a living death. | tragedy, melodrama | train | imdb | It seemed strange how Emma (Vivien Leigh) could rise to such prominence in life to become a Lady Hamilton and eventually fall so low, yes and sadly.The movie begins at the lower rung, in her later life as she's caught stealing and put in prison where she recounts her story to others.
We are taken back in time to her youth and arrival in Italy where, after some thoughtful consideration of her situation in life, Emma agrees to marry the elderly Sir Hamilton, and rather enjoys her position as Lady Hamilton, a glittering socialite.Events of Napoleonic wartime bring Lord Nelson (Laurence Olivier) into their sphere when in need of supplies and he also seeks to warn them.
Yet it is Fate that draws these two, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, together in one of the great love stories of their time.
Vivien Leigh never looked more beautiful and one can see more of the true person she was after setting aside her role in "Gone With the Wind." Laurence Olivier, an actor of many disguises, is well masked in the injuries that Lord Nelson sustained in battle.
If nothing else, 'That Hamilton Woman' proved two things: Vivien Leigh is just as beautiful in black and white as she is in the glorious technicolor of 'GWTW'; and when it comes to the cinema, her acting technique on screen is every bit as expert as Laurence Olivier's.
Screen biography of Emma, Lady Hamilton, whose love for Lord Nelson (the British naval hero of the Napoleonic wars) scandalized the Regency world.Vivien Leigh is in almost every frame, and completely dominates the film.
One of the best known stories of adultery in British history is the one between Lord Horatio Nelson and the enchanting Emma Hamilton.
This film by Alexander Korda takes that story and does not disappoint.In the pivotal role of Emma, Vivien Leigh shines in a role that came not long after her international triumph in 'Gone With The Wind'.
The part of Nelson is taken by Vivien Leigh's real-life husband, Laurence Olivier, and his stuffed-shirt persona suits the role perfectly.In support, Alan Mowbray (as the cuckolded Lord Hamilton), and Gladys Cooper (as the snide Lady Nelson), are excellent, and the standard of script, photography, and direction is high throughout.This was said to be Winston Churchill's favourite wartime film, and you can see the attraction.
The actors give great performances, and I think the film really tries hard not judge the actions of Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson which caused a tremendous scandal in their own time.
In 1941,only England was still resisting Hitler.So the parallel was obvious and "that Lady Hamilton" is a propaganda work,which does not prevent if from being highly commendable,thanks to the two leads,mainly Leigh-this must have been her third best performance,in the movies,far behind "gone with the wind" and "a streetcar named desire",but her beauty shines in every scene.The movie is a long flashback,sandwiched between two "present scenes " in a jail in France.Hamilton tells her story to her prison mate,an English good-time gal:the rise,decline and fall of a courtesan.There are some brilliant lines in the dialogue:Hamilton to her old soon-to-be hubby:"so your nephew sent me to you with his paintings and the bric-à-brac because he's broke!".Her last lines are touching .My mother saw the movie when it was released and how did she love them:"And then?" ,the hooker says " "there's no then" Hamilton replies"there's no after".When Hamilton understands she's lost everything,she draws the curtains and collapses,she seems to be on a stage and the play is over.Vivien leigh did not make many movies.So it would be a pity to miss this one.French remake by Christian-Jaque in 1968,with Michèle Mercier,John Mils and Richard Johnson as the leads ,known as "les amours de lady Hamilton."Despite a huge budget,much inferior to Korda's version" Jean Tulard..
Vivien Leigh is simply superb as Emma Hamilton and dominates the entire film with her beauty and impressive acting skills.
As she lies in prison, drunk and penniless, she describes to a fellow prisoner, her life as the beloved mistress of one of England's greatest heroes.This is a film that stays with you, not only for the story of the ill-fated romance of Admiral Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton, but also for the perfect casting of the leads, Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier.
That attraction was obvious on the screen and reflected the love affair of the characters they portrayed.The story follows Lady Emma's life from a possession passed from nephew to uncle (Sir Edward Hamilton, well played by Alan Mowbray), to her marriage to Hamilton and her meeting with Horatio Nelson.
There is more than enough pathos to move the most jaded movie lover.One of my favorite scenes in the film is that in which Nelson returns to Naples against orders to rescue Emma and she collapses against him saying "I would have died if you would have left me here".The film may not be for all tastes, as it contains a plethora of propaganda aimed at the US which was still neutral in WWII, and does not portray the characters exactly as they may have been.
Told by Emma Hart (Vivien Leigh) as a flashback on her life when she was on hard times later in her life, the film portrays her rise to courtly fame and fall from social grace after her affair with the Lord Horatio Nelson (Lawrence Olivier).She is supported by her mother, (Sara Allgood) and makes the acquaintance of the British envoy (Hamilton) to Naples in about 1798.The latter is looking for a trophy wife to add to his collection of sculptures being something of an aesthete and he manages to successfully disabuse Emma from the idea that her fiance will follow her onto Naples.Later he pursades Emma to marry him, more as a platonic relationship to show off.(Nothing has changed).All goes well and Emma further rises in court circles by befriending the King and Queen of Naples.One day a 21 gun salute announces the arrival in the bay of Naples of the Lord Horatio Nelson on a diplomatic mission.Inevitably he and Emma have their grand affair and the British envoy seems to take it on the chin, (high society did not marry for love in those days).Unfortunately although it is love, Mrs Nelson(Dame Gladys Cooper) will not give Horatio the divorce he craves and his career could mean you were years between meetings with your spouse.The affair will not help his career with the Admiralty either.Of course the day dawns (October 21 1805) off the Cape of Trafalgar (Spain) when Britain took on the combined French and Spanish fleets under Nelson's command.Why did he decide to go on his flagship Victory's quarter deck against good advice showing all his medals and braid, thus making him an obvious target for the sharpshooters in the rigging of "Le Redoubtable"?
Was it an unconscious desire to end his life because his private life was then untenable?After his great victory and national rejoicing, his body was preserved in a keg of rum in preparation for a state funeral at St. Paul's Catherdral, London after the voyage home.Trafalgar Square was built in his honour and was laid out in about 1840.When Hamilton dies, Emma graciously refuses to profit from his estate to the detriment of his legitimate son and heirs.With no financial support from her dead love, she falls on hard times.Obviously Leigh and Olivier had a natural chemistry together because of their marriage and previous affair.Vivien looks utterly exquisite and this film would look sumptuous if a colourised version could now be made available to film connoiseurs.After seeing and reading several versions of Winston Churchill's biography, it was obvious he had a great admiration for historic British martial heros, so it came as no surprise to me that this was his favourite film.Unmissable if you are a Larry and Vivien film fan.I rated it 7/10.
Perhaps the two greatest stars of British cinema, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, come together for the third and final time in Alexander Korda's extravagant period piece drama depicting the tragic romance between Lady Emma Hamilton and Lord Horatio Nelson.
No big surprise of course, since this movie is an autobiographic one about Emma Lady Hamilton, the character played by Vivien Leigh, who is historically known as the mistress of Lord Horatio Nelson.
That's not what the British public wanted in 1941 and Alexander Korda who shot the film in exile in America wasn't going to give them that.Whatever the scandals of his private life as a seaman and a naval leader, Horatio Nelson was the real deal.
Emma's mother is delightfully played by Sara Allgood and as you see here at dinner with the Hamiltons and the Nelsons you appreciate where Emma's roots were, lower on the class scale than Nelson's.Olivier and Leigh around the time of this film, got shed of their respective spouses and tied the knot.
The Nelson here and in real life was not a political man, but like Dwight Eisenhower here, might have considered that career and who knows where he would have wound up on the issues that concerned Great Britain for the next couple of generations.Larry and Viv head a remarkable group of players that bring to life the story of a most remarkable British hero..
Vivien Leigh is just so breathtakingly stunning as the beautiful Emma Hamilton (Lady Hamilton was the most beautiful woman in Europe or even the world at the time so I'm glad they cast the right person!!) Laurence Olivier was also fine as Nelson, though occasionally hamming up some parts with Vivien (understandably so, since Vivien seduces him on screen and off) But you can feel the chemistry a mile off and thats what matters.
Director Vincent Korda mounts a handsome-looking historical costume drama about the open affair between Emma Hamilton (Vivien Leigh) and Horatio Nelson (Laurence Olivier) during the Napoleonic wars.In fact, I was struck by how frankly their affair was dealt with given the time period, and wonder if it was shocking to audiences in 1941.
She possesses those Scarlet like qualities here.The film uses history as a backdrop in exploring the relation between Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, a tragic ill-fated romance if there ever were.Though very effective in the part, Laurence Olivier is certainly not dominant here.In addition, there are some very fine supporting performances.
The spirit with which she imbues Emma Hamilton is worthy of the highest praise of both historians and thespians (and critics.) Because both Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier were so glamorous in real life, one could be seduced into thinking that they weren't acting at all in this movie.
But most important, you believed you were seeing a pitched naval battle of that era on which the fates of two empires, the British and the French, were staked.Seeing this film ot me more interested in Nelson's career and his actual affair with 'That Hamilton Woman'.
Alexander Korda's historical drama pivots on and beautifies the real-life adulterous romance between Emma Hamilton (Leigh), a courtesan-turned-wife-of-British-ambassador and British Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson (Olivier) during the dawn of the Napoleonic war in the beginning of 19th century.
Yet, in the end of the day, his country downright fails him, too moralistic to pay due care to Emma, the woman he truly loves, after his untimely demise, not to mention, it is "that woman" who plays a critical role not once but twice (according to the movie's story-line), when Nelson and the Great Britain desperately need aids from Naples, she proves to be much more tactful than her then husband Sir William Hamilton (Mowbray), the British ambassador to Naples.
So, the war propaganda train has gone off-rail, but as a showpiece, Vivien Leigh is utterly ravishing in this tailor-made character, which boils down to her actions, reactions, line-delivery, miens and gestures, are all highlighted with subdued close-ups exude a dainty aura of divinity and desirability, and the story is almost exclusively told through her eye's-view, a young woman unwittingly sold by her dissolute lover to enter a marriage (under which circumstance she caves in) where she is regarded as a precious art collection by her well-off husband, impeccable, forever young but with no love, and for once, the husband, is not a man possessed by the green-eyed monster when Emma finds passion and attraction in another man, an apotheosis of virtues, he can suavely dole out constructive advice to her but never stands in their way.
That Hamilton Woman (1941) feels like two different movies competing for attention: a star cross'd romance made to capitalize on real life lovers Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier and a propaganda film trying to coax the US to getting involved in the Second World War.This sort of mix can be done well.
It's a story that reveals her to be the ex-mistress of Laurence Olivier (Lord Nelson) and ex-wife of Alan Mowbray (Lord Hamilton) and it details her romance with the English naval hero up until his death at the 'Battle of Trafalgar'.The film is long but this doesn't seem to matter as the story captures the audience from the beginning.
The cast are all good and, apart from the leads of Leigh and Olivier, mentions must go to Alan Mowbray who ends up as an hallucinating wreck and, in particular, Gladys Cooper (Lady Nelson) who holds her dignity and whose every scene is filled with tension.There are some powerful scenes, eg, Vivien Leigh receiving the news of her lover's death, and the film gives you a bit of everything - romance, humour, drama and good actors.
This film is just excellent...Vivien Leigh sparkles and scintillates as Emma Hamilton, and Olivier brings an appropriate seriousness to the role of Nelson.
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh star in "That Hamilton Woman," a 1941 film directed by Alexander Korda.
It's the true story of Emma Hamilton (Leigh) and her long affair with Lord Nelson (Olivier).
She falls in love with Lord Nelson, and the two embark on an affair that produces a child.Vivien Leigh makes a smashing Lady Hamilton - beautiful, desirable, determined.
Olivier is a stoic Nelson, a great naval hero who can't stay away from his duty, despite massive injuries.A very opulent production with two stars whose real-life story had some parallels to Hamilton and Nelson, "That Lady Hamilton" is a very absorbing film that Leigh fans in particular will not want to miss..
Besides, I’ve yet to catch up with a couple more Korda productions on VHS – THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN (1934; also directed by him) and LYDIA (1941; Julien Duvivier’s Americanized remake of his own UN CARNET DE BAL [1937]).Made by Korda’s London Films (and distributed by United Artists) during the influential producer/director’s brief sojourn in Hollywood, the film was designed as both a vehicle for the Laurence Olivier/Vivien Leigh team and as propaganda for Britain’s war effort (the script, written by Walter Reisch and R.C. Sheriff, equates Napoleon Bonaparte all-too-obviously with Hitler); still, it doesn’t refrain from showing the tragedy of war – Nelson himself loses an eye and a hand and, finally, has his spine broken by a bullet!
It’s a typically opulent production (cinematography by Rudolph Mate' and sets designed by another Korda, Vincent), climaxing with a spectacular sea battle (highlighting Lawrence Butler’s special effects and a Miklos Rosza score) and winning the film an Oscar for Sound Recording.Long and occasionally melodramatic (an incident which I learned from the history books, for instance – detailing the Brits’ attempt to retrieve Malta from the French – is depicted here as having been compromised by the Lady Hamilton/Admiral Nelson affair), but always interesting – with the stars’ scenes together having a genuine sparkle to them.
The supporting cast, then, is peppered with familiar character actors of the era – led by Alan Mowbray and Gladys Cooper as the two lovers’ respective long-suffering spouses (the former’s death scene, having gone mad, is especially moving), and also including plum roles for Sara Allgood (as Emma’s mother) and Henry Wilcoxon (as Nelson’s lieutenant).Other films have been made about this famous historical affair, notably the Silents LADY HAMILTON (1921) – with Conrad Veidt as Nelson – and THE DIVINE LADY (1929) – which won director Frank Lloyd his first Oscar – and, years later, BEQUEST TO THE NATION (1973) – with Glenda Jackson as Lady Hamilton and Peter Finch as Admiral Lord Nelson; THAT HAMILTON WOMAN (which, by the way, is said to be Winston Churchill’s favorite movie!) is the only one I’ve watched myself..
Vivian Leigh stars as Hamilton and Laurence Olivier as Nelson.If you can look past the fact that Emma Hamilton was a slut, you can enjoy this film-mostly because it was so well made (with very nice acting) and because the film ignores her earlier life.
Vivian Leigh, (Emma Lady Hamilton) and Laurence Oliver, (Lord Horatio Nelson) both gave outstanding performances as lovers during the Napoleonic Wars and the British Naval story of battles being won by Lord Nelson against France and Spain and the dictator, Napoleon.
It stars Lawrence Olivier as Lord Nelson and Vivien Leigh as Emma Hart Hamilton, with Vivien Leigh fresh from her triumph in "Gone with the Wind" and at a time when the real-life romance and marriage between the two stars (Leigh and Olivier) was new.The film is largely accurate, which is unusual for an historical drama of its time since these usually took great license with the truth.
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's third and final film together and the only one made during their marriage, this is a hugely enjoyable romantic period film which tells the story of the rise and fall of Emma, Lady Hamilton in Georgian society and her long lasting and very well known affair with Lord Nelson, which ended with his death at Trafalgar in 1805.
Once I got past the British-Empire agitprop (which seems to belong in another film) I was caught up in the story of the scandalous Emma Hamilton and her Lord Nelson. |
tt1800241 | American Hustle | The movie starts with a 70s Technicolor logo of Columbia Pictures, Atlas Entertainment, and Annapurna Pictures.A title caption reads that the following is loosely based on a true story.April 28, 1978:In a suite in the Plaza Hotel in New York City, a fat Jewish man named Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is elaborately fixing his hair in a comb over to hide a huge balding spot on his head. This goes on for several minutes. He finally hairsprays it in place. Irving leaves his room and walks into an adjacent hotel room where a surveillance team is recording the video and audio of another room. Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) enters and exchanges an angry look with Irving. It is broken up by the entrance of Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) who begins arguing with Irving, saying he got them a suite at the Plaza Hotel and mentions that he's never touched Sydney (there is obviously some jealousy between Irving and Richie over her). As Richie and Irving quarrel, Richie messes up his comb over, leaving the hairpiece sticking straight up. Sydney, in her British dialect, rushes to fix it.The three walk into a hotel room on the same floor and put on friendly faces. They are meeting Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). Richie has a briefcase at his feet and tries to push it towards the mayor. The mayor's associate, Carl Elway, notices and tells him he'll handle it and Richie rambles that it would be disrespectful to "the sheik" if Polito doesn't take it. Carmine becomes suspicious, saying he came to meet a sheik but the fact that a briefcase is being forced on him is freaking him out and he decides to leave. Richie and Irving begin fighting again with Irving finally agreeing to "mop up" the mess Richie caused by being dumb and sliding the briefcase conspicuously.We now go back in time several years and explore the events that will lead up to this meeting.In his childhood, Irving's father owns a glass business and Irving notices him being taken advantage of by customers. It convinces him to drum up business for his dad by breaking glass windows in the area with a baseball bat. As an adult, Irving also owns a glass business... as well as a bunch of dry cleaners. At a pool party, Irving meets a nice girl in a fur coat named Sydney Prosser, who speaks with an American accent. When Irving notices her bracelet has Duke Ellington's picture on it, they bond over their love of the jazz musician. They go upstairs and play one of his records, and Irving's confidence attracts her. Irving and Sydney have a lot in common because she comes from a background of limited options (such as a stint as a stripper). Sydney professes that she is a bold person, and Irving praises Sydney's ability to reinvent herself.Sydney has recently started working at Cosmopolitan Magazine. Irving knows she is too smart to work at a clerical job. She is broke and fearless with nothing to lose; her dream has been to become anyone else other than who she was. So she thinks nothing of going with Irving as he shows her one of her dry cleaning stores. He takes her to the back where things that were left behind or forgotten are stored; they try on various clothes and end up kissing between the dry cleaning conveyors.A few days later, Irving shows Sydney his office where there are tons of paintings on display. He tells her that his new business helps guys get loans who can't get loans. When he hesitates upon being asked how he gets them money, she realizes he is a con artist, who takes his clients' $5,000 fee but makes no effort to pay them back. He defends himself by saying the guys that are desperate to invest with him are people at the bottom with gambling problems and embezzling. She points out he takes advantage of desperate people, and he asks if she wants to join him. She walks off without saying anything, exiting the office. Irving goes back to his desk, upset that he has crossed a line with a woman he genuinely likes. Moments later, though, she returns, this time using a British accent, introducing herself as "Lady Edith Greensly", who has royal banking connections in London.Hency, Irving and Sydney become partners. The scheme is simple: Sydney tells new acquaintances that she has London banking connections, so their husbands will overhear and beg her to let them invest with Irving. To hook them, she refuses to help out, making them more eager to connect with Irving. One by one, people come to Irving's desk; Sydney/Edith and Irving convince everyone that they are selective so all of the desperate men end up begging for Irving to take their $5,000 in hopes of a $50,000 in return. Irving's business triples due to Sydney's close attention to detail. They also sell art on the side. All of the paintings are forgeries, but with the British Lady Edith Greensly alias helping sell them as authentic, each one is sold.Due to their success, they rent out a better office, calling it London Associates (in honor of Sydney's fake accent). The two fall in love with each other, go dancing, have sex, and more. In voice-over, Irving admits we're all conning ourselves to get through life, leaving out the ugly truth in his case. In fact, he's currently married and has adopted his wife's son (from another man) who he loves as his own.In his Long Island home, he talks to his young son, Danny, who tells him that his mom was late picking him up from school, and that a sun lamp caught on fire that afternoon while she was drinking. His wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is defending herself, saying she put out the fire. The left side of her face is completely red with burns. They quarrel and she hilariously defends herself every time he criticizes her, blaming sun lamps for being dangerous and saying it probably happens all the time. He tells her he's not happy, and she takes a moment and says that he can't divorce her because then she just might take Danny and never let Irving see him again. She says nobody in her family has ever gotten a divorce and she won't be the first; and points out that they fight and fuck and that's their thing. In voice-over, he says she was the Picasso of passive-aggressive and was better than any con artist. Meanwhile, Rosalyn strips down to her underwear and seduces Irving, to get him to forget he is angry with her.Sydney and Irving's operation goes perfectly, until they try to scam someone else out of their $5,000. Their victim ultimately is Richie, whom we met at the beginning of the film. He mentions that Lady Edith had done a good job convincing him to come in over their two lunches. Irving gets jealous as they reminisce about their outings together; it is obvious she really had a fun time with him versus just trying to con him. Richie holds out his $5,000 check, but now Irving is suspicious. Sydney finally takes the check instead. When the two try to sneak out of the office, they run into undercover cops. Because Irving didn't take the money, Richie can't arrest him, but Sydney is arrested for fraud, because she is not British nobility and has no banking connections. Richie shows off his badge, revealing that he's an FBI agent.Sydney is taken to an interrogation room where she is incarcerated for three days. Only Richie is allowed to communicate with her. She goes stir crazy given that her cell has no furniture. Richie tells her that Irving is taking advantage of her and puts it in her head that Irving is loyal to his wife and son and that she is being fooled; he uses the fact that Irving has not come visit her as proof that he doesn't really care about her (when in truth, Irving has been forbidden to see her). Richie concludes the conversation by revealing that he has a romantic interest in her; the entire time, she remains speechless so he still thinks she is British and named Edith Greensly.On the third day, Irving is looking through the glass at the jail cell with Sydney oblivious to him from the other side. Richie talks to Irving about his dishonesty, and then explains that he wants to combat white-collar crime and can, with Irving's help. He wants Irving to help him trap four similar con artists and if he does, Sydney and he will be free of all charges.Now back home, Sydney suggests that Irving and she flee the country to Romania but Irving refuses because he doesn't want to leave Danny behind. She becomes accusatory, becauseRichie has planted it in her head that Irving is just using her and doesn't care about her. She finally agrees to help entrap four con artists to clear their names and tells Irving that she is going to get romantically close to Richie in case they need him in the future.Irving, Sydney, and Richie are in an art gallery with an Arab sheik. Irving is rude to Richie but Sydney defends him. Irving explains their plan by going around the gallery with a wealthy sheik: people who want to sell fake bank CDs and take the sheik's money will approach them for an introduction. Since there are very few con artists who sell fraudulent art, it does not take long to attract someone unscrupulously interested in the seemingly wealthy oilman walking alongside Irving. In actuality, the sheik a friend of Irving's from Queens, and not a real Arab.Irving shows Richie a painting and explains that it is a fake and that people believe what they want to believe. The colleague from before interrupts, asking Irving to introduce him to the sheik (so he can take advantage of him). Irving refuses in the same way Sydney does when she wants to hook someone; this time, it's Sydney that steps up and acts as a middleman between the con artist and their group.In his office, Irving secretly records one of his friends, Carl, asking if he can sell fake certificates and deposits to Irving's investor, the sheik. Sydney and Richie arrive, and Carl is told his appointment is up, all while Irving is pretending he's not interested in working with Carl. But when Richie helps sell the story of the sheik by pointing out that he is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Carl says he has an investment bigger than bank CDs. The sheik can invest in the rebuilding of Atlantic City, a task taken on by Carmine Polito.At the FBI, Richie's boss, Stoddard Thorsen (Louis C.K.) tells him they shouldn't try to entrap Carmine Polito, who is also a family guy well-loved by everyone in his community. Carmine had just gotten gambling legalized in Atlantic City and wants to rebuild the city, but is having trouble raising the money. Stoddard says they shouldn't go after a politician; Richie tells him to put $2 million into a Chase account under the sheik's name so Carmine can verify that the sheik is real. Stoddard refuses to wire taxpayers' money into an account, even if it's controlled by them, and begins telling Richie a story about ice fishing with his family. He says his brother wanted to go ice fishing in October and their dad said no because the ice was too thin. Richie says he knows where the story's going: the brother was too eager and fell through the ice, just like he himself is too eager. Stoddard said, no, that's not the point of the story, and tells Richie they'll continue it another time.Even though Stoddard has shut the operation down, Sydney/Edith schemes on Richie's behalf. She becomes friends with the woman in charge of all the wires, Brenda, a lonely cat woman (Colleen Camp) who is appreciative of Sydney's friendship. They get her to wire two million dollars into an FBI-controlled account. Edith then makes sure that Stoddard's boss, Anthony Amando (Alessandro Nivola) is impressed with the plan so that when he calls Stoddard to praise him, Stoddard won't be able to back out of it.Irving is now irritated that Sydney and Richie have made this about entrapping politicians since he thought they would fulfill their duty with very small criminals. Sydney supports Richie, who is adamant that he wants to think big and use video surveillance to capture big guys (and get the glory for it). Irving tells him he's going to have to rent out a luxury suite to trick Carmine Polito into believing the sheik is real, even though Richie thinks it's unnecessary. Irving then gets mad when he finds out Sydney used her skills to get the Bureau to wire two millions to fool the sheik and leaves Sydney alone with Richie. He straddles her on the table and they kiss, but then retracts, holding just her foot instead. He exits, leaving her flustered.A surveillance video is played of Richie showing the briefcase filled with cash that will be used to entrap the mayor. We are now back at the opening scene, where Carmine gets suspicious and leaves the hotel room. Like before, Irving runs after him. He finds Carmine outside of the Plaza, bent on escaping the situation. But Irving convinces him that the opportunity they presented is real and badmouths Richie as being inferior to them. The two end up bonding as they discover they have a few things in common. Carmine says he was nervous because he was expecting to meet with the sheik, but admits that he likes Irving and therefore will continue business with him instead of Richie.Irving tells Richie that Carmine agreed to go out to dinner with Irving and his wife but doesn't want to deal with Richie anymore. Richie is adamant to be included because he wants to use Carmine to find crooked politicians whom Carmine bribe to pay off people for licenses and casinos. Irving points out that Richie is taking them to a dangerous place; Sydney is more upset that Rosalyn gets to go to dinner with Irving instead of her.At home, it's revealed that Richie lives in a decrepit apartment with his mother. During dinner with his mother and a fiancée he doesn't love, he gets a call from Sydney/Edith who is upset about being left alone while Irving is out with Rosalyn. Richie agrees to meet Sydney, but before he heads out, he tells his mom how he's going to finally prove himself and no longer be a laughing stock.At dinner, Irving introduces Rosalyn to Carmine's wife, Dolly. The four of them have a great dinner. Rosalyn is obviously uncultured, but instead of weakening Carmine's perception of Irving, she actually ends up charming the table. She goes into a long story about her nail finish that has a topcoat that smells both perfume-y and rotten, sweet and sour, like flowers with garbage. She eventually gets drunk and falls out of her chair.At the same time, Sydney and Richie are out on the streets of New York. Richie opens up to her that he wants to do something with his life. They end up at a dance club and bond over disco dancing; the moves get steamier and steamier until they are both sexually aroused. They cut in front of a long line of women in the restroom and fool around in a stall, but Sydney/Edith decides to wait until the two of them get real with each other before they fuck. She gives him a long kiss before he leaves the stall, but she stays behind to pee, letting out a thrilled scream on the toilet.At dinner, Irving and Carmine are really bonding, singing along to a karaoke song. Next moment, Carmine is introducing Irving to a colleague, telling him that Irving is going to get New Jersey back on its feet by helping rebuild Atlantic City and creating thousands of jobs. Irving begins feeling guilty now that he's getting close to Carmine.The next day, Carmine and Irving are eating breakfast. Carmine talks about how much he loves his community and he really wants the sheik to realize how helpful his investment is going to be to the people in town. They walk to Carmine's car and he opens the trunk to reveal a thank you gift to Irving, something that is too new technologically for Irving to recognize. Carmine explains that it's a microwave and it heats up food in a scientific way. Once again, Irving feels guilty but Carmine doesn't catch on; he just tells Irving not to put metal in his gift.At the FBI, Richie (now in sunglasses and a bomber jacket) is demanding that the sheik arrive in a jet; Stoddard says he should just arrive on the curb at JFK. Richie aggressively points out they should be committed to selling the sheik as wealthy and finally is successful in convincing Stoddard. Richie walks away, but stops to request Stoddard finish the ice fishing story. Stoddard says his brother and he were on the ice and he saw his father running towards them; Stoddard stepped in front of his brother to protect him. Richie says, "Oh, you were trying to protect your brother but you couldn't just like you are trying to protect me. The story's about protection." Stoddard says, "No, that's not what it's about." Richie leaves.In Long Island, Rosalyn is mocking Irving, muttering to herself "Don't put metal in the science oven, don't put metal in the science oven." She puts a foil-wrapped tray inside the microwave, and it immediately explodes. Danny shouts, "Another fire!"When Irving comes home, he is irritated that Rosalyn destroyed the microwave Carmine gave him, but she responds by making fun of him for being in love with Carmine, and says he should get a chain with a gold microwave around his neck. She also points out that she read that science ovens take the nutrients out of their food, and hands him a magazine article to prove it. As he reads, she mutters to herself, "Bring something into this house that's going to take all the nutrition out of our food, and then light our house on fire? Thank God for me."On the tarmac, Richie and Sydney kiss while Irving watches on. She encourages Richie to not be nervous. As he walks away, Irving approaches her, but she wants nothing to do with him, upset that she has to share him with Rosalyn. Richie and Irving board the private jet that the FBI has rented for an hour. They meet the fake sheik, replacing Irving's friend, since this guy is with the Bureau. Irving is irritated because hes a Mexican named Paco Hernandez (Michael Peña) and doesnt speak Arabic, although Paco says he knows a few phrases. Irving tells Paco to give Carmine an ornate dagger and present it as if it's a sacred, expensive artifact. Paco points out that the name of the operation is offensive: it's revealed to be Abscam (Arab scam). Irving responds, "What do you care? You're Mexican."The fake sheik greets Carmine outside the jet and presents him with the sacred knife.At home, Rosalyn is bitching to Irving that she cannot go to a meeting with him, even though she's already done her hair. She answers a ringing phone, and Richie is on the other end. Rosalyn listens in from a phone in the kitchen and overhears Richie talking about feds. After he hangs up, Rosalyn asks Irving if the conversation has to do with IRS, a tax thing. The phone rings again and this time, it's Carmine. Rosalyn tells him that Irving isn't letting her come to the event that night; when Irving takes the phone, Carmine tells him that his wife is the life of the party and to bring her. Irving is nervous, telling Carmine that his wife is unpredictable (he's secretly worried that she will blow their cover somehow). Carmine won't take no for an answer; Donna has even bought the nail finish Rosalyn had told her she couldn't find. Now Irving has no choice but to bring Rosalyn along.Out front, Irving and Carmine bond with Rosalyn and Dolly; their bonding is interrupted by the arrival of Sydney and Richie and the (Mexican) sheik. Rosalyn stares at Sydney and mutters," I know who you are." She repeats to Irving that she knows who Sydney is.Everybody enters the lobby of the hotel-casino. Carmine obviously has a genuine interest in creating a great Atlantic City, more so than making money. He tells Irving that he saved them 50 million by choosing to renovate instead of building from the ground up. They go into the gambling room where Rosalyn glares at Sydney some more. Carmine pulls Irving aside and tells him that he is saving a lot of money by working with casino guys standing at the bar who happen to be the mob. Irving tries to circumvent a meeting with them, but Rosalyn, hearing everyone is nervous to approach, decides to cross to the mob guys and say hello. She catches the eye of Pete Musane (Jack Huston) whom she flirts with. Irving and Carmine now approach to reel in Rosalyn; Richie steps forward as well, introducing the sheik. The guys at the bar tell them that Victor Tellegio (a mob boss) is in the back room and wants to meet them. Irving tries to avoid the situation but the mob guys insist.Richie, Irving, Carmine, and the sheik now meet Victor Tellegio (Robert De Niro), a mob boss who never buried a body because he felt it left a better message to just leave it in the street. Employees set up a table and they all take a seat. Victor says its been a dream to build casino resorts on the East Coast. He says even though Carmine made this legal, he has 40 years of history and has to be careful. To get a gaming license and keep it, they will have to make their principal investor, the sheik, an American citizen. Carmine is asked to use congressmen and senators he knows to expedite citizenship, although Irving tries to talk him out of doing something unscrupulous (because they've become close). Victor is suspicious of Irving's concern, and he points out that they are a real organization and he hopes that everything else is real. He begins speaking Arabic to the sheik to see if he actually knows the language. It turns out he's got casino investments in the Middle East, and he spent two years learning Arabic to keep an upper hand. Irving and Richie get very scared. Richie tries to intervene, but Mr. Tellegio insists the sheik speak for himself. Someone enters the room, interrupting. Paco then says, in Arabic, "It'll be great doing business with you. The investment is real. It was a pleasure to meet you." Even though his memorized phrases are not in response to what Victor said, it's enough to assuage his suspicion.Mr. Tellegio says they should put ten million in the bank of his choice in the next two weeks or else they will insult his friends in Florida. Outside, Sydney asks Rosalyn to come with he,r but Rosalyn refuses, calling her her husband's whore. Sydney and Dolly continue glaring at Rosalyn across the room while Rosalyn and Pete end up bonding over their love of the phrase "What's meant to be will be."Moments later, Rosalyn goes to the bathroom. Sydney follows behind, yelling at her for flirting with the mobsters. Rosalyn is unmoved, pointing out that she has a ring on her finger. Sydney replies that what Irving and she had might be over now, but it was beautiful and it was real and they loved each other. This makes Rosalyn cry. Sydney continues, pointing out that Rosalyn scares and manipulates Irving by the use of her son. Rosalyn replies by saying he keeps coming back, so there must be something he loves, just like perfume that you can't stop smelling even though there's something sour in it. She tells Sydneys he's never going to leave her, and she's going to make Sydney sorry for what she's done to her family. They call each other gross, and Rosalyn applauds Irving for being consistent and says, "Sometimes all you have in life are fucked up, poisonous choices." She then kisses Sydney hard on the mouth and walks away, laughing. A dazed Sydney wipes a big lipstick smear from her mouth.In the lobby, Rosalyn finds Pete and begins sobbing in his arms. Sydney walks away, turning around to see a very upset Rosalyn with Pete. She steps into the back room and whispers something to Irving. The group leaves Mr. Tellegio behind. He watches them go.On stage, in a ballroom, Carmine is introduced to the crowd. Irving is flustered from all the excitement of meeting Victor Tellegio, and takes a pill for his heart to calm himself down. Rosalyn walks by him with Pete. Sydney stands nearby with Richie, both listening to Carmine's enthusiastic speech to a cheering crowd of locals. Carmine further reveals that he really loves his community, and that has been his motivation for wanting to restore Atlantic City.Irving goes to one of his dry cleaners and opens a safe in the back. He takes out a lot of cash, as well as a handgun. He then stands inside the dry cleaner conveyor, the location where he first kissed Sydney.Meanwhile, Richie knocks on Sydney's door. He still thinks she's Edith, a British woman. Richie tells her last night was insane and calls Stoddard to request the Sherman suite at the Plaza Hotel (an entire floor); Stoddard refuses. Richie explains that Carmine has admitted to taking bribes from members of Congress and reveals that Victor Tellegio is demanding ten million dollars in two weeks. He becomes ecstatic as Stoddard refuses to cooperate and hangs up the phone. He begins kissing Sydney, and asks her to calm him down; he then demands they finally have sex. As they begin getting intimate, she reminds him they're not going to go all the way until they get real. He tells her he loves her, and points out that everything has just gotten real. Moved by his feelings for her, they kiss some more, and she interrupts to tell him the truth that she's an American, not a British woman as she's been pretending. He is confused. She tells him she's falsified her records, and her name is Sydney Prosser from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He asks why she was doing an English accent after they agreed to be real in the stall; she says she needed the Edith persona to survive, the way he lives with his mom and fiancée he doesn't acknowledge, and curls his hair even though he has straight hair. She points out we all do things to survive. He says he's confused, and that maybe fucking will help. They begin to kiss again, but she's not into it; to get him away from her, she smashes a small framed picture over his head.Irving enters. He points his handgun at Richie and asks him to step away from Edith. He reveals he knows she is Sydney; she admits that she told him and doesn't care. Irving tells Richie what they've gotten into is worse than jail, and since they can't get ten million wired to Tellegio, the jig is up. Richie points out that when Tellegio finds out he's been had, he's not going to go after Richie (an FBI agent) or Carmine (a politician), he's going to go after Irving and his son, as well as Sydney. Richie calls Stoddard again and demands the suite of the Plaza Hotel and to be told the point of the fishing story; Stoddard replies, "Not the way youre behaving." Still frustrated, Richie asks Stoddard where he is and upon being told a location, says he's going to go there right now, to beat his ass.Irving and Sydney are left behind, terrified since they are now in danger. Sydney points out she was Irving's lifeline out, and he blew the chance to run away before. She tells him they have to get over on all these guys, and he agrees that, whatever they do, it will have to be the best con they've ever done.At the FBI headquarters, Anthony Amado is listening to a deposition from Stoddard about Richie threatening to kill him. It's then revealed that Richie has, in fact, beat up Stoddard with a telephone receiver, who has all kinds of bruises on his face and a bandage over his left eye. Richie uses the meeting to request the Sherman Suite in the Plaza Hotel; he points out that the mafia and crooked politicians have intersected, and that they can snag all of them with Anthony's approval. Anthony says he won't wire ten million dollars, but he will pay for the Sherman suite so they can record congressmen taking bribes. He tells Richie he's proud of him.Outside, Stoddard yells at Richie. Richie only asks how the fishing story ends, and when Stoddard refuses to tell him, Richie says he'll call Stoddard's brother. Stoddard replies, "My brother's dead!" Richie then thinks he's figured out the story: Stoddard's brother fell through the ice. Stoddard replies, "No, he died a different way many years later." (The ice fishing story is never revealed)Richie makes amends with both Sydney and Irving in the Plaza Hotel. They set up a room in the Sherman suite with hidden cameras.Carmine calls congressmen, and tries to convince them to make investment opportunities. Richie videotapes himself putting bribes into suitcases. They meet various congressmen and a senator, pitching the idea to each one. One agrees to expedite the sheik's citizenship. Several others feel secure in investing because they know Carmine is a good man. One by one, they take all the bribes. Irving feels guilty, knowing Carmine only has good intentions. He steps outside and talks to Sydney who says the only way to help Carmine is through their plan for Tellegio, a plan that makes Irving nervous. Sydney assures him there's only one thing that can mess things up and that's his wife.Cut to Rosalyn dropping Danny off at school and then being picked up by the mob guy, Pete; she has her sweet and sour nail finish in hand. Pete and Rosalyn go to a fancy restaurant where Pete tries to convince her to go to Florida with him, leaving Irving behind. Rosalyn responds by venting about her husband, explaining that she hears him on the phone and that he loves Carmine but hates the curly-headed IRS guy. She expands, explaining that he's in some kind of bind, throwing money to Congress or something. Pete gives Rosalyn a huge wad of cash and says he has to leave to talk to his boss (Tellegio) back home. She tells Pete not to hurt Irving too hard.At home, Rosalyn goes home and sings along to Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" while she cleans her house. This is juxtaposed with Irving and Carmine ambushed by Pete and taken for a ride.Rosalyn tells Danny the truth about his father, and tells him not to repeat it. Outside, a car squeals up onto her driveway. Irving enters the house, yelling at Rosalyn, telling her that he knows she was in Pete's car because she had left her sweet and sour nail polish on the dashboard. This tipped him off to know he was in danger. During the drive, the mob guy in the backseat put a canvas bag over Irving's head and then pointed a gun at his neck. Rosalyn defends herself, telling him not to scream at her. But Irving is frantic since he knows how much danger she put him in. She replies, crying, saying she is left alone all day and she just wants him to love her but since he can't, she's going away with Pete. Irving is concerned about how much danger she'd be in if she moved to Florida with a mob guy. She says she only meets people through him, so whom else did he expect her to date instead of him? Irving struggles for a heart pill, and she asks him what kind of trouble he's in. He tells her he has a plan, and it came to him when he was in the canvas bag.We return to a few minutes earlier. Irving tells Pete that he has two million out of the ten that will be wired that week. At home, Rosalyn takes credit for Irving getting himself out of a bad situation, saying she knows how hard he is to motivate, and that she knew if she got Pete to knock some sense into his head, he would figure things out. She tells him about a book she's reading called The Power of Intention, and the reason she sent Pete to him was so Irving could come up with the plan. She tells him, "You're welcome," and in disbelief, he thanks her. Rosalyn tells him maybe she's a better partner than Edith (Sydney), and maybe he underestimated her. She tells him she'll tell Pete she was wrong about the IRS, but points out she was actually right and repeats her the power of intention motto. She then tells him he needs to grow up and face the facts that they should get a divorce.In voice-over, Irving explains that necessity is the mother of invention, and the FBI is willing to wire two million dollars if it means taking down Tellegio and his entire organization. Tellegio won't meet at a public place like the Plaza but only at the office of his attorney.So Irving, Sydney, and Richie visit a skyscraper in New York with high security. They are finally allowed inside, but Tellegio is not there-- only his lawyer, Alfonse Simone, and a secretary. Alfonse admits the trip was unnecessary because everything could have been done with a wire transfer. He gives the number of Tellegio's account on a piece of paper, and tells them Victor is out of town. Richie is upset and says they were willing to come in person to give two million dollars out of respect. Alfonse points out he still has the power of attorney, but Irving suggests they just leave; Sydney and he debate back and forth whether they should stay or not. Irving and Richie start to leave but Sydney stays behind and suggests they call the sheik. Richie catches on and says they'll call the sheik if Alfonse explains specifically what the money will be used for. Alfonse responds by revealing, "We will guarantee all proper licenses and construction permits for any hotel-casino that plans to open before the end of the year. And we'll throw in the customary privileges and protections." Richie asks, "What if there's obstacles? What will you do?" Alfonse responds, "If we have to pay somebody off, we'll pay somebody off. If we have to lean on somebody, intimidate somebody, we'll intimidate somebody." He also adds, "At the end of this, we'll teach you how to skim and make some money on the side because we invented skimming and have been doing it for 30 years."This is all captured on a video in Sydney's purse and on a wire in Richie's tie. Richie calls Anthony at the wiring desk with Brenda, the cat lady. Now that they have evidence against Tellegio, Anthony (talking on the phone as if he works for the sheik) agrees to wire the money to catch Victor accepting a bribe. The money is transferred.Irving, Sydney, and Richie leave. Richie is ecstatic at getting evidence that Tellegio is corrupt. He goes back to the office, screaming about finally getting some respect as everyone in his office cheers. The recording of Alfonse admitting that they intimidate people to get what they want is played and everyone cheers again. In a great mood, Richie begins humping Stoddard's leg, laughing at him as Stoddard leaves the room, moping.Irving and Sydney drive to Carmine's house. Irving gets out and reveals to Carmine that the sheik was a fake and that he was working with the Feds. Carmine gets upset, pointing out that hes been a politician for 20 years and that he didn't want to take the money, but Irving chased after him to convince him to do business, even though his judgment told him to leave. Carmine adds that everything he did was for the good of the people of New Jersey, and he had no selfish motives. Irving knows this is true, and says he has some leverage to make it right. Carmine is just upset, pointing out the ceremonial knife he has on display in his living room and how much he's been fooled. Carmine kicks Irving out of his house as all of Carmine's sons and daughters watch from his staircase, in tears.Irving collapses on his way back to the car, stressed and fumbling for heart pills. Sydney helps him back to the car. They rest on the seats; she kisses his hand and it's obvious they are in love again.Cut to Richie, Stoddard, and Anthony with accusatory stares at the FBI headquarters. Sydney and Irving stand opposite them. Anthony reveals the two million dollars that was wired is missing. An anonymous call has told them that in exchange for immunity for Sydney and Irving, and a reduced sentence for Carmine Polito, they will get their two million dollars back. Irving and Sydney refuse any involvement. Richie points out that they can be charged for wire fraud but Irving points out that it was Richie that requested the two million (Irving had tried to convince them to leave), and Richie had given the wiring instructions. Irving also points out that if the public found out about Richie's gross incompetence, the FBI would be a laughing stock.It turns out that when Richie went back to bust Alfonse Simone, there was a divorce attorney there instead. The man Rich thought was Alfonso Simone was actually Ed Malone, the mutual friend who threw the party that Irving first met Sydney at. Richie defends himself by saying he was conned; Irving points out that it makes him look just as incompetent, since he was conned by the con men whom he forced to entrap the members of Congress in the first place. He also points out that Richie was only able to find evidence against good guys like Carmine who were really just working to better New Jersey; and that he didn't get anything on the big guys like Tellegio. Stoddard tells Richie he should go home, and that he won't be involved with the case anymore, except for witness testimony.Six congressmen, one senator, and Carmine Polito are all arrested. Because the two million is given back by Irving and Sydney, Carmine's sentence is reduced to 18 months. When the story was written, all accounts of Richie's involvement are left out; he never gets the glory he craved for so long. Sydney and Irving move in together; Rosalyn goes on to live with Pete, who tells Irving that Victor Tellegio appreciates him for making sure he was free of any conviction (since he never took any money, since the two million dollars was wired to Irving and Sydney instead). Before they go, Rosalyn gives Irving the sweet and sour nail finish she says he loves.Sydney becomes a surrogate mother to Danny for whenever Rosalyn's out of town with Pete. She and Irving get a loan from a bank and begin to sell legitimate paintings. The last shot is Sydney putting Duke Ellington on the record player and staring seductively at Irving. | comedy, neo noir, murder, flashback, melodrama, romantic | train | imdb | null |
tt0401792 | Sin City | The Customer is Always RightIn Basin City, The Man (Josh Hartnett) approaches the stunningly beautiful Customer (Marley Shelton) on the balcony of a penthouse apartment. They chat and seem to fall in love. The woman talks about how she's "tired of running." The Man suddenly shoots her with a silenced pistol, as she had earlier arranged for him to do. The Man says he'll "cash her check in the morning."That Yellow BastardHartigan (Bruce Willis) races to the docks to prevent Junior (Nick Stahl) from raping and murdering 11-year-old Nancy. As he drives, his voiceover reveals that it's the day before he's supposed to retire from the Basin City police force because of a heart condition. His partner, Bob (Michael Madsen) tries to stop him, arguing that Hartigan has a bad heart. Hartigan tells Bob that backup will arrive too late and Nancy will have been killed & then knocks Bob out. After disarming Junior's henchmen, Hartigan corners Junior on a pier. Junior tries to use Nancy as a shield but Hartigan is too good of a shot, and blows off Junior's ear and pistol hand before shooting him in the groin. But before Hartigan can finish him off, Bob shoots Hartigan in the back. Junior's father is a powerful senator and Bob knows who calls the shots. Hartigan goads Bob into shooting him several more times to keep him from killing Nancy before more police officers arrive.The Hard GoodbyeMarv (Mickey Rourke) is a frighteningly ugly, brutish man. Although he does not flinch from violence -- and even enjoys it in many circumstances -- he has a strong moral code by which he lives. He is surprised when the stunningly beautiful Goldie (Jaime King) comes to him and professes her love. They make love and fall asleep in each others arms. When Marv awakens, she is dead. Marv is bewildered because he believes no one can sneak up on him. Then the nearly immediate arrival of the police lets Marv know that he has been set up. He fights his way through the hail of bullets with which the police officers greet him and makes his way to the apartment of Lucille (Carla Gugino), his stunningly beautiful lesbian parole officer. She gives him the medication he needs to maintain his sanity as he explains to her that he is on a mission to find who is responsible for Goldie's death and brutally kill them.Marv makes the rounds of Basin City's criminal element to find out who ordered Goldie's death and his framing. The road leads to a priest (a cameo by Frank Miller), to whom Marv confesses his sins. Marv then points a gun at the priest, who tells him that the person behind the crime was Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer), the most powerful man in Basin City and the brother of Senator Roark. Marv kills the priest when he suggests that Goldie was a slut. However, even Marv pauses before going after Cardinal Roark. Instead he goes to the Roark family farm house where he is assaulted by the superhumanly agile Kevin (Elijah Wood), who knocks Marv out with a sledgehammer. Marv regains consciousness in a basement cell. The walls are adorned with the heads of young women; they're other Basin City prostitutes. In the corner cowers Lucille. She informs him that Kevin is a cannibal and has cut off her hand and eaten it before her eyes. She also tells him that powerful people are willing to protect Kevin and that she was under suspicion as soon as she began to investigate Goldie's death on Marv's behalf. Goldie and some of the other prostitutes of Basin City had been servicing the upper echelons of the clergy and Goldie learned of Kevin's evil tendencies. She then went to Marv for help. Marv busts out of his and Lucille's prison. A SWAT team arrives at the farm. Lucille is killed by them while trying to surrender herself and Marv, setting Marv off on another of his rampages. Marv tortures the last cop left alive, who confirms that Cardinal Roark was behind Goldie's murder.Marv is captured by a woman who looks exactly like Goldie. She takes him back to Basin City where she interrogates him brutally. Her name is Wendy, and she is Goldie's twin sister. She believes that Marv is responsible for Goldie's death. When he explains to her and the other prostitutes the truth, she agrees to help him get revenge. They go to a hardware supply store and buy what Marv will need to kill Kevin and drive to The Farm. Marv takes another beating from Kevin but tricks him into getting too close; Marv handcuffs Kevin to his own wrist, neutralizing his leaping ability. Marv slowly dismembers Kevin and allows Kevin's pet wolf to eat him. Kevin, as ever, remains silent. Marv then takes Kevin's head to Cardinal Roark. Roark freely admits that Kevin was his protege and that they both were cannibals, justifying their actions because they only killed and ate prostitutes. Marv brutally kills Cardinal Roark. The police arrive and shoot Marv down. Marv receives surgery for his wounds and spends months in the hospital recovering. When he's released, the police beat him severely & get him to sign a confession after they threaten to harm his mother. He's put on trial not only for the murder of Cardinal Roark but all of Kevin's crimes, as well and is sentenced to death. Wendy visits him on Death Row and permits Marv to call her Goldie. They spend the night together. The next day, Marv is sent to the electric chair. It takes two massive jolts of electricity to do the trick.The Big Fat KillJackie Boy (Benicio del Toro) tries to persuade Shellie (Brittany Murphy) to let him and his thuggish friends into her apartment. She delays them because Dwight (Clive Owen), her new lover, is there. While Dwight dresses in the bathroom, Shellie lets Jackie Boy in to avoid violence. He smacks her anyway then goes into the bathroom to urinate. After he has finished, Dwight sneaks up behind Jackie and holds a straight razor to his throat. He tells Jackie to leave Shellie alone from then on & then dunks his head in the toilet. Rattled and embarrassed, Jackie Boy leaves. Dwight knows they are headed for Old Town in Basin City, where they can get prostitutes and abuse them. Despite Shellie's pleas not to, he decides to follow them and end their crime spree. But he doesn't need to bother, because the self-motivated prostitutes, led by the stunningly beautiful Gail (Rosario Dawson), are more than up to the task of defending themselves and their territory. They kill Jackie Boy and his gang and then proceed to loot the corpses. Dwight goes through Jackie Boy's pockets and discovers why Shellie begged Dwight not to follow him: Jackie Boy is really "Iron Jack" Rafferty, a police officer. If it becomes known that Jackie Boy was killed by the prostitutes, it would end the fragile agreement between the police and prostitutes that keeps the mob out of Old Town. And Jackie Boy was seen entering Old Town by other police officers. Dwight decides to take the bodies to the tar pits and dump them before the police can arrive. Gail protests but because they have an impossible love for one another, they relent. One of the other prostitutes, the silent but beautiful Miho (Devin Aoki), uses her skill with swords to dismember the bodies which are then put in a beat up old car for Dwight to drive. Jackie Boy's body couldn't fit in the trunk, so they prop him up on the passenger seat. On his way to the tar pits, Dwight imagines a conversation with Jackie -- Jackie taunts Dwight about hearing voices in his head and that the girls of Old Town gave him a car with a nearly empty tank. When Dwight is followed by a cop, he suddenly slams the brakes, smashing Jackie's face into the dashboard. The cop assumes Dwight is driving a drunk friend home and lets him go.Dwight barely makes it to the tar pits but is ambushed by Irish mercenaries who want to take Jackie Boy's body to the police. After a battle, the mercenaries are able to take Jackie Boy's head. They leave Dwight to drown in the tar pits. He is rescued by Miho and Dallas, who had followed him. They catch up with the mercenaries after a short car chase and kill them and retrieve Jackie Boy's head.Dwight realizes that the prostitutes have a traitor in their midst, someone who has thrown her lot in with the mob. It turns out to be Becky (Alexis Bledel), who phoned Manute (Michael Clarke Duncan) to let him know about Dwight's trip to the tar pits. Manute kidnaps Gail and holds her for ransom. Dwight calls and offers to exchange Jackie Boy's head for Gail. They meet in an alley behind Manute's headquarters. Manute announces his intention to kill them all anyway. Dwight has packed Jackie Boy's head with explosives which he then detonates. The other prostitutes open fire on Manute and his men from the rooftops above, killing many of them. Slightly wounded, Becky slips away.That Yellow Bastard (continued)We return to Hartigan's story, where we find he's survived Bob's hail of gunfire. Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) will personally pay for Hartigan's surgery so he can go on trial for assaulting Junior. Roark believed Junior could have been president one day and now won't even be able to give him a grandson. Hartigan will be tried for Junior's crimes as well. Young Nancy visits Hartigan in the hospital and promises to write him while he is in prison. Hartigan spends eight years in solitary confinement, unbroken and refusing to confess to any crimes. His only solace is the letters he receives from Nancy, who is careful to conceal her identity and location. Then, one day, the letters stop. Worried that Nancy has been discovered and wanting to protect her again, Hartigan confesses to everything in exchange for his release. Bob meets him at the prison gates and apologizes for double-crossing Hartigan. He drives Hartigan to Nancy's apartment. It has been broken into but there is no sign of Nancy. Discovering a matchbook from a sleazy bar in her apartment, Hartigan decides to check there to see if anybody knows Nancy. At the club he is disturbed to learn (from barmaid Shellie) that Nancy (Jessica Alba), now nineteen and stunningly beautiful, is an erotic dancer. We catch a glimpse of Marv. Hartigan also recognizes a misshapen, canary-yellow man, the Yellow Bastard of the title, in the bar who gave off an unpleasant odor and had once beaten him in his cell. Hartigan realizes he has been set up to lead the forces of evil to Nancy. He tries to leave the bar before Nancy recognizes him but it is too late. She leaps off the stage and kisses him passionately.They leave together in her car. The Yellow Bastard follows them and begins shooting at their car. Hartigan returns fire, wounding the Bastard and causing him to crash his car. Nancy and Hartigan go back to examine the accident but the Bastard's body is missing. They go to a motel where Nancy confesses her love for Hartigan. Hartigan admits he feels the same way but is reluctant to act on his feelings. The Bastard surprises them. He reveals that he is Junior; his new skin tone and misshapen appearance is due to experimental procedures Senator Roark had put him through so his genitalia would grow back. He hangs Hartigan by a noose and takes Nancy back to the Farm to brutalize and kill her. Before they leave, Hartigan gravely tells Nancy not to scream -- Junior can only be sexually satisfied if his victim screams. Hartigan survives the hanging, frees himself and follows them to the Farm. While the Bastard tries to whip Nancy into screaming -- she only taunts him about his impotence -- Hartigan kills the police officers standing guard. He confronts the Bastard in the barn. He stabs the Bastard in the chest, rips off his genitals, then beats his head into a pulp, finally killing him. Nancy watches with joy and love. Hartigan sends her home, telling her that he has to wait for the police so he can give them the true story and reveal Roark's corruption once and for all. However, Hartigan knows that as long as he is alive Roark will come after him and Nancy to get revenge for Junior's death. To sever Roark's only lead to Nancy, Hartigan commits suicide.The Customer is Always Right (continued)At the Basin City hospital, Becky talks on her cell phone to her mother. She gets in the elevator and sees The Man. Knowing who he is, she says goodbye to her mother for the last time. | comedy, cruelty, murder, bleak, cult, action, suspenseful, revenge, neo noir, horror, psychedelic, comic, tragedy, atmospheric, good versus evil, insanity, entertaining, storytelling, dark, realism, violence, romantic, sadist | train | imdb | Certainly not a film for the whole family, but for those of us who enjoy our movies rated R, this flick kicks the head and the gut like a mule.Here's hoping Sin City makes a mint, for there are 10,000 stories in the naked (sinful) city, and this is but a handful of them.
So I went to my local comic book store and bought the Frank Miller books the movie is based on, and enjoyed them for their off beat humor, incredible violence, and stories of love, lust, friendship, honor and seedily-earned redemption in the underworld of fictional Basin City.
Having recently read the stories that are included in the film ("Sin City," later renamed to "The Hard Goodbye"; "The Big Fat Kill;" and "That Yellow Bastard"), I was amazed at how much of the dialogue and narration of the books actually made it to the big screen translation.
Equally beautiful and gritty black and white, with occasional brushes of color that all but explode off the screen- the comic books (graphic novels to you purists) act like storyboards for this movie- as life is breathed into the still images on the pages.
I must admit that I know, or knew rather, very little about the story or history of Frank Miller and his series of comic book novels - and maybe that is why I enjoyed this movie so much.
And so much of the cinematography being so close to a "moving picture" version of comic book art simply makes this movie worth seeing.Take the artistic elements of this movie, and put it together with the amazing cast (both looks and talent) and throw it together with a very different but coherent plot, and you've got yourself an extremely enjoyable movie that is definitely worth seeing.
A good amount of nudity in the film, ALL of it on camera, so you'll probably want to leave the kiddies at home.All in all, one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, and I'll probably go see it again while it's in the theatres, so that my fiancé can enjoy it as well....
Sin City exudes the essence of classic film noir, except combined with over-the-top violence, characters and dialogue to maintain that comic book feel.
Add the characters' noirish costumes (almost every male character sports, as Marv puts it, a "damn fine coat") unique appearances, (it says a lot for the quality of the movie when a character like Yellow Bastard doesn't seem out of place) and movement (take note that if the movie was paused at any given point, the frame would look like a panel from a comic book) and Miller and Rodriguez perfectly nail the comic book feel.It also helps that a wonderful cast has been assembled to bring life to the mayhem.
Spot on performances abroad here, but the standouts in my opinion were Elijah Wood, who was truly chilling as Kevin, the silent, cannibalistic serial killer; Nick Stahl as Roarke Junior/Yellow Bastard, a truly creepy and disgusting character; Clive Owen, playing against type as Dwight; (who isn't exactly a sophisticated, British gentleman, but then again, no one in this film is) Mickey Rourke as Marv, managing to turn out a stunning performance, even with his face buried under several layers of latex; Benicio Del Toro almost unrecognizable as corrupt cop Jackie Boy and a welcome appearance from Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute, an enforcer specializing in inflicting pain.
"Sin City" - Digitalized violence, film-noir, steroids, and comic book greatness!.
"Sin City," directed by one of the greatest directorial trifectas - Robert Rodriguez, "Sin City" graphic novel creator Frank Miller and special guest director Quentin Tarantino - is a visually stunning and breathtaking piece of film-noir graphic novel, cinematic greatness on steroids.By and large, this is what a movie based on a comic book should be.
Comic book movies represent one of the remaining avenues for truly original film-making, and "Sin City" takes full advantage of its digitalized violence and groundbreaking CGI vainglory.
As mentioned earlier, the visuals are lifted right out of the original "Sin City" graphic novel panels, so audience members would not have to be readers themselves to understand what's going on.Although the world of "Sin City" exists through seven transversal story arcs, the film primarily focuses in on Miller's three tales "The Hard Goodbye," "The Big Fat Kill," and "That Yellow Bastard." It's brutal, it's violent, it's vicious, it's beautiful, and it's sinful.
The numerous unsavory characters are truly right out of a comic book, as they make no attempt to rise above their amoral existences in Miller's decadent Basin City.There are few heroes in "Sin City" and there are even fewer identifiable characters, but there's no two ways about it: "Sin City" is a visual masterpiece, a pumped-up comic book come to life on steroids, and is one of the best movies I've seen this year.10/10.
It's the best film ever based on comic books or graphic novels, and I doubt that will ever change (until Sin City 2, that is).
'Sin City' is filled with guns, blood, babes, murder, sickness and so many kinds of danger.While the cast is very impressive as most of the actors blend into the characters well enough, Willis isn't convincing as a 70 year old and he seems to be a little too popular which makes him the odd one out.
Dawson is particularly effective as the dominatrix/godmother while Gugino, Alba, King and Murphy are very good and Bledel and Gugino are particularly stunning to look at.Though 'Sin City' has been claimed to be a guy film, I don't see why women cannot enjoy it.
There are very few successful adaptations of comic books and Sin City is for sure a success.The graphic elements portrayed in the film are wonderful and something very different.The story is laid out very well showing different situations.Bruce Willis is good in his role but I wished he had got more screen time.Jessica Alba and Rosario Dawson,the ladies looked beautiful in the movie and played well their respective minuscule roles.Benicio Del Toro was the surprise package of the film as he played the corrupt police cop to perfection.But the scene stealer has to be none other than Mickey Rourke who is magnificent in his screen presence.The film itself has something new to offer and that is its plus point.Some critics have bashed this film for having less human emotions and giving importance to graphic content in the film.Leave the critics aside, you have got to watch 'Sin City' to have one of the best experiences of your life.
If you step back from the stylish production, and the white comic book blood, the content and message is very cold and dehumanising.Neither my wife or I finished watching the film, and both felt angry that we had wasted as much time as we did watching someone else's nasty fantasy.The only thing that disturbed me more than the film was the fact that people I like recommended it to me with no mention of the violence.
a comic book.In this case we have noir become cinema, become the genre of "graphic novel" become a specific movie that in its collage is neonoir.That collage is three stories in a wrapper: Willis is a convict, framed by Senator Roark protecting his son, who protects a stripper; Rourke (the actor) is a convict, framed by Cardinal Roark protecting his adopted son, who gets revenge for the death of a prostitute (and is protecting other prostitutes); Owen is a convict targeted by Roark, protecting a whole society of prostitutes.
So oblivious are the directors to the simple reality that elements that work in comics may not work in film that no attempt is made to modify the scenes of Marv getting hit head-on with a car, or dragging a perp from his own car at 50 miles an hour, or Hartigan gushing blood when getting perforated by bullets, and the result descends into cartoonish preposterousness.The directors would rather bury a big-name star like Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro under gobs of facial prosthetics, despite the fact that there is nothing particular about his character that would require it .
I don't mind that the others didn't do the nude scenes in which their characters originally appeared, but the moment when Hartigan sees Nancy performing in "That Yellow Bastard" is a vital plot point in the story, because when we see that the little girl he saved is the same stripper we have come to know and love from previous stories, we're able to feel the same creepy feeling Hartigan does.Armond White nailed it: "Graphic art has its own principles and justifications that become inane when converted into live action.
In Sin City nobody is innocent, not even the Bishop, and they are going to pay for that.The movie is based, both the story and aesthetics, in the noir comic by Frank Miller, who is also co-director of the film,together with Robert Rodriguez; Quentin Tarantino was invited to direct one of the scenes.
Many movies based on comic books (or graphic novels, if you insist) have been somewhat lackluster, but Sin City certainly delivers what it promises.
The remaining story deals with Dwight (Clive Owen) who gets in trouble with the police while protecting his girlfriend and has to resort to the help of the vigilante prostitutes of a special region of the city.In Sin City everything is exaggerated: the starkly contrasted black & white cinematography, the sparse but powerful use of colour, the pulpily poetic narration and the caricature-like characters.
Very little is revealed about the hit-man and he himself admits he doesn't know the reasons for the violence, but at the same time it comes out so naturally that avoiding it is not an option.The constant, even ridiculous exaggerating of the cruel nature of Sin City could have been just a funny action movie or a laughably heavy-handed overstatement of Man's nature, but I think it works both as an actioner and an emotionally draining experience.
"Walk down the right alleyway in Sin City and you can find anything." A film for which the term "Graphic" (and all its connotations) was invented for, and quite simply the best comic book film adaptation I have ever seen (with "Batman Begins" probably coming up slightly behind it in 2nd place) Frank Miller's "Sin City" is an extremely brutal, wonderfully violent, incredibly stylised tale of cops, criminals, and stunning-looking prostitutes.With a cast to die for (and believe me many do in quite graphic ways) Bruce Willis, Michael Masden, Rutger Hauer, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson all shine through in a heady ensemble, but it's Mickey Rourke looking almost unrecognisable as Marv who steals the show, giving the performance (so far) of his chequered career.A must see for all comic book fans..
It's hard to criticize a movie that does in spades what it sets out to do.I will say, however, that if you're not a fan of graphic novels, and their predispositions for violence, sexual stereotyping, and grim looks at humanity, then you'd be better off skipping Sin City.
'Sin City' is probably the worst high-profile movie I have ever seen.I wasn't too happy with Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' and Rodriguez's 'Dusk Till Dawn' can hardly be called a masterpiece, but their flaws seem almost negligible when compared to 'Sin City''s total lapse of reason.It is a film without a heart, made by people who have drifted so far away in their extreme vision of cinema art that the resulting product could not be saved by the impeccable acting, solid direction and innovative looks.'Sin City' is so full of pointless violence that there is hardly anything else in it.Do I need to be a fan of the original comics to appreciate how 'true to the original' the film managed to stay?
Sin City is a modern rendition of a comic book told in the film noir style.
They were cheap to make and got the job done.Sin City is an extremely stylized version of the film noir, and, because it is based on a comic book it looks like a comic book and has characters from a comic book.
Bruce Willis, Benecio Del Toro (The Usual Suspects, Traffic, 21 Grams), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Rosario Dawson (Men In Black II, Alexander), Jessica Alba (Never Been Kissed, Dark Angel), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile, The Scorpion King), Brittany Murphy (8 Mile, Little Black Book), Mickey Rourke (Man on Fire, Once Upon a Time In Mexico), Nick Stahl (In The Bedroom, Terminator 3) Clive Owen (King Arthur, Closer, The Bourne Identity) and Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor, Blackhawk Down, Wicker Park), among many others, seem to present us with "the Mother of All CASTS!" With such an awesomely impressive cast, I imagine that many of the actors involved agreed beforehand to receive, instead of a lump sum payment before filming
a small percentage of the box office after release and distribution.
What is it about?A big, brutal and bloody story, about different characters, and their individual pursuits for justice on the lawless and corrupt streets of Sin City.A number of familiar names appear on the cast list , including Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke (who is superb), Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Michael Clarke Duncan and Brittany Murphy and Michael Madsen amongst others.
I enjoyed all those I wrote of earlier as well as some honorable mentions, which include Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson, Jaime King, Devon Aoki, Carla Gugino, Alexis Bledel, Michael Madsen and really the entire cast.Overall, this movie is full of hardcore and violent images, yet still maintains it's comic book feel.
Based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller, Sin City is perhaps the first film ever made to really have the authentic tone and look of comic books.
The mix of black/white and colour is perhaps a bit obvious but is still a nice touch and, although I didn't think it pulled it off, the attempts at film noir played well with genre clichés.Because the stories and characters are larger than life, the narratives do struggle a bit and it is only their pace and unrelenting grim violence that makes it possible to stick with it.
Here women are beaten and they like it, they need men to protect them from other men, they are gorgeous but give it up like it was a bad habit, generally they are not defined by who they are but by what they are "dykes", strippers, whores, rape victims and killers; that they are not real people is not a problem but the film's depiction and use of them within the narrative goes beyond the mere "trophyism" of music videos and adverts and is very close to being misogyny so harsh and spiteful it is.Thanks to the pace and style though, I was mostly able to put this out of my mind and enjoy it as a comic book noir that appeals to those who like the noir style without having to watch old films and miss out on extreme violence and MTV flesh.
Yes, Rodriguez's direction does make the film look like a comic book (sorry, graphic novel).
I loved reading two of the Sin City books in this film, one of which is the famous and first in the series "The Hard Goodbye" it's the story of Marv, who is played by Mickey Rourke and he does an amazing job, he basically wakes up to find out that Goldie is dead, and he then goes on a rampage to find out who done it, don't worry what I said doesn't give any of the story away.The one thing that stands out in the whole film is the way that it looks, it's very much like Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow, in terms of it's a very 1950's comic book feel, but this however is done in the better way.
I thought that Batman Begins was close when I saw that but then this come out and I thought perfect.However I preferred the Hartigan story "that yellow Bastard", I thought that this story was better in terms of the way that it looks as a posse the the story (though the story is excellent and Bruce Willis is Hartigan, Mickey Rourke steals the spot light in this film) the Night club scene is the best scene ever when the lighting changes, and the whole editing is spot on, it's again how the comic is.Most of my friends were put off by the Black and White effect and found it to be a bit dull, however with the Special Edition version (which you should get because it has an extra 30 minutes) you see it all in colour and see that it's so much more different.
For my A level media project I actually used the Sin City style and watched it in colour and could see how much of a difference it made.There are other famous actors and actresses in this film Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Michael Madsen, Clive Owen and Elijah Wood and they all do amazing performances.
If you like the Sin City comics then you will love this film, it's true to the comics, and is actually directed by Frank Miller (creater of Sin City) it's perfect in the way that it's shown but I think to get the most out of it you need to see the Extended edition, it's a bit more expensive but it does explain the story and also you don't have to worry about watching them all you can watch the one you want when you want..
I just don't know why most people say that "Sin City is the best comic book movie ever" it's not; in fact it is the worst.
Primarily based on three Sin City graphic novels by Frank Miller--The Hard Good-Bye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard--the film tells a non-linear story centered around three primary threads.
In short, "Sin City" is a great movie for people with an acquire taste for comic books and film noir. |
tt0892782 | Monsters vs. Aliens | A few minutes before her wedding to Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd), a TV weatherman, Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteorite. The meteorite is infused with quantonium, a rare and powerful element that causes her to grow -- just as she begins to recite her vows -- to an enormous size. Targeted by the government as a monster, Susan is captured and imprisoned at a secret facility where other such oddities are being held, including Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a mad scientist who accidentally transformed himself into a roach-human hybrid; B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a gelatinous, brainless, but talkative mass brought to life in an experiment gone wrong; the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon-like lizard man; and the skyscraper-sized mutant larva Insectosaurus. Their jailer is General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland).
When deranged alien overlord Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) comes to Earth to obtain the precious quantonium and conquer the world, U.S. President Hathaway (Stephen Colbert) offers the monsters their freedom in exchange for defeating the evil mastermind. They're turned loose in San Francisco and Gallaxhar's giant robot quickly fixates on Susan. It corners her on the Golden Gate Bridge. Thanks largely to Susan's amazing strength and determination to keep anyone from being hurt, the monsters are able to destroy the robot.
Susan takes her monster friends to visit her parents, but they frighten all the neighbors at the backyard barbecue. Derek doesn't attend. When Susan seeks him out, he breaks up with her; it's apparent that all he cares about is his career, and he doesn't think a 50-foot wife will help him move into larger markets. Susan quickly realizes that she's better off without Derek, and that she likes her new self, her new abilities, and her new friends. She rejoins the other monsters only to be snatched up into Gallaxhar's spaceship. Insectosaurus is felled when it tries to help her.
Despite Susan's brief escape and determined resistance, Gallaxhar extracts the quantonium from Susan's body and she returns to her original dimensions. The quantonium is key to Gallaxhar's evil plan to take over the world: it enables him to create legions of clones, who march around in formation saying "Hail Gallaxhar!" Meanwhile, the surviving monsters have snuck aboard to help Susan. They send the ship into self-destruct mode. Only Susan makes it out of the engine room before the doors close; Dr. Cockroach, B.O.B., and the Missing Link, stuck inside, insist that she escape without them. But Susan is made of tougher stuff than that; she goes back to Gallaxhar and tries to make him abort the self-destruct and release her friends. When Gallaxhar tries to escape, Susan regains possession of the quantonium and becomes a giant again. After she frees her friends, they're all rescued from the self-destructing ship by General Monger and Insectosaurus, who wasn't dead after all -- just busy metamorphosing into a moth the size of a 747.
Before Susan and the monster squad are called away to save another day, there's a big celebration during which Derek tries to interview Susan. She spurns him and allows B.O.B. to swallow him and spit him out, a career-killing moment that Susan makes sure will be caught on camera.Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteorite on the day of her wedding to weatherman Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd), absorbing a substance called quantonium and growing into a giant. Alerted to the meteorite crash, the military arrive and capture Susan. She is labeled a monster, renamed "Ginormica" by the government, and sent to a top-secret prison facility headed by General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) and containing other monsters: B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a brainless, indestructible gelatinous blob; Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), a mad scientist with the head and abilities of a cockroach; the Missing Link (Will Arnett), an amphibious fish-ape hybrid; and Insectosaurus, a colossal grub that is even larger than Susan. The monsters are forbidden to have any contact with the outside world; while the other monsters have been living contentedly with this lifestyle for the past 50 years, Susan feels incredibly isolated and wishes to return to her old life.
An alien named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) detects the quantonium radiation emanating from Earth and deploys a gigantic robotic probe to find it and extract it from its source, Susan. After a botched attempt by the President of the United States (Stephen Colbert) to make first contact with the robot, it begins destroying everything in sight, resisting all conventional military force used against it. General Monger convinces the President to use the monsters to fight the robot instead. The monsters accept the mission with the promise of freedom if they succeed. Arriving in San Francisco, Susan is chased by the robot across the city to the Golden Gate Bridge, where the monsters are able to defeat the robot, Susan and Insectosaurus keeping it occupied while Dr. Cockroach sabotages it from inside and B.O.B. clears a path for the cars to evacuate (The Missing Link having been knocked out during the fight).
Now free, Susan returns to her hometown and introduces her family and friends to the monsters, who are quickly rejected after innocently causing a panicked ruckus in the neighborhood. Derek, meanwhile, breaks up with Susan, claiming that he can't be married to someone who could overshadow his career. Initially devastated, Susan realizes that becoming a monster has improved her life, and fully embraces her new friends and lifestyle. Suddenly, she is abducted by Gallaxhar, who apparently kills Insectosaurus when he tries to save her. On Gallaxhar's spaceship, Susan breaks loose and chases Gallaxhar down, only to enter a machine that extracts the quantonium from her body, shrinking her to her normal size. Gallaxhar proceeds to use the quantonium to power a machine which clones him into an army so he can invade Earth.
With assistance from General Monger, B.O.B., Dr. Cockroach, and the Missing Link infiltrate Gallaxhar's spaceship, rescue Susan, and hot-wire the spaceship's power core, activating the spaceship's self-destruct sequence. However, during their escape attempt, Susan is cut off from her friends, who are trapped in the power core and tell her to save herself. Instead, Susan confronts Gallaxhar, who tries to escape with the quantonium, and attempts to force him into releasing her friends. When Gallaxhar says he cannot reverse the sequence, Susan takes the quantonium back and absorbs it, restoring her to her gargantuan size and allowing her to save her friends. The monsters leap out of the exploding spaceship and are rescued by General Monger on the back of the revived Insectosaurus, who had sealed his body in a cocoon and transformed into a giant butterfly.
The monsters receive a hero's welcome upon their return. Derek attempts to get back with Susan for the sake of interviewing her, which could benefit his career; instead, Susan rejects him and forces him to endure the humiliation of being thrown into the air and caught, swallowed and spit out by B.O.B. on camera. At that moment, the monsters are alerted to a monster attack near Paris and fly off to combat the new menace. [D-Man2010] | psychedelic, cute, entertaining | train | imdb | I'm tempted to describe this movie as "innocent," because it's such a nice story that doesn't have all the innuendos some other animated films have, yet still will make most adults laugh in many spots because there is some good humor that kids wouldn't get.
"Monsters Versus Aliens" shows one doesn't need "edginess" in every movie to have adults enjoy the kids' film, too.Chances are you'll find this movie a lot better than you thought.
The government has secretly collected these monster and now they need them to fight alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson).DreamWorks has gathered all the iconic 50s sci-fi B-movie creations, and formed a pretty cohesive team.
Aliens is also a family film in the truest sense: Elders to tots can enjoy the visual delights of 3-D outer space and observe a young bride-to-be Susan Murphy (voice of Reese Witherspoon) grow by a radiation accident into the heroic role of Ginormica, a woman literally too big for her britches.
She must assert her independence from a self-centered fiancé and convince family, friends, and the world that an out-sized woman (read overachieving feminist) has a place in the male world, a superior place at that.A strength of this sweet film is its use of ironic, sometimes sardonic, language to satirize just about everyone, from the president (see the opening quotation, not great humor but entertaining) to the makers of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, whose feel good '70's glow is ripe for 21st-century cynicism, to memories of such chestnuts as The Blob and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.The hip,loving mood of the film is exemplified by the alien's proclamation at invasion time, "Humans of Earth, my quest has led me to your planet.
Add to that the fun and oddball personalities of the monster characters and you have a winning combination.The 3D effects were good, although like most other mainstream animated movies - they start out strong and then get recessed into background.
Monster versus Aliens is a sometimes funny and sometimes interesting, but mostly the story is dull and the plot is nearly a non-entity.However, this movie does take 3D to a new level at times.
There's really only one obvious 3D "gag" very early in the movie, but other than that, you are just in awe of seeing these animated characters truly come to life like never before.The character that steals the show is of course BOB (voiced by Seth Rogen) He is incredibly dumb but also fantastically funny and the most interesting of all the monsters.
Everything here worked to a perfect T, from the very key component of animation, to voice casting, and sound, but what the film ultimately lacked, was a compelling narrative, and soul.The premise for success is all there, and as seen in the trailer, there's a pretty good balance of comedy, action, and homage to the 50s and 60s horror and sci-fi genres.
Even kids aren't tickled by the usual juvenile antics of the characters anymore, which now calls for a shift in sophistication.A whole host of stars join the lineup, such as Rainn Wilson as the villainous alien Gallaxhar, Stephen Colbert as the dim-witted President Hathaway, Amy Poehler as a computer voice and even Renee Zellweger, but despite the star power going all round in flesh out the carefully designed and crafted animated characters, ultimately everyone was one-dimensional and playing to their stereotypical tendencies.
In fact, there are only two main fight scenes and neither manages to make the movie worth while.The whole movie revolves around Susan (the woman who grows into a giant after getting hit by a meteor) and her issues rather than around the much more fun idea of monsters fighting aliens.
A waste of a good idea.Maybe kids will enjoy this generic CGI film, but even my siblings (ages 6, 10, and 13) didn't like this movie.
The latest effort from Dreamworks Animation is among their best efforts to date and, for the first time, I see them stepping ahead of Pixar.What a better set-up for an animated film than Earth when it is about to be invaded by a squid-like alien with his fair amount of bad eyes and his army of clones?
One may wonder where is the Giant Killer Tomato or the Invisible Man but this handful of monsters are enough to nullify the Alien menace.The movie itself is pure enjoyment: Colbert as the President is hilarious, Laurie is an excellent mad scientist and I could not point a single flaw in the cast but, it is definitely Seth Rogen who shines voicing BOB, the inform mass of gelatinous goo.
Ultimatelty the success of the film lies with the voice cast which includes Reese Witherspoon as Susan (later forcefully renamed Ginormica) Seth Rogen as the blathering B.O.B., House's Hugh laurie as Dr. Coachroach, Will Arnett as The Missing Link, Kiefer Sutherland as the steely General W.R. Monger, Rainn Wilson as the evil alien Gallaxhar and finally Stephen Colbert as the dimwitted President of the U.S.
This film had the promise of being really funny with a great line up of talented actors such as Kiefer Sutherland, Seth Rogen, Reese Witherspoon and Hugh Laurie (all talented Actors) and produced by DreamWorks.Unfortunately the laughs were quite tame and even for mid aged kids they weren't very funny, being more for 4-9 age group.
I have to admit I had some enthusiasm for watching Monsters vs Aliens because,in spite of the horrible state of animation cinema in Hollywood (with a few exceptions,of course),I thought it would be fun to see a movie obviously inspired by various fantastic cinema movies from the 50's,like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,The Blob,The Fly or The Creature of the Black Lagoon.However,the movie resulted to be hollow and boring,with over the top moments of comedy (which do not result funny) which change ingenuity for noisy action.This very weak movie may satisfy to very little children,but the ones who want to see animation cinema of the best quality should look anywhere else (like,for example,some Japanese movies like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke).As it could be expected,the references to the sci-fi genre in this movie go beyond of the name of the characters,and although I appreciated the mention of Red Dwarf,E.T.,Star Trek,Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a long etcetera of famous works from the genre,I did not feel them as honest tributes,but as condescending tricks to ingratiate a certain group of spectators...and to suggest they are not copying concepts and situations,but innocently playing tribute to those works.The cast of voices made a decent work,although nobody stood out too much.On the animation field,I found the design from the monsters pretty disparate.I understand the intention of making them sympathetic and not frightening (although this last thing would have worked much better),but they do not seem to belong to the same visual scheme from the movie.Besides,it seems that they were created by artists who had very different concepts about the tone and nature from the story.The main point is that that attitude destroys the basic idea from the movie,which is : "never judge the people from their appearances,but by their actions".On many aspects,Monster vs Aliens reminded me of the sequence from Toy Story (or was it Toy Story 2?) in which the monster toys help the heroes.The animators from that movie were not too shy with the design,because they comprehended that making the monsters too sympathetic would kill force to the message.But,after all,what could I expect from DreamWorks?
The good will they had won with Shrek was extinguished after producing craps like Shark Tale,Madagascar and its sequel and,specially,the execrable Bee Movie.I respect that the dramatic scheme from DreamWorks does not try to copy the one from Pixar (which is obviously superior) and I understand their sensibility,which is more commercial and less artistic.I just do not respect the complete lack of narrative ambition from almost all of their movies.Monsters vs Aliens is another very mediocre animation movie which commits the fatal mistake of being boring..
Reese Witherspoon is wonderful as Susan Murphy, while 24's Kiefer Sutherland gets a rare chance to flex his comedic muscle as backwoods general W.R. Monger.The Office's Rain Wilson is fine as Galaxar (the evil alien), as is Arrested Development's Will Arnett as The Missing Link and House's Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach.
Reese Witherspoon, that unfunny actress that acted in Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2 comes and acts in Monsters VS Aliens, a movie that sounds like it will be tons of fun and will have heaps of laughs and (family) action scenes.
If you have read my review on Kung Fu Panda, you'll know that it's a true fact Dreamworks have started working on animation for quite some time now since 11 years ago in 1998, that includes their first computer animated movie Shrek and then from where on there, they give us unforgettable moments and fun but very lovable characters to watch.But, as the more we get into CGI and much less of traditionally hand drawn animation in the 21st century, our love for animated movies might of wear out; and then there's Monsters Vs. Aliens.To start off, let's just say I thought Shark Tale and Bee Movie was better before I saw this, not that I'm complaining but it needs a little bit more work.
The film starts off with a beautiful young woman named Susan Murphy play by the wonderful loving Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, getting married to a weather reporter young man from the news named Derek Dietl play by Paul Rudd who you might recognize his work from I Love You Man, Role Models, and Knocked Up. He's not a very hard guy to spot if you're familiar with the voice in this movie.Their wedding goes out fine before she gets hit by a meteor and grows into a 49 foot giant size monster named Ginormica (Funny name if you ask me).
A green swimming monster (can't remember what type he was suppose to be) called The Missing Link (whose voiced by Will Arnett who also was in Horton Hears a Who with Seth Rogen) and of course a human scientist with the size of a cockroach head named Dr. Cockroah Ph. D (voiced by Hugh Laurie who is quite known for his role of that crazy thriller horror show House) Their world suddenly becomes in huge danger when a four eyed alien from outer space plans to take over the world so it's up to Susan (aka Ginormica) and her new friends to save the day!
It's the kind of writing that is not only targeted at children, but consistently feels like it was written by them; unsurprisingly, the little ones will get some kick out of it all, but for everyone else (and I include some of the more discerning of children in this exception), Monsters Vs. Aliens will instead only mildly distract with its pretty pictures and sporadically amusing farce.What's most surprising about the extremely derivative writing present within the movie's script however, is that it comes directly from chaps involved with quite a few of the genre's most enjoyable and original outings.
Not only is it frustrating to be forced to artificially root for a protagonist we're never really given a chance to care about (that's Susan by the way, played by a bland Reese Witherspoon), but there is also a distinct lack of comic relief to the whole thing—in fact, the best parts to Monsters Vs. Aliens aside from Colbert's brief appearances, are all the cool space shots and action sequences.This of course, brings us to the primary reason many people will be seeing the feature in the first place; the 3D.
Yet for the good that it does for the movie's aesthetic appeal however, the overall impression is that without such an artificial distraction, Monsters Vs. Aliens would be a banal and flat affair.The problem is that despite the awe-inducing animation and sometimes amusing performances, the majority of the feature is actually devoid of any life.
I have to admit that I was thrilled by the overall concept and while it's not the first time monsters battled aliens for control of the planet, this was a nice twist and a great tribute to classic 50s creature features.Plot: Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) was about to be married to the dashing reporter Derek when she was stuck by a meteorite full of an unknown but powerful energy, causing her to grow to nearly fifty feet in height.
When the evil alien Gallaxhar (Riann Wilson) attacks the earth with giant robots and an army of clones, General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) convinces the president (Stephen Colbert) to let the monsters loose to defend the earth from this outer space menace in return for their freedom.The cast was a lot of fun as they all fit very well with their roles like Hugh Laurie as the intelligent Dr. Cockroach (reminiscent of House) and Seth Rogen as the fun-loving but dim-witted B.O.B. Reese's character Susan a.k.a. Ginormica was a great heroine (as well as easy on the eyes) and was developed surprisingly well and and Will Arnett's Missing Link was also pretty cool, plus Insectosaurus is one of the coolest and cutest monsters I've ever seen.
With names like Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland, Paul Rudd, and more, it was just right on the money for the casting of performers to do the voice acting.The animation style was nice to look at, lots of cool effects, details and nice coloring.
that they have accumulated over the past 50 years.Included in the Monster's squad are Susan, now known as Ginormica and basically a white haired replica of Elastigirl/Mrs Incredible, a gelatinous blob named BOB, a fishy looking thing (apparently the missing link) called Link, a maniacal genius called Dr. Cockroach due to an experiment gone wrong and finally a giant bug called, you guessed it "Insecto".There are really only two fights between Monster and Alien, a few jokes and a couple of pop culture references, though refreshingly less than normal, but not much more than that.You'd think rather than being P.O.'d Susan would be happy to have an excuse to buy an entire new wardrobe!
From "The War of the Worlds" (1953) to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), to "Independence Day" (1996), to "War of the Worlds" (2005), to Godzilla, to both the original and remake versions of "The Fly," "The Blob" and "Attack of the 50 foot Woman," you can bet that if it's sci-fi and cheesy (cheesy sci-fi), it gets lampooned by the film-making team of Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon, working with DreamWorks Animation.Nothing about the animation in this movie really stands out when compared to what we're seeing from Pixar or Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli (his animation is truly the best, in my opinion), but "Monsters vs.
Her cohorts do their normal supporting-role thing and manage to stand out on their own, but don't have the emotional depth that Susan Murphy does.As she's walking down the aisle to her husband-to-be Derek (Paul Rudd), Susan starts to grow - and I mean really grow - into a 49-foot-tall giantess (while still somehow managing to remain fully clothed in her wedding dress), who the government later names "Ginormica." She is soon taken prisoner, watched over by General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland, "W.R. Monger" - "War Monger," get it?) and introduced to characters who seem to have popped right out of '50s sci-fi movies - the Gill-man The Missing Link (Will Arnett), the blob B.O.B.
Dreamworks tries its hand in animation after having offered huge successes in the likes of the shrek franchise,kung fu panda and madagascar with this new 2D+3D flick, Monster Vs Aliens.As far as the story plot goes,it is a bit of a disappointment it loses track many a times,and has only a few really good humor throughout.But what makes this movie a "Check it out" flick,is the fact that it has a 3D version which is the saving soul and dreamworks has done a good job in delivering and engrossing the audience with 3D effects and ground breaking visuals.The younger audience will definitely love this movie,cause there where like a dozens of tiny tots jumping up in their seats through the movie run time while i was watching!Hence i would strongly recommend for anyone having young kids,that they would have a great time.This movie is for anyone who likes animation movies and please watch it in 3D,or u r missing a lot!cheers!!!.
At the least there's a very good voice cast assembled- aside from fairly straightforward leads like Reese Witherspoon there's Seth Rogen and Hugh Laurie as monsters and Rainn Wilson as the evil alien set to make clones of him/itself to take over Earth- and it does have wonderful animation.
are quite likable amusing & it would've been nice if they had more screen time & funnier dialouge to work with...But the aliens' motives & plot must be explained in the meantime.Like many animated family films these days, "Monsters vs.
Aliens", the latter movie is superior as a MOVIE but like the former Dreamworks flick, I think there was a lot of untapped potential.The visuals were excellent (the most beautifully animated Dreamworks film yet) but it wasn't as funny as it could've been even though there were many jokes & one-liners.However, I'm not a child nor do I have a family of my own, so maybe I'm being a tad bit harsh.Children (and most parents) will Definitely enjoy this movie, so I do recommend it..
(Well, you get it, just look again at the film's title.) Besides Witherspoon, excellent voice-over work was done by: Seth Rogen as B.O.B., Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, Will Arnett as The Missing Link, Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar, and Stephen Colbert as The President.
Monsters Vs Aliens is a very funny animated movie from Dreamworks. |
tt0315327 | Bruce Almighty | (This synopsis contains spoilers.)"Bruce Almighty" is the story of a news reporter named Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) who covers fluff stories for TV news in Buffalo, New York. The story opens with Bruce in a bakery, spidery hairnet yanked over his forehead, diligently reporting on the largest cookie ever baked in Buffalo. At the end of the sequence, we are introduced to one of the films running jokes, "That's the way the cookie crumbles."Racing back to the station, Bruce gets caught in traffic and vents his frustration about the fact that his life is in a go-nowhere rut. Arriving late to an important meeting, fellow staffers--including nemesis Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell)--needle Bruce mercilessly about his clownish coverage at the bakery, further exacerbating his bitterness about being stalled on his career path. In the exchange with Evan, we see that Bruce has a lively, but dark, sense of humor and won't take anything lying down. After the meeting, Bruce begs his boss, Jack Baylor (Philip Baker Hall), to consider him for the open anchor position.Later that night, Bruce watches the news with his live-in girlfriend, Grace Connelly (Jennifer Aniston), at a middle-class but homey one-bedroom apartment. Sitting on the couch with their dog, Grace tries unsuccessfully to enlist Bruce's help with a photo album commemorating highlights of their relationship, but Bruce is too preoccupied with feeling sorry for himself until he happens upon an x-rated photo of them making love, and whisks Grace off to the bedroom.The next morning, Bruce drops Grace off at the Red Cross to give blood. He's still in a bad mood, so she gives him her prayer beads, saying he needs them more than she does. Bruce reluctantly takes the prayer beads, which are useless to him since he never prays, and makes fun of Grace for wasting her time giving blood.At the station, Bruce learns he's being sent into the field to cover an important story at Niagara Falls, assuming from this apparent promotion that he is in line for the anchor position that just opened up. The producer sets the scene in front of the spectacular falls, with Bruce in a comical umbrella hat interviewing an elderly woman about early days at Niagara.Surrounded by the tremendous rushing of the falls, Bruce is interrupted mid-interview for a big announcement from the station, waiting breathlessly to hear that he got anchor. Instead, the position is awarded to Evan, and Bruce has a serious meltdown in front of the camera, repeatedly insulting Evan, verbally abusing the two interviewees, and then capping off his report with the statement "Back to you, fuckers!" Needless to say, the network fires Bruce, and he is thrown out on the street with all his stuff, including a framed photograph of Walter Cronkite. Bruce responds with another of his running jokes, the sarcastic remark, "B-E-A-utiful!"Bruce arrives home late to dinner and picks a fight with Grace, who tries her best to appease him. In a rage at life, he turns on her, calling their life together mediocre. She takes it personally, which inflames him all the more, and he slams out of the apartment, yelling, "The worst day of my life with a side order of GUILT please!"Increasingly furious, Bruce goes for a drive, shaking the prayer beads and cursing heaven. It's raining hard as he gets out of the car, lost in the turmoil of his feelings, continuing to berate God, crossing the highway, without regard for oncoming traffic, to toss the prayer beads as far out into the lake as he can.Back at the apartment next morning, Bruce's beeper starts to go off repeatedly with a high-pitched shriek. He doesn't recognize the number and finally gets so annoyed that he tosses the beeper out into the street, where it gets run over by a car. The dog, who is not housebroken, pees on a chair, so Bruce takes him outside, only to hear the flattened beeper still going off in the middle of the street.Aggravated beyond words, and unable to stop the beeper from going off, Bruce calls the number and listens to a tape recording of someone who apparently knows everything that's going on in his life. Intrigued, he drives to the address he got over the phone, finding himself in Buffalo's warehouse district.Bruce gets out of car to look for the address, stepping in a huge, filthy puddle that splashes all over his jeans. He enters a warehouse to find that the ground floor is empty except for an African-American janitor (Morgan Freeman) mopping the floor. Bruce asks for directions to room seven on the seventh floor, finding much to his annoyance that the elevator doesn't work. As he heads for the stairs, the janitor asks him to help mop the floor, and Bruce retorts that he would be happy to help in seven days at seven o'clock.Arriving on the seventh floor, Bruce finds himself in a huge, empty room that's painted stark white. As he calls out for help, the janitor climbs down a ladder through a hole in the ceiling connected to a brightly lighted room above. Bruce think the janitor must have taken the elevator to get there ahead of him, and watches while he strips off his coveralls and sits down behind a white desk impeccably dressed in a white suit and tie, disclosing--much to Bruce's amusement--that he is, in fact, God.God proceeds to prove his powers by showing Bruce a file cabinet that contains everything that ever happened in his life. The drawer is so long that it pushes Bruce all the way across the room, then slams shut again dragging Bruce along behind. Bruce is still sceptical, so he and God play a game where God guesses how many fingers Bruce will hold up. Bruce is finally convinced that something strange is going on when he holds up one hand with seven fingers just as God says, "Seven."God has a plan for Bruce. Since Bruce thinks God isn't doing a very good job, he will give Bruce all his powers and see if Bruce can do any better. God retreats to his ladder, clapping for the lights to go back on so he can climb back up. "Clap on, clap on," is another joke that repeats throughout the film. Bruce makes a quick exit, not believing a word of what this self-proclaimed God has told him.Outside in the street, Bruce finds that he can walk across the puddle that tripped him up earlier. His car won't start until he bangs his hands on the steering wheel and yells, "Start!" As he drives, he realizes that all his fantasies--such as for example being Clint Eastwood---easily come true.Bruce stops at a diner to order coffee and the waitress convinces him to add an order of tomato soup. He agrees, then decides to try out parting the Red Sea with his bowl of soup. The soup parts in two, Bruce's hair flies about, amazing another customer. God appears out of nowhere, sitting in the booth across from Bruce as he finally comes to the realization that he does indeed possess all of God's powers.Bruce and God then go for a walk, where God tells Bruce about the two rules of his powers; he can't tell anyone he's God, and he can't mess with free will. Bruce then sees a boat sail past, and he realises that the two of them are walking on a lake in Buffalo. God then leaves Bruce, and Bruce runs off to have fun with his powers.Returning to the centre of Buffalo, Bruce struts down the street gleefully, eager to use his powers on whatever he wants. He points his fingers at a fire hydrant, causing it to burst, and water to fly out. He then sees an attractive young girl walk past, and he causes a gust of wind to lift her skirt, giving him a good view of her underwear and bottom. Bruce spies a trendy set of clothes being worn by a mannequin in a shop window, and uses his powers to swap them with his own clothes.As he struts further down the street, Bruce spots the gang that beat him up earlier, and decides to get some revenge on them. He demands that they apologise to him, but they just laugh, and Bruce is told by the gang leader that he'll get his apology the day a monkey comes out of his butt. Thanks to Bruce's powers however, that was that day, and a monkey forces its way out of the man's rear end. The other thugs run off, but are chased by a swarm of bees that Bruce spits out after them. He then commands the monkey to return into the gang leader.Bruce then teleports himself to the top of a skyscraper, creates a lightning storm, and declares "I am Bruce Almighty! My will be done!".Back at their apartment, Grace is sat drinking wine, when she hears Bruce outside singing. When she opens the door, he kisses her, and presents her with a bouquet of flowers, which he informs her are a new breed; a cross-pollination between tulips and daisies, which he calls "Todayzees".While Grace goes to get a vase for the flowers, Bruce heads out onto the balcony, commanding the stereo to play romantic music. He then alters the night sky to make it more romantic; he erases the clouds, creates new stars, and pulls the moon closer.Grace then walks out onto the balcony, and the romantic sky, as well as Bruce running his hands through her hair, leads to her becoming very aroused. They start kissing, before Grace runs off to the bathroom to prepare for sex. Bruce then runs into the bedroom, using his powers to turn the lights off, light candles, and make his clothes (apart from his underwear) fall off.Bruce then decides to use his powers to encourage Grace into the bedroom, and give her a bit of a treat. While he dirty-talks her, Bruce uses his divine powers to make Grace have a series of incredibly powerful orgasms, and she writhes and moans in ecstasy as she collapses onto the bathroom floor. Grace then emerges from the bathroom, full of lust, and she pounces on Bruce for a night of indescribably pleasurable lovemaking.The next morning, Grace watches TV, and sees a news report about a tidal wave in Japan, which was caused by "unusual lunar activity". Meanwhile, Bruce is still in bed, sleeping among the bedsheets, which have been completely strewn about by the previous night's amorous activities. He is awoken by strange voices in his head, but he quickly shrugs them off.Bruce gets dressed and heads downstairs, surprising Grace with a kiss, before sitting down for breakfast. They briefly discuss the previous night's lovemaking, which they both agree was "heavenly". Grace then tells Bruce that, when she'd woken up that morning, she'd felt like her boobs were bigger. He denies that they're bigger, but she insists on it. After getting a bit tongue-tied, Bruce leaves to get his job back.Bruce's plan includes finding the long missing body of Jimmy Hoffa. When he reports back to the station everyone applauds and Bruce is hired back to his old job of reporting on fluff stories that all somehow turn out to be late breaking news. On Evan's first night as anchor, Bruce uses his special powers to endow him with a humiliating stutter.Bruce becomes increasingly enchanted with his new powers and ability to do anything he wants to make his life better. He tries to be good to Grace who thinks that he's on the verge of a marriage proposal. They go out for dinner at the restaurant where they first met, and he gets down on his knees in a romantic way, not for a marriage proposal, but to brag that he finally got anchor!Grace is confused and hurt by Bruce's odd behavior, and the bizarre things that are happening around the apartment, such as their dog learning how to use and even flush the toilet. In the meantime, Bruce starts hearing voices in the background, like a huge crowd that's chattering away at a distance. Sometimes the noise increases almost to a roar and starts to overwhelm him.God appears and informs Bruce that he's hearing the sound of people praying. Bruce tries various ways to deal with all the prayers, finally using a computer program that downloads everybody's prayers like email. He tries to go through all the prayers one at a time but finds it an impossible task. Giving up, he hits a key and yells, "Yes to all!" Unfortunately, this means that everybody who was praying to win the lottery wins all at once, so each winner only gets $17 and chaos ensues. Bruce's self-centered and incompetent attempts at playing God are beginning to wreak havoc all over the globe.Bruce roams the city in despair, and suddenly finds himself up on top of Mt. Everest with God, thinking that he might be in heaven. They talk and God shows Bruce that he has only been using his power in selfish ways and this is destroying everything, including Bruce's relationship with Grace. If Bruce wants a miracle, he's going to have to "be the miracle," giving voice to main theme of the film.The network holds a party to celebrate Bruce's promotion to anchor. By now, Grace is completely alienated and refuses to attend. Using his powers, Bruce finds a way to persuade her, but she arrives to find Bruce not quite resisting a sexy co-worker who's trying to seduce him. This is the last straw for Grace and she breaks off the relationship.Bruce arrives back at his lonely apartment, finally realizing that he's going to have to start using his special powers to help people in need. He can't use special powers to housebreak his dog, he has to use intelligence, patience, and ingenuity. He still tries to use his special powers to try to get Grace back, but it doesn't work since he's breaking one of the rules God gave him... that he can't use his powers to "mess with free will." When he complains about this, God replies, "Welcome to my world."Bruce races back to the warehouse where he first met God, and finds him mopping the floor. Coincidentally, it's seven o'clock on the seventh day since they first met, so God hands Bruce a mop and says, "Right on time." They mop the floor together and Bruce finally understands what he has to do to fix the mess he has made.Bruce makes amends with Evan, ensures that he is reassigned to anchor, and goes back to covering human interest fluff stories. He even finishes the photo album that Grace started to commemorate the highlights of their relationship. When Grace's sister (Lisa Ann Walter) comes to pick up Grace's stuff, and sees that Bruce has finished the album, she takes pity on him and tells him that Grace prays for him all the time.Bruce races to his computer and downloads Grace's prayers. A new one comes in and he realizes she's praying for him right then. He watches her cry and, seeing her desperate unhappiness, feels utterly forlorn and helpless. Wandering around the city in a state of emotional anguish, much like the night he got fired, he kneels in the middle of the road to pray and is smacked head on by an oncoming truckBruce suddenly finds himself up in the clouds face-to-face with God in heaven. They have a conversation during which God teaches Bruce how to pray. When Bruce gets the hang of it, God presses his fingers against Bruce's chest and there's a huge crashing buzz that Bruce finds very painful. Next, Bruce awakens to glaring lights in the middle of the road with an EMT defibrillating him.Next, we find Bruce in a hospital bed looking pretty bashed up. Grace comes and climbs in the bed, full of compassion and forgiveness. After his discharge, still in a cast, he returns to the bakery where we found him at the beginning of the film. The bakers display a huge cookie in the shape of a hypodermic needle to promote the Red Cross blood drive and a huge crowd has gathered to donate. Bruce announces that he and Grace are engaged, and goes off with her to give blood, repeating the film's theme, "Be the miracle." | comedy, fantasy, bleak, paranormal, humor, romantic, revenge, entertaining, sentimental | train | imdb | The results were not very promising, so it's nice to see someone in the movies setting a good example.Jim Carrey plays the part of Bruce Nolan, the nice guy mentioned above whose entire life seems to be falling apart.
Or even better, it seems to be breaking up by the blows of bad luck like an asteroid entering the atmosphere (a little metaphor that comes up when Bruce miraculously finds himself a gigantic news story later in the film).
Needless to say, he loses his temper on live TV in one of the funniest scenes of the entire film.Morgan Freeman delivers a fantastic performance as the Man himself, displaying a God whose infinite wisdom is somewhat reflected through Freeman's massive talent as an actor.
He is the kind of God who takes his job very seriously, but in such a way as to advise his followers (as well as the viewers of this movie) that there are times when you need to slow down and do some manual labor in life.
There are a lot of people in the world (maybe more than our share in America) who are so absorbed by their money and their possessions and their jobs and everything that they completely lost touch with the natural side of themselves as humans.One of the biggest strengths is that the movie is able to provide great advice to people in general about improving their lives, and this message is clear and acceptable regardless of the viewer's religion.
But despite the fact that I don't believe that God exists as an entity overseeing the universe or as a janitor dressed all in white who mops the floors of his downtown office in his spare time, I was able to appreciate the messages that were delivered in this movie.Jim Carrey's movies display this fantastic evolution that ties them all together and makes the newer ones look even better just because you can see how far he's come.
If you compare Bruce Almighty with movies like Ace Ventura (both of which I loved, by the way) or a lot of what he did before he got into film, it's amazing how far he's come.
Jim Carrey has unmistakably moved from the cheesy comedy of his past to become one of the most important comic actors working today.Jennifer Aniston also once again provides an excellent addition to the movie (as she did in the side-splitting Office Space) as Bruce's girlfriend, who becomes increasingly exasperated by Bruce's growing stress about his life as well as his negligence to ask her to marry him.
Bruce is endowed with the powers of God for a given period of time so that he can understand life a bit better, and he says a lot about himself when he uses the powers only for his own purposes rather than to help all of the people who pray to him.
The movie has plenty of time for Carrey to deliver some excellent jokes, such as when he says to God (who reveals that he's the janitor, the proprietor, the electrician, etc) that his Christmas parties must be real bashes, and to be careful about drinking, because on of him might need a ride home!
In a world that is about to be flogged with yet another American Pie film AND another Scary Movie (which are only scary because of their sheer barbarous idiocy), it's nice to see that there are still people making comedies worth watching.
And it's really funny.Jim Carry plays Bruce Nolan, a TV reporter usually stuck on the lighter side of the news, desperate to prove himself (more or less TO himself) that he can be taken seriously and do a good job in an anchor job.
The step-by-step fashion in which we meet the challenges of being God is much better than clustering his problems together, and is able to hide itself fairly well.As you probably know from hearing about this movie in the first place, Carrey's pitch-perfect acting stays in character (which, luckily enough, is him), and controls and gives atmosphere to the movie scene by scene.
Jim Carrey delivers his trademark antics in this little comedy gem about the responsibility of playing God..
Starring: Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Anniston I was really quite skeptical the first time I watched this movie.
I'll give you the low down.Jim Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a reporter who is down on his luck and feeling very unsuccessful with his life.
In the end he cries out for God to take it away and prays that His will be done, not Bruce's.Since it is Jim Carrey, the movie is quite amusing, and there are definitely some highly entertaining moments in it.
If you don't find the sight of a dog putting the seat down after using the loo funny, don't bother with the movie.Carrey, a reporter stuck in a rut covering 'lighter news' berates God when the whole of his life seems to be going to pot.
Carrey gets into the swing of having all of God's powers by making his girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston)'s breasts bigger, getting himself promoted, and answering everyone's prayers by single stroke computer commands.This is not a highbrow movie or even that memorable, but it is very well made within it's very limited intent, provides almost continuous laughs to Carrey fans, and even any religious cheesiness is likely to be inoffensive to all but the most narrow-minded god-squadders and anti-god-squadders.On the more thoughtful level, the film tempts us to speculate about Carrey's own career - stuck in his 'comedy' typecasting he has largely failed to make an impression as a serious actor even after winning two Golden Globes.
Well-crafted comedy suffers from occasional lapses due to conventional story elements, but it's good-natured and consistently laugh-out loud funny, with some terrific sight gags, clever ideas, and a perfect part for Carrey who makes a welcomed return to the kind of silliness that made him a star.
He gives his powers to him see if he can do a better job.'Bruce Almighty' is a film that I've loved ever since it's release.
Bruce (Jim Carrey) is angry at God and is given divine powers by him to be God for a week to see if he can do a better job.
Morgan Freeman plays a man symbolized here as God, and though it isn't his usual type of film or one of his best roles, he does excellent with what he is given to work with.
Although crude at times, the film does have quite a few laughs, from Bruce parting his soup in half like the Red Sea and the customers' reactions to him, as well as Freeman's seemingly laid-back and wisecracking image of God. It is overly exaggerated at times, and there is some crude humor, but overall it manages to be somewhat funny.
God, played by Morgan Freeman in a gleaming white suit, is inordinately angered and teaches Bruce a lesson by letting him take over the job of being the Almighty.
I would have said he has the ability to slam his fist down people's throats and rip out the laughs in bloody heaps.Honestly, I thought Jerry Lewis was the ultimate comedian-narcissist, but not even Lewis had God fawn over his own genius; still less was there a God who let him bumble his way into destroying the lives of those who evidently aren't hilarious enough to receive special treatment.This movie would have been so much more tolerable – for me, if not Carrey fans – if Bruce had been played by someone more likable.
`Bruce Almighty' is yet another `high concept' comedy starring Jim Carrey, this time as a self-pitying, put-upon TV news reporter in Buffalo who finds himself endowed with all God's powers when the Almighty Himself decides to take a little vacation.This material may seem tailor-made for Mr. Carrey's manic talents, but the makers of the film screenwriters Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk, and director Tom Shadyac have failed to discover any really innovative ways of approaching it.
It had been a long time since I went to see a Jim Carrey movie and I was definitely up for a good comedy.
Everything about this film, from the lazy, unimaginative script to the perfunctory performances, lead one to the inevitable conclusion that everyone involved in the making of it should be locked up and shouted at.It's a movie with a message (ah how sweet) and that message seems to be something to do with not complaining about your lot in life, but just accepting that maybe failure, poverty, sickness or whatever stands between you and a better life is simply what 'god', in his infinite wisdom, has in mind for you.
Everyone loves slapstick but this film purely plays on Jim Carrey's wellknown trademark.This film is not a poor comedy, it is another of those films that help fuel the fear into American.Few obvious messages in the film: A woman's place in society is to serve her man.
Interesting premise for a story, and it sounded like it could be fun, although the Jim Carrey starring did worry me, the appearance of Morgan Freeman made me rethink.The problem is that this is Mr Carrey trying to hold back from doing his wild and wacky rubber face stuff.
Morgan Freeman was quite good as God, but Carrey seemed to be trying to be even more self-consciously funny than usual (and that's saying a lot)!
Jim Carrey with God-like powers, and the best he can do is make a monkey come out of a dude's ass?
Jim Carrey has the ability to make anything funny, but in Bruce Almighty he doesnt make the most of his overwhelming talent.
I wouldn't waste any more of your time then already spent reading this on this movie.That said if ignore me and find my words echoing in your head after 10 minutes of "Bruce Almighty" in the theatre don't think it's going to get any better - just leave..
"Bruce Almighty" is a good example of the fact that "humor makes sanity."Although I noticed some resemblance to "High Strung" (1994, starring Steve Oedekerk), this is definitely Jim's best work so far..
Hard core movie critics who a looking for the story to make perfect sense, or people who don't like Jim Carey probably won't like this film.
Carrey's manic tantrums and crazy antics were never that funny to begin with, and by now it's been done to death.The film is divided up into three parts: An introduction where we get to know (and hate) Bruce, a middle part where Bruce has fun with his powers, and a third part, where Bruce learns the errors of his ways and becomes a better person.
And then there's Jennifer Aniston, she was OK, I am an Aniston fan, but it's kinda hard to be a big fan of her in Bruce almighty, because like freeman, there just isn't much to her performance in the film.
Also I can imagine that many of us might react the same way in the beginning if we were bestowed with the powers of the almighty.The key thing to remember is as they said in the movie that we all have free will, and how does God get people to love Him when there is free will to contend with.
Initially happy with the ability to use his powers to his own benefit, Bruce quickly learns there is more to it than just magic tricks.Having seen the trailer I assumed that this was going to be a really funny film and to it's credit, it almost manages to be for a lot of the film, but this is not so much to do with the plot as it is to do with Jim Carrey's delivery.
The film's best bits are where Bruce is allowed to run wild with his new powers and after this the film sags a bit as it then starts to look for something resembling a plot to try and form an ending around.The film drops in a scene from It's A Wonderful Life, which gives you a clue as to what it is trying to be it wants to be a warm fuzzy feelgood film too like Capra managed.
Much like Bruce he has the ability to bring joy to so many people.The basic concept of an ordinary man being given the Lords powers is funny on its own but what Carrey and the writers do is create a film that has all the big laughs that a comedy needs while also creating characters that we care about and can relate to.
The film also has a moral and a tenderness that Carrey can portray in.While it's clear that this is Carreys film he his ably supported by Jennifer Aniston and the then up and coming Steve Carell who would later become the lead in this films sequel Evan Almighty.The casting of Morgan Freeman in the role of God is also inspired and there are few actors who could play this part with such grace.Overall a great comedy that really acts as a vehicle for the fantastic comedic talent of Jim Carrey..
Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura) stars as Bruce Nolan, a news reporter who is down on his luck and blames God for his misfortune.
God hears Nolan's complaints and comes to earth and gives Bruce all of his powers in this charming and humorous romantic comedy.Comedy genius Carrey is on top form as Nolan with sharp wit and sophistication in the role of the news reporter.
His timing in executing his lines produces brilliant comedy and the physical humour he uses excels brilliantly with great direction from Shadyac.Carrey steals the show, but great support is given from established actors in Morgan Freeman (Shawshank Redemption) and Jennifer Aniston (Friends).
Prayers come in to Bruce, and he has "almighty" power to do whatever he wants, which, since this is a comedy, includes adjusting his girlfriend's breast size and destroying a co-worker's career.This movie marked the last Jim Carrey movie that most people saw in the theaters.
This is where the film hits its stride, the makers letting Carrey loose for a number of funny sequences as he plays God to further his own ends.It goes where you expect it to, and nobody else gets a look in as Carrey does his stuff, but the journey is a most pleasant one.
Jim Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a down-on-his-luck Buffalo TV reporter for whom things just never seem to go right.
If Bruce thought God was doing a bad job well here's his chance to prove he can do it better.So being given all of God's powers seems like a pretty good deal.
Turns out being God is no fun if you've lost the love of your life.As with any Jim Carrey comedy there are plenty of antics from the star.
Discontented television reporter Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey), on his worst day of his life, rages against God. He responds by appearing in human form (Morgan Freeman) and gives Bruce divine powers, challenging him to take on the big job of being the Almighty.As the divine-powered Nolan using his new gift, it is actually very hilarious to see him playing tricks on people that annoy him in his life, including the sidesplitting scene where he makes rival reporter Evan Baxter blunder big time on live TV.
I think this is cleverly depicted in this movie's solid plot.Overall, this is one of the better Jim Carrey comedies I've seen, where he is funny, but doesn't go overboard with the slapstick and silliness.
Bruce is having a really bad day and knows that god his picking on him.The next day he gets a call from someone and he goes to a place and meets Morgan Freeman who plays god in this movie.Bruce then said he could do better job then God , so God then give him his powers.It't take a bit for him to get used to the powers as first, then he starts having a lot of fun with being God, like making his wife boobs bigger who played by Jennifer Aniston and give himself a great car, getting his Job back also getting jerk fired from his Job.
Bruce is played by the unforgettable Jim Carrey who is brilliant at physical comedy much like John Ritter, Don Knotts, and Jerry Lewis in this film.
With a pretty good storyline and a talented leading cast, featuring Carrey, Jennifer Aniston and Morgan Freeman, there's no reason why this movie should have turned out this bad.
And that is the problem I have with 'Bruce Almighty.' Little of what Carrey did in this movie was enjoyable to me.
I admit that maybe it is wrong to judge Jim Carrey on his previous films, but what does he really expect when he makes Gem's such as 'The Truman Show' , 'Liar Liar' , 'Me, Myself and Irene' , 'Dumb and Dumber' , 'The Mask', and the 'Ace Ventura' films then produces, in Bruce Nolan's own words, such a mediocre film?Reason 2: Jennifer Aniston's role was criminally underwritten.
His ranting provokes God (Morgan Freeman) to allow Bruce (Carrey) to take control of his power and responsibility for one week.
Bruce Almighty is my 2nd favorite Jim Carrey movie, next to The Mask.
Jim Carrey meets God, gets powers, and becomes a new god.Very funny stuff in this movie.
That's pretty good for a Jim Carrey film.Seeing Bruce Nolan go through the expected emotions of attaining god-like powers is funny.
I'll get back to that.Jim Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a news reporter who is mad at God. And why not?
Well, God(ironically played by atheist-agnostic Morgan Freeman) comes to him and gives Bruce his powers for a week to see if he can do a better job.This, at first, seems great.
Bruce Almighty is a funny movie and some of the parallels of the film seek to propose a lesson to mankind, as absurd as it sounds with a movie starring Jim Carrey. |
tt1706620 | Snowpiercer | In 2014, an attempt to counteract global warming through climate engineering backfires catastrophically, unintentionally causing an ice age that extinguishes all life except the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a massive train powered by a perpetual motion engine that travels a circumnavigational track, created by the transportation magnate Wilford. By 2031, elites inhabit the extravagant front cars and the "scum" inhabit the tail in squalid and brutal conditions. Under watch by Wilford's guards, they are brought only gelatinous protein bars to eat and kept in their place in the social order by Minister Mason, while sometimes small children are taken away.
Conspiring with his mentor Gilliam, Curtis Everett leads the tail passengers in a revolt that he plans will take them all the way up to the engine. Overpowering the guards, they release security expert Namgoong Minsu and his clairvoyant daughter Yona from the prison car so as to disable the locks between cars. They take the car where insects are ground up to make their protein bars, and Gilliam suggests that if they take the subsequent water supply car, they will control any negotiation with Wilford. Instead, they are ambushed by a mass of masked men with hatchets led by Franco the Elder under Mason's orders; after a bloody battle Curtis sacrifices his second-in-command Edgar to win the fight. Mason is taken captive and Curtis, Namgoong, Yona, and three other rebels: Gilliam's bodyguard Grey, and Andrew and Tanya who have had their respective children Andy and Timmy taken away continue on with her as a hostage.
They travel through several luxurious cars and arrive at a classroom, where the teacher expounds to the children and the rebels on the greatness of Wilford and the "sacred engine". While distracted by the celebration of the New Year marking one circumnavigation of the globe, the teacher ambushes them, killing Andrew before Grey kills her. Further back, Franco and Mason's soldiers use the same distraction to kill the rebel army and many of the tail passengers. Franco executes Gilliam, and Curtis kills Mason in revenge. Curtis' group continues forward, followed by Franco, leading to a violent fight in a sauna car during which Franco kills Grey and Tanya before Curtis and Namgoong seemingly kill him.
At the gate to the engine, Namgoong reveals that he plans to use Kronole, a hallucinogen he has gathered from the elites they passed, as an explosive to blow a hatch to the outside, as he observed signs the world outside is thawing. Curtis confesses to him that shortly after boarding the train, the tail passengers resorted to cannibalism to survive, and he is haunted by his part in it. He was nearly ready to kill infant Edgar when Gilliam offered his own arm instead. After years of disdain for Wilford, Curtis seeks to learn what Wilford's intentions were. Franco is revealed to have survived and makes his way toward the engine.
Wilford's assistant Claude emerges from the engine, shoots Namgoong, and invites Curtis inside where he meets an aging Wilford. Wilford reveals to Curtis that his revolution was actually orchestrated by himself and Gilliam to reduce the population and maintain the balance of the sealed ecosystem, and subsequently orders the elimination of 74% of the remaining tail passengers. He explains the importance of using fear and chaos to maintain a necessary order and leadership on the train. After letting Curtis experience being alone for the first time in seventeen years, Wilford asks Curtis to replace him. Curtis appears ready to accept, when Yona runs in and pulls up a floorboard, showing Curtis that small children from the tail section are being trapped as replacement parts for "extinct" machinery; the tail section only serves to provide this resource to the engine. Curtis subdues Wilford and sacrifices an arm to save Timmy from this work.
Namgoong revives and finally kills Franco as Yona lights the fuse on the Kronole. Curtis and Namgoong tightly embrace Yona and Timmy, protecting them from the blast. The explosion triggers an avalanche that derails the train. Yona and Timmy, apparently the only survivors, emerge from the wreckage and see a polar bear, proof that life exists outside the train. | allegory, violence, boring, psychedelic, plot twist | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0131325 | Bowfinger | The movie opens with Bobby Bowfinger sitting alone in his office reading a script. As he finishes reading the script, he gets a twinkle in his eye, believing that he's found the perfect movie moment. The next day he gathers his staff and actors and tells them about the brilliant script called "Chubby Rain" that was written by his very own accountant Afrim. They then figure that this is their only shot at making a movie. So Bobby gets out his life savings - some $2200, and they start getting the equipment and the crew that they need to make the movie.Bobby then goes to meet executive agent Jerry Renfro at a chic Hollywood restaurant. He slips the maitre d' $20 and asks to be seated at the table next to Renfro. As he pretends to be an elite movie producer and fakes his way into having a conversation with Renfro about the script for Chubby Rain. He hands the script to Renfro and he reads through it, eventually agreeing with Bobby about the script's final moment which has the hero screaming "Gotcha suckers!!" that that is a great catch phrase. Bobby tells Jerry about the plans to get Kit Ramsey in the film's lead role. He then agrees that if Bobby gets Kit Ramsey, they've got a go picture.In Kit's mansion, he is unloading at his agent, telling him about how there's no good Hollywood moments and no good catchphrases anymore, that it's all style and no substance. The agent tries to tell him that the script he's just read is good and this movie has that moment, but it's not the moment that Kit is looking for. Kit then heads to his weekly appointment at Mindhead, a psychological collective that has obtained cult-like status among the Hollywood elite. Bobby has managed to sneak past the gate and heads to talk to Kit, now pretending to be a script delivery guy for a major Hollywood agent. He and Kit are having what appears to be a civilized conversation, and Bobby tells about how he's about to go for his appointment at Mindhead. Kit offers Bobby a ride to Mindhead, but when Bobby reveals who he really is, Kit goes ballistic and has him thrown out of the car.Back at the office, Bobby comes up with another idea - they film the movie without Kit knowing that he's going to be in it. His producer Dave thinks this is a bad idea but Bowfinger decides to pursue it anyway. We then see a young woman named Daisy, who is looking for work, getting off a bus. She goes to Bowfinger's "studio" where he has her audition for the female part in the movie. Daisy is a naive Midwestern woman who is a first time actress seeking fame and fortune.Kit goes to his meeting to meet Terry Stricter, who is the head psychiatrist at Mindhead for his weekly meeting. Kit talks to Terry about how he's better when he goes to his happy place and that he heavily believes in aliens and conspiracy theories. Dr. Stricter then reassures Kit that he will not do the one unforgivable action - show "it" (meaning his male organ) to the Lakers cheerleaders.Back at Bowfinger Films, Bobby is giving a pep talk to his staff about how this is the opportunity that they've been given to finally make a motion picture. And that once they're famous and successful, that Fedex truck will be making multiple stops at their studio with future projects, and that will be the day that they truly know they've made it. Bobby then wonders what exactly they're really in for with no star.Day 1: Bowfinger tells Dave to supply the equipment. He does so by checking out a camera from his day job at Universal, and using the van with S&Y Construction painted on the side. The first shot of "Chubby Rain" is Daisy chasing Kit's limo as it leaves his mansion for Mindhead. Kit has no idea what's going on as he looks out his window and sees the action behind him. Back at Bowfinger films, they are reviewing the first shot of the movie and Bowfinger realizes that this movie is going to work.Day 2: Kit and his agent are having a meeting at another chic Hollywood restaurant. Bowfinger and his crew are going to be there. Bowfinger cleverly disguises his crew to look like homeless people as they shoot the first scene of dialogue involving Carol and Kit. But Kit still has no idea what's going on, and Carol's approach and the dialogue about the movie - which discusses alien love, has made him even more paranoid than normal. Kit is resuming the conversation that he had with his agent about how there are no good scripts out there. Kit then heads to an emergency meeting with Terry Stricter. Kit then reveals to Dr. Stricter about his plans to show "it" to the Laker cheerleaders.Day 3: Daisy and Slater are discussing that they both need some more scenes with Kit, and are discussing the best course of action to take as far as getting some actual screen time with Kit. Although no one still has any clue as to the fact that Kit doesn't know that he's in the movie. Afrim even has written some extra scenes with Kit to incorporate into the movie.Day 4: Dave has tracked Kit to Mindhead. In the parking lot, they film the climactic scene in the movie where Carol confronts Kit in the parking lot. Kit, still unaware of his involvement in the film, thinks that someone is actually following him through the parking lot and begins to freak out. It's then revealed that Bowfinger has his dog wearing a pair of high heels following Kit through the parking lot. Back at the offices, they review the film and Carol is completely in awe of Kit's professionalism. Afrim is bragging about his screenwriting abilities to Daisy, who then sees an opportunity to get some more screen time in the film.Day 5: Kit is heading to an upscale department store to buy some new clothes. The store offers him the clothes for nothing if Kit makes an appearance outside their store. Kit demands $1000. Carol decides to confront Kit and then begins to talk about their screen time in the film. That makes Kit even more paranoid than usual. At Kit's mansion, Terry Stricter makes a house call and Kit talks about how the aliens might be following him. Dr. Stricter then offers to let Kit stay in Mindhead's special "celebrity quarters". Back at Bowfinger films, they're wondering what to do now that Kit's out of the picture. Bowfinger then instructs Dave to hold auditions to find anyone that even remotely looks like Kit to get the shots for the scenes that they need. He then settles on a guy named Jiff.Day 6: Bowfinger's first day of shooting with Jiff. who bears an unbelievably striking resemblance to Kit, has him running across US-101 in Los Angeles. Jiff fears for his life running across the freeway but Bowfinger assures him that the stunt isn't for nothing.Day 7: Bowfinger is realizing his cash supply is dwindling at an extremely rapid rate. Thankfully he has a date with Daisy that night, who's manipulating Bowfinger into getting some more screen time and time with Jiff / Kit. Bowfinger then catches a break when Daisy leaves her wallet unguarded and then takes advantage of her "lost" credit card and uses it to purchase tons of equipment that they then use to shoot additional scenes with.Day 8: The new equipment that Bowfinger purchased allows them to shoot some indoor scenes for the movie, and Daisy and Jiff have their on screen romantic moment together.Day 9: Just as no one knows where Kit is, Carol stumbles upon an opportunity to shoot the next scene for the film - Kit is appearing at the department store that he was in just days before. They borrow Renfro's one of a kind 1946 Buick to use to shoot the scenes with. This scene they approach Kit (or Keith Kincade) in the department store, once again freaking him out. Bowfinger is approached by a cop who stops him and asks for a film permit. Bobby instead offers him a part in the movie. As the scene unfolds, it freaks Kit out to the point where he does anything he can to run from what's happening.Day 10: While sitting at a diner eating breakfast, Jiff reveals that he's in fact the biological brother of Kit Ramsey - not just some guy who really looks like Kit Ramsey. This causes Bowfinger to have a change of heart as to how Jiff is being used in the film. But Jiff really likes working for Bowfinger and is excited to be a part of cinema where before he was working at a fast food restaurant.Day 11: A security guard discovers the "found footage" of Chubby Rain locked up with all the rest of the equipment that Dave was borrowing and reports it to Mindhead, causing Terry Stricter to become suspicious about what's really going on. Meanwhile, they're getting ready to shoot the film's big ending scene at the Griffith Observatory. Dave checks out a crane truck and then they disguise it to shoot Kit's car from overhead. The final scene begins to play out and Kit is heading to the Griffith Observatory as originally planned. Afrim disguises himself as a mutated alien causing Kit to really freak out and get in the car, Daisy follows, and then Slater follows with Jerry Renfro's car. Just as Kit is about to say the film's signature catch line "Gotcha Suckers", Bowfinger is discovered by Terry Stricter who was proven right about how the paranoid some times are actually being followed.Back at Bowfinger Films, the group is completely defeated and begins to wonder how they're going to turn their careers around - if they have a shot at all. That is until Dave comes back with the crew and tells Bobby about how they followed Kit around to obtain some extra shots for the movie. The footage proves to be useless until one piece catches Bobby's eye. They now have the permission they need.Bobby heads to Mindhead to show Stricter the footage they recorded of Kit. It turns out that he did in fact show "it" to the Laker Cheerleaders - only to be met with hysterical laughter. Bowfinger tells Stricter that they could use this and it'd make a great ending for Chubby Rain, but it would also ruin Kit's career. Stricter confers with his council and agrees.We are then shown the premiere of Chubby Rain. Bowfinger gets a front row seat and is stunned to watch his vision become a reality. Back at the offices, he's greeted with a standing ovation. Then - just as he predicted - the Fedex truck shows up at his door and hands Bobby an envelope. What's inside is a contract for Bowfinger films to make a Kung Fu movie in Thailand starring Jiff Ramsey. The movie ends with the opening of the newest film from Bowfinger Productions called "Fake Purse Ninjas". | comedy, satire, entertaining | train | imdb | Given Tom Cruise's recent unstable behavior, it might be the right time to revisit 'Bowfinger,' Steve Martin and Frank Oz's highly under-appreciated satire of the side of Hollywood we mere mortals aren't supposed to see.In Hollywood, there are no secrets--everyone knows who's secretly gay or insane, and who's slept with who, when, where, and what they got out of it.
But no one wants powerful enemies, and in the quickly shifting landscape of stardom, where one can transform almost overnight and with no apparent or predictable logic from b-list character actor or teen idol into a-list mega-star and Oscar-caliber actor who can open hundred-million dollar movies and make or break the careers of his/her friends and acquaintances, no one wants to be the one who spills the scandalous beans.For this reason, 'Bowfinger'--the 'Spinal Tap' of contemporary Hollywood--was barely made, and upon its release was greeted with a politely, barely restrained gasp of horror from everyone on the inside who recognized Martin's unusually liberal borrowings from the gossip files to construct this smart, dry, tastefully executed comedy about a has-been-before-he-ever-was actor/director who concocts a scheme to sell his hopelessly bad sci-fi action film project to a major studio by surreptitiously following and filming a major action film star, manipulating his behavior when able, and then later patching a film together with the clandestine footage and a few shots with a body-double.
Little does Bowfinger (the loser, played with typical charm and intelligence by the great Steve Martin) know that the film star he means to exploit--Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy)--is a paranoid, delusional basket case of psychological problems barely being held together (though, one suspects, also being held at the edge of sanity) by his mentors at MindHead, a bizarre, cultish, mind-controlling religion obviously meant to stand in for the Church of Scientology, the increasingly infamous faith/life method of numerous Hollywood stars, most notoriously Tom Cruise and John Travolta (musician Beck has allegedly also recently joined the ranks of Scientology, at the behest of his father and his girlfriend, the sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi, also a Scientologist).Bowfinger assembles a motley crew of Hollywood wannabes, which include the fabulous Christine Baranski as Carol, an aging stage actress who drives around town listening to old recordings of herself singing show tunes; Heather Graham as Daisy, a presumably naive young beauty who steps off the bus in L.A. and immediately sets about trying to sleep her way to the top (Daisy is based on nutso actress Anne Heche, who exploited Martin before moving up the food chain to a public lesbian affair with Ellen Degeneres, whose sit-com was then at peak popularity); Adam Alexi-Malle as Afrim, Bowfinger's corpulent Pakistani accountant and the author of 'Chubby Rain,' the ludicrous alien invasion script which Bowfinger believes will catapult him to fame and respectability; Jamie Kennedy as Bowfinger's camera operator, who smuggles equipment out of the studio lot where he works as a low-level crew man; and Kohl Sudduth as Bowfinger's sweet but vapid excuse for a heart-throb.
This gang of misfits works well together in various gags lampooning the film industry.But the film is stolen entirely by Eddie Murphy, first as Kit Ramsey, whose paranoid rants include the observation that a script his agent has offered him must be racist because the letter 'k' appears in it a number of times divisible by three ('KKK' appears in this script 111 times!) and the twisting of a remark made by the agent about a script--'it's not Shakespeare'--into a racist slur ('Shakespeare?!?
You callin' me a spear-chucker!?!), and later as Jiff, Kit's nerdy and socially inept twin brother, who unwittingly stumbles into Bowfinger's scheme and agrees both to serve as a stunt/body double and errand boy for the film ('Running errands would be a real boost for me!' he gleefully remarks).One of the great things about 'Bowfinger' is the opportunity to see Eddie Murphy create two ridiculous characters the way he once did so frequently on Saturday Night Live, before 'Bevery Hills Cop' send his ego to Mars.
Together, Martin and Murphy remind us how comedy should be made: with intelligence, humility, generosity--and, most importantly, scathing wit.Scientology gets fairly merciless treatment in the form of MindHead, a cult-like corporate religion led by Terry Stricter (Terence Stamp), who soothes the paranoiac Kit with new-agey acronym lessons (K.I.T=Keep It Together) and chastens him not to 'show it to the Laker Girls' when he hears the voice of Teddy Kennedy instructing him to 'bring the Laker Girls down a peg or two.' Given Tom Cruise's recent weirdness and the fact that he openly travels with a cadre of Scientologists who function like a Secret Service detail, it's not hard to suspect that Kit Ramsey was written with Tom Cruise in mind (the role was originally written for Keanu Reeves but was ultimately changed and offered to Murphy).Murphy's presence, ironically, may have undermined this film in its initial release, as audiences many audiences left theaters disappointed, having expected more of a traditional slapstick comedy with Murphy in a larger role (his scenes are easily the funniest, but Kit and Jiff or secondary characters).
After seeing how good the combination of director Frank Oz and actor Steve Martin was in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," I wasn't surprised that the two would make "Bowfinger" interesting, too.
It's not the caliber of "Scoundrels," but it's still fun to watch.Eddie Murphy, as usual, is responsible for a lot of laughs as he plays two characters: this paranoid New Age-type follower and a very nerdy stand-in actor.
"Bowfinger" is a movie about movies, with all the potential for in-jokery and self-indulgence that brings, but for the most part dispenses with the clever-clever, isn't-Hollywood-shallow stuff to deliver laughs.Martin's Bobby Bowfinger, a struggling producer desperate for a hit before he reaches the 'unemployable' age of 50, hits on the idea of putting action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) in his new sci-fi film "Chubby Rain" without the star knowing anything about it.
Steve Martin scored a bullseye with BOWFINGER, a smart and cleverly mounted comedy, which Martin also wrote, which stars Steve Martin as Bobby Bowfinger, a down and out Hollywood producer on the verge of going out of business who gets hold of a script to produce and wants big time action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) to star in it.
Murphy delivers one of his funniest performances as the lookalike and there are other effective contributions from Heather Graham, Jamie Kennedy, Christine Baranski,Terrence Stamp, and Robert Downey, Jr. A smart and winning comedy about the inner workings of modern Hollywood with a great screenplay and starring performance by Martin and Eddie Murphy in the dual role of a lifetime..
Stage actor turned Grade Z amateur filmmaker:Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) is Hollywood's least successful director.
When Bowfinger decides to make an ultra low-budget film with the hottest action star:Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy).
For Bowfinger's ingenious scheme, he decides to use a double for Rasmey, a nerdy look-alike (Also played by Murphy).Directed by Frank Oz (HouseSitter, Little Shop of Horrors-1986, The Stepford Wives-2004) made an wildly funny comedy that is actually based on a real incident in the late 1920's with actress Mary Pickford, which it's hard to be believe.
Good supporting cast includes:Heather Graham, Christine Baranski, Jamie Kennedy, Terence Stamp, Adam Alexi-Malle, Kohl Sudduth and Robert Downey, Jr. Murphy is fun in is dual role (especially in the role of the nerdy look-alike).
This leads to many very funny scenes in which Ramsey comes to believe his paranoid fantasies about aliens are in fact real, while the actors in the movie praise Ramsey's "style".Eventually, a stunt double is needed for certain scenes, and a Ramsey look alike, named Jiff, is brought on board.
He is lovable and yet annoying at the same time, to Murphy's credit, and a great movie character.I liked a lot of things about the movie, especially the eye it has for the way Hollywood works.
While the other main star Eddie Murphy, again pulls off another great double as both Kit and Jiff Ramsey.
Unfortunately he does have a knack of making too many films that are merely mediocre or worse; films like 'Mixed Nuts' 'Sgt. Bilko' 'Bringing down the House' and 'Cheaper by the Dozen'I am pleased to say that Bowfinger shows us Steve Martin close to his best; he plays the lead role and he also wrote this totally crazy, unbelievable and madcap comedy; and it is genuinely funny for all the right reasons.
Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) is a Z-list producer who lies, steals and schemes to make a movie out of a script written by his accountant.
He gets A-list Hollywood producer Jerry Renfro to greenlight the script if he could get superstar Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) to do the movie.
We see the story of a bankrupt would-be director (played wonderfully by Steve Martin) trying to make a scifi/action picture with a big star (Murphy) who doesn't even know he's in the film.
I also loved the way that by the end of the film, Martin's illegal aliens were the most professional and competent members of his staff.Bowfinger did manage to make a small profit at the box office, by many people have obviously forgotten about it.
Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy work as an excellent comic duo and sometimes overshadow the witty material of the movie.
was actually surprised that BOWFINGER got a mere average rating of 6.4 on this site because the IMDb is full of wannabe film makers who are gonna love a movie satirizing the Hollywood studios , a film both cruel and amusing in turn and it would be very interesting to see how the votes panned out .
I was very happy that the movie did relatively well on its initial release in 1999 because it certainly had the potential to be a flop at the cinema The premise is very simple: Film producer Bobby Bowfinger ( Martin ) has a knock back from Hollywood star Kit Ramsey ( Murphy ) so Bowfinger decides to secretly film him anyway and edit it into his movie .
Bobby Bowfinger himself seems to have been based on the infamous Ed Wood while watching Kit attend the MindHead classes one is perhaps reminded of John Travolta or Tom Cruise and I don't care what the critics say - Some of the gags like the scene with the dog in the underground car park are laugh out loud funny without ever going OTT All in all a fairly amusing satirical comedy that enjoys taking pokes at the American film industry and certainly one of the better films that have either starred Martin or Murphy.
And while the cast is good, this is all just an excuse to see Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy ply their comedic talents.
I love that even though Murphy's got his own signature laugh (Axel Foley, anyone?) he comes up with something completely new.This is a great comedy, beautifully paced and very funny.8/10.
The cast does justice to the brilliantly simple concept of a bunch of loser Hollywood misfits led by arch-producer Bowfinger (Martin) who want to make a film so badly that they film their 'lead', the A-list Kit Murphy (played by Eddie Murphy) without him knowing it.
Eddie Murphy is equally funny as both Ramsey twins, finding new and fresh ways to play paranoid and nerdier.
One of Steve Martin's best movies, and one of Eddie Murphy's best too.
This has several laugh out loud moments.Plot In A Paragraph: Hollywood, today: Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) a down on his luck actor-producer-director, has a script which a friend has written.
A famous producer(Robert Downey Jr) promises him to do it, but there is one condition: Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) Hollywood's number one star, has to be in it.
Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy team up to bring us this quirky comedy that's short on story but big on laughs.
First of all, while Eddie Murphy is in the film quite a bit, this is definitely Steve Martin's movie.
Martin plays Bobby Bowfinger, a washed up film director who gets a script from one of his employees that he feels is great movie material.
Steve Martin (who stars) wrote the script and has a ton of little "extras" built in (no--not actors but nuances).Beyond those little tosses of "gravy," just when you think you're getting a little bored and know where it's all going, this film tosses in turns that would make Bruce Willis jealous off the "Die Hard" series.
The problem is that in order to get this movie noticed by Robert Downey Jr's character, he has to get Eddie Murphy's character to play the lead role.
"Bowfinger" is brilliant with SNL's famous Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.
These two just work on so many levels with another comedic genius, Frank Oz, the director.The plot is that Steve is a struggling director who finally gets a break for a motion picture, but when the star he promised everyone turns down the leading role, he starts to film Eddie, the star Kit, without him knowing it.
It's like this: Steve Martin hasn't done a funny role in a long time, and people want very much to see him do that again.
I'm no huge fan of Steve Martin, maybe even the complete opposite but I've liked some of Eddie Murphy's earlier movies for example "Nutty Professor".
The movie is very entertaining and it makes you laugh out loud several times, it shows off two of the most famous comedians Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy from a very good side.
Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy are a nice couple and they play pretty good.
To fans of both Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, this movie promised to be the pinnacle of comedy entertainment, and fell short.
Although both actors are very funny in the film, they're rarely funny together.Despite what the previews allow you to believe, Murphy spends much more time in the movie playing Kit Ramsey (the actor) than Jiff Ramsey (the oafish brother).
If you enjoy a little silliness to go with your movie, then this should redeem most of the low-points.Overall, this movie is more like watching two screens, one with a Steve Martin movie and one with Eddie Murphy.
Bowfinger is an underrated movie- few if any comedy fans have heard of it but this gem starring Steve Martin and an excellent Eddie Murphy is a great film.
Eddie Murphy proves why he is one of the finest comedic talents and side actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Heather Graham are quite good.
Bowfinger is a hilariously charming film starring Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy set in the heart of Los Angeles.
There are great side roles for the likes of Heather Graham, Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Stamp but the film belongs to Martin and Murphy.
Continuing my plan to watch every Eddie Murphy movie in order, I come to Bowfinger (1999)Plot In A Paragraph:
Murphy looks like he is having fun playing dual roles, which he filmed in six weeks between finishing Life and starting Nutty Professor 2.
Which is a shame because it may be the last really funny movie either Murphy or Martin ever starred in.Bowfinger grossed $66 million at the domestic box office (on a $55 million budget) to end the year, the 35th highest grossing movie of 1999..
Steve Martin's story is the necessary plot bones that enable Murphy's comic star turns throughout this movie.
This very funny film, does owe a lot to Eddie's place in the movie, doubling as a geek brother of a block buster movie star, Kit Ramsay (the other Murphy role) who refuses to be in Mr Bowfinger's (Martin's) film.
It's Murphy's geek character scenes I loved the best, a great contrast to his serious, movie star brother who's not having the best of days.
There are some great lines too, ala: Steve Martin, who even wrote that Guy Pearce thriller, Traitor years later, although I've really never thought much of him as an actor, where he did show some great character work in some films, but like Sandler, they were slapstick, comedy based, which demanded that style.
Bowfinger (1999): Dir: Frank Oz / Cast: Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Christine Baranski, Heather Graham, Terrence Stamp: Hilarious romp becomes one of Steve Martin's best and most creative comedies.
When grasping director Bobby Bowfinger finally finds the 'perfect' script, a cheesy sci-fi story called "Chubby Rain", he decides to put everything on the line and give it a shot.Gathering together an ambitious young Ohio actress, a melodramatic stage actress and a laid back male hopeful.Armed with a handful of illegal immigrants for a crew, a tiny budget, and equipment stolen from a nearby studio, Bowfinger lacks just one thing, Hollywood's hottest action star, Kit Ramsey.Refusing to give up when Kit doesn't take the part, Bowfinger and his crew do whatever it takes to complete the flick - secretly filming Kit without his permission and using his nerdy look-alike brother to fill in for remaining scenes....Just as it was looking like there was no coming back for the two comedians, Murphy and Martin hit us with this.It's one of the best satires of the Hollywood machine in years, and precedes the awful Tropic Thunder by nine long years.There is a lot of fun to be had here.
It is so muddled that I believe the actors got confused and Frank Oz forgot to help them keep it together.As a desperate movie producer, Bobby Bowfinger (Martin) must get a movie going, or go under.
Steve Martin is the producer and Eddie Murphy is the star (as well as the star's goofy double) and when 'Bowfinger' came out, it seemed like a dream come true, two great comedic talents joining forces to make what would surely be a comedy classic.
*Special Stars- Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Heather Graham, Jamie Kennedy, Christine Braranski, Adam Alexi-Malle, Terance Stamp, Robert Downey Jr. DIR- Frank Oz.*Theme- Team work can overcome all odds. |
tt0846308 | Kit Kittredge: An American Girl | In June 1934, Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) is determined to become a reporter, and she writes articles on the typewriter in her attic while drama unfolds beneath her. The mortgage on her house is about to be foreclosed because her father lost his car dealership and couldn't keep up with the payments. He has gone to Chicago, Illinois to search for work, and to make some income her mother takes in an odd assortment of boarders, including magician Mr. Berk, dance instructor Miss Dooley, and mobile library driver Miss Bond.
Locally there have been reports of muggings and robberies supposedly committed by hobos. Kit investigates and meets young Will and Countee, who live in a hobo jungle near the Ohio River and Erie Lackawanna Railway. Kit writes a story about the camp and tries to sell it to Mr. Gibson, the mean editor of the Cincinnati newspaper, but he has no interest in the subject. She adopts a dog, her mother buys chickens, and Kit sells their eggs.
Then a locked box containing her mother's treasures is stolen, and a footprint with a star matching the one on Will's boot is discovered, making him the prime suspect. The sheriff goes to find Will and Countee. However, Will and Countee have left the hobo jungle. Kit, Stirling and Ruthie then set out to investigate on the incidents and clear Will's name. It then turns out that Mr. Berk, along with his assistant Frederich and Miss Bond, were actually the ones behind the robberies, framing Will and the rest of the hobos for the crime. Kit then becomes a local hero. They found out that Countee has been pretending to be a boy. On Thanksgiving, the hobos bring food to Kit's mother and Kit's father returns home. Mr. Gibson arrives to show Kit that she is in print in Cincinnati's major daily newspaper. | inspiring, depressing | train | wikipedia | The characters were believable, the plot interesting, there were humans instead of androids in this movie, there was no sex, violence, or bad language in it, and this old lady LOVED it.
She seemed to get it, and loved the way the story had a good ending where the main character had a personal triumph and a family endured adversity.Take your kids to see this movie.
But what surprised me the most was that Kit's family came face to face with the personal dilemmas of the Depression.
There were also some very interesting characters such as the mobile librarian.I spoke to a mother as she came out of the theater with her 5 year old (who liked it).
film critics,we know what we like and what is a good movie, worth your time and money.
This mom is real and not just another self superior empty mom as played in an empty way in some family films like the mom in Drill bit Taylor.
This film reminds me that movies are not suppose to be aimed at one particular age group in order to improve ticket sales.
Abigail Breslin is headed for Oscar nomination in this move and I would not be surprised to see this movie receive and Oscar nod for best character set.
Yes, Abigail Breslin does maintain a strong presence but without EQUAL interaction with the other characters, the movie would not have played so equal across the scenes.The story is based in 1934, just a few years into the Great Depression.
I've been told stories from people who have lived through the Great Depression and I can tell you that the film comes pretty darn close to reality.Abigail Breslin and her cohorts has this not so secret clubhouse in the family's yard.
As the movie progresses, we see the club forming ideas to help the less fortunate on the street where they live.Movies like Kit Kittredge gives me hope that there are a few Hollywood idea men that are left who can present to the world, movies laced with a healthy dose of 'nice' and topped off with a dollop of a kindred spirit..
It's also about time girls were the focus of movies.
The historical references are very accurate, the story is accurate as to what was happening the the Depression, and children can learn a lot from this movie.
Also, children were respectful to their elders, it's a "clean" movie, but there's a great message and it's about time.
No, it's not going to win any Academy Awards, but it might give kids today an idea of what life was like during a particularly troubling period in American history--just like NOW!!!!
American girls, including older gals like me, will enjoy this one very much, Breslin shines brightly!.
Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) is the only child of a Cincinnati couple in the 1930's.
An aspiring newspaper reporter, Kit spends some time in her room, tapping out her stories on an old typewriter.
Her father (Chris O'Donnell) owns a car dealership and her very pretty mother (Julia Ormond) takes care of their lovely home, where she often hosts garden teas.
But, the Great Depression is gripping the nation and soon Mr. Kittredge is out of work and traveling to Chicago to look for a new job.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kittredge is forced to take in boarders to make ends meet, including a dancer (Jane Krakowski), a magician (Stanley Tucci), a mobile librarian (Joan Cusack), an uptight mother (Glenne Headley) and her young son.
Also, will Kit see her fondest wish and get published, all the while solving the mystery of who took her family's safety box of money and other costly possessions?
This is a nice, nice film for American families with young girls.
The supporting cast is likewise wonderful, with O'Donnell very fine as the sensitive father and Ormond, especially, doing a terrific turn as the beautiful, courageous mother.
The film looks sensational, from the Kittredge's gorgeous home and grounds to the costumes to the wonderful cinematography.
In short, this is a lovely film for young girls and their families, with abundant laughs, lessons, and love.
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is a touching story about a young girl (named Kit) who is living during the Great Depression.
The movie follows Kit and her family as they struggle through the tough times of the Great Depression.
It is a very moving movie, with several emotional scenes, especially near the end.This movie introduces viewers personally to the struggles that people had to go through during the time period, and I feel that this is one of the strengths of the movies.
Not only is it touching and moving, but it also educates the viewer on what the time period was really like, giving a personal perspective to an important period of history.In terms of acting, I absolutely loved Abigail Breslin as Kit. She is an amazing actress, and I think this is one of her best performances.
All of the other actors give great performances, as well.This is a wonderful movie that can be enjoyed by anyone, kids and adults alike.
I was able to see this the other day with my child, and I must say I thought it was a decent little family movie.
Just before an hour i happened to see this movie "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl".
I recommend this movie for kids, this is a soft and sweet story which we all have stopped looking back and appreciate the beauty of it.I am surprised the theater was empty, hoping its because of the weekday.
I like the kids role very much, i have seen her previous movies and a big fan of her.
Kit Kittredge-Happy Days Are Here Again Arrive With this Film ****.
A vastly under-rated, marvelous film with Abigail Breslin proving that she will be a quite a star as the years go on.Set in May, 1934 in depression era Cincinnati, the film wonderfully captures the depression period and its effects on the inhabitants of the city.
The story then turns into a stealing caper and as usual, the hobos are blamed until Kit and her brood of friends prove otherwise.
Inspired by a popular doll, this film about a family struggling to make ends meet during the depression of the 1930s is entertaining if formulaic and predictable.
Everybody is so nice and politically correct that it's enough to induce nausea for adult viewers, which is OK because this one is aimed at tweeners and young teens who read the American Girl books.
The first-and only, to date-American Girl movie to be released in theaters!
Fortunately, you can't!Abigail Breslin stars as Kit Kittredge, the ambitious, soon-to-be journalist whose family gets torn apart by the Great Depression.
With a colorful supporting cast including Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack, Jane Krakowski, Wallace Shawn, and Madison Davenport as Ruthie, everyone brings something extra to the movie.Every girl who owns an American Girl doll, no matter which doll it is or how long ago she got her, probably went to the theaters to see this movie.
It doesn't matter if you don't own Kit; I'm sure your doll will love to watch the movie with you.
She'll recognize how special it is that Hollywood make a theatrical movie about one of her fellow dolls.I have six American Girl dolls and have been enjoying them for twenty years.
For me, it's 3, but it is indeed a good family movie!
It's a sanitized look at life during the depression, with job loss, home loss, and the struggle for a family to make ends meet.
Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) wants to be a reporter for the Register and city editor Mr. Gibson (Wallace Shawn).
He has to go to Chicago to look for work while her mother Margaret (Julia Ormond) rents rooms in the house.
The boarders include Mrs. Howard (Glenne Headly) and her son Stirling, dance instructor Miss Dooley (Jane Krakowski), mobile librarian Miss Bond (Joan Cusack), and magician Jefferson J.
Kit starts writing with the help of Ruthie, Stirling, and hobos Will Shepherd (Max Thieriot) and Countee (Willow Smith).
There are probably too many characters and too much story for a general kids movie.
"Kit Kittredge" began well, and I was impressed by the nice sense of period that the film invoked.
Chris O'Donnell, who plays her father, is quite believable too, as is a nicely understated Max Thieriot in the role of young hobo Will Shepherd.
If you want a truly great American Girl movie, go instead for "Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front," which is outstanding in every respect..
You can't help but think about how disastrous the current situation in Hollywood is when the umpteenth representative of the infamous category "cliché ridden, sugar coated American cute movies" arrives, and you've got to go see it because your niece is crying about itsince the first announcement.
I didn't think Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl could've been an exception to the rule, but I was hoping it kind of would because I thought the atypical scenario, different era and diverse cast could have delivered a rather unique movie.
Kitt Kittredge is about a little girl in Cincinnati trying to become a great journalist during the Depression, while her parents and the US are struggling to get out of the tragic events that were occurring at that time.
Although Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is about ten year-old Kit's (Abigail Breslin) family struggles during the depression, I doubt anyone but six year olds will enjoy it.
It's been a while since I've seen a cliché-ridden, sentimental film like this---most 10 year olds I know would head for the nearest Harry Potter installment for sanity.In her faux Nancy Drew act, Kit investigates a series of robberies in the money-short, foreclosure-ridden neighborhood.
Even award-winning Breslin seems dazed by the pedestrian plot and plodding direction, which leave no tear- possibility unexplored, no stereotype unexploited (benign hobos, shifty magicians, daffy librarians, lovable kids, bumbling adultsthe list goes on).Those hobos: I don't think Woody Guthrie would recognize their clean clothes and pure hearts, much less a compound that looks more like summer camp than hideout.
Her manic, dense librarian could appeal to three year olds.But this considerably older critic isn't buying the schmaltz except that Kit Kittredge: an American Girl is an example of American movie-making at its worst.
Kit's no nerd, but she's stuck in a nerds movie.This was a real shame because the American Girl series provides young women with good role models and strong moral messages.
Life in our story.us the great depression.the importance of such movies is the meaning we have torn off the branding irons flesh that branding iron,our hides...how can we understand another person without the movies we love!
They pretend in silent dreadful terror.Kit Kittredge:an American girl.
Give credit where it is due, and once again Breslin dishes more than a dose of sunshine again over a story that puts the spotlight on one of the darkest times in American History.
Although the film is told from the point of view of a budding writer who happens to be 10 year old, with the help of a consistent and very talented supporting cast, the emotions come through honestly and without much of the unnecessary and over dramatized productions that now pass as drama.Chris O'Donnell is perfectly cast as Kit's father, the perfect prototype of the American family man who is now facing total disaster as his world crumbles around him.
Here is a film where there is strength, humor, and many more emotions shown with restraint and class.Soon, their home becomes a magnet to boarders and other outcasts of society, and we see some of the era's stereotypes beautifully played by first rate actors like Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack, Glenne Headley, and Jane Krakowski.
There are some intimate scenes where one captures how these people tried to escape the darkness outside by finding strength in each other and humor in whatever little entertainment came their way.The film is short, yet it is full of detail, courtesy of some fine writing, a fantastic production team, and very lovely camera-work.
Very pleasant movie, set in the 1930s depression era..
All the small kids knew was that whenever your family resorted to selling eggs, you were about to lose your home.Cute 11 year old Abigail Breslin is Margaret Mildred Kittredge, 'Kit' for short.
Kit's mom has to resort to taking in boarders to make ends meet and keep the house from foreclosure.
But Kit doesn't believe it and puts her investigative skills, a sort of Nancy Drew approach, to work helping solve the crime.Overall a good movie, entertaining with some good actors.SPOILERS: The crime was a product of the magician, his friend, and the mobile librarian.
It's the Great Depression, and young Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) has a great life.
Soon, however, her world is turned upside down as all her friends suffer bankruptcy and foreclosure, and soon it affects her very family.Her father goes to Chicago to try to find work, and meanwhile her mother opens her home for boarders.
Kit loves the new company, as everyone has a special story to tell, but things go downhill when her friend Will (Max Thieriot), a hobo, is accused of stealing.
Kit and her young friends do some detective work to try and find the real robbers, which leads them on the adventure of their young lives.A poignant, moving, exceptional film...all the more realistic because of what people are going through in their own lives right now..."Kit Kittredge" shows the true meaning of charity, friendship and family.
A truly can't miss family film!.
If I was only a ten year old girl (especially at heart) I would have loved this.
being a middle aged guy I liked it.Its a sweet little movie about Kit who wants to be a reporter and the Depression era troubles and the mystery of a stolen lock box.
For give the lack of details but it was too sweet for me and while I cared enough to leave it on to let it play to the end I was more into wrapping Christmas presents.Recommended for any girl/woman reading this who is still 10 years old at heart.6 out of 10 for old guys like me.
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is the film that Nancy Drew should have been.
As it is set it the Great Depression, it may have more contemporary significance than intended.The film chronicles the life of Kit Kittredge, a young girl with a strong interest in journalism.
The house is in danger of being foreclosed, so Kit's father, Jack, decides to look for work in Chicago.
Kit's life worsens even more when her article concerning camaraderie in the hobo community is rejected by the local newspaper because it doesn't appeal to societal perceptions about the homeless.
Two young "hobos" named Will and Countee respectively visit the Kittredge house frequently.Several painful scenes of non-plot progression later, the police report a burglary with a single (and extremely obvious footprint) as the only evidence.
The movie ends with a heartwarming feast in celebration of Kit's detective skill and her article's acceptance in the paper, and the hobo's innocence.
Oh, and Miss Dooley finds a man to seduce in G-rated stylized acting.Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is an unusual film.
Kit's father goes to Chicago to find work, but is unable to find any prospects.
An adult will find something admirable in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.
In an age of cynical adult-laden innuendo in children's films (see Shrek
), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl provides a welcome and encouraging divergence..
Abby Breslin: An American Girl..
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008): Dir: Patricia Rozema / Cast: Abigail Breslin, Chris O'Donnell, Julia Ormond, Joan Cusack, Max Thieriot: Charming family film about realizing one's potential.
Set in 1934 during the Great Depression, Kit dreams of being a reporter but after her father loses his job at the bank, her mother opens her home to strangers.
Abigail Breslin is winning as Kit who observes all who arrive but ultimately sets out to clear the hobos of blame.
Kit Kittredge is a 10 year old aspiring journalist who lives in an upper middle-class suburb of Cincinnati in 1934.
Instead of being turned down and not getting her article published until the movie is just about over (and that's the way the plot actually plays out), it might have been more interesting if somehow Kit enlists an adult to get herself published and then her articles become a sensation.
In my 'alternative' scenario, Kit is found out at the end and 'exposed'; she falls from grace but is redeemed after her final article exposes a team of con men who have been preying upon the good members of the community.As it turns out, The Kittredge 'First Act' is replete with politically correct, anachronistic ideas.
The rich kids are equated with the conservative, right-wing Republicans of today.The film's second act begins when Kit's father loses his car dealership (it's interesting that he was still able to have a thriving business as late as 1934!).
Then there's Mr. Berk, played by Stanley Tucci, who wows the kids with his magic tricks (another scene that did not have to go on as long as it did).In addition to the boarders, Kit meets two Hobo children, Will and Countee and decides to investigate the Hobo 'way of life'.
Much too late in the story, the Hobo children are accused of stealing all the boarders' valuables which Kit's mother had placed in what she believed to be a 'safe place'.By Act III, we've finally discovered that Mr. Berk, the magician, his associate and Miss Bond are a bunch of con artists who have been victimizing poor boarding house denizens all over the city.
Instead of becoming an exciting muckraker from the beginning, Kit's new found fame comes a little too late in the storyline.Unfortunately, little Abigail Breslin is once again used by adults for nefarious purposes. |
tt3809294 | Board to Death | The camera begins with blinds suddenly opening up. This establishes the starting point of the film where we are brought into a world of lust, envy and crime. The camera slowly tracks back to reveal a woman smoking from the left side of the screen and a man looking intensely at her on the right inside a house. Hard shadows of the blinds are displayed across the man's face while the woman is back lit to create a silhouette. The camera ends the tracking shot, establishing a master shot, revealing a table in between the characters with an unknown board game. The man narrates how his life is going nowhere, stuck with a woman, his wife, whom he suspects has been unfaithful. The words on the board spell out LUST from the wife's side. The wife takes another smoke and exhales as the camera captures a close up of her red lips in slow motion.The husband narrates about her lips and how he first fell in love with them at a club. The scene cuts to the wife and husband at a club at opposite corners of the room. The light is spot lit on both of them. They stare at eachother intensely as the camera cuts between their faces in slow motion, tracking inwards. He narrates that she is his alone; he compares her to jewellery, his most precious treasure. The scene cuts back to the house. He further narrates about what murderous things he would do to anybody who tried to take her away from him. The scene cuts back to the club with the wife smoking at the bar and the husband walking towards her in slow motion. He narrates that he desired his wife to be a prisoner to him, somebody who he could control and manipulate, watching her every move. As he says this, the husband locks his wife in a position where her back is facing his chest and her hands tied, being held tightly by him.The scene cuts back to the house. The husband begins to spell out a name, whilst staring intensely at his wife. He ends up with NICHOLSON. The wife looks at the name and moves her eyes back up to stare at her husband. She takes another puff of smoke and gives a subtle smirk, hinting at the fact that she is proud of what she may have done with Nicholson. The Husband narrates how Nicholson is a close friend of his who works at a club as a bartender, a player who lives life with no consequences. The husband intends to change that with a bullet to his head.The camera cuts to a shot of the husband entering a club. The bouncer is seen conversing with staff and stops the husband on arrival to search him. The Husband narrates how the bouncer could very well be one of the men that slept with his wife, it could be anybody. He further narrates that he is looking for a fight tonight, looking to get noticed and anybody that gets in his way would end up in a hospital wing. As the bouncer checks his pocket, the husband beats him up, breaking his hands and nose, leaving him bleeding on the floor. He advances through the dance floor and sits at the bar. He smiles at Nicholson and begins a casual conversation with him. He mentions his wife, hinting to Nicholson that he knows about their affair. Nicholson's smile slowly begins to fade and quickly takes out his shotgun behind the counter. Before Nicholson could aim, the husband grabs the gun and strikes him on the face, disorientating him. The husband jumps over the counter and repeatedly punches Nicholson in the face whilst he is immobile on the ground. He grabs the shotgun from the counter and shoots Nicholson as he begs for his life.The wife gets out of her chair and puts the kettle on. The husband reveals how he will confront her about her affair when she comes back. The wife returns to the table. The husband stares deep into her eyes, the room begins to shake as the sound of the kettle begins to grow louder and louder. CLACK. The shaking stops and the kettle boils down. The name MAR is spelt. The husband wonders who the letters could be the name of. Could it be Marshall? The husband narrates how Marshall owes him money from a long term debt and figures that taking his life would be a high enough price to cover the costs.The scene cuts to Marshall's house. The husband is seen sitting at the dining table, smoking. A car is seen arriving outside the house. Marshall enters the house and calls his wife, informing her that he is home. He enters the kitchen and sees the husband with a gun at the table. Marshall is confused and starts to panic. The husband tells Marshall that he knows what he has been doing with his wife. Marshall asks where is own wife is. The scene cuts to the living room where the wife is seen tied up to a sofa and Marshall with his arms up in the air at gun point by the husband. The husband tells Marshall to kill himself to save his wife. He further informs him that once he is dead, his wife will be comforted by other men, just like how Marshall comforted the husband's very own wife. Marshall kills himself and the husband begins to smile.The scene cuts back to the house and the wife puts down the letter K spelling MARK. The Husband sees this and narrates how he had killed the wrong person; he was too pre-occupied by who the next perpetrator was that he couldn't wait for all the letters on the board to be revealed. The wife looks at him, slightly moving her head from left to right in disappointment with a smirk. The husband talks about how her smirk is irritating him, questioning himself whether she knows what is happening, whether she is in control of his actions.The husband wonders about how many more men she has cheated him with. He ends up with the word Quantity. She smirks, takes a smoke and puts the name Sven on the board. He becomes angry at the new placement and narrates how there are seven more men out there that have touched his woman and Sven is one of his closest friends. Although Sven is a young priest, he would never have thought of him being an unrighteous individual, giving into such temptation. The Husband narrates about the powerful influence he is aware of that his wife processes over men, a rare beauty that no man can pass. He continues to talk more about Sven, a man whom regularly provides service on Sundays which the husband attends. Whilst the husband is narrating, cuts of Sven reading a prayer in front of fellow church goers is shown.The scene cuts inside of a confession booth with the husband confessing to Sven. Before he speaks, he quotes a passage from the Bible about lust and temptation. He speaks to Sven in the booth, confessing his sins of the murders he has committed over his wife. He explains that she is a demon that consumes men if they get close. Sven says that we are born in sin but man can fight temptation. The husband turns to Sven and questions this, as he implies that he knows what Sven has been up to. The husband aims his gun through the booth and shoots Sven in the head.The scene cuts back to the house and the husband narrates how there are two people down and five more to go. He mentions how he almost forgot about Mark and needed to deal with him as soon as possible. The wife slowly slides the door open from her side of the table, revealing a gun. Four more names are revealed on the board with a total of seven people he has on his kill list. There is one name which is unfinished on the board. As the husband narrates, the wife puts down the rest of the letters to reveal the husbands name. The husband is slow to realise this and before he does, he looks up and is shot by the wife.The husband had killed all of the wife's lovers but when it came to his name, he could not kill himself, only the wife. The wife planned to kill him from the very start, playing a game of death with her husband. The wife sits back down and continues to smoke. The scene cuts to black and the credits roll with audio from the scene playing in the background. | revenge, murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0285492 | Cube 2: Hypercube | The film starts with a young woman named Becky (Greer Kent), shown to be trapped in the Cube. She enters another room, but unknown to her, the room has reversed gravity, as she is pulled up, and it is implied that she is killed.
Some time later, a woman named Kate (Kari Matchett), detective Simon (Geraint Wyn Davies), a blind girl named Sasha (Grace Lynn Kung), engineer Jerry (Neil Crone), game developer Max (Matthew Ferguson), lawyer Julia (Lindsey Connell), and an elderly woman named Mrs. Paley (Barbara Gordon) find themselves trapped in brightly lit cubes, each with a panel on each of the six sides, which are doors to other rooms. They come across Colonel Thomas Maguire (Bruce Gray), who says that they have to solve the code in order to leave the mysterious place. Just as he finishes, a wall begins to close in on the group. The group escapes while Thomas stays behind, while Kate and Simon watch in horror as Thomas is disintegrated by the wall. Later experiences around the cube reveal that gravity can operate in different directions in each room, while Mrs. Paley, who is revealed to be a retired theoretical mathematician, and Jerry, realize that they may be in a tesseract, or a hypercube. Kate notices the numbers "60659" everywhere they go.
The group soon realizes they are connected to Izon, a defense contractor. While in conversation, Mrs. Paley opens a panel to reveal her being killed by Simon, who is decapitated soon after by crystal beams. Jerry thinks that it is a parallel universe, while Max and Julia think it is an optical illusion. Later, while the group is sleeping, Simon realizes that he is in the tesseract to look for Becky, a missing Izon worker and the first person revealed in the film. Meanwhile, Sasha hears a noise and awakens everyone, due to her acute hearing. The group finds a floating square in the middle of the room, which grows into shifting variations of a tesseract, before expanding into a lethal and rapidly spinning frame. The group flees into another room, but Jerry is injured by the tesseract. Trying to call Jerry, the rest of the group watches as Jerry is shredded by the tesseract, which grows rapidly. Kate remains to save Sasha, who is still trapped in the room, narrowly avoiding death as they group in one of the corners of the room where the tesseract can't reach, as the tesseract conforms back to a cube and disappears. Sasha and Kate are separated from the group, as a result.
Simon starts to suspect that Mrs. Paley is an undercover spy, so he gags and ties her up, but crystal beams start protruding from the walls. Simon tries to save Mrs. Paley, but when he sees that there isn't enough time, as the clinging Mrs. Paley refuses to release him, he stabs her with his knife. Max and Julia, disturbed that Simon killed Mrs. Paley, leave and abandon him. Julia tells Max she must be dreaming, and then kisses him, because she says she would never kiss him in the real world. They begin to have sex, but unbeknownst to them, they are in a room that is zero-gravity and time dilated, and age prematurely and die, as Kate finds the corpses floating in the air later, still in mid-coitus. Simon, alone and hungry, goes insane. He encounters a parallel Jerry and the missing Becky, killing both of them.
Meanwhile, Kate finds grisly alternate realities of her death in other rooms, and is horrified. Sasha tells Kate that time and space are distorted where they are, that the tesseract will implode and reality is collapsing. She reveals that she is Alex Trusk, a computer hacker who is responsible for the creation of the tesseract, who also reveals that when she discovered that Izon was putting people inside the tesseract, she tried to stop their operation, but was pursued so she "fled into the only place they wouldn't follow;" the tesseract. Kate, however, still believes that there is a way out. Kate then finds Simon and stabs him in the eye after he grabs her in another room, as Simon appears behind Alex, old and blind in one eye, proving Alex's space-time theory. Alex claims that they "are all dead", which causes Simon to snap her neck, believing that if they are all dead that it won't really matter if he kills her now.
Kate finds that the tesseract is shrinking, and kills Simon with the knife. She looks at the numerous duplicates of Jerry's watch and realizes that "60659" is the time that the tesseract will implode; 6:06:59. and that she is there to take back Alex's necklace which was filled with confidential information on Izon. The hypercube starts to wear away, and Kate opens a panel in the bottom, revealing a black void. At 6:06:59, she jumps in just when the Hypercube implodes.
Kate wakes up in the hands of Izon authorities in an unknown factory. She gives them the necklace, but because of their confidentiality, she is shot in the head and killed by one of the Izon operatives. An Izon authority reports to an anonymous and unidentified source that "Phase 2 is terminated", as the operatives leave the facility, and the film ends. | psychological, murder, violence, alternate reality, psychedelic, claustrophobic, romantic | train | wikipedia | Even more, the Cube's logical image has been destroyed, replaced by this machine gone horribly wrong in the fourth dimension.The best part of the film is how it continually keeps you on your feet, long after you've seen it.
I think that the script writers managed very well to combine interesting evolving inter-personal dynamics with the bizarre realities of physics (time and 4 dimensions).Although the film was very similar in some ways to Cube 1, it was cunningly different in others.
I think it was acceptable, if you caught what happened exactly (I've only seen one review here (Sareji's) which seemed to actually catch what happened at the end), but as others have pointed out, it lacks the much deeper and fascinating metaphorical meaning about society and individual responsibility.Although slightly flawed, this is an intelligent and unusual film, and, I think, deserves to be seen, but only after Cube 1, because it plays with some of the viewers expectations, and extends on many of the ideas of the first film..
I am a big fan of the first Cube movie and have seen it at least 15 times.
One thing that worked so well in Cube 1 were the interesting characters and the fact that there were not many in the film at all.
This doesn't always work in most films, but it worked perfectly in Cube 1.If there was one thing which i really did not like in Hypercube, it would have to be the ending.
If you love the original Cube you should check out Hypercube, if only to watch it one time....
I heard this was more of a remake than a sequel, but actually it's a straight-out sequel.Again, a seemingly random group of people are abducted and imprisoned in a possibly enormous matrix of anonymous Cube-shaped rooms, with doors in all six surfaces, and a number of fiendish & deadly booby traps (and scary noises).
Hypercube (moving on from Cube) adds gravity, time and parallel universe traps into the mix.It's good because: it's broadly similar to Cube, which was excellent.
And there's a fair bit of hammy over-acting, deliberate comedy, and a curious lack of desperation & fear (whereas Cube was superb in all these respects).There are a lot of well-intentioned sequels which (by their very nature) cannot string you along with the same 'fear of the unknown' in the original, and this is the case here.
I also believe that having access to a bigger budget for a sequel is often a bad thing, since it's easier to go for flashy special effects at the expense of story, acting & dramatic tension - as in this case.
(brilliant opening credits though)But Hypercube - although not as good as Cube - does work as 'next step' sort of sequel.
I was just surprised I laughed so often, without it ruining the film for me.If they make a third one (the ending does indicate that they could), they should spend the vast part of the budget on a really good concept/script & director, get really-good-but-unknown STAGE actors (Hypercube came across as more of a soap-opera level of acting), and go back to the ingeniously wicked & creative traps a la Cube - because the CGI route does not look like a road worth following any further...
"Cube 2: Hypercube" is a weak and confusing entry after such a great original.**SPOILERS**Waking up alone, Kate Filmore, (Kari Matchett) Simon Grady, (Geraint Wynn Davies) Sasha, (Grace Lynn Kung) Max Reisler, (Matthew Ferguson) Jerry Whitehall, (Neil Crone) Tom McGuire, (Bruce Gray) and Mrs. Paley, (Barbara Gordon) each find themselves trapped in a large structure together.
Forced to take action, they try to solve the riddle of the cube and escape before they're killed off.The Good News: There isn't a whole lot here to really like.
Outside of these great ideas, the film is pretty hollow.The Bad News: There's a lot here that doesn't work.
This is a downer and makes the middle seem like it takes forever, and coupled with the weak, confusing story and lack of inventive traps, really brings this down.The Final Verdict: With a couple of decent scenes and ideas thrown in, this is a really hard movie to recommend to anyone.
Just a few minutes ago I and some 200 fellow geeks were the very first people seeing an official copy of "Hypercube", the sequel to "Cube", one of my most loved films (the date of today's premiere was 7/31/0:30 a.m.).
Like "Blair Witch", the original "Cube" is in itself a pretty perfect film which doesn't really scream for a sequel.
Like "Blair Witch 2" "Hypercube" is not really bad - in fact there are many good ideas in it, there is excitement, the timing is good....it is just not as good as "Cube", which is, for a sequel, simply not good enough.
It says a lot that the original director of "Cube" was not involved in this project - instead we have Andrzej Sekula, apparently also a newcomer.I will try to describe the film without giving away too much....
The design of the cube is like a less interesting version of the first film: the rooms are white and pretty bland.
There are time-paradoxes, parallel universes, gravity shifts...all in all a worthy successor to the first cube, I'd say.The story itself unfolds pretty much like in the first film, but with some surprising twists - not all is like it seems!
Whereas it came as a real shock in the first film to find out that one of the prisoners was actually the architect, this time around pretty much everybody of the bunch was involved in the construction of the cube one way or another...
"Cube" was a SF/Twilight Zone inspired variant of "huit clos" by Sartre, and like "huit clos" it cannot really have a sequel, as there are only two options: continue/explain the story of the first film (bad!) or repeat the situation of the first film with some new twists (also bad!).
"Hypercube" sort of tries both at the same time, and ends in a kind of limbo: it won't bore you, but it want excite you as much as the first film (actually the ending might p*** some people off badly...).
If you like films that leave you with questions instead of answer, this second cube only adds to the general intrigue and I suspect that they may be more to come.It's not for everyone.
We still have a bunch of people stuck inside identical looking rooms trying to get out.The actors feel slightly more professional this time, but the characters are carbon copies of the previous ones - so what's the point really?
It did nothing to enhance the plot.If I were to run down a checklist grading this movie here's what it would look like:Acting: exaggerated version of all the characters in part one, all more terrible.Story: More convoluted than the first.
Worst Film for as long as I can remember, The acting absolutely stinks, the old lady is the most annoying actress I have ever seen, It was so bad I fell asleep through parts and had to keep rewinding the film to see what happened, avoid this film at all costs, I feel really sorry for people who pay to watch this..
The dialogue is annoying, the (over)acting horrific, the F/X are not nearly as charming as in the original, the characters are undeveloped, and the ending is a complete cop out.Poor writing is the main thing I blame for HYPERCUBE's weaknesses, but I suspect that another issue enhancing the crappiness is the fact that none of the original creative crew played a part in this poor-man's sequel.If you enjoyed the first CUBE enough to buy it, rent HYPERCUBE.
A lot has been said about this movie...Fact of the matter is that this story builds on a theoretical concept that can never be materialized, nor properly explained by anyone to mortals, then adds mediocre acting and a "mysterious super-boss" theme ending in a despair effort to commercialize.Flop.To the movie audience, it rates below average.
90% of the original Cube plot plus a bit of cheap special effects, plus one or two new conceptual ideas.
I sincerely enjoyed the allegorical nature of the first Cube, but the chaotic nature of this film seems to be merely a license to 'do a lot of cool stuff' with special effects and camera angles without having to fasten it to logic.
The tree movies have different points of view of the cube; the first movie had an industrial theme, the cube seems more like endless elevators with deadly traps, the second one had a technological avant Gard point of view plus had some similarities between the characters of the first movie, that explore how they get into the cube; the prequel cube Zero is the less complex movie but it had the premise of what is outside the cube and what are the purpose of the cube.The second movie, I say is more a remake with an abrupt ending than sequel, the character between the first two movies have some similarities, but the still this movie can get apart from the first one.The plot doesn't add something new to franchise but the perils of the cube can make the movie exciting, talking more about the cube It was really fun that the producers took the claustrophobia of the cube to new levels by painting the walls with white so the deep can have no deep perception at all, but it was more fun to see the cube looking like a industrial factory this time was OK too because the cube looks gave a futuristic dystopia future..
Bad. I watched the first movie - Cube yesterday I really enjoyed it.
The ending of the film was puzzling ( though I guess it gives a way to the third part) and somewhat unnecessary.I am really not sure if there is one really good point about this movie.
Cube was great because it was very creative and the actors/characters were all very good and engaging with believable stories somehow sucked into the mysterious Cube and not knowing just like us viewers what was going on and trying to figure it out.
The first CUBE released back in 1997 is one of the most effective films I've ever seen; mystery, character development and horror combined into one disturbing masterpiece of Sci-Fi and human examination.
One of the most important parts of the film that made it so effective is the fact that no answers are given as to what the hell is really happening; the titular cube just exists and the people trapped inside are forced to survive.
CUBE 2 on the other hand, disregards that and assumes that its audiences are stupid and spoon feeds the answers somewhere in the middle of the running time.Fine, maybe the effects were good enough for a movie of this caliber and some of the twists are nicely done but this doesn't speak for the whole film; bad acting, forced mystery, bad script, you name it: this movie sucked.
Terrible writing, even worse acting, and half explained characters led me to the barely formed conclusion in which I merely said, "Huh?" I assume the film makers were attempting to create the same atmosphere of the unknown as in 'Cube.' What ended up occurring was a somewhat mish-mashed situation that didn't fit into the movie at all.To be honest, I don't think the film makers even knew what was going on.
or why and who put persons in the cube?).Cube 2:hypercube answers the questions and,by my point of view,it's better than the first one.I liked that the movie doesn't have a happy ending and there are very original things in the plot(for example,the fourth dimension).The only bad thing about this movie are the performances.Cube 2:hypercube is a very fun and original movie that answers the questions made on Cube.I totally recommend this movie.Rating:9.
It has been turned and curved and thrown around and smashed into a pulp, and that was only the start of what happened after I watched the demented, drunken art-house flick from Hell that was Cube 2: Hypercube.This was the sequel to the original Cube, with worse acting, no budget and not even a lick of common sense.
Not so with its sequel, Cube2:Hypercube.Nothing gets me rolling my eyes harder than a science fiction film that makes up the rules as it goes along.
As they slowly meet up with each other, they find out that they are inside a hypercube, a cube where all of the rooms move around each other and there are parallel universes and the time in motion changes and loads of crap like that.
Cube was very interesting movie when it showed but second part "Hypercube" seems like something that is going on far far in the future.
and the worst of all when you watch this movie you won't be any smarter because movie makers didn't explain anything about Cube (history, architecture, reason for existing...) So if you like to see a bunch of people in one place having no idea about anything that happens around them watch this film if you don't want you won't miss anything interesting..
This movie leaves you in suspension(in a good way) and I think they should make a cube 3 to sum it up.
Even though most sequels aren't very good I was really excited to see Cube 2...wow...I can't even begin to explain how bad this movie is...it was a rip off of the first but with no tension, no build up, no quality of any kind.
In the first Cube you felt like you were really watching people caught in this claustraphobic, little Twilight Zone world...This was such an apparent soundstage with really bad acting, terrible writing and...well, you get the point..
As I said though, the first movie was very good as a character study.This second Cube at least tries to give a reason for this new cube, as nonsensical as it might be.
And while you watch it, the only thing you can think of is: just how good the original was.In this movie, it almost like they have seen the first movie, because that almost instantly know whats going on.
The final 10 minutes will seem really cool and mysterious to those more easily amused, but those of us who know what a thinking-persons movie looks like, know that the writers just had no idea how to end the thing.
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All CostsWhen I first saw the original Cube,I don't think I fully absorbed it and appreciated it for the original and ingenuitive piece of sci-fi that it was.On second viewing,however,I rectified this mistake and immediately added it to my film collection.It was,for all it's greatness however,still only a low budget,independent film,and I certainly didn't expect a sequel to be made.In a way,it's kind of flattering that a film company like Mosaic Pictures would want to do it,and,it would seem,put their own spin on it.But that's exactly what they've done.They haven't tried to craft an original story to follow the first film up with,they've just created a film with an almost carbon copy plot and characters,matched by cliched dialogue and set-up.The original's unbeatable impending sense of claustrophobia has been completely desecrated and in it's place ,we have tacky,unconvincing special effects,supposedly designed to cover up the cracks.But by the end,you wonder why the characters wait around for the traps to kill them instead of just giving in to terminal boredom.**.
I really liked the ending too, which should really appeal to Sci-Fi enthousiasts.You won't be disappointed by this movie if you're into Sci-Fi but if you're not and haven't seen Cube 1, it's also worth checking out..
I've seen cube which was very original with average acting and character development.This film is baaaad.
Plot was like a late saw movie except not funny (with dumb twists and some bad acting)
Coming from someone who loves Cube, I feel confident in saying that Hypercube managed to take everything good about the original and toss it out the window.The first thing that really upset me about Hypercube is it's uninteresting characters.
That would be reason enough not to make a sequel, but they went ahead to put in a very generic and uninteresting story.The only good thing I can really say about Hypercube is that it tried to something new and different.
In that respect, I think it would have been a lot better as a standalone movie since it wouldn't need to follow any rules set by the original film..
In this movie it's just "oh no its a poorly animated thing run away!!" and the characters just go through random doors to escape.I know I keep comparing this film to the first, that is because I need to emphasize: THIS MOVIE IS NOT LIKE THE FIRST ONE, AND ISNT GOOD ON ITS OWN.
Cube 2 was an immensely convoluted film with very few like able characters.
This movie isn't bad, but it has badly written characters, mediocre acting, and a decent story.
The way I see it, this movie removes some of the mystery with the original Cube, which is a little bit of a shame.
It's not even that the movie effects were bad or the acting was poorly done in any way, it's just that there is absolutely no point to any of it.
With no idea on why they are there, or how they got there, they must all work together to try and find a way out, but as strange things start to happen, they all start becoming more & more desperate.OK no beating about the bush here - Cube 2: Hypercube is the biggest load of dross and is arguably one of the worst movies you'll watch.
I believe Cube 2 was every bit as good as the first one, though the main idea had nothing new or original.
I did see the original "Cube" movie before seeing this sequel, though that was several years ago and my memory of it is getting fuzzy. |
tt0074383 | Death Machines | Three separate duo's of karate kick-boxers fight it out under the watchful eye of glamorously sinister Madame Lee, (Mari Honjo) an ersatz Asian "Dragon Lady." Her handsome and dapper Asian assistant, Mr. Lu, also stands observing nearby. They watch two Asian kickboxers fight, two African kickboxers fight, and two Caucasian kickboxers fight. One Asian kickboxer (Michael Chong) defeats the other by slashing him bloodlessly with a machete, and then one African kickboxer (Joshua Johnson) defeats his opponent by piercing him with a pole. One of the white kickboxers pulls out a knife to stab his opponent, but the opponent (Ron Marchini) quickly pulls a pistol out of an ankle holster and shoots the other kickboxer dead. The Dragon Lady observes stoicly, but is apparently impressed with the fighting talents of the three survivors, and admits to her assistant that "They will do nicely."Soon Madame Lee enters a darkened room and has a conversation with a mysterious man in the shadows who apparently funds Madame Lee's operations. She tells him that the drug worked exactly as he had said it would, and now "they're completely under our control." This man gives her an eight by ten photograph of a mustached man know as Mr. Gioretti (Chuck Katzakian). The man in the shadows says that Mr. Gioretti runs an out-of-date crime syndicate, and he tells Madame Lee that they need to run another test of their "death machines," and Mr. Gioretti "and his people" should be used for that end. She quickly agrees.The scene shifts to Mr. Gioretti relaxing poolside with two women when he picks up the nearby phone. He gives firm instructions to the person on the other end that he wants hits on two business men. The first one is Hong Lo (Eric Lee), the proprietor or a local karate school, the other being Nathan Adams, a bank vice president.A sedan pulls up to the curb outside a high rise building, and a man carrying a satchel gets out of the car and goes inside the building and up to the roof. He pulls a rifle out of the bag and starts to take aim at Hong Lo, who is walking below nearby on his way into the karate school. The gunman tries to zero in on his target, but before he can get a shot off, he's waylaid by the Black Death Machine (BDM) who grabs his gun. The hitman pulls out a pistol and shoots the BDM, but the bullets have no effect, and the BDM continues his assault. Soon the Asian Death Machine (ADM) and the White Death Machine (WDM) all converge on the gunman hoisting him onto the ledge and then tossing him off the roof and down onto the hood of his illegally-parked car. An aging meter maid in the process of ticketing the car recoils in horror as blood spout from the gunman's mouth.(Note: From here on, the three "Death Machines" will be referred to as the DM's. Individually they will be referred to as WDM (White Death Machine), ADM (Asian Death Machine) and BDM (Black Death Machine.).)The phone rings and Mr. Gioretti is awakened as he lays in bed with a woman. He is incredulous at the news of his gunman falling from the building. Later that day, another hit man takes aim at the bank vice president Nathan Adams as he jogs in a park-like setting. As he's preparing to take a shot, a vehicle pulls up about fifty yards behind him. Madame Lee's assistant and her three DM's get out of the car, retrieve a bazooka from the trunk, and soon annihilate the assassin with one well-directed smoky blast.Now at his office, Mr. Gioretti takes a phone call from an associate, George. Mr. Gioretti learns that another one of his hitmen is dead -- this one "blown up." He engages in a heated conversation with George, who speaks to him from a phone booth. Mr. Gioretti demands to know who's killing his assassins, but George insists he doesn't know. As George loudly protests his ignorance, a bulldozer appears in the background and starts for the phone booth. After a few moments, George notices the bulldozer and starts to holler for it to stop. The driver of the renegade bulldozer is revealed as the WDM, who steers the vehicle straight for the phone booth and ultimately crushes it. A confused and angry Mr. Gioretti hears George's anguished screams over the phone line.Next, Mr. Gioretti finally receives a phone call from Madame Lee who informs him that she is the one killing his men. She tells him that in this town, if anyone wants someone killed -- they must deal with her. Although he's originally reluctant, Mr. Gioretti agrees to meet with Madame Lee, and he soon arrives in a small propeller-driven airplane at a small dirt airstrip where his driver, Mike, awaits him. They then drive to Madame Lee's mansion, and Mr. Gioretti and Mike have a nasty exchange pertaining to whether Mike should accompany Mr. Gioretti into the house. Mike is disappointed and annoyed when his boss orders him to go to "Tony's" to eat dinner. The reprimanded driver Mike peels out in the driveway leaving clouds of dust as Mr. Gioretti watches angrily.Mr. Lu lets Mr. Gioretti into Madame Lee's mansion and tells him to wait. Madame Lee immediately comes down the staircase, and engages Mr. Lee in some acrimonious conversation. They agree that she will supply him with a "demonstration" of her professionalism.Meanwhile, the driver Mike goes for dinner at "Tony's," a quaint Italian eatery. As Mike sits alone in front of a large picture window eating his salad, Tony the owner brings him a plate of spaghetti, and goes into a long monologue about the quality of his food. Seconds later, when Mike tries to dig into his meal, he discovers a red Buddha buried beneath the spaghetti, and calls Tony back. Right after Tony apologizes and takes the plate away, the headlights of a huge truck appear through the picture window. It immediately heads for the restaurant, causing diners to scatter. The renegade truck drives right through large picture window and into the restaurant. All the diners rush outside, but Mike gets corralled by the three DM's. Mike fires six shots at the DM's, but to no avail since they seem impervious to bullets. The ADM soon closes in on Mike with a machete as the BDM lurks behind, carrying one large wicker basket.Meanwhile at Madame Lee's, it's now after dinner and a waiter pours more wine for her and Mr. Gioletti. She soon tells Mr. Lu that it's time to bring in her demonstration, and Mr. Lu brings in a large wicker basket and places it on the table. The waiter again freshens Mr. Gioletti's wine as the basket is opened by the confused crime boss. He's shocked to see that Inside is the severed head of his driver, Mike. Mr. Gioletti quickly pulls a revolver out of his pocket and shoots the waiter right through the bottle he's holding. Mr. Lu quickly enters the room and points a revolver at Gioletti, but Madame Lee peevishly waves him off. Mr. Gioretti and Madame Lee then agree that now they're even, and can do business. So Mr. Gioretti now gives her eight by ten photos of the two men he had previously tried to have be killed -- the Karate school owner Hong Lo and the bank vice-president Nathan Adams. Madame Lee comments that she knows that the Karate school guy is using his establishment to front drug money. She also wonders aloud why he would want the bank V.P. killed when they'll immediately be another bureaucrat to replace him. Madame Lee gives the photo of Hong Lo to her assistant who takes it upstairs and gives it to the three DM's. Mr. Lu tells them to leave no witnesses.The scene shifts to Hong Lo's Karate school where a class with about twenty students practice. Young blonde and very serious student Frank Thomas practices along with the others. Soon Hong Lo enters the class holding a small red Buddha and asks if it belongs to anyone. After no response from the class, he says that he'll just keep it. Moments later the class is suddenly disrupted by the three DM's crashing feet-first through the front windows and wreaking mayhem on the class. All the students are beaten and butchered by the relentless DM's who use their fists, feet and knives and swords that they pull off the walls. Hong Lo gets electrocuted by being shoved into a live breaker panel. Frank Thomas has his right hand brutally severed, but survives.Soon two Police detectives, the veteran Lt. Clay Forrester (Ron Ackerman) and his less-experienced partner Jerry Farnham (Edward Blair) arrive on the scene. The younger Farnham becomes nearly overwhelmed by the carnage and is visibly shaken. Other officers stroll around the corpses, checking for signs of life. The detectives rush back to the station, only to be met by the mocking attitude of detective Doyle criticizing Forrester for missing "human relations" classes. But then the detectives rush off to the hospital to interview the only living witness, Frank Thomas.At the hospital, the two detectives have a few words with Joe, the uniformed officer who is guarding the door to Frank's room. When they enter, they encounter a young nurse in the room. Under questioning, Frank remembers the red Buddha sent to Hong Lo, and he threatens a hoped revenge against the DM's who killed his entire class and took his hand. On their way out of the hospital, the detectives are stopped by the head nurse, who shows them that a red Buddha has been delivered for Frank.Meanwhile, at Madame Lee's mansion, her assistant Mr. Lu informs the three DM's that they left a witness alive at the Karate School massacre. He tells them that he already sent the survivor a red Buddha, and they should finish the job.At the hospital, the nurse and Frank have a discussion as to whether he should have a hook or a cosmetic hand as a prosthesis. Frank is peevish, and doesn't like either choice. After the nurse leaves, Joe sees an orderly pushing a gurney with a corpse on it down the dimly-lit hallway. The orderly is accompanied by a lab technician. As the gurney passes closely to the guard, the WDM jumps out from beneath the sheet atop the gurney and karate-chops the surprised Joe. The orderly and the lab tech are revealed to be the two other DM's, and they karate-kick Joe. The WDM enters Frank's room, shrieks, and seemingly stabs Frank in the stomach with a large knife. As the three DM's are escaping, Joe shoots the WDM in the back. The WDM gets up and Joe shoots him again, and he rises again. The third shot Joe fires is aimed for the head, and the WDM howls in pain as the bullet grazes his forehead over his right eye.Madame Lee sits and sips red wine in her mansion when Mr. Lu enters and informs her that one of her men has been injured and captured. She is incredulous and becomes angry and slaps Mr. Lu harshly across the face. She approaches the BDM, and goes to slap him too, but he intercepts her arm before she can do so. They exchange nasty glares.At the hospital, Detective Forrester and partner Farnham go in Frank's room, and congratulate themselves on their ingenuity in substituting pillows under the bedsheets instead of Frank, who had been moved to another floor.Madame Lee turns out the lights in her mansion, and ascends the staircase to her private quarters. She is surprised to find the BDM sitting in the room. She angrily informs him that he is not allowed in there, but he just sits and glares at her. He angry expression softens into a sinister smile, and she snuffs out the candle lighting the room.Forrester visits Frank at the hospital, and tells him that they're transferring him to a different facility. Forrester tells Frank that he's spoken with Frank's old boss at the bar, and he wants him back on the job. Frank agrees to go back to bartending. At the police station, Forrester is first hassled by rival detective Doyle, who tells him that the suspect from the attempted homicide at the hospital (WDM) is coming in to be interviewed by him, not Forrester. Captain Green enters and dresses-down Forrester for his slack attention to paperwork and missing his Human Relation classes.Two uniformed officers bring in the WDM, who now has a small white bandage taped on his forehead, and they escort him into an interrogation room. Doyle and his partner Rossi go in to interview him, but their suspect appears to become ill as he slowly lowers his head down onto the table. Doyle gives Rossi the okay to uncuff the suspect, and the WDM immediately goes on a rampage. He karate-kicks Doyle and Rossi, and then goes out into the office area and begins to take down all the officers there, including Forrester, Farnham and Green. One detective tries to shoot the WDM, but the suspect manages to grab his arm and deflect the shots onto another detective. Then Doyle tries to shoot the WDM, but instead hits an office worker who the WDM uses as a shield. The entire place is in mayhem, as the WDM escapes out a window and hijacks a police car that he slams into the wall of the station. He reverses his way out, and makes a three-point-turn, but crashes into another vehicle. Forrester and Farnham run out of the station hoping to recapture the suspect, but he has fled the scene.Next the WDM strolls into a sleazy roadhouse diner, and uses the payphone. He soon sits at a table and the elderly proprietor brings him a cheeseburger and a glass of water for no charge. The old man tells the WDM that he needs to find God and gives him some pamphlets. Next about a dozen bikers converge on the diner and begin to mock the WDM, calling him "Tarzan" and asking if he can hear. The ringleader of the gang approaches the WDM, and notices the handcuffs dangling of his wrist. The WDM starts karate-kicking the bikers, but one of them slams him onto a table which crashes onto the floor. But in through the door walk the other two DM's, who proceed to make short work of the bikers by karate-kicking them unconscious. They pick up the WDM off the floor and he recovers and walks out. The old proprietor hands the WDM the religious pamphlets as he leaves, but the WDM throws them atop a fallen biker after he kicks him in the head.Shortly thereafter, Madame Lee plays chess by herself and sips from a wine goblet. He assistant leads in all three of her reunited DM's. She suggests that they continue on with there work since Giordetti has asked her to get Nathan Adams to resign his position at the bank. She says that Giordetti wants it done without violence, and since Adams has a daughter, they should use her as "leverage."Nathan Adams's daughter speaks with him over the telephone. Soon Madame Lee's assistant and the three DM's enter her apartment. She screams as the DM's throw her to the floor, and the ADM removes his jacket. Mr. Lu takes out a camera and begins to photograph her.At Nathan Adams's office at the back, his secretary, Kate, buzzes him to let him know that Mr. Lu -- carrying a wicker basket -- is there to see him. The secretary sends Mr. Lu in, and Adams inquires as to what he wants to meet with him about. Mr Lu pulls out some photographs from his basket and tells Adams that "the others in the photos are not important, but he will recognize his daughter." Adams becomes angry and refuses to succumb to this "cheap shakedown." Adams suspects the Giodetti is behind this plot, and he will not resign his position. Mr Lu pulls a gun on Adams, and smacks him with it telling him to go to the filing cabinet. Mr. Lu handcuffs Adams to the filing cabinet, and goes to the basket he left on the desk. He takes out a big red Buddha with some sticks of dynamite and a timer taped to it. Mr. Lu locks the office door and bids Adams goodbye before exiting through a different door. Adams sees the bomb and begins to yell for Kate to come in and help him, but since the doors are locked, she cannot get it. He yells for her to find the key, and she rummages through her desk drawers to no avail. Kate yells to him that the keys must be in his desk, and he yells for her to go get help, and she frantically exits. Adams watches the ticker on the bomb get closer to the detonation time, and he's relieved when the bomb doesn't explode. A second later, the bomb detonates, showering the street and sidewalk in front of the bank with broken glass and debris.Back at Madame Lee's, Mr. Lu approaches her and gives her a photograph of Nathan Adams. She tosses it into the fireplace, and the two exchange knowing smiles.Frank Thomas walks through the debris at the Karate School crime scene, and he experiences some flashbacks of the three DM's breaking in. Soon Florence Nightingale enters, and they have a discussion, and decide to go back to the bar where Frank works for coffee.At the bar, an exotic dancer shakes her stuff on a small stage. An irate pool-player complains to owner Ned about the price of a one-dollar bottle of beer. Frank and Florence sit and talk at a table, when the dancer Sharon asks Frank for change. Ned sends Frank to get more beer and then he sits down with Florence to discuss Frank. He tells Florence not to give up on Frank. The irate pool-player becomes angrier when he cannot get the jukebox to work, and he starts pounding on it. Ned and Frank tell him to leave the jukebox alone, and the man slams his beer down on the bar and starts a bar fight by cracking a bottle over Ned's head. Soon another pool-player joins in and hits Frank with a pool cue. Florence stares in disbelief as the place is wrecked. The second pool-player punches Frank in the face and throws him atop the bar, where he remains unconscious. The two pool-players leave after throwing a chair through the front window. Florence hovers over Frank, shaking her head sadly.Soon thereafter, Florence and Frank kiss in his apartment. Later he tries to button his shirt with one hand as Florence lays in bed. They seem depressed, discussing changing the past, and how badly Frank wants revenge against the three DM's. Then Frank suggests that they go to a nice motel for a few days. Soon they leave the apartment with Frank carrying a small suitcase.Madame Lee next informs Mr. Lu that Giordetti will soon be arriving at the airstrip. Lu asks Lee if whether Giordetti will need the standard receipt. She says yes, and they had better give him the receipt, before he gives one to them. The three DM's descend the stairs behind her, all zipping up their matching black windbreakers. They all get into a car driven by Mr. Lu.
As Frank and Florence are driving, Frank see the three DM's go by in a car driven by Mr. Lu. Frank tells Florence to get the license plate number, and then kicks her out of the car to call Forrester. She runs to a pay phone at a roadside vegetable stand, and speaks with Forrester, who tells her to stay put. Forrester tells his partner Farnham to put a trace on the license plate number, and meet him at the car. As he's rushing out, Forrester is stopped by Captain Green who angrily wants some paperwork from Forrester, who tells him about the three DM's being spotted and adds "Screw you!"Mr. Lo drives the three DM's to the airfield where Mike had previously picked up Mr. Gioretti, with Frank trailing him. Lo parks the car and gets out to watch a plane coming in. Frank parks nearby and runs to hide behind some tall grass and watch. The plane lands and taxis back to Mr. Lu's vehicle. Either Mr. Gioretti or a man closely resembling him, alights from the plane and hands Mr. Lu a suitcase, and then gets back into the plane. As the plane taxis away, the three DM's get out of the car and retrieve from the trunk the parts to a bazooka. They assemble it on the shoulder of the WDM, and as the plane taxis toward them, he fires off a shot that explodes the plane. Frank watches from behind the grass as the plane's wreckage burns. Mr. Lu and the three DM's all get back into the car and drive off. Frank runs back to his car and follows.Soon Mr. Lu and the DM's are parking on the street in front of Madame Lee's mansion. Frank has followed them and stealthily watches from behind his car as they enter the house. He runs through a wooded area to get a better viewpoint.Inside the mansion Madame Lee is descending the stairs as the men enter. Mr. Lu tells her that Gioretti has been taken care of. The three DM's begin to climb the stairs, rudely pushing Madame Lee in the process. She gets angry and begins to sneer before telling Mr. Lu that she thinks "it's time to take care of those three." Mr. Lu pulls out a pistol and starts up the stairs, just as Frank is making his way through the trees to the mansion. Mr. Lu enters the DM's room, closing the door behind him. From outside, Frank watches and he hears three gunshots. Frank then slowly creeps up to Madame Lee's door, pushes it open and enters, allowing the door to close behind him.Frank slowly walks up the stairs till he's outside the DM's room. He goes to push open that door, when suddenly it flies open and Madame Lee pounces out wielding a machete. She swings it at Frank, who backtracks and stumbles down the stairs with Madame Lee in hot pursuit. She appears to land some hits on Frank as he grunts and yells. At the bottom of the stairs, he falls out through the front door onto the step with Madame Lee right behind him swinging her machete. Just then Forrest, Farnham and Florence pull up in a car and all jump out. As Madame Lee raises the machete high in the air to strike at Frank, Farnham pulls out a gun and shoots Madame Lee in the stomach. She screams and grabs her waist just before blood starts to leak from her mouth. Florence runs up to Frank and he tells her that he's okay. Forrester walks by them into the mansion.Lt. Forrester climbs the stairs in the mansion and arrives at the top landing by the door to the DM's room. He pushes the door open and there dead on the floor with blood dripping from his mouth is Mr. Lu.Three men in stylish suits enter an airport and go up to a ticket agent who hands them their boarding passes, and tells them to enjoy their flight. The three men turn away from the counter to reveal that they are the three Death Machines. The screen freezes with their image. | violence | train | imdb | They don't really make films like Death Machines anymore and that's a bit of a shame.
Its story centres on three fighters – the death machines - who are directed by a female crime boss by way of a mind control drug.
There are lots of martial arts fights; heads and arms are chopped off; a truck is driven through restaurant window and a bulldozer flattens a man in a phone booth; an aeroplane is taken out by a bazooka; a banker is blown up by a time-bomb and a professional hit-man is thrown off a roof; an assault on a karate school is attempted with predictably action-packed results; there's a biker bar-room brawl; we have a shouting police captain and a 'hero' who is beaten up easily by an angry pensioner.
Director Paul Kyriazis' "Death Machines" is so unrelentingly silly and incompetent as to rate as a true hall of fame see-it-to-believe-how-bad-it-is turkey.
Now, granted, it could have been even more entertaining on a lovably clunky level, as it's somewhat overextended, but sometimes the padding is absurd enough to generate some real chuckles.This martial arts / action / exploitation piece of sludge stars Ron Marchini, a student of Bruce Lee who also produced the film, as one of three "death machines" (the other two are a black and an Asian) who've been given a drug that controls their minds, and apparently also makes them impervious to bullets.
Another fine bit of comedy has a target for assassination, a bank manager, handcuffed to his file cabinet while a time bomb in his office ticks away - yet his secretary takes her sweet time while helping out.From the super funky and funny music score by Don Hulette (dig that piano during a fight scene) to the thoroughly amateurish acting, "Death Machines" sizes up as a real hoot and a half.
"Death Machines" is a wonderfully precocious bit of bad movie nonsense, director Paul Kyriazi really lets a scene play out to it's conclusion, however unpleasant.
The story involves a Dragon Lady (Mari Honjo, in a one shot performance of a lifetime Carol Burnett could not touch) who are developing some machine like marital arts killers for use by an evil syndicate, problems arise when the killers learn to think for themselves.
it's really hard for me to imagine how someone could not enjoy "Death Machines." It is quite cheap, and the final freeze frame suggest they just ran out of time and money and couldn't finish the credits..
If you remember the great Lee Marvin movie "Point Blank" you'll recognize the "pipe-smoking assassin" character originally played by James B.
As you watch "Death Machines" you find yourself constantly reminded of some of the great scenes or clichés you've seen in other movies.
Of the dozens of B-movies (and worse) that I've subjected myself to recently, DEATH MACHINES is one of the best.
Madame Lee (Mari Honjo), a minor boss in a vague Asian crime syndicate, has got a new weapon to make a splash on the world of organized crime: her three mind-controlled ninjas (Ronald Marchini, Michael Chong, and Joshua Johnson).
When they're assigned to eliminate a local karate teacher (for reasons unknown thanks to bad audio mixing), the "death machines" attract the attention of law enforcement, particularly hot-shot detective Lieutenant Forrester (Ron Ackerman), and earn the ire of overzealous karate student Frank (John Lowe).
Frank is the sole survivor of the machines' vicious attack on the karate school and he's determined to seek vengeance for the murder of his teacher and fellow students and for the loss of his right arm.
Will Frank rise to the challenge of Madame Lee's three unstoppable death machines?
More importantly, will he ever get around to that human resources class so his captain will get off his back?DEATH MACHINES is a perfect blend of semi-competence, incompetence, and martial arts action with just a hint of insanity.
DEATH MACHINES, and the audience, isn't really sure whom we're rooting for to win.Detective Forrester seems an obvious choice, being a police officer and all.
At one point about halfway through the film, there's even a brief moment when it appears the white ninja might shift allegiances and become our hero when he stands up to a rowdy band of bikers that terrorize a Ma & Pa diner/fueling station.
DEATH MACHINES, while certainly not a "good movie", ranks high on the spectrum against its peers.
I don't recall seeing him do anything during the film and I certainly had no idea he was called Frank.The most interesting thing about the whole movie is the plot summary on the back of the video casing.
Even if you tried so hard to make a film on a shoestring budget that was so bad it was unwatchable it would be like The Godfather in comparison to this pile of pants.
Ye Gods where to even begin with this one
..Well, mix crap acting (including one bloody infuriating woman who speaks as though she's either a) chewing painfully on some ice cubes or b) has just woken up after having undergone some extensive root canal surgery), editing that would appear to donate that the celluloid was cut and spliced via the utilisation of an angle grinder, some truly hopelessly choreographed martial arts 'action', a script that has ostensibly been written by a two year old and some of the most hideous and intrusively loud background music ever committed to any film and hey presto you have Death Machines aka The Ninja Murders (although note that surprise, surprise there are in fact no actual ninja anywhere to be found in this sodding travesty!) In a nutshell, if ever there was a cinematic equivalent of a particularly vehement bout of dysentery, then this must surely be it!
This old classic action film in a kind of tale of a difference...This movie asks us what the plot is all about?
They just basically going round killing people left, right and centre..Another thing that bothers me was that when the film finished, the three men just stood there as they're making their way off somewhere..
It just plays the music and the men are just standing there like a bunch of bananas..Well, if you ever see that film, see what you think..?
All I saw was some people in the beginning that looked as if they are in beginning martial arts and some really dumb sounding dialogue so I hit the fast-forward button to watch the rest of the stupid film.
In the history of bad cinema, DEATH MACHINES must rank up there as one of the worst flicks of all time.
The only possible interest somebody could ever have in this film is watching the director trying to pull off all these action scenes without a decent budget.
He tries hard, which is the only redeeming quality.The idea of three non-speaking killing machines is interesting, but it turns out that the guys (one White, one Black, one Asian) don't speak purely because they're rubbish actors!
The worst actor is Mari Honjo, the Japanese villainess, whose delivery of dialogue is the most intensely irritating thing in the whole world.The action scenes are poor and one of them, an attack on a dojo, plays out with virtually no sound effects!
The director tries to incorporate lots of '70s staples into the movie, like bar-room brawls, kung fu schools, car accidents and somebody getting chucked off a building (incredibly the car he lands on isn't dented) but the only decent bits are the bullet hits and the blowing up of a real plane.
There are martial arts films, and there's "Death Machines".
DEATH MACHINES is not one of them.After seeing movies like MALIBU BEACH, THE CREEPING TERROR and THE PINK ANGELS, it is hard to say that this is the worst film ever made; but, it doesn't have much going for it.No plot; really no story to speak of.The acting isn't evident – only the actor responsible for the terribly-played Tony (with the thick, fake Italian accent) made any attempt to "get into character." The score is annoying and pedantic.The only thing about this movie is why...
Did they think the story of: 1) three ninjas, 2) two competing crime bosses, 3) an ancillary bartender / karate school student character; and 4) his pitiful love-interest nurse was so compelling that the world would not be complete without this movie being made?
Pulling out a gun during a martial arts duel and shooting your opponent would be considered cheating by most, but it is viewed as 'using one's initiative' by Madame Lee ( Mari Honjo), whose elite squad of assassins consists of only the most ruthless killers.After wiping out the competition, Lee's hit men are hired by crime boss Mr. Gioretti (Chuck Katzakian) who pays for a hit on a karate school.
Student Frank Thomas (John Lowe) survives the ensuing massacre, but loses a hand in the process; while he recuperates in hospital, the three killers (the 'death machines' of the title) attempt to finish the job...A ham-fisted piece of martial arts action trash, Death Machines is blighted by terrible acting, thoroughly unconvincing fight scenes, and really boring storytelling.
When a film is this bad, there are bound to be some unintentional laughs to be had (the uncuffing of one of the hit men in the police station; the biker fight; the Italian restaurant owner), but there are not nearly enough of them to counteract the extreme tedium..
Calling Death Machines "so bad it's good" doesn't begin to explain how deliriously enjoyable this movie truly is.
What little plot the movie has concerns three assassins for hire – one white, one black, and one Asian (Think of the Death Machines as the Rainbow Coalition of killers - how politically correct!).
The police can't seem to find any leads into the karate studio killings, so it's up to our hero, Whining One Hand (as I like to call him), to bring down the gang of killers.Oh where to start?
The attack on the karate studio, the killing of the man in the phone booth, the bazooka shot at the airplane, the obligatory fight scene in the police station, and the bombing of the bank president – the only connection is that a familiar character or two appears in each scene.
Otherwise, you might get the wrong idea and start to think the Death Machines actually had no real, coherent plot (wink, wink).The killers receive their marching orders from one of screendoms most bizarre master criminals.
And was it just me or were the opening fights rigged to ensure the racial diversity of Death Machines?
When not whining about his problems, getting beat-up by an old man in the bar he works at, or making love to the most unappealing nurse imaginable (I think I might have just thrown up a little in my mouth thinking about it), one of his lone contributions to the movie is to follow the bad guys, crawl through the tall grass, and watch as they blow up a plane and the unknown passengers therein.
By the time he shows up at the run-down house (that's obviously a stand-in for an opulent mansion- just use your imagination) the Death Machines have left, Madame Lee's right hand man is already dead, and yet he still manages to get attacked by the wobbly sword welding Madame Lee and her gigantic wig.
Death Machines is a real hoot of a movie that I implore all fans of bad 70s trash movies to seek out.
As for my rating, I'll be honest, rating movies like Death Machines is difficult.
"Nothing and Nobody can stop them!" "The Death Machines" are three men that dress in black and work for an Oriental woman with big hair.
The head gangster meets with the Oriental lady and tries to convince her to have the Death Machines (or DM's for short) stop killing his men.Soon there is a big brawl in a karate studio where the DM's kill everybody except one man who loses his hand in the fight.
On the soundtrack there is a song about the holy trinity and then all three Death Machines kick into action and beat up all the bikers.
So it is a very, very long shot of the Death Machines in their spiffy suits.Interestingly, the trailer makes it seem like it is a futuristic sci-fi thriller.
What it is, is a very fun, ridiculous, silly action-packed drive-in flick 70's style.If you have any appreciation for this kind of movie, you will be sure to love "Death Machines"!
A multi-racial trio of lethal and indestructible ace martial artist assassins - white guy (beefy Ron Marchini), black dude (brawny Joshua Johnson), Asian man (lithe Michael Chong) -- go around the city and bump off various folks for their evil dragon lady boss Madame Lee (a hysterically campy and vampy Mari Honjo, who can barely speak English and mumbles all her dialogue).
Boy, does this deliciously dippy and dreadful dreck possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as an enjoyably awful piece of gut-busting schlock: we've got fumbling (mis)direction by Paul Kyriazi (who also co-wrote the nonsensical script), lousy acting from a lame no-name cast, a token hot naked babe, crude cinematography by Donald Rust, hilariously inept fight choreography (sidesplitting highlights include the death machines wiping out an entire school of karate students, the white guy beating up dozens of cops while escaping from a police station, and our deadly threesome opening up a king-sized barrel of hurting on a biker gang in a diner), slipshod editing, excessively bloody tomato paste-style violence, and a stupid "it ain't over yet" sequel set-up (non)ending.
As bad as this movie is, I really like it.
It fails to adhere to any sort of movie making convention which makes it strangely interesting to watch- just lots of people getting killed around a very loose plot surrounding hired killers - no "machines" as such and those weird face/mountain things on the front cover and the trailer do not appear!
I love the fact that there is no good guy in this film until about half way through and I love the numerous pointless scenes of that aeroplane landing - lots of people get killed who have nothing to do with the "plot" and no explanation is given about anything - DO NOT expect to understand this film.
Why did the hero collapse under one punch from old guy onto the bar where a stream of water jets out in the background so it looks like it's coming from his mouth?
"Death Machines" takes a fairly decent premise for an action movie (unstoppable martial arts killing machines sent out to eliminate a crime boss' opponents) and turns it into an unwatchable mess.
It's easily the worst martial-arts/action oriented movie I've seen in years, eclipsing even "Ninja Holocaust" (which at least had some good energetic fight scenes).
The actual "star" of the movie is the white "Death Machine", (it's basically his vehicle) so he is featured prominently in many more scenes than his two cohorts.
He's in good shape, and he's not bad looking, but as an actor he's barely there - think Chuck Norris in "The Octagon",only without any energy or emotion.This is obviously a deliberate choice on the part of the actor and director...but you have to be Arnold to pull this kind of thing off, and this guy is no Arnold.The movie (and the director) can't seem to find the time (or the budget) to film the scenes that would have answered the basic questions that it originally posed, like: Who was the shadowy figure giving the marbled-mouthed Asian lady her orders?
It does, however, find the time to film a completely extraneous bar fight in which a sailor (well, he looked like Popeye) destroys a bar because the juke box didn't work.
It's only related to the rest of the film because in the process he also K.O.'s the movie's "hero", a bartender/karate student who was a victim of the "Death Machines" first major assignment (he got his hand chopped off while they were killing his teacher).
And wait until you see the showdown between the homicide detective and his captain - it plays as if the director and screenwriter never actually saw a movie scene placed inside a police station, but had heard of them second hand and decided to include some without really knowing how they worked.
The three "Death Machines" come across as clods; the "hero" knows his lines but can't carry the movie, given that his character is an ineffective wimp; his girlfriend is a charisma vacuum; and all the other minor parts are barely watchable.
Add to this a low-budget one-synthesizer soundtrack that never shuts up and never plays anything appropriate or interesting; crappy film stock and lighting; fight choreography that is strictly from hunger; and a general all around dreariness and lack of energy in the blocking and the stage business...and you have one lame movie.
Madam Lee (Mari Honjo) who is fun to listen to, creates three zombie "death machines" using a serum.
Add b-movie karate star Ron Marchini and you get this weird, weird film.The action is cheesy, of course.
There is a point in the film where the female boss of the "death machines" (a multi-ethnic trio to please everyone, being inclusive I think it's called these days) talks about using leverage on a business man.
The boss lady had to do the talking as the "death machines" did not say a single word during the whole film and talk she does.
The three mute "death machines" live to survive another day at the end of the film.
I mention him only because there is an actor in Death Machines who looks JUST LIKE HIM playing the owner of an Italian restaurant.
Death Machines is bad by any measure, and pretty boring, which is an even worse crime. |
tt5052448 | Get Out | In the opening scene, a young black man named Dre (Keith Stanfield) is walking alone at night through a perfectly manicured suburban street. A little sports car pulls up and starts slowly tracking him. Andre gets spooked, says, "fuck this shit", and changes directions to briskly walk back the way he came. When he turns to see what the car did, he sees its parked where it was, but the door is open. From out of nowhere, a man in a medieval helmet attacks the black guy and drags his body to the car.Rose (Allison Williams) shows up to her photographer boyfriend Chris's (Daniel Kaluuya) apartment with pastries and coffee. They're getting ready to go away for the weekend to visit her family and hes concerned that they don't know she's dating a black guy. She assures him that, while they will likely say some stupid things, they are incredibly progressive. Her dad would have even voted for Obama a third time if he could have. He makes sure hes the only black guy Rose has ever dated. She says he is, but is confident that her parents will be totally cool.On the ride to her parents home, Chris goes for a cigarette, but Rose takes it and throws it out the window. She tells him that parents would really frown on her dating a smoker. Chris calls his buddy Rod (LilRel Howery), a TSA agent and reminds him to take care of his dog and not to feed him human food. Rod berates Chris about going to visit the white folk and says its a bad idea (Rod does not approve of his friend Chris dating a white woman). He also flirts with Rose a little bit. Chris gets a little jealous and Rose thinks its sweet. While they're deep in conversation and not entirely paying attention to the road, a deer darts out in front of the car and is hit.They pull over to investigate and call the police. The police show up and ask what they're doing in the area. Rose tells them that they're visiting her family who live nearby. The officer asks to see Chris's ID, but Rose steps in and says that because he wasn't driving there's no need for that. The officer lets them go and Chris tells Rose that was hot the way she stood up for him to the racist policeman.Chris and Rose arrive at her parents home. Her father, Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) is an affable neurosurgeon who, yes, tells Chris that he would have voted for Obama a third time if he could have. Her mother, Missy (Catherine Keener) is a strangely cold hypnotherapist. She offers to cure Chris of his nicotine addiction through hypnosis, but he doesn't feel cool with people tooling around in his head.The Armitages also have two onsite black helpers. Walter (Marcus Henderson) the groundskeeper and Georgina (Betty Gabriel) the maid/housekeeper. Dean acknowledges that it looks bad, two wealthy white people having two helpers who are black, but they were hired to take care of his parents and Dean would have felt bad letting them go. There's definitely something off about both Walter and Georgina. They have a definite stiff Stepford artificial politeness about them. They also both speak using dated vernacular.Dean gives Chris a tour of the house and shows him old family photos. Dean claims that his father was a track runner who was beat out by Jesse Owens to compete in the 1936 Olympics in front of Hitler. And while that was sad for his dad, it was still great to have Hitler's Aryan idealism proven wrong. There is also photos of Rose's brother who will be joining them later. He's a surgeon like his dad, but he went through a rough patch.The family gets together for afternoon tea. Missy asks about Chris's parents. Chris claims that his father left when he was young and his mother died after she hit by a car when he was age 11. Georgina sort of short circuits while pouring tea and Missy tells her to go lay down and get some rest. The Armitages tell Rose that they're having their big party tomorrow. She's surprised and they remind her that it's the same day every year. Rose's brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) arrives. He's an aggressively spoiled rich kid.That night the family has dinner and a drunk Jeremy starts talking to Chris about MMA fighting. He says that because Chris comes from a hearty stock he'd be a natural. He wants to spar, but Chris says that he has rules about play fighting with drunks. Dean and Missy tell Jeremy that maybe its time for him to go to bed.Chris and Rose retire to their room where she apologizes for her family and they go to sleep. In the middle of the night, Chris gets up and decides to sneak out for a cigarette. While outside he sees something in the distance charging him. It's Walter! He heads straight for Chris, but makes a sharp turn at the last moment and runs off in another direction. Inside the house, Georgina is staring out a window. It turns out she's looking at her own reflection, not Chris. She adjusts her hair and Chris decides to head back inside.Before Chris can make it back to his room, Missy turns on a light and startles him. She tells him that smoking is a bad habit and offers again to help him quit. He sits down and mocks the notion of hypnotism unaware of the fact that she's slowly hypnotizing him while using her tea spoon as a focus object. She takes him back to when he was 11 on the night his mom died. Chris tells Missy that his mother didn't come home from work and he was took scared to do anything about it. He was afraid that if he called the police it would make it real. So he just sat there watching television nervously digging his nails into his bedposts. Present day Chris is doing the same thing, digging his nails into the arms of the chair. She tells him to sink and 11 year old Chris sinks into his bed, while present day Chris sinks into blackness seeing himself and Missy far above. His consciousness has left his body, while his body is still paralyzed in his chair.He wakes in the morning and checks his phone. Rod has sent Chris a picture of him pretending to give his dog beer. His battery is low, so he plugs it in. Chris tells Rose that he thinks maybe her mom hypnotized him last night. He has vague recollections of the evening.The Armitages wealthy friends start to show up for the big party. Its mostly older white people who say a lot of inappropriate things to Chris like how he has a good build, because Tiger Woods golfs he must have a good swing too, are black guys better in bed, etc. Chris sneaks off and finds a blind man named Jim Hudson (Stephen Root) who says that all the people at the party are ignorant. He's an art dealer and Chris is well aware of who he is. Jim says that he's a fan of Chris's work. He recognizes the irony of a blind art dealer, but tells him that he has a really good assistant who is great at describing pieces. He envies Chris's eye. Jim says that he himself tried photography, but was never very good at it.Chris goes back to mingling with the guests and discovers another black guy in attendance. It's a young guy about his age. Chris tries to bond with him, but he too is stiff and unnatural like Walter and Georgina. (Note: a sharp eye will notice that this man is Dre from the opening of the movie.) There's something about him that seems familiar to Chris though.Chris decides to check in with Rod again. When he returns to his phone he finds it unplugged again. He plugs it in and calls Rod to tell him everything that's been going on. Rod tells him that white people love to have sex slaves and he needs to get out of there. Rose finds Chris and he tells her how weird everything is and that his phone was unplugged again. She tells him he's just being paranoid because he's in an uncomfortable situation. He agrees and she leaves. Rod tells Chris to take a picture of the black guy and he will see if he remembers him. As Chris is about to leave, hes blocked by Georgina who apologizes for unplugging his cellular phone. She was dusting the night stand and lifted it up. That's when it came unplugged and she didn't want to mess with it further. He says that its fine and hopes that he didn't mean to rat her out. She doesn't understand. So he clarifies that he didn't mean to get her in trouble. She gets super weird and lets out a single tear while telling him that the Armitages treat her like family.Chris goes back outside and tries to discreetly take the familiar black man's picture with his cell phone, but has forgotten to turn off the flash. As soon as his phone flashes, the man changes. He goes from overly prim and proper to raving. His nose starts bleeding and he jumps at Chris telling him, "Get out! Get the fuck out while you still can!"Rose is freaked out now too. She asks her dad what happened and he explains that the flash just caused the man to have a seizure. The man comes out and apologies for upsetting everyone and says he must return home. Chris and Rose go for a walk and Chris tells her that he's sure he recognizes the guy and that something strange is definitely going on. She agrees by saying that it did not seem like a seizure at all. Chris says that he'd really like to go home now. Rose reluctantly agrees. She says she will make up something to tell her parents.Back at the house, Dean is holding an auction with his guests. Next to him is a picture of Chris. Jim Hudson has won the auction. The rest of the guests all go home.Chris goes back to pack his belongings and gets a call from Rod who tells him that the guy in the picture is a guy named Dre whom they knew who used to work at a movie theater, but went missing some weeks ago. The phone battery dies. Chris notices the closet door is open. He looks inside and finds a box filled with photos of Rose posed romantically with many other black guys. Also there are photos of her with both Walter and Georgina who don't look at all like the robotic versions of themselves we've come to know so far. Apparently Chris isn't the first black guy Rose has been with after all!Rose returns and Chris says that he needs the keys to put their bags in the car. She looks for them in her purse as they make their way out of the house. Suddenly, Jeremy appears blocking the front door. Dean and Missy are there too. Jeremy is ready to attack, but Missy and Dean tell him to calm down. Chris keeps telling Rose to get the keys. Missy and Dean tell Chris that they don't want him to leave. Chris asks for the keys again and Rose says, very calmly: "You know I can't give you the keys". Chris finally realizes that Rose too is in on whatever this is. Jeremy attacks Chris. Dean yells and Missy clinks he tea spoon on her glass causing Chris to sink back into the dark void again.Meanwhile, Rod keeps trying to call Chris, but it keeps going straight to voicemail. He looks up the picture of the guy in the photo and sees that he went missing some time ago, so he goes to the police. He tells a female officer that his boy was kidnapped by white folk to be a sex slave just like the missing guy in the picture. She calls in two more officers to listen to Rod's story. When he finishes, they all burst out laughing. No one is going to take him seriously.Chris wakes up to find himself tied to a chair in front of a mounted deer head and an old TV. He watches a video made by Dean's father that talks about immortality and stuff like that. Chris sees that his finger nails have clawed through the leather arm of the chair and exposed the padding. The teacup and spoon appear on the screen again. TING TING TING and he's out.Rod tries Chris's phone again and Rose answers. She lies by saying that Chris left two days ago and is concerned about his whereabouts too. Rose says that Chris left in a taxi or an Uber maybe. Rod tells her that he went to the police and she seems concerned about this. He starts to realize that something is wrong, so he tries to record the call. When he goes back to talking to her, she tells him she knows that he has the hots for her. He tells her she's a crazy bitch and hangs up.Chris wakes up and Jim Hudson is on the screen. He tells Chris that they're going to swap brains. The other people at the party were all about being black, but Jim couldn't give less of a shit about that. What he really wants is to be able to see the world through Chris's eyes. Dean has perfected the neurosurgery to make this all possible. And Missy hypnotizes the body donors to prep them for the procedure. He will continue existing in the dark void, but will be able to continue on as sort of a passenger. The flashing is an unfortunate side effect as they saw earlier at the party. TING TING TING of the teaspoon and Chris is out again.Dean and Jeremy prep Jim Hudson for a brain transplant. Dean tells Jeremy to go get Chris. Jeremy goes down the hall, we see now were in the basement of the house, and finds Chris unconscious. He takes of his restraints and gets an I.V. ready. Chris wasn't unconscious after all. He stuffed the padding from the chair in his ears to block the sound of the tea spoon. He knocks out Jeremy.Dean starts calling for Jeremy and goes out of the lab area to check on him. Chris rushes him and impales him with the deer antlers from the other room. He knocks over a candle that ignites the blanket covering Jim Hudson too.Rose has earbuds in and isn't aware any of this is going on.Chris goes upstairs and finds Missy. She goes for the tea cup and spoon, but Chris beats her to them and smashes them. Instead she attacks him with a knife, but he turns it on her and stabs her to death. Chris goes for the front door again, but Jeremy has returned and puts him in a choke hold. Chris breaks free and finally kills Jeremy. He runs outside and gets in Jeremy's car. On the passenger seat is the medieval helmet from earlier. He starts down the driveway, but hits Georgina. He can't just let her lay there like his mom did, so he gets her in the car and continues down the driveway. She wakes up and attacks him. In the process her wig falls off and we see she has a scar across her head from a brain transplant too. They crash into a tree and she dies.Suddenly, the rear view mirror is blown away. Rose is coming after Chris with a gun. He begs her to stop, but she's more worried about the condition of her grandma. (Note: Georgina was the vessel in which Rose's grandmother's brain is now housed!) Rose shoots again and misses Chris. From out of nowhere, Walter runs in an tackles Chris. He takes the gun from Rose and she says, "kill him grandpa." Walter aims at Chris, but Chris takes his picture. Flash! Walter turns and shoots Rose instead. Then he takes the gun and shoots himself in the head.Rose is on the ground bleeding out. Chris gets to his feet and then a police car pulls up. Rose smiles with her last breath. The door opens and it's Rod. Chris gets in the car. Rod looks at the chaos and says, "Man, I told you not to go in that house." | murder, violence, horror, flashback, satire, revenge | train | imdb | The film, while mostly horror, is actually completely hilarious in some parts, making it the funniest AND scariest movie I have seen in ages (no easy feat).
Probably the timely social commentary is going to loom heavily when discussing the film; however this shouldn't conceal the fact that this is a masterclass cinematic work that has been thought out to the very last detail; it knows what it wants to say and how to say it, balancing wildly contrasting tones and defeating potential clichés with stylistic bravura.
In the tradition of "The Stepford Wives" with the twist of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?," the story follows a young black man named Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) who goes to meet his girlfriend, Rose's (Allison Williams) parents at their fancy estate where things go from slightly uncomfortable in terms of Chris being black to deeply messed up in one slow but inevitable fell swoop.With a creepy opening scene showing a different black man getting abducted in a peaceful-seeming suburb, the tone is set immediately that there's cause for concern.
The warning signs come in the form of the Armitage family's black help, maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson), whose behavior is anything but normal.Peele sets a tone of creepiness largely with the help of composer Michael Abels, also making his feature film debut.
The unpredictable nature of Georgina and Walter as characters, the ever-increasing suspicion of all the white characters and the way Peele keeps you nervous about who or what is just outside the frame fuel the fear and paranoia as well as if not better than any horror movie featuring more overtly malevolent forces does.Kaluuya, in a role that will deservedly put him on the map, gives a performance that will connect with viewers who identify with Chris as a man trying to feel comfortable while out of his element experiencing strange things, and those who truly understand Chris' experience as a man of color undergoing the very same events.
It would be fascinating to know the different ways a black viewer would experience the film compared to a white one, but the most important thing is that everyone will identify with and feel for Chris.When a little horror film debut like this one gets talents such as Whitford, Keener and Williams, you know the script is good.
This Jordan Peele fellow has managed to bring something new to this genre and I certainly hope he'll do more thrillers.The cast is great and I especially enjoyed Betty Gabriels performance.
the newest film made by jordan peele lives out to the hype that it made.horror comedy is one of the hardest genres(or sub genres) to make a movie about.some good examples would be evil dead 2 and scream.the film actually takes a subject like racism and makes it into a parody of itself.the comedy of the movie is actually really subtle and your'e not gonna walk into the movie and start laughing as a joke comes along.its a realization that can be made while watching the film or after you watched it.it can't be really called a satire of horror movies because it uses the horror movie clichés more than once but the good part is that i doesn't annoy you like a lot of horror movies do.one of the strengths of the movie is that you don't need to be an American to understand the story.a basic knowledge about racism will be enough.but for the clues and metaphors that are in the movie you need to pay more attention and know a little bit more.there are no jokes in the movie and even the comedy relief character lil rel howery doesn't make jokes but sells its comedy by his performance which makes him actually funny and not just an annoying side character like we see mostly in the movies right now.the performances are great and the character choices are rational and logical unlike most horror movies we see today.allison williams does a pretty good job and actually nails the character far more better than i expected.the cinematography is pretty good but it got distracting in two or three places of the movie but it wasn't boring and actually kept the movie pretty good looking.the twists of the movie will actually kinda predictable but that wasn't what the movie was about and i didn't expected to be shocked since the movie doesn't take itself to seriously but serious enough to keep the plot going.the CGI blood were kinda distracting and the movie got slow in a few places but it had the pay-off and you were rewarded after the scenes.the movie is well made and deserves a second viewing in some time and i would recommend it to horror fans or if your'e a fan of subtle humor and comedy..
600th Review: As Lingering and Effective As You Would Want It To Be. Get Out is full of touches and surprises, strong acting, excellent direction, and above it, it's a ride, a trip to a place Hollywood doesn't normally go - it offers a unique experience - and in this age of copycat, cookie cutter safe choice cinema, it stands out by a mile.Get Out is that rare beast - a film that leaves you satisfied yet pondering.
We objected to its constant referral as a horror film - it's an effective thriller with mild horror elements - but it is not a gore/slasher movie - this is more about getting under the skin, and inside the mind, of the viewer.The plot is simple: girlfriend takes boyfriend home.
Jordan Peele is a man best known as one half of the comedy duo Key & Peele, so when I first heard the news that he'd written and directed a horror film, I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little surprised.
Believe the hype guys because Get Out is as good as you've heard.Black photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) visit Rose's parents for the weekend, where they will meet Chris for the very first time.
Staggered by their behaviour from the very off, Chris begins to think all is not right in the home of Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener).I absolutely loved Get Out as both a psychological and satirical horror, Jordan Peele's imagination bringing us something quite unique within the genre and showing that he has such a big future ahead as a filmmaker.
It felt almost as if I was watching a film from a seasoned director and not a man making his directorial debut, Peele exuding confidence more and more as the film rises through the levels of paranoia.The writing is spot on as well, Peele's background as a comedian coming into great use to blend the satire so perfectly with the horror.
As well as being genuinely creepy, Get Out also has some hilarious moments up its sleeve, leaving the audience in the palm of Peele's hand.Peele's confidence as a filmmaker is seen further through Toby Oliver's swift cinematography, akin to work seen in The Shining, and both Michael Abels haunting score and songs picked by Peele to accompany his twisted film.Coming to the performances, Get Out excels above many horror films with a talented and strong cast.
Lil Rel Howery deserves a mention too for being genuinely funny in the role of Chris' best friend, Rod, who doesn't just feel like the comedy relief shoehorned in for the sake of it.Get Out brilliantly continues the resurgence of the horror genre and, as a directorial debut, has to go down as of the best I've seen from Jordan Peele.
It comes out the other end as a unique movie offering.It borrows from Pacific Heights, Psycho, Michael Haneke's astonishing Party Games and sub-horror-porn like Saw without ever being any of them.Without resorting to spoilers its one gigantic twist from start to finish that realises the fears of a young black American guy on a trip to the country to meet his wealthy WASP girlfriend's family on a celebration weekend.
What director and screenwriter Jordan Peele (amazingly a debut outing) most cleverly does is apply Hitchcockian tension so that 89 minutes of tension are realised in a mere 15 minutes of terror in such a way that the nasty bits don't (as so often is the case) outstay their welcome.Superb performances all round from the five principal actors, but especially boyfriend and girlfriend Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams (Girls).It's should be no surprise that this has been both BAFTA and Golden Globes nominated, but it is because this genre rarely reaches this level of critical acclaim.It'll get Oscar nods too..
Will he be able to "get out" of this situation before it's too late?Overall, the filmmaking debut for sketch comedian Jordan Peele is a respectable, if not great, effort to blend some commentary on racial relations with a tried and true, formulaic Hollywood thriller.
And that was a great accomplishment and definitely something that added a dynamic layer to the movie.And while the story did seem quite odd and bizarre, it was actually a really good story, and it turned out to be quite interesting and actually well-thought through.Director Jordan Peele was able to skillfully introduce some great build ups of drama, tension and suspense throughout the course of the movie.
And I was also quite impressed with Betty Gabriel, although I think it was a shame that her role wasn't bigger and that she only had limited screen time.The odd dialogue by various characters thought-out the entire movie actually makes sense when the revealing of what actually was happening took place.
Once with a group of friends way after it released on Blu-Ray and the second time in theaters during the Oscars 2017 Best Picture Festival and both times I have loved this film."Get Out" strikes this perfect balance of being a comedy and a horror film, while simultaneously being social commentary about racism.The political message works really well here, but it's not the only thing going for it, which can often times be the case for films that push a strong political agenda.The entire cast did so well, that I was scared for Chris and genuinely creeped out by the entire Armitage family.
The movie does not necessarily use the most original concept (we have seen similar things with "Rosemary's Baby" or "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" before), but the movie mainly benefits from its clever storytelling - because sometimes it's not about which story you are trying to tell, sometimes it's about how you are trying to tell it.The brilliant actors (Allison Williams was surprisingly good, Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford were as good as was to be expected, and boy, was Daniel Kaluuya amazing) added to the film's success, as well as its better-than-brilliant directing.
The film follows the story of a young couple who happen to be mixed race (Daniel Kaluuya as "Chris" and Allison Williams as "Rose") who take a weekend trip to visit her parents' estate in the country.What's expected about 'Get Out' is the major emphasis on race, as Rose's family (and extended family) is virtually entirely white, and their two hired support staff, Georgina and Walter (Betty Gabriel and Marcus Henderson), are black.
But, as the weekend progresses (and without revealing too much of the plot), Chris begins to discover something truly sinister.Jordan Peele, the director and writer, crafts this horror film so delicately, being sure to reveal things slowly and carefully as the film progresses.
Jordan Peele intertwines this message of racism so delicately throughout the film, and even though it's a horror movie there's plenty of poignant commentary of the state of racism today.Personally what I loved about the movie was the pacing, which allowed subtle hints to be sprinkled throughout the movie before the dramatic, sinister reveal.
And by little, there's no disrespect meant of course, just highlighting the not-so-trivial fact that this is a directorial debut from Jordan Peele with an actor who was relatively unknown Mr. Daniel Keluuya, and yet what we've got here is a game-changer, one of these "little" movies popping out of nowhere but leaving in your mind the constant impression that they will be standing in cinematic memories for a long, long time.
A time where the "Star Wars" series became a soap space opera and for all the noises these movies make, all is desperately quiet on the cinematic Western front.Now, Jordan Peele's film is made of "old stuff" but only in the way it totally deconstructs all the usual infuriating tropes of the horror genre and features, for once, a protagonist who's smart enough to figure out when things go suspicious and a "sidekick" who incarnates our own point of view and never goes for the face-palm inducting choice.
Let's just say that it opens like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" where Chris Washington is getting ready for meeting the rich family of his white girlfriend Rose (Alison Williams) in a secluded house, the Armitages who can't stop delivering glorifying compliments on Obama or Jesse Owens yet hire black housekeepers who look so "Uncle Tom" it's painful to watch.But the parts meant to raise our suspicion (I won't get too wordy on them) shine because of their roles within the plot and the various reactions of Keluuya.
The plot thickens with the first display of racism from the son, played by Caleb Landry Jones, and a mysterious group of white hosts coming for a garden party and where each one indulges to one of these patronizingly racist commentsturning slowly the film to an experience à la "Rosemary's Baby" where you can tell there's some conspiracy going on but people are so occasionally friendly, we're tempted, like Chris, to keep on a cool facade and give the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, once Chris gets why he'd better get out, there's no way to get out and the film turns into one of the best horror movie experiences of recent years.
And while I was watching this film I began to realize how well Jordan Peele can blend comedy and horror when I was laughing and getting nervous at the same time throughout the film.
Some may argue that the comedy element may take away from the horror aspect of the film but I'd have to disagree, there is a perfect mix between both that results in a fantastic modern horror flick and the best I've seen in a very long time!
Jordan Peele's strong directorial debut got well deserved Oscar attention, as it's unique, intelligent, and often times subtle storytelling made for a well layered, suspenseful film experience.It is hard to say one actor out of the supporting roles stuck out as they all performed so well, but Daniel Kaluuya in the lead role as Chris was superb.
His usage of facial expression and body language played so well to his character, and in a movie with plenty of good qualities about it he shines.Jordan Peele also uses a lot of subtle imagery that contributes well to the themes and tone of his story, which is notably impressive especially for a first time director and make for rewarding second, third and maybe even more repeat viewings.This movie is not without faults however, as there is a handful of times where characters inexplicably act strange seemingly just for the audience, and like most horror movies coming out recently it has it's pointless, shrill music stabs to emphasize a silly jump scare.
The horror hits hard as well, making the film disturbing and creepy when it needs to be.The technical things in this movie were amazing.
If he acted less like a cartoon character it would have been better but it doesn't effect the movie in a major way.Overall, Jordan Pelle's Get Out is fantastic,keeping the audience on the edge of their seat when they need to be and made them laugh when the jokes hit.
Let me just say straight up, I'm not a fan of horror but this film directed and written by Jordan Peele is very original in the storyline and themes within the movie.
First time director Jordan Peele gets back to basics with what traditionally made the genre so great, in a film that's also from the producers of such hits as Insidious and The Gift.Peele understands that a creepy air of mystery and a foreboding sense of the unknown are far more effective tools than cheap shocks and gore, and what works in Get Out's favour so well is a genuinely intriguing and exciting story that really leaves you wondering what is going on, when it will kick off and how it will all work out.
Told You So. Get Out in short: An African-American man meets his white girlfriend's parents, and their friends, and notices that there's something a little strange going on.Racial undertones surround this really good horror-mystery film directed by a guy who has a (mostly) comedy background, Jordan Peele.
Peele is a horror movie aficionado, and he handles the film like a seasoned professional.
But, recall this movie is like "The Shining" which has the Horror-Psychological genre.Jordan Peele is the director who is responsible for the success of "Get Out".
We have here a psychological thriller/horror which has themes on race and standing.The film begins with our lead (a young black man) who is to visit the white family of his well to do girlfriend.
Finally saw "Get Out" one of the most talked about movies of 2017 and I must say this work from director Jordan Peele was interesting as it's a take on society and a spin on race and class as it's blended with themes and elements of drama and horror and the film twist with suspense it's a real guesser and almost mind numbing.The story is that of an interracial couple Chris(newcomer Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose(Allison Williams from "HBO's" "Girls") who one weekend drive to visit the well to do parents of Rose. |
tt0099423 | Die Hard 2 | The story opens with a car being towed away from a restricted parking zone at Washington Dulles International Airport. Lt. John McClane (Bruce Willis) comes running out of the terminal -- it's his car that is being written up. He argues futilely with the airport cop (Robert Costanzo) writing the ticket, but is interrupted when his beeper goes off. McClane is waiting for his wife Holly to arrive from Los Angeles. He heads into the terminal and asks a girl at the information kiosk for directions to the payphones. The woman points McClane toward the payphones, and then returns to watching a TV broadcast about snowstorms slamming the East Coast.The newscaster then turns over to a field correspondent at Escalon Airport in the Republic of Val Verde covering the other major developing story: the extradition of deposed dictator and General Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), who is being extradited to the United States to stand trial.As the newscast continues, the scene cuts to an airport hotel room. We see the room's occupant, retired Special Forces Colonel Stuart (William Sadler), practicing martial arts exercises, nude. The reporter on TV notes that two years ago, Esperanza led his country's military campaign against communist insurgents, financed by the United States, but recently, several high-ranking Pentagon officials have been charged with violating a congressional ban and supplying him with weapons. Mounting evidence that Esperanza violated the neutrality of neighboring countries also made Congress withhold funding, which he is accused of replacing by entering the market of drug trafficking. At that point, Stuart's watch goes off, and he pulls his coat out of the closet, then turns off the TV, aiming the remote like a gunfighter.In the terminal, McClane finds the payphones. His beeper goes off again, but he finds that all of the phones are busy, forcing him to wait.Upstairs, Colonel Stuart and his eleven men - Baker, Burke, Cochrane, Garber, Kahn, Miller, Mulkey, O'Reilly, Sheldon, Shockley, and Thompson - leave their rooms and march in formation down the hallway to the elevator. The camera settles on Stuart's face as the doors close on them.McClane finally manages to grab a phone and contacts Holly. Holly informs her husband that her flight will be landing about 30 minutes late. McClane, who is staying with Holly's parents, is careful to avoid telling Holly that the car, belonging to his in-laws, has been towed. After Holly hangs up, she makes some small talk with the elderly woman sitting next to her. The woman shows Holly her taser which she says is much more effective for self-defense compared to pepper spray cans.As McClane leaves the payphone area, he collides with Colonel Stuart. The two exchange a brief glance. McClane momentarily recognizes Stuart's face, but cannot remember where he has seen it. He shrugs it off, and the two men continue on their separate ways. Stuart does a double take on McClane as he disappears into the crowd.The scene changes to the exterior of a small rundown church in a snowy field on the edge of the airport. A rusted pickup truck is parked by the shed, and a sign next to the front door announces that the church is being closed down and is to be converted into a day care center. The quiet tranquility of the landscape is disturbed when an airport service van pulls up and parks out front. Baker and Thompson climb out, disguised as utility workers, wearing orange uniforms, visibility vests, and hard hats, and each of them carrying a tool case.Inside, the church's custodian is having an early dinner and watching a newscast on Esperanza's extradition when Baker knocks on the door. The custodian answers, and Baker says that he and Thompson are checking their equipment and need to inspect the conduit box in the church's backyard. Although the unsuspecting custodian claims not to know of any utility lines, he lets them in. As Baker and Thompson enter, a plane takes off from a runway right next to the church.The custodian leads Baker and Thompson down the aisle of the church while musing about the impending closure of the church and the news broadcast continues in the background. He comments that although the parish will keep on using the structure, it won't be the same when it gets converted into a daycare center. He points out that he's been with the church for many years, and he feels like a piece of him is dying along with the church. Baker tells the custodian that he's right about that. The custodian turns, just as Baker suddenly draws a suppressed pistol and shoots him. As the custodian dies, Baker holsters his pistol. Thompson turns off the TV, punches a three digit descrambler code into his radio, and reports to Stuart, "This is Buckwheat. The clubhouse is open." He and Baker then shift pews aside to create a larger space in the middle of the church.In the main terminal, the scene shows another TV broadcast on Esperanza's extradition from WNTW Nighttime News reporter Samantha Coleman, reporting from inside the terminal. The camera pans to a phone booth, where Garber, Stuart's second-in-command, is finishing up a radio call with Stuart. He leaves the phone booth, and joins Miller and Cochrane at the bar. Garber relays from Stuart that everyone else is in position and ready. He asks Cochrane for a weather report, and Cochrane, who is listening in on a radio broadcast reports flurries all along the Virginia coast and a new storm front moving. Miller and Garber grin at the good news. Garber's grin quickly fades and he instructs them to continue their assignments. They synchronize watches, and then Miller picks up a gift-wrapped package and leaves.As Miller departs, he passes McClane, who is sitting a few tables away waiting for Holly's plane. As he idly smokes a cigarette, McClane's gaze happens to settle on Garber and Cochrane talking. When two airport cops walk into the bar, Cochrane instinctively removes his earbud and Garber slides his package further under the table, as if trying to hide it. McClane glances between the cops and the two men, realizing that they must not be up to any good. Then Cochrane stands up to leave, and McClane notices what looks like a pistol and shoulder holster under his jacket. Suspecting something is up, he goes over to the two airport cops to ask them to follow Cochrane, but backs off when he notices that one of them is the guy who just had his car towed.As McClane follows Cochrane through the crowded terminal, Samantha Coleman is interviewing two Justice Department officials. Then she spots Colonel Stuart and Garber conversing and walking through the crowd on the other side of the terminal. Garber is informing Stuart that someone in personnel has fallen ill and there is a last-minute replacement on hand, and asks him about the security at the airport. Stuart assures him that security is like they figured: a joke. At this point, Coleman and her cameraman are suddenly in Stuart's face trying to ask him for a few words. Stuart tells her that she can have two ("fuck" and "you") and then takes off.McClane follows Cochrane and sees him go through a door leading to the luggage handling area. He asks an airport baggage handler to unlock the door and call for help, and weaves his way through the conveyor belts. He finds Miller and Cochrane appearing to be tampering with equipment. McClane interrupts them and informs them that they are in a restricted area. Miller claims that they work for the airline. Unconvinced, McClane asks to see identification.At this point, Miller and Cochrane whip out their pistols and open fire. McClane returns fire with his own pistol, but loses it when Miller shoots a suitcase that falls onto McClane and knocks his pistol onto another conveyor. He continues the fight against Miller with other tools, like golf clubs and mace cans. In the fight, Miller's two-way radio is knocked away. McClane manages to corner and kill Cochrane, crushing him in a baggage press and electrocuted, and tries to chase down Miller, who manages to get away when airport cops appear and draw their guns on McClane.Up on Holly's plane, Holly is a little dismayed to find that Richard Thornburg, the insensitive reporter from the first Die Hard movie, is sitting in the same row as her, possibly in violation of a restraining order she filed against him.In the terminal, we see Cochrane's body being zipped up in a body bag. McClane is handed back his pistol, and is appalled at the way the press is crawling all over this new story and asks an airport cop to take him up to their boss.As night falls on the church, Kahn and Burke are digging with pickaxes in the backyard. Baker is standing at the door, on sentry duty, and changed out of his utility worker disguise, when Miller comes out of the woods by himself, having run all the way after escaping from McClane. Baker is somewhat crestfallen when Miller offhandedly mentions that Cochrane is dead.Inside, Colonel Stuart is marking measurements on a map of the airport with a protractor when Miller comes in and shakes snow off his coat. Miller, shaken, reports that a cop killed Cochrane, and he barely got away alive. Stuart is indifferent learning that Cochrane has died, more concerned with whether or not Miller accomplished his goals, and Miller says yes. Stuart points out to him that although the damage is minimal, the penalty is severe, and he suddenly puts a pistol to Miller's forehead. He slowly pulls on the trigger, and Miller tenses up, expecting to have his head blown off.....only for the weapon to click on an empty chamber. Stuart puts his pistol away, but not before warning Miller that he won't be seeing an unloaded chamber the next time he hears of a failure.McClane, still believing something more serious is about to happen, tries to report his suspicions to airport police captain Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz), who refuses to believe him (more focused on the number of airport misconduct laws McClane has violated in his shootout with Cochrane and Miller) and throws him out of his office. Needing a plan, McClane sees Cochrane's body on the stretcher, and steals some paper from a rental car girl. He catches up to the morgue attendants as they are preparing to load the body into the ambulance, and takes fingerprints from the right hand.Up in the skies, the F16 fighter jets escorting Esperanza's plane out of Val Verde turn away and leave the aircraft as they leave the danger area. The pilots converse in Spanish, estimating a 3½ hour flight time to the United States. In the back of the plane, Esperanza asks to have his leg shackles loosened, but the guard points out that he is not allowed to do that. Esperanza praises the guard's loyalty, and asks him to light his cigarette. He then checks his watch, and the action shifts back to the church, where Stuart is overseeing his men as they set up equipment. Kahn is installing a radar dish in the bell tower while Burke uses an acetylene torch to break into the conduit box, allowing them to patch into the airport's systems.McClane faxes the fingerprints to Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) over in Los Angeles. Powell agrees to run the prints through various databases to see if any hits come up.Up in the control tower, Trudeau (Fred Dalton Thompson), the airport's chief of operations, shows Chief Engineer Leslie Barnes (Art Evans) the weather radar to inform him of a larger storm front coming in from the north. Barnes decides that to allow him adequate time to plow the runways between landing aircraft, he will need to reduce landing frequencies. Trudeau gives in to Barnes's request, and orders the controllers to hail all of their planes and slow them down to avoid having any congestion. This will affect all aircraft heading in to Dulles, including Holly's plane.McClane gets the prints back from Powell and learns that the man he killed was named Sgt. Oswald Cochrane, an American advisor in Honduras. Powell notes that Cochrane evidently faked his death, as he was presumed killed two years ago in a helicopter crash, and he was involved in a number of black bag operations during his army service. As McClane takes Cochrane's service record and heads for the tower, Samantha Coleman spots him and tries to speak with him, but much like Stuart, he brushes her off.Up in the tower, Trudeau is exasperated. He tells Barnes and Lorenzo that National Airport has just been shut down because their runway is iced up, meaning Dulles will be heavily strained by being forced to accommodate both its own aircraft and National's flights, combined with the bad weather. Lorenzo is complaining to Trudeau about the press's obsession with the dead mercenary, and how the story has ended up on the evening newscasts, much worse since these reporters were swarming all over the Esperanza story. He admits that while he would like to eject all of the reporters from the airport, he also doesn't want to violate the First Amendment or risk the ACLU suing them into oblivion. At that point, McClane comes in to the tower, and gives Trudeau the report on Cochrane's military service, despite Lorenzo's objections. Trudeau believes McClane's suspicions that there is a situation going on in the airport.In the backyard of the church, Burke is breaking into the conduit box with a torch. He lifts up his face shield and radios to Stuart that their systems are ready, and they activate their equipment. The church, we see, has been transformed into a miniature version of the control tower's infrastructure.In the tower, McClane, Trudeau, Barnes and Lorenzo are startled when suddenly, all the runway and taxiway lights begin shutting off. The tower erupts in chaos as Barnes tries to figure out what is going on and how to resolve the problem, and controllers frantically work to get all of their aircraft back into the sky and out of danger.The henchmen sever cables for the ILS and approach control systems, and Trudeau has to get on the intercom to calm all of the controllers. He declares code red and gives specific instructions to what the incoming planes are to do: they are to shunt all aircraft to their alternate airports except for those that have started their approaches, who are to continue circling the airport, including Holly's aircraft.At this point, Stuart calls the tower on a phone patched into the utilities. He demands a cargo-converted 747 fully fuelled and available within an hour, and he will be landing Esperanza's aircraft on a runway of his choice, though he avoids mentioning Esperanza by name. Stuart makes it clear that he is serious, and warns of severe penalties if the airport tries to restore their systems. McClane tries to help, but Lorenzo ejects him from the tower, as well as Coleman, who has somehow gained access to the tower.As they are heading down the elevator, McClane escapes by climbing out the roof hatch. Coleman tries to ask him for a few words, but McClane tells her "Fuck off!" She admits that she's already heard this from Colonel Stuart. McClane realizes who his adversary is, and he continues his escape. When the elevator is greeted by two airport cops at the bottom, they wonder why Coleman is alone, and she shrugs, admitting that McClane is "claustrophobic".Up above, Barnes and his engineers try to figure out how to restore communication with the planes. They then realize that a new transmitter in an under-construction terminal might be functional. Trudeau and Lorenzo converse with Barnes, who explains that he can get the systems on the under construction Annex Skywalk up and running within a half hour, and the planes won't need to change frequencies to communicate with them.Down below, we see McClane making his way through the subterranean basement. He is suddenly drawn towards the sound of music playing on a phonograph, and finds himself in a small basement apartment. He is startled by the appearance of Marvin, the airport janitor, who lives here since he's homeless. He gives McClane directions to the Annex Skywalk, which McClane realizes is a great location to carry out an ambush. To get to the Skywalk, McClane first must walk a narrow beam over one of the boilers. Once across, he crawls into a ventilation duct, while complaining about how he never gets to have a normal Christmas.Meanwhile, Trudeau gives a last message out to the circling planes to request that they circle until they can restore the systems. Every flight still listed on the departures and arrivals boards has its status changed to DELAYED, much to the frustration of people waiting for arriving passengers.Barnes packs up his tool case, and a five man SWAT team comes to escort him to the Skywalk. As they walk, he complains to them that restoring communications with a SWAT escort wasn't part of his job description. Though the sergeant promises to watch Barnes's back, Barnes is not reassured.When he gets to the Skywalk, Barnes calls Trudeau to report in, as he and his escort team make their way down a moving sidewalk. At the other end of the sidewalk, lying in wait to ambush them, are O'Reilly, Sheldon, Shockley and Mulkey, disguised as painters and maintenance staff. O'Reilly is standing at the end of the moving sidewalk, while Shockley and Mulkey are stationed behind some other equipment lying on the ground, and Sheldon is stationed on the scaffolding and pretending to paint the ceiling. As the SWAT escorts are nearing the end of the sidewalk, O'Reilly presses the stop button, bringing the walkway to a sudden halt and nearly knocking Barnes and the five SWAT officers off their feet. The sergeant yells at O'Reilly, who then turns his back to them. The team continues walking, failing to see Mulkey, Shockley and Sheldon drawing submachine guns.As the SWAT officers come up on O'Reilly, the annoyed officer on point asks him what he looks like. O'Reilly suddenly turns around, a pistol in his right hand and a submachine gun in his left, and replies, "A sitting duck!" He promptly shoots the officer in the face with the pistol, then promptly dives for cover as the remaining SWAT officers raises their rifles and fire at him. Sheldon, Shockley, and Mulkey also open fire as well.As bullets fly, Barnes jumps over the sidewalk railing and dives for cover. He almost gives himself away when flying glass shards slice a nasty gash across his left arm. While Barnes hunkers down, Sheldon guns down a SWAT officer firing a shotgun at him. The third officer shoots Shockley, only for himself and another officer to be shot dead by Mulkey. The fifth and last officer fires a burst across the sidewalk railing. Sheldon turns his submachine gun and riddles the officer with bullets even as he tries to draw his backup pistol. The officer is thrown backwards through a plate glass pane and falls on his back. Barnes reaches and successfully grabs his tool case.Suddenly, the shooting ceases, and everything goes silent, except for the sound of the heating system. Barnes suddenly realizes that he is all alone, and looks around nervously, to see if anyone is hiding to ambush him. He fails to see O'Reilly creeping up behind him. Barnes doesn't know this until O'Reilly puts a pistol to his head.As O'Reilly prepares to pull the trigger, a ventilation grate over his head suddenly is pushed out. O'Reilly looks up and catches it on reflex. McClane appears, and fires his pistol at the disarmed O'Reilly until his bullets drill straight through the grate and through O'Reilly's body. As O'Reilly crumples dead, Sheldon and Mulkey open fire on McClane, who returns fire. During a brief lull, McClane jumps down, and Barnes uses this distraction to run for his life as McClane fires on Sheldon and Mulkey.McClane jumps over O'Reilly's body and dives onto the Skywalk, firing upwards at Sheldon. Mulkey reloads his submachine gun and fires on McClane. McClane rolls across the floor while firing at Mulkey, and is driven underneath Sheldon's scaffolding. Mulkey continues firing until his gun jams. Figuring out where Sheldon is, McClane reloads his pistol and begins shooting upwards through several wooden boards. Sheldon contorts himself to avoid McClane's bullets as he reloads, then fires downwards, driving McClane out into the open. McClane hurriedly pushes the metal scaffolding support, which eventually gives way. Sheldon continues shooting until he falls off the toppling scaffolding. He has a split second to scream as the platform lands on him and crushes his neck.McClane fires his pistol at Mulkey across the gallery until another part of the scaffolding falls on top of him and knocks his pistol onto the moving sidewalk. Mulkey sees his enemy immobilized. Furious, he ejects his submachine gun's magazine and jumps onto the sidewalk, cursing at McClane.At that point, McClane grabs a piece of fallen metal pipe to start up the moving sidewalk. Mulkey notices McClane's pistol lying on the ground just in front of him. He sprints towards it, hoping to use it to finish his foe off, but McClane reaches, grabs it first, and empties the remainder of his magazine into Mulkey at close range, and Mulkey crumples, dead.Barnes then frees McClane from the scaffolding pinning him down and stops the walkway in its tracks. As he prepares to get up to check on the antenna system, it suddenly explodes in a giant fireball, shattering the windows on the Skywalk. McClane and Barnes are unharmed, being outside the blast radius.On the plane, Thornburg is trying to take a look out Holly's window, much to her discomfort, and he notices another plane not too far away. He insists that he has an obligation to show the world what the people want to know, but Holly is not above reminding him that he endangered her family.Back on the Skywalk, paramedics are removing the bodies of the SWAT officers killed by Stuart's team, and the henchmen killed by McClane. McClane is bandaging Barnes's arm while Barnes is on the phone with Trudeau. There is a distraction when McClane hears a garbled noise coming from Shockley's body. He rolls Shockley over and pulls out Shockley's radio, the source of the garbled radio chatter. The noise is Garber, trying to hail the Annex soldiers on the radio. Because the three digit code hasn't been punched in, his voice sounds scrambled. Garber turns to Stuart, who looks concerned. Barnes analyzes the radio, determining that with a three-digit descrambler code, and over a million possible combinations, it would have been easier if one of the men had punched the code in and tried to communicate with Stuart before they were shot.At the church, Stuart learns what has happened when Kahn comes down from the choir loft after overhearing Barnes's phone call. Stuart is not happy to find that his Annex team has been killed. He promptly calls up the tower and declares to the controllers that they will pay the penalty. McClane communicates through Barnes's tie-in phone to Stuart, and is rudely berated by Lorenzo, who is cut off when he notices from Trudeau's look that he has just betrayed McClane's identity. Stuart makes clear what he plans to show by rescuing Esperanza, then hangs up.Once he hangs up, Stuart turns to Thompson and asks him to find a flight that is definitely low on fuel and will need priority landing. Thompson gives him the info slip for Windsor Airlines Flight 114, a Douglas DC-8 en route from London Heathrow Airport. Thompson then resets the ILS ground level to 200 feet below real ground level. Stuart adapts a southern accent and impersonates an approach controller to contact the Windsor flight, and instructs them to come in for an ILS landing on Runway 29. McClane realizes what Stuart wants to do and runs over to the window. He grabs two pipes, a lighter and some rags. Barnes uses a painter's uniform to lower McClane to the ground, and McClane heads for the runway, wearing Barnes's firefighter's coat. On the plane, the pilots start going over their landing checklists.As they pass the outer marker beacon, the pilots restart communication with Stuart, who is using his normal voice to pose as the control tower. McClane lights the rags with his cigarette lighter, and uses the pipes as improvised torches and waves frantically to signal to the incoming plane. Trudeau and Lorenzo in the tower spot him out on the runway, and realize what McClane is trying to do, though they take concern that he might be endangering himself.As the plane gets into range, McClane signals more frantically, but this proves useless as the aircraft flies overhead. The pilots panic when they see they are barreling towards the runway at a faster-than-normal descent rate, but before they have time to correct, the plane slams into the runway with such force that the landing gear collapses. Sparks produced by the underbelly as it slides down the runway cause the fumes in the ruptured tanks to ignite. The plane promptly explodes in a fireball, sending debris flying everywhere, instantly killing all 230 passengers and crew on board. Stuart then picks up the phone and coldly informs the tower that future lessons can be averted if the escape plane is available on time and the men in the tower don't interfere with Esperanza's aircraft.Crash tenders race to the crash site and start a search-and-rescue operation, but it's a fruitless effort. We also see McClane walking through the burning wreckage, dazed and in a trance. He picks up a girl's doll, found near the remains of the landing gear. In the tower, we see a doctor treating the cut Barnes received on his arm during the Skywalk shootout. Trudeau comes up to him and orders him to look for a way to warn the planes that are still circling over Dulles about the new impending danger. Trudeau feels McClane's emotions and informs him that they are summoning a Special Forces unit to take out Stuart and his men.Stuart watches Samantha Coleman delivering a TV broadcast on his own plane crash, and crumples up the slip with the plane's information.The Army's Blue Light unit, headed by Major Grant (John Amos), arrives on the tarmac in two choppers. Up in the tower, Barnes and his engineers try to figure out how to communicate to their planes. When one of the engineers mentions that the headwinds are slamming aircraft on the outer marker, Barnes gets an idea, and uses the outer marker beacons frequency to address all circling aircraft. He does not know that Thornburg is listening in with his radio mike and is writing everything down.Unfortunately for McClane, the army and DOJ see him as a civilian and eject him from the briefing on the situation. He goes back to Marvin's basement apartment and asks for a way to the pilots' briefing room. However, he gets something better: just then, he overhears the beeping of a radio being punched into, and overhears a radio communication between Stuart and Garber. McClane moves a few charts beside to find that Marvin has acquired the radio Miller had lost during his fight with McClane in the baggage room.In the church, Stuart is briefing his henchmen. He is interrupted when Thompson informs him that Esperanza's plane is making contact. Stuart instructs the tower via phone not to interfere, then impersonates the control tower again to make contact with the plane. He instructs Esperanza's pilots to land the aircraft on a different runway from the one that they have been assigned to land on.In preparation for landing, Esperanza strangles and kills his guard with the chain of his handcuffs, then unlocks his leg restraints with the guard's key. Just as the pilot is pointing out that Stuart is giving them orders contrary to their instructions, Esperanza sneaks into the cockpit and puts a pistol to the pilot's head, and orders him to acknowledge Stuart's instructions. After a moment's hesitation, the pilot does so. At that point, the co-pilot tries to grab for the gun. In the struggle, a bullet is discharged, which kills the copilot and ricochets, blowing out a window and causing a decompression. Esperanza then puts his pistol to the pilot's head, reassures him that landing will not be his problem, then shoots him. He then pulls out one of Stuart's special radios from behind the console and makes a mayday call, which Stuart overhears. He redirects Esperanza to another runway that will give him a direct approach.Unknown to Stuart or Esperanza, McClane has one of their radios and is overhearing their instructions. He makes his way to the runway in question and meets Esperanza's plane just as he touches down. McClane confronts Esperanza, but is then ambushed by Stuart's henchmen. McClane manages to wound Esperanza in the shoulder, and also kils Thompson. McClane hides in the cockpit, and Esperanza and Kahn use a pipe to barricade the door. Kahn then shoots up the cockpit door, which proves to be bulletproof. He helps Esperanza off the aircraft and Stuart runs over to check on him. Learning Esperanza's story of the mystery cop, Stuart realizes that it's McClane. He and his henchmen then spray up the cockpit in an attempt to give McClane "a military funeral". One bullet hits McClane in his hand. The mercenaries then throw hand grenades through the shattered windows of the cockpit. McClane escapes through the pilot's ejector seat just before the plane explodes. A parachute deploys, but Stuart and his men are forced to drive off in their SUV when they see crash tenders approaching from the terminal.Meanwhile, the pilots of Holly's plane notice that they are running low on fuel and wonder how much longer they will last.Grant and Lorenzo are frustrated with McClane for trying to confront Esperanza and Stuart by himself, pointing out that Stuart might crash another plane in retaliation. Barnes pulls McClane aside and shows him some airport maps of underground utilities. This allows them to determine the possible location of where Stuart might be based.McClane and Barnes drive over to a suburban tract neighborhood on the edge of the airport. As they finish clearing several houses, they find the church. They notice Baker walking around the back of the church on sentry duty, trying to be casual. Barnes stays back to call Lorenzo while McClane advances to get a closer look. Unfortunately, just as he is getting close to the pickup truck parked out front, Holly tries calling him from an airphone, and his beeper goes off, giving McClane's position away. McClane manages to silence his beeper, but it is too late to stop Baker from suddenly attacking him. The fight continues while inside, Stuart tells Esperanza that the escape plane is being readied as they speak. At the same time, Grant's men are driving towards the church at speed. Grant tells his men they have a situation, and the team promptly don white ski masks and load blue-taped magazines into their weapons.After a lengthy brawl, Baker tries to draw a knife on McClane, but McClane shoves Baker away and stabs him in the eye with an icicle. Baker dies as Lorenzo's and Grant's troops arrive.Grant and his team advance on the church, breaking a trip wire that tips Stuart and his henchmen inside off. Stuart learns of the invaders from Garber, and all of the henchmen go to work disabling their ATC equipment and fitting it with explosives while also swapping red-taped magazines on their submachine guns for ones with blue tape. A shootout ensues between Grant's men and Stuart's men, and Stuart's men escape out back, where they climb onto snowmobiles to make their getaway. McClane notices them. He guns down Garber and steals his snowmobile and submachine gun, and also shoots Burke off his snowmobile as well, while Stuart, Esperanza, Kahn and Miller ride off into the woods.Stuart, Kahn and Miller set up at a hiding spot on the path to ambush McClane, and Stuart changes his blue-tape magazine for one with red-tape. McClane fires on the mercenaries, but Garber's weapon fails to work, and Stuart's men shoot the snowmobile, causing the motor to explode. McClane jumps off just as the snowmobile goes airborne and goes up in a fireball. As he tries to figure out what happened, he suddenly realizes that the magazine he was using contained blanks.Meanwhile, Thornburg manages to contact his news studio and sends a recording of Barnes's message to the planes through to the editors. Stuart meanwhile calls the tower and asks Trudeau to send a ground crew to check on the plane. Grant hears this and tells Stuart off via his radio tie-in to the tower phones. He and his troops then take off in their trucks while instructing Lorenzo to return to the airport with his men.As Thornburg prepares to go live, Grant's truck drives towards the hangar where Stuart's escape plane is being prepared. Some of the men crack an army joke on the last-minute replacement, Cpl. Telford (Patrick O'Neal), wondering what he was doing while they were in Grenada. Telford suddenly wishes that he was with them, and Grant says he wishes the same. He comments that if that were the truth, they "wouldn't have to do this". He promptly pulls out a knife and slits Telford's throat. As Telford keels over and dies, Grant pulls out a radio and communicates to "Eagle Nest" that his team is in position. We then see that "Eagle Nest" is Colonel Stuart.McClane, meanwhile, falls into Marvin's basement, dazed. Marvin rushes McClane to Lorenzo's office on his janitor's cart. McClane shows that Grant and Stuart are working together by firing at Lorenzo with Garber's weapon and the blank magazine. Lorenzo calls for assembly of his men.Thornburg goes live with the tape, and his broadcast is played on TVs throughout the airport. This causes a mass panic, and the throngs of people in the terminal flee the airport in a panic. This causes trouble for McClane and Lorenzo's men, who are trying to move out towards the hangar. The car McClane and Lorenzo get into also contains Lorenzo's brother Vito - who is also the guy who towed McClane's car at the beginning! Trudeau curses when he notices the mass panic on a surveillance camera from the tower. Holly, realizing what Thornburg is doing, grabs her seatmate's taser, sneaks into the bathroom, and zaps Thornburg, ending the broadcast.Grant and his troops arrive in the hangar and meet Esperanza, Stuart, Kahn and Miller. They get on the escape plane and prepare for departure.McClane and Lorenzo have barely gone a few feet when their vehicle collides with a taxi in the chaos. McClane sees Samantha Coleman and her cameraman and asks to hitch a ride on their chopper, which catches up to the escape plane as it is taxiing. As McClane is being unloaded onto the wing, he overhears the pilots of Holly's plane radioing in that they are out of fuel and need to land as soon as possible. McClane blocks the ailerons on the plane's left wing with his firefighter's jacket, which Esperanza notices in the cockpit. Grant goes out to the wing to check on the wings, and puts up a fight with McClane, who overpowers him. Grant falls into the inboard engine on the wing and is ripped apart by the turbines. Stuart comes out and fights McClane, who manages to open a valve that causes fuel to leak from the tank. Stuart dumps McClane off the wing, and McClane pulls out a cigarette lighter, which he uses to ignite the trail of leaking fuel. The fire runs down the runway and up into the air, where it causes the plane to explode into pieces.The pilots of Holly's plane see the trail and use it to make a successful landing, followed by the other planes in the air. Holly and McClane reunite, while Thornburg is dumped and left lying in the snow, helpless. Lorenzo arrives and tears up McClane's parking ticket, since it's the holidays and all. | comedy, murder, cult, violence, humor, action, tragedy, suspenseful, entertaining, sadist | train | imdb | null |
tt0113492 | Judge Dredd | A scrolling and narrated prologue opens the film: in the Third Millennium (the 21st Century), the Earth's ecosystem has become polluted and altered, leaving much of the world's landmass a barren desert called the Cursed Earth. Most people have moved to a few "mega" cities, where, due to the rampant population increase, law and order have collapsed. A new order has risen, that of the Street Judges, who are "judge, jury and executioner", possessing the license to fight criminals, pronounce sentences and summarily execute them if necessary.When the story opens, Herman "Fergee" Ferguson is returning to Mega City 1 after serving a sentence in the Aspen Penal Colony. He arrives at his new home, Heavenly Haven, which is embroiled in a vicious "block" war. Gangsters have set up their command post in his new apartment and have opened fire on their rivals in another building and on the street, 40 stories below. Fergee finds himself an unwitting accomplice, passing ammunition to the block warriors.Street Judges Hershey and her candidate judge respond to the block war. Hershey calls immediately for backup, which arrives in the form of Judge Joseph Dredd, the most famous of all the Street Judges. He leads an assault on the block warriors, dispatching several of them rapidly with his pistol, the Lawgiver 2. Hershey's candidate is killed when he rushes into the command post and is shot immediately. Dredd kills everyone but the block war leader and charges him with several violations of the Mega City Municipal Code, before summarily executing him for the candidate's murder. He announces that court is adjourned. Outside the apartment, he finds Fergee hiding in a servo-droid and finds him guilty as a repeat offender, giving him five more years in Aspen. Fergee claims he's innocent and was hiding from the block warriors, however, Dredd refuses to be swayed and dismisses Fergee to re-incarceration. Dredd reports to Chief Justice Fargo, who questions Dredd's hardened methods of summary execution. He believes Dredd when the judge tells him that the executions were unavoidable. Fargo assigns Dredd to teaching ethics at the academy a few days per week.At the Aspen Penal Colony, Warden Miller meets with a man named Rico and gives him a small object that contains a copy of Dredd's badge and a picture of a reporter, Vartis Hammond, who has done several unfavorable reports on the Street Judges. Rico suddenly unlocks a secret compartment in the box and it becomes a small pistol, which he uses to shoot Miller through the throat. Miller is unable to match the voice-identification that disarms the cannons in Rico's cell and he is immediately killed by them. Rico hides and is able to massacre the guards who rush into the room.At the Academy, Dredd tells a pool of cadets about the weaponry of a street judge and how little of it matters where knowledge of the Mega City Municipal Code is concerned. He also tells them that they stand a high chance of being killed on duty and that, if they live to old age, will undertake the Long Walk into the Cursed Earth, where they will teach the savage denizens outside the city walls of the law. Hershey later speaks to Dredd about his obstinate personality and whether he had any friends. Dredd tells her that he did have a friend at the Academy but was forced to judge and sentence him when he broke the law.Rico stows away on a shuttle from Aspen in a body bag. In Mega City, he goes to a pawn shop and retrieves a box set aside for him. In the box is a judge's uniform and a Lawgiver pistol. When Rico reaches for the pistol, the pawnshop owner warns him not to pick it up because all Lawgiver's are booby-trapped and will only recognize the grip of a street judge. Rico picks up the pistol, is not harmed by the defense mechanism, and shoots the man dead, revealing that he is a judge himself. Rico finds a giant combat droid, an ABC Warrior, in the shop and reactivates it, giving it the duty of being his personal bodyguard.At Hammond's apartment, an unidentifiable judge bursts in and kills Hammond and his wife. The incident is captured on a security camera and Hammond's final word is "DREDD!!" Dredd is arrested on the street and incarcerated for trial.Dredd chooses Hershey to defend him due to her expertise in criminal law. At the trial, the recording from the security camera is presented, however, Hershey successfully has the evidence dismissed as circumstantial since Dredd cannot be positively identified. However, new evidence is presented; the Lawgiver 2 pistol has a secret feature that captures the DNA of the wielder and imprints it on every round of ammunition fired. The DNA from the rounds that killed Hammond and his wife are an exact match for Dredd himself. Hershey and Dredd's defense crumbles and Dredd is sentenced to death. Fargo, who is overcome with guilt at seeing Dredd, one of his greatest students, sentenced, decides, with some goading from Justice Griffin, to retire as Chief Justice and leave Mega City on his long walk into the Cursed Earth. Before he resigns, Fargo asks the Justice Council to commute Dredd's death sentence and send him to the Aspen Penal Colony for life. The council agrees, Fargo leaves Mega City and Griffin becomes Chief Justice.Later, when Griffin returns to his office, he is confronted by Rico, who demands access to a project called "Janus". Griffin tells Rico that there must be a demand for the project to be implemented; violent crime must engulf the city for Griffin to convince the Justice Council to re-institute Janus. Rico promises to do just that.Dredd is put on to a shuttle going to Aspen; seated next to him is Fergee. Seated around him are several criminals who were sentenced by Dredd himself. Dredd and Fergee argue briefly about how Dredd unfairly re-convicted Fergee; Dredd claims "the law doesn't make mistakes" and Fergee asks Dredd to explain how the judge became convicted himself. Just then, another con on the shuttle attacks Dredd. On the ground, the Angel Family, religious fanatics and pirates of the Cursed Earth, blast the shuttle out of the sky with a rocket launcher. In the ensuing chaos, the pilots of the shuttle are killed. Dredd and Fergee are the only survivors and are captured by the Angels. In the Angel Family's lair, Dredd identifies them as pirates and scavengers. Fergee, in an attempt to escape their clutches, suddenly proclaims himself a believer in the Angel's religion and is let go. Dredd then reveals the Angel's darkest secret; they are cannibals and plan to eat Fergee. Dredd frees himself and is immediately attacked by the Angels, whom he takes out one at a time. When Pa Angel attacks Dredd, he is shot dead by one of the salvage team sent by Chief Justice Griffin himself to investigate the shuttle crash nearby. The two salvage men prepare to execute Dredd when they are shot dead by Chief Justice Fargo, who'd found the crash site. Fargo himself is critically wounded by Mean Machine Angel, whom Dredd had knocked out moments before. Dredd fights Angel and electrocutes him. As Fargo dies from his wounds he tells Dredd about Janus, a sophisticated genetics project that tried to clone children with the best traits of the existing judges in an attempt to create the perfect Judge. There were two subjects produced, Rico and Dredd himself. The project was a massive failure with Rico becoming a monster, judged by Dredd and sentenced to Aspen for life. Fargo dies and Dredd vows to return to Mega City and stop Rico from starting the Janus project again.Back in Mega City, chaos erupts as Rico, using his ABC robot, declares war on the Street Judges. Many are killed and their numbers reach a critical point. Hershey detects a power surge near the Statue of Liberty and moments later is almost killed when her Lawmaster cycle explodes. The Judges Council meets and discusses the crisis, knowing that they cannot replenish their ranks quickly. Griffin suggests that they unlock the Janus project, which can produce a fully mature judge in mere hours (with the technology being more advanced than 20 years before, it's possible to create adult clones rather than children). Each member of the council gives their authorization, as does Griffin, however they collectively object when they realize that the project was already a major failure. Just then, Rico enters the room and murders the entire council, leaving Griffin alive.Outside the city walls, Dredd and Fergee are able to enter the city through a heat vent, barely making it inside. They enter the Halls of Justice, where Dredd steals a judge's uniform. Dredd finds the murdered members of the council and Griffin. He also sees Rico but fails to stop him. Griffin shoots himself in the arm, framing Dredd. When guards move in to arrest Dredd, he flees on a Lawmaster, flying off with Fergee. After a furious chase, they escape.Dredd finds Hershey at her apartment and tells her of Rico's plan. She goes with him to the Statue of Liberty where Rico has already started the Janus project. When Griffin objects to Rico replacing the old DNA samples with his own, Rico has the ABC robot dismember him alive. When Dredd, Hershey and Fergee try to enter the lab, Rico has the robot shoot Fergee and capture Hershey. With Rico threatening to have Hershey killed, Dredd agrees to listen to Rico explain his plan to create a super race of judges that will do only their bidding. Dredd naturally refuses to join Rico and they battle hand-to-hand. Fergee distracts the ABC robot long enough to disable it and Hershey fights with Rico's assistant, Ilsa Hayden, chief scientist of the Janus project. Rico finally corners Dredd where he hangs above the city. Rico tells Dredd that his judgement is death for betraying Rico years before. Dredd is able to distract Rico with a flare from his Lawgiver and pulls Rico over the edge where he falls to his death. Hershey finds Dredd and helps him to safety.On the street, Dredd is greeted as a hero. When asked if he'd like to take the position of Chief Justice, he refuses, saying he would rather remain a Street Judge. | comedy, murder, cult, revenge, good versus evil, humor, romantic, sci-fi | train | imdb | null |
tt0283897 | Assassination Tango | John J. is a New York City hitman aging into retirement, with a loving 40-something girlfriend who has a young daughter that he dotes on. He keeps his gangster life a secret from both of them.One night he stabs a man in line at a club and swiftly gets away with the murder. Not long after, he goes to his boss for another assignment, which will take him to Buenos Aries.After arriving in Argentina, he meets with the men who have arranged the hit, and he begins to work on the plan for murdering a corrupt general. Despite his insistence that the job be done in less than three days, the plan gets extended for a few weeks.With so much time to wander around, John becomes captivated by tango dancers at local clubs, particularly one ravishing girl named Manuela. He asks her to teach him the tango, yet she is reluctant, and encourages her sister to help him.John and Manuela have a candid conversation over coffee. She admits she is single with a 2-year-old daughter. He says he is essentially married to his girlfriend, but he has been with other women. He doubts that he would "have a chance" with her since he is so old, but she says that indeed he does.Over time, John and Manuela go out dancing and he learns more of the tango as he continues to prepare for his hit job. One evening he enjoys a nice dinner with Manuela and some of her family.John has grown to distrust the men who have set up the hit, so he pulls off the murder sooner than expected, and evades capture by both the gangsters and the police. He had agreed to meet Manuela and her daughter at a park, but he gets caught up in trying to escape the country.On the plane back to the U.S., John fantasizes of dancing the tango with Manuela.Having returned to NYC, John reunites with his girlfriend and her daughter. He later shows the little girl some tango moves.In a coda tacked on to roll under the closing credits, Manuela says in voiceover that she has provided John with a video of new tango lessons that she hopes he will enjoy. | murder | train | imdb | Two viewings within a year has not changed my opinion.This movie is just different, a unique portrait of strange older hit-man and the people in his life.
I am not surprised a number of viewers did not like this film, even fans of Robert Duvall.
A pity that as of this review in October of 2005, this is still her only screen appearance.Between her and Duvall - who are both complex characters to say the least - along with some wonderfully-colorful cinematography, great dance scenes and intrigue about how an assassination plot will turn out, I found this film very pleasing.This is unknown film that isn't fully appreciated not only with the public but with the reviewers here..
In `Assassination Tango,' a film for which he provided both script and direction, Robert Duvall plays an aging professional killer who also happens to be a tango aficionado.
When he is sent to Buenos Aires to take out a disreputable retired general, John falls in love with both a lovely young dancer and the style of `genuine' tango dancing to which she introduces him.`Assassination Tango,' despite the unsavory elements of the story, is a quiet, muted film that is more about this strangely paradoxical character than it is about either assassination or tango.
The supporting performers are all good, but, ultimately, we are left wondering just what Duvall had in mind when he set about making this film.
Even the tango scenes are generally blasé and uninspiring, forcing us to wonder just what it is about this dance that both intoxicates John and leads one of the women in the film to say that the tango is `life, love, hate,' an encomium that certainly doesn't seem justified by the dance sequences in this film.`Assassination Tango' deserves to be seen for Duvall's performance and for the uniqueness of both its setting and its main character.
And I'm not sure I agree with other comments that Argentines have a big inferiority complex; I think it's more like a "confusion" complex, i.e., "Why don't these other people understand life the way I do?"The film also reminds me a bit of Apochalypse Now in that you just sort of have to watch it -- many times, perhaps -- and realize at the end you're just about as confused as you were when you first saw it, so if you're like me, you accept that, live with it, and are happy to hear any new interpretations that might come along.Finally, I believe that Argentina is not a comfortable place to live if you're not extremely familiarity with and experienced in living in paradox, confusion, and Isaiah Berlin's theory of "negative freedoms." Thank God, I love it.
There probably supposed to be some higher meaning to this movie to correlate the tango with the job of an assassin, but I missed it to be sure.
Its not like you won't understand what's going on while you watch the movie, but you may wonder what's the bigger picture to all the small interactions between the characters.With the exception of the main plot, featuring Robert Duvall, I don't feel like there was any closure on the sub-plots and the characters played by Ruben Blades, Luciana Pedraza, and some of the other assorted supporting characters.
Maybe a director's cut might shed some light on a lot of the questions I found myself asking about character motives and behaviors.This a movie that no one will fault you for missing and no one will look at you like you've got four heads if you go see it.
What remains is the well described atmosphere of Argentina, and the love of the character with tango dancing, and the beautiful Argentinian who introduces him to the secrets of tango.
I've read Robert Duvall loves to tango in real life, and his dancing in this is so graceful and talented.
The film makes me want to visit Argentina and see in person their beautiful dancing.
I can understand why Duvall, one of the premier actors of our times, can sit back and look at his body of work with supreme satisfaction, and be more than willing to try new things.
In a dual story about a aging hired killer and tango dancing, neither subject is developed to anything approaching interesting.Duvall, as usual stellar as an actor, has not given himself very good material here.
This is never explored, though, and we are left unmoved.Similarly, the sequences with tango dancing are also never fully utilized to their full effect, and Duvall, who is supposed to be the central character, is barely shown doing any dancing at all, and his suppressed love for his real-life girlfriend never catches fire.As a result, both plots are pretty much glossed over and what we end up with is two sub-plots, neither of which is satisfying.
This Duvall feature is quirky, touching, beautiful, odd, and by a man whose politics I do not at all like, yet I have to say that its qualities, including the camera work, the cutting, the music, the actors, the spoken script come close to creating a film Fellini would have been pleased to have authored.
His little, tightly wound but precise killer is, like the dance which carries the spirit of a place and people in the film, and the panther which his dance teacher admires, is a wary watchful beast whose devotion to the ten year old daughter redeems him in part.
Anderson (Robert Duvall) is an old man, who loves to dance, and lives with his beloved girlfriend and her daughter in Brooklyn.
The story is very boring and slow paced and Robert Duvall is completely miscast, being too old for the role of John J.
It is almost ridiculous to see the romantic scenes of the 71 years old Robert Duvall, with the beautiful and sexy 30 years old Luciana Pedraza, or acting like a dad of with his 10 years old stepdaughter.
"Assassination Tango" is completely overrated and I believe just for two reasons: the first one is because of the name of Robert Duvall, but he needs to look to Clint Eastwood and learn how to get old with dignity and glamour.
I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys watching a movie with great acting, nice music, and not the usual boring plot..
At once it seems like he is trying to draw a parallel between the passion of dance and the intricacies of crime, but he allows scenes to drag on too long without significant action or dialogue.I get the feeling that Duvall wanted to celebrate the tango in its natural habitat without indulging in the erotic aspects of the dance, just as he wanted to portray a crotchety assassin in a foreign land without speaking of the relevant political context.
This film takes a little time to settle into because the assassination is more of a subplot in the movie.
Once this point sinks in, I really enjoy the film because the Argentinian tango dance scene is enthralling.
something many would never watch on their own, but now that you're there, you're drawn into the story.To me, the interesting thing about Duvall's character is that he is a hit-man who must disguise all of himself to others ( he even leads his benefactors to believe that he would carry out the hit at a specific time when in truth, he always has his own cautious agenda -- and he is correct not to trust anyone ).
But his next move is to be the ruthless hit-man.Admittedly, you're a little confused initially, but looking back on the film, you feel pretty good about most of it..
This film follows the well trodden path of an ageing hit-man (John J) sent on what may well be his last job in Argentina which also sets the backdrop for a second stand of the story: John J's love of Tango.
The script is flawed and the movie ends with lots unresolved.Robert Duvall stars, wrote, and directed this homage to the tango and Argentina.
There is a line in the movie that you are never too old to learn, I'm sure he interjected that because he discovered the Tango in his 60's and dances it to this day.
Odd little movie shot in Argentina about an American hit man sent to take our a general, only to find himself with time on his hands before he can take out the general and return home.
To kill time, he takes up the tango, and the movie is as much about this unusual development as the impending assassination.
This Robert Duvall directed film attempts to combine a crime thriller and a romance with the exotic charm of Argentina's national dance, the tango.
Duvall, acting wonderfully as usual, gives an interesting portrayal of an aging assassin with a gentle side and a love of life but his assignment seems to be a mere backdrop for highlighting the dance sequences.
While his co-star and dance partner, newcomer Luciana Pedraza, also gives a realistic, believable performance, the two fail to heat up the screen.While beautifully shot on the streets of Brooklyn and Buenos Aires and featuring a latin soundtrack, this film may be of interest only to dance lovers or Duvall fans..
I have been a Robert Duvall fan for many years now so when this movie showed up on my DVR I naturally watched it.
The beginning was pretty much what i expected but then the tango was introduced along with the beautiful dancing of Luciana Pedraza.
It was then that the movie made a turn and the wonderful tango dancing became the high point of the film.
Once again, Robert Duvall comes out of the gate with one of his personal projects, writing, directing, producing, and starring, and delivers an almost perfect film.
Assassination Tango is as good a film as I've ever seen..
The romantic interest between the tango dancer (his real-live girlfriend) and Duval's character was fun to watch; especially when the two were drinking coffee.
If there is a sequel....not........play up the romantic interest with the tango dancer and connect the plot dots.By the way...I saw Duval and his girlfriend costar get on a plane for the east coast a few years ago, she has a lot of natural beauty.Julius.
The key about playing the hired assassin Robert Duvall portrays in this film seems to be his newly found happiness in a relationship with Maggie and her young daughter.
In many ways the film suffers because it keeps us away from the main reason for his character's trip to that South American country.It is very interesting that when John, gets back to Brooklyn he goes to meet his young step daughter at the end of the school day and on the way home he tries to teach her a few steps of the tango.
He's professional, speaks some Spanish, but moreover has a fascination with Tango and other ballroom dance.Duvall has shown he can run a one man show before, with The Apostle, and while this film is entirely different, it's every bit as good.
If you appreciated the banter between characters and intense yet subdued violence from Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, you'll like this movie.Duvall is the brilliant veteran assassin who's not altogether pleasant all the time (this isn't the sweet nice guy Marky Mark assassin from The Big Hit), but you still wish him well.
Miller is his stepdaughter, the apple of his eye for whom he always shows his nice side, and Pedraza is the Tango student/teacher who seduces Duvall's character by her very nature in more ways than one.It's not a hot steamy thriller with over-the-top action sequences and acrobatic heroes like Assassins, nor a romantic comedy like Grosse Pointe Blank, just a movie that shows a man's dance with life and death and his fellow human beings in a very enjoyable way..
Robert Duvall's greatness lies in part, on his ability to become the character he's portraying, his identity subsumed in the film.
Actors tend to be empty vessels, filled by a writer's creation...Duvall mistook his acting gifts for writing talent, and produced an interesting glimpse of Buenos Aires' tango world, populated with the road show cast of "Reservoir Dogs".
A 30 year old woman who has charmed him, with whom he lives and loves and dances.She moves dance into his life and he film-making into hers.
I know that Duvall had been trying to develop a story around the tango for years.
Duvall fleshes out the latter in "Assassination Tango"; a sort of character study of a heartless killer with a sensitive side which is hard to swallow.
The camera work and the dancing is really superb.However: Duvall is way too much in love with himself.
This movie by Robert Duvall was fantastic, and moved me to actually sign up for tango lessons!
at first I did not like it as I was expected another "preacher" story (Duvall's first fantastic film he wrote as well).
The atmosphere and slightly unconventional plot coupled with superb acting, directing, and script "writing" has allowed me to watch the movie more then twice with no disappointment Mr. Duvall is at his finest and I wait to see his beautiful co-star in another production.
I especially enjoyed the impromptu scenes between Mr. Duvall and Miss Pedraza, to me, were worth seeing over and over, of course this might also be due to her great beauty.
I had thought Duvall's " Apostle" was going to be his last and best acting.Assassination Tango comes very close to being almost as good.The movie moves along surprisingly quickly considering it's length and the many dance scenes.I have no interest in musicals nor in dancing but I found the tango dancing scenes interesting..There were some things that were never made clear to me.
in a movie that robert duvall wrote, directed, and starred in, he spends a lot of time chuckling with a smile on his face.
So when an actor (and occasional writer/director) with the stature of Robert Duvall gets a chance to do a movie on a topic clearly near and dear to his heart, in this case tango dancing, and feels that the audience "hook" he needs is to play a hit man and a "nice" (and aging) one at that, it's a little depressing.
(POSSIBLE SPOILER: If you watch the film waiting to learn why the American Mafia is involved in a hit in Argentina, or why Duvall was chosen, or what happened "behind the scenes," don't bother.
There's a scene with Duvall sitting at a table with her, her sister, their mother and another guy just "talking shop" about the tango; it was pretty interesting in a watching-the-Discovery-channel sense until I remembered this was supposed to be a movie about a guy coming to kill someone.
Story is about John Anderson (Robert Duvall) who lives in New York and owns a line of beauty salons and dates a woman named Maggie (Kathy Baker) and adores her daughter Jenny (Katherine Micheaux Miller) but what they don't know about him is that he's also a professional assassin.
John has always loved the tango and one night he notices a young woman dancing a more complicated version of what he has seen and this fascinates him so he asks for lessons.
This film is directed and written by Robert Duvall and in his previous filmmaking efforts he has shown a tendency to allow his films to go on a bit long with scenes that could easily have been edited out to tighten the story but he does an excellent job of making sure that audiences understand his characters.
His character here is about control from the way he talks to people to his appreciation of a complicated dance like the tango.
This story does wander and meander back and forth between his being an assassin to his love of the tango and their are clearly scenes that could have been left out like the scene early in the film at the newstand with the cop.
Pedraza appears to be an actress of limited experience but her performance overcomes this with her natural grace and beauty and her dancing in the film is impressive and it's easy to understand why Duvall would be attracted to her.
This film is slow moving and drifts back and forth with mixed results but like "The Apostle" Duvall gives us a seriously flawed but interesting character that you cannot help but be drawn into..
Robert Duvall has turned in such interesting performances in films like "The Godfather," "M*A*S*H", and "True Grit" that "Assassination Tango" comes across as a disappointment.
(A few spoilers) A great performance from Robert Duvall helps lift Assassination Tango from good to the very good category.
Luciana Pedraza gives a very natural performance as Manuela, the tango dancer that Duvall develops a deep admiration for.
It could be that as a writer and director, Robert Duvall is a much better actor.
Maybe this could all be fixed with a re-write in which Robert Duvall plays the part of The Tango Assassin..
I was also not surprised to see that he wrote the Assassin's Tango, as well as directed it.Most of Duvall's later films are about real people and real-life situations and that is what makes them so interesting.
His love of tango gave the Duvall assassin an unusual depth of character that made him not only more interesting than your average assassin, but made him more human.
So, what makes this film ultimately pleasurable and interesting, is that Anderson starts to frequent dance halls where he eventually sees a dancer Manuela (Luciana Pedraza) and is instantly connected to her.
To see the various dancing by Professional Tango dancers in various places in the film-- Is just wonderful and a good side twist to the film, bringing your attention away from the fact that Anderson is quite probably trapped in Argentina and is being hunted.
Robert Duvall made two mistakes in making Assassination Tango. |
tt0796366 | Star Trek | In the year 2233 a Federation starship, USS Kelvin, investigates a "lightning storm" in space, which the crew soon realizes is a black hole. A massive vessel, the Narada, emerges, creating an alternate timeline. The Narada, possessing advanced weaponry, opens fire on the Kelvin, inflicting heavy damage. The Narada's Romulan first officer, Ayel (Clifton Collins Jr.), hails the outmatched Kelvin and demands that its captain, Richard Robau (Faran Tahir), come aboard the Narada via shuttlecraft. Captain Robau agrees and hands command of the ship to his first officer, George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth). Robau orders Kirk to wait fifteen minutes for his signal and evacuate the ship if he doesn't make contact.Robau is taken to the Narada while the crew of the Kelvin monitors him. Ayel interrogates him first about a particular ship, which Robau does not recognize, and then about the whereabouts of Ambassador Spock, with whom Robau is also unfamiliar. The Narada's captain, Nero (Eric Bana), sits in the background, saying nothing. Upon citing the stardate, Robau is impaled with a teral'n, a pronged bladed weapon, by Nero, and the display of his vital signs on the bridge of the Kelvin instantly flatlines; Robau is dead. Kirk orders the Kelvin to open fire. As the situation worsens and he realizes that the damage to the Kelvin is compromising the lives and safety of everyone aboard, he orders the crew to escape pods and shuttles, including his wife Winona (Jennifer Morrison), who is about to give birth.Kirk tries to plot a collision course with the Narada, but autopilot navigation is offline; he will need to control the Kelvin himself. He orders his wife to leave on the shuttle without him. She protests, but Kirk knows that he has no choice but to stay behind and continue the attack in order to protect the others who are leaving on escape pods. On the shuttlecraft, Winona Kirk gives birth to a baby boy. As the Kelvin destroys the missiles aimed at the shuttles, Kirk can hear his newborn's cries but realizes that he will never meet his son. Just before the Kelvin collides with the Romulan vessel, Kirk asks Winona what they should name their son. She suggests naming him after George's father, but he laughs the suggestion off and says that "Tiberius" isn't much of a first name. They decide to name him "Jim," after Winona's father. Communication is cut off as the Kelvin smashes into the Narada, crippling it briefly and giving the shuttles time to escape.Approximately ten years later on Earth, in Iowa, a young boy (Jimmy Bennett) recklessly drives his dead father's antique Corvette (which, from the novelization, his stepfather is selling while the boy's mother is off planet). The stepfather (Greg Grunberg) calls the young boy on a built-in phone to warn him against getting even one scratch on the car. The boy ignores this warning and drives down the road blasting 20th century music, passing his older brother Johnny while honking the horn to get his attention. A policeman (Jeremy Fitzgerald) on a flying motorcycle tells the boy to pull over, but he instead turns onto a road leading to a stone quarry. He destroys the car in the deep pit, jumping out moments before it slides over the edge. When the policeman asks the boy his name, the boy defiantly says "My name is James Tiberius Kirk."Meanwhile, on Vulcan, a young Spock (Jacob Kogan) is being tormented by bullies (Lorenzo James Henrie, Colby Paul, and Cody Klop) who tease him about his mixed heritage, calling his Vulcan father a traitor for marrying his human mother. The three have previously failed to evoke an emotional response in Spock by stirring his human side (exactly 34 times previously, according to Spock himself), but this time they take it too far, calling his mother a "human whore." Their plan backfires, and Spock knocks one of the older boys into a learning pod and beats him in an emotional rage. He is later admonished by his father, Sarek (Ben Cross), who is disappointed at his son's lack of emotional control and tells him that he has a path to choose and that only he can make the decision.Several years later, Spock (Zachary Quinto) is conflicted about whether he should participate in the kolinahr, the Vulcan ritual aimed at purging all emotions. He talks to his mother, Amanda Grayson (Winona Ryder), about it, and she says that she will always be proud of him, no matter what he decides. Later, Spock stands before the Vulcan high council. The chairman (Akiva Goldsman) comments on Spock's perfect record in his attempt to gain entry to the Vulcan Science Academy, saying that his only flaw is that he also applied to Starfleet Academy. Spock explains it was logical to explore all options, which the others agree was logical but unnecessary. They accept him into the Vulcan Science Academy despite his "disadvantage" of being half human. Upon hearing this, Spock declines the appointment and states that he will enter Starfleet Academy instead. Commenting on the fact that he is the first Vulcan to reject an appointment to the Vulcan Science Academy, he sardonically tells the committee that their record is still perfect since he is, in fact, part human.Meanwhile, in a bar in Iowa, a young Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana) meets up with some friends. As they order drinks, James Kirk (Chris Pine), somewhat inebriated, introduces himself to her and offers to buy her a drink. He unsuccessfully tries to learn her first name and flirts with her, even though she is not very interested. Kirk reveals he is intelligent, but another Starfleet recruit (Jason Matthew Smith) has concerns for Uhura. He and three other recruits get into a fight with Kirk and beat him up before a senior officer, Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), enters the bar and ends the fight. Pike sits down with Kirk and tells him that his own dissertation was on the USS Kelvin, Kirk's father's ship. Pike attempts to talk some sense into the rebellious young man and to persuade him to join Starfleet, firmly believing that he can do more with himself than be "the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest." Kirk does not want to hear it and laughs at the idea of joining Starfleet. However, Pike reminds him that his father saved 800 others in just 12 minutes of command, and challenges Kirk to do better. Pike also predicts that Kirk could attain the rank of captain and have his own ship in only four years.Early the next day, Kirk heads to Riverside Shipyard, where the USS Enterprise is being built, and thinks about what Capt. Pike told him. He makes the decision to join Starfleet. Pike is surprised to see Kirk turn up to join the new recruits. Giving his motorbike away to the first person who compliments it, Kirk passes Pike, saying, "Four years? I'll do it in three." He boards the recruit shuttle, surprising Uhura and the recruits whom he fought with the night before. Another man, Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), also boards the shuttlecraft. Sitting next to Kirk, the somewhat nervous doctor starts ranting about what could physically happen to them should anything go wrong with the shuttle's systems. Kirk is amused and tries to remind him that Starfleet works in space. McCoy explains that he has nowhere else to go; having lost everything he had in a divorce, the only things he has left are his "bones." The two become instant friends.Three years later, the Narada is waiting in an remote part of space. Nero, who has lost part of his right ear since his arrival in the past, is called to the bridge by Ayel. Suddenly, a temporal disturbance (another black hole similar to the one the Narada appeared from in the past) appears and a small starship, the Jellyfish, flies out. Nero recognizes the ship, welcomes the appearance of Ambassador Spock, and orders the ship to be captured.Meanwhile, at Starfleet Academy, Kirk is telling McCoy that he is taking the Kobayashi Maru test again the next day, and is certain he will pass it this time. McCoy is shocked -- nobody passes it, and nobody even repeats it, much less takes it a third time, as Kirk is about to do. Kirk then leaves to "study," which actually involves sexual foreplay with an Orion cadet named Gaila (Rachel Nichols) in her dorm room. Suddenly, Gaila's roommate enters, and Kirk hides under the bed. Her roommate is Uhura, who talks about a message she decoded about a giant spaceship destroying dozens of Klingon warships in Klingon space. Uhura then hears someone under the bed and outs him. Angry that her roommate brought yet another guy to their room, and even angrier that it's Kirk, she kicks him out.The next day, Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and a few other Starfleet recruits are in the simulator room, undergoing the Kobayashi Maru test on Kirk's third attempt. Kirk takes a comically casual approach to the test, much to everyone's bewilderment. Everything goes as planned when, unexpectedly, the power systems momentarily fail, the attacking Klingon ships' shields go down, and they are promptly destroyed. From the viewpoint above the simulator room, a technician asks an officer how Kirk was able to beat this test. The officer turns, revealing himself to be Spock.During an official inquiry, the Starfleet Academy brass informs Kirk that they have received evidence that Kirk entered a subroutine into the computer making it possible for him to win in the simulation, and accuse him of cheating. While Kirk faces his accuser, Spock, and tries to defend himself, stating that "no-win" scenarios are a ludicrous training tool. Spock counters that it's a test of character, not of tactical ability. The hearing is suddenly interrupted when the committee is informed that the Federation has received a distress call from Vulcan. With the primary fleet occupied in the Laurentian system, Starfleet is forced to commission the Academy cadets and dispatch ships immediately to begin a rescue mission.Cadets are assigned to ships based on their aptitude, with the most capable cadets assigned to the USS Enterprise, a ship completed so recently that it hasn't even been christened yet. Uhura is initially assigned to the USS Farragut, but complains directly to Spock, citing her numerous commendations and recommendations (many from Spock himself) and insisting she has earned an assignment to the USS Enterprise. Spock replies that he wanted to "avoid the appearance of favoritism," but ultimately relents and re-assigns Uhura to the Enterprise. Kirk has been grounded pending a ruling on his inquiry, and is not allowed to board the shuttles and join the mission. However, McCoy takes him to the medical bay and injects him with a vaccine, making him temporarily ill. Consequently, he is allowed to take Kirk up to the Enterprise on medical grounds.The Enterprise leaves for Vulcan, but not before helmsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho), standing in for Ensign McKenna, who is ill, disengages the external inertial dampener, which had been preventing them from going to warp. Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin) uses the comm system to inform the crew about their first mission. There is a massive lightning storm above Vulcan's upper atmosphere, followed by strange planet-wide seismic disturbances. Their orders are to investigate the seismic disturbance, and aid in evacuation of the planet if necessary. After hearing the announcement, Kirk suddenly recognizes the "lightning storm" detected near Vulcan as exactly the same occurrence the Kelvin encountered two decades earlier. Realizing that they are running straight into a Romulan trap, Kirk rushes through the ship to Uhura, despite suffering a bad reaction to the vaccine McCoy gave him: big, swollen hands and a numb tongue. He asks her about the Klingon distress call she deciphered earlier, and she confirms that the attackers were Romulan.Kirk then rushes to the bridge to inform Captain Pike. Pike is at first skeptical, but after hearing about the call Uhura picked up, Spock concludes that Kirk's logic is correct. Uhura is stationed at the communications console on the bridge as, unlike assigned communications officer Hawkins, she can distinguish Romulan from Vulcan. As they disengage warp drive, the Enterprise finds itself in a debris field -- it's the remains of the seven Starfleet ships which arrived shortly before they did and were immediately destroyed by the Narada. With Pike's direction, Sulu is able to navigate through the debris with minimal damage. The Narada attacks the Enterprise, which takes heavy damage on the first volley of torpedoes, destroying the sickbay and reducing shields to 32%. Just as they are about to fire again, Nero realizes which ship he is firing at and orders a halt.He hails the Enterprise and identifies himself. Pike, seeing a Romulan, accuses him of an act of war, but Nero says he is a renegade from the Romulan Star Empire. He pointedly greets a confused Spock and orders Pike to come aboard via shuttlecraft, just as he ordered Robau to do years before. Pike asks if there are any hand-to-hand combat-trained officers on the bridge. Sulu volunteers. Pike gathers Sulu, Spock and Kirk and heads for the shuttle bay.Pike promotes Spock to captain and puts him in charge of the Enterprise. He also commissions Kirk, naming him first officer, much to Spock's chagrin. Pike outlines his plan to do two things at once: from the shuttle en route to the Narada he will drop Kirk, Sulu and chief engineer Olsen (Jonny Rees) into an orbital skydive. They will land on Narada's drill platform, which is deployed into the Vulcan atmosphere and is drilling a massive shaft to the core of Vulcan, causing the seismic disturbances that prompted the original distress signal. The drilling beam's signal also blocks any communication with the planet, as well as transporter beams. They will disable the drilling beam and then contact Starfleet to inform them of the incident. If all else fails, they are to fall back to the primary fleet at the Laurentian system. If Pike doesn't come back, they will also need to rescue him.Spock returns to the bridge and checks in on sickbay. He is surprised to hear Dr. McCoy instead of Dr. Puri, the chief medical officer, who was killed in the attack. Spock formally names McCoy chief medical officer, a job McCoy had already assumed as he works in the sickbay, heavily damaged and inundated with casualties.Pike arrives on the Narada as Sulu, Kirk, and Olsen begin their descent. Sulu opens his parachute first, followed by Kirk. An over-enthusiastic Olsen, wearing a red space suit, waits too long to activate his parachute, falls under the drill, and is instantly incinerated by the beam. Kirk lands safely on the platform and proceeds to fight the first Romulan who attacks him. He reaches for his phaser pistol, but the Romulan quickly knocks it out of his hand, forcing Kirk to use his helmet as a weapon. As Sulu approaches the platform, a second Romulan with a disruptor rifle emerges, and Kirk grapples with him. The resulting disruptor fire shoots holes in Sulu's chute, and he too nearly falls victim to the drill's beam. He uses the parachute's repacking mechanism to pull himself onto the platform, then uses his retractable sword to cut it off to avoid being pulled onto a flame vent and incinerated. Sulu engages one Romulan in blade combat while the other goes hand-to-hand against Kirk, who is knocked over and left hanging on the edge of the drillhead. Sulu knocks his adversary onto a vent, killing him. He then stabs the other one with his sword and pulls Kirk to safety. Olsen had the explosives they were going to use to destroy the platform, so they take the Romulans' disruptor rifles and fire on the drill, disabling it.Ayel reports the drill's incapacitation, but tells Nero that the shaft had reached Vulcan's core. Nero orders the release of a tiny amount of "red matter" and the return of the drill. Chekov discovers what the red matter is doing: creating a black hole in the middle of the planet. Vulcan will be destroyed in a matter of minutes. Just as Kirk and Sulu are to be beamed off, the drill shifts and Sulu falls. Kirk jumps after him. Catching up, Kirk activates his parachute but, unable to support the weight of two people, it snaps off. The Enterprise can't get a transporter lock on moving targets, so Chekov races to the transporter room and mathematically works out how to do it. The two officers are rescued just before they hit solid rock and arrive on the Enterprise's transporter pad.Right after Kirk and Sulu are beamed aboard, Spock beams down to save the Vulcan Council, which includes his parents, Sarek and Amanda. They were taking refuge in a cave which they could not simply beam through. Several of the elders in the Council are killed by falling rocks and statues, but Spock gets five of them to safety, including his parents. As the transporter is about to pick them up, the rock ledge his mother is standing on collapses, causing the transporter to miss her. Spock stands on the Enterprise transporter pad in shock, having lost his mother.The Enterprise crew watch in horror as Vulcan implodes into oblivion. Spock records his log entry, stating that over six billion Vulcans perished, and only around 10,000 remain. He notes he is now "a member of an endangered species." Pike, still a prisoner of the Romulans, is officially listed as the hostage of a war criminal. Nero asks Pike for the security codes to defense systems around Earth, but Pike refuses to give them to him, disgusted by Nero's act of genocide on Vulcan. Nero speaks about how the Narada, in his time, was a mining ship, and he was laboring to support his wife, who was expecting his child until she died in the destruction of Romulus. Nero placed blame on the Federation for doing nothing to save his planet, and accused Spock of betraying them, promising himself retribution. Pike pleads that Romulus still exists, but Nero only knows that his world, the Romulus of the future, was destroyed, and he intends to destroy every world of the Federation so that others will know his pain. Forcing a Centaurian slug down Pike's throat to coerce Pike to reveal the security codes, Nero orders the Narada to continue to Earth.Spock, in command of the Enterprise, leads the bridge crew in trying to understand what happened. They have determined that the Narada is heading for Earth. Based on their red matter black hole technology, Spock reasons that the Narada must have traveled back in time from the future. He asserts that the Enterprise must regroup with the fleet, but Kirk says that in order to stop Nero they must go after him first. Kirk believes that any delayed action will result in Earth being destroyed. An argument ensues which ends in Spock ordering Kirk's removal from the bridge, but Kirk fights off his security escort. Spock ends it by delivering the Vulcan nerve pinch to Kirk and ordering him placed in an escape pod. The pod is launched and Kirk awakens to find himself on a snow-covered world known as Delta Vega, another planet in Vulcan's system. Picking up his gear, Kirk heads for the Starfleet station 14 kilometers away. He is chased down by a polarilla, which in turn is attacked by an even larger insectoid animal. It chases Kirk into a cave, and when it finally attaches a tendril to catch him, it is spooked off by an elderly man wielding a lit torch. The man reveals himself to be Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Kirk's old friend, but the latter is skeptical.Spock mind-melds with Kirk to make Kirk understand why he is there. He explains that 129 years in the future, in the year 2387, the impending supernova of the star Hobus threatened to destroy the home worlds of the Romulan Star Empire and throw off the political balance of the galaxy. Spock developed a stockpile of red matter, a substance that can be ignited to form a singularity -- a black hole capable of absorbing the matter of a supernova. However, while he was en route, the star exploded much earlier than he'd predicted and Romulus was destroyed. Spock launched the red matter from his ship, the Jellyfish, to prevent further destruction to the galaxy. Immediately, Spock was confronted by a surviving Romulan mining vessel, the Narada, captained by Nero. Spock tried to escape, but fed by the mass of the supernova, the resultant black hole captured both the Jellyfish and the Narada, creating a disturbance in the space-time continuum which sent both ships into the past. The Narada exited over 150 years in the past, where it confronted the Kelvin. Spock's ship entered moments later, but what appeared moments to him was 25 years for the Narada. Nero captured Spock's ship when it finally appeared but kept Spock alive, marooning him on Delta Vega, so that he could witness the destruction of his own home planet, Vulcan, just as Nero had to witness the destruction of Romulus. Kirk explains he was left on the planet by the Spock he knows, who is in command of the Enterprise. The elder Spock is surprised, knowing that Kirk should be in command of the ship. It is then that Spock realizes that when Nero exited the wormhole and confronted the Kelvin, he altered history and created an alternate reality.Kirk asks Spock whether his father survived in the original timeline. Spock confirms that George Kirk saw his son take command of the Enterprise. Spock leads Kirk to the Starfleet base where they meet this timeline's Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg): an engineering genius who was also exiled to Delta Vega along with his alien assistant, Keenser (Deep Roy), after beaming Admiral Archer's beagle to an unknown location during a transporter experiment. Spock informs Kirk that he must relieve the Vulcan's younger self of command by provoking him and showing everyone that Spock is too personally and emotionally compromised as a result of Vulcan's destruction and the loss of his mother to lead the mission and command the ship. Giving Scotty the mathematical formula for transwarp beaming, an operation originally devised by the older Scott, Spock sends Kirk and Scotty to the Enterprise. After rescuing Scotty from the Enterprise's coolant system, the two are spotted and almost immediately captured by security personnel, led by the guy who got into a bar fight with Kirk three years previously.They are taken to the bridge where an astounded Spock demands to know how the two were able to transport on board the ship while it was in warp. Kirk refuses to answer and recommends that Scotty do the same. He asks why Spock doesn't feel any anger or have any emotion over the destruction of his planet and the death of his mother, who was murdered. Kirk keeps pushing and provoking Spock until he finally snaps and starts beating Kirk, strangling him to the point of nearly killing him, before he is stopped by Sarek. Realizing how far he has gone, Spock relieves himself of duty and leaves the bridge. Kirk assumes command.Following his outburst, Spock returns to the transporter room, where Sarek talks to him. Spock feels a rage he cannot control over the death of his mother. Sarek says that his mother would have said not to bother controlling it, and admits that he married Amanda because he loved her. Meanwhile, on the bridge, Chekov devises a plan to get the Enterprise close to the Narada without the Romulans detecting them: they can follow the Narada and stop at Saturn's system, remaining undetected in the shelter of its magnetic field. Spock returns and endorses the logic of Chekov's plan. He offers to beam over to the Narada to get the black hole device and save Earth, the only home he has left. Kirk says he will go as well, to rescue Pike.The Romulan ship deploys its drilling rig directly over San Francisco and begins to bore into the planet near the Golden Gate Bridge. Warping into Titan's atmosphere, the Enterprise indeed remains undetected, and Kirk and Spock beam over to the Romulan ship -- Scotty thought he would be beaming them to a remote and empty part of the ship, but it turns out to be an occupied portion. After a brief firefight, Spock uncovers the location of the black hole device and Captain Pike by melding with an unconscious Romulan. When they board the Jellyfish, it recognizes Spock as its captain. The Vulcan finally figures out what's going on when the ship's computer confirms its stardate origin as 2387. As Spock aboard the Jellyfish blasts his way out of the Narada, Kirk runs into more trouble when he finds the Romulans' bridge, where Nero and Ayel are waiting. Spock destroys the drilling rig before it can reach Earth's core, then goes to warp, and Nero orders pursuit. Kirk manages to gain control of Ayel's disruptor during a brief fight and kills him. He heads off to rescue Pike.The ships drop out of warp and the Jellyfish turns to intercept and collide with the Narada. Nero orders all weapons to be fired, even though the ship still has red matter aboard; with his plan for revenge ruined, now he only wants to kill Spock. The Enterprise arrives on the scene and destroys the missiles, allowing Spock to carry through with his plan to collide with the Narada. Inside the Narada, Kirk finds Pike, alive but injured due to his earlier torture. Scotty beams Kirk, Pike and Spock from their different locations right before the Jellyfish collides with the interior hull of the Narada and explodes.The explosion of the Jellyfish ignites the entire stockpile of red matter on board, creating another black hole. Kirk offers to rescue the Narada but Nero refuses, defiantly stating he'd rather watch Romulus die a thousand times than accept his help. Kirk orders the Enterprise to open fire, blowing the ship apart with phasers and photon torpedoes. The Narada is finally destroyed, but the gravitational pull of the black hole begins tugging on the Enterprise, keeping it from escaping, even with its engines running at warp speed. In a last-ditch effort, Scotty ejects the warp core and detonates it near the black hole. The resulting explosion pushes the Enterprise to safety, and the black hole implodes.On Earth, Kirk is commended and given command of the Enterprise. He relieves Pike, who has been promoted to Admiral and is now in a wheelchair. The elder Spock meets with his younger self and tells him that he helped Kirk directly so the two would form a friendship. The older Spock raises his hand in the familiar live-long-and-prosper gesture, but notes that the unusual circumstances do not lend themselves to the famous greeting of the original series, so he simply wishes his younger self "Good luck." As the elder Spock leaves to help the remaining Vulcans establish a colony, the younger Spock returns to the Enterprise and asks Kirk if he can serve as his first officer, to which Captain Kirk agrees and the Enterprise warps away. | entertaining, comedy, murder, realism, alternate reality, plot twist, flashback, good versus evil, psychedelic, humor, action, romantic, revenge, alternate history | train | imdb | I must admit that I was skeptical at first about taking such iconic characters and recasting them, even in younger iterations, because most people think of the characters of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov with the actors that originally portrayed them.
But any cheesy bits (of which there were relatively few) are blown away by the sheer beauty and bravado of this film.I was a fairly big Trekkie in my youth, but in the last 10 years only really kept up with it by watching a few new episodes here and there and seeing the big screen outings (OK, I admit that I have all 10 films on special edition DVD - £47 was a bargain!) - but Abrams' vision here has me thinking the new franchise will be even better than what has come before.What made this film special for me was not the story (remarkably good, bearing in mind that, like the first film in any new franchise, it's backbone was character development).
This has set a high standard for a new era of Star Trek that I hope will spawn at least a couple more films.It's not that I wasn't impressed with the character development, the acting, the script or the story - it's just that this film looked so gorgeous that I haven't been able to think of anything else since I saw it last night!
This is what set the star trek franchise apart from generic sci-fi and space adventure like Star Wars.Sadly, this movie utterly failed to capture that essence of trek.The first 20 mins of opening sequence are a beautiful and somewhat emotional alternate/new back-story to Captain Kirk.
My favorite remains TOS for its unforgettable characters, performances and stories, as well as the sense of camaraderie aboard the Enterprise.I hope I've established my feelings on Trek (after all there are Trekkers who think "The Motion Picture" is the best Trek film, and a lot of people seem to like "Nemesis") and what I truly value in it.
What I desired, what I can say with a deep, deep sigh of relief, I got, is a film brimming with confidence, energy, a sense of adventure, a suitably emotional story for the film's main characters, and, thank heavens, superb characterization.Using a plot device bring Nero, our Romulan villain played by Eric Bana, and Nimoy's Old Spock into the film, the writers Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman maintain canon.
Instead of merely rebooting the series entirely and creating an entirely separate canon, the writers have fairly deftly worked this film into the existing Star Trek universe.
Bruce Greenwood as Pike nails the character and in a crucial role Leonard Nimoy shines yet again as Spock.Abrams' "Star Trek" isn't quite tight enough and emotional enough to compete with "The Wrath of Khan", isn't as much fun for me as "The Voyage Home", but overall is probably the third best Trek film to date, on par with "The Undiscovered Country".
Kudos, though, to Zoe Saldana's loveliness as Uhura and also, especially, to Chris Pine as Kirk - I had always thought Spock was my favourite character, but it looks like I may have to reassess; Pine lives and breathes that Kirk moxie exquisitely and he'll be great fun to watch in future instalments.With regards to plot, it's pretty good; there is a decent sense of internal logic to it, without it being too overwrought.
Plus there were a number of points in the movie where they were saying, "We were pulling this kind of shtick 20+ years ago, and you loved it then; run with us on this one," and I was happy to.Oh, and most importantly of all, the movie is fun; it has the good sense to not take itself too seriously, despite remaining well aware of that sense of pomp and importance that all great character dramas should have, and that isn't a bad thing at all.How this movie will bear up to repeat viewings, I'm not certain yet, but at the premiere, it was a blast.Addendum: It's a month plus since I originally wrote this and I have seen the film three times in total now - the opening ten minutes remain a manipulative marvel that the remainder of the film struggles to match, the coincidences and conveniences seem even more far fetched than ever and the jokes seem even more silly BUT I still fancy seeing it again, so I guess it must work for me..
I was one of the few lucky fans who attended the Sydney premiere and my impression was "Wow!" The use of a well known Roddenberry plot device to reset the franchise was a brilliant idea and means the franchise can now move forward without the "FANS" shouting "canon!" The movie itself was brilliantly cast and performed with each actor being enough like the original to be believable in the role without the over the top acting that was part of TV when it all began in the 1960's.The special effects are top notch.Its a film which you can take anyone who enjoys sci-fi to, not just someone who knows the last 40+ years of Trek.So what level of fan am I?
As Paramount, Spyglass and the Bad Robot flitted across the screen Michael Giacchino's score pulsed through the audience and the film began.From the first stunning visuals of a pre-Enterprise time to the final iconic sweeping space shots Star Trek is fully and wholly back, completely engaging for Fan and newcomers alike.
The characters and elements taken from the original series are fantastic and iconic, but the rest of the movie is a mess and a betrayal of star trek's loyal fans.There are sooooo many plot holes, that this thing is just a joke.
And the movie is bursting at the seams with Phlebotinum (do a google if you don't know what it is).Basically, they've taken the cool characters from the original star trek, changed them sufficiently so as to render them annoying, and put them in a weak derivative predictable story.One thing they have done is made it possible to have new star trek adventures with kinda the same characters as the original series.
The first, and most disturbing part of the movie is the villain, Nero, who I think is the worst villain Hollywood has given us, and Hollywood once gave us Arnold as Ice Man. Nero is awful because his motivation makes no sense whatsoever.As the story goes, Nero is furious at Spock, and by extension his whole race of Vulcans, because Spock did not get to Romulus' star in time to save it from super nova, which destroyed his planet and all those he loved and cared for.
We have seen the effects of several stars that have gone supernova in our galaxy and in nearby galaxies and none have been anywhere near that big.None of the actors had the character they were playing right and Chris Pine seemed to think the role of Kirk was nothing but a joke, Kirk was cavalier but just plain stupid was not part of the character, he wouldn't get a job as dish washer let alone ship's captain.
Scotty was nothing like in the TV shows or movies; He had little or no technical abilities and was just the joke of the scenes he was in.The only character I think they had right was Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy; Karl Urban had it perfect right down to the insults and paranoia.This was more like a Star Trek parody than anything else.
(Black holes, get it?) Trekkies have always been able to forgive ridiculous plots (e.g. Star Trek movies three through six), as long as it meant we'd get to see Kirk and crew back in action.
The only characters that seem to come close to the originals are Scotty -- who is in the film all too briefly -- and Chekhov.Yeah, I know, this is now "alternate universe" Star Trek, because Nero and "Spock Prime" went back in time and changed the past, present and future.
Repudiate years of my interest in a series solely because you have lazy writers is a huge insult to those of us who have wasted four decades watching Star Trek just to have every television program and movie repudiated to give these idiots "creative space"?
The Trekkie in me wanted to give this a rating of 0/10, but I gave it a 3/10 for a few reasons: Good acting, good special effect, good action.If those things are what you look for in a movie like this, you'll probably rank it a lot higher!
Every time they showed that garbage, I was rudely jerked out of the tiny amount of suspension of disbelief that I was able to muster.There were so many plot holes you could use this movie as a doily.It felt as if the producers really hated Star Trek and were going out of the way to wipe out 40 years of canon.
This movie flushed the whole thing down the toilet.I'll give credit - they did a great job of finding people that look like younger versions of Kirk, Spock, McCoy et al.
What a way to make Uhura a cheap thrill ride...It's okay though, cause OLD Spock, played poorly by Leonard Nimoy says that is an "alternate time line" and because of that it makes everything better...Let me put my view into perspective.
It is a cheap ploy to get the trekkies to spend their money on something that will very soon be universally known as the absolute worst Star Trek in history.It's even worse then 5...In my many years and dollars of going to see movies, I have only walked out on 1.
It is hurtful and near hateful towards the series that has inspired us to look up into the star and dream of boldly going where no man has gone before.It is disrespectful towards all of the black woman who were inspired by Nichelle Nichols to rise above the stereotypes of that day and age and become more then what they told they could be.It is a perversion towards all of us kids who dreamed of being Captain Kirk, and discovering new life and new civilizations.
Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek is a tale of diplomacy and peace littered with ethical and moral dilemmas developed to make you think, to wonder about what future humanity is moving towards.This was not Star Trek and it infuriates me that they would try to pass it off as such.Why couldn't they simply make up new names for the characters or at least give the film a subtitle instead of allowing JJ Abrams to prove his arrogance and ignorance to the real themes behind the Star Trek name?
On SNL last week I saw the two actors playing young Spock and Kirk declare that they tried very hard "to stay true to Star Trek canon." This is a gigantic lie.This film completely rewrites 42 years of Trek history.
And the BIG problem with this new "Star Trek" movie is that they TOTALLY foul up the history of these characters and then insult our intelligence by having Spock (Prime - the older Spock) say that his actions altered the course of history (which, we learn, is why Kirk's father dies on the day of his birth this time around).
What did disappoint me so much was the choice for a time travel plot creating an "alternative timeline" which allows/allowed the film-makers to work with Star Trek while creating something new from the beginning, too.
(I believe this has euphemistically been called a reboot, yet if you reboot your computer you don't actually get a new one out of doing so.) It seems to me as if they just wanted to make a Star Trek movie for the masses so badly and at all costs, but without even bothering to watch the shows and engage themselves in the history.
Today I don't feel like laughing back at people who have never even considered watching a Star Trek show and are now surprisingly caught by some other big budget Sci-Fi movie.
As a recent thing, I begun watching the original Star Trek series, with Kirk and Spock.
Suffice it to say that because of time traveling, history got changed and we are presented an alternative universe which 'allows' this movie and potential follow-ups to completely 're-imagine' Star Trek.
No planet Vulcan, no Vulcan Science Academy, no Spock's ship with its enormous load of 'red matter', no failed rescue mission for Ambassador Spock, no avenging Nero, no ridiculous black hole/wormhole to the time and place of Kirk's birth etc.This is not a parallel universe story.
The story is a pathetic amalgam of the "big thing appears near earth" story that has been used in at least three previous Treks, a bunch of scenes from the various TV series done worse and a load of filler that I think was shot by Michael Bay but he didn't want it because it was too stupid.The actors who play the adult Kirk and Spock are both good if you ignore the story and script they have to work with.
The actors and action were convincing and good, but the problem with Star Trek is, that if the writers can't come up with something they just use time travel to make there story fit.
The scene where Captain Kirk feels the need to blast Nero even though a black hole's engulfing his ship was so not like Star Trek's values.
In a comedy like Star Trek 4 it works because the movie is never too serious in tone, but time travel leaves too many logical conundrums to make good sci fi.(i.e why don't the Klingons just go back and destroy Earth in the past) Time travel is something that most probably is impossible.
This new movie is not the Star Trek that we know and have loved for more than 40 years, is in fact a poor excuse to gain market and to reboot (erase) the series completely.
Nero's effect on that time-line by killing Kirk's father does affect the alternative reality in this new Star Trek.
In a sudden (plot) twist, the very nature of the film becomes clear: this is a new Star Trek.However, the opening sequence delivers more than just this "statement" - it also gives us a taste of what is to come: action, drama, solid performances and an outstanding introduction to a new era.Little by little we are introduced to the main characters, starting with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura as we briefly navigate their early lives including events at Starfleet Academy before hitting a plot crescendo which brings all the cast together – and to the starship Enterprise, NCC 1701!
This is a movie strong on character development, and each of the actors deliver brilliant performances – nothing less would be appropriate given the shoes each has to fill.The movie moves along at an agreeable pace, never slow enough to be tedious, nor too frenetic so as to be judged another "run 'n' gun" style sci-fi action flick.This is a movie with cutting edge special effects, but they serve more to frame the storyline and characters rather than to be the show entirely.Star Trek has always been tied to models and great visuals, so this is something which we've come to expect from this groundbreaking franchise.Since I do not intend to introduce spoilers in this review, I can only really say that the crew of the USS Enterprise is brought full circle to face the film's dark enemy, a Romulan by the name of Nero who is portrayed by Australia's own Eric Bana (who is not given nearly enough screen time in my humble opinion).By now you've probably heard that the movie also features Leonard Nimoy – reprising his role as Mr (please, not Doctor) Spock.
but I have to say that Simon Pegg and Zachary Quinto are simply outstanding amongst a group of very talented actors in a movie which is (perhaps a little surprisingly) carried by strong character development.In summary, this film is likely to appeal to a wide audience including die hard Trekkies and those new to the Star Trek universe.
I liked it to a point, and then Spock's mother dies when Vulcan is destroyed, the use of an alternate time line came into play and everything Gene Roddenberry, Shatner, Nimoy and the generations that came after them put on screen, was made null and void.Kirk is a young rebel rouser from Iowa who in a matter of moments it seems is recruited into Star Fleet and through a 'just happened to be there at the right time' scenario, is put in charge of the Enterprise.
So there, you've been warned.After seeing this flick in IMAX last night, I knew I felt uneasy (and it wasn't just the random chunk of dirt being projected onto the huge screen) but I had to sleep on this one.Many of the original Star Trek episodes were written by the leading science fiction authors of the time, and they dealt with issues like geopolitics, arms race, cultural divide, and, yes, even some science.This film was brought to you by the guy who brought us that hopelessly lost TV show Lost.During the movie, all I could see in my mind's eye was the writers' meetings."We need something that can blow-up a planet.
Casting is good, with the exception of Simon Pegg.After nearly 1000 filmed episodes of Trek, many where time travel was featured, we are supposed to accept that Spock would allow some madman to change the past, destroy Vulcan, kill his mother, and just accept it, without taking a trip to the Guardian of Forever, or slingshotting around a star, or visiting Zarabeth, or sending an e-mail to Gary Seven.The characterizations are nothing more than simplistic sketches of clichés worn out after 40 years. |
tt0134928 | Rasen | Following the events of Ring, the body of Ryūji Takayama, former husband of Reiko Asakawa and father of Yōichi Asakawa, is examined by his friend and rival, pathologist Mitsuo Andō. After he finds a cryptic note in Takayama's stomach, Reiko and Yōichi also turn up dead. Andō soon learns of a mysterious cursed videotape, haunted by the spirit of a murdered young woman. Rumor has it that anyone who watches the video will die exactly one week later. Despondent over the death of his own child, and believing that he is being guided by his rival's ghost, Andō decides to see the video for himself. After watching the tape, strange things begin to happen around him, and he soon discovers that the tape's restless spirit has different plans in store for him.
With the help of Takayama's student, Mai Takano, Andō finds out more about Ryūji's past as well as the mysterious young woman, Sadako Yamamura. Searching for the truth about why Ryūji and Yōichi died from the virus while Reiko didn't leads him to her boss Yoshino. Yoshino lets Andō in on a secret: he has the wife's diary. She and Ryūji had been researching the cursed videotape. While Reiko had broken the curse, Ryūji died a week after watching the tape. Reiko believed that creating a copy would break the curse but Yōichi died a week after watching the tape, just as his father had. Yoshino shows Andō both the tape and the diary.
When Andō tells Mai Takano what he's done, she is shocked and can't understand why, since she felt from the start that it was the video that killed Takayama and his family. As they are talking, Yoshino calls Andō. He admits that he wishes he'd never been involved in Reiko's business. Andō believes that Yoshino had watched the video, but he denies it saying that he was too scared to. However, Yoshino still dies.
Andō decides to destroy the videotapes and make sure that he will be the video's last victim. He then confides in Mai about his son's death, and they end up sleeping together. Andō asks Mai if she'll be there with him when he dies, but Mai tells him she's too scared. He understands and decides to try to find out more about the virus that killed Takayama and his son. He discovers that the virus that killed Yoshino was different from the one that killed the father and son. Andō asks for tests to be run on him.
Meanwhile, Mai Takano goes missing and Andō apparently survives the curse. He starts to feel that the story was just a myth and he's relieved when Mai turns up. However, he is shocked to find out that she has been found dead, having given birth with no sign of a baby. Andō goes back to work and sees "Mai" there and finds out that she is none other than Sadako Yamamura, reborn and claiming to be "perfectly dual-gendered". He then learns that Takayama wasn't helping Andō stop Sadako – instead, he was helping Sadako. Yoshino, Andō's friend Miyashita and many others weren't killed by a virus or the video but rather Reiko's diary. Sadako promises to help resurrect Andō's son in exchange for his help.
In the end, Andō brings Takayama and his son back to life with help from Sadako. Just as Ryūji leaves, he tells Andō "Many years will pass before our world will be at peace." | good versus evil, romantic, murder, violence, flashback | train | wikipedia | Set almost immediately after the events of Ringu (1998), Rasen/Spiral tells us the story of Mitsuo Ando (Koichi Sato), a forensics doctor who gets wrapped up with the "Ring curse" when his the body of an old friend, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada, reprising his character from Ringu), makes its way onto his autopsy table.
If you're a fan of that kind of material, and you do not mind sequels with vastly different tones and foci, you should like this film a lot.
For some others, the attempted scientific explanations of the "Ring curse" are a turn-off that saps some of the supernatural creepiness out of the rest of the series.At the end of Ringu, scripter Hiroshi Takahashi and director Hideo Nakata suggested that the Ring curse operated something like a paranormal, deadly chain letter.
Of course, audiences often feel alienated when their former heroes are so wantonly disposed in a sequel (and I'm guessing that's part of the reason for making an alternate reality Ringu 2 where the characters Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) and Yoichi Asakawa (Rikiya Otaka) return), but it's a move I love.
An American film that alienated audiences in a similar way, and which I also loved, is Alien 3 (1992).Suzuki and Iida make Rasen/Spiral nicely parallel symbolically to the overall metaphors of the series.
Although Spiral contradicts many things in the original film ringu it is actually based on the sequel book written by the original author of Ringu.
If anything this version/universe of Ringu is more to what the author intended and is not an awful film I thought it had quite a good plot twist at the end, however it isn't wholly satisfying as it does contradict the original to much and takes away most of the horror aspect of Sadako.
Forget everything you might have seen in Ring 2 and Ring 0: Rasen (AKA The Spiral) takes a different approach to the other sequels of Hideo Nakata's influential J-horror Ringu.In this version of the events that follow the first film, Koichi Sato plays Mitsuo Ando, a grief stricken pathologist who contemplates suicide after the tragic death of his young son, but who finds himself unable to go through with the act.When he is called upon to perform an autopsy on his old friend Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), Ando discovers the existence of the cursed VHS tape that caused so much trouble in Ringu.
After cracking a code left to him by his deceased pal, Ando comes to believe that the deadly tape was intended as a macabre present which would provide the solution to his suffering.The truth, however, is far more sinister: Takayama's gift to Ando is actually the return of his son, but for this feat to be possible, Ando must first betray the whole of humanity by allowing Sadako's curse to spiral out of control.Although a slow moving and often rather confusing movie, Rasen is not an entirely worthless experience: the film introduces some interesting ideas about the true nature of the curse and reveals its objective—to alter the course of the entire human race.
Casual horror fans might be disappointed by the distinct lack of scares, and once again gore is almost non-existent, but Rasen should be enjoyable enough for those who love creepy Asian flicks and don't mind doing a bit of research to fill in the blanks (apparently, reading the books helps a lot with understanding the story)..
Maybe the fact that I saw Ring 0: Birthday before I saw this film effected the way i viewed this film, knowing Sadako's story gave me a greater understanding of the film.The ending of the film was a tad weak, obviously setting the scene for another sequel, one we will never see due to this films failure at the box office & the making of Ring 2, which was a completely different story.The use of music in this film was good, except for the end theme during the credits, it just did not fit with the tone of the filmWhile this film is not as scary as the original, it does have it's scary moments & will keep the viewer interest all the way through.
"Rasen" ("Spiral"), the "forgotten" sequel to "Ringu" is an interesting, but Messy film...
Filmed and released at the same time as it's predecessor "Ringu" (or "Ring", which inspired the hit American remake "The Ring"), "Rasen" (or "Spiral") is an ambitious idea.
(Basically, "Rasen" is to "Ringu" what "Highlander 2" is to "Highlander"- a forgotten, non-canon sequel that people ignore) However, as the film was still made, and is easily obtainable (even in the US, where it is included with all three of the other "Ringu" films in a boxed set), I feel I should give my take, as a fan of the original film."Rasen" is actually not a "bad" movie, but I will say, as a sequel, it is quite misguided.
But as "Ringu" was changed into more-or-less a standard ghost story, this sequel's focus on the science of it was too awkward for many.It begins soon after "Ringu"- a pathologist named Ando is called into work to perform an autopsy on Ryugi, whom as you will recall was killed in the first movie.
Eventually, he hears about the cursed video tape, and decides to watch it and solve the mystery of the vengeful being Sadako himself, with the help of Ryugi's former assistant Mai.The film delves deep into science-fiction territory, with constant talk of viruses, cloning, etc.
Well I did not work out, the people were confused, they went and saw Rasen first and not Ringu, or whatever, anyway basically it wasn't that Rasen was bad, it was the way they released the films that was bad.
Right now they have a double feature DVD set with Rasen & Ringu 0, it is definitely worth get because Rasen is a great movie with a good satisfying ending, and Ringu 0 is spectacular, it is my favorite of the series.
Originally intended to be viewed as the sequel to 1998's box office smash "The Ring," (indeed, the film was double-billed with its precursor), "Rasen" continues the story of Sadako Yamamura, a strange child possesed of demonic powers who was killed by her father some indeterminate time before the first of the trilogy of films opened.
Whereas "The Ring" was primarily concerned with Sadako's murderous revenge through a chain-letter style video, "Rasen" concentrates on her attempts to be reborn into the world, essentially making the film a Japanese re-interpretation of "Rosemary's Baby." Like that film, "Rasen" is a strong film with plenty of moments of sheer psychological terror but few grisly "blood and guts" scenes.
And then lets not even get started about all those 'Ringu/Ring' movie versions and television series from different countries.
The explanation to this unexpected event comes later, but still, there is no really scary scenes in this movie, and Sadako looks more frightened than frightening.However, the story isn't necessarily bad...It's just the way it's being presented.
Everyone knows that Hideo Nakata's masterpiece Ring was followed by a sequel (Ring 2) and a prequel (Ring 0) which completely recall and wrap-up the story of Sadako Yamamura, the telekinetic girl who gained revenge via a cursed videotape for being buried alive in a well.
Less common knowledge is that fact that this movie, Rasen, was filmed at the same time as Ring and was originally intended to be the one and only sequel - wrapping up the story of Sadako in a completely different way.Both movies were released simultaneously in Japan but while Ring went on to be a major international hit and hailed as one of the scariest movies of all time, Rasen flopped and was quickly forgotten.
Rasen is now the forgotten chapter of the Ring legacy and is best watched now as an alternative to Ring 2.The plot follows a doctor as he investigates the death of close friend Ryuji (the professor who was killed by Sadako at the end of Ring).
This doctor soon finds Ryuji's wife Reiko's diary and learns of the mysterious Sadako video - and after watching it for himself, comes to the realisation that he has one week to solve its remaining secrets or risk succumbing to the curse himself.Rasen is an excellent sequel to Ringu - for the first hour.
Without giving anything away, the final act turns on its head anything we'd thought Sadako was trying to do through her cursed tape and makes the events of Ring seem somewhat pointless.
It rambles on about philosophy and ethics and is really a damp squid of a horror movie.Thus, it really is quite clear how Rasen was buried and I'm eternally grateful to Hideo Nakata for making Ring 2 - and to Tartan Video for failing to release this in the UK!
Kind of like the Phantasm series, the first one you wondered what the heck was going on and in the later installments they tried to explain everything and it just was not as intriguing anymore.The story starts out with a man autopsying a former colleague who was the father in the first film.
I have see Rimgu 2 (I have not seen for a while) few times before I even heard of this movie.I think Ringu 2 was okay movie, it wasn't bad but could hAve been so much better, then it was as I loved The Ringu I was hoping this would be an lmprovement of Ringu 2 but once a again, it was another let down.Rasen (1998) Is The forgot Ringu sequel, it came out almost at the same time as Ringu 2 as( it sequel in tgr book series as well,) it was huge flop and then a year later Ringu 2 came out.Now I know, why it is know as the forgotten sequel, it wasn't really that good or that scary, it was just really bizarre..The move was not scary at all, we don't see any one come out of the TV set, We do see Sadako, who just appears from no were.
That morning he gets a call from his buddy Miyashita (Shingo Tsurumi) telling him that the guy on the chopping board that day is Ryuji Takayama (played by the great Hiroyuki Sanada), who was Andou's old rival in Med. School.During the autopsy (which is about the only scary thing in the movie!) Andou has a flashback about how he and Ryuji used to always make number codes for words.
Some how (despite the fact that in 'Ring' Ryuji never told anyone about videotape and never went near anyone but Reiko), Mai knows everything about the cursed videotape and says that's why Ryuji died.That night, Andou take the numbered paper found in Ryuji's throat home and decides to work it out.
Many viewers probably felt the same reaction as when George Lucas decided to explain the Force with mitochlorians.The acting and cinematography is impressive in this film, as with the other Ringu movies.
Rasen is good, but it deserves to be presented in its own movie with new characters, rather than trying to fit the ideas into the Ringu storyline..
So, if you take these aspects into account, the story is great, and had the film been made with as much care as the novel, it would have greatly succeeded, and there would be no point in making "Ring 2", which in my opinion isn't as good as this movie, even though I enjoy that one, too.
...that a second sequel, "Ring 2" (which negated several of the events in "Rasen"), had to be released by way of apology."Rasen" is from beginning to end thoroughly unengaging, shot in a kind of ham-fisted, movie-of-the-week style that much more insulting when compared with the brilliantly eerie feel of the original "Ring." There are only two real characters to speak of throughout the entire film, Takayama Ryuji (Sanada) and Takano Mai (Nakatani), and their interplay is crushingly dull.
By the time that Ryuji stumbles onto the lead-in from the first film (the videotape made "cursed" by the beyond-the-grave power of Yamamura Sadako) and watches it for himself, the audience has already lost interest, and indeed may welcome his eventual demise.Oddly enough, the comic book adaptation of "Rasen" is superb, succeeding where the movie failed miserably-- that is, explaining the "why" behind the enigma of Yamamura Sadako through medical science without losing sight of the fact that *too much* information detracts from the mystery that makes the unknown so much more frightening."Ring" has spawned a television series of the same name, the two sequels mentioned above, and a prequel (Ring 0/ Birthday)-- all of which, sadly, fall short of the original..
Rasen' (pr 'Spiral') is the unnecessarily over complicated film whose plot bogs down this sequel to the J-horror classic 'Ringu' (1998).
the Ring series started out a supernatural suspense horror about a lurching figure with hair covering her face who stalks her victims via a cursed videotape and turned into a story that seems to consist of a vengeful telepath who wants to create many Sadako's to show the world the pain and fear she endured while in the well, by cloning and killing people with a virus.
Both movies were put into production with different directors and creative teams in the hope that when audiences saw Ringu, they could then immediately go back to the cinema to see the sequel Rasen.
While Ringu focuses on the supernatural elements of the cursed video tape, Rasen takes a more scientific view.
In fact it sets up the possibility of a movie adaptation of the third novel in the Ring series, Loop which takes the story even further from the supernatural into the realms of virtual reality.Rasen deserves more credit than it has been given, it is vastly superior to the "official" sequel Ringu 2, which was merely a rehash of the original movie.
I only stumbled into this because I thought it was a different film called Spiral.This movie is full of atmosphere but almost from the start doesn't add up to much.
By the end, I really didn't care anymore, and was mainly just watching in case I would have to know some of this to understand "Ringu 2" (at that point I didn't realize "Ringu 2" wasn't any kind of sequel to "Rasen").The high point of this movie, without a doubt, is Andou's vision of the dissected Ryuuji coming to life during his autopsy.
However, people see through that and find the goodness this movie offers.You should watch Rasen with no anticipation for it to live up to "Ring" because both movies head in different directions.
Ando Mitsuo is a pathologist who has to perform an autopsy on Ryuji Takayama early in the movie (his fate is explained in proper fashion in "Ring", unless you haven't already guessed).
If you have not seen this movie, everything read until now should be satisfactory enoughYou should know the real story behind the cursed video.
It's kind of hard to really explain the plot of Rasen (Ring: The Spiral) without giving away some major spoilers from the first film, Ringu (Ring).
Firstly, I'll explain for people who HAVE seen the first film.*** SPOILER WARNING *** SPOLIER WARNING ***Sadako has killed Ryuji Takayama, the ex-husband of Reiko, the reporter investigating Sadako's cursed videotape.
But this is just the beginning to a series of events that could be Earth shattering.*** END OF SPOLIERS *** END OF SPOLIERS ***Rasen (Ring: The Spiral) is a follow-up to the Japanese cult-horror film Ringu (English title: Ring), but I don't really want to call it a sequel.
Unfortunately, time becomes a factor because Andô inadvertently watches the tape and, fearing for his own life, he must find away to break the curse before it's too late.Rasen isn't really that bad of a movie, but it is a pretty slow going film that's quite hard to get into and is actually more of a psychological drama than a horror.
I can understand why Ringu fans didn't like this one because even though it still involves the Sadako storyline, it doesn't have the same effect as Ringu.I've not read the book, but I have read reports that Rasen follows it and Ringu 2 doesn't, so for a film to be slated for actually following the book is quite ironic.Anyway, Rasen doesn't start off too bad but it doesn't ever really get going, and if you're looking for similar creepy moments that Ringu had then you'll be sorely disappointed.
who also wrote Ring.The whole supernatural plot and tone from the original is changed to some really out there storyline on life & the pain (well that's what it seemed like to me)and now it's got some crappy scientific plot, trying to explain how it's a virus and not a curse that kills the people when watching the tape...
Follow up to "Ringu" has a pathologist, Mitsuo Andô(Kôichi Satô), who was colleagues with Professor Takayama(Hiroyuki Sanada) from the first film, watching the dreaded tape and hoping to destroy all methods of travel for Sadako(Hinako Saeki), not realizing that a diary(..containing elaborate details from the videotape, penned by the hand of Yakayama's ex-wife) continues to spread the "virus" to those who read it.
After that, Yoshino gives him a copy of the tape he stole from Reiko's flat, and disappears till later in the movie...After watching the videotape, Andou has a nightmare about Sadako's death.
Thirdly, and here is where the film fails completely, the story, which departs in many from the original Ring, wears very thin and it is overt-explanatory in trying to find scientific answers to the curse of Sadako.
At the end of the film Takayama, now reunited with Sadako, tells Ando that he is going to publish the diary so the virus will spread out.
RASEN is a weird and forgotten follow-up to RING, filmed at the same time but going in a very different direction to the official sequel, RING 2. |
tt0028950 | La grande illusion | During the First World War, two French aviators, the aristocratic Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), set out on a flight to examine the site of a blurred spot found on photographs from an earlier air reconnaissance mission. They are shot down by a German aviator and aristocrat, Rittmeister von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), and both are taken prisoner by German ground forces. Upon returning to base, Rauffenstein sends a subordinate to find out if the aviators are officers and, if so, to invite them to lunch. During the meal, Rauffenstein and Boeldieu discover they have mutual acquaintances—a depiction of the familiarity, if not solidarity, within the upper classes that crosses national boundaries.
Boeldieu and Maréchal are then taken to a prisoner-of-war camp, where they meet a colorful group of French prisoners and stage a vaudeville-type performance just after the Germans have taken Fort Douaumont in the epic Battle of Verdun. During the performance, word arrives that the French have recaptured the fort. Maréchal interrupts the show, and the French prisoners spontaneously burst into "La Marseillaise". As a result of the disruption, Maréchal is placed in solitary confinement, where he suffers badly from lack of human contact and hunger; ironically, the fort changes hands once more while he is imprisoned. Boeldieu and Maréchal also help their fellow prisoners to finish digging an escape tunnel. However, just before it is completed, everyone is transferred to other camps. Because of the language barrier, Maréchal is unable to pass word of the tunnel to an incoming British prisoner.
Boeldieu and Maréchal are moved from camp to camp, finally arriving in Wintersborn, a mountain fortress prison commanded by Rauffenstein, who has been so badly injured in battle that he has been promoted, but given a posting away from the front, much to his regret. Rauffenstein tells them that Wintersborn is escape-proof.
At Wintersborn, the pair are reunited with a fellow prisoner, Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), from the original camp. Rosenthal is a wealthy French Jew, a naturalized French citizen, the son of a Polish father and a Danish mother, who generously shares the food parcels he receives. Boeldieu comes up with an idea, after carefully observing how the German guards respond to an emergency. He volunteers to distract the guards for the few minutes needed for Maréchal and Rosenthal to escape. After a commotion staged by the prisoners, the guards are ordered to assemble them in the fortress courtyard. During the roll call, it is discovered that Boeldieu is missing. He makes his presence known high up in the fortress, drawing the German guards away in pursuit. Maréchal and Rosenthal take the opportunity to lower themselves from a window by a homemade rope and flee.
Rauffenstein stops the guards from firing at Boeldieu with their rifles and pleads with his fellow aristocrat to give himself up. Boeldieu refuses, and Rauffenstein reluctantly shoots at him with his pistol, aiming for his legs but hitting him in the stomach. Nursed in his final moments by a grieving Rauffenstein, Boeldieu laments that their usefulness to society (as aristocrats) will end with this war. He also pities Rauffenstein, who will have to find a new purpose in the emerging social order.
Maréchal and Rosenthal journey across the German countryside, trying to get to nearby Switzerland. Rosenthal injures his foot, slowing Maréchal down. They quarrel and part, but then Maréchal returns to help his comrade. They take refuge in the modest farmhouse of a German woman, Elsa (Dita Parlo), who has lost her husband at Verdun, along with three brothers, at battles which, with quiet irony, she describes as "our greatest victories." She generously takes them in, and doesn't betray them to a passing German army patrol. Maréchal begins to fall in love with her, and she with him, but he and Rosenthal eventually leave from a sense of duty to the war effort after Rosenthal recovers from his injury. Maréchal declares his intention to come back for Elsa and her daughter, Lotte, after the war.
A German patrol sights the two fugitives crossing a snow-covered valley. The soldiers fire a few rounds, but then the patrol leader orders them to cease fire, saying the pair have crossed into Switzerland. We last glimpse them from a distance, trudging through deep snow, their future uncertain. | anti war, romantic, murder, atmospheric | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0060942 | Savage Pampas | The movie starts out with deserter gaucho soldiers bringing women and treasures to a rebel named Padron who lives with a Native American Indian tribe. A loyal pair of soldiers confront Padron but he convinces them to desert also by offering them the women of their choice. One of the soldiers chooses a girl that a Native American wants, so the soldier and the Indian fight over her.Later, Captain Martin and some of his troops track down Padron and his brother out on the plains. He shoots Padron's horse out from under him. However, his brother attacks the captain who he drags behind his horse until the rebel is finally shot and killed. The hatred that Captain Martin feels for the Padrons is massive.Captain Martin and his soldiers return to the fort with rebel Padron. He ties the prisoner spread-eagle on the ground with wet leather straps that will tighten and kill him as the sun dries them out. Inside the fort, the Captain learns that he is assigned a new second in command, Lt. Del Rio. Del Rio has just graduated top of his class of cadets at new military academy. Martin also unhappily learns that he has to transport a group of "professional" women to the fort to keep the men happy and to prevent them deserting.Outside, Padron talks with one of the soldiers who asks him about his hoard of women. The soldier decides to desert and helps Padron escape. Once free of the fort, Padron goes back and buries his brother who was killed by Captain Martin.The Captain and a group of soldiers find the trail of escaped Padron as they set out to go to the train station to pick up the women. On the way there, Martin visits the grave of Teresa Padron in a nearby village.At the train station, the troops load up the women into two stagecoaches. One of the women is a political prisoner; the sister of an escaped revolutionary. She is forced into prostitution by the government because she will not tell them where her brother is. Also at the train station, the soldiers acquire an Anarchist, revolutionary, journalist prisoner named Carreras that is to be taken along to the fort.Carreras goes along in the stagecoach with the women and talks with them during the journey. Captain Martin has forbid any of the other soldiers to talk or go near the women during the trip.During the first night the group camp outside. Captain Martin has the women stay on one side and the men on the other. However during the night, one of the soldiers goes off with one of the women. Another soldier confronts them and there is a fight that is broken up before anyone is killed.The next day the soldiers notice and chase two Native American scouts who have spotted them. The Indians escape and return to camp to tell Padron about the women traveling with the soldiers. The group then has to stop because one of the women is pregnant and very sick. During the break, Carreras tells the political prisoner girl that her brother is dead.On the second night the soldiers and women stay at a wagon rest stop. Everyone has a big party and start to get intimate with each other. Lt. Del Rio falls for the political prisoner woman and the captain goes after the Native American girl who works at the rest stop. In fact, when it is time to leave the next morning, Captain Martin trades the Indian girl for the annoying woman that was supposed to back with them to the fort.During this final day there is Native American attack that leaves the pregnant woman and the army tracker dead. Both are buried at the village graveyard. While in the village, the soldier tells the captain that they refuse to take the women back to the fort. They have all paired up and don't want to share their women with anyone else.The soldiers stay in the village while Captain Martin and Carreras go by themselves back to the fort. However before they can get there they are attacked by Padron and his Native Americans. Padron shoots Carreras and ties the captain up in the sun spread-eagle and beats him up. Then the rebels and Native Americans go back to attack the village and get the women for themselves.Wounded Carreras struggles to crawl towards the captain to help him but dies just before reaching him. However, the Native American girl shows up just in time and saves the captain. Back at the fort, Captain Martin gathers the few remaining men there and return to village where the Native Americans have caused much destruction. The soldiers and the women are hiding in the church waiting for the final Indian attack.During the night Captain Martin sneaks into town and kills the Native American chief. The next morning the tribe sees the Chief's head on a pole. Without their leader, the Indians leave. Without the Indians, the rebels have no army. Captain Martin declares amnesty for any deserters. However, Padron attacks and fights Captain Martin to the death. They both die. | violence | train | imdb | null |
tt1659338 | The Numbers Station | CIA operative Emerson Kent is sent to kill a man who owns a bar. Before being killed by Kent, the man reveals he is a former agent who wanted to retire. A witness flees the scene, accidentally leaving his wallet behind. Kent finds the wallet and tracks the witness to his home, where he kills him. Kent spares the life of the man's daughter, Rachel, who follows him outside, hysterical. As Kent tries to convince his boss, Michael Grey, not to kill her, Grey strikes Kent on the back and he falls to the ground. Kent and Rachel share a last look at each other as Grey kills her. Kent is transferred to Suffolk, England to watch over a numbers station. While there, he befriends Katherine, the station broadcaster, and is haunted by memories of the woman who was killed. When the numbers station comes under attack, Kent and Katherine barricade themselves inside. One assassin is already inside the secure station and, after a lengthy shootout, is killed by Kent.
Kent requests assistance, and the operator tells him help will arrive in four hours; since the code has been compromised, he must kill Katherine. Kent notices that Katherine has a serious leg wound and dresses her wound. Kent receives an update from the operator, and, when he reports that he has not killed Katherine yet, the operator orders him to do so immediately. Kent contemplates her death but ultimately decides to recruit her help in tracing fifteen unauthorized messages sent from the station. On the computer, Kent and Katherine discover dossiers of fifteen different government officials, including Grey. The unauthorized codes are instructions to assassinate the officials, and Katherine is to be eliminated so she can't cancel the broadcasts. Kent says that the assassinations would leave the intelligence world crippled and the world unrecognizable.
Kent tricks the telephone operator by giving him a false confirmation code, proving he isn't the real agency operator; the operator offers Kent a deal, and Kent pretends to have killed Katherine. Kent escapes to his car, where he recovers a cell phone, and then races back to protect Katherine, who has cracked the code and is broadcasting orders to cancel to previous instructions. Katherine leaves her station when she sees the assassin, but he manages to wound her before Kent kills him. Katherine insists that Kent complete the final cancellation order, and he leaves her side briefly. When he returns, he administers an anesthetic, and she asks him if she will wake. Kent reassures her that he will not kill her, but he reports her as dead to Grey. Kent spreads C4 explosives throughout the base and drops Katherine's jewelry on the floor. After he carries Katherine outside, the base explodes, destroying all evidence.
Kent hijacks a car, only to realize that the driver is the telephone operator. When Kent asks him who he works for, the operator replies that he used to work for the same people that Kent does, but he now works for the other side; they are just as twisted, but they pay better. The two shoot each other at the same time, but Kent survives and attempts to drive away, only to fall unconscious from shock and crash. Kent wakes in a hospital and discovers that Katherine is alive. Grey steps in and says that she is a liability, but Kent is able to save her life by convincing Grey that she is responsible for saving his life. Grey volunteers to find their bodies at the ruins of the station, and, as the end credits roll, cars are shown passing over the Orwell Bridge in Ipswich at night, implying that Kent and Katherine escaped. | suspenseful, murder, violence, flashback, claustrophobic, revenge | train | wikipedia | A definite case of poor marketing.John Cusack plays a burnt out CIA black ops guy that is assigned to watch over Malin Akerman after screwing up a job.
Yes. Once you get past that, most people already know and accept there are secret killings, so you can simply enjoy the story (except for the product placement, of course).Another problem with these films is they get too caught up in the message, talking, and forget about action, thrills, and the story.
After a flubbed mission and a severe attack of conscience, hit man Emerson (John Cusack) gets reassigned to provide security to Katherine (Malin Ackerman), one such code broadcaster.
One day, their base gets compromised and Emerson and Katherine to promptly contain the problem before the false codes achieve their misguided missions.John Cusack plays the cool-as-nails but conscience-stricken Emerson very well, both in the action scenes and the quiet scenes.
Emerson Kent (John Cusack) and his superior Michael Grey (Liam Cunningham) are American secret agents sent to kill in New Jersey.
Grey assigns him to a bland job to protect code operator Katherine (Malin Akerman) in a number station near Suffork, England.
the background of John Cusack's character was well revealed, so we can better understand his motives and feelings during the unfolding action, the female character was somewhat underdeveloped i think, not that it impacts the story much, but we could have gotten some flashbacks on how she ended up in the station as well, not only in words - but thats all minor mumblingsalthough it may seem to some as a 'B' rated movie - it is a much, much better than that, you can easily tell that much effort has been put in this movie by a serious team7/10.
Very different results to the stories, however.THE NUMBERS STATION is definitely the more dark of the 2 films, filmed in the English country side, and in a forbidding fortress like facility in which codes in the form of 4 digit strings are broadcast relaying instructions to field espionage personnel and military units.
Going on John Cusack's recent venture into silly, inconsequential direct to video thrillers without depth or heft, I expected a mind numbing cash grab with his moniker shamelessly plastered in pre title billing.
I only watched it for a couple of actors I really enjoy, and what I got was thoroughly fun, slow burning spy thriller that took its time, built the characters and focused on mood and story instead of just action filler.
During and after the Cold War, Numerous 'Numbers Stations' were planted all over Europe, facilities where operatives would reside, broadcasting codes in the form of random sequences of digits, all over the region to various agents, who would read them, and carry out the orders embedded within.
Cusack's plays a disgraced agent who is assigned to accompany a coder (Malin Ackerman) to a remote station, and protect her and the premises.
The irony is not lost on me that I'm about to, with this review, do away with the very blindness that served my particular viewing experience but as they say the show must go on.The elements warranting a peak in The Numbers Station generally stem from three areas: the performance of John Cusack as a world-weary hit-man, that of the lovely Malin Akerman as a chipper civilian analyst and the gloomy aesthetics of the number station where the film takes place (and where it draws its name).
Even the exterior of the station looks like a graveyard.Likewise, the performances from these two leads is deserving of some level of praise even when the writing that shapes these characters is superficial to say the least (and I won't even go into the further mounting conventions associated with an assassin questioning his morals).
Especially when a good portion of the running time is dedicated to the interaction between these two refugees, we should get something meatier than Emerson breaking out your standard-order, dossier-brand psychoanalysis.But I digress, as Cusack in particular surprised me simply because he wasn't on autopilot and at some turns even emoted more than the material demanded him too.
While she in particular may exude a tad too much zest and isn't given much to do in the way of ass-kicking, her glowing presence is welcome nevertheless.It's somewhat unfortunate that the welcome elements swirl amongst mediocre writing and pacing issues more times than can be overlooked, but some slick kills and the aforementioned avoidance of over-the-top genre tropes still makes The Numbers Station better than your average bargain bin thriller.6.5/10.
"You keep the station safe, the code safe, whatever it takes." After Emerson (Cusack) has a problem during a routine assignment he is reassigned to a safe house type area making sure secret codes are transmitted out to the government properly.
The term 'disgraced black ops person' as that applies to John Cusack's character has about as much meaning as a poem from Pol Pot. I have never seen the world of clandestine operations depicted in quite this way before.
The numbers Station is a high tension film.But it is difficult to understand something,or I don't understand something.Firstly,there are some secret agents(or something like that) who kills somebody without any mercy.And of course they have some missions to do as you guess.I will not tell what's happening at the movie,you know what happens if you watched it.But film is not showing us who are these agents?Which country are they work for?Who are the enemies of them?You just see the what happens at the moment.For me,I don't understand the movie.But anyway it was some enjoyable to watch this movie.So I gave six to this movie..
Truth be told, I am very surprised that Barfoes's debut is such a lukewarm concept since Kandidaten did well, got picked up for a remake and Barfoed himself was attached to a handful of projects.The Numbers Station shares not only the plot with Safe House but also Liam Cunningham in a role of a seasoned professional spy.
It's always enjoyable to see John Cusack in the role of a burned-out something, and he steps right up to the plate here.Some of the reviewers have pointed out that the location (and this is basically a single-location film) seemed unlikely.
I got that feeling because of the way the movie is filmed and how skilfully the director managed to build suspense in a movie which in it's core has a truly simple storyline and activity throughout.I say this because when i watch immensely funded blockbuster with millions of USD budget, and I feel like i've just been watching 3 action packed scenes and it all lasted a total of five minutes.This is an engaging movie, with a solid cast giving a rigid and thorough performance.
It's Cusack's own internal struggle to do his job or do what is right that is the villain/hero of the movie.I give the film a 6/10.
The numbers station is a suspenseful action movie with real and believable characters and a very interesting plot.
And this was a hard blow to the movie, which dragged it down.And while both John Cusack and Malin Åkerman performed quite well, then they just had very little to work with in regards of script and direction from Kasper Barfoed.
Liam Cunningham also did a good job acting in this movie, as he always does.The plot in "The Numbers Station" had an adequately enough foundation, it just never took hold.
But director Kasper Barfoed swung wide and missed even wider with this movie.If you enjoy thrillers then there are far, far better thrillers available, and "The Numbers Station" is worth your time only if you are a fan of John Cusack or Malin Åkerman.
Former field agent Emerson (John Cusack) is reassigned to a Numbers Station due to a botched field assignment and it is hoped that he will resolve his demons in this new assignment.
John Cusack's Emerson character does a very good job selling the importance of a Numbers Station.
John Cusack manages to play the lead role in a movie that seems to be a cross between 1408 and Grosse Pointe Blank.
Malin Akerman manages to be the nondescript blonde girl.The core of the story is that there are secret stations that broadcast instructions for field agents using some numbers.
John Cusack is a terrific actor and he proves it once again in The Numbers Station.
Emerson (John Cusack) was one of those agents, until his conscience caught up with him, and he is assigned to guard the station, a quiet, lonely job, until terrorists break in, and he is the last line of defense.
A movie like this, with a small cast in a secluded location, only works if the stars of the film can keep you're attention and make the story believable, and both Cusack and Malin Akerman both do a terrific job of it.
This movie is more about the intensity of the situation and the reaction of the people involved than it is about killing bad guys, and that is why Cusack was perfect choice for the lead in this film.
Most action films are more about big explosions and special effects, the story is secondary, but in The Numbers Station, things are reversed and that's why I liked it so much.
The Numbers Station: A cryptographer (Malin Akerman) and her CIA bodyguard (John Cusack) arrive at a communications facility in England for a shift change but find no trace of their colleagues.
(This is not a plot twist reveal, it all happens in the opening sequence.)Most of the action takes place in the underground station and this is where the film gains its strength with the developing relationship between Akerman and Cusack.
With mysterious but an awesomely ethereal original score by Paul Leonard-Morgan, this Kasper Barfoed directed espionage movie starring John Cusack seems more like an independent character-driven psychological thriller drama that spends more time in a brooding ambiance of foreboding terror and a sense of loss of control much like what Signourney Weaver's character as Ripley experienced in Alien (1979) and suggestive eerie and dark, sadistic ambiance of the classic thriller Wait Until Dark (1967) with Audrey Hepburn.
Cusack's singular performance in the horror movie 1408 (2007) likely offered a number of resonating psychological themes that could be related back to this movie.There's a little backstory offered in this movie but the script plays out well without having to known everything about these characters as it comes done more to just survival.
John Cusack is not an action hero: The Numbers Station.
This is a classic action movie somewhere in the middle of an unholy "bond", "die hard" and "taken" trinity.Malin Åkerman makes an impressive acting performance in every way, incluing an extremely convincing "being knocked out"-scene.
This Little Film Does that Quite Well.It is a Dimly Lit World of Computer Screen Glow Through Maze Like Corridors with Heavy Key-Punch Doors and the Natural Light of Day is Absent in More Ways Than One. This is a Suspenseful Character Study and John Cusack and Malin Akerman are Believable in the Tightly Choreographed Story.Although the Ending is a Bit Mysterious, there is Enough Action and Intrigue to Satisfy Fans and the Dark Tone is Welcome in This Big Brother Scenario that Comes at the Right Moment in Time and is Well Worth a Watch..
The whole movie was filmed in a type of industrial estate, which is supposed to be the numbers station, and you don't really get time to know the characters because it just gets straight on with it from the beginning.
It starts of quite intriguing but it ended up being disappointing.Round-Up: Isn't John Cusack getting a bit old to be running around shooting and beating up people?
John Cusack stars in "The Numbers Station," costarring Malin Akerman.
Directed by Kasper Barfoed, it was filmed in England.Cusack plays Emerson Kent, a black ops agent.
Everyone else, including the Akerman character, isn't well developed.This comes off like a small movie, the kind you don't need to see in a theater.
There's an obvious reason why it seems a bit slow in the beginning, and the impact is all the more effective when it hits.I was slightly worried that Cusack might be miscast in this (that happens frequently with him, I find), but he's actually quite convincing as the suddenly conscience-ridden sociopath assassin he plays.All in all I'm pretty sure this will be both too low-key and a bit slow in the build-up for younger audiences, but it's certainly one of the more intense thrillers I've seen in a while.
So I have about 20+hrs of reaserch and videos on NS than the everage person and the fact that I knew what NS are and the mysteries around them, made me want to watch this movie even more.) I imagine that the average Joe might go as far as to think NS aren't even a real thing the way the beginning was presented (cool intro/music video but during that time more infomation giving text and video can be played).
The movie would make a bigger impact as to how serious this spy stuff is, though watching Cusack work in the field, kinda made things pretty clear :)It would be crazy cool to see an oldschool like 1960's agent taking on new orders from his radio and carry out an important task linked to US history (think Kennedy assassination type event) then hit with the "The NS are still in use 'today' (part) and start the movie.
A consequence of this attack causes John to question his role in the US security organisation he works for and to help him make up his mind he is sent to deepest darkest Suffolk to look after an isolated broadcast station for the numbers which equate to field agent assignments.Now I have been to Suffolk many times and it is not quite as deep and dark as the film makes out and is not quite as isolated either as rather a lot of people would notice this ultra secret installation.
Though obviously not in Suffolk which is deep and dark and an ideal place to hide US skulduggery.The shift he looks after comes back and finds the station under attack and that's where the film dives for the ditch and we get a bog standard so called thriller that makes little sense and whose plot is rather ridiculous.
The acting is really awesome, especially John Cusack, Malin Akerman and Liam Cunningham.
If not for the everlastingly bad decision making of the great John Cusack, The Numbers Station would be a complete waste of time.Cusack plays an awesome assassin who, with a level of conscience, gets 'station'ed in England and needs to babysit a ditzy blonde who's good with numbers.
He knows how to 'play' the 'Hollywood game.'What's that mean?He understands that - in order to do the small, intelligent movies he wants to, he must make the 'big budget' to allow him to make those he wants.(I should also say that i am in the entertainment business, so i do know what i speak of).I never heard of this film - and it was in theatres only a few months ago.If you don't know - never heard of 'numbers stations,' they ARE real.
I'd guess they're people who want more action, more of the plot TOLD to us - and not interested in 'going along for the ride,' and having to use your mind.Personally, I prefer the second type - but have no prejudices against the former.The Numbers Station has John Cusack as Emerson Kenta - a CIA black ops agent who, due to a job (at the beginning of the film) going wrong - is assigned to watch over a numbers station in England, and assigned to pair with the station's broadcaster, Katherin (played by Malin Åkerman).After two months of working a monotonous job, Emerson and Katherine come under a lethal attempt on their lives.
It takes a while to get what the calling of numbers on short wave frequencies is all about, but luckily the movie does get to that.Then we have the very familiar setup and all out assault on the station and the key caller, Katherine, played by the beautiful Malin Akerman.
If you don't know what a numbers station is, then if the movie comes up on the tube, watch it; I wouldn't spend hard earned money to buy or rent it unless it's on special.
The strength of this light spy action thriller rests on their performances as they fight for survival.Cusack was more convincing in this film than he was "The Factory." The movie holds your interest as you wonder what Emerson will ultimately do, why the station was compromised and by who.
I thought both John Cusack and Malin Akerman performed their roles reasonably well enough and all things considered I figure this movie is probably good enough for a rainy day..
This formulaic secret agent thriller stars a world-weary John Cusack as a CIA field agent who finds himself relegated to the position of a watch-dog for Malin Akerman after he fails to pull the trigger on an innocent bystander during a botched hit.
Grey demotes him to watching a code operator, Katherine (Malin Anderson of "Catch .44") at a remote number's station in Suffolk, England.
You'll have to be a schmuck like me, who keeps buying Cusack's direct-to-video thrillers like "The Factory" and "The Number's Station," to waste your time on this fodder.
The problem was, the movie was actually very boring, I hated John Cusack's take on his character, and the last 10% of the film was just stupid.
The Numbers Station is a visually striking, well filmed yet simple, exciting thrill ride that shows us we don't need an over the top plot with many different and unique characters to enjoy and appreciate a great movie.
He is assigned to a Numbers Station, in which coded messages are sent to field agents, issuing them orders. |
tt0120907 | eXistenZ | At a Antenna Company seminar, Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is introduced as the "goddess of the gamepod". She carries a single ski boot and describes eXistenZ, which is a new game system (metaflesh). Almost everyone in the room volunteers to test the new system. At the door, a game company worker Ted (Jude Law) screens Noel Dichter (Kris Lemche) for recording devices. Noel has an outdated gamepod, and is anxious about the demo.The demo uses flesh like gamepods to allows players to interact with the game. As they go into a trance to enter the game, Noel pulls an odd-looking gun out from inside his gamepod and shoots Allegra in the shoulder. The gamers attached to her feel the impact, and Noel gets shot by security. Ted grabs the gun and whisks Allegra away. In the car, Allegra throws Ted's phone away, as it can be used to track them. He uses a pocketknife to dig out the bullet, which is a tooth. They realize the gun and ammo are made of flesh and bone, which would not be detected by a scanner.They stop at a motel. Ted wants to check in with Antenna, but Allegra wants to test the game, and needs Ted to help her. Ted does not have a "bio-port". They go to a gas station and ask the attendant Gas (Willem Dafoe) to install an illegal port. He agrees, after recognizing Allegra. When she connects her pod to Ted, it short circuits, locking everyone out of the game. Gas reappears, holding a shotgun, and explains that Ted's port is useless. Ted shoots Gas in the neck before he can kill Allegra.Allegra and Ted drive to an old ski club, where they find Kiri Vinokur (Iam Holm). She hands the ski boot to Kiri for safekeeping, then Kiri and Landry (James Kirchner) work to repair the pod. Afterwards, Allegra and Ted jack into the game, and Ted's reality changes. Allegra says "you have to play the game, to find out WHY you're playing the game. They meet a gameshop owner, D'Arcy Nader (Robert A. Silverman), and Ted realizes the non-player characters (NPCs) must act based on his actions and speech. Nader gives them micro-pods, and they use them to port in. Ted's character makes a pass at Allegra, and she responds.During the encounter, the scene suddenly changes, and Ted is at a trout farm, working on a conveyor belt as "Larry", next to Yevgeny Nourish (Don McKellar). Yevgeny explains that the trout farm is now used for making game pods. Yevgeny recommends lunch at the Chinese restaurant, and to order the special. He finds Allegra, but she seems to react like the NPCs as well. Over lunch, Ted tells her he is nervous, and manages to pause the game. Back in reality, Ted starts to feel like the real world is fake, and vice-versa.They re-enter the game, and special of the day arrives. It's gross looking, but Ted's character eats it anyway. He assembles the bones into the same weapon that he found in the real world. He shoots the waiter (against his will), and the weapon is destroyed. Yevgeny appears, and tells them the waiter was a traitor. Yevgeny leads them to a breeding pool for the creatures and explains that they are working on undetectable weapons for a secret agency in addition to pods. The trout farm where Ted and Allegra work is owned by a company called Corticle Systematics, and Yevgeny's organization wants to destroy all non-real elements such as pod games.They return to the gameshop and speak with Hugo Carlaw (Callum Keith Rennie). Hugo shows them Nader's dead body and tells them Nader and Yevgency Nourish work for Corticle Systematics, and Ted shouldn't have killed the waiter. Hugo is with the realist underground. He tells them to assassinate Yevgeny. They return to the trout farm and find a game pod left for them. She ports into the pod, but something goes wrong. Ted cuts her link to the pod, and she begins to bleed out. Yevgeny arrives and burns the pod, which releases deadly spores. Allegra stabs him, and the farm catches on fire. They awake back in the ski lodge. Allegra's pod has caught the disease from the game.She injects the pod with a spore disinfectant, then sees Ted's bio-port is infected, too. She realizes Kiri installed an infected bio-port. She inserts a disinfectant pod his port, and says they cannot play for awhile. Suddenly the ski lodge is attacked, and the game cashier arrives, talking about freedom, and destroys the pod. Ted realizes they are still in the game.Outside, a battle rages, and the cashier talks about the victory of reality (the death of eXistenZ). He points a gun a Allegra, but Kiri shoots him from behind. Kiri explains that he copied the game, and tries to recruit Allegra to Corticle Systematics. Allegra shoots Kiri. Ted points out that she's committed murder, then tries to kill her. Allegra triggers the bomb she inserted into Ted's bio-port and celebrates, thinking she's won the game.Allegra and Ted awake back in the seminar, and the group de-briefs, applauding Ted and Allegra. The session proctor, Merla (Sarah Polley) tells everyone they will get a discount on the next game, transCendenZ. We realize Allegra was only playing a part of a game designer, and that Yevgeny is the real designer.Yevgeny tells Merle he is nervous about the anti-designer theme. Ted and Allegra shoot Yevgeny and Merle, then shout "death to transCendeZ!". The Chinese waiter asks, "are we still in the game?"End. | comedy, mystery, murder, violence, intrigue, alternate reality, psychedelic, action, sci-fi | train | imdb | null |
tt0048973 | Baby Doll | Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), a middle aged cotton gin owner, lives with his teen bride, Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) and her eccentric Aunt Rose Comfort (Mildred Dunnock) in a dilapidated plantation house in Tiger's Tail County, Mississippi. Archie Lee and Baby Doll have yet to consummate their marriage; they have separate bed rooms, with Baby Doll sleeping in an oversized crib in hers. Archie Lee desperately wants to but Baby Doll keeps him at arm's length. But on her 20th birthday -- one day away -- Baby Doll has promised to give her virginity to Archie Lee. She and Archie Lee fight a lot, and she threatens to leave him and live in a hotel in town if he doesn't provide for her. The situation boils over when the furniture company repossesses their furniture.Archie Lee's business is in terrible straits. All of the cotton fields are now working with the Syndicate Gin run by a Sicilian, Silva Vaccaro (Eli Wallach). Vaccaro has put many local business owners out of work with his large operation. One night, during a party in honor of the Syndicate Gin, Archie Lee burns the gin house to the ground. When the local authorities refuse to pursue an investigation because Vaccaro is an outsider, Vaccaro vows to take matters into his own hands. He realizes that Archie Lee was the only person not at the party and determines to prove his guilt.The next day Vaccaro takes his cotton to Archie Lee to have it ginned. While Archie Lee tries to get his antiquated machinery working, Vaccaro flirts with Baby Doll. She lets slip that, contrary to what he had told Vaccaro a few minutes earlier, Archie Lee was not at home at the time of the fire. Becoming suspicious of Vaccaro's intentions, Baby Doll goes to Archie Lee for protection. But he is upset because his gin has broken down. Vaccaro demands that Archie Lee go wherever he has to to find a replacement part. Archie Lee agrees and immediately leaves. Vaccaro sends an associate to get the replacement out of Vaccaro's own storehouse then continues to pursue Baby Doll.Baby Doll believes the plantation house is haunted. Vaccaro playfully uses this to "scare" Baby Doll and eventually get her to lower her guard. They play hide and seek, and Baby Doll hides in the attic. The floorboards are dangerously loose. Vaccaro, now forceful and angry, tells Baby Doll that she can't come out of the attic until she agrees to sign his handwritten "affidavit" that Archie Lee burned down the gin house. Baby Doll signs it. Vaccaro lets her out and prepares to leave. But Baby Doll persuades him to stay and take a nap with her in the crib, one of the few pieces of furniture left in the house.Archie Lee returns with the part and is angered and embarrassed to discover that Vaccaro has begun to take over his business. These emotions are only amplified when he discovers Baby Doll lounging around the house with Vaccaro, he still curled up in that oversized crib, she clad only in her slip. Baby Doll suggests that Vaccaro is interested in becoming partners with Archie Lee and suggests they discuss it over dinner. When Archie Lee sneaks away to make a phone call to friends in hopes they will come over to he house and help him deal with Vaccaro, Baby Doll kisses Vaccaro. Over dinner, she and Vaccaro taunt Archie Lee about his poor luck and flirt openly. When Archie Lee tries to take his anger out on Aunt Rose by threatening to evict her from the house, Vaccaro offers to hire her as his cook.Humiliated, Archie Lee loads his shotgun to kill Vaccaro. While Baby Doll calls the police, Vaccaro hides in a tree. Drunk, Archie Lee wanders the house and front yard looking for Vaccaro but can't find him. When the police arrive, they disarm Archie Lee; when Vaccaro shows them the affidavit signed by Baby Doll, they arrest Archie Lee as well. Baby Doll hopes Vaccaro will stay with her but he is more interested in ensuring his cotton is processed and goes home. Resigned, Baby Doll leads Aunt Rose back into the plantation house, telling her they will have to see what tomorrow brings. | comedy, cruelty, violence, satire, romantic, revenge, storytelling | train | imdb | null |
tt0837562 | Hotel Transylvania | In the aftermath of the death of his wife Martha (Jackie Sandler) at the hands of an angry human mob, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) commissions and builds a massive five-star, monsters-only hotel in Transylvania in which he raises his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and to serve as a safe-place getaway for the world's monsters from fear of human persecution.
Famous monsters such as Frank (Kevin James) and his wife Eunice (Fran Drescher), Wayne and Wanda Werewolf (Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon) and their massive immediate family, Griffin The Invisible Man (David Spade), and Murray the Mummy (CeeLo Green) often come to stay at the hotel which is completely human-free and safe for monsters.
On Mavis's 118th birthday, Dracula allows his daughter to leave the castle in order to explore the human world, but he sets up an elaborate plan using his zombie bellhops disguised as humans to make them seem intimidating, but without her being in any danger, and frighten her home. The plan works, but the zombies inadvertently lead a 21-year-old human named Jonathan (Andy Samberg) back to the hotel. Dracula frantically disguises him as a Frankensteinesque Monster and passes him off as "Johnnystein", 'a distant cousin of Frank's right arm'. Jonathan soon encounters Mavis and the two "Zing" (a form of romantic attraction). Unable to get Johnny out of the hotel without notice, Drac quickly improvises that Jonathan is a party planner, brought in to bring a fresher approach to his own traditional and boring parties. Jonathan quickly becomes a hit to the other monsters, especially Mavis, but this disgusts and worries Dracula greatly. Drac orders Johnny to leave, but Johnny is brought back by Mavis. After being shown the beauty of a sunrise by Johnny, Mavis is inspired to give humans another chance. Meanwhile, the hotel chef Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz) with the help of his pet rat Esmeralda learns that Johnny is a human and kidnaps him in order to cook him. Dracula intervenes and magically freezes Quasimodo to keep him from telling anyone that Jonathan is human. Dracula leads Jonathan to his quarters and shows him a painting of his wife. Much to Dracula's surprise, Jonathan knows the woman in the painting from a legend he has recently heard and relates a story about how she fell perfectly in love with a count, but died in a mysterious fire. Dracula reveals the full painting with himself in it and confirms the truth of the tale, and proceeds to tell the full version, thus explaining why Dracula built the hotel and the origin of his overprotective behaviour with Mavis. Jonathan is understanding and Dracula develops respect for his knowledge, and the two bond, recognising that Jonathan is a good person. Jonathan then tries to leave for good, but Dracula convinces him to stay for the time-being to avoid ruining Mavis's birthday.
The party is a great success the next night, and Mavis looks forward to opening a gift from her deceased mother. However, when Jonathan and Mavis share their first kiss, Dracula overreacts, and, in his outburst, inadvertently confesses to deceiving Mavis with the town. A still-frozen Quasimodo bursts in and the Fly (Chris Parnell) translates from his frozen speech that Johnny is a human disguised by Dracula. The guests are outraged by the deceit at play, but Mavis is undeterred and wants to be with Johnny, even knowing he is human. Jonathan feigns disinterest in Mavis and rejects her out of respect for her father and leaves the hotel. Mavis then angrily yells at Dracula and flies off. Dracula finds Mavis on the roof with her mother's present. He learns it is a book about how her mother and Dracula "Zinged" and fell in love. Dracula realizes humankind has become tolerant of monsters, Dracula manages to convince Frank, Wayne, Griffin, and Murray to head out into the human world help him find Jonathan, and with the scent-tracking ability of Wayne's daughter, Winnie, they learn that he is bound on a flight to America soon. The four head to the airport, but are held up in a town celebrating a Monster Festival along the way. Instead of being frightened by the appearance and powers of real monsters, the humans admire the group, and a team of men dressed as vampires help Dracula by providing him shelter from the sunlight while he rushes to the airport. Drac arrives to see Jonathan's plane taking off, and he gives chase in bat form, burning in the sunlight. After getting Jonathan's attention, Dracula makes his way to the front of the plane and uses his mind-controlling power on the pilot (Brian Stack) to help him apologize for his actions. Jonathan accepts his apology; Dracula then manipulates the pilot to return to the Transylvanian airport for a "refuel".
Dracula returns Jonathan to Mavis. Jonathan confesses that their 'Zing' was mutual and the two kiss, making Dracula realize his daughter has grown up and can make her own decisions. The monsters finish celebrating Mavis's party as Dracula, Mavis, Jonathan and their monster friends sing "The Zing" to the audience of hotel guests. | romantic, cute, entertaining, flashback | train | wikipedia | The story is about Count Dracule trying to raise his only child safe and sound away from terrifying humans and invites all the monsters to his hotel to relax and celebrate his very young daughter's 118th birthday which is accompanied by a surprise visitor!
I recommend this movie to anyone who like monsters ( so afraid of a little boy licking ice-cream)and want to have a good laugh and take a break from Disney..
After reading reviews that either disliked or were indifferent to Hotel Transylvania and being dubious because Adam Sandler(who has been in a lot of really bad movies recently) was in the lead role, I was unsure of whether to see the film.
And the voice acting was surprisingly great, to me from a non-fan who has liked him in some movies(Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Spanglish and Happy Gilmore) and hated him in others(Jack and Jill, Going Overboard, Zookeeper and Mr Deeds) Adam Sandler gives one of his better performances of late in the role of Dracula, he is actually funny as well as emotive in alternative to irritating.
The movie was a creative story, quick moving action, funny, heartwarming, visually interesting and sometimes surprising - this film had a lot of great things going on, and I found myself really engaged and far more interested in the characters than I would have guessed.
Youngsters will like the characters, the older children will enjoy the jokes and plot, and the adults will likely enjoy the movie as well, being able to catch on to the more "adult" funny references and a story about a father-daughter relationship that can be appreciated.
This movie isn't that bad but at the same time isn't that funny In this movie, we have Count Dracula who has organized a building called Hotel Transylvania to keep his fellow monsters safe from the evil humans.
One day, a human accidentally ventures into the monster world...Hmm...Still familiar and meets Dracula's daughter, Mavis voiced by Selena Gomez and falls in love...Still remind me of the Sully and Boo relationship as well as segments of Twilight.I'll start off by saying that voice acting is brilliant.
Set in Transylvania in modern time, Dracula (Adam Sandler) hosts all the legendary monsters at his hotel to celebrate his daughter's one hundred and eighteenth birthday.
In the present days, the place is the Hotel Transylvania, where monsters bring their families to spend vacation far from the frightening humans.Dracula invites his friends – Frankenstein and his wife Eunice; Wayne and Wanda, the werewolves; Griffin, the invisible man; Murray, the mummy; the Bigfoot, among others – to celebrate the 118th birthday of Mavis.
Soon Mavis believes that Jonathan is the "zing" of her life despite the advices of her father about the humans."Hotel Transylvania" is a delightful animation and a wonderful family entertaining for adults and children.
That's precisely the case with Hotel Transylvania.Hotel Transylvania tells the story of modern day Dracula, voiced by Adam Sandler, who runs a hotel away from human world meant only for monsters.
Even my eight year old cousin who I took to see this said the movie felt "like it went faster than other movies." The voice cast is excellent, with Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Andy Samberg and Kevin James lending their talents.
In terms of the 3D I wasn't really impressed but I haven't been impressed with any 3D movie as I find it adds next to nothing to the experience but hey, the children seem to love it and it brings in more money so I'm sure it's here to stay.So why does this animated kids' film fail to come together?
From the outside, Hotel Transylvania may look like a clichéd and typical aim-at-the-kids-mooch-off-the-adults animated film with pop music, celebrities, cute characters, and plenty of childish humor.
And from a film buff's perspective, it may look like an animated movie with known production hell that was tossed at September to just collect some cash and lessen the losses.But, Hotel Transylvania actually delivers.
Rounding out the fun cast is Devid Space, Steve Buscemi, Kevin James, Jon Lovitz, Selena Gomez, and the hilarious Luenell in a limited role.Bottom Line: Hotel Transylvania isn't deep and doesn't carry any cinematic weight, but is indeed a very enjoyable film with plenty of surprises, humor, and even a good bit of heart.
And as if a human visitor wasn't enough for the count to deal with, then his daughter was also coming of age and was showing an alarming interest in the world outside the hotel; the world of the living."Hotel Transylvania" has a pretty impressive list of people on the cast list, and they are doing really good jobs with the voice acting.
But the rest of the cast were also doing great jobs."Hotel Transylvania" is a nice animated movie that is enjoyable for both youngsters and us older people as well.
I enjoyed it because it had a funny story, was stuffed with great animation and it had that semi-goth feel to it and dealt with all the movie monsters that I grew up with and loved then and love today as well..
"Hotel Transylvania" is an animated feature about a father, who happens to be Dracula, voiced by Adam Sandler, who does exactly that to his daughter Mavis, voiced by Selena Gomez.The story begins in the year 1895 where Dracula is unexpectedly forced to be a single father and raise his baby girl Mavis after a tragedy takes his wife's life.
That's that, Mavis is a unlikable character, bold, not feisty but completely disastrous film.Came out in September 28th, it needs to be thrown away, I can't stand the bad voice acting, uninteresting plot and comedy that doesn't make me laugh at all.Mark Hotel Transylvania off, and go watch Despicable Me instead, touching, but very funny.I thought this would be as stupid as Trigun: Badlands Rumble, not similar at all, but Trigun: The Movie wasn't my cup of tea, Hotel Transylvania was really unnecessary to make..
At the very least that well-received film had the audacity to adapt a tricky children's novel, whereas this Adam Sandler-led vehicle seems as archaic as the gloomy manor in which this film is set.However, not to be a complete ogre (a creature which ironically does not make an appearance amongst the mummies, gremlins and more famous monsters and ghouls), Hotel Transylvania does not even seem to be reaching for anything beyond mediocrity and seems simply intent on pleasing a young audience for 90 minutes – a basic merit I cannot entirely dismiss.Hotel Transylvania is not offensively bland and frankly, the easy-going nature of the production is likely to please its target demographic while keeping accompanying parents rooted in their seats (this is no "Oogieloves," or so I can surmise).Sidestepping the inconsequential nature of Hotel Transylvania's execution, a significant failing of the film comes via the misleading trailers which essentially play out as a bait and switch.
Hilarity would hopefully ensure as Adam Sandler's Dracula tries to hide the true nature of his abode (and its many odd residents).However, that portion of the film plays out almost immediately and what we're left with is the well-worn overprotective parent story as the hotel's newcomer falls for the famed vamp's daughter, Mavis.
Unfortunately, Mavis and Jonathan meet and fall in love that forced Dracula to pick right decisions for his daughter.'Hotel Transylvania' starts with an interesting and promising storyline that make people hope these would be so fun and hilarious.
I found Mavis's character and her relationship with Dracula to be one of the more compelling aspects of the film, and I can't help but feel like they would have ended up with a better movie if they'd focused on this more and left the fart jokes at the door (though admittedly, not one that would appeal to little kids).Unless you're really itching for something new to see, I probably wouldn't spend the money, though I suppose it's also not the *worst* vampire movie coming out this year....
Rating-6/10Hotel Transylvania is an animated movie that has laughs, a nice style and some good people involved in the voice cast.
The problem they have in that area does hinder it quite a bit and also a massive reason this won't be remembered as much as other animated films, and although still OK on my account, no more than that.The voice cast as I mentioned are good and Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez and others are well cast with humour flowing through there voice pretty well.
I also really loved the sets involved and yet again they look very nicely done, I think with the addition of director Genndy Tartakovsky who himself is also an animator, you get a good team to sort out the way it looks.I think with this movie anyone can watch it, not only the kids but also the adults and even though I have seen some people say this strictly for kids, I don't believe they are right and it fine enough for anyone.
But at the same time, his daughter gets involved, and there's this whole comedy-thing with wacky animation and over-the-top characters and all that.Hotel Transylvania is a movie that I was very unsure if I really liked or just liked.
When monsters want to go on vacation, they turn to Count Dracula's (Adam Sandler) Hotel Transylvania, a luxurious castle resort where they can simply be themselves without the possibility of being bothered by humans.
Hotel Transylvania comes across in the trailer as a monster good time where Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) hosts all the legendary monsters at his hotel to celebrate his daughter's birthday while he works overtime to keep his daughter from falling for a human, who haphazardly stumbles upon the hotel.
I saw this movie on Halloween with my momma and sis and i always go to the movies with my cousins and s but this was when all of them were at the chalet OK so anyway my mom hadn't seen a movie in theaters in for years and she wanted to see taken 2 but she had no one to go with so i told her plzz come with us to see hotel T and she did to be honest i thought my mom was gonna get bored but she laughed A lot and enjoyed SO much and so did i and i don't have a good sense of humor but this just made me laugh so hard it was funny and awesome and its definitely not Disney since they always are eye catching and never fail but this is probably something close to Disney (coming from a Disney fanatic) and its so original which is so hard to find these days in movies and considering the fact that its sony pictures animatin its sooo good since cloud with a chance of meatballs (also good and original but not funny) so i really recommend seeing it defintaly a movie not to be missed and the animation was brilliant and the sound and cast OMG AH-MA-ZING deserves a 8/10 from me and the charactars are SO unique and you'll have loads of laughs SO go have fun and be a kid and see this movie no matter what age u r you'll feel like a kid and will laugh hard!!.
In Brave, a mum and and her teen daughter argue about whom the latter will marry.In Hotel Transylvania, Dracula dad (voiced by Adam Sandler) does his best to keep his teen daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), from stepping out into the real world or, horrors, falling in love with a human.The main thing that you'll remember after watching this high-quality production but low-quality joke fest is the chaos that permeates it.Director Genndy Tartakovsky hits you with everything he can, including weird and cuddly characters, such as werewolf Wayne (Steve Buscemi in that whiny voice of his), Invisible Man (David Spade), mummy Murray (CeeLo Green) and Frank the Frankenstein (Kevin James).
He, surprisingly, allows her to visit a nearby village, but what she doesn't know is that he built it and his underlings disguised themselves to look like humans out to torch her.His antipathy towards humans isn't explained initially, but it's later revealed that humans burnt down a castle, which killed his wife but spared their daughter.A bushy haired and gangling backpacking teen, Jonathan (Andy Samberg), chances upon the hotel and makes himself a menace there, but he and Mavis hit it off immediately, forcing the father to execute anti- falling-in-love-with-human measures.Mavis embraces Jonathan's nomadic lifestyle, and is touched by his visit to the Taj Mahal, built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife.While funny events are rare in Hotel Transylvania, there are some well- crafted scenes that you wished the movie had more of, for example, the table-raising chase scene between Dracula and Jonathan, and a couple of live band performances.The movie's conclusion is that humans and monsters can get over their fear of each other and learn to get along well.www.jeffleemovies.com.
The story is basically about Dracula who is owner of a hotel where all monsters gather to enjoy there time away from humans who they think of as a huge threat.
A beautiful animated movie to watch with your family and friends, relaxing and fun with a interesting story and some amazing character drawings.
"Hotel Transylvania" features many of the same monsters as that film and more, including Dracula and his daughter, Frankenstein and his bride, werewolves, mummies, an invisible man, a gillman and Quasimodo, but they've basically nothing to do with their sources in novels or prior movies.
Everything goes according to plan until an actual person accidentally enters the hotel, bringing a lot of problems to Dracula who must act fast in order not to compromise his sacred place (and of course the wellbeing of Mavis).It's an interesting story with monsters, full of funny moments and excitement.
Hotel TransylvaniaOne of the perks to staying in a hotel for monsters is those tiny bottles of virgin blood they leave in your bathroom.However, owning an inn for inhumans, like the one in this animated feature, holds absolutely no benefit.Built by Dracula (Adam Sandler) as a refuge from civilization, Hotel Transylvania hosts hordes of horrordoms most screamed names, from Wolf Man (Steve Buscemi) and Frankenstein (Kevin James) and their wives (Molly Shannon, Fran Drescher) to the Invisible Man (David Spade) and the Mummy (Cee Lo Green).But when a human (Andy Samberg) shows up, Dracula must not only keep him away from his guests, but also his daughter (Selena Gomez).With more song and dance than these legendary characters should be performing, Hotel Transylvania sucks the scare out of these abominations and replaces it with flatulence.Nonetheless, there's probably fewer murders here than at an actual hotel in Transylvania.
Dracula(Adam Sandler) who runs hotel for monsters in Transylvania, wants to through his teenage daughter Mavis(Selena Gomez)a big birthday bash, but Mavis eagerly wants to see the world, but Dracula is afraid that the humans would want to hurt her.
Hotel Transylvania is a lot of fun , the story of the movie is pretty cool, the animation is full of monsters Classics, Dracula , Wolfman , Frankenstein , Mummy , etc., the voice work is perhaps the best thing in the film, the actors combines a lot with their character , the film has very funny moments , highlighted to the party that has more or less in the middle of the film, most are not many, the soundtrack is another strong point of the film, the look of the hotel is like Dracula 's castle in films about himself , Johnny the main movie , I found it boring , plus has some funny moments with him , Hotel Transylvania is a very fun animation , although not so funny, it worth watching to pass the time .
The main character, Dracula (Adam Sandler) is a very overprotective father and won't let his daughter (Selena Gomez) leave their prison-like castle--afraid that those horrible humans will kill her!
'HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA': Three Stars (Out of Five) Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Fran Drescher, Molly Shanon, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Chris Parnell and other comedy talents voice this computer-animated kid's monster movie directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (of 'SAMURAI JACK' and 'DEXTER'S LABORATORY' fame).
The film tells the story of Dracula running a hotel for monsters, to get away from humans, and his daughter, who wants to venture out and see the world.
I'd put it in the same league as the animated kids monster film 'PARANORMAN'.Adam Sandler voices Dracula and Selena Gomez voices his daughter Mavis.
Especially when a 21-year-old human (Andy Samberg) stumbles on to the castle and Mavis shows interest in him.The movie is really simplistic and uninspired in it's story structure and character development but the animation is cool and the actors are great.
Hotel Transylvania was fun-loving , feel good entertainment with great voice-over by Adam Sandler and Kevin James which will bring out comic relief.Count Dracula , whose wife was murdered by human beings, tries to protect his daughter by building a hotel just for vampires , were-wolf , mummies to create his own dark world.
Adam Sandler and Kevin James will make sure that their dialogues delivery will be punching enough to keep engrossed in the film.Overall , a very likable animation and funny moments makes Hotel Transylvania more enjoyable.
Directed by none other than Genndy Tartakovsky, Hotel Transylvania is one of the best animated movies this year.
So if you've not said hello to ParaNorman, Rise of the Guardians, or Frankenweenie, then why not check in to Hotel Transylvania?As you would have skimmed the story from the trailer, it involves an over-protective father, the count Dracula himself (voiced by funnyman Adam Sandler), who have for the longest time looked after his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) as a single parent, and convincing the child that the big bad world out there is full of vengeful humans who won't bat an eyelid to get rid of those who are innately different, namely the vampires like themselves. |
tt0475276 | United 93 | On the morning of September 11, 2001, passengers board United Airlines Flight 93, bound for San Francisco, at Newark Liberty International Airport, including Tom Burnett, Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Richard Guadagno, Louis J. Nacke, II, William Joseph Cashman and Patrick Joseph Driscoll. Four al-Qaeda terrorists Ziad Jarrah, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Ahmed al-Haznawi also board the flight.
Meanwhile, newly promoted FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney is in a meeting when it is reported that American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles has been hijacked after Mohamed Atta is overheard on the radio saying, "We have some planes". Minutes later the aircraft crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Much to Sliney and his staff's horror, they learn that a second flight United Airlines Flight 175 also from Boston to Los Angeles, has been hijacked and after New York air traffic controllers attempt to contact the aircraft, it is seen live on CNN plowing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center as reported that day. Sliney and his staff realize they are dealing with several hijackings and orders the military to be on the lookout for American Airlines Flight 77, which is reported missing and presumed to have also been hijacked.
On United 93, Jarrah appears hesitant to initiate the hijacking plan, perhaps seems to be having second thoughts about going through with it. Impatient, the other three hijackers prepare for invasion themsevles. al-Haznawi assembles a fake bomb out of clay and plastic during breakfast, then al-Ghamdi makes the first move and grabs hold of flight attendant Debbie Welsh at knifepoint. After a passenger is fatally stabbed and the "bomb" is revealed causing mass panic among passengers, al-Nami and al-Haznawi force the first class passengers to the back of the plane. Meanwhile, Jarrah and al-Ghamdi threaten Welsh and wrestle their ways into the cockpit. The pilots send out a mayday call but are killed and dragged from the cockpit. Welsh herself is killed. Jarrah turns the plane, intending to crash the plane into the United States Capitol.
Sliney, still debating on what to do about the unfolding disaster, is in shock when American 77 crashes into the Pentagon and comes to a decision that all aircraft be grounded and planes are not to enter or leave US airspace until further notice.
Aboard United 93, the passengers become aware of the dead bodies, and learn from family members via airphone of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; they decide to take action organizing a revolt against the hijackers. Their plan is empowered with the knowledge that passenger Don Greene has experience in flying.
After passengers arm themselves, pray, and make final phone calls to loved ones, Todd Beamer says, "Let's Roll!" The group begin their counterattack, rushing down the aisle and overpowering Ahmed al-Haznawi; Mark Bingham crushes Ahmed al-Haznawi's skull with a fire extinguisher, killing him. Seeing this, al-Nami alerts Jarrah and al-Ghamdi in the cockpit of the ongoing assault. Jarrah shakes the plane violently to throw the passengers off balance; nonetheless they continue their assault, overpowering Ahmed al-Nami who is killed by Glick snapping his neck. Seeing the passengers getting nearer, al-Ghamdi and Jarrah debate whether to take the flight down, knowing they'll never reach their intended target. The passengers then breach the cockpit with the food cart, and al-Ghamdi orders Jarrah to crash the plane. Nonetheless, the passengers finally gain entrance into the cockpit, and battle both hijackers over the controls. As the passengers and hijackers struggle for control of the yoke, the plane plummets into a nosedive and goes upside down as the screen cuts to black. Title cards reveal the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board. | tragedy, violence, psychedelic, murder, sentimental | train | wikipedia | I don't think I've had such a profound and sober movie going experience like this since I saw The Passion of the Christ, and when the film was over how did the audience react?
The casting of the film includes a number of real life United pilots, stewardesses, air traffic controllers and military personnel, many of them actually playing themselves.
We are seeing these people for the first time, with no previous knowledge of them as actors and it only works in their favor.The film opens quietly with several hijackers going through their morning rituals, reading aloud from the Koran; praying to God and kneeling on the floor of their hotel room and then packing their things to head to the Newark airport.
But it's not until United flight 93 takes off that the towers are hit and the plane is up in the air when the terrorist's plans are set into motion.The final fifteen minutes of United 93 will leave you speechless and paralyzed, as a group of passengers plan to attack and over throw the terrorists and try to take back the cockpit.
United 93 is absolutely amazing, and to see a better or more important film this year seems very unlikely, and I think this film should be required viewing for all Americans, but when they feel that they are ready for it, because this is as real as it gets.
Masterfully written and directed by Paul Greengrass, this relentlessly intense movie covers that fateful morning when United Airlines Flight 93 departed Newark for San Francisco with 33 passengers and seven crew members on board.As it turns out, Greengrass's heavy background in documentaries turns out to be a blessing in this treatment, as he tracks the subsequent events in real time and uses either under-the-radar actors or actual aviation personnel to play the real-life characters.
In fact, the last half-hour is harrowing in the most personal sense as the inevitable becomes reality.The power of the film comes from its surprisingly apolitical perspective and the inclusion of the ground personnel trying to comprehend the scope of all the redirected planes that day, in particular, Ben Sliney who effectively plays himself that day, the just-promoted supervisor of the National Air Traffic Control Center in Herndon, Va. None of the actors stand out because the film cumulatively achieves a verisimilitude that simply knocks me out.
Not to mention, I didn't want to go through that depression again and watch those horrifying events happen again, a girl at work had mentioned how she saw United 93 and World Trade Center, she said it was nothing like what you would expect of an action movie, it's more dedicated to those who lost their lives that tragic day.United 93 is a truly inspiring tale about the 4th hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.
These people were truly incredible and the thing that I loved about the film was that it was made to show that they were not victims, they chose to not be so, they knew what they were facing and unfortunately died trying.Another thing that I appreciated is that I think we did forget about those planes that were hijacked and the horror that the passengers must have gone through.
This is the story about the events leading up to the hijacking and about the people who tried to save United flight 93.At first I did not want to see this film.
We get insight of the real-time actions taken by the military, air-traffic and flight control personnel and how they tried in vain to take control of the situation (and ultimately grounding every single plane in flight that day).However well the movie portrayed the crew and passengers, I found the portrayal of one of the hijackers (the pilot) a bit discomforting.
We sit in the plane with the heroes of that day, we watch it unfold from the perspectives of the flight controllers and NORAD, we feel the confusion, the torment, and ultimately, the victory in the end.
It's not an easy film to watch, but I believe people should see it, if not as a tribute to those who died, then as a remembrance that due vigilance is constantly necessary in these dark times.Some may disagree and call it "propaganda," but that is patently ridiculous.Based on the United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth U.S. jet hijacked on Sept.
11, 2001 (and the only liner not to strike its intended target), this movie has the intentional feel of a documentary, and is thus difficult to really criticize.Much of this reasoning is that the picture tells a straight enough story, with little or no dramatic embellishments (other than to speculate what exactly took place on-board the doomed craft) in real time, from take-off to its ultimate crash, approximately 90 minutes.What there is, however, is a moving, powerful, gut-wrenching, emotional work by director/writer Paul Greengrass ("Bourne Supremacy," "Resurrected," "Bloody Sunday").
Nevertheless, he will no doubt take some heat form some uninitiated film-goers who equate this movie with a piece of propaganda, but that could not be further from the truth.Greengrass plays it fairly even down the line, and cockpit voice recordings, as well as last phone calls from passengers and crew seem to indicate his vision of the plane's hijacking seem pretty close to factual.Of course, no one is going to know 100 percent of what happened aboard flight 93, since no one survived its ultimate crash in Shanksville, Penn.
Jason Dahl (J.J. Johnson) and First Officer LeRoy Homer (Gary Commock), as well as one or more passengers.One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al Haznawi (Omar Berdouni) has brandished a fake bomb, which keeps the passengers at bay long enough for Ghamdi to turn the San Francisco-bound craft east towards Washington, DC.Stunned by the events, but believing them to be completely isolated, the passengers are shocked to discover via cell and air phone conversations that planes have already smashed into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and the Pentagon.They now realize this is not a hostage situation, that the flight is to be used as a missile against an unknown target, and they will probably not escape with their lives.It's then that the passengers, mainly Todd Beamer (David Alan Basche, "War of the Worlds") Joseph DeLuca (Ray Charleston, "Out For A Kill"), Jeremy Glick (Peter Herman, "The Treatment") and Mark Bingham (Cheyenne Jackson, "Curiosity"), attempt to retake the plane.And while these scenes are gripping enough, the real fascination (for this scribbler, at least) comes from the segments in which the various civilian and military air traffic controllers, as well as other technicians, come to the cold realization that something horrible and unprecedented is taking place in the nation's skies that autumn morning.The drama that builds as controllers scramble to identify possible hijacked planes (American Airline Flight 11 and United 175), and their investigation into 93's dilemma, is excruciatingly tense."United 93" also exposes some serious miscommunication between civilian and military authorities, with no one knowing much of anything until it is way too late.Another interesting touch is that Greengrass chose not to populate the picture with big names, which would have diluted the impact (in fact, several roles are actually played by real ATC personnel, recreating the positions they held in 2001 for this movie).This is not an easy film to watch, but I could not look away.
I saw it and thought it was really good, you could get the feel of the tension and the emotions running the the passengers and their families, i would highly recommend it to anyone who wants the truth about what happened on the fourth plane that day in 2001.
STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits A re-enactment of the terrifying events abroad United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11 2001, as several suicide bombers took control of the plane and attempted to crash it into The Pentagon.
The opening featuring an overhead of the New York skyline at night as we hear Muslim prayers being sung by the terrorists in their rented hotel rooms gives a creepy and quietly foreboding sense that the big, bustling city where so many people are walking about minding their business and no one suspects a thing is under threat, the use of a digital camera, adding immeasurably to the 'real' feel the film has and the sudden ending which doesn't delve into the aftermath and make the film become sappy in any way.
Do them a REAL honor and inform yourself wat really happened that day.Watch one of the following films instead:9/11 Mysteries Loose Change 9/11 Martial Law: Rise of the Police StateAll can be seen for free online.
not mentioned in the movie, my cousin tells me that he knows of people that worked at the mill behind where flight 93 went down, and are said to have seen the plane in a fireball upside down,, then crashing, of course suggesting that the military shot the plane down,, anyways, i have some camcorder footage of the memorial, and will try to get it up on my my space for those to see if anyone is interested.
Although we can only dimly understand what must have happened on that ninety minute flight, we can know from the two dozen phone calls and from the 30 minutes of Cockpit Voice recordings that it dramatizes and symbolizes everything that we face today.Made with the full support of the families of those on board, FLIGHT 93 will track in real time the dramatic story of what happened inside the aircraft as well as on the ground, as passengers, crew, Civilian Air Traffic Controllers and Military Command Centers struggle to make sense of an unimagined and unimaginable crisis.The film begins on a normal September morning at Newark airport.
But sitting in four first class seats right next to them is an Al Qaeda cell.And so as the hijack unfolds, the film moves between the passengers and crew in the air and civilian and military air traffic controllers on the ground as each tries desperately to avert the flight's progress towards the Capitol Building in the heart of Washington D.C."Flight 93" will take us through the events of 9/11 as they happen in real time - all the confusion, violence, courage and endurance of a day that changed our lives forever..
You would have been forgiven for thinking it blasphemous to even entertain the idea of shooting a movie on 9/11, yet despite the controversy United 93 is here, and will attract an audience regardless (or maybe even as a result of) its negative press.Shot in real time, on digital camera, United 93 begins with showing us the terrorists making their final morning prayers, before setting off to the airport.
Greengrass does not incorporate a view of hindsight for his audience, instead allowing the film to flow in the moment, with each passing event happening as the characters read it, rather than what the audience already knows occurred.
But it would be incredibly naive or incredibly patriotic (same thing) to view their actions as any attempt to "save Washington." People who think that need to get a grip.For the above reasons, this movie is simply a plane hijacking flick.
But you'd be surprised how many people, many of whom that just don't question, still don't even know that a third tower, World Trade Center 7, even collapsed; since it was not hit by a plane -- like controlled demolition.
Since this was a documentary style movie, a "real-time" account of what happened aboard F93, then I think it should have showed how the plane crashed.
After watching United 93, I feel that those doubts are irrelevant.Greengrass' directorial style, the same that he displayed in the Bourne films, is to let the characters and the action tell the story, without fanfare or fluff.
Rather, it allows the actions of the passengers (or rather, what their actions are believed to have been) and the ground crew to stand on their own.A powerful, moving film, about the courage of ordinary people on an extraordinarily terrifying day..
An excellent masterpiece that will stand the test of time.We remember those lost on that day, and this film goes above and beyond to show respect and gratitude to those Americans that gave their lives for a country they believed in.
British writer-director Greengrass incorporates these facts carefully but relies on his own artistic integrity to fill in the missing pieces and provide us with a version of the "emotional truth." What we do know is that the passengers of United 93 transformed themselves from a group of strangers to a determined force that prevented the terrorists from hitting their intended target.
Every detail of the story is told in the present tense; the narrative only knows what we would know if we were on the plane that day or in one of the flight control centers trying to piece together what was happening.
My point is that I was amazed that no one in the U.S. had any standard procedures ready for events like this and how completely unprepared they were for any attack on their own soil.Of course we will never fully know what happened on flight 93, so we will also never know how accurate this movie actually is.
I'm not sure what the artistic point is to the films the that use this technique -- looks and feels like it was done with a home, personal video camera -- but it ruined this movie for us.I noticed two ladies down the row from us having the same problem, closing their eyes and getting up and walking out for periods of time, so I know it did not just affect us.Let me interject here that before last night I really, really wanted to see this movie.
Potentially, a story of hijacked aircraft crashing faces some of the problems that affected attempts to make a movie about another iconic, era-defining human tragedy, the sinking of the Titantic 90 years earlier: for sure, it was a huge event in world history, but the basic narrative is apparently quite dull: innocent people board a transport of some description, something terrible happens and a lot of death follows.
Next, there's a natural story that isn't just one of accidental death, in the efforts of passengers on United flight 93 to resist their hijackers (hence the title of this film, although much of this movie is actually set in the air traffic and military command centres, as Greengrass sets his central tale in just the right amount of context).
I felt that I had to watch this movie to honor those who had died by watching their story of terror, bravery and heroism.The expectations I had were so off, the movie was very well made and as far as I have heard from family interviews on cable news, the passengers and flight crew was happy with the overall portrayals.The anticipation level is on high from the movies first opening shoot, we know the ending but we are hoping and on edge waiting for intervention.The movie has no political agenda and takes place in multiple locations (not just limited to the inside of the plane) as the events of September 11th unfold.This film is strong and full of emotion, there were many sobs and sniffles as the lights came up, there were also many people who clapped in honor of the bravery and heroism of the passengers and crew on United flight 93.Many theaters stated they would not show this movie due to sensitivity.
"United 93" is British director Paul Greengrass' real time account of the tragic events of United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when some passengers tried to foil the terrorist plot.
That was just a bump in the road of life for me.Now, as I reflect on the movie and review my experience, I ask myself, "Would I have taken the same actions as the passengers and crew on United 93." I hope so, but I really don't know.I have a lapel pin that honors the flight crews of all four aircraft on September 11.
Greengrass was tasked with combining fact with the unknowable and rather than glamorizing the story of United Flight 93, he told a story that was not only plausible, but likely as close to the raw truth as humanly possible.This movie is a must-see for any American who can bare to re-live that fateful day.
I'm very against the commercializing of 9/11, so chances are this is the only 9/11 film I will have watched.More of a docu-drama, United 93 focuses as much on air traffic control and military ops on that day as it does on the flight where 40 passengers stood their ground.I found this film to be very well done (the "look" and angles make it more personal, unlike Hollywood Blockbusters).
Writer/director Paul Greengrass tells the story documentary-style, with many of the actual airline and military personnel taking part in the filming.There were many New York actors whom I recognized, but most people won't be cognizant at all that they're watching actors.Several things emerge as especially striking.
In near real time and using accounts and officials records of the day, Paul Greengrass delivers an account of the events surrounding the terrorist attack on 11/9/06, focusing on the aviation authorities, the military and the passengers of the only plane that did not reach its target United flight 93.
The story, as best as we can tell, of what happened on Flight 93 which crashed on September 11 2001 when the passengers attempted to fight back against the hijackers of the plane.This is an extremely well made and well acted film.
The film brought out a sense of futility felt by the air traffic controllers, the military, and the passengers on-board Flight 93. |
tt0057193 | It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World | "Smiler" Grogan (Jimmy Durante), an ex-convict wanted by police in a tuna factory robbery fifteen years ago and currently on the run, careens his 1957 Ford Fairlane off twisting, mountainous State Highway 74 near Palm Springs, California and crashes. Five motorists stop to help him: Melville Crump (Sid Caesar), a dentist; Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters), a furniture mover; Dingy Bell (Mickey Rooney) and Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett), two friends on their way to Las Vegas; and J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle), an entrepreneur who owns Pacific Edible Seaweed Company in Fresno. Just before he dies (literally kicking a bucket), Grogan tells the five men about $350,000 buried in Santa Rosita State Park near the Mexican border under "… a big W".
Initially, the motorists try to reason with each other and share the money, but it soon becomes an all-out race to get the money first. Unbeknownst to them all, Captain T.G. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy), Chief of Detectives of the Santa Rosita Police Department, has been patiently working on the Smiler Grogan case for years, hoping to someday solve it and retire. When he learns of the fatal crash, he suspects that Grogan may have tipped off the passersby, so he has them tracked by various police units. His suspicions are confirmed by their behavior. Everyone experiences multiple setbacks on their way to the money. Crump and his wife Monica (Edie Adams) charter an old WWI-era Jenny biplane and eventually make it to Santa Rosita, but are soon unknowingly locked in the basement of a hardware store by its owner (Edward Everett Horton). They eventually free themselves with dynamite. Bell and Benjamin charter a modern plane, but when their wealthy alcoholic pilot (Jim Backus) knocks himself out drunk, the two are forced to fly and land the plane themselves. Finch, his wife Emmeline (Dorothy Provine), and his loud and obnoxious mother-in-law, Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman), are involved in a car accident with Pike's 1954 Ford furniture van. The three flag down British Army Officer Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne (Terry-Thomas) in his 1951 Willys station wagon and convince him to drive them to Santa Rosita. After many arguments, most caused by Mrs. Marcus, she and Emmeline refuse to go any farther, and Finch and Hawthorne leave them by the side of the road in Yucca Valley.
Pike tries to get motorist Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) in his ivory-colored 1948 Ford convertible to take him to Santa Rosita, but the greedy Meyer betrays him and races for the money on his own, leaving Pike stranded with only a little girl's bike from his furniture van. An enraged Pike catches up with Meyer at a gas station and assaults him as the gas station owners (Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan) try to stop him. Meyer escapes in his car while Pike literally destroys the gas station. He then steals the station's Dodge M37 tow truck and takes off after Meyer. Pike meets up with Mrs. Marcus and Emmeline and picks them up. While in a town called Plaster City, Mrs. Marcus calls her devoted, powerfully built, but impulsive and dim-witted son Sylvester (Dick Shawn), who lives on Silver Strand Beach near Santa Rosita, to get the money for them, but misunderstanding and believing his mother is in trouble, he instead races to her in his red 1962 Dodge Dart convertible.
Meyer experiences his own setbacks, including sinking his car while trying to cross the Kern River and nearly drowning. He manages to steal a blue 1956 Ford Sunliner belonging to a passing motorist (Don Knotts) by telling him he's with the CIA and re-joins the hunt. All the while, Culpeper and the police department observe their activities from afar. Around this time, two taxi drivers (Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) get in on the chase in their 1959 Plymouth Yellow Cabs.
Eventually all the characters arrive at Santa Rosita State Park at the same time and search for the big W. Emmeline, who wants no part of the money and doesn't take part in the search, looks up from taking a drink from a water fountain and sees, in the distance, "The Big W", composed of four palm trees growing in the shape of the letter "W". Pike finds it next and informs everyone else. Culpeper, who saw Emmeline's discovery, orders all policemen to leave the area, and goes in solo to retrieve the money. However, disillusioned by the greed and reckless behavior of so many supposedly law-abiding people during the course of the day, he now plans to take the money to Mexico to escape his own dysfunctional family and an apparently unappreciated career as an honest cop with a very small pension. After everyone digs up the money, Culpeper identifies himself and talks them into turning themselves in, promising a jury will be more lenient. But when the group sees Culpeper fleeing with the money, they realize what's happening and give chase in the two cabs. At that point, Chief Aloysius (William Demarest), who had (unbeknownst to Culpeper) blackmailed the mayor to triple Culpeper's pension, reluctantly tears up the pension papers and orders Culpeper's arrest.
After a long chase sequence, all of the men end up stranded on the fire escape of a condemned office building. The suitcase of money opens, and the money falls into the streets below, where passers-by scoop it up. The men all try to climb down a fire truck's extension ladder even though the fireman (Sterling Holloway) tells them "one at a time". Their combined weight causes the firemen to lose control of the ladder, whereupon it swings around wildly and flings them into various locations, causing many injuries and landing all of the men in the prison hospital wing.
The group, in various stages of traction, criticizes Culpeper for taking the money, but he replies that they will likely get off lightly because Culpeper will be there for the judge to throw the book at. He wonders if anything will ever make him laugh again, given that his wife is divorcing him, his mother in-law is suing for damages, his daughter is getting her name legally changed, and he is losing his pension. At that moment Mrs. Marcus, flanked by Monica and Emmeline, enters, begins to berate everyone, and promptly slips on a banana peel that Benjy had carelessly tossed onto the floor before the women arrived. She is carried out on a stretcher, still berating everyone, including those carrying her out. All the men, except Sylvester, start laughing hysterically despite the pain it causes; within seconds even Culpeper joins in. | comedy, insanity, absurd, satire, comic, revenge | train | wikipedia | Though lots of dialogue is amusing and all the performances are outstanding, but the movie suffers from a common delusion of people outside comedy, as Stanley Kramer was, that the mere vision of cars crashing is somehow funny in itself.
Again, some milk their small roles for what they are worth, giving the movie an undercurrent of true humor beyond the principals: Don Knotts, Carl Reiner, Jesse White, Paul Ford, Jim Backus."Mad World" is most valuable simply because it is a cross-section of comedy in its day.
Jonathan Winters, whom Robin Williams used as a prototype, was the most gifted ad-lib comic of his day and rarely showed up well when he was constrained by a script and a sustained character, but he brings off many of the best laughs in this film, and, with Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan the most memorable set piece in the movie.
They may not all be funny every minute, but every moment they know what they're doing, crafting better performances than many Oscar-winning serious actors have ever turned in.Though the movie might be too bloated for the promised three hours' hilarious ride, with too much dependence on, "Hey, there's Edward Everett Horton flicking a switch!" But anyone who loves comedy and its history needs -- deserves -- to see the best in the business of comedy in 1963 interacting with their schtick, especially if they don't mind sitting through -- occasionally mindless -- car chases and crashes..
A dying man (Jimmy Durante) who was thrown from a car that careened over a cliff, tells a group of witnesses to the accident (Sid Ceasar, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters) that there is $350,000.00 hidden under a big "W" in a nearby town, which sets off one of the wildest, craziest chase comedies made in the history of cinema.
A rather tired and haggard looking Spencer Tracy heads the cast as the cop on the trail of these greedy money-mongers and just about every comedian or comic actor alive in 1963 appears in this film, either in a starring role or cameo and despite this impressive gathering of the best comedic talent in the business, towering over all of them in one of her few film performances, is Broadway legend Ethel Merman, who gives the performance of a lifetime as Berle's shrew of a mother-in-law.
A few more treasure seekers get picked up along the way.That barebones plot description doesn't begin to tell you about some of the funny sequences that follow, Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney in a private plane with a drunken pilot Jim Backus passed out, Edie Adams and Sid Caesar trapped in a hardware store desperately trying to get out, Jonathan Winters as the lunkhead truck driver generally running amuck wherever he goes, and Milton Berle the henpecked husband of all time married to the beautiful Dorothy Provine, her braindead brother Dick Shawn and Ethel Merman the mother-in-law from hell.
And they leave a whole lot of some of the best character actors and comedians who each in their own way contributes a certain specialty they're famous for.There are two unbilled appearances by Jack Benny and Jerry Lewis each in situations that show off their peculiar style of comedy.Watching it all is Spencer Tracy as the Captain of Detectives of the Santa Rosita, Police Department both before the camera and between takes.
I don't remember much about it because I was only 6 years old back then, but I do remember the audience in the movie theater laughing continuously.I bought the DVD, which was remastered in DTS Surround Sound, a couple of months ago and it's definitely a good comedy classic to have.
They definitely don't make movies like that anymore, that's why I gave it a rating of 10.Although most of the actors in it have passed on, I still love the comedy and acting styles of Milton Berle, Spencer Tracy, Ethel Merman, Buddy Hackett, Terry Thomas and others, plus there are cameo appearances in there with Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny and The Three Stooges..
This was the first time a comedy got the "epic" film treatment and after getting increasingly pretentious in his previous two dramas, Stanley Kramer just went all out for simple old-fashioned fun with the largest ensemble of comic talent he could get his hands on.
Just about every big name in TV comedy of the 50s and 60s is here and the results, while not the greatest of its kind ("The Great Race" is a funnier film in my opinion) still manages to deliver the laughs.It's too bad the remaining ten minutes (plus the police bulletins intermission) of the road show version still is missing, because the expanded version helped me appreciate the film a lot more than I did the first time out when I saw it on TV as a faded pan and scan atrocity.
Add a famous dramatic actor, Spencer Tracy, to the mix,, too, and you have one of the most famous comedies ever put on film.When I saw this in the theater, and even in the '80s on tape, I liked it immensely, but now it's just a bit loud and too much for me in spots.
Two things make it great: (1) the script, which is just crackling with fabulously hilarious lines for all the actors; and (2) the cast which, without doubt, is the greatest comic cast ever assembled in the history of the civilized world.It's so hard to single out individual performances when they were all so good, but...Spencer Tracy: his portrayal of the henpecked, tired, ready-to-retire civil servant is phenomenally realistic.Ethel Merman: can you even begin to imagine someone else in that role?
Made over 40 years ago, twice as long as any comedy should be, it is a non-stop, mad fun, and a very beautiful and well crafted movie to that, the true achievement by Mr. Stanley Kramer.
What did it take to send them all in the mad, mad, mad, mad race for the buried treasure that require them to drive, to fly, to swim, to run, to crawl, to fight, to cheat, and to fall hard from fire escapes, ladders, palm trees, and building tops under the watchful eye of the police chief Spencer Tracy (famous dramatic actor happened to be very funny, too) on his retirement day, and to have as the result the film that never hangs or runs out of breath - now this is a BIG W - WONDERFUL.
The thief Smiler Grogan, played by Jimmy Durante in his last screen appearance drives off the cliff and as his last words, before he kicks the bucket (literally) he tells the bystanders about the hidden $350,000 in Santa Rosita under the big W.The bystanders include comedy writer Dingy "Ding" Bell (Mickey Rooney), his writing partner Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett), moving van driver Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters), dentist Melville Crump (Sid Caesar) and edible seaweed company owner J.
Russell Finch (Milton Berle).Now all these people start a big race to get to the money.On the way they meet other people who find about the money and want to get it themselves.What they don't know is that they're being watched all the time and Captain Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) is aware of every step they take.Stanley Kramer is the director of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).This one tickled my funny bone.There's a whole bunch of fantastic actors/comedians that make sure you won't get bored.Spencer Tracy is fantastic as the tragicomic Culpepper who suffers both from stress at work and domestic stress.Milton Berle suffers mostly from domestic kind.He keeps popping pills mainly because of his mother-in-law from hell, Mrs Marcus.She's played by the wonderful Ethel Merman.His wife Emeline is played by Dorothy Provine.Sid Caesar spends some time stucked with his wife Monica (Edie Adams) and in an airplane built in 1916.Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney also have some unpleasant times in an airplane.Phil Silvers, who plays Otto Meyer makes Jonathan Winters mad.And see Winters on that tiny girls' bike.Terry Thomas as the British Algernon Hawthorne fights with Berle and Dick Shawn (Sylvester Marcus).Peter Falk is a cab driver and he's as funny as ever.Carl Reiner plays the tower controller.Charles Lane, who we lost last year at the age of 102 plays the airport manager.Andy Devine is the sheriff.Joe E.
Brown is the union official.Arnold Stang is the garage man Ray and Marvin Kaplan is Irwin.Don Knotts is very funny as the nervous motorist.Jack Benny is seen there as the man offering help.And so is Jerry Lewis runing over Culpepper's hat.The silent star ZaSu Pitts is Gertie the switchboard operator in her last movie.The Three Stooges appear as firemen.Buster Keaton does his moves familiar from his silent pictures as Jimmy the Crook.All those people and a few more make you laugh like you've never laughed before.Slapstick can't get too much better from this..
So I find myself here in my middle age with mixed feelings after just revisiting this extravaganza for the first time in many a year.It's very much a film of three parts to me, and each part impacts differently on the entertainment scale, the first part of this multi cast piece is as madcap and as mirthful as you could honestly wish to see, but this sadly ill prepares you for a middle part that outstays its welcome to the point that you can't believe they stretched it to an original cut of 3 hours.
The final third of the film saves it from smug overkill because by now you have invested so much time into the film, you thank the gods for any sort of frivolity, and thankfully the film does lift you back up to the happy place that you visited an hour before .The cast are fine, some brilliant shows are mixed in with the merely acceptable ones, and I wouldn't want to be so churlish as to dissect each actors respective show, but as a Phil Silvers fan I'm rewarded enough, and as a Spencer Tracy acolyte I'm burning candles again in his honor, but it's Ethel Merman as Mrs Marcus that lives long and glorious in the memory here, and honestly I feel the film is worth a watch just for her .
I only have vague recollections from age 13.Is what I think is still missing something that was really in the original presentation in Dec 1963--radio news bulletins intermission, Sylvester car stealing, Culpeper on phone with wife and daughter more, intro of the police reporter we see in one scene, getting Tyler Fitzgerald into a North Valley shower, Sid and Edie getting into a taxi at Blue Lake that they get out of in town, Don Knotts trying to call the CIA from a drugstore phone??I'd be grateful for reminiscences on an all-time favorite movie from the over-50 crowd here.
I only saw this twice in my life (my mother insisted on it, both times), the last time 30 years ago, and I still have a sour taste in my mouth.Take practically every living comic who made a movie between 1910 and 1950 and completely throw their talents away on cameos and one-liners (on the obviously self-indulgent whim that 'we're oh-so-much-more-sophisticated-now').Take a whole host of post-'50s B-movie character actors television comics and have them draw out every damn line and bit of physical comedy, until all possible laughter is lost in the bewildered effort to guess whether they'll ever stop.Dump in a whole ton of car chases, train chases, bicycle races, plane chases, along with the inevitable crashes of every description.Make sure your script is written by nihilistic cynics who think human beings are the lowest form of life on the planet, and comedy the lowest form of entertainment they ever came up with.As garnish add Spencer Tracy, who really does look like he's dying throughout the film.And voilà!
The film succeeds as much as it does from piling on talent: No sooner do the first group of comedians begin overstaying their welcome than they meet up with other, fresher characters, including Shawn, Terry-Thomas, and Phil Silvers as a delightfully snakey lowlife, one of the few characters in the story who genuinely deserves his miserable fate."Mad4" may celebrate film comedy, but most of its key actors earned lasting fame either on TV (Berle, Silvers, Sid Caesar) or on stage (Merman, Shawn, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett).
Shawn is good, too, though I enjoyed his performance more when I was 15.Maybe the film's biggest miscalculation, other than going as long as it does, is casting Spencer Tracy as Chief Culpepper, who watches the proceedings with wry, tired bemusement.
I loved every single character, but the standouts are Milton Berle as the pill popping wreck Russell Finch, who seems to want to follow rather than lead, and who repeats just about everything people already said; Jonathan Winters as Mr. Pike, the truck driver who makes anyone who crosses him pretty sorry for crossing him; Ethel Merman as Mrs. Marcus, Russell's screechy mother in law who, whether they like it or not, is the leader of this mad pack; Terry-Thomas (who also voiced Sir Hiss in Disney's Robin Hood cartoon!!!) is delightful as the British Colonel Hawthorne, who suffers racial assaults from Merman and Berle over and over again; Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett as Dingy Bell and Benjy Benjamin and their hilarious struggle to fly a rented airplane whose pilot gets knocked unconscious; and of course, Phil Silvers as Mr. Meyer, the epitome of a dirty crook.
Reading through the comments, 'winner55' pretty much nailed it with 'greed and depravity' review Anyway, i first probably saw this movie as a little kid in the late 60s or early 70s.It seemed incredibly dated at the time, even though it was probably less than 10 years old.
Hollywood insulted our brains and our backsides with any number of "serious" epics in the 1950s and 60s, like "Ben-Hur," "Cleopatra" and "How the West Was Won." It also gave us the not-so-serious but no less boring "cameo" pseudo-adventure pics like "Around the World in 80 Days," which existed mainly as celebrity-spotting exercises for the movie audiences, and which I guess were supposed to tickle people silly by giving them a chance to recognize obsolete and creaky film stars popping up in bit roles as chauffeurs, doormen, organ grinders, etc.
So it was only a matter of time before Hollywood would give us a new mutation of the formula: the epic "cameo" comedy."It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" is of course ridiculously long, grotesquely overblown and as overstuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey, but it also happens to work a sort of charm on its audience.
Anyone who was anyone in the world of film comedy appears in the picture, either in a lead or cameo role, and the results are nearly frightening: any single member of the cast could (and did) carry films on their own, so when you throw them all together, it's like a shark feeding frenzy, with each actor trying his or her damnedest to shout down the others in an attempt to steal the scene.
Some, like Ethel Merman for example, are better suited for this than others, and they're the ones that you'll remember later.If watched in a certain frame of mind, "...Mad World" is grim and grueling, working over time to wring laughs out of its high-concept premise.
This film may not have invented the cameo appearance, (See around the world in 80 days, released in 1956 for that)but this movie sure has what could be the biggest cast of comedians and character actors ever in one movie at one time!
He worked with director Stanley Kramer a total of four times in his film career, so maybe it was a favor to Kramer for Tracy to do this film.If you're a fan of slapstick, comedians and comic actors, as well as classic character actors, you will probably enjoy this silly spectacular!
It makes "Cannonball Run" look like "Annie Hall."But Hollywood excess from 1963 tastes a lot sweeter and more wholesome than Hollywood excess from today, and it's hard to imagine anyone not enjoying the razor-sharp comic performances (especially from Ethel Merman), the spectacular chase/race sequences, the ditzy slapstick, and the general sense of goofiness.It's so entertaining I'd probably vote it an 8 if it were, say, two or two-and-a-quarter hours.
And this movie is brimming with so many recognizable names, it's starts sounding like a Who's Who of Trivial Pursuit Comedy Edition: Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, Jim Bachus, Jonathan Winters, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, and scores of others.
Spencer Tracy leads an all-star cast including Jimmy Durante, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Edie Adams, Terry Thomas, Ethel Merman, William Demarest, Arnold Stang and Jim Bakus just to name a few of the dozens of comedic talents that add so much to this picture.
How the script writer and the director managed to coax such mediocre performances out of -- in no particular order -- Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berle, Terry-Thomas, Dick Shawn, Jonathan Winters, Ethel Merman and Tracy (with cameos by Jack Benny, Rochester and Joe E.
Some of the all-time Hollywood greats are here: Spenser Tracy, Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Carl Reiner, The Three Stooges (Joe Version), Jimmy Durante, Sterling Holloway, Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III), and more.
Where else could you find such comedic talents as Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Dick Shawn, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Terry Thomas and Sid Caesar (not to mention all the great cameos by other comedy legends).
And the chase is on.The principal funnymen (and woman) in the film, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, and the vastly underrated Dick Shawn are all extremely good. |
tt0091069 | Fortress | In a dystopian 2017, ex-army officer John Henry Brennick and his wife Karen are attempting to cross the Canada–United States border to Vancouver to have a second child. Strict one-child policies forbid a second pregnancy, even after their firstborn has died, so Karen wears a magnetic vest to trick the security scanners. A guard notices and raises the alarm.
Brennick is caught, believing Karen to have escaped, and sentenced to 31 years at the Fortress, a private maximum security prison run by the Men-Tel Corporation. To maintain discipline all inmates are implanted with "Intestinators" which induce severe pain or death as a form of physical control and mental conditioning. The prison is co-run by Director Poe, who oversees Zed-10, a computer that monitors day-to-day activities. The prison is located underground, in the middle of the desert, inside a deep pit that can only be crossed by a retractable bridge, while the prisoners are kept in overcrowded cells secured by laser walls.
John is imprisoned with inmates Abraham, a model prisoner who works as Poe's manservant and is awaiting parole; D-Day, a machine and demolitions expert; Nino Gomez and Stiggs, who tries to extort John. John learns his wife has been captured and is held in another level with his unborn child who, being illegal, is now officially owned by Men-Tel and will be confiscated at birth.
Stiggs has a friend, Maddox, who intimidates John and the two are involved in a brawl which culminates with Maddox being shot by a security turret. John manages to grab Maddox's Intestinator and gives it to D-Day before he is taken away to be subjected to a mind-wipe procedure as punishment.
Poe, infatuated with Karen, tells her that if she lives with him he will treat John well and release him from the mind-wipe chamber. She accepts to help John. Poe is revealed to be a cyborg, powerfully enhanced by Men-Tel cybernetics. Four months later, a heavily pregnant Karen manages to use her access to the prison computer in Poe's quarters to help John by restoring him from his mind-wiped state. Karen steals a holographic map and gives it to Abraham to give to John. D-Day dismantles Maddox's Intestinator and uses a magnetic component to pull out the others' Intestinators.
During their next work shift John's group puts their Intestinators in an air-duct and stage a brawl, causing Zed to trigger the devices and blow the duct open to prepare their escape. Poe promptly flushes the duct with steam and sends in "Strike Clones", networked cyborgs armed with flamethrowers and machine guns. Stiggs surrenders and gets shot dead, but the rest of the group kill a Strike Clone, steal its weapon and use it to kill the remaining clones.
Zed alerts Poe of Karen's actions. He reveals to her that her child, like all MenTel-owned babies, will be extracted in a fatal Caesarean to be made a cyborg. Abraham and Karen resist, but are powerless against the cyborg Poe and Abraham dies of strangulation.
Hijacking one of the gun turrets and using it as an elevator, John's group travels to Zed's control room. John takes Poe hostage and orders him to release Karen. Poe gives the order, but Zed refuses the command while stating that MenTel does not engage in any negotiations during hostage situations and a gun turret blasts Poe, blowing him to pieces and leaving John's group with no leverage. Once brought over to the core computer, D-Day hacks into Zed and accesses a powerful virus confiscated at the start of his sentence. D-Day manages to activate the virus after being shot and incapacited, causing a complete systems crash and all automated security to fail. John and Gomez rescue Karen, hijack a truck, and escape to Mexico where Karen enters labor in an abandoned barn and gives birth to her and John's child. | revenge, violence | train | wikipedia | I loved watching this movie growing up as a kid, and every time I watched it I was freaked out yet I couldn't get enough of it.
I knew the movie was based on a true story, and the country school setting reminded me of a place where I used to go camping.
I haven't seen it in years but remember the whole movie back to front.Set in a small country town, a class of students comprising the entire school and their teacher are kidnapped.
The teacher and kids are left to try and plan an escape from their captors.Hardly anyone in the world is going to see this movie, and they are all missing out.
I am so happy that Google exists, because after 15 YEARS of fruitless searching (including on IMDb, sorry!) I've found this movie again.
Images like the swim through the underground cavern and the older couple (?) being horrified by the rabbit masked man have haunted me to the point I thought I had imagined the whole thing.
The fact that I watched it as a pre-teen made the fight for survival of the woman and the children all the more real.
A group of Aussie thugs take a young teacher and her charges hostage, their escape and subsequent fight for survival turns bloody at the end.
I remember watching this movie every Saturday on TV why my mom cleaned the house.
I was talking to people randomly about the movie and people thought I was crazy because no one remembered it.
Finally two years ago a girl that I worked with was like yeah I know the movie you are talking about.
It took me 15 years and a NICE NICE guy from Austrialia (that I meet on in a chat room) to help me find the name of the movie.
Plus this movie is based on a true story..
Vividly I remember sleeping over my friends house and telling him about this movie Fortress that I had just seen and he was eager to see it after I went on and on about it.
I thought about the movie frequently growing up but never ever ever saw it again on TV or any channels such as HBO or Cinemax or Showtime.
About two weeks ago while looking through my Comcast cable at 3 in the morning I came across Fortress coming on the next day on HBO and I set my DVR to record it and just watched it last night.
I felt like a kid again.....and I couldn't believe how my memory flashed back and I knew pretty much everything that was coming up before it happened.
Hope I didn't bore you to death.....maybe some others can relate to my little story and feel the same way about this movie.Tommy New Jersey.
I had already looked up Fortress (1993) up on IMDB before watching it earlier this morning, so I knew the basic plot of this movie.
That the struggle for survival is never very far away.This movie captures that perfectly as a kidnapped school class turns from fleeing victims into tribal warriors.
It's one of those movies you don't get tired of seeing, when my niece was younger, I was watching it and she really liked, everytime she came over from then on we had to watch it, it's just that good.
What we have here is a fairly obscure little made for Australian TV movie that takes a common plot (kidnap) and moulds an interesting little morality tale around it.
The theme seen in this film was previously seen in classics such as The Virgin Spring, and later The Last House on the Left, except here it arguably more shocking (though much less visceral) as there are children involved.
The question that the movie asks is whether or not it is OK to "do unto others as they do unto you", though it never actually makes a judgement on this and the audience is left to decide - which makes the film instantly more interesting than morality tales that preach to the viewer (recent Oscar winner Crash is a good example of how badly that can turn out).
They soon realise that the best to get away from the villains may not be to run, but to stand and fight...This film works because the plot is kept simple and this allows us to focus on the important points that the story has to make.
The characters we are introduced to are all likable and believable also; and this again helps to convey the film's message as we can understand why they have been lured into the situation that they find themselves in.
The acting in the film is decent considering it's a TV movie.
Rachel Ward plays the part of the school teacher well, and definitely seems to have a rapport with the children.
A Problem that often befalls films like this is that the child actors tend to be annoying; but surprisingly, this film manages to avoid slipping into that pitfall as even the kids manage decent performances!
The first half of the movie doesn't feature a lot in the way of excitement, but things really hot up in the second half and the ending is certainly worth waiting for.
I can't say that this is a great movie, but it's certainly a very good one and one that fans of horror/thrillers will certainly want to check out!.
A school teacher and her students are kidnapped by four masked men.
I would recommend this film to anyone who loves movies that always keep you guessing, you will be surprised by the outcome..
The film scared the pants off me and my brother, and at the same time made us marvel at how ingenious and brutal the kids and the teacher could be when pushed to the edge.
For those who watched Aussie shows at the times, there were a few familiar soap faces as well as Rachel Ward.
This cross between Lord of the Flies and Walkabout is a true slice of thriller movie making.
It really makes you think "how would I react under similar circumstances?" The performances by the kids are great as is that by the teacher.
But the best scene of all is the way they close the movie - it's very dis-"heartening"..
In this movie, A group of crazed Aussie group of thugs, kidnap a group of students in a school house and hold them hostage.
A movie, with a plot that doesn't look promising at first, manages to stabilized itself with all the suspense.
An enjoyable fight-for-survival movie..
Kidnappers bite off more than they can chew when they abduct a teacher and her class from a remote school in the Outback.
Escaping from the cave in which they are held hostage, Sally Jones (Rachel Ward ) and her pupils must fight for survival against their captors.This surprisingly well made film, based on a true story, is an exciting, gritty and disturbing tale which shows how the the human instinct for survival can turn even the most innocent of people into savage killers.
Sally and her class, pushed to the limits, revert to an animalistic state which, by the end of the film, sees them wildly stabbing and tearing at their attackers in a frenzy of blood-lust.Director Arch Nicholson develops the story well, at first having the children bickering with each other, but eventually seeing them teaming together to beat a common foe.
Rachel Ward plays Mrs. Sally Jones, a teacher in the Outback of Australia.
The thrill factor of this movie comes with the fight between Good & Evil.
A young teacher, preparing for a well deserved hiatus, and her small class of 9 students are kidnapped by masked gunmen and taken to the Australian Outback.
To this day, years later may I add, the images of those crazed masked men are still vivid in my mind.
The underwater scene at the cave was probably one of the most horrifying moments in the entire movie.
The ending is enough to send chills down ones spine.Good news is, after lots of searching by both myself and my husband, he found a VHS copy online from an antique movie dealer and bought it for me for Christmas.
I am looking forward to watching it again, as it's been almost 15 years since I've last seen it..
It is an adventure to watch but certainly not an adventure anyone would want in real life.I think the plot summary gives away too much of the story.
I think it would be better to say that this is a story of one adult young woman school teacher and her nine young students.
It is very enjoyable to watch the kids get the best of the bad men (as unlike "Lord of the Flies", the actions that the children take are righteous ones!).
Please note: The events that take place toward the end of this movie are VERY violent!
I recommend this movie to those who like adventure / suspense & thrills!NOTE: There is partial nudity & bad language!
I saw this movie on tv when I was younger and spent years looking for it on video.
The fact that the villains faces are covered by masks the whole time really adds to the fear and suspense in the plot.
Watched it a lot as a kid and love it as an adult!
The plot is quite simple in that a small Outback school where only nine children of varying ages attend is overseen by an English school teacher.
Then in the middle of a normal school day four masked gunmen turn up and kidnap them.Once they are secreted in the bush they soon realise that these guys are not going to win any prizes for being nice.
This is a movie that I remember from my childhood, brilliant cast and simple but amazing well executed plot.Too many horror movies these days have characters that pathetically try and survive, I believe if you are ever kidnapped and manage to win the upper hand on your captors you would get revenge no matter how brutal and this movie has that and more.As others have said the masks are something that stays with your forever.
Rachel Ward is just exceptional, quite surprised this is just a "TV Movie" it deserves way more accolades.
I watched this movie when I was probably 9 years old on HBO.
Like many other posters here I watched this movie as a child in the 80s and I have been HAUNTED ever since by those masked faces.
After many conversations with people of a similar age I managed to find out what this movie was called - I want to watch it again to put those ghosts to rest.
I am incredibly relieved tonight, however, to find out that I'm not the only person who frequently thinks of this movie after watching it as a child - I honestly fear those masks appearing through my windows at nigh (ugh).
An Australian Outback teacher and her elementary class are kidnapped by masked men.
I would recommend anyone to watch it as long as you understand, sometimes the low budget movies are the creepiest.
This a very good suspense movie.
This a very good suspense movie.
But once the children begin to stand up for themselves the movie takes a very exciting turn for a very good ending..
I'm in that group of people that saw this movie as a young teenager back in 1986.
As a side note, while babysitting those same kids on a different night, I was introduced to Nicholas Cage in a movie called Birdie.
If you like Nick's work that falls more on the side of drama and a little less on the flashy lights, this movie is for you.
Through out the years the scenes in this movie really stuck with me.I wanted to watch this movie again!
Periodically every year or so I would ask someone if they have ever seen the movie, telling them the scenes I remembered,plot line, and that I thought it could be a foreign film.
I even checked with all the video stores with no luck.For about 9 years no one I asked had ever heard of this movie.
At 12 years old, this movie rocks!
When I saw this movie as a kid, I was fully immersed.
Instead of getting the kids, which I thought was the objective, the masked men stood outside the cave making taunting noises.
I saw hints of LORD OF THE FLIES, which is pretty deep for a TV movie.
Just like LORD OF THE FLIES, the children almost became savages in the end.
These are subtleties that you don't get when you're 12 years old viewing this movie.So though it's not quite as enjoyable as when I was young, at least now, I have a full comprehension, and it's still a great nostalgic flick..
A group of kidnapped kids in the Australian bush manage to escape and kill their kidnappers in a very brutal and bloody manner..
I watched this movie when I was 18 and it made a great impression on me.
Schoolteacher and class of rural bumpkins get kidnapped by cartoonish bunch of thugs, brought to the forest, try to escape, get caught, repeat, until they finally bond as a group and give the kidnappers a taste of their own medicine.My, the savage nature of the human animal!
Give me a break.The movie is corny, the children are annoying, the soundtrack is silly, and all that without taking into account the embarrassingly corny, "Yeah, group!" type moments.
Sally Jones (Rachel Ward) is a teacher in rural Australia.
With ingenuity, they escape the cave but the masked gunmen are not letting them go that easily.It's a fair action thriller TV movie.
Featuring not one, but two separate caves, an escape swim through an underground stream, along with some savage retributions against the masked tormentors, "Fortress" delivers enough entertainment that the plot holes are best forgiven.
Just to let you know the writer of Fortress (the man who gave us plot holes) is working with Asher Keddie (Sue) on a new project.http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=123752I guess those Aussies really stick together.Writer Everett Deroche Everett is an established writer with a long list of credits to his name for both television and feature films over 25 years.
What were parents thinking letting children see this movie???????
I never remembered the name and then typed in like "santa kidnapper" in google and there it was FORTRESS!
School kids get kidnapped by guys in freaky masks.
Fortress is a beautiful yet disturbing film about the human instinct to survive.
The part where the kids and the teacher brutally kill one of the kidnappers is very disturbing - it's not often you see children killing an adult.
"Fortress" is more or less an amalgamation of "Lord of the Flies" and "Last House on the Left" with a teacher and her mixed classroom of nine children gradually reverting to savagery in order to save their own lives.
Rachel Ward is good as the teacher and I would really like to mention the actors whose faces were covered by the icky masks the entire time.
However; real children do have to deal with violence every day, so I appreciate, that this film isn't "Disney- ized" and shows the tough stuff.
Mostly due to the acting and the editing that allows that acting to come forward, I give it three strong, solid stars and recommend it if you like the idea: a framework of terror and brutality surrounding a group of kids and their teacher who discover the inner primitive savageness that is, in the end, their only possible savior..
Young school teacher Sally Jones (a fine and credible performance by the lovely Rachel Ward) and her nine students are taken hostage by four masked gunmen.
Fortress is a highly effective thriller supposedly based on true events, as so many compelling movies are.
Rachel Ward plays a school teacher in the Australian outback who is taken for ransom along with her entire student body.
The film is very suspenseful, and almost comes off as a masterpiece until the third act loses credibility when the captives begin to turn the tide against the kidnappers.
I'm yet another 80's kid who saw this on TV and was scared witless but didn't know the name of the movie and eventually couldn't recall if it was real or just a bad nightmare (a nightmare that happened to recur on and off for the following 2 decades!!!).
I must have shut off the movie before the ending, but now, 20 years later, I am happy to know they defeated the villains, albeit quite gruesomely.
During an ordinary day at school, suddenly four men in novelty masks kidnap and hold ransom a schoolteacher Sally Jones and her nine students.
So, when they finally escape, instead of running they decide to take a stand against their captors.Well, this is kinda disturbing for a TV movie, but I knew what I was getting myself into as read the novel by Gabrielle Lord when I was at school.
I didn't really know that there was a movie adapted from this tale that's loosely based on a true story until recently.
But saying that, this Australian TV movie is efficiently solid and packs a sting in its observation of the unsettling change in the children and their teacher when they come face to face on even ground with their captors.
The last third of the film takes on a feeling and atmosphere almost comparable to "Lord of the Flies", with the children becoming a bit scary.
In fact the finale is like something out of the occult.Not that any of this ruins the movie though, even if it is somewhat surprising. |
tt0959337 | Revolutionary Road | The movie begins at a house party, where Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) eyes April (Kate Winslet) from across the room. They go to the corner, introduce themselves and chat. She says she is learning to be an actress.Next scene we jump immediately to the end of a play, as the curtain is about to come down. We see April on stage upset, and Frank in the audience with a huge frown on his face. Some people clap and cheer and some are really disappointed with the play, walking by Frank as they go on about how terrible it was. Mrs. Helen Givings (Kathy Bates) walks by and compliments Frank that his wife was terrific in the play. Frank smiles and walks away.Frank goes backstage looking for April. On the way he sees Milly Campbell (Kathryn Hahn), who was also in the play. She tells Frank that she and her husband Shep (David Harbour) are ready for a drink. Frank agrees and goes to the private dressing room where he finds a devastated April changing. She asks Frank to tell Milly and Shep they cannot go out for a drink, using their nanny as an excuse. Frank and April argue a bit but Frank obliges. We then see a far shot of Frank and April leaving in the hallway of a high school with obvious distance between the two of them, not saying a word, even when they are in the car.While driving, Frank turns and tells April that it wasn't her fault that the play was bad, it was because it was unprofessional with lousy scripts and amateur actors and actresses around her. Not only does April not appreciate his comments, she asks Frank not to talk about it. They argue some more and Frank pulls the car over. Frank tells April that it's not his fault the play sucked -he is being very supportive and he is not going to put up with anymore of the bullshit she is giving him. April gets out of the car and Frank follows angrily. They scream at each other about how Frank is always trying to talk things out while all she wants to do is have peace and quiet to deal with it herself. The argument gets heated and April insults Frank about trying to be tough and manly. Frank makes a fist and looks like he is about to hit April but he controls his urge to hit her and starts to pound the hood of their car instead, hurting his hand. April asks Frank to take her home. They drive off.Now the title Revolutionary Road comes to screen.We see Frank getting ready to go to work. Dressed in a grey suit and a hat, he drives to the station and takes the train into the city. The setting is suburban Connecticut in the 1950s. We now see April stopping to stare at the neighborhood as she is taking out the trash. She flashes back to sitting in the car with Frank while Mrs. Givings, their realtor, is driving. Throughout the drive Mrs. Givings keeps mentioning how the two of them are so different from anyone else in the neighborhood. This is a recurring reference, people mentioning Frank and April Wheeler as the model couple of the town. They pull up to the house they eventually buy and we see how delighted April is with it. Flash back to present day.Frank is within hundreds of other people heading to work - his face shows just how miserable he is with this everyday routine. While riding the elevator a cute young secretary gives him a glance which puts a smile on Frank's face. On his way to his cubicle Frank trades pleasantries and miseries with his coworkers. He is called into the boss's office for a discussion regarding a bad job he did. (We realize Frank works in Knoxx as a salesperson like his dad did all his life.) He is ticked at being yelled at by his boss so he revises his work with a half-assed, joking attitude that could very well cost him his job. Frank then goes to the cute secretary he saw in the elevator earlier and asks her to type the revised edition for him and asks her out for lunch. During lunch they drink martinis and he calls the office to tell them that he needs the secretary for the day to help him do research. After he hangs up they both laugh. During their conversation, Frank tells the secretary a joke; the joke is that his dad worked all his life at the same company as a salesperson and he thinks that he was the most miserable man he has ever known and swore he would never be like him. Years later he is doing the exact same job his dad did all his life. To top that off, today is his 30th birthday and he is miserable.Frank and the secretary go to her apartment where they have sex. He then leaves in a hurry with a very casual good-bye, leaving the secretary feeling used. Frank gets home and is greeted with a kiss by a dressed up April. He is then surprised with a birthday cake by April, their son Michael (Ty Simpkins) and their daughter Jennifer (Ryan Simpkins) who sing Happy Birthday to him which bring tears of joy to his eyes.Around this time of the movie April is flipping through old pictures and finds a picture of Frank and his buddies standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. April has a flashback of the first night she slept with Frank when he told her if he has a choice he would live in Paris where people actually have lives. April tells him that he is the most interesting person she has ever met.At night after a shower, April asks to talk to Frank. She proposes the idea that between their savings and selling their house they would have enough money to survive without work for six months and wants them to move to Paris. She believes that they pay secretaries so well that Frank can finally have the time to enjoy his life and all and they can get away from this misery they are in right now. At first Frank just laughs off the idea but then begins to buy into it. They agree and hug.They break the news to their friends Shep and Milly Campbell who are shocked but supportive as Frank and April are so serious and so convincing of how their lives in Paris would be. At night, Shep and Milly laugh at this idea but Milly also cries, maybe at the notion of friends leaving or that the friends are on to better lives than theirs.April invites Mr. and Mrs. Givings and their troubled son John (Michael Shannon), who currently resides in a psychiatric ward, to a gathering (actually a favor to Mrs. Givings, who believes meeting the perfect couple will do her son good). John is a very blunt man and has no sense of manners at all. Frank and April are patient and allow John to ridicule everything they have to say. Frank and April mention they are leaving their lives here and starting a new one in Paris. This causes John to laugh at everything his mother believed, that the perfect couple couldn't even stand this place. Frank and April ask John to go for a walk with them afterwards.During the walk, Frank and April learn that John gets electroshock constantly for his mental problems, and in some ways, they bond during the talk. John asks why they are leaving here and Frank's answer is to leave this place of helplessness. John agrees and says it takes a wise man to see it, but a brave man to admit this sense of helplessness.In the next couple of weeks the Wheelers are preparing for their new lives; April gets their visas and all of their traveling documents taken care of and Frank continues going to work but with so much more joy. They seem to be happier now, no more arguments and definitely very loving.Frank is called into the boss's office one morning with the chief executive inside as well. Frank is so sure he is going to get fired (which he doesn't care about) for the half-assed work he did a couple of weeks ago. Turns out his half-assed work hit the jackpot and got great reviews within the company which leads them to offer Frank a promotion working with the chief executive on a new project: computers.Frank doesn't take the job yet, nor does he mention it to April. They are so happy that they are taking this step at a new life that they make love right there in the kitchen.After a while the chief executive calls Frank in for a fancy dinner to talk about the promotion. The chief executive really wants Frank in and he is tempted but not fully willing to take the job. Frank asks if he knows his father, who worked at the company for 30 years, the chief says no. The chief tells him that a man only gets a couple of chances in life so when the opportunity comes, he better grab onto it as tight as possible because there just might not be another one coming. This gets Frank thinking.Later, April tells Frank that she is 10 weeks pregnant and they both are worried. She says there are options as long as it is before the 12th week. They agree that a child would not be an option for them to take to Paris as it changes the whole plan. Frank is not supportive of the idea of abortion.Next we see the Wheelers and the Campbells at the beach enjoying the sunshine and the water. Frank, knowing April can hear the conversation, speaks loudly to Shep about what a great opportunity it is and how much more money he is being offered for the promotion. April notices Frank is starting to lean away from their idea of a new life in Paris and they argue at the beach - Frank jumps into the water to cool off.At night, while they argue some more, Frank goes to the restroom and as he is getting a towel he notices an abortion kit on the shelf. He is furious and starts to scream at April. During the argument she mentions that the reason they moved here was because of an unplanned pregnancy and that she doesn't want to decide another part of their lives for the same reason. She said she has no plans to use the kit for sure but she got it just in case. They argue some more and April understands that Paris is no longer an option.The next day Frank takes the promotion and while staying late, he goes out with the young secretary again.Another night Frank, April, Milly and Shep go out dancing. Milly and Shep are happy that the Paris trip is not going to happen, everyone is happy except for April. Frank asks April to dance but April says no so he dances with Milly instead. At the end of the night when they are leaving their cars are blocked in so since both of their nannies are waiting, April stays with Shep to wait for the car to be moved while Frank takes Milly home to relieve the nannies. April and Shep go back into the bar and start to dance with a lot of flirting and implications which leads to them having sex in his car. Shep tells April that he loves her and April tells him not to talk.The next day Frank sees how unhappy April is and worries that they haven't slept on the same bed ever since the Paris trip got canceled. He decides to tell April how much he loves her and how he wants to make her happy here at home. He goes so far as to tell her that he had an affair but he ended it. April is not even mad hearing it. She says she feels nothing, because she no longer loves him. Just then, Mrs. Givings stops by along with her husband and her son John. As they eat dinner they mention that Paris is no longer an option and that April is going to have a baby. This gets John upset so he starts to insult Frank and April saying that he is not a man anymore because he is eating his own words about the helplessness and all that. Frank starts to get mad and impatient while John goes on to say Frank only feels like a man because he knocked April up. This gets the Givings kicked out of the house, and on the way out, John jokingly apologizes but says he is happy about one thing, that he is not that kid that is going to be born into this miserable family.When the Givings leave, April and Frank get into another heated argument. Frank is so emotional and angry that he slams the door, punches the wall, throws lamps, breaks chairs and is completely out of control. April says that if Frank touches her she will scream, Frank holds her hand and she screams and runs out of the house. Frank chases after her into the woods.April tells Frank to leave her alone, that she doesn't want to talk things out; she just wants to be alone to think it through. Frank complies and leaves her in the woods. While in the house, Frank sits in a chair in the living room, drinking and worrying about April and her safety but when she comes back she does not come into the house, she just keeps smoking right outside the door while Frank stays in the house with the lights off.The next morning Frank is ready to go to work and he sees a beautiful and 'rejuvenated' April preparing breakfast, asking Frank politely how he wants his eggs. Frank is caught off guard but is relieved that the whole drama is done and they go on to have breakfast. During breakfast, he talks about his work and the new computer to April who appears interested in every word he has to say and tells him he should take pleasure in what he does. They have an awkward goodbye at the door with a kiss and wavery smile from April. Frank asks if she still loves him and she replies with a calm yes. Frank leaves in his car.Back in the house, April's fragile demeanor cracks and she cries while doing the dishes. She calls Milly to ask her to tell her children that she loves them very much. She boils a pot of water and lays down some towels on the bathroom floor while she holds the abortion kit in her hand as she closes the door. We then see April gently walk down the stairs to the living room where she looks out the window; she bleeds all over the carpet and her skirt, then calls the ambulance.At the hospital, Frank is worried and crying while Shep comforts him. He talks about broken capillaries and other stuff the doctor told him that he couldn't understand. He finishes with "she did it to her herself." Shep leaves to get Frank some coffee and is seen crying at the vending machine. He returns to see Frank get news that April did not make it because she bled out too much before the ambulance got to her.Frank runs down the street.The next scene we see Milly and Shep with a new couple in their house and they are sharing the tragic story of the Wheelers. Milly mentions that Frank moved back into the city with the kids and he was the most devoted father there is, spending all his time with them. Shep walks out to the backyard and Milly follows suit. Shep tells Milly that he no longer wants to talk about the Wheelers and she says okay, both subdued for a minute with memories. They hug and kiss and walk back inside the house.We see a scene of Frank sitting on a park bench watching his children on the swings, looking sad and thoughtful. When one of his kids calls him, he looks up and smiles softly, looking wistfully a little happier.In the final scene, Mrs. Givings is sitting on the couch talking to her husband Howard (Richard Easton). She talks about the neighborhood and what it has become. When Howard mentions the Wheelers, Mrs. Givings starts to criticize them as being somewhat neurotic and difficult, neglecting the house. As she is going on and on about it, he begins to turn down his hearing aid, and smiles faintly with the new silence. | boring, depressing, flashback | train | imdb | There are many themes in this film, mainly being love, marriage, relationships, and life.DiCaprio and Winslet give powerhouse performances.
April (Kate Winslet) finds unreserved determination to leave to Paris and although her character seems at times erratic, we gradually come to understand that she is in fact the stronger personality of the two; she truly finds change favorable, whereas Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) seems to find the idea of change more flattering than change itself.Each choice a person makes can change a life, and that life is not always theirs.
This is a heavy film with emotionally complex characters, I'm not sure I could think of any two actors that could pull off the roles of Frank and April Wheeler like Leonardo and Kate did."Truth is usually in singular - Lies always come in plural." I'm not sure who said that, but it is a notion that sums up this film.Michael Shannon shinned in his role as the clinically insane son of Kathy Bates character; John Givings.
But after an unexpected event and other factors, will the dream plan go through?The chemistry between Winslet and DiCaprio in "Revolutionary Road" reminded me in many ways of the chemistry between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in the 1966 film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
Kate Winslett said afterward that (interestingly) it was she who had brought the book and the project to her husband, not vice versa and that it took some consideration for Sam Mendes to convince himself that he hadn't already told this story before, and by the final credits, I too was thinking just that, it felt like I'd watched a prequel to American Beauty, but without the pizazz and the rapture and the delight.
He plays well but I feel as if something is missing from his character.The directing of Sam Mendes is good in that the film brings you back in time.
In this Richard Yates story portrayed through the lens of Mr. Mendes' camera, we enter the relationship of Frank and April Wheeler; a young married couple depicted brilliantly by DiCaprio and Winslet, who seem to be on the verge of marital and emotional collapse as their growing desperation and dissatisfaction with their town and their relationship leads them to think of an escape.
There has been a lot of expectation about the movie that would bring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet together again for the first time in more than a decade, but the romance that they share in Revolutionary Road could not possibly be more different from the one they developed on the Titanic.They are Frank and April Wheeler, an outwardly charming husband and wife who live in a beautiful dream house on Revolutionary Road.
The movie begins with April in an unsuccessful play, and we learn very quickly about their relationship in the car on the way home as Frank thoughtfully assures her that it's okay that she didn't become an actress, it's not her fault that the play was lousy, and then in the fight that ensues, Frank tells her that she acts "sick" when she gets mad like this.It seems that the most important thing that Frank and April embody about the traditional 1950s couple was the routine sacrificing of dreams upon the altar of conformity and fulfilling expectations.
But he is stuck in a job that he hates despite a good salary, they have two kids already and a third accidentally on the way, and adultery's going on left and right.April suggests that they drop everything and move to Paris where, with money that she could make working combined with whatever they could get for the house, they could live comfortably until he could get on his feet artistically and they could both live the lives they have always dreamed of.
A gossipy real estate agent, played perfectly by Kathy Bates, makes friends with April and nervously asks if she might bring over her son John, who has been in a mental institution and who she thinks might benefit from meeting a happy couple like April and Frank.
When he does this with April and Frank, the results are not pretty, but they are some of the best movie moments of 2008.Kate and Leo both approach perfection in their performances.
Both of them have appeared in other brilliant films in 2008 (Kate in The Reader and Leo in Body of Lies), but in Revolutionary Road their performances reach such a level of pitch and depth that, when combined, they reverberate against each other and turn into something entirely different.
If there were an Oscar for the best combination of two performances, there would be no need for any other nominees.Revolutionary Road is not the most uplifting film of the year (although it's also not nearly as depressing as, say, Rachel Getting Married), but it is definitely among the most important.
But I understand some audiences may enjoy this and, in any case, it doesn't matter: it's your message, isn't it?According to Justin Haythe (writer) and Sam Mendes (director), life is just too painful to be lived, too full of suffering and sorrow as to find the time to enjoy, create or love.
DiCaprio and Winslet's chemistry was once again flawless, I honestly felt like I was watching a 50's suburban couple fighting about normal, every day problems, no scripts.
All of the supporting cast was superb, especially Kathy Bates and Michael Shannon, who should both be very tough contenders to beat for the best actress and best supporting actor Oscars, respectively.Thank you, Sam Mendes, for giving the American people another great drama to watch, that really gave people a dose of what the "perfect 50's suburban life", was really like..
If you want to see a film about a dysfunctional couple of the era, try "Come back little Sheba" or "Death of a Salesman." Each of these films created actual characters, and we were drawn into their lives as we learned about the era.This film was about 2008, and how when two super stars are signed for a film deal there is no need to throw away money on writers who flesh out their characters, and provide plausible circumstances of their lives.I just learned that the director of this film was the same man who directed, "American Beauty," one of my all time favorites.Go figure!.
into "Revolutionary Road," my husband said "all three main characters were in 'Titanic." I replied, "I think this movie is sinking faster."The '50s are certainly a treasure trove of depression, conformity and hidden angst.
Revolutionary Road is a tragic realistic love story powered by the believable performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet who reunite 12 years later after starring in 1997's Titanic together.
Leonardo DiCaprio is good as always as Frank Wheeler and Kate Winslet is just as impressive playing his wife April who seem to have to be the perfect family with the house, the kids, and a good paycheck living in a Connecticut suburb in the 1950's.
Overall Revolutionary Road was better than expected it's a tragic love story brought to life because of the exceptional performances from both Dicaprio and Winslet who make the film worth the time to watch..
Indeed, the whole time I was watching this strangely insubstantial film from director Sam Mendes, the only thing I could think of were all the other movies I've seen that have dealt with the same themes and dealt with them better.Frank and April Wheeler are the miserably married couple at the center of this story.
I guess it's meant to be a sort of modern-day "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", the story of a married couple who could be helping one another but instead decide to tear each other apart, except that the material isn't nearly as interesting as Edward Albee's play, and neither are the characters.For "Revolutionary Road" to work, we have to really understand why April is so unhappy, and that's something the film doesn't tell us.
This character is wedged awkwardly into the narrative as the movie's id, shouting out truths everyone else is trying to avoid having to admit, but Shannon's performance is over the top and I didn't know what I was supposed to make of him.With wonderful films like "Far from Heaven," "The Hours," "All That Heaven Allows" and "Little Children" (which stars Winslet in a stunning turn, no less) and the cable series "Mad Men" exploring the same themes as "Revolutionary Road" but much more capably, there's really no reason to waste your time or money on this gloomy, depressing movie that has nothing to say.
As I suspect many people were, I was drawn to this movie primarily out of curiosity, wanting to see the "great reunion" - Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunited 11 years after their blockbuster starring turns in "Titanic" - with Kathy Bates thrown into the mix as well.
In this movie set in the 50's, they play the Wheelers - Frank and April - a young couple trying to make their way in the world, dissatisfied with life, with marriage, with each other and with pretty much everything else.
The Wheelers are not a pleasant couple to watch or listen to, and, by the end of the movie, pretty much everybody else is sending the message "I don't want to talk about the Wheelers any more." They do have those handful of powerful, raw with (negative) emotion scenes, but in the absence of that anger (which sometimes seemed to border on hatred) Frank and April are actually pretty dry together, which might make a valid point about the state of their marriage, but which isn't very interesting to watch.
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, as the married couple who constantly fight.
The Titanic lovers, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, get reunited for Revolutionary Road a tale of sterile life in the suburbs during the Eisenhower years.
Nevertheless Revolutionary Road which is the name of the street the Wheelers live on in the film, got three Oscar nominations including one for Michael Shannon as the bipolar son of the Wheeler's neighbor Kathy Bates who sold them the house.
I mean, at least we didn't see the couple going to a restaurant where a bunch of "poor, disadvantaged black folks" were cruelly refused entry by a tight-lipped host because they were not worthy due to the "color of their skin" (as if race was skin deep, but that's another subject).Skip this piece of fetid spew from the minds and hearts of hateful parasites bent on the complete destruction of all that once made white, European-descended society great and go watch something else instead, like "Blue Lagoon," another movie about a couple who discover the natural and fulfilling way in life is the family unit, which this alien, cancerous element in our world is hellbent on tearing apart..
During watching this movie I was thinking the performances of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are convincing and extremely good.
The fact that the American Beauty and Road to Perdition director assembled such a strong cast doesn't override the fact that it is just not a good film.Basically we get a chance meeting at a party between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
His twisted and vile psychoanalysis of Leo and Kate is spot on, though ridiculous in itself.Director Sam Mendes (Kate's real life husband) is blessed to have Winslet and DiCaprio cast or this film would die a quick death at the box office and most assuredly would not end up on any best of lists for this year.
In that period, women's freedom and choice of career was virtually non-existent, and whoever tried to shake this equation, often found themselves on the wrong side of society's ability to tolerant social turbulence.In American Beauty director Sam Mendes's adaptation of the bestseller Revolutionary Road, Frank and April Wheeler (portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet together on screen for the first time since Titanic!), a young, suburban couple going through the motions of life.
When April comes up with a daring idea to relocate to Paris, France, the consequences of the decision manage to make the couple's life even glummer.Personally speaking, I found Revolutionary Road to be a depressing experience, lacking the optimism or cynicism director Sam Mendes demonstrated in films like American Beauty or Jarhead.
The film reunites the popular stars of Titanic, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, as a suburban couple, Frank and April Wheeler, who see themselves as special but whose mediocre lives do not reflect their ideals.
There is very little else other the arguments of a married couple and in the end that gets a little tiring.I would though say that this film is well worth a watch, the performances are terrific and it is beautifully shot, I just don't think it is the seminal commentary on marriage it sets out to be..
Of course, Kate Winslet was great in the role, but I don't think this is anywhere near her best work, and it would be a shame to see an Oscar go to this performance when 2008 was such a wonderful year for the leading ladies.
This has to be like my favorite movie from Sam Mendes, I'd have to re-watch American Beauty and Road To Perdition just make sure though, but I'm still pretty sure.
But "Revolutionary Road" is not only the typical story of a couple who buys a house, has kids, goes out with the friendly neighbor's and one day starts asking "what are we doing around here?"...Seems like no one knows the answer except a magnificent character, a neighbor's son who has a psychiatric problem.
Michael Shannon is Oscar nominated for his role as a mentally ill neighbour who is the only one willing to speak what everybody else is thinking - his key scene is hilarious and horrific.The cinematography and period detail are beautiful and James Newton's score is affecting - particularly in a scene where Winslet grasps the last moments of light against the back garden tree, while, after their biggest bust up yet, Leo DiCaprio wanders around in the darkness of the house on Revolutionary Road - the house that typified everything 'perfect' about their life.As just about every critic ever has noted, the concept is not original; David Lynch blew it apart in 'Blue Velvet' and 'Twin Peaks' and surely after 3 seasons of Desperate Housewives, it's no longer an alien concept.
American Beauty had one and so does Sam Mendes' new film Revolutionary Road.
Through four movies, he's the only director working today who has yet to make a movie that's less than a minor classic, though his dark sensibility admittedly makes his films difficult to watch repeatedly.In Revolutionary Road, Di Caprio and Winslet give believable, fully human performances in the challenging roles of Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple struggling with their own lack of belief in the life they've chosen.
Brilliant convincing performance from both,Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio,actually took away the fact that am not watching anything of drama genre but a reality.It was expected.The background score also perfectly mingled with the flow of the movie.
Great acting by Winslet and DiCaprio make Revolutionary Road a must watch..
The drama has 3 main characters - April (Kate Winslet) the housewife, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), the main character and will talk about the third one later.If you experience anything what you've seen in the movie, you are psychologically abused and should see someone specialised immediately.
Revolutionary Road is a great movie with a well developed storyline and a terrific cast.It is certainly a well acted movie,though it is certainly not their finest performances,Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet both shine in the lead roles,and their acting has certainly improved over the eleven year gap of Titanic,both movies contain great chemistry between DiCaprio and Winslet,but this time around it felt more real and sincere.I felt like there were certainly several things missing than could have made this movie better,one thing is that it certainly would have benefited with making us feel for these characters more,I found them quite unlikable for the most part,and at times that certainly made it difficult for me to care about the decisions they make or the things that happen to them.I also think it needed more scenes containing intense dialogue between the Wheeler's,these parts were the highlight of the movie as Winslet and DiCaprio both deliver their dialogue beautifully.Its certainly not outstanding and could have benefited more from its two leads,but Revolutionary Road is still a very enjoyable film that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good drama or romantic film.
This is one of the most honest films I've ever seen about marriage and the emptiness that brings it apart.The story involves Frank and April (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) who meet at a party one night and discuss their future plans.
April: It takes backbone to lead the life you want!Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) works for the first time with his wife Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road, a heavy drama based on Richard Yates' novel.
Sam Mendes, in an effective follow-up of sorts to American BEAUTY (I say follow-up because both films touch on the same subject matter), has created a film that is amazingly realistic and compelling, and examines life in Suburbia to the extent that most directors are afraid to go.The acting by Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet is astounding and is reason enough to watch the film.
Revolutionary Road (2008)**** (out of 4) A suburban couple (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet) find their lives getting boring and their marriage falling apart so they think a trip to Paris will give their lives a new direction to keep them going.
Having read about the plot, I really didn't want to watch Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road." But I figured that in light of an article I'm writing, I should see it because both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are lauded for their performances. |
tt1262981 | World's Greatest Dad | Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) is an aspiring writer that has never gotten any of his works published so he settles for working as a poetry teacher at the school his son, Kyle (Darly Sabara), attends. One morning Lance walks into his son's room to find him masturbating and practicing autoerotic asphyxiation. Lance thinks he is dead but Kyle just tells him he's fine and to leave the room. On the car ride to school Lance unsuccessfully tries to bond with Kyle, who repeatedly calls him and the music Lance likes a "fag".While walking through school Lance bumps into a fellow teacher, Claire (Alexie Gilmore), whom he is dating.In the hallway at school, Kyle shows his friend, Andrew (Evan Martin), some European porn but Andrew finds it disgusting. As an attractive girl, Jennifer (Ellie Jameson) walks by, Kyle makes a sexual remark which causes him to get into a fight with another boy nearby. They all get called into the principal's office where the principal (Geoff Pierson) advises Lance to that Kyle should transfer "special needs" school.Lance finds out Mike (Henry Simmons), one of his colleagues, has published an article on a famous magazine. Lance tries to look happy for him, but can't help but feel a bit jealous as he notices Claire taking an interest in Mike.When Lance gets home he finds Andrew on the computer and asks Kyle to send him home. Kyle says he can't because Andrew's mom is an alcoholic. Lance decides to let him stay. Lance calls Claire while getting ready to go to her house for dinner like they had planned, but Claire cancels on him.Lance spots Claire and Mike having a couple of laughs at the school parking lot so Lance asks Claire if she likes Mike. Claire storms off angry but later makes up with Lance. Later that night Claire cancels yet another date so Lance settles with smoking pot for the night.The next day, while Lance and Kyle are at the mall they spot Claire with Mike. Kyle ditches Lance and decides to go home with Andrew to plug in the new computer screen Lance just bought him. That night, Lance, Kyle, and Claire go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. While they are eating Kyle secretly takes a picture of Claire's underwear with his cell phone from under the table.After dinner, Lance drops off Kyle first and then drops off Claire but refuses her offer to have sex. When Lance gets back home he discovers that Kyle has died as a result of practicing autoerotic asphyxiation. To save Kyle and himself embarrassment, Lance buttons up Kyle's pants, hangs Kyle's body from the closet and writes a fake suicide letter in order to fake Kyle's suicide.Once Lance returns to school, he bumps into Andrew in the hallway. Andrew tells Lance that Kyle didnt seem sad enough to commit suicide but Lance just blows him off by saying Kyle was a "complicated guy".One day, feeling sad, Kyle calls Claire looking for someone to talk to but Claire is at one of Mike's basketball games and blows him off. Lance bakes weed brownies and takes them to his neighbor's house just to have someone to talk to. Sharing an interest in zombie movies, the neighbor invites Lance to watch a zombie marathon on tv, Lance accepts gladly.When Kyle's suicide note, or better yet Lance's, is published in the school newspaper, all attention turns towards Lance as Claire pays more attention to him and more students switch from Mike's class to Lance's.As students inquire more and more about Kyle and his interests, Lance starts making up things. He even starts writing a journal, pretending Kyle wrote it. The kids at school start wearing shirts with Kyle's picture on them, actually pretending they liked Kyle when they didn't. Andrew talks to Lance about it saying the suicide note didnt seem like something Kyle would write, but once again Lance blows him off by saying Kyle was a smart and complex individual.Lance talks to the grief counselor but he assures Lance that Kyle's suicide note has touched a lot of students causing them to reach out to him. He assures Lance that Kyle may not have died in vain. That weekend Lance writes the rest of "Kyle's journal" which he then gives to the grief counselor telling him to take a look at it and see if he should publish it for it to be valuable to the other students. Claire also takes a look at it and they try to pick out a name for it. They publish the journal which is then handed out to kids at school.Lance grows all the more popular but it seems as if Mike is starting to get suspicious. Lance cancels on his neighbor by saying he has an emergency even though he is playing golf with Mike and Principal Anderson. There, Principal Anderson tells Lance that he is going to rename the school library after Kyle, even though he had once suggested Kyle be put in a special needs school.Lance gets invited to go on a talk show but as he is getting ready to leave, Andrew visits him and tells him how the journal doesnt sound anything like Kyle. Lance gets a bit worked up and tells him to just let it go and that no wonder his mother drinks, causing Andrew to storm off.After the show, Lance gets a call from someone saying that the journal has caught the attention of several publishers.The next day at the library dedication, fueled by the guilt of exploiting his sons death for his own benefit and the hatred towards those who pretend to have liked Kyle when in real life they didnt, Lance tells everyone the truth behind Kyles death, revealing that he was the one who wrote the suicide note and the journal. Lance walks through a crowd full of looks of indignation, now that everyone knows he was living a lie. Immediately after, feeling liberated, he runs to the schools pool and dives in naked.Lance is now disliked by everyone except for his neighbor and Andrew who advices him to keep writing. The movie ends with Lance, his neighbor, and Andrew watching a zombie movie. | comedy, depressing, adult comedy, absurd, satire, plot twist | train | imdb | So when, as in this movie, he plays someone who is sweet and kind and weak and crawling through moral quicksand, the resulting conflict you feel has you laughing out loud and wringing your hands with anxiety all at the same time.The plot is original and comes with a couple of unforgettable twists.
From this year's Sundance Film Festival we have Bobcat Goldthwait's dark comedy World's Greatest Dad, we delve once again into the unknown of Any Town, USA.This film mainly takes place in a school setting, but the themes and conflicts that arise coincide with those found in other films about suburbia.
For a comedian I can imagine it being difficult to change emotionally like that, but Williams has proved time after time in films like Good Will Hunting, One Hour Photo, and Insomniac that he can play just about any role thrown at him.
At first I thought the film was going to end up like last years Towelhead, a hodgepodge of issues and conflicts that are each could have been their own film, but here we have an even dosage of each, culminating to a great finale and realization by William's character.The film isn't perfect.
In his latest role as Lance Clayton in Bobcat Goldthwait's (yep the guy out of Police Academy) 'World's Greatest Dad' he is once again showing us he's still got what it takes as he tackles the role of a father who loses his son to a tragic accident.
Like finding yourself staring at a car crash you won't be able to look away as the pacing draws you through the story with ease and although it deals with matters that are slightly taboo its ultimately an enjoyable watch and one which cements Williams reputation as a comic actor adapt at playing the wounded human soul..
World's Greatest Dad (2009) *** (out of 4) One of the blackest of all black comedies features Robin Williams as Lance, a failed teacher, failed boyfriend and failed father to an obnoxious pervert (Daryl Sabara) who masturbates too much, is hated by everyone and who has no real purpose in life.
SHAKES THE CLOWN has gained a cult following over the years and there's no doubt that this film will eventually be looked at as not a great movie but one that after watching you'll want to stand up and applaud the filmmakers for delivering something completely original and different.
The movie has so many layers that people are going to take different things away from it but I really respected the comedy of the first half and then the drama of the second.
World's Greatest Dad well and truly sees him in the latter.Williams plays a teacher and unsung poet who has been unsuccessful in his quest to become published, even though he has submitted quality work over many years.As a single father he has an extremely difficult relationship with his utterly detestable teenage son.
Just joined IMDb for the privilege of posting a review of this film.I watched it with my wife expecting a wry dark comedy (what it says on the box) The characters are thin, Robin Williams is UN-credible and the plot is slow.The dialogue & subject matter is disgusting and repulsive - it is repeated and dwelled upon as if the director enjoys portraying this stuff.
It is one of the darker comedies I have scene but at times it does not feel like a dark movie.
The first thing we learn from World's Greatest Dad is that Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) isn't the man he thought he'd be.
Alexie Gilmore, Henry Simmons, Geoffrey Pierson (who plays the school principal), Evan Martin (as Kyle's best friend, Andrew), and Lorrain Nicholson (Jack Nicholson's daughter, all but unrecognizable as Kyle's goth classmate) all give solid supporting performances.Bobcat Goldthwait wrote a clever and funny script, and then directed it beautifully.
The camera work is nicely handled including a few moments of judicious slow motion; one camera angle in particular adds so much to the pain of a poignant moment that my breath caught for just a moment (as was likely intended) when I saw it.BOTTOM LINE: Given the combination of a good idea, a solid script, terrific actors, and a gifted director, I'd have to say that World's Greatest Dad would be a treat for people who really love film making however they happen to feel about teenagers themselves.
While many things aren't too shocking for kids as young as 13 or 14, there are a few things (which I won't discuss here so as not to ruin some nicely twisted parts of the plot) that are well beyond what you may want your younger teen to see.POLITICAL NOTES: There's nothing either overtly or subtly political about World's Greatest Dad. But when I saw the blatant hypocrisy of the high school students on full blown display, I couldn't help but think of the politicians who will do and say anything just to stay popular with the voters.
These are questions explored in Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad, which is in my opinion one of the best dark comedies of 2009.As a high school teacher, Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) has tried his whole life to have his writings published but has always failed.
However, after his works are published he begins to realize that though he may not always like his son, he loves him and has certain responsibilities toward him.Overall, World's Greatest Dad works best as a dark, raunchy comedy, yet there is also an interesting and original story about a father and son that keeps the viewer entertained.
So if you are looking for a raunchy comedy and you have to choose between re-watching one of the Judd Apatow films (40 Year Virgin, Funny People, Knocked Up) or World's Greatest Dad, check out Robin William's latest film on Instant Netflix.
That's okay, just don't watch the movie!"World's Greatest Dad" is a comedy for a very specific audience, the audience for very, very dark and cynical comedy films.
This movie had a message to it that crosses over into reality with such force that it wouldn't be unheard of for something like this to have happened.Robin Williams put forth a tremendous acting performance.
Certainly not Kyle (Daryl Sabara.) Kyle is the 15 year old son of Lance (Robin Williams.) Kyle is over-indulged.
Hypocrisy it may be, but Kyle's memory (fake though it is) seems to have a positive impact on a lot of the kids, until Lance then has to ruin whatever good was going to come out of all this by confessing to being the author of the note and book and reminding everyone that his son was "a douchebag."Nobody was likable or sympathetic in this.
A black comedy about a struggling writer attempting to raise his arrogant child, Kyle.The movie stars Robin William (Mrs. Doubtfire, One Hour Photo) as Lance and Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids) as Kyle.
Soon his suicide letter gets published in the school paper and Lance's fame from TV and the kids sky rockets.Such an inspiring movie, its a wonder why more things like this don't get made.
The place where World's Greatest Dad differs from these two films is the lead character; Heathers and Jawbreaker both follow female leads that accidentally murder fellow high school classmates.
World's Greatest Dad followed a different path than this, showing a father in a similar leading role.Robin Williams stars as Lance Clayton, a high school English teacher who is attempting to hold on to his job, his girlfriend, and his son's respect
and failing miserably at all three.
The first half of the movie is a hilarious spectacle of sorts, showing Clayton's son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara of Spy Kids fame), ridiculing and disrespecting him at every turn.
His life is finally starting to look up, and Lance is for once happy.This movie showed a relationship which is rare to see so honestly in films; a father who dislikes his son.
Things take a interesting turn for the worst in their relationship, and Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) has to take matters into his own hands, which eventually leads to a result you obviously expect, although it would've been more interesting to continue living the lie.
SLEEPING DOGS touched on sexual perversion, but WORLD'S GREATEST DAD brings it front and centre, though never graphically so, in the form of Williams' screen offspring, played by former child actor Daryl Sabara of the SPY KIDS trilogy (2001,2002, 2003).
(My once prudish professor did as well, as she unleashed a series of sinister laughs before clutching her broomstick and heading off to her 5 o'clock.) Robin Williams' performance as Lance Clayton, the film's protagonist is simply brilliant.
But all that is about to change after a bizarre accident.Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, director of numerous comedy shows such as "The Man Show" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "World's Greatest Dad" is an unlikely black comedy that will surely twist anyone's perception about what it means to be a genuine person.Williams give one of his best leading performances in maybe as much as the last ten years.
The emotions of a man whose life is on the brink of failure going through a change as tumultuous as the one he endures is are varied and I think Williams plays them all nicely.The pride of "World's Greatest Dad" is the script.
The Obama-like photo of Kyle that appears on numerous occasions represents so much that just having it in frame it is part of the humor and even the poignancy.Non-traditional and a bit cliché at points, "World's Greatest Dad" is not perfect, but the undertones and intention behind the events of the film is where it makes its statement.
Me and the person I watched it with were laughing so hard I thought I was going to choke at some point.Robin Williams is absolutely excellent and gives such a brilliant performance that you can't help but like him and cross your fingers any time something new happens on screen.
As a matter of fact, all of the actors were pretty good and believable, from the staff of the school to the students themselves - I particularly liked the old lady living next door (I'm sorry I don't remember her name).The ending may leave some people slightly disappointed - I'm not talking about the message that other reviewers didn't get, since I matter-of-factly totally agree with it - but how the dad reacts at the end might be puzzling.
Hugely underrated, dark comedy movie about a father who deals with his sons accidental death.
I watched this movie after watching Robin William starer Dead Poets Society and i was surprised that same actor in same role of a English poetry teacher, can deliver two contrasting characters with such brilliance.
If you want to watch a dark comedy where you are laughing at the plight of characters and the situation no matter how weird it may seem can bring out the laughter, go for it.It is also a reflection that once someone is dead same people who them you for a fool or never cared, show how much they meant to them.The movie also brings out the fact that all of us have some peculiarities of our own.
In World's Greatest Dad, Williams plays an English Teacher, who covers up his son's bizarre and embarrassing death.
The story line is thin at best and even a half hearted performance from Williams fails to ignite this experience.The subject matter is questionable & pointless with the message which it attempts to portrayed is ultimately lost.I would avoid this title and go for Bobcats' better outing to date, 'God Bless America', its an infinitely more rounded film with quality performances in the leading roles.
Even while it builds at first as an bleakly affectionate character study, it is shifting into uncanny high satire, and it is hard not to identify with every fine point of Goldthwait's portrayal of a thoroughly shallow society whose search for prophets and leaders results in artificial figures of nobility, something that hasn't been done this acutely well since Alexander Payne's Election or South Park.But instead of weaving a distillation of US politics or characterizing allegories, Goldthwait just keeps it really simple, and ends up saying so much about high school bureaucracy and pack mentality, the extremes of father-son bonding, blind hero worship, the superficial nature of media fascination, the moral grey of opportunism and the need to belong, all of which leads to a well-earned over-the-top repression release set to Under Pressure with which everyone will be able to lovingly and cheerfully relate..
World's Greatest Dad is a very dark comedy starring Robin Williams.
Perhaps they felt at home with Lance (Robin Williams' character).The real question I have is why did Bruce Hornsby agree to be insulted in this movie?
Goldthwaite spends a major part of the movie laying out the principal characters and driving home the complete loser – team that Lance and his Son Kyle make.
Whilst this film won't stand as high as Good Morning Vietnam or Dead Poet Society, The World's Greatest Dad shines almost equally to these greats.
Robin Williams does a fantastic job at setting up his character and the film as a whole is great fun to watch.
In the film, Robin Williams' son accidentally kills himself (I won't say how - you'll have to find out) in an embarrassing way.
While it might not rank as THE best comedy Robin Williams has ever done, it is a darkly funny film that takes advantage of his comedic and dramatic skills effectively.
Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, WORLD'S GREATEST DAD is about Lance Clayton (Williams), a failed writer who teaches poetry at the high school where his son attends.
Robin Williams gives one of his best performances in years as Lance Clayton who, if you think about it, is like a cynical version of his John Keating character from DEAD POETS SOCIETY.
The film opens with the words of lonely high school teacher Lance Clayton, played here by Robin Williams.
His life turns around dramatically after a tragic accident."World's Greatest Dad" is an interesting film as it mixes tragedy and comedy successfully.
He once again proves what a good actor he really is.Im not going to spoil anything of the movie because you got to see it in its full.If you like dark comedy where you never know if you're supposed to cry or laugh this is your movie.
And he's in that mode here - or trying to be - as a single father who tragically loses his piece-of-s&%# son, who dies while - yep - masturbating.Williams, as high school teacher/aspiring writer Lance Clayton, finds his dead masturbating son and does what I suspect many would do in this unique situation: he makes it look like his son killed himself.
He's a decent enough writer and a funny, unique man, but, under the direction of a REAL director, Williams likely could've given a great, buzz-worthy performance.I suppose you could compare the film to Election, Happiness and American Pie, all three of which do a much better job at doing what they do than World's Greatest Dad. But is this a bad film?
So far 2009 has brought us some great films, but nothing tops the quality and hilarity that is World's Greatest Dad. This also features what is quite possibly Robin Williams's best performance ever, and I mean ever.
World's Greatest Dad. Robin Williams stars as Lance Clayton, an aspiring writer who hasn't quite reached success, in Bobcat Goldthwait's dark comedy World's Greatest Dad. Lance's poetry class lacks attendance, the teacher he is dating (Alexie Gilmore) doesn't seem to want a serious relationship, and his son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) could care less about him.
Robin Williams shines in his best performance in years in a film that is both vulgar and poignant, hilarious and saddening.http://www.cinemarewind.com/2009/07/review-worlds-greatest-dad.html.
Robin Williams has more often than not had Drama mixed with Comedy in his films.
World's Greatest Dad, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwaite, is to be commended for turning Williams' legendary character on its head in the persona of Lance Clayton.
Bobcat Goldthwaite shows he was not only a fan of Dead Poets but Heathers, another 1989 movie that turned the topic of teen suicide into comedy.Lance's suicide note is a hit!
World's Greatest Dad is probably the darkest dark comedy I have ever seen, and it impacts you so much more than any other film would...
Perhaps that is a little strong to describe it, but I got the creeps from it.World's greatest dad is the story of a teacher named Lance Clayton(played excellently by the excellent Robin Williams, who proves that he is better at drama than comedy.
It's great to see Robin Williams back in this creepy but hilarious film.World's greatest dad:***1/2 out of ****.
In this film, Robin Williams plays Lance, who is a failed writer who teaches poetry to high schoolers who either suck at it or are just no good, has a hot-cold affair with another teacher, and his son, for lack of a better term, is a waste.Kyle, as it turns out, just sits in his room and masturbates - a lot - and to whatever he can get his hands on, the sicker the better (he even takes a liking to the little old lady next door through the curtains), and he hates just about anything, and his peers hate him right back.
Note: the spoiler is integral to the synopsis, and, as such, isn't really a spoiler at all.In Bobcat Goldthwait's black comedy, Robin Williams plays divorcée Lance Clayton; part-time writer (unpublished), and full-time poetry teacher (unpopular).
It is to the credit of the director and star that the film doesn't falter after Kyle's accidental death a third of the way through.Lance finds his son dead of auto-erotic asphyxiation and decides to make it look like the suicide of a tortured soul. |
tt0097733 | Lethal Weapon 2 | The story opens in the middle of a car chase through the 4th Street tunnel in downtown Los Angeles. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), partners in the LAPD's homicide division, are in pursuit of a red BMW, while their colleagues are converging on the car from the opposite direction. It's a suspected drug bust.Murtaugh is driving his wife's new station wagon, so he's not wanting to drive it as fast as Riggs wants him too, especially through the tunnel, where there's not much room to maneuver. The cops back at the precinct station, are taking bets on the outcome of the chase.A blue car with more bad guys appears and pulls up next to the red BMW. The bad guys have radios and the police can hear them speaking in an unfamiliar language. Murtaugh speculates as to whether they might be Japanese, figuring that because the car radios are Japanese, maybe the Japanese bought the L.A.P.D. too, since "they own everything else."A man in the blue car passenger's seat leans outside the window and puts a shotgun blast through Murtaugh's station wagon windshield. Riggs kicks the cracked windshield out. The female police dispatcher advises them that shots were fired. Riggs sarcastically thanks her for the heads up.One police car is forced to swerve to avoid a head-on collision, but runs into some other cars and the vehicle explodes in flames. The blue and red cars split off in different directions. Murtaugh and Riggs continue pursuing the red car. The driver of the red car swerves onto a sidewalk, but Murtaugh gets caught up in traffic and has to stop.Riggs jumps out of the car and races past all the stalled cars stopped in traffic, somehow catching up to the red car. As the red BMW makes a slow left turn, Riggs jumps onto the hood with his gun drawn and shouts at the driver that he'd like to see crook's "driver's license and proof of insurance." Riggs falls off the car as it lurches. The driver pauses and raises an automatic weapon and squeezes of a few rounds at Riggs before speeding off again.Riggs takes off running after the BMW again, up a slight grade. Murtaugh catches up to Riggs and tells him to get his slow ass in the car. Riggs insists on driving and pushes Roger over. Roger moves, but warns Riggs not to put a single scratch on the car. They approach traffic congestion on a bridge and Riggs puts the car's left wheels up on the curb scraping the side of the station wagon along it's entire length.The blue car spins out as it approaches an intersection with all lanes blocked. Two men jump out and start shooting at the police. The police return fire. A helicopter appears and the bad guys jump in and it flies away. Meanwhile, Riggs and Murtaugh are still after the BMW, which loses control and crashes through the front window of a store, coming to rest upside down. Riggs and Murtaugh are temporarily stalled when a police car blocks their path, but once it moves out of the way, they hurry up to the crash site. Riggs tells Murtaugh that they will rush the car on the count of three. He counts three and takes off, but Murtaugh is still struggling to get out of the car.The driver of the BMW is gone. Riggs blames Murtaugh for not rushing forward on his count of three. Murtaugh protests and they briefly argue about what exactly on the count of three means. Hearing a noise, and thinking the suspect might be in the trunk, Riggs kicks it open and hundreds of South African krugerrands (gold coins which were illegal in the U.S. at the time due to the South African apartheid government), come spilling out.Back at the precinct, Captain Murphy (Steve Kahan) is very upset at Murtaugh for all the damage that had resulted from the high speed chases, shootings and crashes. He said it's coming out of the department budget. Murtaugh sarcastically tells the captain to pay it off in krugerrands. The captain notes how the arrest was just supposed to be a routine drug bust. Murtaugh can only say that things "got a little bit out of hand."Other detectives are standing around taking bets on whether Riggs can escape from a straight jacket they put him in, specifically whether he could do it in less than five minutes. Everyone cringes when he is able to escape, by dislocating his shoulder, then he slams it back into place against a partition while the police psychiatrist (Mary Ellen Trainor), looks on, distinctly un-amused. Riggs calls her "Mrs. Sigmund Fraud." She asks him why he does that to himself and he says none of the other guys would let him do to them, and besides, he needed the money. One of the guys tosses down a gold kruggerand to pay off the bet, but Murtaugh confiscates it and yells out that it was evidence and whomever had it shouldn't have taken it.Murtaugh tells Riggs that his oldest daughter, Rianne Murtaugh (Traci Wolfe), is going to appear in a commercial that is scheduled to debut that evening on Channel 8 at 8 p.m. Against Murtaugh's wishes, Riggs announces it to all the detectives. Murtaugh is worried that if Rianne stinks, the squad members will tease him unmercifully about it.As Murtaugh and Riggs leave the station for the day, they approach Murtaugh's station wagon, which looks like it's been in a demolition derby. A mechanic is standing over it and tells Murtaugh that the windshield, hood and other parts are all on order.At Murtaugh's home, Murtaugh shows Riggs the new additions to the house that are being built, a 2-car garage and hobby room over it. He plans to retire at age 52. A carpenter (Jack McGee) is using a power nailer and when he discharges the tool, it startles Murtaugh and Riggs and they draw their weapons and point them at the carpenter. He didn't appreciate that. The carpenter also doesn't trust Murtaugh when he asks to see the nail gun, so after just a few seconds the carpenter takes it back from him.Inside the house, Roger's wife, Trish Murtaugh (Darlene Love), gets the family organized to watch Rianne's commercial on television. Even the carpenter has come inside to watch. Roger takes a bite of a sandwich and when the family learns it's tuna, they criticize him in unison, telling him they are boycotting the consumption of tuna because when it is harvested, many dolphins get caught in the nets and are killed. Before Roger can argue with them, the commercial comes on.Rianne appears on the beach, dressed in a swimming suit and cavorting with some friends. She gets close to a young man and they exchange a kiss. The advertisement is for Ramses Condoms. Roger gets very upset, orders the family upstairs and Rianne's boyfriend, George (Allan Dean Moore), to get out of the house. The carpenter tells Murtaugh that he thought it was a very good commercial, and it made him want to go out and buy some rubbers right away. Murtaugh gives him a severe look and the carpenter turns and leaves the house. Murtaugh is mostly thinking about how he's going to be teased at the office -- Riggs begins haranguing him as he leaves the house to clear his head.Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland), is in his office when one of his goons, a man named Hans (Mark Rolston), comes in. Rudd orders Hans to step onto a large sheet of plastic, explaining that he's having some painting done. Rudd is not happy that Hans lost one million dollars in gold Krugerrands when he crashed and abandoned the red BMW. He says a few words to another of his goons, Pieter Vorstedt (Derrick O'Connor), who is standing to one side. Vorstedt suddenly pulls a pistol from under his jacket, points and shoots Hans through the forehead. Hans falls over onto the plastic sheet.Rudd tells Vorstedt that the police are becoming an intolerable nuisance and need to be dealt with. He hands Pieter a file on Roger Murtaugh and tells him that Murtaugh is the leader of the police, indicating that Murtaugh needs to be paid a visit. Vorstedt notes that Murtaugh is black, a "goddamnt kaffir".Riggs is fixing chili at the Murtaugh's and is alone in the kitchen with Trish. She'd found a gold pen in his shirt that she laundered. He tells Trish that the pen reminds him of the night he lost Vicki, his wife. Since they had never really talked about the time when Riggs' lost Vicki, Riggs explains the association of the ink pen with her death. It was on a night that Riggs was supposed to have dinner with Vicki, but he forgot about it, so she was out driving alone when her car was involved in an accident and she died. He identified her body at the morgue and used that gold pen to sign the form.Riggs lives in a trailer house, right on the beach, with his dog Sam. He goes home and he and Sam watch an episode of the Three Stooges on his small television.Four hooded men break into the Murtaugh's home and surprise Roger and Trish in their bedroom, binding their limbs and mouths with duct tape. One of the men is Pieter, who tells Roger he and his people need to back off on the case involving the Krugerrands, or his family will be at risk. After the men leave, the children come rushing into the bedroom and release them.The next day, Roger tells Riggs what happened, and that he'd sent Trish and the kids to a relative's for awhile. Murtaugh and Riggs wonder if the attackers might be South Afrikaaner. based on their accents. The thugs' racist behavior towards Murtaugh is a clear metaphor for the apartheid government's abuse through its racial segregation in the country.Believing that Murtaugh can use an easier assignment after the attack in his home, his supervisor, Captain Murphy gives the duo an assignment to keep safe a star witness in a federal drug case. The witness is Leo Getz (Joe Pesci), and the assignment should only be 2-3 days, until federal agents come to get him. Murtaugh and Riggs call it a "shit assignment," but Murphy doesn't "give a fuck" what they think.Riggs and Murtaugh go to the Marriott Hotel to hook up with Getz. After Riggs flirts with some women in the hotel jacuzzi, pretending to be a hotel employee, they meet Getz in his sixth floor room. Not happy with the assignment, they are rude to him. That surprises Leo, but he seems pretty thick-skinned about it and gives as good as he gets. Riggs and Murtaugh take over the main bedroom and make Leo move to the smaller room. Leo decides they are playing a game of "bad cop, bad cop" with him.When a waiter arrives to deliver Leo's lunch, the turns out to be a hit man, pulling a pistol he'd hidden in the cart, and attempts to shoot Leo. Leo grabs the hit man's arm, fending him off just long enough for Riggs to launch himself full speed into both of them. The force of his attack drives the hit man, Leo and himself through the window of the room and they fall six floors below into the swimming pool.The hit man is able to escape when Riggs mistakes Leo for the hit man (Leo had a towel over his head) and begins pummeling him in the face. After they get out of the water, Riggs demands to know what Leo witnessed such that it would cause someone to want him dead. When they are dry and sitting around a table in a room, Leo tells them that he'd laundered half a billion dollars in illegal drug money. He explains the process, getting all excited and uttering his trademark, "ok, ok, ok," as he talked. The reason he was in trouble is that he was skimming some of the profits and his clients found out.Riggs and Murtaugh wanted names, but Leo said he only worked with couriers and not directly with the drug dealers. He didn't learn the names of any of the couriers either. However, he was able to remember one time when someone took him to a house on stilts and mentioned a man named Hans.Leo remembered that the house on stilts was on a hill overlooking Los Angeles and that the address consisted of four numbers. Two of the numbers were the year he graduated from accounting school and the first number was "9," his lucky number. With that information, they narrowed the house number to just two possibilities, but they didn't know the street, so using an atlas, they arrived at about six streets to check out. The ninth house they checked turned out to be the one, and Riggs wastes no time approaching. He grabbed some gear and pretended to be a pool cleaning man, even though there was no pool at the house. Of course, he was confronted by two men, whom he immediately disabled and handcuffed before others in the house were attracted by the scuffling and come out shooting.One of the men inside the house was the same man who posed as a waiter at the hotel and had tried to kill Leo. He runs away and commandeers a tow truck on the street. Riggs pursues and jumps on the car being towed, then makes his way up to the tow truck and engages the driver in a fight. Murtaugh and Leo jump in the station wagon and follow.During the furious chase and fight, Riggs loses his balance and nearly falls off the tow truck, dropping his gun in the process. Murtaugh stops his car and Leo jumps out and retrieves Riggs' gun. Riggs falls over the top of the tow truck's cab when the driver suddenly slows down, but Riggs is able to catch himself on the bumper winch and hold on. Approaching traffic cause the truck driver to have to come to a sudden stop and Riggs loses his grip and falls onto the road. Murtaugh is following so closely that he can't stop in time and rear ends the car being towed, sending it flying up and over the tow truck and head on into a small pickup coming the other direction. There was a surfboard on that small pickup and it comes lose and goes flying straight into the windshield of the tow truck, immediately killing the driver.Back at the stilted house, Riggs and Murtaugh are joined by others from their squad and they come upon men removing boxes from the house. The police order the men to stop. About that time, Rudd and Pieter come into view and demand that the police leave the premises, as it's considered South African property, given that he's the Minister of Diplomatic Affairs for the South African Consulate in Los Angeles. He shows them the documentation. When Riggs asks Pieter his name, Riggs doesn't quite understand and says, "I'll just call you Adolph."Rudd asserts that he and his people are immune from U.S. laws, via the Diplomatic Relations Act, and may not be detained for questioning and certainly not arrested. Riggs calls Rudd a "dickhead." Rudd tells Riggs that if he tries anything, then he'll have to deal with the U.S. Department of State, and then they'd see "who is the deekhead now, hey?"A beautiful woman, Rika Van Den Haas (Patsy Kensit) drives up as Riggs and the other police are leaving. Riggs opens the door for her and she drops a briefcase as she's getting out. She and Riggs bump heads as they both bend to pick up the briefcase. She's Rudd's secretary and is bringing the briefcase to him. Riggs is immediately attracted to her and begins flirting with her. She is obviously attracted to him as well.Riggs and Murtaugh are making their case with Captain Murphy, who is not happy that he's going to have to personally apologize Rudd for the violation of his diplomatic status. Riggs and Murtaugh try to convince the Captain that Rudd and his henchmen are practicing a new version of the "Triangle Trade." What used to be molasses-to-rum-to slaves, is now drugs-to-dollars-to-Krugerrands. The captain is further infuriated when he meets Leo and learns he's been running around on the case with Riggs and Murtaugh.Murtaugh approaches his desk, and finds a small tree made out of rubbers sitting on it. He lets out a loud moan and everyone in the room breaks up laughing. After a few seconds, Murtaugh can't help but laugh himself.Rudd and his men take Rika home to her apartment and as they are dropping her off, Rudd attempts to explain to her that the black policemen in Los Angeles do not like South African whites because of the policies and conditions in South Africa. He appears to be trying to woo her and doesn't want her to find reasons not to like him.As he returns to his car, Rudd tells his men that because things are getting out-of-hand with the police, he wants to move the cash they have on hand in one large shipment.Riggs, Murtaugh and Leo go through a Subway Sandwich Shop drive-thru. Leo ends up with a tuna sandwich, and he's not happy about that. He refuses to eat it, then he decides the people at Subway screwed up the order, so he starts ranting about how they should never go to a drive-thru because the employees know they will never see you again and they fuck you over.Riggs begins harassing Rudd, following him when he drives somewhere in his car and even joining a crowd protesting apartheid. He makes sure that Rudd sees him every time.When Riggs returns home he finds Leo there cleaning up the place (Riggs lost his argument with Murtaugh about where Leo should spend the night). Leo had even kicked Sam out of the trailer while he worked. Riggs tells Leo to leave his place alone. Riggs has to scramble around to find his phone when it starts ringing. It's his office telling him that Roger hasn't been heard from for a long time. Riggs and Leo go immediately to Roger's home, where Riggs kicks open the front door and goes in with his gun drawn. Leo announces that he'd cover the back door and sprints around there.Riggs finds Murtaugh upstairs, sitting on his toilet, legs numb and sweat on his forehead. He tells Riggs that he'd just been relaxing and reading his copy of Saltwater Sportsman magazine, when he glanced at the roll of toilet paper and saw that someone had written, "Boom, you're dead." Murtaugh had to sit there like that all night.Riggs gets on his hands and knees, to look behind the toilet, and confirms that there was a bomb back there containing C4 explosive. Roger doesn't want him to call the bomb squad, but realizes they have to. The police psychiatrist comes too, but after seeing Murtaugh on the toilet, she decides to leave. Leo intercepts her and starts asking her about a disturbing dream he had.Jarvis (Kenneth Tigar), the bomb squad supervisor, oversees preparations, then gives Riggs his flak jacket to wear, as Riggs tells him he is not leaving Roger alone. After the bathroom is cleared of everyone, except Riggs and Murtaugh, the two share a moment of mostly unspoken fondness for one another, as there's a good chance they will die. Murtaugh does make an attempt at levity by wondering why they couldn't have planted the bomb in Trish's stove, and which Riggs notes would have saved a lot of people a lot of suffering (Trish wasn't much of a cook).Riggs climbs into the bathtub and grabs Murtaugh's hands. They agree to count three and then Riggs will pull Roger into the cast iron tub, and they will pull the bomb blanket over the top of them. They have maybe 1.5 seconds to do all that, thanks to some liquid nitrogen that had been sprayed over the bomb. Riggs counts and they go. After the massive explosion, that sends the fully intact toilet out over the yard and onto the Murtaugh's station wagon windshield, Roger and Martin are amazed that they both survived and were not injured, other than their ears hurt a lot.The next day, Leo pretends to be a Mr. Jones and he approaches a man at the immigration desk at the South African consulate office. He tells the man that he needs help convincing his friend, Alfonse, not to go to South Africa. Leo says his friend is there and he calls him in. It's Murtaugh. When the consulate employee sees the black Alfonse, he immediately agrees with Leo that Alfonse should not travel to South Africa. Murtaugh then launches into a tirade against apartheid and insists that the people need to eliminate it. During the diversionary disturbance, Riggs is able to sneak into the building and make his way into Rudd's office. He grabs a piece of paper from a notepad on the desk and puts it in his pocket, just as Rudd, Pieter, and four other men come into the office.Riggs had been able to hide behind the door as they filed in, then he closes it, drawing everyone's attention. When Rudd orders his men to show Riggs to the street, Riggs knocks two of them to the ground, then draws his gun and orders the other men to keep their hands away from their weapons. He tells Rudd that he and his people should fold up their tent and get the fuck out of the United States, or he'd fuck their ass and send them home with their balls in a sling. Rudd calls Riggs a "kaffir lover" (referring to blacks).The situation is pretty tense, and to make sure he can get out ok, as well and to emphasize his point, Riggs shoots the glass of a large aquarium set in the wall, causing the water and fish to cascade everywhere. The men are all busy trying to save Rudd's exotic African Knife fish as Riggs opens the door and leaves. On the way out, he encounters Rika. She asks what he's doing there and he tells her he was just up shooting the breeze, and fish, with her boss.Riggs is picked up by Roger and Leo in the station wagon. They laugh and tell Riggs about their experience there at the consulate. Leo got a real kick out of the immigration employee being shocked when he first saw Roger, and observing, "but, you're blick!"Riggs shows Roger the piece of paper he found in Rudd's office. The words "Alba Varden, Thursday" are on it. Roger thinks there's something familiar about the name "Alba Varden" but he can't quite place it.As they drive away in the Murtaugh demolition derby mobile, Leo sees a deli and wants to stop and get something to eat. Despite being told to stay in the car, he insists on getting out and opens the left rear passenger door. A passing car hits the door and tears it off the hinges.Rudd notices the missing sheet from his paper pad and tells Vorstedt it's time to take stronger actions with the police.Riggs follows Rika to a grocery store and threatens to embarrass her if she doesn't agree to have dinner with him at his place. She's reluctant, but has no choice but to agree when he makes a scene at the market. He takes her back to his trailer, where he notices her staring at his wedding ring. He tells her that he was married once, but offers no more details. She admits that she doesn't like her boss, Rudd, and hopes that he gets in trouble for whatever it is he's up to.As Riggs and Rika are beginning their evening together, Pieter Vorstedt and his men were in the process of murdering police officers Jerry Collins (Grand L. Bush), shot while exercising in gravity boots at his home; Meagan Shapiro (Jenette Goldstein), killed by a bomb placed under her diving board; and Tom Wyler (Juney Smith), Tim Cavanaugh (Dean Norris), and several others, killed by a bomb rigged inside Cavanaugh's stereo that went off while they were playing cards.Riggs and Rika evict Sam via the doggy door in the floor of the trailer and they spend several hours of bliss making love.Roger had to miss the poker game with Cavanaugh and the others because he had to watch Leo. Leo, meanwhile, was helping Roger put together his income taxes. As Roger looks over his receipts, including one for his boat, he suddenly remembers what "Alba Varden" means; it's the name of a cargo ship that he had noticed in a family home video of his birthday aboard his own fishing boat.Roger rushes to his house, leaving Leo alone in the car, finds the video and confirms his recall. Meanwhile, Leo is accosted by Rudd's men, who drive away with Leo and Murtaugh's car.Roger is attacked inside his house by two other men, one at a time. He manages to kill the first with a nail through the forehead. He used the nail gun that the carpenter had shown him earlier, then he uses the nail gun to put three nails in the chest of the second man. Murtaugh catches his breath and says, "nailed 'em both." He then remembers Leo and runs out to find him and the station wagon gone.Riggs' and Rika's lovemaking is interrupted by Sam, when he sticks his head through the doggy door and barks at Riggs. Riggs senses something is amiss and he listens carefully for a few seconds, then orders Rika to get dressed. Riggs looks out the window and sees two approaching helicopters. He tells Rika to get down on the floor, just as automatic weapons fire starts shredding the walls of the trailer.Riggs and Rika escape through the doggy door and Riggs shouts at Rika to get to his truck once the shooters pause to reload. When one of the helicopters sets down and four men jump out and continue shooting into the trailer, Riggs comes up behind one of them and twists his body so another shooter hits his own man in the chest, then Riggs uses the dead man's weapon to kill the shooter. He then jumps on top of his trailer and kills the other two shooters, and the helicopter pilot. The second helicopter appears and Riggs heads for his truck.He jumps in with Rika and she pounds on his chest, demanding to know who those people are. Riggs says he doesn't know and asks her what she's doing Saturday, then he puts the truck in gear and takes off. He slows down to wait for Sam, who's running to catch up, then has to take time to return fire at the second helicopter, hitting at least one man on board, and forcing the helicopter to turn away.Riggs takes Rika home. She agrees to let him live with her, since his place is all shot up. He sends her on to her apartment, promising to return later, but as he's getting into his truck, Pieter ambushes and knocks him out. While two other men grab Rika, Sam can be seen in the back of the truck, lying low.After Riggs regains consciousness, he finds himself on a pier, bound and face-to-face with Vorstedt. Vorstedt tells Riggs that four years ago, when Riggs was working narcotics in Long Beach, and was unknowingly getting close to nailing Rudd. Vorstedt was then contracted to kill Riggs. However, the person in the car he ambushed was not Riggs, but Riggs' wife Vicky. He tells Riggs that she took a bit of time to die.Riggs is bound in a straight jacket by two of Rudd's men and thrown into the water near the pier. He executes his shoulder dislocation maneuver and frees himself from his bonds. As he turns to start up to the surface, he comes face to face with Rika, who had been thrown in the water earlier and drowned. Riggs surfaces, gasps for air, then climbs out of the water and grabs a short length of chain draped across a small boat motor. He ambushes the two men, who were still up on the pier. He snaps the neck of one and shatters the skull of the second by smashing it through a car window, then repeatedly slamming his neck between the car door and the door jam. Riggs forces his shoulder back into place then dives down and retrieves Rika's body and takes her to the beach. Sam sits quietly by as Riggs walks aimlessly, carrying Rika's body as he grieves.Riggs eventually calls Roger, telling his partner that "they killed them both" (Vicky and Rika). He tells Murtaugh that he is no longer a cop tonight, that it was now personal and he was going to fuck Rudd, Vorstedt and the others. Roger tired vainly to talk Riggs out of doing anything rash, but realized he was probably wasting his breath. He quietly removed his own badge and took off to intercept Riggs near the house on stilts.Leo is captive inside the house on stilts, where one of Vorstedt's men is repeatedly hitting Leo across the face. He refuses to tell Vorstedt anything having to do with how he stole their money.Roger intercepts Riggs on the road short of the house. Riggs warns him not to try and talk him out of it. Riggs says he heard on the radio about the murders of their fellow officers, and that they've declared war on the police. Roger just asks if Riggs has a plan. Riggs tells him to go around to the front of the house and wait for his signal, that he'd know the signal when he saw it, and then charge in and start shooting. When Roger told Riggs that Leo was inside, Riggs tells him to be careful of Leo.Riggs wraps a steel cable around one of the steel support stilts of the house and hooks the other end around his truck bumper. He then starts violently lurching the truck forward over and over, jerking the support structure loose and causing the house to shake. At first, the inhabitants think it's an earthquake, but when they look out, they sees the truck and Pieter snaps off a few shots at Riggs before he gets out of the house.Roger shoots two bad guys from outside the house, then rushes in and gets Leo out just before the house comes crashing down. Riggs jumps out of his truck and jumps up and down in celebration. When he rejoins with Roger and Leo, he learns that "Adolph" had escaped.Leo is told to return to the police station and wait for the federal marshal. He's reluctant to do that until Murtaugh tells him he can use the siren on the way there. Before Leo leaves, he gives both Murtaugh and Riggs hugs.Murtaugh and Riggs head for the docks in search of the cargo ship, the Alba Varden. Murtaugh tells Riggs that it's scheduled to sail for South Africa. They find the ship and see three men standing near a container waiting to be loaded onto the ship. They ambush the men and take their weapons, then break into the container to investigate. Inside, they find Rudd's Mercedes sedan and numerous pallets piled high in shrink wrapped United States currency, in multiple denominations. It was probably a total of several hundred million dollars. Murtaugh called it the "Donald Trump Lotto," and grabbed a handful of one thousand dollar bills, considering how it would easily pay for his children's college educations. Riggs suggests he keep it, but Murtaugh thinks better of it and puts it down.The container doors are suddenly shut and locked on the outside. Rudd decides that Riggs and Murtaugh can just ride along with them to South Africa and orders the container loaded onto the Alba Varden. Riggs comes up with a plan. As the container pauses directly over the ship, the doors suddenly burst open and the Mercedes comes flying out, accompanied by thousands of bills. The car explodes in a fireball and the bills flutter down into the water and into the hold of the ship. Rudd observes, shocked, then he calmly orders his men to make sure that Riggs and Murtaugh die.As Rudd's men start shooting down into the water, Riggs and Murtaugh grab onto ropes, preparing to rappel down into the hold of the ship. Murtaugh is a bit reluctant, wanting Riggs to go first, but Riggs gives Roger a nudge over the edge, then follows. Riggs shoots two of the bad guys on his way down. Once on the ship, Riggs shoots two more men. The second man is recipient of about 15 shots fired by Riggs, who shouts the names of Vicki and Rika as he's blasting away.Roger shoots and kills one of the bad guys, then Riggs takes down another. Roger makes his way up on deck. Riggs, still in the hold, suddenly takes a knife in the calf of his right leg. It was thrown by Pieter, who then rushes forward and starts delivering vicious round-house kicks to Riggs' body and head.Roger shoots another bad guy while Riggs finally musters enough strength to start fighting back against Pieter. Pieter grabs the knife in Riggs' leg and gives it a twist. Riggs yells in agony, then pulls the knife and Pieter's hand away from his leg. In the ensuing tug of war for the knife, Riggs forces it into Pieter's chest and jerks it sharply upwards. As Pieter falls to the deck, Riggs turns and walks away, noticing the control to the hoist for the container. Pieter isn't dead and pulls a pistol from a holster on his lower leg, preparing to shoot Riggs, but Riggs reaches out and pushes the button that releases the container poised high above and it drops and crushes Pieter to death.Rudd suddenly appears up on deck and shoots down at Riggs, hitting him 2-3 times, and appearing to kill him. Roger then calls out to Rudd to drop his weapon. Rudd holds up his South African diplomatic I.D. and reminds Roger that he has diplomatic immunity. Roger pauses a moment, then shoots Rudd through the forehead, saying "it's just been revoked!"Murtaugh hurries down the ladder and over to Riggs, fearing he was dead. Roger starts yelling out, "breathe Riggs, you're not dead until I say you're dead!" Surprisingly, Riggs moves and he asks Murtaugh to reach into his pocket and get his cigarettes. Once Murtaugh has the pack of cigarettes, Riggs asks him to throw them away, saying "those things will kill ya!"Riggs wonders about Rudd and the others. Murtaugh tells him the bad guys "have been de-kaffir-nated." Sirens can be heard in the background. Riggs looks deep into Murtaugh's eyes and tells him, "you really are a beautiful man...give us a kiss before they come."The two buddies laugh and joke as the story ends. | comedy, neo noir, murder, cult, violence, humor, action, revenge, home movie | train | imdb | They can't arrest them because of diplomatic immunity, so Riggs goes in and shoots up the place where they're staying.Riggs finds himself a new girl (Patsy Kensit), while Murtaugh protects a federal witness named Leo Getz (Joe Pesci), a lovable little blabbermouth who likes being one of the cops.
Of course Riggs and Murtaugh pick on him throughout the movie, but their friendship is a sort of love-to-hate, explained in "Lethal Weapon 4" (1997).What a hard action movie/sequel this is.
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's winning chemistry created some of the most tender moments in the series and "Lethal Weapon 2" excels because they make the audience care about their characters.
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return to kick heads and shoot bad guys for the second time, as Riggs and Murtaugh, the "Oscar and Felix" of law enforcement in "Lethal Weapon 2." This timearound, the boys are forced to become the 3 Stooges when they are assigned to guard a feisty, foul-mouthed federal witness named Leo Getz (the frantic Joe Pesci) from a group of sadistic Afrikaner thugs (led by the usually dark-natured character actor Joss Acklund).
The duo have to fight for their right to fight back, as the criminals declare war on the cops, and arouse the lethal weapon in Riggs.The introdction of Joe Pesci's character is a little annoying at first but it soon grows on you and he adds a focus for the comedy element.Richard Donner again directs the cop duo and again we have a movie well worth watching.Plenty of action, a few more laughs and a lethal weapon that is still just as sharp, all combine to deliver another great outing for Riggs and Murtaugh.8/10.
This time our favorite mismatched cops (Mel Gibson and Danny Glover) take on South African diplomats (who I think are German) who are taking advantage of the system by using their status to deal drugs, after numerous warnings from the dealers, as well as near death experiences, our favorite two cops go out with all pistols blazing in a thrilling climax which ends in explosive fashion.
Joe Pesci enters the Lethal Weapon-series as the annoying and witty Leo Getz(ok ok ok ok?) Riggs and Murtaugh must fight against a South-African diplomat, who`s a big drugdealer.
i thought the opening sequence was great,, the chase scene,, the rubbers scene was good too, making fun of Murtaugh's daughter's commercial,, this one gets serious bunch of cops get killed in this one,, you also find out what happens to Rigg's wife from before the first one,, this time Riggs and Murtaugh are dealing with the South Africans,, and Krugerands,, Joe Pesci seems to brilliantly steals the show as Leo Getz,, get it, what you want Leo Gets,, haha lol, so anyway he's just has the best line ever in this,,, they f you at the drive thru,, wow amazing,, very true also,, i liked the fast pacing of this movie,, the stunts were great,, the house on the stilts..
There is an uncomfortable sense of the South Africans being there - they are easy targets, and the film will win fans cheaply in this regard.Of all people, a Joe Pesci character named Leo Getz is implemented into proceedings; a witness who needs protecting and who is assigned to Riggs and Murtagh's care but whose presence soon sees both of their paths more intrinsically linked than first appears.
With an uneven tone made possible by scenes of terrific violence and terror lined up beside more light hearted and more throwaway moments, not to mention a cackling chief villain at the centre of it whose reoccurring line is the roaringly amusing "......dip-lur-mat-ic immu-ni-tie!" said in that way only a South African could, Lethal Weapon 2 is the sequel to the film that was clinging on by its fingernail for a recommendation in the first place, and of which doesn't work..
While it still plumbs some dark, painful subject matter for its lead characters, Lethal Weapon 2 skews lighter by treating the Murtaugh-Riggs dynamic as the stuff of fruitful comedy, an approach intensified by the slightly annoying, but still faithfully endearing, Leo Getz character, whom Joe Pesci makes all his own.But it's the supreme comfort of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, with both each other and the script that rockets this to the top of buddy movies to such an extent that it became ripe for parody.
The action is still just as good, and there is still plenty to enjoy about Lethal Weapon 2.Lethal Weapon 2 wastes no time getting started as we see LAPD Detectives Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) in the middle of a police pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles with an unidentified suspect driving a red BMW which turns out to be transporting a trunk full of gold Krugerrands.
Rudd and Vorstedt continue to deceitfully continue their smuggling operation while hiding their diplomatic credentials and Riggs and Murtaugh vow to take them down.Lethal Weapon 2 adds a lighter comedic element with the introduction of Joe Pesci as Leo Getz.
Here in Lethal Weapon 2, Pesci's Leo Getz is nothing more than an irritating annoyance but enhances the comic relief to counterbalance the violent action scenes.It was great to see Mel Gibson and Danny Glover continue their dynamic partnership as Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh.
Continuing my plan to watch every Mel Gibson movie in order, I come to Lethal Weapon 2Plot In A Paragraph: The boys are back in town as L.A.P.D. officers, Martin Riggs (Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) who must protect an federal witness (A brilliant Joe Pesci), while taking on a gang of South African drug dealers hiding behind their diplomatic immunity.It's easy to forget how big this movie actually was in 1989.
This movie has the great duo of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are back this time, thwarting South African diplomats.
I really really liked Lethal Weapon for a whole host of reason, but the sequel certainly doesn't stand up to its predecessor.The character development, which in the first film was pivotal, is dropped and your just expected to enjoy the character of Riggs and Murtaugh on the merits of the first film alone, which is alright at the start of the film, but soon it is revealed they are simply shadows of the previous multi-dimensional selves (especially Riggs).The film lacks the dark underbelly of the first, in which despite having a good plot, the screwed up achololic and weary senior officer's transformation in to coherent unit was nothing less of genius.Plus this film has the terrible Patsy Kensit in, whose South African accent is actually terrible, and can't act for toffee.Its a shame, because I really wanted to love this film, as much as the first one, but despite not being a bad movie it just doesn't live up to the original..
She's the naive yet sexy love interest of Riggs (Gibson), and plays her part very well.There's every single element in this movie which makes up great action, and film.
This movie is at least as good as its predecessor, at times it even gets a better movie than the original.Just like "Lethal Weapon" this movie is just very basic action material.
A few things I liked about this film were the romance between Riggs and Rika (Patsy Kensit), whenever the bad guys got their a**** kicked, and Leo's (Joe Pesci) wise remarks.
Lethal Weapon 2 is a rare sequel in which compared to many movie sequels, this one could be ranked as one of the many great sequels along with being one of the better action movies of 1989.In 1987, movie fans were introduced to partners, the wacky but volatile Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and cool but cautious Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) to a little known movie called Lethal Weapon.
The subplot involves a ruthless villain played by Joss Ackland who's pretending to be a diplomat for South Africa where they could do their crime in Los Angeles; there's also a witness that both Riggs and Murtaugh look after by the name of Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) who can't seem to shut the hell up at any cost.
Leo's a witness to bringing down the fake diplomat whereas Riggs discovers that one of the criminals wanting to kill him, Murtaugh and Leo has ties to his wife's death.Lethal Weapon 2 still proves to be a wham, bam, thank you ma'am movie where it feels like between the action, the relationship of the characters and the talking, this sequel proves to outshine most sequels..
Thankfully the plot moves along at a supercharged rate and he gets overshadowed.Still this is better than a lot of sequels, as LA detective Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) reprise their roles and chemistry this time battling a vicious South African drug cartel.I also enjoyed the quieter side here and seeing how Martin's relationship (and mental status) had progressed, in particular in his scenes with Rogers wife and family.
it's nice to have a big-audience action movie attacking apartheid and the slaughter of sea mammals, instead of acting as an enlistment poster for the Army Air Corps, local vigilante groups or the reopening of the Vietnam War, the sentiments don't really transcend the car crashes.Pesci's terrific comic performance really gooses the proceedings, but the film also works because of its exciting action content, the presence of Patsy Kensit as Riggs' love interest, and the series-best interplay between the two lead characters.
Lethal Weapon 2 is a brilliant movie with a very well developed storyline and a very good cast.The movie is just as good as the first Lethal Weapon.On terms of action and storyline, the first Lethal Weapon is certainly better,but with humour, Lethal Weapon 2 is much funnier.The chemistry between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover seemed much better this time around,they obviously got to know each other after the first,also the edition of Joe Pesci was a great decision,he is both a great actor and a very funny one too.Lethal Weapon 2 is filled with action and comedy and fans of the first shouldn't be disappointed.Martin and Roger are hired to take care of an accountant who's life is at risk,however this job also puts their own lives at risk..
As 80s action flicks go, this is definitely one of the best for spectacular vehicular chaos, ballistic mayhem, random acts of death and destruction, and tuneless music.Jeffrey Boam's script delivers on all counts, matching Shane Black's original in terms of wit, pathos, and excitement, and although it does introduce what would become one of the most irritating characters in cinematic history—fast talking money launderer Leo Getz (Joe Pesci)—at least Boam has the good sense to inflict a lot of pain and suffering on the guy in the process, Leo getting more than a few bruises as the story progresses.Seasoned Hollywood director Richard Donner handles proceedings well, balancing the light-hearted moments and the gritty action just right (a trick he seems to have forgotten come part 3), and with the benefit of a bigger budget than before, he gets to pull off some truly impressive action scenes, including the amazing destruction of an entire house on stilts.Part 2 also benefits immensely from a pair of memorable villains—South African diplomat Arjen Rudd, played by Joss Ackland, and his truly wicked henchman/assassin Pieter (Derrick O'Connor), and the welcome presence of the wooden but still very lovely Patsy Kensit, who very kindly strips off for a sex scene (the price we must pay for that pleasure is yet another Mel Gibson ass shot, but at least it's only a side view— not a full on crack shot like in the first film!)..
Mel Gibson & Danny Glover return in this equally fun, action packed film as they are assigned to protect a government witness(Joe Pesci) whose life is in danger from South African gangsters who want to preserve Apartheid, something which both Riggs and (especially) Murtaugh oppose.
Glover and Gibson are back as a crime fighting duo who fight crime, make jokes and have a very powerful friendship.This movie is about Riggs and Murtaugh who are after South African diplomats who are using their diplomatic immunity to commit crimes in American without being arrested.This is a great sequel to the original.
Darn good film-making here."Lethal Weapon 2" is quite possibly one of the best sequels of all time.
Darn good film-making here."Lethal Weapon 2" is quite possibly one of the best sequels of all time.
Gibson and Glover respectively reprise their roles as LAPD officers, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, who protect an irritating federal witness, played by Joe Pesci, while taking on a gang of South African drug dealers hiding behind diplomatic immunity.
Danny Glover and Mel Gibson as cops Murtaugh and Riggs had enough chemistry in 1987's "Lethal Weapon" to generate more than four times the film's estimated budget that it easily green-lit a sequel.
The film also deepens the humanity of Murtaugh and Riggs (specifically Riggs in this one) at the same time, which is pretty admirable for an action script back in the 1980s.The gunfire does get excessive at times and much like the original there's some crazy new scene unfolding around every corner with little lead in, but by some point in this film you just accept that as part of the Lethal Weapon universe--the bad guys are everywhere and there's always something going on.
Riggs and Murtaugh return once again in this fun, action-packed sequel.This time around, they are met by South African diplomats, led by Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland).
Also here, there is a new member of the gang, the hunted, klutzy Leo Getz (Joe Pesci).I feel this movie's action scenes were great, but the character development wasn't as good as the first.
Mel is back as Detective Sergeant Martin Riggs and Danny Glover is still his partner, Detective Sergeant Roger Murtaugh but besides having to deal with evil minded South African diplomats they have to babysit Joe Pesci as Leo Getz their mob informant turned amateur Detective.
Martin Riggs (Two Time Oscar-Winner:Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) find themselves on the case of corrupted South African "Diplomats" (Joss Ackland and Derrick O'Connor).
In the second installment of the "Lethal Weapon" series, we see Mel Gibson and Danny Glover going after South African diplomats.
In the meantime, Riggs falls in love with the girl who is the secretary for the diplomats.And we see Joe Pesci in his first Lethal Weapon movie, as Leo Getz, the quick talking little banker who tried to steal money from the South African diplomats.
Lethal Weapon 2 isn't as fantastic as the first movie, but still offers amazing action, Gibson and Glover come back with really good chemistry, and you got Joe Pesci as Leo Getz, who has a brilliant and funny performance for his role.
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return in the sequel to one of the greatest action movies ever made.Some people say this is the weakest in the series, but I rate it over Lethal Weapon 3.
Mel Gibson and Donald Glover's amazing chemistry is what fuels the franchise along with a new additional character of Joe Pesci who is equally good in his portrayal.Lethal Weapon 2 is effective for a definite amount of time when it is showing off its tricks and turns, but beyond that, it fumbles to offer anything..
Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) are on the trail of South African diplomats who are using their immunity to engage in criminal activities.This is not as "classic" as the original, and lacks that Christmas element, but we have some new fun.
Leo's "OK, OK, OK" jabber is amusing and annoying in equal proportion, so thankfully Leo gets more a bit part than a supporting role.All Lethal Weapons have great setpieces and action sequences, but this film is remembered for three things:The exploding toilet scene - "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!" - Mel and hottie South African secretary Rika getting' it onnnnnn.The fact that South Africa was right in the middle of apartheid when this film was released added a new wrinkle for the pair, obviously Roger, and made shooting white people cool again.Of course both Riggs and Murtaugh get their own personal nemesis to deal with and everyone nearly dies multiple times, but only those with less than 4 lines of dialogue actually bite the dust.Lethal Weapon 2 shouldn't work but thanks to the chemistry between the two leads, the efficiency of the action and the "just right" blend of action and comedy, you'll go a long way before you see a sequel as good as Lethal Weapon 2.Final Rating - 8.5 / 10.
"Lethal Weapon", a successful action blockbuster from 1987 starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, spawned a total of three sequels.
Mel Gibson gives a great performance as the Wacko Seargent Martin Riggs, Danny Glover is in the role he was born to play the Easy Going Seargent Roger Murtaugh, and Joe Pesci delivers some excellant comic relief, I guess You could call him "The Third Stooge." Joss Ackland and Derrick O'Conner perform well as the diabolical South African Drug Dealers.
If you liked the first one you will love Lethal weapon 2 non stop action great car chases shootouts and comedy.The villains are good played by Joss Ackland and Derrick O Conner who play South African diplomats that are up to no good .
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover returns as Detectives Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, who find themselves assigned to protect an accountant (Joe Pesci) whose testimony involves a large money laundering conspiracy that involves South African diplomats during the time of apartheid.
Lethal Weapon 2 is a 1989 American buddy cop action film directed by Richard Donner, and starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci , Patsy Kensit, Derrick O'Connor and Joss Ackland. |
tt0036025 | I Dood It | Bumbling hotel pants-presser Joseph Rivington Renolds (Red Skelton) is obsessed with Broadway performer Miss Constance 'Connie' Shaw (Eleanor Powell) and routinely "borrows" his customers' fancy clothes in order to follow her around town. The temperamental Connie, however, is oblivious to Joe, preferring the company of her fiancé, actor Larry West (Richard Ainley).One night, while Joe is at a nightclub wearing a customer's expensive tuxedo, Connie comes in and sees Larry kissing socialite Suretta Brenton (Patricia Dane). Enraged with jealousy, Connie sits at Joe's table and pretends to be his date. By chance, the tuxedo's owner, tourist Alfred Spelvin (Andrew Tombes), is sitting at the next table and recognizes his suit on Joe. Spelvin pursues him onto the dance floor, but is unable to catch the clumsy Joe, who flees the club.Later, Joe goes to see his sixty-fifth performance of Dixie Lou , a Civil War melodrama starring Connie and Larry. After the show, Kenneth 'Ken' Lawlor (Thurston Hall), the producer of Dixie Lou, brings Suretta to Connie's dressing room to discuss backing for Connie and Larry's next show. After the smug Suretta shows off a ruby bracelet that the ambitious Larry has bought for her, Connie is furious and storms out of her dressing room. On her way out, she runs into Joe and, seeing the smitten fan, gets an idea.Sometime later, Connie and Joe return to the nightclub, and seeing Larry, Suretta and Kenneth seated together, Connie introduces Joe as her new husband. Connie pretends that Joe owns gold mines, and she informs Kenneth about her husband's wealth. Kenneth immediately sets up a meeting with him.Connie and Joe then check into the honeymoon suite at the same hotel at which Joe works, and while Joe is out securing some champagne, Connie starts to write a farewell letter to him. Before she finishes, however, Larry calls and again infuriates her with his indifference.Connie is about to sneak off when Joe returns with the champagne. Unable to say goodbye to the love struck Joe, Connie decides to drug him instead and slips some of her sleeping pills into his champagne. Joe unwittingly switches the glasses, however, and Connie falls into a deep slumber. Joe has a heck of a time getting her up off the floor and over to bed. As he finally covers her up and kisses her goodnight on the cheek, the bed collapses. Joe goes out to sleep on the couch.The next morning, Joe delivers breakfast to Connie and when she wakes up and sees him, she screams. He runs out, but she comes out shortly after and apologizes.Kenneth arrives at the suite, with Larry and Suretta. Larry claims to want to invest in Kenneth's new show with Joe. Unknown to Kenneth, Joe and Connie, Suretta is aware of Joe's impersonation and calls for valet service.Joe's boss, tailor Ed Jackson (Sam Levene), responds to the valet call and when he sees Joe in the room, he angrily tells everyone there that Joe is a pants presser and works for him. Connie confesses that she had in fact married Joe.Feeling that he has nothing more to lose, Joe slugs the cocky Larry, then attempts suicide by asphyxiating himself with the valet service gas. However, the gas automatically shuts off after hours, and as the gas shuts off, Joe simply falls asleep and dreams about a dancing Connie.Joe is eventually awakened by Ed, who slaps him repeatedly and tells him he's fired. The blustery Ed at first criticizes Joe for thinking he could marry a famous performer like Connie, then changes his mind, deciding it's a personal insult to him and all other pants pressers. He insists that Joe assert himself and demand his conjugal rights. Pushed by Ed, Joe sneaks into the theater through the cellar and hides in a stage prop box as Hazel Scott, Lena Horn, and their background singers rehearse the song, Jericho.Joe gets tossed out of the theater, but accidentally falls into the old coal chute and down into the storage cellar. There, he bumps into actor Roy Hartwood (John Hodiak). Unknown to Joe, Roy is a Nazi saboteur and has been digging a hole in the theater wall so that he can plant a bomb and destroy some ordnance that are being stored next door. Roy is immediately suspicious of Joe, but once he realizes Joe doesn't know anything about his activities, he lets him go.Roy is ordered by his superiors to set off the bomb that night, so he asks Joe, who has bragged that he knows every line in the show backward and forward, to cover for him. Joe is reluctant, until he's reminded he gets to kiss Connie at the end of the first act. He dons Roy's stage beard and costume, nearly cutting his right ear with the scissor in the process. He does accidentally cut one of the straps of his t-shirt, but fixes that by gluing it to his skin.Mistaking Joe for Roy, one of Roy's Nazi cohorts slips Joe a message about a submarine rendezvous, but Joe fails to grasp its significance.Joe finishes preparing himself in costume by way overdoing it on some powder to make it appear as though his uniform is dust-covered.As the show starts, Joe stumbles and bumbles, knocking over stage props, sneezing from all the dust on his uniform, stepping on Connie's dress, and later pinning it to a wall with a prop sword. His performance enrages Connie and the stage crew, but Joe refuses to leave the stage.Joe is about to kiss Connie, when he suddenly understands the Nazi's message. He dashes offstage and becomes engaged in a protracted fight with Roy, starting in the cellar, continuing on stage, up in the rafters and back to the cellar.After knocking out Roy, Joe begins a frantic search for the bomb. Connie soon joins him and, impressed by his bravery, professes her love. Joe finally realizes a wire he kept tripping over was connected to the bomb. Moments before it is to explode, Joe defuses the bomb and then learns from the police that he will be rewarded for his efforts.Later, Joe becomes not only Connie's true husband but the co-producer of her next show as well. | romantic | train | imdb | It's full of laughs, music and Red Skelton.
I've never been a Red Skelton fan but when I saw this film on TCM I was hooked.
Between the music, the dancing, and slapstick I can't say which one was better.
No one seems to point out that his film is a remake of an earlier film Buster Keaton made for MGM titled "Spite Marriage", with many of the visual gags pulled directly from that earlier film with almost no changes.
If you liked this movie, you should seek out the earlier film; a lot of it is genuinely funny.
Red Skelton musical comedy that also happens to be Eleanor Powell's final leading role at MGM.
Skelton plays a loser totally obsessed with an actress (Powell).
Most of the better stuff is ripped off from an old Buster Keaton movie.
The highlights of the movie revolve around Eleanor Powell, including a classic lasso dancing number near the beginning of the film.
Also some nice musical numbers from Lena Horne and Hazel Scott.It's a watchable movie but nothing special.
I would suggest watching the first ten minutes or so for the Powell number and then fast-forwarding to whenever you see someone singing or dancing.
Then too, she's got the movie's comedic highpoint where Skelton has to bend her upside down and sideways while she's knocked out with sleeping pills.
On the other hand, Red's routines pick up slapstick momentum toward the end, but the first part has him do little more than wear a goofy grin.
As a Skelton fan, I don't think it's the comedian's best showcase.On the whole, the 100-minutes amounts to a rather unwieldy package, with a few over-stretched routines and an awkward Nazi subplot.
Judging from the screen environs, I'll bet it was filmed in MGM's prop room with the lifts, props and catwalks all doing their part.Overall-- as another reviewer points out—it's more a movie of parts than a whole.
I understand it was a remake of a Buster Keaton silent feature,so the slapstick is pretty funny.
Also entertaining are Miss Powell's dance numbers (even if two of them were lifted from previous films) and the musical numbers by Hazel Scott and Lena Horne.
Red Skelton is his usual bumbling, confused,but lovable self.
Besides the whole "mistaken identity" plot,there is a subplot about Nazi saboteurs,which is just stupid and some really bad spoof of "Gone With the Wind" as the play that Powell's character is starring in.
You have to be a die-hard RED SKELTON fan to approve of his slapstick performance in I DOOD IT, but some of his routines just fall flat.
He and ELEANOR POWELL have to deal with a less than spectacular script in which he's mistaken for a wealthy man when he's actually a pants presser.
The gags that follow are weak, for the most part, but occasionally some bright bits of humor do crop up along the way.For comic timing, nothing beats the scene where Powell takes the sleep medicine by mistake and Skelton is unable to wake her up to either put her in a chair or on a bed.
The timing by both is impeccable and it's one of the film's best routines.Too bad her dance numbers aren't staged as well as that sequence which runs a little too long.
They're serviceable, but that's about all.Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra play some nice tunes, best of which is "Star Eyes" sung by Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell.
An "audition" scene featuring Hazel Scott at the piano and Lena Horne as vocalist on "Jericho" is a lively routine that gives the film a much needed musical highlight.But for both Skelton and Powell, this is one of their lesser efforts.
Come for Red Skelton, Stay for Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, and Hazel Scott.
I generally find Red Skelton films entertaining, so I poured a glass of wine and tee'd up "I Dood It" on a quiet Sunday afternoon.Red Skelton was his usual great.
But one genius plus one genius equals some great comedy, so that was okay with me.However, I was really blown away by three performers I didn't know very well.
Check out her lasso dance near the beginning of the film.
And then later in the film comes Hazel Scott, a phenomenal jazz pianist who I'd never heard before.
Those scenes alone make the movie worth spending a little time on.There were a lot of musical numbers, too many in fact, and I have to admit I fast forwarded through the more tedious of them.
But there's enough gold in this film to make it an enjoyable, although certainly not classic, movie event..
A very weak Skelton film.
Red Skelton plays Joe Reynolds--a guy who is absolutely obsessed with the stage actress Connie Shaw (Eleanor Powell).
When he meets her finally, he doesn't realize that when she proposes marriage it isn't because she cares about him but because she is doing it to spite another man."I Dood It" is one of the weakest films that Red Skelton made for MGM and there are two huge strikes against it--and one smaller one.
First, it's a remake and the original (starring Buster Keaton) is a better film--though for Keaton standards it's also a weak effort.
Second, like too many of MGM's films, the studio insisted on inserting a lot of music into the film, as they really didn't seem to trust comedy.
Because of this, Skelton, who could be very funny, seems like an afterthought at times.
As for the smaller strike against the film, because it was made during WWII, they inserted a completely unnecessary subplot near the end about some evil-doer trying to blow things up to somehow aid the Axis.
It really made no sense and was obviously tossed in at the last minute.Note: To show how poor this movie is, the final musical number is recycled--taken from a Powell film ("Born to Dance") made seven years earlier..
Red Skelton was a hoot, and Eleanor Powell - even my 26-year-old son thought her dance numbers were 'impressive.' Our favorite of these dance numbers was the first one at the beginning of the movie, a cowboy production where Eleanor Powell danced with lariat-wielding cowhands, then roped a post several times in a row, showing admirable skill.
And, of course, more dancing and music, including appearances by Jimmy Dorsey.
If you like musical comedies of the thirties and forties, this is one of the best!.
I have this notion that the thirties was a great pressure cooker for movies, during which time all sorts of experiments were tried.
Out of that period came the genres we know today, plus the great invention of Noir, uniquely American.So I've been watching lots of 30s movies, not because they are good or particularly enjoyable.
It is a remake and "borrows" musical numbers from a couple films that really were made in the 30s.It is a spliced picture, three movies combined, something that was common in the 30's.One movie is a stage show.
Lots of variety here.A second movie is a comedic fold: a movie where all the players are involved in some way in a play (different than the earlier mentioned performances and more like "Gone with the Wind").
Red Skelton's technique was to perform a comedic motion (like rolling his eyes after getting bonked) in an exaggerated fashion and then abruptly stop before it finished and look at the audience with a big grin.
This movie has lots to enjoy - great wartime entertainment by some of the big names in music at that time, good if recycled comedy, and great dancing by Eleanor Powell.
It can never seem to figure out if it is a romantic comedy, a musical, or a movie about wartime sabotage, but it does grow on you.The comedy is mainly recycled from Buster Keaton's last silent film, "Spite Marriage", and in fact Buster was a gag writer on this film and most of Red's other movies for MGM.
Here Red Skelton plays Joe Reynolds, reprising Buster's part as a worker in a laundry enamored with stage actress Constance Shaw (Eleanor Powell).
Shaw marries Joe without knowing or caring what he does for a living, and there is the repeat of the "putting the unconscious bride to bed" scene that there was in Spite Marriage.
"Spite Marriage" had seafaring bootlegging gangsters as villains, which, of course, would have made no sense in 1943.There are some great numbers by Powell if you are a fan of her dancing - I am.
The disappointing part is that a couple of the numbers are lifted from other films.
The finale is lifted from 1936's "Born To Dance" and there is another number that was shot for the film "Honolulu".
Part of the reason for this is that the lasso number towards the beginning of the film was so difficult that Miss Powell knocked herself unconscious while performing it, and thus other numbers were substituted for the originals planned.Finally there are some great musical numbers by the Dorseys and "Jericho" performed by Lena Horne..
Relaxed and enjoyable musical comedy.
(There are some nefarious Nazis here with evil plans but forget them.) It's not Red Skelton's funniest comedy but he's still pretty amusing as his usual tall hick, with his goofy smile, falling over chairs, a pants-presser who impersonates someone else and gets rattled when threatened with exposure.The musical numbers are pretty well done and efficiently integrated into the plot -- direction by Vincent Minnelli.
Eleanor Powell is the major musical star and her tap dancing is so vigorous, and her body so limber and supple, and the tempo so fast, that just watching her spins for thirty seconds gave me chest pains.We are given an extended version of the song "Star Eyes".
The version in the film is of the period, with Helen O'Connell and Ray Eberle, with Jimmy Dorsey's orchestra.Some of the jokes may get by younger viewers -- that is, younger than about 60.
Red Skeleton is listening to a recording by Jimmy Dorsey at a shop window.
The man is Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy's brother, and the two were notorious rivals at the time.Someone pointed out in another comment that this was an updating of a Buster Keaton movie and I can believe it because Keaton's influence seems apparent in some scenes.
(Skeleton trying to lift the limp body of the unconscious Eleanor Powell and stretch it out on the bed.) Keaton was gag adviser on another Red Skeleton comedy, "A Southern Yankee", and turned some of the scenes (eg., a dentist's chair) into comic gems."Star Eyes" was nothing more than ordinary pop music at the time.
This is more a series of scenes than a cohesive movie.There are several scenes featuring black performers like Lena Horn, and Hazel Scott.
While their performances are amazing - they have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
IT is as if the movie is interrupted by a music video.Both Red Skelton and Eleanor Powell had very unique and distinctive talents - this script makes little use of their abilities.
There are a couple of scenes where Skelton mugs for the camera.
There are a couple of scenes where Powell dances - but these are add ons not related to the rest of the movie.
The final film is a series of independent scenes with far too little plot to propel the action.This is still worth seeing - especially for the performance of Hazel Scott and Lena Horn.
But do not expect this to be like other "Classic MGM Musicals of the period".
If you adore Red Skelton...
If you adore Eleanor Powell...
just pure fun watching some of the best talent Hollywood ever had.Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Eberly, Helen O'Connell for the music.
Eleanor Powell's magnificent dancing, Red Skelton's brilliant slapstick and his heart-felt sweetness.
Then there's the rest of the cast - Thurston Hall, Sam Levene, John Hodiak, and Richard Ainley as Larry West, for whom this would be his last picture.The plot has its nuttier moments, none of it meant to be taken seriously.
There are jewels to glitter and shine and, if they were fakes, they were great fakes.The plot gives Red Skelton plenty of opportunity to do what he did best.
Skelton Never Got A Great Film.
When I saw that Vincente Minnelli was the director here, I thought, well Skelton at least got a little more support here with Eleanor Powell and a lot of staging.
While there is a story, it not only was done before, but the film still does not make a comfortable fit for Red. Skelton would not hit his stride until television.This is a war time production, obvious from the themes.
Butterfly walks a poodle near Skelton when he is sitting defeated in a park.The plot has Skelton chasing a show girl, as a pants presser chasing her by going to every one of her live shows.
The plot is not as important as the music and dancing it turns out with Red doing some comic relief.You gotta love Powell and Lena Horne who are great.
This same year he is directing an all black cast in "Cabin In The Sky" and it appears he literally borrows some of the cast from that picture to make cameos lat in this picture.As a fan of Red, am glad I finally caught this one.
So far, the scripts for Red in his films are lacking and this one is not an exception.
At least here, he got an A-List Director and cast along with Jimmy Dorseys Orchestra..
In Vincente Minnelli's third film MGM gave him the disparate talents of Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton to work with.
The result was I Dood It and while Powell's career was only a few more films, Red's got going into high gear after this went into release.Powell is a Broadway star and Red is a love struck fan who has seen 65 performances of her in some Civil War drama from the same seat.
In this case a glamorous dancing star like Eleanor Powell.
There's hope for all of us and a lot of Hope for Red as well in this film.
Coming for specialty numbers are jazz pianist Hazel Scott and the great Lena Horne.
Not to mention Jimmy Dorsey's Orchestra with singers Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly who were at the height of their popularity when I Dood It came out.
Thurston Hall plays Powell's producer, Richard Ainley her insufferable leading man and John Hodiak in one of his earliest films was a Nazi spy and saboteur.
Well this was 1943 and film audiences were reminded those Nazis were everywhere.Red's fans and Eleanor's fans will get their money's worth with I Dood It..
Only the musical number by the fabulous Dorsey band as well as the playing of Ms. Scott and wonderful singing by Lena Horne are about the only 2 saving graces of this rather silly film.The trouble here is the far too many sub-plots.
We have Red Skelton pursuing entertainer Eleanor Powell.
Instead, we have John Hodiak as a player in a show who is really a Nazi saboteur ready to blow up the theater area which is next to some important valuables.Some of the Skelton-Powell skits are way overdone.While we may have needed films like this in war-time, some of this is just too silly to imagine..
While there is a definite art deco look to the mediocre musical comedy "I Dood It", it is a minor credit in the list of masterpieces by the great Vincent Minnelli, a sub-par entry in the credits of the great MGM musicals.
This comedy/farce has a star-struck dry cleaner (Red Skelton) so enamored of Broadway star Eleanor Powell that he follows her everywhere she goes.
But she finds she can't get rid of Skelton too easily, and he ends up saving the day when her co-star tries to rob a warehouse next to the theater in which they are appearing.Little thought was put into this musical for the poor Ms. Powell as it includes two numbers previously seen in two of her other movies.
A hula from "Honolulu" is lifted right out of that film, as is the final from "Born to Dance".
While Ms. Powell has aged well in the seven years since that film, she doesn't really look exactly like what she used to anymore, so don't be surprised when you find yourself shaking your head.
Her one dance number (a tricky rope tap dance) does stand out, as does Lena Horne's walk-on of "Jericho".
Skelton and Powell share a nightclub dance where he is trying to avoid the actual owner of the suit that ends up comical due to his paranoia over being exposed.
Another highlight is the "wedding night" scene where a passed out Powell (having taken a sleeping potion) keeps falling out of bed and Skelton tries different acrobatic ways to get her back in so she can "sleep it off".However, the play within the play (obviously a rip-off of "Gone With the Wind") is so bad it seems like something spoofed on "The Carol Burnett Show".
There is a funny bit of "Noises Off!" like humor with Skelton messing up when he ends up in one of the actor's costumes on stage then fights with the villain on a rising set-piece.
So while there are some really funny moments (influenced with the help of "Comedy Adviser" Buster Keaton) they are few and far between, and much of the film is ridiculous.Patricia Dane's horrendous character seems to have no motivation for her nastiness towards Powell, although Powell isn't the sweet ingénue here, destroying a dressing room in one scene in quite a show of temperament.
However, the presence of some wonderful character performers (Thurston Hall, Butterfly McQueen, Sam Levene, Marjorie Gateson) helps sustain the film from total boredom.
With his first contract film out of the way, Minnelli would go onto the artistic triumph of "Cabin in the Sky" before his true talents were revealed with a colorful musical called "Meet Me in St. Louis". |
tt0446313 | Mang lung | The film begins with INTERPOL agent Wang Sun-Ho stating this is his first mission and all the audience sees is a messy laundry hallway filled with fluff as if a gunfight took place there. The begins and shows a team of young INTERPOL agents arrive in Hong Kong to give testimony to a recently captured crime boss Tiger Duen. Among the agents are Officer Wang Sun-Ho, an ex SWAT member trained in the United States, HKPD officers, Hung Kei Lok and Pak Yat Suet, Ex PRC military sniper Luo Zai-Jun and ex SAS member James "Jie" Lam. They are greeted by Commander Hon Sun the person in of the case. However the escort of Tiger turns into a situation as the older Duen brother Panther Duen plans to rescue Tiger. The rescue attempt is aborted when the agents mistaken an innocent civilian as the criminal who would attempt to break Tiger free and also discover the convoy they are guarding is a decoy. Panther pulls out and disappears.Meanwhile, an HKPD surveillance squad is eliminated by 5 operatives all who are ex military trained. Lead by the Ex 707th Korean commander Ko Tung Yuen, along with his best American friend Petros Angelo, Yuet Song a Viet/Chinese sniper, Joe Pearson another Ex American marine and Lee Chun Pei another Korean operative. The real convoy transporting Tiger is ambushed and the operatives eliminated 7 officers on the scene. The INTERPOL agents arrive but fail to prevent their escape causing Jie to lose his temper.Back at the HQ, Commander Hon Sun reprimates the agents for disobeying orders but lets them off the hook. Lok visits his sick brother while off duty, Ho decides to do some of his own investigations and Jun, Jie and Suet are later introduced to Kong Long an retired officer who left the force. It is revealed then that Petros is seeking revenge for the death of his brother Dominic in the past. Kong Long was involved on a mission to take down Dominic and Tiger but because Kong didn't wait for backup it resulted in Tiger killing Dominic and the deaths of 6 officers. Later Lok, Ho and Suet save Kong's daughter from a fight in her own restaurant but then its revealed Kong's daughter hates him for an event in the past. The team then practices for their mission by improving their shooting accuracy in a local barAfter several team introductions and attempts from both sides to getting to know the "players" Captain Ko meets Petros in cafe to initiate 2 phases of their mission. Ko will attempt to keep tabs on the INTERPOL agents while Petros will attempt to retrieve a microfilm which is their main objective for unknown purposes. It is rumoured to be in the hands of Panther Duen, and the only link is Yu Ching, Panther's girlfriend. As soon as Ko leaves the cafe, Petro randomly just happens to spot Ho walking down the street. Ho tries to hide his identity by pretending to be a visitor from out of town. Petros then retreats to a fortune teller temple where Ho attempts to take Petros down but Petros escapes using his training.Petros then finds Yu Ching being bullied and pretends to befriend her, Even letting himself get beaten up by 3 Chinese gangsters who finish their beating by throwing a dumpster on Petros. Yu Ching however is too trusting and even lets Petros into her house.Meanwhile its revealed Ko has a rivalry with Kong which earned him his scar. Ko tries to kill Kong in a locker room with a machete to machete fight but Ko is forced to retreat after the team is alerted to the danger.Later Petros, Joe, Lee Chun Pei and Ko meet Panther for a deal for the microfilm, they even threaten him showing Tiger's ear cut of earlier. This only results in a gunfight with the operatives eliminating most of Panther's Triads. Ho and Lok arrive on the scene attempting to fight Ko but Ko just defeats them and leaves saying "I don't have time for this" and the HKPD arresting Panther. He later gets released on lack of evidenceThe Team then seeks advice from Kong on how to catch the operatives. Kong reluctly agrees to train them hard.Eventually Hon Sun, prepares a sniper unit, and 3 teams of HKPD officers to ambush the operatives. Petros splits up with Ko after lying to Yu Ching he has to do something. Yuet easily eliminates the snipers, Petros takes out 2 of the HKPD teams and Ko eliminates the HKPD command squad. Hon Sun tries to fight back but is shot without mercy by Petros and is badly wounded.Having enough of the operatives rampage, Ho, Lok, Jun, Suet and Jie attempt to ambush all the operatives at once. Yuet then engages in firefight with Jun, Petros, Lee Chun Pei and Ko enter a firefight as well against Suet, Jie, Ho and Lok. The operatives change tactics making it harder for the team to kill them. Joe Pearson breaks into a jeep in to evac Petros and Ko. Lee Chun Pei is killed by Suet with one shot from an MP5. Unfortunately Jun who was covering Suet gets distracted and Yuet kills Suet. Thus both sides lose one member of their teamBack at HQ, Hon Sun dies of his injuries and Suet is remembered by her comrades and even her target (Cameo by Andy On) After condolences for Suet. The team decides to catch the operatives using all the training. A China agency attempts to deport them but they are saved by Kong who only recently discovers the operatives true intentions. Their plan is then mobilzed.Ho gets to Yu Ching first luring her away from the operatives tricking her in believing he is a friend of Petros. Jun shoots Ching's car tire so Petros would pick her up. Ho then leads the operatives to an abandoned warehouse where Jun ambushes Yuet. Joe then enters the inside and is rammed by forklift by Jie. However Jie underestimates and after a few struggles Jie manages to impale Joe onto a large sign nail and electrocute him to death with a shock wire. Jun enters an intense sniper battle and eventually shoots Yuet dead. Kong finally defeats Ko, and with Ko committing suicide by stabbing himself.Petros is the only operative left. Lok posing as a taxi driver drives Ho and Yu Ching away to a mall where Yu Ching is to deliver the microfilm to Panther Duen. Lok tries to keep Petros off Ho's back but Lok is stabbed with a screw and is seemingly killed. Ho is then pistol whipped by Petros and meets back with Yu Ching. Petros decides to deliver the microfilm to Panther. In the cinema. From there Panther takes Petros hostage with a silenced pistol and kill him, but Petros disarms Panther and kills him.Petros then attempts to leave with Yu Ching, only to find Ho who has regained conscious waiting to ambush him. Petros attempts to shoot Ho from a high deck, only to be shot 2 times in the back by Lok who survived the screw stab. Still wounded Lok tells Ho to go after Petros. Ho and Petros then engage in a gunfight where both men shoot each other in the same laundry room at the beginning until their guns are empty. Ho is heavy wounded but manages to shoot Petros to death and discovers the microfilm was in Ching's toy doll all along.Before the credits roll, Lok, Ho, Kong, Jie and Jun who have all apparently healed arrive at the same bar and fire all their pistols at the same time at the screen. | violence, revenge, romantic, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt0313196 | El crimen del Padre Amaro | El Crimen Del Padre Amaro is a film based off the 19th century Portuguese novel O Crime do Padre Amaro, recreated with a modern touch. Although critics have scolded this movie for not precisely recreating the novel, director Carlos Carrera does a great job at bringing the novel into a modern context and highlighting issues to which current audiences around the world can relate. Carrera created a film that reaches international audiences by establishing a Hollywood texture with continuity editing and a smooth, polished finish. Yet by focusing the film on sociopolitical corruption and prevalent issues in Mexico, Carrera also catches the attention of the national audience. In a primarily Catholic country, the clear themes of corruption and hypocrisy within the Church resounded and created undisputable tensions throughout the nation, which even inspired the Church to advocate against viewing of the film. Padre Amaro serves as a symbol of hypocrisy in the context of Catholicism and the issues of the class system in Mexico. He begins as young priest inspired to do right under the laws of the Church; however, throughout the film he is continuously challenged by pressures of money, society, and issues of celibacy. This film consists of most indoor scenes creating a sense of discretion throughout the film, highlighting the theme of scandals, secrets, and hypocrisy. The film creates an impactful sense of realism of the difference in lifestyles and class systems. Poverty in rural towns is contrasted with the wealth of the church through the mise-en-scene as portrayed in costumes, barren houses in poor conditions, shots of the underdeveloped town in the country side, and amongst all of these there lies a beautiful and ornate church. While in most Latin American films the country side is portrayed as fostering a happy, rooted, soul-fulfilling lifestyle, Carlos Carrera shows the audience a realistic view of how rural life can contain the same corruption and scandals that are normally seen to take place in urban environments.
All in all, this film does a terrific job at leaving the viewer with a clear message. Many distinct concepts can be pulled from this film, from corruption and injustice of politics and religious bodies, to personal struggles with human passions and the effects of society on a persons life. | murder, storytelling, melodrama | train | imdb | From a novel by the 19th century Portuguese well-known novelist Eça de Queirós, the Mexican director Carlos Carrera made this good movie in which to the main ingredients present at all times everywhere (lust, the temptations of the flesh haunting Catholic priests, religious hypocrisy, love and bourgeois prejudices) he added specific Mexican ones of our times such as the fight for independent journalism, drug traffic, complicity of authorities and the fight of the peasants for dignity, freedom and a better life.
I don't know if people from around the world will understand the impact it had here in Mexico, but here are some hints: a) almost everybody in Mexico is catholic, b) Mexican catholics have an enormous respect for priests.So, imagine the chaos when a film is about a priest, Father Amaro (García Bernal), who falls in love with a teenage girl (Talancón) and is under the supervision of the local priest, Father Benito (Gracia), who is involved with one of the most wanted drug dealers in the country.
While the acting was passable, the story did not move along in a provocative enough manner to thoroughly captivate its audience-- in simple terms, the movie was somewhat slow.What is interesting to notice is the reaction that the public-- especially the Catholic public-- has had to this film.
It is on these superficial levels that Padre Amaro is decried as a criminal of the faith by the viewing public, but lust is not this priest's true crime.Central to the film's controversy is the corruption that propels the church.
The crime of Padre Amaro is not so much that he acted upon his human impulses as that he accepts the corruption of the church by participating in its lies and creating lies of his own.Unfortunately, this film's only exposé is not the corruption of the church, which has become more and more evident in recent times, but the faithful church body's willingness to pretend that none of this goes on.
If you read this novel today, besides being marveled by its iconoclast wit, powerful story-telling, sharply drawn multi-layered characters and magnificent style, you will no doubt be startled by Eça's volcanic attacks on the Catholic clergy's corrupt morals and behavior in late 1800s Portugal.Well, this Mexican adaptation is a total waste of the novel's story and shocking power, beginning with the bad idea to transpose it to modern times -- how can anyone relate to the impact of Eça's novel when sex scandals in the Catholic Church have become daily news?
Anyhow, this is no excuse for the film's soap-opera approach, lame adaptation, cardboard characters, unimaginative direction, bland acting (Bernal, Talacón, though they make a beautiful couple) or sheer overacting (most of the cast, excepting the good jobs by Damián Alcázar and Angélica Aragón).A major disappointment from director Carrera, writer Leñeros, and actor García Bernal, who was very interesting in "Amores Perros" and "Y Tu Mamá También" (and since then progressively déjà vu), but is totally lost here, his expression telling us he didn't get the first idea about Amaro's cynicism, passion, ambition and growing immorality.
Based on an 1875 Portuguese novel by Eca de Quieros, The Crime of Father Amaro, the new film from director Carlos Carrera, has been updated to modern Mexico.
Amaro then has an affair with the reporter's ex-girlfriend, Sanjuanera's young daughter Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancón), and in an awkward scene, the priest drapes her in a blue robe that has been designed for the local church's statue of the Virgin Mary.
Despite these setbacks, Mexicans always had something to fall back upon and to look to for support: the Catholic Church.The Catholic Church is the main focus in the movie Crimen del Padre Amaro.
In the beginning of the movie, Padre Amaro is seen as the good guy, who everyone wanted to succeed; however, by the end of the film, I looked upon Padre Amaro with complete disgust.
In 2002, in a small town in Mexico, Father Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal), a young and promising priest, is assigned for that parochial.
The release of the film THE CRIME OF PADRE AMARO caused about as much of an uproar in Mexico in 2002 as the publication of the novel, written by Jose Maria Eca de Queiroz, caused in 1875.
It does not help that, to pursue his vocation, he is sent to a town sustained by a culture of corruption.One thing actor Gael Garcia Bernal does not know how to do is give a bad performance, and in the movie's title role he captures brilliantly all the agonizing ambiguity that comes with being a young adult male intent on asserting his masculinity while also serving the spiritual needs of his community.
Better believe it.As in the film THE HEALER (please see companion review) "The Crime of Padre Amaro" depicts sexuality and spirituality as equally powerful forces of attraction capable of producing very different results, which will not be revealed here.
In my opinion, the best thing about El Crimen del Padre Amaro is Vicente Leñero's script - updating a story from 1875 without losing the magic scenes created by Eça de Queiroz so long ago.
Again, by updating the old Portuguese story to a contemporary Mexico and inserting current issues like the relation between church and drug dealers, El Crimen del Padre Amaro raises some relevant questions about celibate, religious ethics and hypocrisy.
That Amaro slips so easily into the amoral role set up for him by the likes of Father Benito (even though the old priest seems to find some redemption at the end) is what gives the film its air of frustrating hopelessness.
So much time is spent on the sexual dalliances of Father Amaro and the girl, Amelia, that we don't really get to see enough of the other forms of controversy and corruption with which the film is dealing.
In addition to the aforementioned Bernal, Sancho Gracia and Damian Alcazar are excellent as Amaro's fellow troubled priests and Ana Claudia Talancon is pretty and poised as the young girl drawn by lust, love and passion to this weak-souled priest.Viewers will most likely find `El Crimen Del Padre Amaro' to be either a brave film or an offensive one, depending on which side of the religious divide they happen to come down on.
"El crimen del padre Amaro" (called "The Crime of Father Amaro" in English) portrays newly ordained priest Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) getting pulled in several directions in a small Mexican town.
Credit has to go to the scenario written by Vicente Leñeros, adapting the original material and bringing the action to present day rural Mexico.The turmoil within the Catholic church is in the headlines of the media and this story deals with the hypocrisy of father Amaro in not practicing what the church wants him to teach these poor people.
Poor Amalia, the young woman, in the story, she is repeating what her own mother is doing on the sly with the older priest, father Benito, something that young father Amaro gets to know as soon as he arrives in the small town he has been assigned to serve.
NOT because the photography was excellent, but it was!In addition to all the above, it spoke of a very real and present danger existing in our societies today, so skillfully, and with such excellence of production, and character and thematic development that I will long remember the story, the feelings of ALL the characters, and, most important of all, the POINT.The REAL CRIME became evident in the early stages of the movie: the sin of placing ego ahead of God, and the people to whom one has voluntarily become a Shepard.
The characters are weakly depicted: There´s no true transformation, Amaro is flimsy and stupid, the same with almost all the other carachters, just forgettable ones...I could continue to insult and criticize this film, but if i did I don´t think you would understand me (not only because my bad english) because to do so, you would need to live there, and know true latin-american priests and know that here, in this jungle of ignorants, everybody loves the subject about corruption in religion...
For the rest of the people they seemed to enjoy the humor, which in the process also seems to lighten the dramatic parts, and no longer can we take the characters and situations seriously.The theme of the movie, whichever it was, seems to get lost in the over packed story; you'll get drug trafficking, abortions, retarded girls, newspaperman, priest, clerics and else.
His crime is revealed mostly in the very last scene of the film, though he commits it throughout the story.This is not a feel-good movie but an important one with a lot to say about the place of religion and those who practice it in today's world.
And a fair share of condemnation from some for this Mexican submission for a Best Foreign Film Oscar.But Amaro's real moral crime is, at least to me, far more serious than his understandable straying from the path of sexual abstinence demanded by his church's dogma, a doctrine enforced sporadically and then often only when responsive to an enveloping and inescapable scandal.Amaro's great offense isn't found in the penal code of any nation - it's careerism, the sometimes crawling, occasionally grasping, rarely abandoned pursuit of advancement.
A priest's choice is a reflection of his free will.Amaro (the cast is listed on IMDb and except for the actor playing the lead, also seen in "Y tu mama, tambien," most are unknown to U.S. audiences) initially seems like a young priest whose character is several parts holiness healthily leavened by an earthly openness and caring that should insure his success in his first post as assistant parish father.That combination, if true, would give us a very boring film.
Aside from Gael Garcia, who plays Father Amaro, all other actors are great, including Ana Claudia Talancón, who plays Amaro´s interest in the film.
Like a badly written soap opera.To rely totally on the notion that the subject matter - a young priest has an affair with a female parishoner - makes for compelling drama is rather naive.There was nothing in this film that set it apart from a Jackie Collins made for TV movie.That it was ever considered for an Oscar is quite simply baffling.
Gail Garcia Bernal and Ana Claudia Talancon as Father Amaro and Amelia give wonderful performances as do all of the actors.In addition to the primary roles there are several interesting characters including [in my opinion, one of the best] the retarded daughter of the sexton.
"El crimen del Padre Amaro", sadly captures the actual situation of the Church, as a mexican and a beliver I can't say is a bad movie or that attemps against the Church, I see it more as a wake up call, so that all belivers see what is going and start to make a change to prevent this and other situations from happening.
"El Crimen del padre Amaro" is a film hard to watch, specially for catholics and yes, it could change your vision for Catholic Church if you take as an example recent events in real life.The movie starts a controversy that surrounds the credibility of the Catholic Church through their priests and the connections between the Church with politics and drug dealers.
I recommend it for everyone, even if you are not Catholic this movie shows how the Church has became a dirty business and not only in México..."El Crimen del Padre Amaro" will start a controversy and it will be acclaimed by critics, just like "Amores Perros" and "Y Tu Mamá También"..
Gael Garcia Bernal was Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries and is just as good as Father Amaro, a Catholic priest filled with doubt about his life's meaning.
When Amaro and Amelia share their first kiss in the pews of the church the camera pans away from these two people and instead zooms in upon the figure of a porcelain Virgin Mary.The film successfully draws attention to the very reality of conflict that exist between religion, politics, and the internal struggles of the individuals within these systems..
Directed by Carlos Carrera, starring Gael Garcia Bernal (Amaro), Sancho Gracia (Benito), and Ana Talancon (Amelia), this film examines the presence of the Catholic church in Mexico and the grip it has on Mexican politics and reality (ironically, efforts were made by the church to block the film).
There are no fast-paced, action-packed and flashy qualities present in many blockbusters nowadays, but the film does keep one's interest in the melodrama and hypocrisy that unfolds.The movie starts with a fresh, newly ordained priest (Amaro) who is sent to a small town to study under the seasoned Benito.
This is voiced by Carrera in the opening scene where Amaro drives by Catholic tombstones: "They don't mean anything - they are forgotten." But the church remains very powerful, having symbiotic relationships with drug lords, government and media that allow it to persist and influence Mexico.So much detail was taken in the film's depiction of Mexico: the contrast of modernity and tradition (donkeys and cars on the streets), the economic woes of the 1990s and resulting corruption, the Catholic church's scandals, and increasing liberalism at the time.
Love, lust, scandal and sin, El Crimen Del Padre Amaro, tells the story of the conflict between one's faith, the desires of the flesh, and the consequences that entail.
The movie develops in a small town where people don't get much education and therefore they are more naive, they are more likely to believe anything, even more if it comes from a priest, but that's reality, it happens!
"El Crimen del Padre Amaro", based on a book written in 1875, Carlos Carrera achieves to project several of true events that has happened since the starts of the Catholic religion and that prevails in our days.Great cast, good actings, and thanks to the free publicity that PROVIDA gave to the movie around the polemics untied with the arguments that the movie offends to the catholic community with several scenes of the movie, Carrera's film is now a success in Mexico's movie theaters..
"The Crime of Father Amaro" tells a story about a young Mexican priest who is lost in a world of romance and politics, a world that is completely new for him.
The script was written by Vicente Leñero, responsible por scripting "La Ley de Herodes", a movie with which it shares similarities in plot and structure.Father Amaro played by Gael Garcia Bernal (of "Amores Perros" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien") arrives to a small town only to discover ilegal actions involving the local drug-mafia and the local church and to find himself infatuated by the presence of Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancón).
I decided to go the next day and I saw a lot of things that may be the rawest images about religion that I've seen.But considering this scenes not to be the main plot of the movie, we actually see the story of the men behind the robe of a Father, Priest, Bishop, etc.
We see a Priest who accepts money (and washes it) from the mob to build a Hospital, We see another one who is involved with a Guerrilla, and finally, we see Father Amaro (Gael Garcia) who gets involved with a 16-years old girl.I recommend and encourage people to go see this movie, religious and non-religious, because it's a great movie, to help Mexican movies, and to create an open cultural and religious mind in all the people that goes to see it..
I can see Bill Donahue of the Catholic League fuming and frothing over a film that features a pastor laundering drug money and sleeping with his housekeeper; another priest openly defying his Bishop to minister to the guerrillas in the mountains; a wacky woman who fakes taking communion only to hide it and carry it home to give to her cat; and, the greatest crime of all, Father Amaro deflowering a young girl, getting her pregnant, and praying for a miracle, which came, but not as the church would approve.There are the book purists who feel that Eça de Queirós' novel is not given proper respect, but a movie is not a book.
Performances are very powerful, especially those by the two main characters, el Padre Amaro (Gael García Bernal) and Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancón).
Where a young priest Amaro(Mexico cinema's new face Gael Garcia Bernal)falls in love with the daughter of Father Benito's Mistress.
The most interesting thing is there are not characters totally good or bad (like televisa soap, and why not most of the movies)the nark save Benito's life, where a very catholic had an Abortion Clinic.
Young father Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) is assigned to a small church in a small town in Mexico.
It doesn't make any sense to change, to such an extent, the original story.Just for you to see how ridiculous this gets, there's a moment in the film where Amelia (the girl Padre Amaro falls in love with) confesses to the priest that sometimes, while she's having a bath, she touches herself thinking about Jesus Christ.
So, at the outset, this film loses a large portion of its audience.Father Amaro (Gael García Bernal) is a very young priest who is on his way to his first parish.
The two emotions must be balanced to truly make the crime of Father Amaro (as well as those of the movie's other corrupt priests) touch the audience.
El Crimen Del Padre Amaro is a movie about corruption in the Catholic Church and the personal struggle of priests between obedience and temptation.
Padre Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a young ambitious priest sent to a small town to work in his first church.
Carlos Carrera made the controversial film, El crimen del Padre Amaro, to expose the corruption and hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. |
tt1013743 | Knight and Day | Knight and Day follows the adventures of Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), a rogue spy, and June Havens (Cameron Diaz), a car restorer. We see Miller watching Havens, and he bumps into her a couple of times as they go through security at Wichita Airport. Havens is making her way back home to Boston from Wichita after picking up spare parts for her deceased father's classic GTO car, which she is restoring for her sister as a wedding gift. Even though she has a confirmed reservation for her flight, she is told at the gate that it is overbooked. Miller is able to board, whispers to her that she is better off taking the next flight. Unbeknownst to Havens, FBI Special Agent Fitzgerald (Peter Saarsgard) is monitoring Miller's movements and, believing she is working with Miller, puts her back on the flight list.On board the flight, Havens notices that there are only 4 or 5 other people present. She relaxes with a drink, and Miller chats about his dream of someday driving to Cape Horn while he checks out the other passengers. She is charmed, and goes to the restroom to freshen up. While she is occupied, Miller is attacked by the remaining passengers and crew. All are dispensed, including the pilots. After she emerges from the restroom Miller calmly informs her that everyone onboard is dead. Thinking that he is joking, Havens plays along until Miller enters the cockpit. In a spell of turbulence, she notices the dead bodies falling over in their seats, and spilling onto the aisle. Miller lands the plane on a highway, but skids off the end of the road into a corn field. Miller gives Havens a drink, and explains that she may be questioned by various officials. She is not to get in any vehicle with them, nor accompany them if they suggest taking her away to a "safe" place. Havens passes out due to a knock-out drug in the drink, but awakes at home amongst clues that Miller brought her there, ensuring her safety.Havens struggles through the day trying on bridesmaid dresses for her sister, April's (Maggie Grace) wedding. Talking over what to do with their dad's GTO car Havens is shocked to learn that April wants to sell it. She is lured out of the shop and is accosted by a group of intelligence agents who, with assurances that she will be safe, drive her away. She is shown some files pertaining to Miller, and is questioned by the agents to determine if she is working with him. Suddenly, Miller shows up, and with much shooting and acrobatics, "rescues" Havens.Havens doesn't know who or what to believe and flees to the firehall, where her former boyfriend, Rodney (Marc Blucas), works as a firefighter. Upon hearing her story he thinks she is merely stressed from the wedding, and takes her out for pie. While they are chatting, Miller arrives and kidnaps Havens. He handcuffs her and shoots Rodney in the leg, telling him this will all turn him into an overnight hero and virtually guarantee his desired promotion to lieutenant.Miller explains that Havens is safer with him; and Havens agrees to follow him as they go to pick up Simon Feck (Paul Dano), a genius inventor who created a perpetual energy battery called the Zephyr. Miller arrives at his safe house in New York City where he left Feck. He is missing, but has left clues that he can be found on a train in Austria. The two are immediately ambushed by men belonging to Antonio (Jordi Mollà), a Spanish arms dealer. After Miller again drugs Havens, she drifts in and out of consciousness between their capture and escape from Antonio's men. Miller brings her to an island that is off the grid, which he calls his home. After leaving Miller in frustration to wander the island, Havens notices a message on Miller's cell phone with a Boston address. While studying this, her cell phone rings, showing her sister's caller ID. In answering the phone, she accidentally leads Antonio's group to the hideaway. They try to kill Miller and Havens with a remote drone.Again knocking out Havens, Miller transports them to a train heading through the Alps. Havens awakes alone and, missing a message from Miller, leaves to get breakfast in the dining car where she encounters Danny (Rich Manley), a German assassin. When she looks at the message, she realizes that Feck is with Miller, and Danny is someone else. Using tricks learned from Miller, Havens manages to survive, and Danny is eventually knocked out of a window by Miller and presumedly killed by a train coming from the opposite direction.Miller puts Havens and Feck up in a hotel in Salzburg, and heads to a meeting with a mysterious beautiful woman. Havens follows him, and hears him make a deal to sell the Zepher to Antonio. Havens is picked up by the CIA and meets the director of counter-intel, who confirms that Miller is a rogue agent, and gives her a pen to signal them when she is with Miller and the Zepher. Miller meets her back at the hotel, and shows her the Zephyr, which is now showing signs of overheating. Havens uses a pen transmitter to notify the agents, but Miller escapes to the roof-tops. After leading the CIA agents on a chase, Miller is apparently shot and falls into a canal.Havens is sent home by the agents in time to stand at her sister's wedding. When Havens hears the song that Miller used as his ring-tone, she heads to the address she remembered from his iPhone. She meets the people at the address, and realizes that they are Miller's parents. She learns that Miller's real name is Matthew Knight. They believe their son, a former Army sergeant and Eagle Scout, is dead; but they are fabulously wealthy from winning lotteries and sweepstakes they don't remember entering.Havens leaves the Knights, and calls her own voice mail, leaving a message that she has the Zephyr. She is quickly captured by Antonio's men and taken back to Spain. She is drugged with truth serum, which makes her relaxed and happy. Antonio realizes that she doesn't have the Zephyr, and the only way he can get the device is to pay Fitzgerald who has kidnapped Feck. Miller has been following Feck using a tracking app on his iPhone, and stumbles upon Havens in the Spaniard's compound. Havens is rescued as she is being taken out for execution. They pursue Fitzgerald and Feck on a motorcycle, while eluding Antonio's men during the Running of the Bulls.Fitzgerald is able to escape in an amphibious plane with the now extremely hot Zephyr while Miller is grazed by a bullet as he saves Feck. Feck comments that the battery is unstable. As they watch the plane climb, the battery explodes, killing Fitzgerald.Miller collapses from the gunshot wound, but wakes in a hospital. He receives an apology from the Director (Viola Davis), who tells him that he routed out a corrupt team. He asks about Havens, and is told that she has returned home. He is warned that he can't be distracted, and must forget her to continue with his job. The Director also explains to Miller that the Agency will "Transfer you to a secure facility tomorrow, for your safety" using the same wording that he warned Havens about. As they leave, a nurse enters, and gives Miller his medication. Miller realizes that he's been drugged, but then sees that the nurse is Havens.Miller comes to in the rebuilt classic car that belonged to Havens' father. After he asks what day it is, Havens kisses him and says it's "someday." She drives off, traveling along a coastal road past a signpost for Cape Horn. The final scene shows Roy's mom telling her husband that they have just received two tickets to Cape Horn. Though she blames her husband for ordering them by mistake, she insists that they go. | comedy, boring, murder, stupid, violence, good versus evil, psychedelic, action, entertaining | train | imdb | It seemed that every time I was about to think "when's the next action scene" the movie would stop the thought with a well timed laugh or another action sequence making me never feel like I was waiting for the story or the action to resume.It was also refreshing to see Tom Cruise play a part that wasn't meant to be almost completely emotionally impotent.
We've seen it all before, but it worked pretty well then, and it works pretty well now.June Havens (Cameron Diaz) is an average perky blonde romantic comedy heroine who runs into the charming and mysterious Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) at the airport, and is sucked into a series of misadventures when Roy turns out to be a secret agent fighting rogue elements in his own agency .
His pacing is brisk and fun, and he stages some terrific action (including one sequence from Diaz' point of view that did feel genuinely new).Of course, this is a star vehicle, and whether you enjoy it will depend a lot on how you feel about Tom Cruise.
* Story has several twists and turns * Walks a fine line between comedy and action well (for the most part) * I never looked at my watch once and the film running time flew byThe Not So Good * CGI is weak and there is a lot of it * Can get a little campy from time to time * Predictable Overall this was quite entertaining.
Unlike most summer clunkers (there was some robot movie last year that was dismally pathetic, if only I remember the name) this one is forgivable for its flaws because of its style, loose direction, and freshness.Without revealing too much (trust me, predicting the movie from the trailer will do you no good), Knight and Day follows a secret agent (Tom Cruise) that accidentally involves a bystander (Cameron Diaz) in the middle of a crazy fight spanning multiple agencies and multiple countries.
Just like in Vanilla Sky (even if the editing and obscurity allowed the movie to collapse), Knight and Day is jump-started and propelled by Diaz and Cruise acting together.
With a budget of over $120 million, Knight and Day looks like an action movie that was running out of cash.The action that we do get to see is plentiful, and fun.
This movie is probably the most fun I've had in a while, and this is coming from a very harsh grader and someone that is let down very easily due to high expectations."Knight and Day" revolves around Cameron Diaz, who is boarding a plane to see her sister April get married.
Overall, "Knight and Day" is a great film because of its fresh script, great performances, amazing action, great comic timing, breathtaking cinematography, and a fascinating direction.
Overall, "Knight and Day" is a great film because of its fresh script, great performances, amazing action, great comic timing, breathtaking cinematography, and a fascinating direction.
Cameron Diaz, who I normally don't like very much - does a very good job in this movie and her chemistry with Cruise is spot on.This movie delivers a good script, beautiful locations, great acting and intense action.
The rapid fire banter between Cruise and Diaz would have been much more effective had it been well written.A quality action movie needs a real force coming from the bad guy.
There is so little feeling that I am wondering if Cruise and Diaz might in fact be robots programmed with the script.The action scenes (most of the film) are fairly good; hence the score of two but even the action has no hope of saving this piece of drivel.
It seemed like every time the action sequences threatened to get good they had to remind you just how silly and stupid this movie was required to be.
*** Some fairly grand scenery shots to take in (and as much money as was spent on this flick there should be).*** Not much on the romance front (with just a few script alterations Diaz' role could have been filled by Ben Stiller).For me this long film (2:00) turned into a real watch-checker without a plot to make me care about either the end of the movie or the characters.
I've never gotten what makes him a star but I have to say in this film Cruise is charming.Diaz is quirky and fun and when they do get a good scene together it works.
Knight and Day was one such film for me; in the back of my mind I was hoping that I could be pleasantly surprised, but unfortunately it turned out to be as horrendous as I first suspected, with lacklustre performances from actors past the peak of their careers.Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz star in this action comedy which fails miserably in both the action and comedy stakes.
Although they still have a great screen presence and a definite chemistry, Tom and Cameron have reached a new low with Knight and Day, its only appeal being the reunion of the two actors who must have a lack of good scripts being offered their way.Billed as a summer blockbuster, Knight and Day can not even be compared to other recent successful blockbusters such as Toy Story 3 and Inception, and doesn't even come close to the duff remake of The Karate Kid. If any other actors were in the main roles, this would be a complete failure at the box office and a film destined for the bargain bin.
Having just finished seeing it, though, I feel almost as though I should be reviewing two separate films.The first half of this movie promises a solid, fun experience due primarily to the banter between Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz's characters.
It's these moments in particular that make the second half of this movie frustrating, and this is all on top of a story that ends up being not the least bit engaging.Even the action that actually is present in Knight and Day, though, is hit-or-miss.
However, as with every other aspect of the film, the action found in the second half isn't nearly as entertaining, and as often as John Powell's (the Bourne trilogy, Bolt) musical score attempts to liven the scene up, it all just feels like old hat.Knight and Day is a film that, despite its initial promise of a simple, fun action flick, takes a tremendous nose dive about mid-way through the experience.
June Havens'(Cameron Diaz) life turns upside down when she meets with secret agent Roy Miller(Tom Cruise) on her way to Boston.
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have a great chemistry together and it feels like they really enjoyed being part of this film.
Despite the fact that the film's script went through as many as ten different writers, the final script, no doubt with the director James Mangold having a pretty big influence, is fun and entertaining, despite some typical tent-pole summer release plot contrivances (most notably a crass attempt at playing a plane crash for laughs, and silly plot twist at the end of the film that leads to a corny and stereotypical climax).These weaknesses are largely offset by fun performance of Tom Cruise, who is very good in the role of a darker, shiftier, wittier and a more morally ambiguous version of his Ethan Hunt persona from Mission Impossible.
The trajectory of her character in the film is far too obvious, but despite this there is a lot of fun to be had watching her get there, and the on screen chemistry between her and Cruise is charming and draws the audience along.The plot, as I have already mentioned is hardly original, but despite the aforementioned problems it is pretty impressive for one that has gone through a whole slew of writers.
Director James Mangold is the individual who deserves credit for fashioning the script into an entertaining and satisfying caper film, even if the fate of Peter Sarsgaard (the CIA/NSA type operative sent to apprehend/kill the Tom Cruise character, and who is pretty good in the role) is obvious almost within the first ten minutes of the movie.Action sequences are well handled, (kudos to second unit director Brian Smrz)and the digital visual effects are by and large pretty good, being handled by a variety of different companies.
The people who didn't like this film don't know how to appreciate a good movie that can make you laugh and entertain you.
All of the good work I did at the Y, destroyed in one beefy, cheesy swoop.Which brings us to Knight and Day, the Taco Bell 5-layer burrito of the 2010 summer movie season.Actually, the metaphor doesn't quite hold true — the 5-layer burrito is less than a buck, whereas you'll be paying around 10 bucks for this action comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
In fact, just about all of Knight and Day's charms come from the stars' interplay as Roy and June cruise along from one dangerous situation to another.And yes, "cruise along" is exactly what I mean — there's never the slightest sense of danger in the film, which apparently is exactly what director James Mangold was going for.If his name wasn't there on screen, you'd never guess Mangold helmed Knight and Day, which couldn't be further removed from his (far superior) other credits, which include 3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted.It's hard to know whether Mangold or Patrick O'Neill's screenplay is to blame, but the flippant way Knight and Day handles its story — this is all just a video game, as grounded in reality as a Matrix film — wears out its welcome very quickly.One conceit that runs through the film has Roy drugging June whenever the action gets heavy.
It feels like a massive cheat, perhaps intended only to lower the budget.Cruise and Diaz's star power is enough to overcome that problem for much of the first half, but after that the wheels come off.Knight and Day subjects us to some of the thinnest supporting characters of any film this year — specifically, the agents heading up the charge to corral Miller.
Sure, there's a cute bit where Diaz gets to have fun with June being under the influence of truth serum (yeah, she gets drugged a lot, which is a bit creepy).But then we get the crappiest of Knight and Day's action pieces, a car/motorcycle chase through Spanish streets that happens to coincide with the running of the bulls.
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz play the lead roles in this movie and you just can't really go wrong with those two.
I never cared much about Cameron Diaz' looks back in the days when she was the new hot star in Hollywood, around the time she did "The Mask" and "There's Something About Mary" but suddenly I'm now way more able to appreciate her looks and I'm even start to like her better as an actress as well.It's still kind of odd as to why all these big names, both in front and behind the camera, decided to sign on to this movie.
The action sequences are over the top, Diaz and Cruise look like they are having a blast the entire time, and the movie is somehow interesting despite the plot making no sense.
Not what you would expect from the normal Tom Cruise action flick and therefore why people didn't enjoy it that much.While there are a lot of names in this film, Cruise and Diaz are the main stars and everyone else seems virtually unimportant.
He did a fairly decent job with the film and really helped make sure Cruise and Diaz had fun with the film and looked good doing it.At the end of the day, I wouldn't say I loved "Knight and Day" but than again I don't usually love any action comedy.
Cameron Diaz is perfect for the role and Tom Cruise looked like he didn't age a day since the first M:I.
So they marketed it as a comedy, and now we as the audience can laugh with them instead of at them.If we weren't told that we should be laughing at all the common action turns and contrivances, then this is exactly the same as every other action flick hitting the theatres.Full of high speed car chases, machine gun shooting, plane crashes, helicopters, trains and everything else that moves at top velocity, and of course the model-like heroine, the hero with movie star good looks and chiseled abs, the genius scientist, and more bad guys that might be good guys than you could even count.
This mismatched spy guy meets funny girl was just tackled earlier this year in the Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl film called "Killers." Of course, "Knight and Day" had the bigger stars and most probably a bigger budget.Tom Cruise plays Roy Miller, an ace but rogue government agent of questionable character.
My expectation for the film was low, so I earned a good time while watching it.June Haven (Cameron Diaz) was just heading back to her hometown for her sister's wedding, but somehow, she gets caught up with Roy Miller (Tom Cruise).
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are obviously having a blast, and anytime they are on screen, the movie's energy and fun level pegs the meter.
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are obviously having a blast, and anytime they are on screen, the movie's energy and fun level pegs the meter.
Kudos to the leads for not carrying the movie with their effervescent acting, but also for doing many of their own stunts.Tom Cruise and Cameron were good pair to be watched on screen.Tom was very good in all the action scenes.His approach to seduce the babe was pretty cool..
The movie has two highly bankable stars, a competent director in James Mangold, stellar action sequences, some laugh-out-loud funny moments of comic relief, cheesy romantic lovey-dovey stuff, and a genuine feeling that you didn't just waste 109 minutes of your life."Knight and Day" has a cookie-cutter plot that's second-rate when compared to the enthusiastic performances of its two hot leads and slam-bang action sequences and pacing.
"Knight and Day" was also hot on the heels of a similar-storied action-romantic comedy ("Killers" starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl) and while I know people flocked to see that movie in droves, this film was left out in the cold - shamefully, I might add, because this one is miles ahead of that picture.Part of the reason "Knight and Day" succeeds far ahead of "Killers" is because of the believable, electrifying chemistry between stars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
Do dogs love bones?"Knight and Day" begins innocently enough but like Cruise's wild and unpredictable, nearly-invincible super-secret agent Roy Miller character, the movie goes ballistic once the action scenes begin.
If you are looking for a light combination of action, humor, story, and romance in a single movie, then you have to see "Knight and Day".
From the beginning to the end you have just to let yourself go with the brilliant tale.The performance of "Tom Cruise" and "Cameron Diaz" was astonishing, they were amazingly completing each other in almost all the actions, they just fit very well.Also a very good mark to the music, smooth, fashionable, and restful.Enjoy it.--http://theearthdiary.blogspot.com/.
However, I can't imagine this movie working with anyone other than Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
I truly hope to eventually see Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in a more intimate romantic comedy, as they are as inspired a pairing as Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.On it own merits, in addition to the charming leads and great stunts, "Knight and Day" boasts excellent sound and cinematography and good music.
In the action spy thriller, Knight and Day, June Havens (Cameron Diaz) bumps into a stranger, Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), in the airport while en route to her sister's wedding.
The perfect date movie - Cruise and Diaz make humorous action work!.
There are cool stunts, charming performances, and enough substance to deliver a fun time.This film is about how a "rogue" agent comes into the life of an ordinary working-class girl and changes her life completely around when they have hordes of people coming after them.Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are certainly charming leads.
Just get some popcorn, sit back, relax, and enjoy 109 minutes of fun.One of the things I really like about this movie is that Tom and Cameron seem to be having a great time making this film.
It comes through on screen and translates well into the energy necessary to drive the movie.If you don't like Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz, do NOT see this film..
Both Tom Cruise and Cammeron Diaz are quite good in the film and they seem to be having a lot of fun.
When you first see the trailer you think "Great another cliché action comedy with big celebrities!" Nop, it is truly a very enjoyable movie to watch with clever humour, excellent action scenes with car chases and planes crashes.Tom Cruise is very cool and funny playing his part amazingly for his age.Cameron Diaz has aged but still looks amazing playing a naive single woman who wanted some excitement in her life and boy does Cruise deliver for her.The chemistry between them is much better than Vanilla Sky and it's a movie that you can watch more than once.
I had seen an interview with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise, while they were shooting this movie.
It works, mainly because Cruise is incredibly charismatic and truly, a movie star.As in most films trying to be everything at the same time, Knight and Day has an identity crisis.
One star for a couple of mildly amusing action or comic scenes, like Cameron Diaz asking Tom Cruise how come she is now wearing a bikini after been drugged.
Knight and Day is just that fresh summer time flick that doesn't overpower you with an incoherent or intricate plot but simply entertains you, providing that one element you need - Fun. James Mangold, of Walk The Line and 3:10 To Yuma fame, never made his film look like 'Inception' in the previews and therefore, you get what you expect. |
tt0068638 | The Getaway | Bank robber "Doc" McCoy (Steve McQueen) is paroled from a Texas state prison, somewhat to his surprise. His wife, Carol (Ali McGraw), has arranged for his parole by sleeping with the politically well connected but corrupt Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson). McCoy is aware of her actions, and it eats at him over the next several days.Benyon had McCoy sprung to rob a bank of $500,000. McCoy wants to use his own men, but Benyon insists that two criminals he knows -- Rudy (Al Lettieri) and Frank (Bo Hopkins) -- take part. McCoy reluctantly agrees. Along with Carol, the three men plot the robbery. The plan involves Rudy and Frank entering the front of the bank to control the crowd and then letting McCoy in the back door so he can crack the safe. While Rudy and Frank purchase the necessary supplies, McCoy and Carol scope the bank, drawing up a timetable for the robbery based on the arrival of employees. McCoy wants Rudy and Frank to wear bullet proof vests but Rudy refuses. Frank begrudgingly takes his. McCoy doesn't trust these men but has no choice but to go forward with the plan.On the day of the robbery, explosives are placed as a diversion on the outskirts of town. Frank and Rudy enter the bank and order everyone on the ground then let McCoy in the back. As McCoy is removing the money from the vault, the bank guard tries to pull his gun but is shot and killed by the enraged Frank. The three beat a hasty retreat. McCoy and Carol head to the meeting point in one car, while Rudy and Frank take another. On the way, Rudy shoots and kills Frank then pushes his body out of the car. At the meeting place, a deserted farmhouse, Rudy tries to kill McCoy and Carol as well but McCoy is a faster draw and shoots Rudy three times. Believing Rudy dead, McCoy and Carol drive off with the money. But Rudy was wearing Frank's bullet proof vest and was wounded only in the shoulder.McCoy and Carol go to Benyon's ranch. On the radio, they hear a news report about the robbery. It says $750,000 was stolen. McCoy confronts Benyon about the duplicity. Benyon admits that the robbery was staged to cover a short fall in his own business. He also goads McCoy with Carol's infidelity. As he does so, Carol quietly enters the room behind McCoy and points a gun at his back. But instead of killing McCoy as planned, she kills Benyon. McCoy and Carol leave but McCoy no longer trusts Carol. They decide to go to El Paso and hole up in a hotel McCoy frequently uses. Expecting him to do this, Benyon's associates send a scout to wait in the hotel to see if McCoy arrives.Rudy also surmises that McCoy will be heading to El Paso. He kidnaps a veterinarian and his wife, forcing to them to treat his gun shot wound and then drive him to El Paso. Harold (Jack Dodson) is scared but his wife, Fran (Sally Struthers) is turned on by the virile, gun-toting Rudy. She and Rudy openly have an affair, tying Harold to a chair in their hotel rooms and forcing him to watch as they have sex. Eventually, the despondent Harold commits suicide.McCoy and Carol decide to take the train to El Paso. While McCoy stashes their getaway car in the train station's garage, Carol puts the valise with the stolen money into a locker. Because the bag is heavy she accepts help from a stranger. However, the stranger turns out to be a con man (Richard Bright) who switches locker keys with her and steals the bag for himself. McCoy chases the con man onto the train but loses him briefly. In that time, the con man realizes what is in the bag and pockets one of the rolls of hundred dollar bills. When McCoy finds the con man, he beats him unconscious then gets off the train at the next station. He returns to San Antonio to pick up Carol. They will have to drive to El Paso.McCoy doesn't believe that the police have any way to connect him to the robbery. But when he comes to, the con man goes to the police. They find the roll of bills he pocketed and, seeing the bank's name imprinted on the band holding the roll together, realize whose trail they are on. They show mug shots to the con man and other witnesses from the train who confirm that McCoy was the man they saw. Soon television and print news reports are mentioning McCoy by name and showing his mug shot. When Carol and McCoy stop in a small town to buy a portable radio, the proprietor recognizes McCoy and calls the police. McCoy goes to a gun store and buys a pump action shotgun and shells. As the police arrive, McCoy confronts them. He disarms them then destroys their car. He and Carol drive off, then buy a different car in another town.One night, they stop for dinner at a drive-up hamburger stand. The wait staff recognize McCoy and call the police. McCoy and Carol lead them on a wild chase in which their car is also disabled. They hide in a trash dumpster but are unable to escape before it is emptied into a trash truck. They spend the night in the trash truck, then are emptied with its contents into the local dump at dawn. Carol tells McCoy she doesn't want to go on, as he clearly doesn't trust her. He apologizes, reaffirms his love for her and they walk to El Paso.Rudy has beat them to the hotel, however. The scout sent by Benyon's associates recognizes him and calls the associates. Believing that Rudy and McCoy intend to meet and split the money, the associates take the next plane to El Paso. Meanwhile, Rudy orders the hotel owner (Dub Taylor) to let him know when McCoy arrives. The hotel owner sends his wife and son away; when McCoy does arrive, he recognizes this as a sign that something is wrong. The owner informs Rudy as ordered but when Rudy and Fran try to coax McCoy and Carol into the hallway, McCoy beats them into unconsciousness.Meanwhile Benyon's associates have arrived. McCoy engages them in a shootout, killing them all. As he and Carol try to escape from the arriving police, Rudy tries to stop them one last time, but McCoy finally kills him. They make a trash collecting cowboy (Slim Pickens) drive them across the border. The cowboy is sympathetic to their outlaw status and encourages them to stay married. Once in Mexico, they buy his truck for $30,000 cash. As he happily walks back to El Paso, they drive farther into Mexico. | neo noir, cruelty, murder, violence, flashback, revenge, sadist | train | imdb | null |
tt0084503 | Pink Floyd: The Wall | Pink is a rock star, one of several reasons behind his apparent depressive and detached emotional state. He is first seen in an unkempt hotel room, motionless and expressionless, watching television while the Vera Lynn recording of "The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot" plays. It is later revealed that Pink's father, a British soldier, was killed in action while defending the Anzio bridgehead during World War II, in Pink's infancy.
In a flashback, Pink is a young English boy growing up in the early 1950s. Throughout his childhood, Pink longs for a father figure. He discovers a scroll from "kind old King George" and other relics from his father's military service and death, placing a bullet on the track of an oncoming train. At school, he is caught writing poems in class and humiliated by the teacher. To the tune of "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)", Pink imagines a surrealistically oppressive school system in which children fall into a meat grinder. The children then rise in rebellion and destroy the school, carrying the Teacher away to an unknown fate. Pink is also negatively affected by his overprotective mother. Such traumatic experiences are represented as "bricks" in the metaphorical wall he constructs around himself that divides him from society.
As an adult, Pink eventually marries, but he and his wife soon grow apart. While he is in the United States on tour, Pink learns that his wife is having an affair. He turns to a willing groupie, whom he brings back to his hotel room only to trash it in a fit of violence, terrifying the groupie out of the room.
Pink slowly begins to lose his mind to metaphorical "worms". He shaves all his body hair and, while watching The Dam Busters on television, morphs into a neo-Nazi alter-ego. Pink's manager, along with the hotel manager and some paramedics, discover Pink unresponsive and inject him with drugs to enable him to perform.
Pink fantasises that he is a dictator and his concert is a neo-Nazi rally. His followers proceed to attack ethnic minorities, and Pink holds a rally in suburban London, singing "Waiting for the Worms". The scene is intercut with images of animated marching hammers that goose-step across ruins. Pink then stops hallucinating and screams "Stop!" He then takes refuge in the toilets at the concert venue, reciting poems.
In a climactic animated sequence, Pink, depicted as a small, almost inanimate rag doll, is on trial, and his sentence is "to be exposed before [his] peers." The judge gives the order to "tear down the wall". Following a prolonged silence, the wall is smashed.
Several children are seen cleaning up a pile of debris after an earlier riot, with a freeze-frame on one of the children emptying a Molotov cocktail. | dark, avant garde, depressing, psychological, dramatic, cult, violence, flashback, insanity, psychedelic, romantic, historical, prank | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0107362 | Last Action Hero | The movie opens at night as a police car screeches to a halt in the middle of a deserted street. It is not the first unit to arrive - the entire street is clogged with police units, and officers are training their weapons at an elementary school where an axe-wielding serial killer named Ripper is holding several children hostage. The senior officer, Capt. Dekker (Frank McRae) laments that this is the worst way to spend Christmas. He summons an officer and orders the sidewalks secured. Just as soon as he's given this order, gunfire breaks out as the unseen Ripper opens up on the police cars with an assault rifle. A few officers are downed and multiple cops are shot. Once the gunfire stops, Ripper tosses the rifle over the edge of the roof, followed seconds later by the rifle's original user. Dekker curses Ripper for killing one of his men.A few moments later, a new face arrives, in the form of Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). He walks through the police barricade, refusing to listen to Dekker's threats to confiscate his badge. The mayor and lieutenant governor are present and attempt to stop Slater, but he punches the lieutenant governor in the nose. He then delivers a groin attack to the officer guarding the entrance, then draws his pistol and makes his way to the roof.On the roof, Slater confronts Ripper (Tom Noonan), who is holding Slater's son Andy hostage with a chopping axe. Slater steps closer as Ripper tells him about how he has felt a sense of revenge ever since Slater sent him to prison ten years ago. Ripper tells Slater to put his pistol down. Slater complies, but Ripper isn't satisfied to find that his foe only has one gun with him. Slater reluctantly then removes his pocket knife and the other pistols he is carrying on his person. Asked by Ripper if that's all he's carrying, Slater says that yes, he is now unarmed, unless what he is currently carrying counts as a weapon: a "grenade" with a blade that pops out of it, that he tosses to Andy.Ripper laughs, astonished to find that Slater is willing to sacrifice his own son's life to get to him. He orders Andy to pick up the grenade and hand it to him. He tells Slater that while the grenade won't hurt Andy, his axe will. Slater and Andy exchange a look. A knife blade pops out of the grenade and Andy stabs Ripper in the leg. Slater dives to the ground and grabs one of his pistols as Ripper hurls the axe at him. He raises his gun and fires twice, both rounds hitting Ripper. As Ripper falls to his death, he takes Andy with him.Suddenly, the image goes out of focus. It turns out we're actually in a New York City movie theater after hours, where a young action-movie obsessed boy named Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is watching the end of Jack Slater III, the third movie in the popular franchise of Jack Slater movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in the titular role. Annoyed that the movie is out of focus, Danny makes his way up to the projector room to wake up the projectionist, an elderly man named Nick (Robert Prosky). Nick fixes the focus, but the credits are already rolling. He apologizes for not seeing that beforehand, but Danny forgives him, as he 's seen this movie six times already. Nick tells Danny that the next movie, Jack Slater IV is scheduled to come out this Friday. It turns out Danny has seen the trailers for that movie and knows that it will involve Slater avenging his second cousin's death. Nick claims he's checking the print he's received for the new movie tonight, and offers to arrange to give Danny admittance to a private preview showing.Danny then goes to school. As he leaves the theater, he sees a cardboard cutout of Slater with a shotgun in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other, alongside new cast member Meredith Caprice (Bridgette Wilson), who gets an "And Introducing" credit, advertising Jack Slater IV. In class, his teacher (Joan Plowright) is teaching the class about Shakespeare's Hamlet, who is one of history's first action heroes. She proceeds to show the class a scene from the 1990 Laurence Olivier film adaptation of the play. The scene in question is the one where Hamlet contemplates killing his uncle Claudius but decides against it because Claudius is praying, and monologues about it.Danny is annoyed that Hamlet stops short of killing Claudius when he could have done it right there and ended the story. He promptly imagines his own version of the scene. In his version, Schwarzenegger plays a cigar-smoking Hamlet, who grabs Claudius and accuses him of murdering his father, before hurling him out a stained-glass window. An announcer blares "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet is taking out the trash!" SchwarzenHamlet then proceeds to surprise and attack numerous guards, defeating them with thrown skulls and swords. He continues to go on his murderous rampage until a figure appears from behind a curtain saying "Stay thy hand, fair prince." SchwarzenHamlet quips, "Who says I'm fair?" then proceeds to produce a submachine gun and slaughters an entire castle of guards as the announcer assures that no one will tell this sweet prince goodnight! SchwarzenHamlet quips, "To be, or not to be. Not to be." then blows up the castle.As the castle is destroyed, the scene transitions to Danny watching the Looney Tunes at home while his mother Irene (Mercedes Ruehl) calls the school attendance office to tell them that Danny is "sick". She is somewhat annoyed to find that Danny has been to the movie theater again to see Nick. She then hurriedly realizes she is late for work and rushes out the door.Shortly after Danny's mother leaves, an intruder breaks in and takes Danny hostage, handcuffing him by one wrist. He looks around for something to steal, but is outraged when he finds nothing worth taking, and departs, dropping the handcuff key in the toilet. Danny goes to the police station to deliver a report. Despite the officer on duty telling him to go home as his mother has instructed him to, Danny instead goes to the movie theater to meet Nick. After letting Danny in through a service door, Nick talks about how he always wanted to be a magician. Before letting Danny see the movie, Nick hands him a special ticket, which he says he received from Harry Houdini. It supposedly is a passport to another world. It has a mind of its own and does what it wants to do. Nick tears the ticket in half and gives part of it to Danny.Nick starts the movie. The opening credits burn through the Columbia Pictures logo, busting through several walls until it finds the title Jack Slater IV. The scene then settles on a mansion overlooking a cliff near Malibu. Mob boss Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn) is on the patio outside, interrogating Slater's favorite second cousin Frank (Art Carney), who is tied up and has been beaten severely. Vivaldi wants to know what Frank has told Slater about his operation. He tells Frank to tell Slater that his organization is joining forces with the Torelli family, another organized crime syndicate, to establish total control of illegal drug trade in Southern California. Frank claims he mostly talks to Slater about guns and muzzle velocities.Not satisfied, Vivaldi snaps his fingers and a bullet hits the orange target to Frank's right. The source of the bullet is Vivaldi's British hitman Benedict (Charles Dance), sitting in a chair overlooking the ocean and reading a newspaper. Benedict is unusual in that his left eye is a false acrylic one that he can pop out and replace with a different one depending on what each situation requires. Vivaldi warns Frank that Benedict is a professional killer, who sometimes even likes to bake while shooting people. But it also turns out that Benedict is annoyed that Vivaldi keeps screwing up metaphors all the time, like saying "easy as cake" when the saying is "easy as pie". Vivaldi asks Frank if he wants Benedict to operate on him. Vivaldi tells Benedict to take Frank and dump him back at his own house. He laughs in amazement at the fact that Frank is buying his nonsense about joining forces with another syndicate, but after the funeral that is going to happen in a few days time, everyone will know Vivaldi is Number One.Sometime later, four police officers are outside a two story house near downtown Los Angeles. They are about to execute a drug bust. Before they can kick the door down, Slater pulls up in his convertible with groceries and asks what they are doing, as they're on the porch of his cousin's house. Slater sets his groceries down, then knocks incessantly on the door. Finding it unlocked, he opens the door and finds Frank sitting in a chair in the foyer, on the verge of death. Frank tells Slater that Vivaldi is joining forces with the Torelli mob, and then dies.As Slater apologizes to Frank, he sees a small card with his name on it attached to Frank's shirt. He shuffles through the cards, which count down "5, 4, 3, 2, 1." When Slater reaches "2," he realizes it's a trap and hurriedly bolts out of the house just as a hidden bomb detonates. The house is incinerated in a giant fireball that throws Slater and the two cops on the porch into the air. A police car is also flipped over. The two cops are killed, while Slater is miraculously uninjured.Slater gets up, just as a red 1950s pickup truck comes speeding around the corner at full speed, driven by a group of henchmen toting automatic weapons. Slater gets in his car and floors the gas pedal as the henchmen open fire on him. He speeds around a corner, around the flipped over police car. As they speed down the street, one of the henchmen stops shooting, and grabs a stick of Acme dynamite from the bed of the truck. He hurls it at Slater's car, but it bounces off the trunk, lands in the street, and explodes harmlessly. Going around a left turn, the henchman lobs another bundle at Slater, but Slater produces his Desert Eagle pistol and shoots it multiple times in midair.It is at this point that Danny's magic ticket starts glowing. He doesn't realize it until the bundle of dynamite Slater shot suddenly bursts out of the screen and into the theater. He gets up and starts to run as the bundle begins rolling down the aisle with a lit fuse. He snuffs the fuse with his popcorn bucket, then runs up the aisle, only to be engulfed in a flash of blinding white light.When Danny's vision is restored, he's in the backseat of an unfamiliar car looking up at palm trees under a sunny sky. As Danny is rising, trying to get a view of his surroundings, Slater suddenly fires his pistol at the pursuing truck. It turns out Danny has been transported into the car chase scene he was watching literally seconds earlier. Slater turns, startled to find a passenger in his backseat. Danny has no idea how he ended up there. Slater tells him to keep his head down as he speeds through a left turn, taking more fire from the gunmen in the truck. One of the henchmen lobs another stick of dynamite, but it misses and instead blows up a car parked on the curb. Driving down the next street, Slater swerves from side to side in an effort to throw the henchmen's aim off. Without his car losing control, Slater takes both hands off the wheel, turns backwards, and fires his pistol several times at the truck. One henchman is thrown off the pickup, and through the windshield of a parked ice cream truck, which promptly explodes, and causes a different henchman to get an ice cream cone through his neck. Slater eventually loses the pickup truck when it is cut off by a backing up tanker truck blocking its way.As Slater drives with Danny as his extra passenger across the LA River Basin, a minivan screeches to a halt in the middle of the road ahead of him. Henchmen armed with a chain gun open the passenger door and begin firing on him. Slater turns left and plows through the bridge railing. His car falls into the river basin and keeps on going. The minivan drives down the side of the embankment and gives pursuit. When the remaining men from the pickup truck fire on Slater at the next bridge, Slater makes a hard right turn up the slope of the banking. The car flies into the air and lands on the roof of a Coca-Cola semi truck, then drives off of it.After losing the remaining bad guys, Danny tries to convince Slater that they are in a film, but Jack sees nothing unusual about his world, which includes a cartoon cat detective named Whiskers (voice of Danny DeVito), a black-and-white image of Humphrey Bogart, female officers dressed in outlandish battle armor, even cameos by the T-1000 (Robert Patrick from his role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct).As Jack and Danny drive along the coast looking for the "bad guys", Danny recognizes, from the opening sequence, the mansion belonging to crime boss Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn). Despite Jack's skepticism, they go in and meet Vivaldi's British henchman Mr. Benedict (Charles Dance), known for his ever-changing glass eyes. After overhearing Danny discussing his role in the Slater film, Benedict follows Jack and Danny as they visit Slater's daughter, Whitney (Bridgette Wilson; though the Slater movie credits her as "Meredith Caprice"), raids the house with some thugs, takes the magic ticket from Danny, and escapes after a gun battle with Jack and Whitney. While inspecting the ticket at the mansion, he discovers a portal to the real world.Eventually, Jack and Danny figure out that Vivaldi plans to kill his rivals at a rooftop funeral by planting nerve gas in a dead body. After a brief scene in which Whiskers saves the two from betrayal by Slater's friend John Practice (F. Murray Abraham), Jack tells Danny to commandeer a construction crane, takes the body and escapes from the funeral, and disposes of the body into a tar pit with Danny's help at the crane. Whitney arrives in her truck immediately afterward, and Jack and Danny use the truck to crash into the villains' mansion shortly after Benedict irritably betrays and shoots the inept Vivaldi. In the ensuing struggle, Benedict and his butler fall through a portal into the real world, and Jack and Danny follow them. In the real New York City, Jack is disappointed to learn that he is a fictional character and resentful at having been given such a hard life by his films' creators, particularly Schwarzenegger himself. While talking with Irene, he learns to be sensitive and loses interest in violent action.Meanwhile, Benedict learns that in this world he can get away with murder and hatches a plan to wipe out Jack by killing Schwarzenegger. Jack correctly guesses Benedict's plan after Benedict uses the ticket to escape a car chase, leaving behind a newspaper with hand-drawn marks on some film advertisements.At the premiere of Jack Slater IV, after a brief encounter with Schwarzenegger (himself), Slater confronts the Ripper (Noonan), the ax-wielding villain who killed Jack's young son in the climax of Jack Slater III and whom Benedict has brought to the real world. In a rooftop scene similar to the finale of Slater III, the Ripper throws Danny from the roof before being electrocuted by Jack. Slater finds Danny clinging to the side of the building and pulls him to safety, but Benedict confronts Jack and shoots him in the chest while ranting about his plans to form an army of film villains (such as Dracula, Freddy Krueger, Adolf Hitler, Hannibal Lecter and King Kong) and take over the world. Danny knocks Benedict to the floor, enabling Jack to get Benedict's gun and shoot Benedict directly in his explosive glass eye, blowing his head to smithereens; but the ticket flutters off the roof and lands in front of a movie theater showing The Seventh Seal. Death (Ian McKellen) emerges from the resulting portal and follows Jack and Danny to the Pandora, where Danny hopes to save Slater by transporting him back into the film. Death notices that Slater is not on his list (but Danny is due decades later) and advises Danny to find the other half of the magic ticket, which he does. Jack and Danny are transported into Slater IV, where the wounds are minor. On Jack's insistence, Danny returns to the real world. The film ends as Jack explains his new insights to Dekker, then drives into the sunset. | dark, comedy, fantasy, murder, stupid, cult, violence, flashback, insanity, psychedelic, action, satire, romantic, entertaining | train | imdb | It's sort of every film buff's fantasy, one that we get to enjoy through young Danny Madigan(Austin O'Brien) as he meets up with clichéd action hero Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course).
A lot of people looked at this as a cheap Arnold action movie, and while it's not a great film it's certainly a good one with a very good concept.
After a string of predictable cookie cutter script action flicks that made money from Arnie's muscles and persona, one studio decided to take a chance and try a Hollywood self-mocking film starring the big guy.
It had a story line that actually made one think and pay attention in order to appreciate the paradoxes arising from its premise.( A fun side effect is that its movie within a movie allowed for some more over-the-top stunts and tough guy scenes than even the simplest knuckle dragging mouth breathing 'action' film fans would normally sit for) Scenes with recognized characters drawn from recent popular films were played tongue in cheek and while the story proceeded on a couple of levels there were enough innuendos and amusing elements in the background to keep the viewer's appreciative attention.
It is possible that the market segment that would appreciate a film like this had already dismissed Arnie as the Commando/Raw Deal lout and dismissed the film unseen, while the usual shoot'em punch'em fans found their brains hurting too much from trying to follow a real story.One thing is sure, the studios are watching and you can bet they won't make that mistake again.
Arnold had been riding the wave of Total Recall and Terminator 2 before the release of Last Action Hero, no one expected such a radical deviation from the norm.Danny Madigan is a lonely kid living in a tiny New York apartment with his single MILF.
Danny likes to escape into the world of action movies, his biggest hero, obviously, being Arnie himself.
He leads a pretty poor life and the only good thing that happens in it is that he gets to go to the movies to watch his favourite movie(s), Jack Slater with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Madigan marvels at his good fortune and observes the many action movie clichés: a police officer getting blown up two days from retirement, Jack Slater evading every blast and machine-gun burst that comes his way, the bad guys never winning, the attractive daughter and not one unattractive woman to be seen.
The action is fast and furious, and shows off even more of Arnie's sense of comedy.There is also a dark contrast between the film world and the real world, for example, the fact that Benedict can kill people in the real world, without anyone caring.Arnie also performs the action scenes with humour, in a way, taking the mickey of his past characters.Keep an open mind, and it's hugely enjoyable..
Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is crazy about the screen character Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and when he uses a magic ticket he is pulled into his latest film, where guns don't need to be reloaded, cars can jump the grand canyon, and the hero can't be hurt, etc.
When Jack Slater comes over to the real world in pursuit of the bad guy (Charles Dance) the fun really begins, and for once Jack Slater seems out of his depth.The whole movie is a funny parody of itself, and it's crammed with ludicrous stunts and action throughout.
LAST ACTION HERO (1993) is a clever satire of blockbuster action films and is loaded with meta references that are sure to delight movie buffs.At the heart of the story is Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), a young movie lover, raised by a single mom (Mercedes Ruehl) in New York City, who skips school to watch his favorite action flicks for the umpteenth time at a dilapidated movie palace run by a dotty old man named Nick (Robert Prosky).
Danny escapes his troubles in the adrenaline-pumping fantasies of the cinema, especially the JACK SLATER film series.The JACK SLATER movies spoof the action franchises popular at the time, like DIE HARD or LETHAL WEAPON.
Going where other cops wouldn't dare.In the film, the star of the JACK SLATER series is real-world action superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is LAST ACTION HERO's biggest meta concept as Schwarzenegger stars as a parody of himself (playing both Arnold and Arnold-as-Jack).With the help of an enchanted ticket given to Nick by the famed escape artist Harry Houdini, Danny is able to enter the world of the newest JACK SLATER movie and help Jack beat the bad guys.
Austin O'Brien doesn't do a bad job in the film, but he does start to get on my nerves a little.The fun really starts once the villain (Charles Dance) gets ahold of the magic ticket and enters the real world, a place where heroes can bleed and bad guys can actually win.
Jack and Danny track him to the star-studded premiere of JACK SLATER IV, where fictional hero Jack Slater comes face-to-face with Hollywood superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger (among other fun celebrity cameos).The satire of LAST ACTION HERO is on-point.
The top-notch pedigree surely helps sell the film's high concept.The script has a lot of potential for the right actor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger seems like he's having a lot of fun with the material.
Arnold has a good sense of humor about himself and seems to enjoy playing with his image.One of the best in-jokes for serious movie buffs comes early in the film when Danny's English teacher, played by Joan Plowright, introduces a clip from Laurence Olivier's HAMLET (1948), suggesting that the students might know the British acting legend from his late-career role of Zeus in CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981) or an older TV commercial for Polaroid.
And since "Arnold Schwarzenegger" can't exist in the fictional world of Jack Slater, his famous role in the TERMINATOR films is played instead by Sylvester Stallone.The JACK SLATER action is hilariously over-the-top and stylized, satirizing Hollywood action blockbusters and further contrasting the fantasy world of the silver screen with the real world Danny knows.
Ian Mckellen plays an interesting role as Death, and Charles Dance is excellent as what is possibly the best villain ever created.The story is spot on superb, mixing effortlessly classy action, with comic dialogue, inn-jokes and emotional binding factors.However as interesting as a boy taddling along with his action hero may be, it gets better once the villain escapes to the real world, in which Arnie and the boy follow.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, obviously is the "hero" and Austin O'Brien does a nice job playing an 11-year-old kid who is wise (a bit too wise) beyond his years.The villains are particularly interesting in here.
Director John McTiernan (director of Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Predator) and Action star Arnold Schwarzenegger teams up again, delivering another good action movie, but this time, a little bit different.Last Action Hero is a satire of the action genre, showing us it's over the top moments and how they DON'T work in real life.This is one of the best performances of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his character does what we like about him: Saying one liners and working on the action fest !
Aside from the ambivalence of having born with a smash hit vocation and wanting to be something more, which makes the original premise to lose weight along the way, I would say the principal flaws have its roots in a bad structured screenplay: the plot of the movie within the movie (a vane, not original at all mob story) is given too much importance, and when we come to the real point (the confrontation between fiction and reality) we are almost at the end and then a lot of a good story beats happen quickly and disordered, creating a little bit of a mess.Anyway, let me insist this is, at least, very curious and fun, and movie lovers will appreciate it above all its flaws..
Danny Madigan is a big fan of Jack Slater, a larger-than-life action hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Nick gives Danny the ticket, and somehow Danny is transported into the movie right behind Slater in the middle of a car chase scene...The laughs begin right away as Jack and Danny get wrapped up in the movies plot, and just keep going on and on.Last Action hero has a stellar cast literally, having a huge selection of big name stars, which simply adds to the delight...This movie has had lower reviews than I would have ever imagined.
I'm shocked that "The Last Action Hero" has received so poor reviews.The movie makes fun of all action movies made, and who could play the leading role better than Arnold Schwarzenegger?I really laugh each time I think about this movie.
Also the scene where Schwarzenegger is talking to the press about his new Jack Slater movie is funny, he comes with the usual comments that you hear before each premiere over and over again.The acting is like you can expect in an action/comedy-movie.
And since the script never indicates that JACK SLATER IV is intended as a parody, what we're left with is a mere nonsensical muddle.But what totally kills the film are things like the rabbi, the cartoon cat, the attack dogs that make a pyramid, the women's JETSONS-style clothing, and stuff like that which has nothing to do with any action movie ever made.If Mr. McTiernan had thought back to his experiences helming DIE HARD, PREDATOR, and THE HUNT FOR RED October, he might have noticed the complete lack of animated animals or heavily-armed nuns.
I love this movie to death I miss Arnold Schwarzenegger I miss him, I wish he would make such a good action films today I really do wish.
Last Action Hero is a 1993 action fantasy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater, an action movie hero whose movie world is invaded by real-life teenager Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) through the use of a magical ticket.I give this movie 10/10 it doesn't deserve the hate, f*** the haters again I don't understand the hate for Batman Forever another 90's superhero flick.
Schwarzenegger also served as the film's executive producer and plays himself as the actor portraying Jack Slater, and Charles Dance plays an assassin who escapes from the Slater world into the real world.Last Action Hero was a box office disappointment during its initial theatrical release.
It also takes a while to warm up and I'd argue that the best part of the movie doesn't come until later, when the action hero finds himself in the real world.
And its ending was surprisingly heart-warming.Last Action Hero is not Arnold's best movie, but it's worth a watch..
Oh, by the way, the funniest thing in the movie: Real-life actor - and I do use the term very loosely - Schwarzenegger is incorrectly identified (by his escaped film character, as I recall) as "Braunschweiger" (imagine it with the accent).
When young Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is given a magic movie ticket by friendly cinema owner Nick (Robert Prosky) at an advance screening of new action movie Jack Slater IV, he is magically transported into the movie and into the car of supercop Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
This film is brilliant, it takes the concept of one of those huge, explosive action films and constantly makes fun off it with observation between the movie world and reality which aren't recognised by the characters.
Having said that, action fans will love it because it is packed with fast, fun action.Surpprisingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger was very good at comedy in this film, as well as bringing his trademark action.
Well, I just watched it again and, if anything, I disliked it even more than the first time.The basic (high) concept—action movie fan Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) enters the fictional world of his movie hero Jack Slater (Arnie)—is actually pretty clever, allowing for lots of ingenious meta-moments, but the way in which it is all realised is diabolical: the screenplay is full of misjudged humour (what is it with that dumb animated cat?), child star Austin O'Brien puts in a thoroughly annoying performance, and the exaggerated action scenes within Slater's movie-verse are completely devoid of excitement.
There are also quite a few jokes that have dated extremely badly, especially the 'star' cameos from people that are no longer as famous as they used to be.The saddest thing about the whole film is that, given the great talent involved (Arnie, screenwriter Shane Black, director John McTiernan) it really should have been much, much better.
Last Action Hero is notorious action film that attempted to be a meta satire, being a box-office and critical flop despite it starring the biggest action hero of the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger and helmed by Die Hard and Predator director John McTiernan.Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is a movie obsessed kid who skips school so he can watch the over-blown action series Jack Slater, starring Mr. Schwarzenegger.
But Danny ends up transported to the movie world where he tries to convince Jack Slater he is really a fictional character as the villainous Benedict (Charles Dance) sees an opportunity to be more then a Mafia hit-man.Last Action Hero had a troubled production and post-production, from getting Shane Black to radically rewrite the script, having an awful test screening, being edited to the last minute and coming out a week after the hugely popular Jurassic Park.
Murray Abraham, but O'Brien was a grating presence as the know-it-all child.Last Action Hero is far from being Arnie's worst film, it wouldn't even be in the bottom five, but it is a wasted opportunity at satirising the action genre, being too meta for its own good.
A young boy from a lower class existence spends his days endlessly watching the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger's franchise action character Jack Slater.
'Last Action Hero' is one of Schwartznegger's best movies, he sends himself up perfectly in a satire of the action genre and many of his own films.The story is every kid's dream, of being transported into an action movie starring their favourite star.Great co-stars including Anthony Quinn,Charles Dance & F.Murray Abraham - Well written with many in-jokes and references to many other films throughout & Action packed from start to finish and from the Director of Die Hard & PredatorAt the time of it's release it was projected to be a huge hit - It didn't happen - on a huge budget (of it's time) of $85M it opened to only $15.4M and made a mere $50M stateside and $137M Worldwide - The fact it didn't make the huge business anticipated was probably down to opening the Week after Monster Hit (and at the time the highest grosser of all time) Jurassic Park, so it was a case of bad timing on behalf of the Studio - Sony ended up making a $27M declared loss on 'LAH' while not being in Pluto Nash Territory that's quite hefty!The only small complaint I have, is that at 130 Minutes, it's rather TOO long and could been 15-20 Minutes shorter.All in all a vastly underrated and under-appreciated Action Thriller that a lot of people don't 'get'****1/2 out of *****.
"Last Action Hero" the film that was Arnold's first real flop makes up for what money it lost at the box-office with a fresh, inventive plot and great performances.
Jack Slater may not believe that his life is a movie but the fact that Danny seems to know all about the plot and villain Benedict.When this film came out the critical mauling was so severe that it was hard to really get a balanced opinion of it.
I can see their point because the film does have major problems but overall I actually thought it was a clever try at something different from the usual blockbusters that doesn't quite work but is still quite fun.From the very start the film sends up the clichés associated with summer action movies and, although not a film in itself, this idea made it much more than the basic story suggests it will be.
As an action movie it is a bit too self-aware and not as smart as it would like to think it is but it delivers enough in terms of fun and sly humour to cover the weaknesses up.
Where can you find an action hero who dislocates his shoulder doing a simple stunt, likes classical music, comes up with the new tag line of "rubber baby buggy bumpers, works with a cartoon character and takes the last bullet in the movie with fatal consequences?
I like Arnold and his movies, I think he is a good and fun actor to watch...is he Oscar caliber?
Also, the running gag of Arnold not knowing that in Danny's world he is a huge action star remains funny throughout the film.
Anyone who loves classic, cheesy action movies from the 1980s and 1990s probably owns a copy of Last Action Hero, an absolutely darling spoof of the genre starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Transported into the cinematic world of his favourite action hero, a young film fanatic struggles to convince the character that his life is one big movie in this ambitious exercise in meta/self-referential filmmaking starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Jack Slater the hero of Austin O'Brien who knows Slater's world inside and out.
This films got classic Arnold lines, great over the top action, and some very funny scenes (one of my favs is when the kid takes Jack Slater to a video store and trys to prove he's a fictional character being played by real-life Schwarzenegger and to prove his point he trys to show him a poster of T2....only Stallone is on the poster dressed like the terminator!
"Last Action Hero" is brilliant satire - spoofing all the clichés and inner-workings of all action films, but most specifically Arnold Schwarzenegger's - beginning with Jack Slater (Arnold) going to his cousin's house: a bomb goes off, kills two nearby cops (one an aging black man days from retirement), but Arnie is left unscathed. |
tt0462590 | Step Up | Tyler Gage (channing tatum) is from the wrong side of the tracks, caught up in a world of drugs,violence and crime.After leaving a party Tyler and his two friends end up outside the Maryland school of the arts they break in and find themselves in the theater where they destroy the set. the boys are busted by a rent a cop and he grabs Mac, Tyler tackles the cop telling mac and skinny to run and is taken to court the next day he is made to serve community service at the scene of the crime.Nora Clark a senior dancer at the school is work hard for her final show piece on which she is basing all her dreams of being accepted into a dance company. When her partner break his leg in a accident, Tyler steps in temporarily.While learning with Nora, Tyler starts changing his perspective of life and becomes a little more serious about his future. He requests the School's director to let him join as a student. But she tells when he proves that he is dedicated, she will consider his request then.Tyler suggests new line to the show piece and both Nora and himself choreograph a fusion of Ballet and Hip Hop. When Nora's old partner Andrew returns, Tyler storms out angrily accusing Nora of using him as a replacement. Andrew unable to pick up Hip Hop, leaves Nora partner-less. Nora choreographs another sequence without a partner.When Tyler and Mac are in a club Skinny steals a car from their rival gang and gets shot and dies. Tyler decides to do the show piece with Nora. He goes backstage and convinces a reluctant Nora to change the sequence back to the one they composed together. They both deliver a spectacular performance landing Nora a place in a dance company. The school director accepts Tyler as a student. | romantic | train | imdb | Having painfully seen similar dance-themed teen movies in the past (Take the Lead, Save the Last Dance, etc.), Step Up does justice to its genre by not pulling any stops in delivering a truly enjoyable movie.
Finally, we are entertained by a dance flick where the leads (Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum) are both beautiful to watch, have good chemistry (enough to sustain the kilig factor) and can really deliver the moves.Dewan is a superb dancer; she has a fabulously fit body, not the anorexic ballerina type, and she dons her outfits exceptionally well for someone who's only 5'3".
It was also amazing to watch such a tall, gorgeous man like Tatum move the way he does (it must help that the boy knows his Kung Fu!).
obviously you have to be a good actor to be in a movie, but the dancing was the main focus of this film.
One afternoon, the ballet dancer Nora Clark (Jenna Dewan) sees Tyler dancing in the parking area and when her partner Andrew (Tim Lacatena) has a strain and Tyler offers to help her in the choreography, she accepts the offer; they rehearsal and become close to each other while Tyler becomes friend of the students Miles Darby (Mario) and Lucy Avila (Drew Sidora).
The heartwarming romantic story shows a perfect chemistry between Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, supported by a magnificent cast and awesome songs and choreographies of dance.
The movie is based on dancing and overall I thought the technique was very good.
What a wonderful surprise to find such a terrific film of dance and music in STEP UP and the actors/dancers were out of this world.
I found not only the music and dancing, but the story set in the jungle of a big city of young black men and a young white man struggling to survive and come up with fulfilling lives, to be a journey that is true to the lives of so many young men and women today in metropolitan cities in the USA.Duane Adler and Melissa Rosenberg have created a film in STEP UP that just hits your heart and soul with the character development created through the actors music and dance, and the sets and costumes which fit each character.
You've seen it all feel-good story of deprived, delinquent kid finding the meaning of life, dedicated effort culminating in an upbeat dance finale, rich-girl-poor-guy routine, and a whole bunch of familiar situations.
As to the dance routines, with her credentials, you wouldn't expect anything less than good, and the movie does deliver in that department.
The leads (Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum) were OK as actors, but their dancing throughout the movie was impressive and mesmerizing.All in all, a movie worth watching if you like to watch good dance sequences, and this movie is MUCH MUCH MUCH better than "You Got Served" in terms of the plot and drama.
Great story-line,a very important message to all young people who struggle with finding meaning of their lives.If you really want something, just go for it,this is the one life we get!
With that said, I recommend this movie , it's great music and dancing, and an important message on top..
"step up" has become one of my favorite movies...the actors are great but the dance scenes really take my breath away and i love the music...
I think that Step Up was a really good movie, even though most of the things were predictable.
Maybe i am a bit bias but, i think all dance movies are really good and entertaining to watch.
And even after watching Step Up 2, 3, Stomp the Yard 1, 2, Street Dance and B-Girl, this title still seems to me like the best.
People looking to watch a drama-dancing movie will just love this title.
I think the movie Step Up is a great film, the story is funny but it has its moving parts as well and the balance between them is very good.
I think Step up is a great movie because it's about a dance school, and I love dance so that account for why.
With a cast of relative unknowns, with the exception of former Oscar nominee Rachel Griffiths, this film, dealing with youngsters at a school for dramatic arts, is absolutely marvelous.It's basically the story of changing one's environment so as to get the best out of what life offers.When our hero is involved in school vandalism, he is sentenced to 200 community hours of service at the school where he did the damage.
most dancers will love this movie more than people who don't dance.
To begin with, I wasn't expecting much from Step Up. But as it happened, from the minute I started watching it till the credits, I was immersed in the movie.Never have I seen such a fine display of dance in a feature film.
The movie perhaps one of the most cliché and predictable and boring story lines i have ever seen (some awkward cross between Fame, Save the Last Dance, with an extra helping of teen angst and of course more cliché).
Sure it was a dance movie, but if you want to see good dancing it would be well worth your time to watch for something else watch something else..
Seriously I don't get why people are all like "Oh my God Step Up is the best movie ever!!!" It's a bunch of junk!
They probably either hired a stunt double or just payed a ton of cash to get these people dance lessons, for a movie that wasn't even that good.
I wasn't really interested in seeing Step Up, but my friend just kept bugging and bugging me to see this film, especially since she is so in love with Channing Tatum, I tease her constantly about it saying how that's the only reason why she loved the movie.
But she somehow convinced me that it was a movie worth seeing, that if I loved movies like Dirty Dancing, Take the Lead, and Save the Last Dance, that I should love Step Up, eh, what the heck?
Not to mention if you've seen those movies, well, frankly, you have seen Step Up. Because Channing is lower class with street smarts who just naturally feels the music while that snobby up class girl must follow step by step, how will they ever fall in love if they are so different?
Although predictable, Sep Up is a beautifully choreographed movie with an upbeat soundtrack that brings even more fun to the theater.Tyler (Channing Tatum) is not a bad kid.
However, the amazing dancing and upbeat music makes a predictable ending acceptable.When I sat down to watch this movie, I was prepared for another boring plot and was surprised by the creativeness and genius in the opening scene.
The director's (Anne Flethcer) alternating shots show how living in the city can be sharp like the woman's heel, and how Tyler and his best friend Mac (Damaine Radcliff) think that the rich kids who attend the school (actually most attend on grants or scholarships) lead a softer, easier life, like that of a ballet slipper.
The scenes in which Tyler and Nora dance together are vibrant and fun, inviting the audience to jump out of their seats and join in; there aren't any rules.Although the plot was predictable and the acting regular, Step Up achieved its main propose: to entertain me for an hour and a half.
Insipid script full of clichés and totally predictable; poorly acted either showing off or stumbling through the motions -- there was nothing believable in any of the characters; poorly directed except for some mildly interesting dance sequences, but other than that, what's not to like?
If i wanted to see bad acting and dancing I would just go to the low budget poetry club down the street, its cheaper and less filthy, this movie is one of the reasons Hollywood is loosing mass amounts of money, and cannot afford to pay larry the lighting guy to feed his family.
i thought that this movie was fantastic, it had awesome music to it that kept my headin moving/nodding the music constantly, with the mixing of hip hop with some violins added, making it a truly unique sound that is definitely a beat that makes you wanna dance.
When Tyler Gage (Channing Tatum) with his friend Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and Skinny (De'Shawn Washington) break into an art school for fun, they get caught by a cop.
Now Tyler must do work for the school, where he helps out a lovely girl (De'Shawn Washington) who dances ballet.Choreographer Anne Fletcher does a horrible job in her directorial debut and even fans of this movie will agree that the dancing is not that good at all.Duane Adler basically remakes his great movie Save the Last Dance.
However, just like all remakes, it's way worse than the original.Channing's character is very irritating and his awful acting doesn't help much.The Drama isn't very dramatic, the romance isn't very romantic, and the comedy isn't very funny.
A lot of people have said that Step Up is just like a lot of other dance movies that are out there.
Overall, it had it's good and bad just like any movie..
Tyler And Nora look good in the movie, it just seems like they have a lot of chemistry together.
there were only 2 things that were good about the movie...Channing, and the dancing..
However, the dancing was good and I really liked the music.
if you enjoyed Dirty Dancing you'll love Step Up. An enjoyable dancing movie that made me want to stand up and cheer.
While a teen dance movie was not my #1 choice, it was a pretty enjoyable film.
What is it, however, is a film that was pretty useless all around, but had enough good "stuff" in it to make it very entertaining."Step Up" not only lacked all that "stuff," but the dancing was horrible too!
I am not one to diss films for being formulaic or overly contrived, as I love many movies which are just that, but if you are not going to add anything NEW to a medium, it should at least be done well.This film is almost like a terrible remake of "Save the Last Dance" gone wrong.
I think that I do need to feel something new, to hear something untold or retold in such a better way than it surpasses the original to like a movie.
I have certainly seen kids literally change from joining Arts & dance programs and when I watch this movie, I'm wondering why every city doesn't have one of these schools!!!
Both have their struggles with this working relationship but while Nora opens up Tyler to the possibilities through dance, he brings an unique urban feel to her routine – but as romance blossoms things become harder.I never bothered with this film when it came out but the rising star of Tatum made me step back and take a look at this.
And so it treads the path you know it will from the first minute and as a story it never rings true so much as just meeting it with a shrug.In fairness though the dance routines are reasonably good and the soundtrack does give it an energy that helps it but both of these things are the type of things that will fade with time as other films supersede it.
The movie was filmed in the USA in 2006.The story is about Tyler and his friends going into an art school and destroying the stuff there.
But it's great that the film ends in an other way than you should think, I liked that a lot!
It's a movie that I definitely advise to people who love dancing and music..
It made me smile I think that Step Up was a really good movie.because, Dance and song is very good.and, actors are great.
romance in contain.I'm Dance and Song for interesting This movie is exciting all this while watching dance movie than enjoyment and good movie, In case like this movie comes out again and if and I delay without see a movie will go.The truth movie thinks.
i was recommended to see step up ii by my friends, all of whom would like dancing after getting out the cinema.
actually, i watched the clip several times to listen to the exciting music and actors' fantastic dance.
This is a great dance movie that you can watch many times.
step up is a typical story about kids with no real aim in life that decide they need to do something and be someone, it has pretty much anything that makes a film good..
romance, tragedy, comedy, amazing dancing and amazing music.my girlfriend talked me into going to see this movie, it's the first time i've enjoyed one of her choice.This film has a great story, great dancing and great music.The actors really pull off their roles perfectly.i enjoyed the film more than any other film i went to see last year, i convinced friends to watch the movie - all who thought it was as equally great as i did.10/10.
I saw this film yesterday - and it mainly lived up to the hype I have heard.I thought Tyler was a good character, although flawed - Nora was also quite effective as the privileged rich-girl - and their main goals came together as a sweet, realistic story.It was TOTALLY predictable, and I wasn't really surprised with any of its twists, but it did keep me entertained.
I got very excited with the dance sequences, as the leads are very talented dancers.I'm 32, so I grew up with brilliant 80's teen dance movies, such as Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Dirty Dancing.
Watching this made me regret a few bad decisions in my life, like pursuing music and dance when I was in school, but it makes one think about what you CAN do if you make the choice not to let your surrounding environment mold who you become.
I personally loved this movie its so exciting watching Channing dance hes amazing + there is Romeance so it kinda adds a little fun to the movie its AWESOME!!!!!!
I really enjoyed the entertainment and the way the movie shows the magnitude of love dancing can bring to people.
I mean it isn't Oscar material but its nice to find a movie that makes you feel good and leaves you smiling.The chemistry between the leads is fantastic, and I loved watching them together.
If you liked Save the Last Dance, or any other dance movie, you'll love this one!!!.
I saw the previews for this movie a month before, and I was immediately impressed.I know that many of you are saying that the plot is reminiscent of "Save the Last Dance," but try looking at it another way: this movie is telling the viewers that if you want something bad enough, you've got to get in there and do whatever it takes to get it.The soundtrack almost makes you want to get out of your seat and flow with the music...
The previews made the movie look like it was going to be good, and I was also interested in it since I take dance classes at a studio.
I thought Jenna Dewan's acting was fairly good, however I really did not not like Channing Tatum.
I can't believe all these people that are saying Step up isn't a good movie.
And while in movies like Step up, there is a reason for dancing (other than walking down the street), the idea seems to always find a crowd of people wanting to watch.
Pretty good acting all around, awesome dance sequences, truly a film that one could even call a modern day Dirty Dancing (kind of).
Good enough dance movie.
For a dance movie, it has just enough goodness to embrace..
Indeed, he will meet the ballet dancer Norah, a student of the school and become her dance Partner.I had read a lot of negative reviews about this movie, and I can confirm some of the bad comments.
He meets and falls for a beautiful, talented dancer named Nora (Jenna Dewan-Tatum) who helps turn his life around, and capitalize on his dancing skills.
Her dancing is of course the best in the film, Tatum is really good too.
The story is not that great, it's too clichéd as is the case with a lot of films about dancing.
While his there he meets a girl(Channig Tatum's real life wife Jenna Dewan) who's partner broke his ankle for a dance completion that she was going to do and together her and Ty decide to compete in the dance completion.The story was great,cool RnB/hip hop music,chemistry between real life couple Jenna & Channing was cute and the ending was had to follow but still it was a great movie for anyone who loves music and dancing.From the director that brought you The Proposal,27 Dresses and is rumored to direct a sequel to the 2007 Disney hit Enchanted (aka Anne Fletcher who does the choreography for this as well)STEP UP is a great film to watch whenever you want something that will make you wanna dance..
I think it is a good watch if you don't mind knowing who's going to end up with whom, and fabulous dancing :) Enjoy!.
This time a hip hop dancer gets pushed into the world of ballet and a rich kid dance school.I am not a fan of dance movies but the Step Up movies seem to be the best ones out there.There is bad acting and no chemistry between the dancers.
Step Up is one dance movie that delivers the goods!."Step Up" is about a white boy who lived in a hood, Tyler Gage (Channing Tatum), who has a unique street dance talent.
if you want a movie with a good story fun dancing and a feel good mood that Step Up is your movie
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tt0287665 | Sangre Eterna | There's going to be a total lunar eclipse over Santiago, Chile next Monday.
The astrologers predict that there will be emotional consequences
and changes all around.Professor Romero [Jorge Denegri] has given an assignment that his journalism students
aren't too happy about...to conduct an interview with
someone...anyone...just so long as it's someone of interest. While sitting
in Romero's history lecture about the influence of Christian ideas in
Latin America, one of his students, a Goth wannabee chick, notices a cute
Goth boy sitting in the back of the room. Hmm, he looks "interesting."
Later, when she sees him in the hallway, she asks if she can interview
him. He's too busy right now, he says.His name is "M", and he is the Master in a game of Sangre Eterna
(like V:tM) with his two Goth amigos Elizabeth [Patricia López] and Martín [Claudio Espinoza]. They are
walking down the street when they notice the sidewalks are empty of
people. Suddenly, they are open-fired upon by a group of vampire-hunting
priests and nuns. M [Juan Pablo Ogalde] takes out one of the priests while Elizabeth takes
cover behind a car. A lone priest blows a hole in Martín's stomach. As the
priest is about to put another bullet in Martín's brain, M speeds by and
breaks the priest's neck. Just then, their bodies begin to steam, and they
realize that they've been out in the sun too long and must take cover.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth has beheaded a nun and is drinking her blood when she
is ambushed by another gun-toting team of priests. They riddle Elizabeth
with bullets as the sun peeks its way over the buildings. Severely wounded
and now exposed to the sun, Elizabeth begins to burn up."You're about to lose your life," M tells Elizabeth after looking at
her dice roll. "If you die, so does your character."Elizabeth does not want to give up her character, so M comes up with
a plan...get another player whose character can jump in and save
them...and he knows just the person...that cute Goth chick who asked him
for an interview this afternoon. She'd be perfect for the role of
Carmilla. The next day at school, when M passes "Carmilla" in the hallway,
he stops to talk to her. This time he agrees to be interviewed, and they
go to a cafe where they can talk. It turns out that Carmilla [Blanca Lewin] really digs
vampires, so M invites her to play Sangre Eterna. After teaching her how to roleplay,
the "vampires" pick up where the game left off. As Elizabeth is about to
die, Carmilla uses Speed to whip past all the vampire hunters and slit
their necks before they can kill Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Carmilla's
arrival from the Vaida's clans has released two ghouls who set upon
Martín. Smelling the ghouls, M retreats, leaving Martín to fight alone.
Together, Carmilla and Elizabeth defeat the ghouls and save Martín.
Carmilla is a natural player, and the group is happy to have her.M is happy, too. He and Carmilla have hit it off quite well. To
celebrate a successful gaming session, Elizabeth invites them to accompany
her to a party at her friend's house. The address takes them to a wrought
iron gate that fronts a big, spooky-looking, rundown house with no lights
in the windows and no suggestion that any party is going on. Elizabeth
eventually finds the way in. The inside of the house is even spookier than
the outside. The guests are decked in their finest Goth garb, lit candles
are all over, and there's a lot of drinking and toking going on.
When party host Dahmer arrives, M gets the chills. He recognizes
Dahmer from Blondie's (a club). After drinking a bit too much last night at
Blondie's, M had gone into the men's room to relieve himself. While M
stood in a stall, Dahmer and his watchdog friend Punk entered and proceeded
to severely beat a third guy they thought was a snitch. Through a crack in
the stall door, M saw it all, including the part where Dahmer turned into
a vampire and bit the snitch's neck. M doesn't like how chummy Dahmer is
getting with Elizabeth, so he follows them out back, where they appear to
be necking. When Dahmer raises his face from Elizabeth's neck, M is
certain he can see fangs and blood.The next morning, M awakens to a big spot of blood on the side of his
head and doesn't remember how he got it. Carmilla explains that he got
into some kind of row with Dahmer, and Punk had to clobber him in order to
get M to stop. When Carmilla and M meet up again after class, Carmilla
wonders where Elizabeth is, and M says that Martín said that Elizabeth
spent the whole night at Dahmer's house. M confesses to Carmilla that he
has a bad feeling about Dahmer, but Carmilla poohpoohs him. When Martín
phones M later that evening to tell him that he's going over to Dahmer's
house to buy some "stuff," M tries to warn Martín about Dahmer, but Martín
isn't concerned either.
Realizing that he's alone with his concerns about Dahmer, M begins to
do a little research. He has learned in Romero's class about the Church's
teaching that the soul of anyone who drinks blood will not enter heaven
because "the blood is the life." He downloads some information from the
Internet about "Saving Souls." The next morning is Saturday, so he goes
over to the library to do a little reading on how the church purifies
souls. He runs into Romero. Always interested in helping a student
interested in Christian history, Romero provides M with even more books
and papers on the subject.That evening, Dahmer is holding another party, a more private one for
his special friends. Martín tries to talk M into going, but he doesn't
want to, even though he's worried about Elizabeth. When Carmilla shows up,
however, and says that she is going, M tags along. When Dahmer offers his
guests some good "stuff," M refuses and tries to force Carmilla to leave
with him, but Carmilla doesn't want to go. Dahmer orders M thrown out of
the party. M returns to his apartment. He rages in anger until he finally
falls asleep. He is awakened several hours later when Carmilla shows up,
her wrists covered with blood. M carries her into his bedroom, lays her on
the bed, and tries to clean the blood off her wrists, but all Carmilla
wants to do is have sex. While they are so engaged, M looks up to see that
Carmilla's face has turned into that of a vampire.Sure that all his friends have been turned into vampires, M knows
that he must do something. But what? Sunday morning, he goes to see his
father, but good old dad is at work, as usual. M tries to phone his father
at work but gets chewed out for interrupting him. M returns to his own
apartment to find Carmilla gone. He tries to call Carmilla's mother but
hangs up when she lights into him. He tries to call Romero but gets an
answering machine. Out of ideas, M finally goes snooping at Dahmer's house
and finds him passing around a cup and telling his followers about the
ritual they will perform tomorrow night during the lunar eclipse, the
ritual that will "finish what we have started."M knows what he must do. The next morning, Monday, M pays a visit to
a nearby church. While there, he dips a handful of bullets into a bowl of
holy water. After the sun has set and the lunar eclipse begun, M returns
to Dahmer's house, bullets in gun, gun in hand. He begins to shoot at
everyone in the house, even Martín. Dahmer comes flying at M in an attempt
to stop the shooting, but M puts a stake of wood through Dahmer's chest.
Elizabeth is in the bathroom when she hears Carmilla screaming, peeks out
the bathroom door, and sees M firing a bullet into Carmilla's abdomen.
Elizabeth watches as Dahmer reappears (where's the stake in his chest?)
and knocks down M. Then she starts to scream.Elizabeth has been taken to the police station where the police
attempt to calm her down while they wait for her parents. Carmilla is
being rushed into surgery, while her mother sits in the waiting room
watching news reports of the lunar eclipse. M and Romero sit in the police
interrogation room while M tries to explain to Romero how he got the idea
of saving his friends' souls from the professor's own teachings. Romero is
horrified that M would have so twisted his words and storms out of the
room while M yells, "This isn't over yet!"So what happened? Was Dahmer really a vampire, turning M's friends
into vampires? Was M a psychotic murderer? Were they just kids unable to
handle the "good stuff"? Was it the effects of the lunar eclipse?Epilogue: Carmilla lies asleep in her hospital bed after undergoing
surgery. The EKG beeps...beeps...beeps...then straightlines. Carmilla
opens her eyes. In an alternative ending, all the characters -- M, Carmilla, Martín,
Elizabeth, Dahmer, Punk, and Romero -- are seated around the playing table
at the end of an all-night session of Sangre Eterna. Dahmer opens the
curtains, letting in the sun, laughs and says to M, "I'll kill you
tomorrow." Carmilla goes home, sneaks into her bedroom, and hops into
bed. [Original synopsis by bj_kuehl] | gothic | train | imdb | I popped this disk in not expecting much, I only bought it because it was dirt cheap and I'm a fanatic about vampire movies.
I was *very* pleasantly surprised that the movie takes place within the "goth" subculture, and even more so at how authentic the subculture was represented.
You'd think more horror movies, especially vampire ones, would have more of this influence.
I may be a bit prejudiced about liking this movie so much because I love a movie in which I can relate to the characters, who, might I add, are absolutely beautiful, I could stare at them for hours.
The plot is original, I've never seen the whole role-playing game scenario used in a vampire movie before.
I loved how it kept you guessing...are the vampires real, or is M just delusional.
Obviously, with the limited budget, some things are left to be desired, but that just goes with the independent film territory...especially with horror movies that require makeup and special effects.
This is definitely in my top 10 of favorite vampire movies!.
I was surprised at how much I really liked this movie.
The story has a very original twist on the typical vampire script idea.
It has a truly dark and brooding atmosphere about it throughout the film.
The use of blue-tinted lighting throughout the movie helped the atmosphere greatly.
The special effects make-up and prosthetics were better than most "A" Hollywood films...they didn't look so cheesy like in so many vampire films.
Quirky characters make many of the scenes quite memorable.Maybe it had to do with the fact that this film was shot in Chile, and I usually enjoy foreign films.
I'm not really sure if I've ever seen a film from Chile before this.
I would indeed like to see more if they are generally of this high quality.Compared to the last few vampire direct-to-video films I've seen...this is far superior in many aspects.
This Latin film is really amazing.
This Latin film is really amazing.
A group of young people has a singular game on vampires.
At the outset it can seem a simple film of vampires, but soon this begins to transform itself into very dark nightmare, with good special effects, but with good actors, something very rare for this type of films
I don't tell much about the plot to ruin the surprise.
This film does not have million of the American industry, but it has much creativity, well-taken care of line of vision.
I did not know that it was a Latin film (from Chile) until seeing an exhibition here in Mexico.
In the old spirit of gore, this movie from Chile centers on some goth youngsters that play a dungeons and dragons-style game, where they become vampires.
Lead by young charismatic characters, the movie's triumph is its cinematography and style.
Too bad that I saw it with no subtitles, though, it made me miss a lot of the movie..
Although Having a Confused Beginning, a Good Vampire Movie.
She needs to interview a person for her homework of philosophy class, and she meets M (Juan Pablo Ogalde), a vampire lover that plays a RPG called "Eternal Blood" with his Gothic friends Elizabeth (Patricia Lopez) and Martin (Claudio Espinoza), in a seminar.
After the interview, she is invited to participate in the game and dates M in a party in a house owned by the weird Dahmer (Carlos Borquez).
He decides to use the content of the philosophy classes to save Carmilla and his friends from the claws of Dahmer.Although having a confused beginning, "Sangre Eterna" is a good vampire movie.
Then the gore and Gothic story becomes very intriguing and has a great conclusion.
The dark cinematography and music score fits very well to this simple, but efficient film.
My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Sangue Eterno" ("Eternal Blood")Note: On 23 May 2010 I saw this film again..
It's not common to find a film of fantastic genre in Latin America and coverall films South American of this type.
battles in the streets between, armed nuns and vampires, soon an unexpected turn, Gothic parties, subrealistic scenes, a dark and solitary city, a tormented and confused hero, much blood and ultraviolence, FXs, etc
This is Latin American cinema?
was fascinating, only I remember "Cronos" of Guillermo del Toro, like a new innovation in the sort of the vampire by these sides.
Eternal blood is a new blood for the Latin American fantastic.
I wait for with anxieties new films of this Latin director!.
a must see vampire movie.
this is one of the best vampire movies I've seen in a long time.
now days it seems like people are running out of ideas for good and original movies, especially in the horror genre.
its nice to see one that takes a fresh view from something as universal as role-playing as the storytelling engine that drives the movie.
overall, i loved this film.
i accidentally ran across this at the video store, and had to watch it cause i thought it would be a "B" rated horror flick, but i was pleasantly surprised to find out that the plot was good, the acting was good, the music was awesome, and the DP work was good.
the only thing not top notch was the cover art, but that may have been on purpose to get people like me to pick it up.
everyone needs to find this movie at a local video store, or just go buy the thing, its worth it..
It is a film of low budget, but its Gothic and dark atmosphere is very well obtained.
Sangre Eterna(eternal blood) mixture two situations, the fantasy, where the protagonists soon play like vampires and the horror, when the protagonists really discover vampires.
Without a doubt this film is better than many other films of vampires of Hollywood.
The film is elegant, remembers the style of Dario Argento and has much of psychological horror.
Soundtrack is incredible, pure Gothic rock in Spanish!.
Not a bad vampire film for being extremely low-budget and being from Chile.
First off this is this director's 2nd film and before everyone rips it pieces could you do better had you been the director with their budget?
I really enjoyed this Spanish-version vampire film as it's was done not in a style reminscent of American,Asian,or European horror films that we've all seen before.
The version I saw was unrated and very gory and I apperciate the ending where dumb people will go "Huh" and those of us who actually paid attention will be like where there's 2 ways to explain whether or not they were vampires at all?
Very good foregin horror film compared to others that I've seen.
Perfect mixture of horror and drama.
Without a doubt the film is of low budget but more than it surprises is its perfect mixture of horror and drama.
It is a film of vampires very different from which we are customary to see.
The first part is horror, action and Gore.
It is really a refreshment for the abused genre the vampire.
The special effects well are done and the powerful Spanish bands of rock are brilliant.
Another great point to its favor is its great description of real the gothic world, not like in other films where everything is false, here the gothic world is very well represented.
I loved the film.
Honestly I thought it was really cool, besides the fact I kinda didnt understand like a word or two.
I love vampire tales and this was a great one, in my view.
After studying film making, I thought it was a really good film.
Oh I know it was NO "Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire", but it was TOTALLY a great movie that I would love to own.
Yes, it was gory and kinda scary and weird on parts, but its a vampire movie...you kinda have to expect that.out of 10?
An eye-popping-blood-spilling horror film till now..
Sangre Eterna (Eternal Blood) is not just a great horror-vampire film.
Chilean young Writer/Director not only displays a quantum leap from his first feature film Angel Negro (Black Angel)but also gives a contemporary look to the everlasting theme of vampires.
The plot is basically the story of M (Juan Pablo Ogalde) and friends who devote their time mostly playing a role game of vampires called Sangre Eterna, then Carmilla (Blanca Levin)comes into M's world not only as a lover but as a new player of the game too.As time goes by they encounter a dark and mysterious owner of a semi-demolished goth house who invites them to assist their parties and gatherings.
Soon M finds out that these people are not only goth freaks like them but somthing more terriffing and ancient and that vampires not only exist in their role game but in real life too.
Jorge Olguin brings new airs to the chilean cinema scene with a 'pure blood' genre movie which was never done before, adding to the mix state-of-the-art special fx and prosthetics (also never done before in these latitudes)with great performances (specially the one that displays J.P. Ogalde as M)and sound design (made by Chilefilms with 3d dolby surround systems)...as a result you get a real good-blood shedding modern vampire tale, that revists the theme in a unique way with low budget and high visuals.
A MUST-SEE for gore/vampire lovers, although it is not a film that is among the masters Dario Argento or the late-gone-million dollar budget, Sam Raimi.Karel Jorge Bosaans..
Vampires & goth.
I really liked this movie.
The work contains three subjects always appreciated in a movie: vampirism, psychopathology and underground/Gothic scene.
In the first ten minutes you'd probably think it is an ugly film about guns, vampires-zombies and religious persecution, but very soon the story grows to another point very interesting...
I definitely would watch this movie again, and that is a sweet flattery to say about this chilean film.
You better don't expect a "masterpiece", but it is a good work, def.
One of the intentions of the director was to focus more on the human reaction to fear, this is a plus in the movie...
This vampire's movie is one of the worst I've ever seen.Every thing in this movie is awful.there is nothing to remember in Sangre Eterna.It's really sad, because, I'd liked to see the vampire's mythology revisited..
One of the comments who surprise me gratefully is the notice that this movie is (at this time) filmed in USA as a Remake.
Historically is the first Chilean movie that's been filmed in USA from an original Chilean idea.
Probably (we don't know yet) the film director will be Jorge Olgin, the same director of the original Sangre Eterna but with more FX and all the foreigner technology.Personally I recommend this movie..
I'm a fan of horror films and of vampires, my favorite is an old film called Near Dark, for that reason when I could obtain a copy of this films was amazing!
It's a film that is centered in the drama of a group of young people disillusioned of the life and they become jumbled in a subworld of urban vampires.
I have seen much garbage of Hollywood with greater budget and this film it's a breathing and demonstrates that the budget is not everything.
My favorite scene is when the protagonists it has very particular a loving encounter
to Marilyn Manson had liked to be there.
It has interesting a sound track of bands of rock in Spanish, but apparently he is hard to find, in any case in DVD American you can find some videos.
It's very Gothic, there is good make-up type "Buffy" and far very entertained, with a surprising end.
Sangre Eterna is set in Chile where three Goth friends M (Juan Pablo Ogalde), Elizabeth (Patricia López) & Martin (Claudio Espinoza) are heavily into a Vampire role-playing game, a bit like Dungeons & Dragons.
Meanwhile high school student Carmila (Blance Lewin) has to interview an 'interesting' person for a class project, for some reason she ask's M if he will be her interviewee.
M introduces Carmila to the Vampire role-playing game & they, erm, play it.
Then, while at a party, M believes that the host Dahmer (Carlos Borquez) is a real life Vampire & is trying to steal his friends away from him...Known to English audiences as Eternal Blood this Chilean production was co-written & directed by Jorge Olguín & one has to say that I thought it was crap & it's as simple & straight forward as that.
The script by Olguín & Carolina García is a complete mess, it tries to do something a little bit different but as a near two hour feature film it is incredibly painful to sit through in one go.
While watching this it felt like it lasted two days rather than two hours.
The character's are awful, the dialogue is awful & I am not sure what the film was trying to do or who it was trying to appeal to.
The story is a total mess, there are two horrible, horrible twists in Sangre Eterna which left me both frustrated & annoyed.
The twists also have the unwanted consequence of ruining everything that has gone before, the events of Sangre Eterna is either down to a lunar eclipse, Goth Vampire role-playing freaks, drugs, hallucinations, parental neglect or all of the above!
You can take your pick because the film never explains itself or gives any real motivation or reason for anything that happens.
Then there's the final twist ending in which a supposedly dead person open their eyes which again just contradicts everything, & I mean everything that has gone before including a big twist mere minutes before.
This film is a really boring mess that will leave most sane people frustrated, irritated, annoyed & if they are lucky asleep.Director Olguín does nothing special, the film is so tedious, about thirty or forty minutes too long & doesn't make any sense.
Seriously if you sit down & think about it, consider all the twists & Sangre Eterna falls apart as it simply doesn't make any sort of sense.
Forget about any gore, there's a decent ripped-off head in a fantasy sequence but nothing else & the lack of horror, scares & atmosphere kills the film deader than a stone.
It's some sort of horrible cross between a teen Goth soap opera & a horror film.
Even the Chilean locations aren't used to any great effect.With a supposed budget of about $25,000 the makers of Sangre Eterna were obviously working on a low budget which accounts for the lack of action, horror, special effects or gore but it's still no excuse for such a poor script & such a bad film.
Shot in Spanish Sangre Eterna was dubbed into English, very badly.
In fact I haven't seen such a bad dub job on a film since they heyday of the Italian gore film during the late 70's & early 80's which is saying something.Sangre Eterna is a terrible film, if you like watching low budget boring horrible poorly scripted confusing messes then by all means give it a go.
If you are looking for an entertaining horror film with some good dramatic incident, a story that makes sense & doesn't bore you to death then avoid Sangre Eterna at all costs..
Bunch of Goth kids make a fraudulent non-movie.
*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*I waited 100 minutes for this movie to start and it never did.
There should be a flashing warning sign on the front of the video box: WARNING: THIS IS NOT A HORROR MOVIE!
Since there isn't I'll warn you now: THIS IS NOT A HORROR MOVIE!
Oh sure, there are two bad beasties on the cover looking all blood thirsty.
There were some interesting scenes at the beginning which seemed to be building up to something.
The Goth kids are playing their vampire role-playing game and priests are wielding shotguns.
Anything that was remotely interesting in this movie was all in someone's imagination.
The imagination of drug taking Goth losers.
I deliberately avoided renting a similar straight to video movie called "Vampire Clan" because I knew the "twist" to the story.
I thought this movie was going to dip over into the horror genre.
Waste of time, energy and space.Screw this movie and all it stands for..
Goth losers play an RPG and become vampires along the way in this stylish yet bad, foreign horror film..
(Note: This review is based on the English-dubbed VHS version of the film.)Pros: Has a decent budget for a B-grade horror movie; the dubbed-over voices are decentCons: Lame acting; lame special effects; painfully bad senseless violence; the story disappears about an hour into the filmPlot summary(WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS!): Eternal Blood is a movie about a girl named Carmilla, a college student studying journalism.
She befriends a group of Gothic students who are playing a role-playing game named after the film.
She becomes interested in the game through M, the leader of the group she met in her class.
During a strange party at an abandoned house, the group meets Dahmer(What a name, LOL!), a weird guy that introduces them to vampiric rituals.
M realizes that Dahmer and his thugs are vampires that are changing his friends into vampires, and it's up to M to use ancient texts as a way make tham human again before it's too late.Review: Compared to The Zombie Chronicles and Frost: Portrait of a Vampire, Eternal Blood is Academy Award winner.
Seriously, this movie is a waste of money.
Too bad the writer of this movie didn't sit down and make a decent script.
EB actually LOST its story about a hour into the film.
After that, it seemed like the director just made stuff up as the movie went along.
If you like gore, Goth, vampires with HORRIBLE hairlstyles, and gun-toting preists, then this movie is for you. |
tt0242285 | El arte de morir | Un grupo de amigos se reune medio a escondidas en una casa derruida. Uno de ellos, Nacho (Gustavo Salmerón), muere. Él es un joven pintor, con unas ideas muy intensas y oscuras sobre la vida y la muerte. Los otros seis chicos y chicas presentes en el incendio de la casa podrían haber hecho algo para salvarle, pero no lo hicieron. La gente piensa que ha desaparecido sin dejar rastro. Al final, Quintana (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba), un detective privado, acepta investigar el caso.El grupo de amigos del poeta, todos jóvenes que se dedican a disfrutar la vida sin preocuparse de mucho más, siente que la presión sobre ellos aumenta. No quieren recordar o hablar de lo que pasó. Iván (Fele Martínez), parece el líder natural de los amigos, y suya es la idea de colaborar con la investigación. Los personajes recuerdan al artista, que a pesar de ser su amigo a veces resultaba cargante, sobre todo en su obsesión con la muerte, y las reflexiones que hace sobre el pasado cuando la gente moría en casa, no en hospitales.De ese grupo de amigos parece que ninguno va a salir ileso de la aventura. Especialmente bien rodadas son las muertes de dos de las chicas, una en el garaje de su casa y otra persegida por un grupo de mastines negros en un escenario fantasmagórico.Clara (María Esteve) se enfrenta a Iván. Ha notado cosas extrañas, como unas llaves que aparecen y desaparecen, cosas que no están donde deberían estar, teléfonos que hacen cosas extrañas o no funcionan...Al final, volvemos a ver la escena del incendio. Resulta que nadie sobrevivió al incendio, pero ninguno de los seis amigos se había dado cuenta de ello. De alguna manera, habían seguido comportando como si estuvieran vivos, aunque no lo estaban. Nacho comenta como al principio, a él le pasó lo mismo, y tardó bastante tiempo en darse cuenta de que estaba muerto. | suspenseful | train | imdb | Intelligent edition, attractive scenarios and slick utilization of shock images make this one, an acceptable thriller plenty of killings.
Spanish Slasher full of thrills , suspense , grisly killings , chills , intrigue and plot twists .
It gives a terrifying and disturbingly youthful view of fears in which posses an element of fantasy .
In Spain a young artist named Nacho (Gustavo Salmeron) has gone missing , and a tough Inspector (Emilio Gutierrez Caba) is investing the strange disappearance .
The police detective asks his young friends but they deny involvement .
Six friends are the followings : Fele Martínez as Iván , María Esteve as Clara , Adrià Collado as Carlos , Lucía Jiménez as Patricia , Elsa Pataky as Candela and Sergio Peris-Mencheta as Ramón ; all of them become the axis of the investigation , being pressured for their knowledge of the artist's whereabouts .
They all deny to know his whereabout , and soon they have reason to fear for their lives as it appears a serial killer committing a a criminal spree , as the murderer is hunting them all down.
The one friend (Fele Martinez) closest to the artist seeks helplessly responses until he finds out the terrible true .This exciting , bizarre film contains tension , thriller, drama , mystery , plot twists and shocks , including decent scares with tense terror sequences especially in its final part , in a creepy denouement .
The picture is thrilling and some moment brilliant, and the players are quite reliable .
Enjoyable main actors formed by a Spanish-all-star-cast .
Being supported by fine secondary actors such as Emilio Gutierrez Caba as a hardened detective who takes on the case and Adolfo Fernandez as Luis , among others .
Creepy movie builds taut by showing virtually well staged killings , lush settings , unsettling score and evocative cinematography .
Although is sometimes slow moving , overlong and stagy , however is entertaining for continuous suspense .
Sinister , mysterious atmosphere is nicely photographed by magnificent cameraman Javier Salmones , and standing out blue colors with luxurious images .
Suspenseful and frightening soundtrack by Javier Navarrete heightens the suspense .This motion picture displaying genuine chills , suspense, mystery and dark atmosphere and a twisted finale , being skillfully proceeded by Álvaro Fernández Armero and turned out to one of the most unusual Spanish thrilling movies of the 2.000s and certainly one of the most unsettling .
By that time , there have been realized several Spanish ¨Slashers¨ imitating to ¨Scream¨ saga , such as : ¨School killer¨, ¨Tuno Negro¨, , but ¨El Arte de Morir¨ is the best .
His director Alvaro Armero was born in 1969 in Madrid, Spain .
He is a good director and writer, expert on comedies and especially known for Todo es Mentira (1994), Salir Pitando , El Juego de Verdad , Nada en la Nevera and Brujas ..
Not a bad film, not at all.
Directing lacks of strength, has a few flaws, might get a little boring sometimes, but this is one of the few Spanish movies I would save if the Earth were to be wiped out by an striking meteor.
At first glance (you only need to have a look at the film poster) you get the impression (at least I got it) that this is going to be a very typical teenager-murder movie, as silly and void as any other.
The first, say, 30 or 40 minutes (I can't remember) don't do anything to change this point of view.
The murders begin, and sometimes it gets even visually silly.
But then things change, and the story starts getting really weird...
what the heck's going on?
you might ask yourself.
When the big twist, the ultimate truth, arrives, something in your head goes off and you realise the cleverness of the story.All in all, a clever thriller, sufficiently well put together.
Could've been better done, but it's not bad.
An unusual movie for Spanish standards, and I applaud that.6 out of 10.
Better than what i expected.
This film turned out to be an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours in front of the boob tube.
The film succeeds due to the entertaining ensemble cast and the great to watch acting of Fele Martinez.
Man, I love this guy.
He seems to make every film he's in.
The films that I have seen him in I greatly enjoy.
He seems to me sort of like a Spanish version of Ewan Mcgregor, maybe even better.
He's very versatile and fun to watch (Lovers of the Artic Circle, Open Your Eyes, Talk To Her).
For him I give the movie a 7.
SPANISH THRILLER/DRAMA,REALLY WORTH WATCHING !!.
Nice Spanish Thriller(supernatural)/Drama that's definitely worth watching,nice rental!!It's your typical "Kill them one by one" movie (like Scream) where a bunch of young adults did something wrong in the past and have to pay for that now...This is NOT a horror/Comedy,it breaths a dark,chilling atmosphere...
It's very well directed,kind of strange and has good music(New Wave/Gothic).Ideal to watch once on tv or for an overnight rental.GO SEE THIS,YOU'LL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!!See ya!.
it was the idea I loved.
as I saw this flick in the middle of the night, that might have made it even more breathtaking, for that is what this is, breathtaking.
The idea is brilliant and quite original, the idea that one can die at different levels before the final death, and that death, however terrifying, is the final liberation.
But it is the idea I loved, not the film itself.
Something is lost, the staging is simple and the murders are textbook.
It in the end is nothing more then a successful slasher film.
I wish someone would do a remake which was actually true to the idea.
The only character which really works here is Ivan, a forlorn and neglected genius, slightly schizophrenic and well, charismatic.
Unlike the others, who are simply uninteresting..
Good and imaginative Spanish horror movie.
I have to admit that when I decided to see this movie I was completely sure it was going to be another "Scream" clone.
Despite that, since it was the first Spanish horror movie that belonged to this new "horror-movie-for-teenagers" genre, I though it might be interesting to watch.How little could I imagine that it was going to be much more intelligent and scary than any "I know what you did last summer" type of movie(It also has some flaws,though, but I'll take about them at the end).
The plot seems rather similar to that of the movie I've just mentioned, but only at the beginning, because afterwards it has amazing plot twists that don't just focus on the identity of the killer.
(Even though the final plot twist isn't good enough)The way it's directed helps the movie be different too, making the movie kind of "cold" and distant.
To be honest, I think the director has got inspired by films such as Crash and Gattaca to set this kind of mood.The performances are good, specially the main two characters, even though sometimes they behave strangely.
(They seem to be a bit unfocused sometimes, but maybe that's the way their characters are supposed to be)As for the bad things, the movie gets a bit boring towards the end, not because of what happens, but because of the performances and the direction (I know, I'm contradicting myself a little bit here, since I've said all of this was good, but maybe the director should have made things go faster at the end and make the character's personalities not so monotonous.) Then, when you thing it's over, there are two more plot twists that instead of getting better and better get worse and worse, and make the ending less interesting.Overall, "El arte the morir" is a GOOD movie BRILLIANTLY directed and with fairly good CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.
And it's much more intelligent than Scream2 and "I know what you did last summer" and its sequel.
Boredom in the kingdom of spain.
Spain has made good impression lately with movies such as The Nameless, tesis, Abre los ojos, Los amantes del circulo polar...
Unfortunately el arte de morir fails to impress.
it inspires boredom instead of inspiring awe and terror.
The murders depicted (it's a slasher film) are uninteresting which is the worse defect for a film of that genre..
Did he rise from the dead?.
People will fatally evoke "los ostros" and "the sixth sense".Those remarkable works did not invent the "trick" though.It was already used in "carnival of souls "(1962).And anyway "arte de morir" owes more to the largely underrated "Jacob's ladder" and to the rather original adolescent movie " Campfire tales" ."El arte de morir" suffers from a screenplay which lacks focus and intensity and the story does not take off during the first thirty minutes.There are good ideas which suggest that the movie could have been much better than what we see on the screen.I particularly dig the lines "it takes nine months to be born,why would it take so little time to die?""There'll come a time when all of us must leave here(...) There' ll come a time when all our hopes are fading When things that seem so very plain Become an awful pain." (George Harrison,"Art of dying","All things must pass " album).
Not Amenabar..
A new genre was created in the Spanish cinema when Alejandro Amenabar presented his two first and great movies, "Tesis" and "Abre los Ojos".
They were brilliant movies with some things in common: A thriller with complicated stories, scenes of great visual impact where weird, impossible things happen and leave the viewer breathless, awaiting for the next surprise, but at the same time with brilliantly resolved screenplay and avoiding the cheap "scary" tricks of bad terror movies.
Young and relatively unknown actors are also used in both movies, but they perform great, and the movies last in your memory forever.Some movies have tried to follow this pattern to obtain the same success as Amenabar's.
With some good marketing and Amenabar's well rounded work, they have everything to be box-office megahits, and indeed they have been.
Some of these movies are "Nadie conoce a Nadie" and "El Arte de Morir".
The first one was not bad after all, even though Amenabar's movies were a lot better; but "El Arte de Morir" is really a very VERY bad movie.The story is very typical and seen before a lot of times; a killer goes after a group of friends, who are killed one by one.
Nobody knows who he is and even if it's one of the group members, ala "Scream".
(I don't think this is a spoiler since it's what the trailer shows).
What tries to make the movie special is some weird events that happen along the movie, which are explained in the ending.
But overall, it's a move seen a thousand times.
However, that doesn't necessary have to be a bad thing.
But also the acting is just horrible (Only María Estevez does an acceptable job and Fele Martinez is disappointing after much better performances in Tesis and Abre los Ojos), the story is quite uninteresting and the ending is plain dull and implausible.
Some scenes are absurd, they are often placed in moments of the movie where they do not belong and the killings are...
well, boring.
Some key factors of the movie are overlooked (Nacho's paintings influenced by El Bosco) and almost everything is undeveloped.All in all, a really bad movie that will make a lot of money thanks to a good marketing campaign, a nice trailer and the hope of seeing another great "Abre los Ojos".
But stop dreaming.
We will have to wait for Amenabar's next movie for that. |
tt0469494 | There Will Be Blood | It is 1898. In the New Mexico wilderness, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) works his silver mine. After blasting out the small mine with dynamite, Plainview falls and breaks his leg. After finding the silver ore, he drags himself to town to sell it. He hires a crew, including a man caring for an infant son. When the silver lode plays out, Plainview discovers oil in the mine. He builds a pump and recreates himself as an oil man. The young father dies in a drilling accident, Planview adopts the young boy as his own and names him H.W. Nine years later, Plainview is a successful if still somewhat minor oil man. He has several productive wells around New Mexico and, with H.W. (Dillon Freasier), travels the state to buy the drilling rights to private property.At a meeting with local people of an unidentified town, Plainview lectures them on his business plan: he claims he does all the work himself, only hires men he can trust to complete the work and will eliminate the need for a "contractor", a middleman of sorts that will collect more money from the community that Daniel believes should go back to the landowners themselves. He also introduces his son as his partner and claims that his business is a family-run operation. When the people begin to question him rigorously and argue loudly among themselves, Daniel turns down the offer and leaves, knowing the community is a bit too smart to be taken advantage of.Daniel later meets with a husband and wife and draws up a contract to drill on their land. The couple are reluctant but Daniel appeals to them by talking about their children. The well comes in as a gusher some time later.One night, a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) visits Plainview's camp. Paul sells to Plainview information about his family's ranch in Little Boston, California, which he says has an ocean of oil underneath it. Plainview and H.W. travel to the Sunday Ranch and, while pretending to hunt quail, confirm what Paul told them. That night, Plainview negotiates with the Sunday patriarch, Abel (David Willis) and Paul's twin brother, Eli (Paul Dano). The price is $10,000, which will go to the building of a new parish, the Church of the Third Revelation; Eli is a bland, uncharismatic but ambitious preacher and faith healer. Daniel agrees to pay Eli half of the money at first and will pay the rest when the derrick produces. Eli wants to pray to conclude the deal but Plainview refuses.Plainview assembles his crew at the Sunday Ranch and builds the first derrick. He also buys almost all of the land surrounding the Sunday Ranch so he will have not only those drilling rights but also the right to build a pipeline to the ocean to circumvent the railroads and their shipping costs. Only a man named William Bandy refuses to sell. Eli wants to bless the derrick before drilling begins but Plainview rebuffs him and instead has Eli's little sister, Mary (Sydney McAllister), dedicate the new endeavor. Mary and H.W. become playmates and Plainview buys her a new dress. At dinner one night, he tells Mary in front of Abel that her father will never hit her again for refusing to pray. Eli and Plainview continue to irritate one another: Plainview resents that Eli solicits his workers to come to daily prayer services, but when a worker dies while trying to free the drill, Plainview has Eli arrange for the funeral. When meeting with Eli about the funeral at his ramshackle church, he watches Eli deliver a fiery sermon about casting out the Devil from a elderly woman with severe arthritis. After mass, Eli agrees to speak at the funeral and tells Daniel that, had he been permitted to bless the well, the accident might never have happened.A few days later, the drill finally strikes oil. The escaping gases cause an explosion. H.W., who was watching the drill from the derrick, is deafened. He becomes sullen and mistrusting. Soon Plainview has three thriving oil wells in the Little Boston area. Eli goes to Daniel and demands the $5000 that Daniel promised him and his church. Daniel immediately attacks him, slapping him and dragging him to a pool of mud, which he smears all over Eli. Daniel also mocks Eli's supposed power of faith healing, saying that Eli did nothing to restore H.W.'s hearing.Shortly thereafter, a man named Henry (Kevin O'Connor) appears on Plainview's doorstep, claiming to be Plainview's half brother. Because he knows details about Plainview's family and hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Plainview trusts him and takes him on as a worker. Plainview admits to Henry that he holds most people in contempt and uses them only to further his own goals. "I have a competition in me," he tells him. "I want no one else to succeed." He also admits that he can't do his work alone anymore. H.W. snoops through Henry's belongings and, jealous that Plainview has someone new in his life, attempts to burn down the house with Henry and Plainview in it. Plainview doesn't discipline H.W. but instead sends him away to a boarding school in San Francisco, callously leaving him on the train with his assistant, Fletcher, who accompanies him there.Competitors try to buy Daniel's wells for $1 million but Plainview rejects the offer and their patronizing sympathy for H.W. When one competitor suggests Plainview should retire to take care of H.W., Plainview threatens his life. He and Henry go to the Bandy property to inquire about leasing the land to build the pipeline. After surveying the land, they swim in the ocean. When Henry doesn't seem to understand a reference about Fond du Lac, Plainview grows suspicious. That night, Plainview, brandishing a pistol, forces Henry to confess: Henry isn't his brother, but knew his brother in Kansas. When the real brother died, Henry assumed his identity and made his way to California and found Daniel. Plainview kills Henry and buries him in a shallow grave on the Bandy property. The next morning, Bandy (Hans Howes) wakes Plainview and tells him that he can lease the land if he allows himself to be baptized at the Church of the Third Revelation. When Bandy reveals that he knows Plainview killed Henry, Plainview has no choice but to agree. He is baptized after he publicly and loudly announces that he is a sinner and abandoned H.W. and is warmly embraced by the church. Eli also announces to the church that Daniel has given them $5000, the original amount he owed to Eli.H.W. returns from the boarding school and Plainview warmly greets him. H.W. now knows sign language and speaks through an interpreter. He and Mary play together, and she learns sign language too. When they are married in the late 1920s, she signs the minister's sermon and marriage rites to him. Plainview has become a drunkard, even more misanthropic and isolated than ever, living alone in a large mansion and shooting his valuables with a pistol. When H.W. announces his intention to move to Mexico and begin his own oil business, Plainview immediately becomes more despondent and reveals that H.W. was never his biological son and insultingly disowns him. Sometime later, Eli visits him in the mansion's bowling alley. As Plainview, like a beast, gnaws the cold steak leftover from his dinner, Eli reveals that old Bandy has died and that his grandson wants to sell the oil drilling rights to his grandfather's land in order to fund his goal of becoming a movie star -- with Eli as the broker for the deal. Plainview agrees but only if Eli will say that he is a "false prophet and God is a superstition." When Eli does so several times, Plainview reveals that, having owned all the wells around the Bandy ranch, he has already taken the oil from the Bandy property through drainage. Eli reveals that, despite a successful radio preaching career, he is broke due to bad investments. Plainview chases him around the bowling alley then bludgeons him to death with a bowling pin. When the butler comes to see what the commotion has been, Plainview announces to him, "I'm finished" . | comedy, depressing, realism, murder, violence, atmospheric, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt0045566 | A Blueprint for Murder | Young Polly Cameron is rushed to the hospital, accompanied by her stepmother Lynne. All the while she is screaming "Don't touch my feet!" Doctors cannot pinpoint the cause of her illness but believe she was poisoned. The following morning her uncle, Whitney Cameron (known as Whit), arrives at the hospital. By this time Polly is stable. Lynne asks Whit if he can stay for a while to spend time with Polly and her younger brother Doug. Whit agrees and later stops by to visit his friends, Maggie and Fred Sargent. Fred is the family attorney and Maggie is a journalist. When Whit mentions Polly's strange symptoms and how she did not want her feet touched, Maggie is reminded of a case long ago. She promises to do some research. Whit is not really concerned because Polly is recovering.That night Whit has dinner with Lynne and Doug. He suggests that Doug spend the upcoming summer with him. Lynne initially agrees. Then the hospital calls. Polly has had a relapse. By morning she is dead.Whit again visits the Sargents. Maggie has information about a man who died from strychnine poisoning. He kept saying "Don't touch my hands!" She suggests that Lynne may have poisoned Polly. Whit scoffs at the idea, mentioning how close Lynne was to the children and how well she treated them. Maggie points out that history has had other female murderers who were like Lynne: cultured, beautiful, and intelligent. Whit finds himself becoming suspicious. Fred points out that under the terms of Whit's brother's will, Lynne has only a small income. She would not inherit the entire estate unless both of the children died.Lynne decides to take Doug to Europe for a year instead of letting him spend the summer with his uncle. There is nothing that Whit can do to prevent it, since his brother's will gives custody to Lynne. Whit talks to the doctors and nurses who took care of his niece. The child received only medication from the hospital pharmacy. Lynne refused to permit an autopsy. She wanted the child cremated but Whit talked her out of it. He felt it was not what his brother would have wanted.By now the Sargents and Whit fear for Doug's safety. They are afraid he will mysteriously die while in Europe. Polly's body is exhumed for an autopsy. Whit conceals this from Lynne until the results are in. Polly died of strychnine poisoning.The police interview the servants and Lynne but come up with nothing. No one would admit to giving Polly anything to eat on the night she took sick. Lynne is very cooperative and even suggests hiring a private investigator. Whitney discovers that the pills given to Polly on the day she died were from a different pharmacy, since the one at the hospital was closed. Lynne was on her way home to pick up some things for Polly and offered to have it filled. There seems little doubt that she was involved. She is furious when she learns that Whit is behind the investigation. After interviewing her again, the police arrest her and a hearing is held to see if their is enough evidence to charge her.Doug is told nothing of what is going on. The Sargents take care of him until the hearing is over. There simply isn't enough evidence for a conviction and Lynne is free to go. Whit tries and fails to get emergency custody of Doug. He knows of only one way to keep Doug safe and that is to kill Lynne. He purchases a bottle of rat poison. The store clerk shows him the same thing in tablet form. Whit notices how they look just like aspirin tablets except for the "W" stamped on each one, to represent the company that manufactured them.Whit books passage on the same ship that Lynne and Doug are on. Once in his cabin, he pours the rat poison into a different bottle and conceals it a pocket. He still isn't sure if he can carry out his plan. Doug is pleased to see Whit but Lynne is not. Whit apologizes to her for all that happened and sweet-talks her, giving her the impression that he is interested in her romantically. Later he loses his nerve and tosses the bottle of rat poison into the sea.On the last night of the voyage, Whit goes to Lynne's stateroom to retrieve her coat. On an impulse he goes into the bathroom and checks her toiletries. To his shock, her bottle of aspirin contains three of the "W" tablets he had seen earlier. He realizes his suspicious were correct all along and that he must quickly come up with a new plan.After a last walk around the deck, Whit and Lynne return to her cabin. They kiss and he orders drinks from the bar. Behind Lynne's back he dissolves one of the "W" tables into her drink. She complains of the bitter taste and Whit says his is bitter too. After she finishes the drink, he tells he what he did and that she only has a few minutes before the poison takes effect. Lynne angrily denies having anything to do with Polly's death and says the "W" tablets are from an old bottle that she combined with a new bottle. Whit reminds her of the ticking clock and that she can still be saved. She orders him to leave and goes into her bedroom. To her shock a man is sitting there. He identifies himself as the ship's detective and that Mr. Cameron called him to witness the conversation. The men wait as the minutes tick by. Lynne shows no symptoms of having been poisoned. The detective is confused and asks Whit if he had really given this woman strychnine. Whit replies that he gave her a pill from her aspirin bottle.After ten minutes pass and Lynne is still fine, she orders them to leave. The detective tells Whit that he will have to write up a report of the evening's events. Whit goes out on deck, shocked that the "W" pill hadn't been strychnine after all. Polly's death must have been caused by a careless pharmacist giving her the wrong pills. Then he is summoned to the ship's doctor's office. Lynne had called them and they just managed to save her life.Back in New York, Lynne is tried and convicted for the murder of her stepdaughter. She receives a life sentence. The final scene shows the Sargents waving goodbye as Whit and Doug board a plane. | murder | train | imdb | null |
tt1767354 | Odd Thomas | Odd Thomas (Yelchin) is a psychic who lives in a small town in California. He describes his ability as, "I see dead people, but then, by God, I do something about it." One morning the ghost of a teenage girl, Penny Kallisto, silently leads him to Harlo Landerson. Odd accuses Harlo of raping and murdering Penny. Harlo flees. Odd chases him into a child's bedroom in a stranger's house. Harlo and Odd fight and Harlo is knocked unconscious. Odd's friend, police chief Wyatt Porter (Dafoe), is aware of Odd's psychic gifts and promises to spin the story to keep public attention away from him.
Odd has a vision of faceless people wearing bowling shirts who cry out to him to save them. A faceless gunman shoots them all, including Odd. Recovering from the disturbing dream, he goes to his job as a short-order cook. He serves lunch to a strange man named Hensley, whose hair resembles some kind of mold. Hensley is surrounded by dozens of bodachs, invisible creatures that feed on evil and carnage that only Odd can see. Odd's co-worker, Viola Peabody (Mbatha-Raw), recounts a strange dream in which she saw herself shot dead with another man. The man's clothing is identical to that worn by the faceless people in Odd's vision.
Odd uses his psychic magnetism to find Hensley; the trail leads to the mall where Odd's girlfriend Stormy (Timlin) works at an ice cream shop. Odd borrows Stormy's scooter to follow Hensley home. When Hensley leaves again, Odd breaks into his house. He finds an ashtray with several brands of cigarette butts in it, indicating that Hensley had visitors. Odd learns that the man's real name is Bob Robertson; he and Stormy refer to him as "Fungus Bob". Odd finds a file containing newspaper clippings of mass murderers, arranged by name. There is also a blank calendar page for the next day; Odd realizes that Robertson is planning something bad on that date. Odd reports this to Chief Porter, who assigns two deputies to follow Fungus Bob.
Odd meets Stormy for dinner in the belfry of a church. They see Fungus Bob approaching and they flee to the sacristy. As they escape the church, Robertson destroys the sacristy. Stormy calls Chief Porter, who finds the church vandalized but no evidence to link it to Robertson.
Odd's psychic magnetism leads him and Stormy to a bowling alley, where the bowling shirts from his vision are sold. Chief Porter sends Officer Simon Varner (Tortorella) to watch the place on Odd's advice. Varner asks Odd about Robertson and is surprised to learn that Odd had encountered him only a few hours ago. He presses Odd for more information. Stormy interrupts by asking about Varner's visible tattoo, the letters "POD". Varner dismisses it as an embarrassment from his youth, an abbreviated obscenity that he won't discuss.
Viola remembers more details of her dream; she tells Odd that she and the man in the bowling shirt were not the only victims of the shooting, and a large group of people were killed. Odd sees bodachs hovering over Vi's daughters, and he advises her to leave town with her daughters immediately.
While driving home, Stormy is overcome with fear for Odd's safety and he tries to comfort her. They hear a woman screaming. Odd finds Lysette, a friend of Chief Porter and his wife, who has been mauled to death by dogs resembling those at Robertson's home. Another man tried to rescue the woman by shooting the dogs, but was too late. Returning to Stormy's apartment, Odd sees a van watching the building. After securing Stormy, he returns to his apartment.
He finds Fungus Bob shot to death in his bathtub, with evidence framing Odd for the murder. Odd surmises that if he goes to the police, Porter will be required to arrest him based on the evidence, preventing him from preventing the next day's disaster. He discovers that Bob has been dead for quite some time and deduces that the encounter at the church was with the dead man's restless spirit. Wrapping the body in sheets, Odd dumps the corpse in the execution chamber of an abandoned prison. As he drives back through town, the magnitude of the coming disaster is indicated by the swarming of hundreds of bodachs.
Chief Porter is shot in a home invasion. Odd rushes to the hospital and learns that Porter is alive thanks to a metal trinket Odd had given him, but in serious condition. Returning to Bob's home, Odd finds a receipt for a moving van and improvised explosives, and browser bookmarks for Satanic websites. Robertson's poltergeist destroys the house as Odd escapes.
Odd investigates Bob's fatal bullet wound, and finds a tattoo matching Varner's. He realizes that "POD" is an abbreviation for "Prince of Darkness". Odd realizes that Robertson was eliminated by his co-conspirators because Odd could identify him.
Odd's psychic magnetism leads him back to the mall. He finds Officer Eckles has murdered the mall security staff. Odd disables him with a baseball bat. He takes Eckles's pistol and seeks out Varner. Hearing screams from the end of the mall where Stormy works, he hurries to the site. He spots another gunman firing off an automatic weapon. Odd fires at him with Eckles's weapon as the gunman has emptied his magazine, he tries to reload Odd continues to shoot at him while being surrounded with bodachs. When the gunman inserts another magazine and is about to kill Odd, Odd reaches him and kills him instead. The lingering spirit of Lysette appears and directs him to the loading dock. Odd removes the gunman's mask and recognizes him as the man who tried to rescue Lysette. Odd rushes to the loading dock where he discovers Bob's moving van packed with explosives, apparently part of a plan to kill the shoppers in the mall. Varner emerges and shoots Odd, but Odd manages to start the van and drive it away from the mall. Varner clings to the outside of the van and attempts to kill Odd. Odd jumps from the van as Varner enters the cab, and the van crashes into a man-made canal and explodes, incinerating Varner but killing no one else. A black, shrieking spirit escapes from the flames.
Odd wakes in the hospital. Stormy is attending him. Viola greets him and tells him that Porter has been released from intensive care. Odd is a local hero. He retreats to Stormy's apartment to enjoy uninterrupted time with her. Porter, his wife, and Viola arrive and reveal what he already knows: Stormy was killed in the mall shooting and he has been spending time with her lingering spirit. Porter, realizing that Stormy is staying in this world only for Odd, advises him to let her go. Odd bids her a tearful farewell, promising her that they'll be reunited one day.
Odd travels to Las Vegas to continue his crusade to help the living and the lingering dead, believing that he is not yet worthy of an afterlife with Stormy. | comedy, neo noir, murder, paranormal, cult, violence, flashback, good versus evil, psychedelic, humor, tragedy, revenge | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0489327 | Venus | The plot concerns Maurice (Peter O'Toole), an elderly actor who finds himself increasingly attracted to his friend Ian's great-niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker) while simultaneously finding himself in deteriorating health due to prostate cancer. Maurice's friend describes the great-niece as a trouble maker and a nuisance, but Maurice discovers that Jessie warms up to him when he starts interacting with her. He takes her to the National Gallery in London, England to view his favourite painting, the Rokeby Venus, by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez.Jessie had expressed interest in modelling (Maurice initially mis-hears this as "yodelling") and Maurice arranges for Jessie to model nude for an art class. As a result of Jessie posing for the art class, and inspired by his favourite painting, Maurice decides to give Jessie the nickname "Venus". Maurice and Jessie develop a passive/aggressive relationship over the course of the film. Maurice is forward in terms of his attraction towards Jessie while Jessie occasionally indulges his whims to a limited extent, such as touching her hand and smelling her neck, but also retracts the indulgences when she feels that he has gone too far. The plot of the film revolves around the evolving friendship or relationship between the two characters. For Maurice, this appears to be the last attempt at something approaching a love life, as his prostate operation has left him impotent. For Jessie, it is less clear what she sees in Maurice. During the course of the film we see her do everything from exploiting him (trying to get him to buy her presents, trying to use his flat to have sex with a boy), taking care of him, flirting with him, and rejecting him sexually to engaging with him as a friend. During the course of the film we learn that she has been rejected by her mother and great-uncle for her promiscuous life style; it is implied that she is drawn to Maurice because he does not judge her as harshly as her family members have.The plot comes to a head when Jessie becomes involved with a boy. The two young lovers convince Maurice to take a walk so that they can have sex. Maurice initially obliges the request, but returns to kick them out of his flat. A scuffle ensues and Jessie knocks down Maurice, injuring him. Jessie leaves with the boy and apparently spends the night out partying with him at clubs, later returning to check on Maurice. When the paramedics arrive, Maurice claims he cannot remember who attacked him, much to Jessie's surprise. Then Maurice calls for "Venus" to take care of him. Jessie, remorseful, agrees to look after Maurice. Some time later, after Maurice has at least partly recovered, he takes Jessie to the seaside at Whitstable in Kent. As they sit down by the water Maurice says to Jessie "Now, we can really talk", and dies, leaning on her. | romantic | train | imdb | null |
tt3713166 | Unfriended | The Universal Studios logo plays but starts breaking up, an homage to the broken Skype video that will take place in the film.The movie starts with someone's video desktop. (Note: the entire movie takes place from the point-of-view of a laptop computer screen). They are on LiveLeak website being told that the video they are about to watch is disturbing and they must agree to be 18 or older to view it. They accept. The description top says this is a response to a YouTube video anonymously posted (with a link). The blurry video is played, showing a girl on a schools baseball field with a gun pointed at her face. People scream out at her to drop the gun but then she shoots herself. Everyone screams. The video is stopped as people run to her. The YouTube link is clicked and begins to play.We see Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) at a party, drunk, lying on a table with a guy on top of her. The video is interrupted as an incoming Skype call comes in its a shirtless guy lying on his bed named Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm). He asks the girl whose POV we are seeing the film from to show off her body. She shows off her knees. He tells her to go higher. He picks up a large knife and demands that she take off her top. She tilts the camera up and unbuttons her shirt she is not wearing a bra but does not pull the shirt open and then tilts the camera down to show off her panties. All the while she tells him to keep threatening her with the knife, (i.e., "Take off those panties or I'll do it for you"). We see her face; she is Blaire (Shelley Hennig), the pretty heroine of the story (and from the POV of her laptop screen takes place). She tells Mitch that she is ready to have sex for the first time with him on the night of formal. This conversation is interrupted when three other people pop up on the Skype call. Their videos freeze her in her underwear and him, jumping up in his boxer shorts. His best friend, Adam (Will Peltz), points out that Mitch has a boner. Jess (Renee Olstead), Blaire's friend, is there, too, along with their wisecracking pal, Ken (Jacob Wysocki).They notice that there is a mysterious person on the Skype with them, who is dubbed "billie227". Ken jokes that he probably learned about their chat on the Boners & Farts website. He holds up his blender and says he's going to make his salsa and then there will be farts. They keep asking who invited the stranger but nobody knows who it is. They all disconnect to try to get rid of him. Blaire messages Mitch and asks who the guy is. He says he doesn't know. She continues talking, but he disappears from the conversation.They all reconnect in the Skype but the mysterious unseen person Billie227 is still there.They try to disconnect him but there is no option on his video to do so. Laura continues messaging Mitch privately on Skype, asking where he went. He says he was distracted by a weird message from Laura Barns. Just then, she gets a Facebook notification saying she got a new message from Laura Barns, too. Laura asks her, "Hey, Blair, who posted the video?" Blair asks, "Who is this?" It says, Laura is typing but there is no reply. She continues asking questions and types: "Why would you do something so messed up?" but doesn't send. On the Skype messenger, Mitch tells her that maybe the dead is trying to contact with them and sends her a link to a website forum where people are posting pictures and telling stories about how someone they knew was contacted by the deceased and then ends up killing themselves. It says people can be possessed and that they should not respond to any contact from the dead. Blaire begins freaking out with Mitch, asking who this person is and what she should do. He tells her she should "unfriend" her. She goes on the Facebook profile but both Unfriend and Report/Block are unclickable. She tells Mitch this, freaking out, asking him for help. He calmly replies, Try refreshing the page. She does and it actually works she unfriends her. She then gets a message from Billie227 saying "Nice try". Laura is still listed as her friend.Mitch and Blaire go back in the Skype room, nervous. The others say they want to bring Val into the conversation but they all groan, saying they can't stand her. Val (Courtney Halverson) connects with them and Ken loudly calls her a slut and starts teasing her. They begin talking about the concert tickets Val is getting them. Blaire continues messaging with Mitch, telling him she couldn't unfriend her. He suggests that it's her brother. She says her brother wouldn't do that. He tells Blaire to turn her account into a Memorial page. She does a Google search on how to memorialize a Facebook account.Blaire stumbles upon a RIP Laura Barns Facebook community page with thousands of likes, realizing that Laura is now more popular and loved than ever. Blaire fills out the form typing in Laura Burns name, the date of her death, and finding an article on Google about her suicide as proof she is deceased. She lists herself as a friend, opts for it to be made into a Memorial Site, and then clicks Send. Immediately, all of her answers change to: WEGOTHER WEGOTHER WEGOTHER WEGOTHER written over and over which causes the form not to end. Now she realizes she isn't dealing with just a normal person. Laura Barns messages her and asks: "What are you watching?" Blaire clicks over to the paused Laura Barns YouTube video she was watching at the beginning of the film paused at Laura passed out (with half of the video un-played). She quickly clears her History.(Note: one of the Tabs above is a link to MTV's Teen Wolf which the actress who plays Blaire is on).Blaire and Mitch message each other privately. He tells her he can't stand Val and that she is a floozy. When they go back in the chat, Billie calls Val a floozy, infuriating Val who demands to know who Billie227 is. Blaire is relieved and tells Mitch he scared her to death with his pranks but he promises her that he isn't behind Billie. Blaire then gets a notification on her Facebook that Jess has posted a photo album with Val tagged in it. She scrolls through to see tons of pics of Val drunk at someones house, smoking a bong. Everyone looks at the pics the same time and laughs at Val. She is upset, saying her mom is one of her Facebook friends, and yells at Jess. Jess says she thought the pics were funny but she didn't post them. Val begins to argue with Jess and Ken says he will pick them up and they can fight outside a Wendy's. Jess continues that she didn't post the pics but she will delete them. She then tells everyone, every time she clicks delete, she refreshes the page and it's back again. Finally, it works. But then a notification comes that Adam has posted the same pics. Val yells at him, asking if he copied and pasted, but he swears he didn't post. Blaire tells them how Laura Barns contacted her. They point out it's the one year anniversary of her suicide. Ken says that Laura was a slut and she deserved what happened to her. The mysterious user now begins typing to them, telling them it's Laura. They all put their hands up to show that they are not the ones who are typing. Billie (the user name of the unknown Skype account) tells them if they hang up, they're going to die. She then tells them "Lights out" and the lights simultaneously go off in their rooms. Now, they know it's not a joke. They start screaming at Billie and Adam grabs his father's gun and threatens to come over there and kill him. Billie continues taunting them and Val tells her she's going to come over there and mess her up. Billie replies: "You wouldn't like it where I am". Val gets a message (via email) and freaks out, saying that she has now been threatened. She calls the police and gives her address saying she is being threatened by someone online. The police say they'll be there shortly. Val signs off.Billie then plays the Laura Barns YouTube video on everyone's computer. They try to close it but the video pops up over and over and it will not click off. We now see the end of the video where Laura is drunk on the ground, lying in her own feces. She shows a meme of her labeled LEAKY LAURA and individual YouTube comments from anonymous users which Billie points out is them. Blaire messages Laura Barns on Facebook saying that she's sorry. She explains that everyone was posting comments so they all did it too. She adds, But they're good people. Blaire looks at the profile of Billie's account and it is listed as Laura Barns. She now remembers that she used to chat with her on there and never deleted her from her user list. Billie threatens all of them and begins to count down, saying she will start to kill someone at the end of 60 seconds. Ken tells everyone to mute their computers and call each other on the phone. Jess freaks out because she has no phone. They all start talking to each other, oblivious that Billie is telling them that she can still hear them. They devise a plan to install a Trojan virus remover that should get rid of the user if he is a troll. Everyone is told to download the game Ken sends. Blaire downloads the Trojan Remover software along with everyone else but her Trash won't empty because an episode of SNL is still in her QuickTime Player. Right as Billie is finishing her countdown, Blaire closes down QuickTime, runs the program, and empties the trash. They all disconnect again and when they come back, the user is gone. They're all relieved and they laugh about the paranoia. They tease Adam for grabbing his dad's gun and he points out that his dad is out getting drunk with Mitch's dad (a way to explain that all their parents aren't home). Then Blaire gets an email from someone named Billie; it is a link to the picture on Instagram that Val had been sent. Blaire begins freaking out. Her friends tell her to send the email to Ken because he can track down the user via their IP address. But there is no Forwarding button. Adam complains to the girls with computers and they try to tell her how to Forward but she says there is no option. She sends a screen shot to Ken instead and he manually types in the Instagram link. They look at the Instagram picture and it is a screen shot of Laura emailing Val a year earlier, where Val ignores Laura's attempt at friendship and instead writes: KILL URSELF LAURA! The Instagram picture is already filled with comments from other students, telling Val she is a horrible person and that she is the one who killed Laura.(Everyone now loves Laura after the cyber-bullying led her to kill herself.)Val sends a request to chat and the group accepts. Val is standing, mindlessly, in her laundry room, next to a bottle of bleach, but the video appears frozen as she is not moving. They notice that the mirror behind her is messed up as if there's been some sort of struggle. Val continues standing still, frozen, and unresponsive but we hear her dog barking. Blaire calls her phone. Val's phone begins to wiggle on the screen proving that the screen is not frozen Val's just not moving.BAM. Val's computer gets knocked down to the ground. We hear police officers entering the house. They start yelling out codes. Blaire goes on Google and looks up the police codes. The first one is for a time check. The second one she mishears and thinks its a call for medical help. She figures Val is just having a seizure and remembers that she mentioned she had a medical condition that causes seizures before the others don't know if this is correct. Blaire tries to find previous conversation on Facebook where she talked to Val about her seizures. But then Ken points out that the code was repeated as 10-56. Blaire looks it up and the code means suicide. They all freak out and Blaire tries to convince herself that Val just had a seizure.Billie is back and tells them she knows all their secrets and is going to reveal them all. If they hang up, she will kill them. She then sends them all a file called NOTBOYFRIEND.JPG to download. Everyone is told not to click it but Blaire downloads the file and looks at it anyway. It's a picture of her lying romantically with Adam (not Mitch, her boyfriend). A second photo appears and she downloads it. It completes much faster and is another pic of Blaire and Adam together. In the chat, the mysterious user pops up again but now, instead of an icon, it's a video. They all shout "We can see you". But they aren't quite sure what they're looking at. It looks like it's from inside a crate. Ken says he's not going to just sit there and they see movement through the crate. The others tell him to go back to the computer and then stand up. Then, they realize the video is filming from a crate inside Ken's house. In both the crate video (from Billie's account) and Ken's video, we see him moving towards the crate and staring at something inside. Then his video becomes static and we start seeing, in broken flashes, him putting his hand and then, his face in a blender. It's not very clear what's happening because it's only shown in flashes, but blood is shown and he is committing suicide throughout the scene.Now, it's just Blaire, Adam, Mitch, and Jess. Billie says they're going to play a game called 'Never Have I Ever'. Jess notes it's the drinking game but Blaire has never even heard of the game, so they explain that she holds up five fingers and if she has done something, she puts one down. Billie tells them, in this game, if the loser doesn't drink, they will die. Billie starts listing statements: NEVER HAVE I EVER SPREAD A RUMOR ABOUT BLAIRE HAVING AN EATING DISORDER. Billie counts down from 10 until Jess finally admits it was her who started it, defending herself by saying it's kind of true since Blaire always says things like "I'm not hungry". Blaire is furious with her. Billie says: NEVER HAVE I EVER TURNED A FRIEND INTO THE COPS FOR POT. And Billie begins to countdown. Mitch admits it was him who told the cops about Adam because they both would have been in trouble otherwise. Adam is furious with Mitch and starts going berserk. Blaire messages Mitch privately to be careful with Adam because he has gone haywire before. Mitch points out only when he's drunk and Blaire tells him Adam is drunk now. Billie suggests: NEVER HAVE I EVER OFFERED JESS'S LIFE FOR MY OWN and counts down from 20. Finally, Adam admits it was him (apparently as an exchange between him and Billie/Laura Barns). Everyone begins fighting with each other. Blaire tells them that Billie is trying to make them all turn on each other and not to give in. Mitch then starts shouting out things: NEVER HAVE I EVER DRUGGED ASHLEY. NEVER HAVE I EVER FORCED ASHLEY TO HAVE AN ABORTION. To upset Mitch, Adam suggests one: NEVER HAVE I EVER HAD SEX. Billie counts down, repeating 5 over and over, until Blaire finally admits she has had sex (in the beginning of the film, she alluded to Mitch that she was a virgin and that formal is when she would finally have sex for the first time). Then Billie writes: NEVER HAVE I EVER CHEATED WITH MY BOYFRIEND'S BEST FRIEND. Mitch goes haywire. Blaire tries to explain that it was an accident, she was drunk, and it didn't mean anything; Billie begins to play a song on Spotify called How You Lie, Lie, Lie. Blaire tries to turn it off but the entire playlist is the song and it can't be clicked off. It plays as Blaire continues to defend herself, saying it was something quick. Blaire sobs and Mitch is furious. Billie says one of them is going to be the loser. Then all of a sudden, something prints on Adam's printer. He reads it to himself and then gets very uncomfortable and quiet. Mitch continues yelling at him but Adam is now stone-faced. They ask what the note says and he says he can't say. Mitch becomes paranoid. Then Blaire's computer sends something to her printer and she gets a piece of paper printed. She reads it and also gets very uncomfortable. Mitch begins to ask her questions, asking how deep their affair went. Blaire says they did it a second time for a few seconds just to see if there was anything between them. Billie begins to play a YouTube video on all their screens showing Adam and Blaire having sensual sex. Mitch begins to scream "What does the note say?" but they say they can't tell him. Mitch says: If you don't tell me, I'll hang up". Billie writes: "If he hangs up, I'll kill him". He is just about to hang up when Blaire finally shows him the piece of paper. It says: IF YOU SHOW THIS TO THE OTHERS, I KILL ADAM. Immediately, Adam shoots himself in the head. His piece of paper is revealed: IF YOU SHOW THIS TO THE OTHERS, I KILL BLAIRE.Billie hints that Jess is next. Jess is told to lock herself in her bathroom and she obeys. Mitch and Blaire begin to scream about what should be done while a pop-up video comes up, a variation of the I love cams pop-up ad selling software that allows you to record webcam videos. Blaire and Mitch don't notice that one of the girls shown getting undressed on a cam is Blaire from the beginning of the film. Blaire goes on Google and looks for sites where you can chat with strangers, to ask for help. She goes on Chatroulette but nobody takes her seriously. She connects with men in Russia, two guys who are high, people who quickly change to a new person after she screams she needs help. This goes on for a while but she finally connects with a nice girl in the USA who is willing to help her. She asks her to call the police in Fresno, California and tell them to go to her friend's house. She types the address and presses Send, but it does not show up (Blaire doesn't notice). The girl calls 911 and talks to them about the situation and the need for police assistance. She is asked the address and Blaire types it again, not realizing it had disappeared the first time. The girl reads the address to the police and they say they're five minutes away. It worked. But then Blaire goes back to the Skype and on Jess's webcam, she is being killed with a hair straightener hot iron in her mouth. Blaire gets a notification -- Jess was tagged in a new pic. Its a photo of Jess... dead, with the hair straightener iron in her mouth with the words: SOMEONE FINALLY GOT JESS TO STFU.Now Blaire and Mitch are alone on Skype. There is silence and they seem to be safe when a buzzing sound is heard. However, it's just an alert from her calendar telling her to GO TO SLEEP TEST TOMORROW. She laughs about this with Mitch. But then Billie comes back and tells them she has one last question. "WHO POSTED THE VIDEO?" She says if they don't admit who did it, they will die. They swear they don't know. Laura messages Blaire on Facebook asking why she is protecting him. Laura says "He didn't do anything. I promise." but then backspaces and says "He did it". Immediately, Mitch stabs himself in the face with the large butcher knife he was using to flirt with Blaire in the first scene. Billie227/Laura begins to play a song with a sarcastic title ('I Hurt Too').Laura/Billie227 messages Blaire on Facebook and tells her that was the right thing to do. Blaire sobs for forgiveness, loading their friendship page on Facebook and scrolling down to show Laura all the pictures of them together as young girls. Blaire apologizes for them drifting apart. Laura writes: "Drifted apart? Is that how you remember it? I think there's more to the story...." She tells Blaire that she's going to have to live with what she did and will never be able to live it down. Just then, a new YouTube video is posted on the RIP Laura Barns Facebook page, starting with Laura drunk on the ground covered in her own feces. But at the end, where it normally stops, the camera person films herself.... and it is revealed to be Blaire. She is laughing about what she just captured on camera and says: "I can't believe I just got Laura Barns on tape. We got her." ('We got her' is the message Laura originally changed the text to on the Facebook Memorial form).All the comments come flooding in from other students watching the video, telling Blaire that she's the reason Laura killed herself, she's a monster, and suggesting that she KILL URSELF. Blaire is now getting the same kind of hate that drove Laura to suicide. All of a sudden, demon hands shut the laptop shut and the lights go out in Blaire's house. Then, a demon-faced teenaged girl (Laura) appears out of the darkness and lunges at the camera.End credits. | revenge, murder, violence | train | imdb | null |
tt0092610 | Bad Taste | The New Zealand Astro Investigation and Defence Service (AIDS) sends Derek, Frank, Ozzy, and Barry to investigate the disappearance of everyone in the town of Kaihoro, North Island, New Zealand. They find the town has been overrun by space aliens disguised as humans. Barry kills one of the aliens and is attacked by others weilding sledge hammers. After Derek notifies Frank and Ozzy (whom are traveling on the road towards Kaihoro), he begins torturing Robert, an alien they captured earlier. Robert's screaming attracts a number of aliens in the area. Derek kills the would-be rescuers, but he is attacked by Robert and falls over a cliff, to his presumed death.Meanwhile, a charity bill collector named Giles is passing through Kaihoro. He is attacked by Robert, who has been eating the brains of the alien killed earlier by Barry. Giles escapes in his car and stops at a nearby house for help. Another alien (dressed as a chef) answers the door and captures Giles. He later wakes up in a tub of water and is told he is about to be eaten. Derek also wakes up to find that he landed in a seagull's nest. He also finds that his brain is leaking out the back of his head, so he stuffs it back in and uses a hat to hold it in place.That night, Frank, Ozzy, and Barry sneak into the aliens' house and find a room filled with bloody cardboard boxes. They kidnap an alien and Frank wears its shirt to infiltrate an alien meeting. He finds out that the residents of Kaihoro have been harvested for alien fast food for this intergalatic fast food chain called 'Crum's Country Delights'. Robert vomits into a bowl, which the aliens dine on, including the disguised (and disgusted) Frank. He escapes and tells the team members of the plan. They sneak out to save Giles as the aliens sleep.At sunrise, they try to leave but are attacked by the aliens. A long and climatic gun battle breaks out with dozens of ailens (wieling AK-47 assault rifles and various automatic weapons) battle the four humans. Derek joins in on the battle only to have his hat shot off, and he starts losing more of his brain, so he uses his belt as a headband. He grabs a chainsaw from the boot of his car and heads for the alien house. As the boys leave with Giles, the alien leader (Lord Crumb) and his followers transform into their true form and follow. Ozzy uses a rocket launcher to blow up Frank's car, which has been overrun by aliens.Frank and Ozzy hunt for Lord Crumb and kill a lot of more aliens along the way. Meanwhile, Derek kills an alien with his chainsaw and replaces the missing parts of his brain with alien brain. An alien prepares to shoot Frank and Ozzy, but it is beheaded by Derek after he bursts through the wall behind it. Frank and Ozzy are shocked to see him alive.As they run, Lord Crumb shoots Ozzy in both of his legs and Frank fires his rocket launcher at the leader, but it misses and almost hits Derek, finally taking out a sheep in a nearby meadow. Derek is knocked out by the alien leader and the house transforms into a giant space ship, which blasts off into space with Derek still aboard.On board, Derek looks out the window to see that he is leaving Earth. Lord Crumb hears a strange, loud noise and investigates. He is killed by Derek, who ambushes him and cuts the alien in half with his chainsaw. Derek proclaims into his phone: "I'm born again! I'm coming to get you bastards!" He then puts on the alien leader's skin, laughing maniacally as he rockets towards the alien planet where he will presumably kill the rest of the alien race (with just his one chainsaw).On Earth in the final shot, Frank, Ozzy, Giles, and Barry drive away into the sunset in Derek's car. | cult, comedy, violence | train | imdb | It seems fitting that in the wake of the excellent Lord of the Rings films, that we should have a look at just what started director Peter Jackson on the road to being one of the worlds greatest visionaries.
Jackson started small, very small, and clawed his way up the movie ladder using nothing more than pure determination and a raw talent for film-making.Jackson's first feature was Bad Taste, a low, low-budget horror comedy movie made over two years about aliens killing humans for their fast-food business back in space.
This is an even greater achievement when you consider just how much gore there is in the film, but the finale, in which a huge mansion is rocketed into space, defies the rules of its low budget and minimal crew.Even the cast were so minimal that the same aliens can be seen, if you look hard enough, being killed over and over again throughout the film, and Jackson himself takes on two roles; the unstable Derek and a mad alien called Robert.
At first it is hard to imagine that Jackson would go on from this to directing one of the best films of all time, but when you look closely, examine just what Jackson could do with no money and no crew, you begin to realise that a true genius was at work here.Bad Taste is a delirious testament to the 'just-get-out-there-and-do-it' school of film-making, as that is literally what Jackson did.
This extremely bloody and hilariously funny gore comedy from the director of "Braindead" and "Meet the Feebles" is about some aliens,who gather in a small New Zealand town to harvest human beings as a food source for their struggling intergalactic fast food.Four agents of the Alien Investigation and Defense Sector(A.I.D.S)are called on to stop them."Bad Taste" was filmed on a shoestring budget over a period of four years,using second hand equipment,and produced by and starring all Jackson's friends and work colleagues.The amount of bloodshed in this film is really high,but the gore is presented in such a way that it just makes you laugh hysterically.There's vomit eating,brain eating,exploding heads,flying guts and even exploding sheep.A must see for horror,splatter and gore fans!.
BAD TASTE, the worldwide cult hero Peter Jackson's first picture, concerns four bumbling government agents whose job it is to rid scenic New Zealand of any alien scum that may be invading their otherwise peaceful country.
Jackson's camera-work and special effects are nothing short of mind-blowing, and the fast-paced editing really gives this 16mm wonder a big-budget, professional look while still maintaining a goofy, campy feel.Sure, the acting may be a bit over-the-top, and the meandering script does seem largely improvised, but these "shortcomings" only add to the picture's fun, crazy atmosphere, helping to make it even funnier.
All in all, if you're a fan of gore movies, alien romps, or just good ol' fashioned black comedy, then you don't want to miss BAD TASTE.
Directed by the New Zealand king of low-budget gore - Peter Jackson, who also takes the starring role in his debut film as 'Derek', the leader of the alien prevention group 'Alien Investigation and Defence Service' - A.I.D.S(!), who are called into action when a group of aliens land on earth with the intention of kidnapping humans and using them as the main ingredient for their fast food restaurants!
Naturally Derek and his crew are none too happy about this and set about stopping them in the only way they know how - violently.As you can imagine with a plot like this and with Peter Jackson involved you can expect extreme gore mixed with extreme cheese, for example there is this one part where an alien has been severed in two from being hit by a car, his remaining top half fends off Jackson's attacks with a chainsaw by throwing pine cones at him!
Before Peter Jackson went on to huge success with A-list Hollywood films he was quite the horror film director (just watch Dead Alive!) and this ultra low-budget flick was his cinematic debut.A half-baked group of 'agents' must save the world when some aliens arrive to harvest humans for their fast food chain.From the premise alone one can tell that this flick is very campy, and rather darkly funny too!
The movie is excellent on gore and low humor but this cannot save the film from a pointless,stupid plot and quite frankly was boring for an exception of the gory parts.
Well, if you like comedies , gore and blood....please watch this master piece....but be careful...it can change the way you think about movies.
Let's face it - When it comes to its hilarious, old school, grind-gore effects (that are really quite over-the-top and need to be seen to be believed), Bad Taste is a small-scale "Alien Invasion" picture that would have, otherwise, been forgotten long ago and dismissed as pure rubbish without them.With so much going against it (terrible dialogue, dumb situations, badly-staged violence, incompetent direction, predictable story), 1987's Bad Taste would be Peter Jackson's first feature film as a director and, with that, it, unfortunately, showed his amateur status clearly at this very early stage in his career.All-in-all - The appropriately titled "Bad Taste" was at least worth a few honest-to-goodness belly-laughs.
Set in the remote, New Zealand town of Kiahoro, Bad Taste was produced on a shoe-string budget of just 200,000 NZ dollars.Besides not giving a sweet-damn about the fate of any of the characters in the story, this viewer also thought that the film's rock & roll soundtrack stank, big-time.Oh, well - What the heck, eh?
I used to enjoy guts the more the better, and found Jackson inspiring enough.Well, after 10-15 min of Bad Taste, I was wondering if I'm too old for that kind of stuff, because I couldn't find anything interesting about this film.
And one more +1 if you like to see Peter Jackson acting.If you want to watch this just because you loved Lord Of The Rings or Heavenly Creatures, run away, fast..
My Rating : 7/10I am a Peter Jackson fan and 'Bad Taste' is his first film.
This movie is intended to make part of the audience reel and another part scream--though it's bad taste done, obviously, with a wink.Most of the movie is a series of wild chases, terrifying fist fights, nauseating sight gags and bizarre gun battles, studded with gore and homages to "Night of the Living Dead," "Evil Dead" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." But throughout, despite the budget, it's staged and shot with deep-focus bravura and brilliance, non-stop verve and relentless energy.Like "Dead Alive," "Bad Taste" means to scare us and make us laugh, go past all our defenses.
When I decided to take on Meet the Feebles (1989) earlier this month I was taken aback by just how clever the man was when he first started making waves in schlocky horror movies business.Bad Taste (1987) was the director's first full-length film shot on a minuscule budget of just $30,000 New Zealand Dollars or just over $25,000 American.
It's now up to Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Pete O'Herne), Derek (Peter Jackson) and Frank (Mike Minett) to put a stop to their plan before they expand to other parts of the island, and maybe the world!On the face of it, Bad Taste plays like a lesser version of The Evil Dead Trilogy (1981-1992) made memorable by its exotic island location.
The dialogue edges just north of bland and there's something to be said about the sound mixing which is out of synch in places.Still, no one watches a movie like Bad Taste to read lips and Peter Jackson's script requires a lot of running, hiding, physical confrontations, gunfire and blood gushing.
In the case of Jackson's story about fast food loving aliens, consider Bad Taste a work in progress.http://www.theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com.
It is hard to believe that Peter Jackson's first independent feature lead him to make movies like Heavenly Creatures and Lord of the Rings for that matter..
I was one of the lucky few who caught Bad Taste on the big screen way back in the late 80s, and I absolutely loved it; but I never guessed that its director, Peter Jackson, would ever find fame, fortune and acceptance from mainstream cinema-goers—his style was for cult movie audiences only, or so I thought (mind you, I made the same mistake with a certain Mr. Raimi too).Last night I watched the film again for the first time in years, and now, with hindsight, I can see how blinkered I was: the subject matter might be a million miles away from his recent mega-budget efforts, and the presentation a tad rough around the edges, but Bad Taste displays enough ingenuity, style and undeniable raw talent from the director that his future success should have been glaringly obvious, even to a naive young gore-hound like me.The film sees a small paramilitary force—the Astro Investigation and Defense Service (AIDS)—sent to investigate the disappearance of the entire population of the New Zealand coastal town of Kaihoro; there, they discover that extraterrestrials, led by intergalactic fast food magnate Lord Crumb, have butchered the locals and packed them in boxes for immediate export.
Armed with a range of automatic weapons, the boys from AIDS—Derek (Peter Jackson), Frank (Mike Minett), Ozzy (Terry Potter), and Barry (Pete O'Herne)—set out to ruin Crumb's plans to launch human flesh as the new taste experience for his customers.Made on a minuscule budget over a four year period by an enthusiastic Jackson and like-minded friends, Bad Taste is a wonderful, wacky splatter-fest that successfully mixes daft slapstick humour with outrageous violence so cartoonish in style that its impossible to take offence at.
Inevitably, the film suffers from some glaring continuity errors, terrible acting, and the occasional technical gaff, but the final film is so entertaining that it's easy to be forgiving about such trifling details.Despite this being his first feature film, Jackson's handling of his material is both assured and very effective: he employs lots of creative camera-work—hand-held dolly shots, severe close ups and extreme angles—the likes of which he still utilises in his work today and which go to give his movies that distinctive Jackson vibe; he also does a great job with the editing (which ensures that film never drags and that the narrative flows properly) and was even responsible for the film's many make-up effects (he baked the rubber alien masks in his mother's oven!).Even if outrageous, low budget, low-brow horror isn't your thing (and it's your loss if it isn't), such invention, dedication and determination has got to be admired..
Peter Jackson's strange (and graphically violent) movies are far beyond the limits of Troma (THE TOXIC AVENGER) and Herschell Gordon Lewis (BLOOD FEAST), so it's simple to see why BAD TASTE excels much further in its gruesome detail, but it's way too overdone.
Sure, any buff who watches movies like BAD TASTE would rate a perfect "10" on the scale, but that isn't always a good thing.
The character of Derek is the funniest one in the film, and he has some pretty hilarious one-liners; "I'm a Derek and Derek's don't run", "The headshot's the only true stopper", "I'm born again" (the last remark should be taken into context with the climax).Overall, not a bad movie, even though it may at first glance look like one.
It's hard to imagine that this director, who now specializes in big budget Hollywood movies, started off by creating twisted and gory low budget movies – his directorial debut, Bad Taste, being the prime example of this early, strange phase.
Bad Taste is a definite must see for every aspiring movie maker, if only for Peter Jackson's creativity.The movie follows 4 agents (called 'The Boys') of some sort of secret service, who investigate alien activity in a small town.
This time the good guy has the chainsaw, but will he be able to defeat the evil corporate aliens who are just trying to supply their fast-food chain?And, yes, this is the same Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame.Be prepared for some really bloody scenes, and humor that borders on the outrageous.
This is a gory and hilarious splatter-satire that Jackson shot with a bunch of friends and an extremely low budget.Aliens, who nourish both on human flesh and their own vomit, have come to New Zealand.
yeah i totally agree with the other chap pie thats commented above me..all i would like to add is the acting is typically "austrailian" as in "cheesey" in fact there's as much cheese as a "mozzarella avalanche" but the effects in it a gruesome & realistic..if they had of put a bit more effort in it & less cheese this would of been a head turning movie but i will still give it 9/10 cause its just so bizarre just a shame about the cheese oh and to add to it please don't forget about the year in which the film was made in somewhere around 1989 or 1990 so whatever you do leave your take away alone or you wont be enjoying it or you'll be vomiting anyway sit back & enjoy the movie OK & stop thinking of cheese....regards Keith also please contact me if you want more details but i think the other guy above me said it all..bye.
I can't say that I'm a huge fan of Jackson's work in movies such as The Lord Of The Rings or even Braindead/Dead-Alive (not to say this movie didn't have its moments) but I can certainly see why he got so famous.All of the gore is lovely to watch and is presented in a more comical manner.
Peter Jackson shows he has a sick sense of humor in the gore fest Bad Taste.
However, the absurd violence is frequently hilarious (watch as Jackson--who plays an alien hunter--packs his brains back into his skull) and a mere preview to the complex slapstick he'd utilize in "Dead Alive" and "The Frighteners" "Bad Taste" ultimately plays out like a 10-page list of ideas stretched to feature length--it's outrageous and excessively gross, but also slow-moving...and not very endearing.
The ultra-cheap budget is equally apparent, with a small cast which looks more like a gathering of some of the directors mates (which is probably not so far from the truth) however Jackson's creative and technical talents make this project a whole lot more enjoyable than the script points towards.The story of a heavily disguised alien party being rumbled by a secret government task force with some very dubious recruits is kept simple but crammed with plenty of set pieces, dollops of gore, physical gags and some off-kilter jokes.Peter Jackson's talents as a director were already beginning to flourish with his work here, and his hands on approach to film making from the creation of gun props from metal stampings to choreographing a two people fight sequence with one actor, have put together an original entertaining piece of schlock.While the over the top make-up effects and surreal humour (what the hell was that car with the Beatles driving all about?) may not be everyone's cup of tea, Fangoria fans and struggling film students alike will find Bad Taste inspiring, proving lack of funds can be overcome by a little ingenuity and a little imagination..
In the case of Bad Taste, Jackson got his buddies together and made a little over-the-top (in a good way) film that is one of the most successful low-budget pictures ever made.
I happen to be a fan of Lord Of The Rings,Dead Alive and Bad Taste, but I must say I prefer these independent type movies to the big budgeted ones.
It's funny to see how the acclaimed director of Lord of the Rings started his career making cheap indie movies from New Zealand like this one.
Peter Jackson excellent movie, I've been a fan of your work for years but I must say two things.
Just the simple fact that this was such a low B movie makes it great this just goes to show that peter jackson can work with anything.
Despite being made on a low-budget, having bad acting, shaky camerawork and a plot that is best described as thin, this is one of the best splatter films ever made and is a great movie to watch with a bunch of mates.Aliens are invading earth (well New Zealand actually), and are going to turn the human race into a new fast food on their planet.
Before "The Frighteners" and "The Lord of the Rings," Peter Jackson's first film was a funny and gory film called "Bad Taste" made in 1987.
The great looking alien FX costumes that where made in Peter Jackson's own oven, add to this cult horror film.
But watch Bad Taste to see an alien give birth to Peter Jackson himself.8/10.
This low-budget horror, action, alien whatever movie makes you laugh every time you watch it.
Well, we still have 'Bad Taste' on the small screen and thank God. Watch it if you love Gore, Fun, Humour, Action, Aliens and the nice surroundings of New Zealand.
=) The bad reviews here are from people who do not appreciate this old and low budget way of making a good movie.
After seeing Braindead I felt myself drawn into watching Peter Jacksons earlier horror movies, starting with Bad Taste.
It´s a semi-professional amateur movie with a rapid gun fight action at the second half, slimy and gory jokes, grotesque humor: if you had fun with other films by Peter Jackson, "Meet the Feebles" or "Braindead" you´ll surely like this one.
Like a lot of other fans of his "early works", I am knocked over by the fact that Peter Jackson was tapped to direct the long awaited Rings trilogy of films. |
tt0080388 | Atlantic City, USA | The opening close-up shot shows a knife slicing lemons. The camera pans out to Sally (Susan Sarandon) washing herself with the lemon juice in front of the window at her kitchen sink in an apartment building in Atlantic City. She is listening to the operatic soprano aria Casta Diva from Norma. From the next apartment, an older man, Lou (Burt Lancaster), is spying on Sally as she bathes.We then cut to a phone booth. A young long-haired man goes in, pretending to make a call, then grabs something in tin foil. This is Dave. Another, tough looking guy with bleach blond hair goes in the same phone booth, obviously to get what was in the tin foil, but can't find it.We then see Dave hitchhiking with a young pregnant woman, Chrissie. They are both dressed like gypsies or hippies. in the background are the marshes of New Jersey and industrial smoke stacks. The two hippies walk through Atlantic City's boardwalk and go into a casino where they find Sally, who works in one of the casino's seafood restaurants. We learn the hippies are Sally's estranged husband, Dave, and her sister, Chrissie. The two had run off together. Sally says she's not going to let them stay with her, but relents.Lou passes them as they enter Sally's apartment. He goes downstairs to Grace's apartment, a woman about his own age who lives in an apartment with girlish pink decor. We find that Lou does errands for her for cash and that they have a combative co-dependent relationship.Back upstairs, Dave tries to kiss his estranged wife, Sally, who gives him the cold shoulder, telling him he ruined her chances of making a life in Las Vegas. He leaves angrily, but sees her purse and steals her wallet from it on the way out.Lou argues with Grace over five dollars. She tells him to steal it. Calling him king of the crooks. He takes the abuse calmly. He takes Grace's dog Peppie for grooming, and while there he asks the proprietress if she has any bets. We see Lou make his rounds as a small-time bookie.Sally is taking classes to be a blackjack dealer. We learn that she is taking French classes and her dream is to go to Monte Carlo and work there as a blackjack dealer.Lou brings the money he has gathered from bets to a man with organized crime connections, Fred O'Reilly, at a bar. Coincidentally, Dave is there to meet with Fred too, hoping to sell the drugs he stole from the phone booth pick-up. Lou watches Dave walk in the back with Fred. Dave shows Fred a plastic bag of white powdered heroin. Fred takes a sniff and says it's very nice. White Christmas. Fred tells Dave to get a leisure suit and lose the hippy look. Dave wants an advance. While Fred takes a piss, he tells Dave he can't do business with him. He gives Dave a card with a number on it, presumably a place he can sell the dope.
Dave chases Lou down on the Atlantic City boardwalk as he walks back to the apartment building. Dave offers Lou $100 to use his apartment for an hour.Lou returns Peppie the poodle to Grace, then leaves with Dave who asks to borrow Grace's scale. The two go downstairs and Dave cuts the white powder with baby laxative on Lou's kitchen table. Dave tells Lou he just turned $2,000 into $4,000. Dave asks Lou to walk him around, but Lou says he can't leave Grace. Dave has Chrissie go into Grace's apartment to rub her feet so that Lou will be free to show him around. As they walk the boardwalk, Lou tells Dave he knew Bugsy Siegel and that he killed people in the past when he worked for the people who worked for the people. He said he would swim in the ocean and come out feeling clean again.Lou and Dave go to a hotel. Dave says he wants Lou to go to room 307 and exchange the drugs for money. Lou asks why Dave isn't coming and Dave says he isn't dressed for it. While Lou is upstairs exchanging the drugs for money, and Dave is walking around. A car pulls up with Fred from the bar and the blond man from the phone booth from whence Dave stole the drugs. The blond man chases Dave into an elevated garage. A chase ensues ending when the blond man captures Dave and stabs him in the chest.Lou stops in a bathroom after collecting $4,000 for the drugs. He bumps into an old friend, Buddy O'Brian, who is now a bathroom attendant. They reminisce about a farcical mass rubber-buying job and Lou tells him he lives too much in the past. As Lou walks home he sees Dave being carried on a gurney into an ambulance.The police come into Sally's hotel and give her back her wallet. She asks where they found it and realizes something has happened to Dave and that it was he who stole her wallet. Sally rushes to the hospital and watches as they pull the blanket over the motionless Dave. When they tell her she can claim the body, she says she doesn't want it and storms out, past Robert Goulet singing a song about Atlantic City surrounded by chorus girls. He's at the hospital doing a benefit. After attempting to call Dave's parents, Sally walks past Lou who is at the hospital as well. He introduces himself as her neighbor and says he's sorry about Dave.
Lou helps her call Dave's parents, when she can't handle the call, Lou talks to them for her. After they get back to the apartment building they each go to their respective apartments. Lou again spies on Sally as she bathes topless at the kitchen sink, spreading lemon juice on her arms and bare chest.Lou goes downstairs to Grace's and sends Chrissie back upstairs. Lou puts on an old jazz record and climbs into bed with Grace who protests, "Lou, whats got into you?" But doesn't resists too much.The next morning, Lou follows Dave's procedure for cutting the drugs in his kitchen while whistling. He arranges for Dave's body to be sent to Dave's parents. He then goes back to the same client from the previous day and gets another $4,000. He visits O'Brian the bathroom attendant and gives him a large tip and tells him to visit a tailor.Lou takes Sally out to dinner. Hes wearing a new suit and pretends to be more wealthy than he is. Sally has to go to work on a house she and some friends are fixing up. Lou takes her. While there, Lou tells more of his history with Grace. That he's protected her for 40 years, since she was a teenager. But she got married along the way. Sally asks if Lou loves Grace. But Lou says he watches Sally. He then tells her, he's been watching her through her window, he then describes in loving detail her bathing ritual involving lemons and soap. Rather than being creeped out, Sally is touched and aroused. She takes off her blouse. And Lou delicately begins to run his hands over her. Presumably they make love (off-camera).As they return to their apartment building, they are accosted by the blond gangster who stabbed Dave. He rips Sally's clothes and breaks her radio and rifles through her purse, looking for the drugs or any proceeds. Lou is held back by one of the blond gangster's associates. As they come up the stairs Grace angrily confronts Lou and Sally, saying men had been ransacking the place. She is especially annoyed by Lou's new suit. "What the hell are you wearing?" She berates Lou and tells Sally in the old days his nickname was numb nuts.Sally's apartment has been ransacked. Lou, who has slipped into his own apartment, begins packing a suitcase. And with shaking hands gathers the remaining dope and a gun.Grace tells Sally it's not the first time Lou has run. He ran when her husband, Cookie, was killed, "so he'll run away now". Sally confronts Chrissie. She admits that Dave and she came to Atlantic City to sell some dope to get money for the baby. She tells Sally Dave went out with Lou the day before. Grace says, "they took my scale." She goes and angrily knocks and his door and sees that he's gone. Sally realizes Lou has been spending the drug money to romance her.Lou visits the client at the hotel and sells him the rest of the dope, except for a last $1,000 worth, since that's all the money the client has. He tells the client to tell Fred to leave the women alone, that what those hoods are looking for he's got.Sally goes to her blackjack dealing class, but is told the manager wants to see her. He says he can't afford to have people with connections like hers working in the casino. He fires her. Sally finds Lou playing blackjack in the casino. As she walks up to him, the blond gangster and his associate are asking him where the money is and they ask him to go outside. Lou won't leave the table. Sally yells at him saying he's playing with Dave's money. He tells her to sit down. She throws a fit. As Sally creates a scene and is forcibly thrown out by security, Lou slips out and gets in a cab.Sally manages to follow him to the bus station and tricks a bus driver into thinking he's her father and she needs to get him off the bus so he can get his medication. She demands that Lou give her the money. As they walk away from the station, the blond gangster and his associate corner them in an alley. The blond gangster holds a switchblade in Sally's face.Lou shoots both gangsters and he and Sally flee in their car. Lou is proud of himself and laughs about killing them." I protected you", he says. She tells him to put the gun down.They go to a hotel and order champagne. Their reverie is broken when they turn on the TV and see a news bulletin about the murders. But the news flash doesn't indicate that they are suspects. So they relax.We then see Grace and Chrissie connecting. Grace tells how she came during the war to Atlantic City for a Betty Grable look-alike contest, but the boardwalk was full of Betty Grable look-alikes. She offers to buy Chrissie a ticket home to Saskatchewan. Lou asks Sally to come with him to Florida where he has friends. She is leaning towards doing it. Then a police sketch of Lou is shown on the TV and Sally realizes it wouldn't work.In the morning Lou takes the telephone in the bathroom and calls Grace and admits the murders. He says he wishes Grace could be there. He is strangely proud and we realize he had never actually killed anyone before, contrary to what he had told Dave earlier on the boardwalk.While he's on the phone, Sally gets up and goes through his wallet. She takes most of the money. Lou peeks out the bathroom door and sees her doing this, but doesn't say anything. She makes up a story about wanting to get pizza, saying shell bring some back. As she's walking out the door, he tells her don't forget to ditch the car, indicating he knows she isn't coming back. She drives away, listing to a radio program about the wines of France.Lou asks for a taxi back to Atlantic City, looks at the paper the man was reading about the murders and tells the man that he did it. Grace sells the last $1,000 worth of dope to the client at the hotel, as she walks away, Lou takes her arm. They walk down the boardwalk together with smiles on their faces. The camera pans up to a wrecking ball slamming into a hole in a hotel being demolished as the end credits rolll. | neo noir, murder | train | imdb | Burt Lancaster gives an astonishing performance aching with melancholy in this lovely, quiet little film by Louis Malle.
He plays a one-time gangster (in his own mind at least quite a big shot) who, like the city that gives the film its title, isn't what he used to be.
Susan Sarandon, in an early-career performance, plays a woman who works in one of the casinos and whose life intersects with Lancaster's because of a drug deal her no-good husband was involved in.
The two don't ever become friends exactly, but they each get something from the other until the sad ending, when Lancaster realizes that there isn't a place in his life for Sarandon, and that there may not be a place in the world for him.The film is a low-key character study that completely satisfies, and gives Lancaster perhaps his last great role.Grade: A.
They can, if they have the money to do so, dine in reasonably good restaurants or stroll on the boardwalks, and we can almost hear the hoofbeats of yesteryear.What modern Atlantic City is to its brassy past, Burt Lancaster is to his own history.
In Atlantic City, assumptions about the American way of life, the American dream and the America reality, circa 1978, are examined through the artistry of master French film director, Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart (1971), Pretty Baby (1978), Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), etc.)The film begins with a shot of Sallie Matthews (Susan Sarandon at 34) at the kitchen sink of her apartment squeezing lemons and rubbing them on her arms, her neck, her face as Lou Pasco (Burt Lancaster at 68) watches unbeknownst to her from across the way, the window of his apartment looking into hers.
They need a place to stay and have the gall to impose on her.Both Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, as was director Louis Malle and writer John Guare for his script.
Even though he emphasizes the tawdry and the commonplace: the untalented trio singing off key, the slums semi-circling the casinos where Lou sells numbers, the boarded-up buildings, the sad, tiny apartments about to be torn down, Robert Goulet as a cheap Vegas-style lounge act, etc., in the end we feel that it's not so bad after all.I should also mention Kate Reid who played Grace, the invalid, ex-beauty queen widow of a mobster, who orders Lou about.
Set in 1970s Atlantic City in the early days of legalized gambling, we find a young woman (Susan Sarandon) working in the fish section of a casino restaurant while learning to be a card dealer.
Not only do Lancaster and Sarandon excel, but so does director Louis Malle.Malle makes this almost a modern-day film noir with the grittiness of the characters and the setting, when Atlantic City looked its worst.
"Atlantic City" is a great film where the setting is just as rich and complex a character as the people traversing its streets (and boardwalk).
Louis Malle delivers one of the most understated directorial turns working with a delightfully witty script (that has many great lines, like the one above) and a great cast (Lancaster perfect in a comeback role, Sarandon stunning in one of her early great performances).
Louis Malle captures it all with this story about a retired small time member of the local organized crime syndicate (Burt Lancaster) who comes into a small fortune worth of stolen cocaine when the guy that stole it (Robert Joy) is killed by the dealers who meant to buy it in the first place down in Philadelphia, and are now hot on his heels as well.
Back in the life, though unwittingly, he sells the coke to an ongoing poker game in one of the suites in a new hotel, bit by bit, and falls into the romance of his dreams with young Susan Sarandon, whom he watched every night from his hotel room as she bathed her breasts with lemon juice in her room across the way.
Louis Malle created a poetic "Atlantic City," released in 1980 and starring Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, and Kate Reid.
Lancaster plays Lou, a small-time mobster from the old days of Atlantic City.
Grace came to Atlantic City in the '40s as a contestant in a Betty Grable lookalike contest, met her future husband, and never left.Lou meets a young waitress and would-be croupier, Sally, and their lives soon collide.
Susan Sarandon does a great job as Sally, creating a totally believable character.John Guare has written a great script, the first important component of a film, and it was in the hands of a master, Louis Malle.
Then enter Sally Matthews(Susan Sarandon) a waitress and card dealer in training for one of the casinos has her life turned up when her sister and ex show up from Philadelphia after finding a big bag of white powder!
This film has a great script (John Guare), brilliant direction (Louis Malle), and two stars (Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon) at the top of their form.
Burt Lancaster plays an aging gangster who teams up with a troubled young casino worker(Susan Sarandon, in breakthrough role), when their lives get out of hand.
Susan Sarandon offers solid support with a typically excellent performance, while Michel Piccoli and Kate Reid make the most of their respective roles (both eccentrics in their own way).The film provides a surprising milieu for Malle but he manages to bring a European sensibility or, if you like a Continental style, to a fundamentally American setting.
While there are a couple of exciting action sequences (most memorable is Lancaster's killing of two hoods/drug dealers, his first 'hit' which makes him giddy with delight and finally proud of himself, after having spent his life spinning tall tales of his stature in the underworld!), it's clearly a character-driven piece - courtesy of John Guare's incisive script - and its tone introspective and bittersweet over a vanished way of life ("the good old days" as they're typically referred to); and, yet, everything is not bleak but actually quite funny on occasion!
Against a vivid backdrop of decaying splendor and shallow glamour the film gathers together several odd, unrelated characters in an unpredictable series of stories involving an aging petty gangster, an aspiring young casino croupier, two hippies on the run with a stolen roll of cocaine, and sundry other killers, dreamers, and fortune hunters.
For lack of a better tag, and because both city and script are built around the magnetic lure of easy money, the film might be called a crime story, but the richness of John Guare's screenplay, filled as it is with broken dreams and rose colored memories (says a nostalgic Bert Lancaster, "You should've seen the Atlantic Ocean back then
") can't be pigeon-holed so lightly..
In his fourth Academy Award nominated role Burt Lancaster essays the role of Lou Pasco, low level numbers runner and guardian and service provider to Kate Reid, a former gangster's moll from the old days.
That forces Lancaster and Sarandon into an alliance of convenience, but who would think at Burt's age and he was 76 when he made Atlantic City, he'd find love as well.
Some interior stuff was shot in Montreal and the film wrapped on the last day of 1980 and released in 1981.Atlantic City got Oscar nominations for Lancaster and for Susan Sarandon and both ran up against On Golden Pond and lost to Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn.
The moment he gets some money, he goes out and buys a white suit and white shoes and wears them through the rest of the movie - looking like a man totally out of place with his surroundings and totally out of touch with reality.Susan Sarandon in an early role is the ambitious small town girl who wants to work in a casino in France.
It's pleasingly voyeuristic without crossing the line into perversion, and hey, it's just a nice way to start the movie.At first I found it a little hard to accept Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster, 67 years-old but still ten times as dapper as you or I will ever be) as the small-time former gangster that he's evidently supposed to have been.
I still wondered exactly why he'd never made good before, but for me the fact that he convinced me but still left a lot of unexplored depth to the character is what makes his performance so great.Director Louis Malle strikes exactly the right balance between nostalgia and a bizarre sort of hopeful redemption.
Louis Malle's "Atlantic City" is as much a look at the changes that the east coast's gambling mecca was undergoing as it is a story of an aging gangster and a waitress.
He also takes care of an elderly woman (Kate Reid) who came to Atlantic City decades ago for a Betty Grable lookalike contest, and who now mostly stays in bed with her little dog, pulling a lever to ring a bell to get him to come down and tend to her, yelling at him when he does.The film is an exploration into aging, fading glory, and the struggles of life, but in an interesting way, it shows us that the glory days really might not have been all that glorious.
A revivifying Atlantic City is the backdrop for this poignant drama about Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster), an aging small-time hood, and Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon), a young waitress who dreams of becoming a casino croupier.
Malle also makes great use of late 1970's Atlantic City, seen as a rundown, cut-rate casino-town trying to rebuild its brand, a fitting venue for a story about aging and failure, hope and resilience, and the importance of looking good (Lou's first purchases with his dope-windfall is a sharp new suit).
I was expecting a flashy picture based on the title of the movie, but it's a smaller, more subtle film that boasts very fine leading performances from the great Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon.
His dream died long ago as he now works a widow named Grace (Kate Reid) who came to Atlantic City herself for a Betty Grable look-a-like contest.
You've got an aging petty crook (Burt Lancaster), a drug dealing user, a doormat of a woman (Susan Sarandon), her bizarre and spacey sister and a nasty old lady with an equally nasty dog--all of which are hard to care in the least about and one who is just thoroughly despicable.
This movie is about a woman (Sarandon) who lives in Atlantic City and is working at an oyster bar in a casino while she goes through gaming school to become a dealer in a casino.
Present-day oyster bar waitress/ croupier-in-training Susan Sarandon crosses paths with former Old World gangster Burt Lancaster while dealing with her estranged drug-trafficking husband, a relationship that ignites a final fire under the romantic-minded gentleman who remembers Atlantic City the way it used to be.
The pregnant Chrissie wants to take LSD "so we can learn from the baby's wisdom" and Dave, a coke dealer, wants to dump his stash and his past.Sally (Susan Sarandon), who is both Chrissie's sister and Dave's estranged wife, shovels shrimp behind the counter of a casino oyster bar but meanwhile sees to her dream by attending dealers' school - "I gotta develop my blackjack; I'm gonna deal my way to Europe" - and, total woman that she is, works on improving her body with lemon juice and her soul with a cassette of Bellini's Norma.
When she becomes romantically involved with Lou, she has one request: "Teach me stuff." Near Sally's tattered domicile (Sally would use that word, rather than the mundane "apartment") Lou waits gallantly on Grace (Kate Reid), a former beauty queen and mobster's moll reduced by time and Lou's lack of discipline to a state of kitschy caterwaul.Grace, lying in a bed strewn with ribbons and poodles and other fussy things, bitches at and about Lou; if she were an inanimate object, she'd be a battered pink plastic lawn flamingo, but Lou, a romantic to the tips of his carefully ironed silk ties, cherishes the memory of what she was, while mildy grousing at the monstrous Baby Jane she is.Lou's most notable characteristic is his tolerance: a man old enough to have "run numbers for the dinosaurs," a man who can say wistfully, "The Atlantic Ocean was something then" - this is not a man apt to be angry long at infirmity, senility or even cruelty.Lou's dapper, chivalrous, compassionate existence informs the sensibility of Atlantic City with something very much like love; the movie's unpredictably explosive, joke-like tone can be inferred from the fact that Lou's splendid reviviscence is made possible by murder.
The movie is also memorable for the great photography and use of locations, where to me, Atlantic City is like a Miami Dive, where 20 to 30 years, before the point of the story, it would of been something different.
Sally (Susan Sarandon) works at an Atlantic City casino oyster bar.
Susan Sarandon, Burt Lancaster and directed by Louis Malle.
1st watched 7/31/2004 - 7 out of 10(Dir-Louis Malle): Small gem of a movie about two loners(Lancaster & Sarandon) who are looking for big things in their life and then stumble upon each other instead and eventually receive those big things that they've stored up in the hearts for so long.
In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster (Burt Lancaster) and the estranged wife (Susan Sarandon) of a pot dealer (Some Guy) finds themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs, and danger.You might think this film would get a second life following the success of "Boardwalk Empire".
There are actors that seem to be born to make great roles like the one played by Burt Lancaster in this film.
A likable, charming, quite enigmatic but very friendly man named Lou Pascal, a old resident of Atlantic City who gets with his neighbor (Susan Sarandon) after the murder of her husband, Dave (Robert Joy), whom Lou recently met and started a business that might complicate the lives of everyone involved with him.
And the city is constantly presented as a different place than in its older days, everything's being demolished (including the place where the main characters live) where new casinos will be made.Lou is a sad figure in the beginning, his mob days are over and now he's taking care of old lady (Kate Reid), wife of a old friend of his, and she keeps bothering this guy all the time, ringing his bell wherever she needs him.
I thought it was a nice job of directing given that the content wasn't particular outstanding.Plot/Characters: 6* - Lou is a one time big shot in Atlantic City and gets to relive his glory days after meeting a young waitress and becoming an accomplice in a cocaine deal.
In the mid-'70s, Malle embarked upon a decade-long visit to America where, after 'Pretty Baby,' a sensitive but finally tedious look at child prostitution in 1971 New Orleans, he makes 'Atlantic City', in which an aging small-time mobster sees his romanticized memories of villainy become reality when he acts as father confessor, protector and, finally, lover to a lonely young croupier...
This movie is both an unconventional love story and a crime drama but it's also a story about past disappointments and dreams of a better future.Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon) is an ambitious young woman who left her drab life in Canada to look for something better in Atlantic City.
At the end of her working day, she returns to the run down apartment block where she lives and routinely cuts lemons and rubs the juice into her upper body to eliminate the smell of fish.Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster) is an elderly numbers runner who lives in a neighbouring apartment and regularly watches Sally's nightly ritual.
As he peers out of the motel window watching Sally drive away, Lou, unlike the duped taxpayers and voters of New Jersey in 1976, is too smart not to understand the truth of the matter.As good as Burt Lancaster was throughout his career, going back to "The Killers" in 1946, the man aged like fine wine.
As previous reviewers have mentioned, Atlantic City's sensibility also puts one in mind of similar cinematic masters Anderson and Altman.Sally (Susan Sarandon) is a comically ambitious young waitress, Lou (Burt Lancaster) a comically dignified old two-bit hood.
Until then, here's the best I can do."Atlantic City" is the tale of Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster), a small-time former Mafia hood.
The Mafia was pushed out of Atlantic City by a "bad element" (read: black gangs) and ever since then, Lou's been running numbers for them and taking care of his old boss's moll, Grace (the marvelous Kate Reid).Living next door to Lou is Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon, in what is surely her best, most honest work), who works at an oyster bar, takes classes in dealing blackjack, and dreams of going to Monte Carlo to be a professional dealer.
'Atlantic City' draws its two main characters so well, and they are so well acted by Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, that it is only at the end that we feel let down for caring about two people who frankly don't deserve it.
Burt Lancaster plays Lou, a supposed gangster slowly watching his beloved Atlantic City dying a slow death as a new more modern place is on the horizon.
She is another reminder of a past Atlantic City that now is a decaying relic.What Lou and Sally develop over the course of the film is magic.
He, in a sense, is Atlantic City, just like Grace and that old decaying building that will soon be driven to the ground giving way to a new more modern age..
Basically elderly long time Atlantic City, New Jersey resident and small time gangster Lou Pascal (BAFTA winning, and Oscar and Golden Globe nominated Burt Lancaster) used to think he was something big in the city. |
tt0393109 | Brick | Present Day: Brendan sits by a tunnel, staring at a dead girl (Emily) lying in the water.Flashback (2 days previous): Emily slips a note in Brendans locker telling him to go to a specific phone booth. She calls the phone booth, and they talk for a little. She says shes in trouble, but uses words Brendan doesn't know to describe the problem (Poor Frisco, Pin, brick, Tug). A black car drives by and Emily screams. The passenger in the car drops a cigarette with a blue arrow on it.Brendan's friend, Brain, tells Brendan that Emily has been trying to hang out with the popular group of kids (the upper crust). Brendan breaks into Emily locker and takes a ripped red piece of paper out of her notebook. He talks to his ex-girlfriend, Kara, and finds the complete piece of red paper: an invitation to a party. The invitation has a number on the back, Brendan calls it, and talks to Laura. Once he says he has Ems invite, she tells him where and when the party is. At the party, Laura and Brendan talk upstairs. She tells him that Emily has been hanging out with someone behind a café in town, called Coffee and Pie, Oh My. He follows Laura outside when she leaves and sees her talking to Tug by his car.Brendan goes to the café, and we meet Dode. Dode has been dating Em. When Dode leaves, Brendan follows him and sees him give Em a slip of paper.Brendan and Emily meet up. She says the only way for him to help is so get over her. As they hug, he takes a notebook out of her pocket. Inside is the note Dode gave her. There is a symbol on the paper, which Brendan does not understand. He goes to his friend Brain to ask him what it means. Brain says that the symbol refers to a meeting place in town, but he doesnt know which one.Late that night, after the time Em is supposed to be at the meeting place, he realizes that the symbol stands for the tunnel. He goes to the tunnel, and the flashback catches up to present day. Emily is dead, and Brendan wants to find out what happened.Voiceover turns into a flashback: Brendan and Emily fighting, she slaps him and he pushes her. They keep referencing somebody named Jerr. Jerr and Brendan used to have a small drug dealing partnership, but Brendan ratted him out to the vice-principal. It is implied that Jerr and Em had some sort of relationship, and that is why Brendan ratted on him.Present day: Brendan goes to the Brain to find out what the words Emily said on the phone meant. Brain doesnt recognize many of them, but he knows that the Pin is a big-time drug dealer in town, and that he is linked to the popular kids Em was trying to be friends with. Brendan picks a fight with one of the popular kids, Brad, in the parking lot, to grab the Pins attention. Laura tries to talk to Brendan, but Brendan says he cant trust her. Tug then comes up and punches him. Brendan is called into the Vice-Principals office, and they make a deal. The VP will stay off Brendans back if Brendan tells the VP what's going on, otherwise, Brendan will be blamed.Brendan walks through a parking lot and sees the black car from the beginning. He holds a brick over the car, which makes Tug come outside and punch Brendan. Brendan puts up enough of a fight that Tug brings him to the Pin. Brendan is able to see out of the trunk and sees the Pins address. Brendan meets with the Pin, and the Pin says he will pay Brendan to not rat him out, but first he wants to check Brendans story. Either the Pin will hire him or hurt him.Laura tells Brendan that Emily stole a brick (brick=heroin), because she was so addicted she wasnt herself.At school, a guy comes up to Brendan with a knife, and we assume he is associated with the Pin. After Brendan knocks him out, the Pin pulls up in a van, and tells Brendan he has decided to pay him.Dode calls Brendan, and tells him that he saw Brendan with the body, and threatens to tell somebody.Brendan goes to talk to Brain. Brain shows him a newspaper, which says that Em has been reported missing. He also tells Brendan that Frisco (poor Frisco, one of the things Em said to Brendan on the phone) took a dose of heroin and is in a coma, because there were traces of laundry detergent in it.Brendan sneaks into the Pins house, and finds a brick in the basement. Tug comes in and punches him. Brendan gets Tug to side with him by saying he gets angry when the Pin isnt honest, Tug feels like Brendan understands him. Tug tells Brendan that there were 10 bricks. They sold 8, and the 9th one disappeared, then came back, and that was the brick that killed Frisco. They still have the 10th brick. Tug pretends he doesnt know Em, but the Pin tells Brendan that they dated.Dode arranges a meeting with the Pin, he says he knows who killed Emily. On the way to their meeting, Brendan gets sick from swallowing too much blood. He confronts Dode and Dode tells him that he thinks Brendan killed Emily. Dode reveals that Emily was pregnant with Dodes baby. Tug, the Pin, Dode, and Brendan meet at the tunnel. When Dode says he knows who killed Emily, Tug shoots him and kills him.Brendan is brought to Tugs house. Tug confesses to killing Em. Tug says there is a war between him and the Pin, and that Brendan is on his side. Brendan organizes a meeting between Tug and the Pin, to try to sort things out. Laura comes in to comfort Brendan, and they have sex. We see her cigarette, and it has a blue arrow on it, just like the one from the beginning. Brendan leaves the bed and asks to borrow Tug's car in order to throw off any suspecting cops if he is followed on his way to the Pin's house, and he asks Tug for a cigarette. Tug replies he doesn't smoke cigarette's, and Brendan leaves.Brendan calls Brain and tells him to call the police at 4:15, and to say that there are drugs in the back of Tugs car. At the meeting between the Pin and Tug, the Pin wants to make sure that the last brick of heroin has not been messed with, so he asks Tug to take a dose off of it. When Tug refuses, because the police will be called soon, Brendan agrees to take the dose. When someone goes upstairs to get the brick, it is gone. A shot is fired upstairs. Tug and the Pin fight, Brendan takes Tugs gun, as Brendan is leaving, we hear the Pin calling for his help. Brendan tosses the gun back into the room and escapes in time. We see that Emily is in Tugs trunk, and the police will find her.The next morning at school, Brendan meets with Laura. Brendan lies to Laura and says he never made it to the Pins, so Laura tells Brendan what happened. 6 were found dead, including the Pin, Tug, and Emily. Brendan then tells her and the viewers what Lauras role in all of this is. Laura was the one who stole the 9th brick, and she took half and then cut the rest. After Frisco was put in a coma from using some of it, Laura needed someone to blame, and she had Emily. The Pin sends Tug to go talk to Em and find out what happened, and Laura tells Em to tell Tug that shes pregnant with his baby. Anyone who knows Tug knows what he would do, so Laura knew that he would kill Em. Laura had taken the 10th brick, so that a huge fight would break out at the Pins. Brendan tells her that he slipped a note to the Vice-Principal telling him to search her locker, where we see the VP finding the brick. Laura then tells Brendan that Emilys baby was his, and she was going to abort it. | boring, neo noir, murder, cult, violence, flashback, clever, psychedelic | train | imdb | null |
tt0454876 | Life of Pi | The novel begins with a note from the author, which is an integral part of it. Unusually, the note describes entirely fictional events. It serves to establish and enforce one of the book's main themes: the relativity of truth.
Life of Pi is subdivided into three sections:
=== Part one ===
In the first section, the main character, by the name of Piscine Patel, an adult Canadian, reminisces about his childhood in India. His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry. The livelihood provides the family with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.
The narrator describes how he acquired his full name, Piscine Molitor Patel, as a tribute to the swimming pool in France. After hearing schoolmates tease him by transforming the first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of his name as "Pi" when he starts secondary school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the irrational number which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a 450-pound tiger at the zoo bears the name Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error, in which human and animal names were reversed.
Pi is raised as a Hindu who practices vegetarianism. At the age of fourteen, he investigates Christianity and Islam, and decides to become an adherent of all three religions, much to his parents' dismay, saying he "just wants to love God." He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion, and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
A few years later in 1977, during the period when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares "The Emergency". Ultimately, Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and emigrate with his wife and sons to Canada.
=== Part two ===
The second part of the novel begins with Pi's family aboard the Tsimtsum, a Japanese freighter that is transporting animals from their zoo to North America. A few days out of port from Manila, the ship encounters a storm and sinks. Pi manages to escape in a small lifeboat, only to learn that the boat also holds a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan named Orange Juice. Much to the boy's distress, the hyena kills the zebra and then Orange Juice. At this point, Pi learns that a tiger has been hiding under the boat's tarpaulin: it's Richard Parker, who had boarded the lifeboat with ambivalent assistance from Pi himself some time before the hyena attack. Suddenly emerging from his hideaway, Richard Parker kills and eats the hyena.
Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of rescue flotation devices, tethers it to the stern of the boat and makes it his place of retirement. He begins conditioning Richard Parker to take a submissive role by using food as a positive reinforcer, and seasickness as a punishment mechanism, while using a whistle for signals. Soon, Pi asserts himself as the alpha animal, and is eventually able to share the boat with his feline companion, admitting in the end that Richard Parker is the one who helped him survive his ordeal.
Pi recounts various events while adrift in the Pacific Ocean. At his lowest point, exposure renders him blind and unable to catch fish. In a state of delirium, he talks with a marine "echo", which he initially identifies as Richard Parker having gained the ability to speak, but it turns out to be another blind castaway, a Frenchman, who boards the lifeboat with the intention of killing and eating Pi, but is eventually killed by Richard Parker.
Some time later, Pi's boat comes ashore on a floating island network of algae and inhabited by hundreds of thousands of meerkats. Soon, Pi and Richard Parker regain strength, but the boy's discovery of the carnivorous nature of the island's plant life forces him to return to the ocean.
Two hundred and twenty-seven days after the ship's sinking, the lifeboat washes onto a beach in Mexico, after which Richard Parker disappears into the nearby jungle without looking back, leaving Pi heartbroken at the abrupt farewell.
=== Part three ===
The third part of the novel describes a conversation between Pi and two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, who are conducting an inquiry into the shipwreck. They meet him at the hospital in Mexico where he is recovering. Pi tells them his tale, but the officials reject it as unbelievable. Pi then offers them a second story in which he is adrift on a lifeboat not with zoo animals, but with the ship's cook, a Taiwanese sailor with a broken leg, and his own mother. The cook amputates the sailor's leg for use as fishing bait, then kills the sailor himself as well as Pi's mother for food, and soon he is killed by Pi, who dines on him.
The officials note parallels between the two stories. They soon conclude that the hyena symbolizes the cook, the zebra the sailor, the orangutan Pi's mother, and the tiger Pi. Pi points out that neither story can be proven and neither explains the cause of the shipwreck, so he asks the journalist which story they prefer: the one without animals or the one with animals. They eventually choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says: "And so it goes with God." The journalist then leaves and files a report. | boring, depressing, magical realism, flashback, psychedelic, storytelling, sentimental | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0064866 | Queimada | Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) is called to the island of Queimada in the Antilles to foment a rebellion against Portuguese rule, to benefit British sugar traders. He singles out a porter named José Dolores (Evaristo Márquez) and tries to insult and humiliate him to goad him into betraying some rebellious spirit. When this eventually works, Walker beings to fashion Delores into a revolutionary leader. At the same time Walker meets with the colonial leaders (ethnic Portuguese) and encourages them to lead the revolution, lest the slaves lead the revolution on their own, which would threaten all white infrastructure, and lives, on the island. The revolution succeeds, the Portuguese are expelled, subtle power struggles ensue between the former colonials and the freed black slaves, and the future of sugar exports is uncertain. Having completed his mission, Walker returns to England.10 years later representatives from a sugar company are trying to find Walker with a business proposition. They find him in the slums of an English city, apparently not living a lifestyle becoming a gentleman of his status, his clothes notwithstanding. He is then charged with ending a rebellion on Queimada between the former slaves and the white rulers.Upon arriving on Queimada, Walker gives an expository on the phases of rebellion and truce that have transpired on the island in the last 10 years. He sends an envoy to Delores (the same leader as before) inviting him to dialogue. He also sends a familiar alcoholic drink. Delores responds by sending a wagon to a government fortification with three dead soldiers, and the alcohol, making it clear that he is not prepared to talk.Walker then sets out to destroy the rebellion. First, however, he takes the time to lecture the government leaders that the rebels are desperate and destitute while the government forces are comfortable and have much to lose. This makes the rebel guerrilla far more formidable then that government soldier. The rebellion is crushed with a scorched earth policy which alarms a plantation owner. This also causes the forced relocation of impoverished mountain villagers, whose starvation has probably not been well-known until this point. Delores is captured. While his fate is being decided, a soldier suggests that Delores might not be executed, but jailed, and one day, freed. Delores then pontificates that true freedom is never given freely–it can only be taken by force. At the same time the governor is discussing which form of execution they will use to dispatch the rebel leader. Walker convinces him not to turn him into a martyr but a traitor. When the governor presents Delores with a bribe to leave Queimada forever, the offer is sardonically refused. The next morning, when Walker sees soldiers building a gallows, there is little doubt as for whom it will be used. He helps one of the soldiers make the noose, then proceeds to find Delores unguarded, and cuts his bonds. When Delores meets Walker's instructions on how to escape with stone silence and inaction, he is left to guess the reason for it. Walker's best guess is that it is a kind of "revenge".As Walker is preparing to leave the island, he is approached by someone from behind who greets him with the same line that Delores greeted him when he first arrived on Queimada. Walker turns around with a smile, expecting someone whom he should know is dead, but his expression changes when their eyes meet. Walker is then knifed in the belly, and collapses. | allegory, avant garde, murder, historical fiction | train | imdb | Marlon Brando's involvement in the making of "Burn" came about directly as the result of his politician idealism and his desire to make films with a comment on the human situation
In 1968 he was deeply concerned in supporting civil rights causes, particularly those to have reference to black and Indian conditions, and, according to his friends, he was greatly disturbed and depressed by the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
"Burn" begins in 1845 as Sir William Walker (Brando) arrives on the island of Queimada, truly as far as can be judged as a harmless traveler but actually an agent of the British government ordered to incite a revolution that will shatter the Portuguese control on the island and permit the British to put their hand on the valuable sugar-cane total product
Queimada has a population of two hundred thousand, of whom only five thousand are Europeans
The main town is a well-protected port with a fort and a garrison, a governor's palace, a cathedral, a bank, a hotel and a brothel
The English gentleman recognizes he must play the part of a political Pygmalion
He looks around for a suitable subject to train as a revolutionary and he selects José Dolores (Evaristo Marquez), a large, handsome black dock-worker with an air of confidence
Walker also recruits Teddy Sanchez (Renato Salvatori), an almost-white clerk with political ambitions
Walker persuades José Dolores to steal the bank of the island, and once he does, Walker reveals his name to the government, thereby turning Dolores into a hunted bandit
The ingenious Walker then teaches Dolores and his followers in the use of firearms and gradually absorbs in them ideas and feelings to overthrow the Portuguese government
The film is quite obviously political in tone, and is a passionate piece of propaganda in the anti-colonial struggle
Brando's interpretation of Sir William Walker is apt to call up memories of his Fletcher Christian
This is another Englishman, whose gentle speech and soft manners disguise with courage and determination
Walker is not a villain but a cold, inflexible pragmatist with a hard work to accomplish.
Brando carries the film in his portrayal of Sir William Walker, who is ready to play either side of the political struggle to satisfy his government's (Great Britain) needs.
The musical score by long time Sergio Leone contributor Ennio Morricone captures very well the senselessness of the revolution as well as the fact that the slaves are just pawns in a much larger and dangerous game.Apparently the actor who plays Jose Dolores was an illiterate sugar cane cutter and had never even seen a film.
In it he was able to realise his long-expressed wish to make films of a serious, political nature and this one, which charts Britain's involvement in a Portugese colony in the Antilles during the mid 19th century, offers an unequivocally Marxist analysis of the struggle for freedom on the part of the black sugar cane workers.
Gillo Pontecorvo, the Italian director, had previously made the much admired Battle of Algiers on the theme of French colonialism.Walker is sent to the island of Queimada on two occasions in furtherance of British interests in the sugar trade.
Jose Dolores, for example, is played by a young Colombian who had never seen a film before, let alone acted in one, and the imbalance between the two performances is all too evident.
Filming was finally completed in Morocco after Brando, who was at a very low ebb in his life, walked off the set and threatened to quit the production altogether.Despite its flaws, it remains a fascinating film, with a literate script, a strong anti-racist message and a central performance of great intelligence and wit.
Marlon Brando is just amazing in this intelligent film.Most people don't understand Brando's career choices during the sixties.But I think that as years go by,they will.His ideas were way ahead of his time.His talent and range were unbelievable.Every actor tries to imitate his intensity (deniro,penn,nolte,.....) with no success.Definitely the king of acting..
The very same English adventurer is once more despatched to the island, this time to hunt down and eradicate the revolutionaries he created.Marlon Brando plays Sir William Walker in his best Fletcher Christian English accent and a blonde wig with a life of its own.
The film's central pivot, the passage of ten years between Walker's two visits to the island, is handled very sketchily by means of a few incongruous London scenes and a voice-over narration.But there are good things, too.
As those who read my postings may well guess, I believe music plays a tremendously creative role in film, and is a contributory factor of immense importance, and QUEMADA utilises music almost like a weapon in its armoury!Brando has said, in an interview published some years ago in `Playboy' magazine, that he and Pontecorvo didn't get on well together during the production of this movie, (one perhaps forgets now that when QUEMADA was made, Brando's career was at a very low point!), and yet there is no hint of this in the movie itself, as Brando turns in one of his most measured, considered and subtle performances.
It is something you take for yourself', and there is a powerful scene where, in an unguarded moment of temper, the character played by Brando, who, up until then has shown himself to be the benign white liberal, suddenly hurls a racist epithet at his prisoner, thus reminding us, that every `brother' ain't always a `brother'!Pontecorvo's films always seem to manage to upset both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum, (from my own libertarian point of view, a source of deep satisfaction), because he has always refused to traffic in slogans or short-term solutions to complex and long-gestating problems.
In the Nineteenth Century, the cynical and pragmatic British agent William Walker (Marlon Brando) arrives in Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Antilles, to promote a revolution and benefits the sugar trade with England.
He finds in the water and luggage carrier José Dolores (Evaristo Marquez) the necessary potential to be the leader of the slave revolt, and the Portuguese troops are expelled from the island; then the provisional government of President Teddy Sanchez (Renato Salvatore) assumes the power with the support of the British government.
Ten years later, William is hired by the Royal Company that is exploring the sugar cane plantations and the Queimada government to chase José Dolores that is disturbing the economical interests of England in sugar cane with his army of rebels.It is impressive the timing of director Gillo Pontecorvo to make and release "Burn!".
Marlon Brando plays William Walker who is is sent to Portuagal occupied sugar plantations to manipulate slave Jose Dolores into leading a revolt against the Portuguese, which will later allow England to dominate the slaves themselves.
The scenes of battles and dances seem so authentic it almost feels as if the cameras is witnessing events that occurred hundreds of years ago.Brando himself seem to really be enjoying playing the somewhat sadistic, but at time empathic Walker.
A 19th century British diplomat instigates a revolution on the island of Queimada in the Caribbean between the black slaves and the Portuguese colonials in order to break Portugal's hold on the sugar market.
Marlon Brando (grizzled, and with a precarious accent) gives a necessarily unsympathetic performance and has some amazing bits and pieces, yet the picture really only comes to life during the montages, sweeping panoramas as scored by Ennio Morricone (whose work deserves the highest praise).
Gillo Pontecorvo, the acclaimed director of 1966's "The Battle of Algiers" released his next film "Queimada" -- aka "Burn!" -- three years later in 1969.
"Burn!" stars Marlon Brando as William Walker, a British agent sent to a fictional Caribbean island, Queimada, to spark a revolution amongst the black slaves who work the sugar cane fields.
Brando cited "Burn!" as one of his best performances, but his portrayal of Walker is actually unmoving because he's never fleshed out as a human being, not to mention his lack of character becomes clearer as the film progresses.The film runs 112 minutes, which is the version originally released in the USA in 1969, but there's supposed to be a restored version that runs 132 minutes.
It's a film with one of the finest scores of Ennio Morricone and an ambiguous performance by Marlon Brando--that makes you wonder if the William Walker role is merely to be viewed as that of a mercenary.
I have watched the film several times and loved Gillo Pontecorvo's direction of the scenes at the port, which are one of my favorite sequences in cinema.
Pontecorvo wanted Brando to create an evil figure of "Sir" William Walker, who was a real person though not a British knight.
It is perhaps most anti-racist movie that I have seen with William Walker in all his glory unable to comprehend the political conviction and values of a native worker who refuses a chance to escape a cruel execution.This film has a small but significant role for Italian actor Renato Salvatori.I have seen hundreds of political movies--but this will remain my all time favorite.
I thought that Evaristo Marquez who isn't really an actor did a fine job and carried the film well when Brando wasn't on screen.
Brando plays a British version of the CIA sent to wrest a Carribbean island away from the Portuguese empire and its slave-holding planters.
Film-maker Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers) is particularly alert to the many subtle and not-so-subtle modes of European domination, and I like the way he lingers over African crowd scenes, neither romanticizing nor denigrating their presence.
(3 outta 5 stars)Very good drama about colonialism with Marlon Brando playing the real-life character of William Walker...
Ed Harris played the same character as Brando in the later film, "Walker"..
Marlon Brando gives an impressive performance in 'Burn!' as 19th century English mercenary and agent provocateur Sir William Walker.
In fact I would say it is equal to his more celebrated roles as Don Vito Corleone or Colonel Kurtz.Walker is sent by the British to a Caribbean island currently run by the Portuguese, and manages by Machiavellian manipulations to engineer a slave revolt that gives the British exactly what they want - power and money.
The movie is almost a textbook example of imperialism, but it isn't just a political lesson, it is a consistently interesting human drama, focused on Walker's uneasy relationship with a local porter turned rebel leader Jose Dolores (played by non-actor Evaristo Marquez).
The characters are all filthy and unwashed, there is no straight-out-of-wardrobe damsel in distress, and the heroes are slaves and servants ignored in most films set in the Caribbean.Brando, still potent and fit in his thirties, plays a mercenary pulled back into service from an British drunktank.
There is no other film that treats this subject with as much depth and seriousness, and it really fleshes out all the arguments that exploitation, revolution and martyrdom include.The movie is loosely, but fairly closely tied to the real history of Haiti, and delivers all this political meaning and discourse is a very entertaining package of palace intrigues, assassinations, and ultimately, firestorms that engulf the island.
The message is handled in the plot, and in exchanges between Brando and Marquez, whose characters have come to know each other and transit from partners to enemies.Never shown on US TV to my knowledge, derided for being untidy in its production, this film is a too anti-capitalist for the American media with its raw, hard look at the history of Western/Christian abuse of native peoples and African slaves in the Caribbean.It remains, however, a great instant education into the history of colonialism, and well as a guidebook to destabilizing regimes through false flag operations (something still in use today).
Brando plays Englishman (convingingly) Sir William Walker a young snobbish, aristocratic, adventurer sent from England to the islands conquered by the Spanish and Portugese.
Gillo Pontecorvo's bold follow-up to "The Battle of Algiers" has become something of a cult movie over the years for a variety of reasons, (not least for the involvement of Brando), but it is a film that is little seen and was something of a commercial disaster.
He plays William Walker, an English agent provocateur, sent to the island of Quiemada to instruct the natives in the art of revolt and overthrow the legitimate government, picking an uneducated, if charismatic, native, (Marquez), as the revolution's leader.
But he instills in the man a Marxist sense of revolutionary fervor over and above what he had originally planned and finds himself returning to the island ten years later to help quell the revolution he had instigated.This is a complex, diffuse film shot, (superbly by Marcello Gatti and Giuseppe Ruzzolini), like a documentary.
In some areas, this film actually manages to be a progression from Pontecorvo's masterpiece Battle of Algiers, but unfortunately, the 'sinking lips' mask what may have been great performances making it hard to engage with the characters.
William Walker is potentially one of the greatest roles in film history played by one of the greatest actors of his generation.
That's probably mostly because of the film's star, Marlon Brando, but the movie itself is quite good.
The story centers on a British man, Brando, who goes to the Portuguese-run island of Queimada in order to provoke a slave rebellion.
are the trade-mark of LALA Land--with the notable exceptions of 'citizen Kane, 'the third man'.this film follows that typical format a bit too much, considering its Italian production---yet Brando's performance and 'jose delores's' characterizations are remarkable.
Queimada is Pontecorvo's follow up to his critically acclaimed magnum opus, Battle of Algiers–an epic war movie based on the events surrounding the Algerian War. Queimada stars American movie-icon Marlon Brando in the lead role of a mercenary named Sir William Walker.
Among the myriad of performances that Brando delivered during his long illustrious career, it's quite remarkable that he rated his portrayal of an agent provocateur in Pontecorvo's Queimada as his best ever.
Brando also admitted to it during an interview with Larry King on CNN as the latter, apparently disinterested in discussing a relatively unknown movie during the precious little time he had with the great actor, never allowed Brando to justify his choice.On the face of it, the movie deals with imperialism of the nineteenth century wherein colonial superpowers like England enslaved the black in the name of civilizing them–a seemingly moral obligation that the English laureate Rudyard Kipling so eloquently referred to as "The White Man's Burden".
One of the greatest actors of all time, he is superb here in this role.Brando himself said in his autobiography that he did the best acting he ever did in this film.Director Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers) was also superb, and gave us a classic film showing how colonial powers foment revolution to their own ends, and how their plans often backfire.Evaristo Márquez, who died this year, was an illiterate herdsman before he joined Brando and Pontecorvo.
Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando sporting a ridiculous blond wig) is a British agent sent to the sugar-rich Portuguese island of Queimada in the mid-19th Century.
Ten years later, Walker returns, this time accompanied by British troops, to find that Dolores has incited another revolt - and Walker is forced to put down the very revolution he started.Queimada!
Pontecorvo's static, unemotional cinema verite style worked well with Battle of Algiers; the use of non-actors in key roles enhanced the film's realism.
Evaristo Marquez's Dolores is similar; he is more of an idea than a character, and unlike in Algiers, the casting of a non-actor does not work.
Apparently, the Sir William Walker that Marlon Brando plays in this film isn't quite THE Sir William Walker!
Marlon Brando plays William Walker, a mercenary who is sent to the Spanish Caribbean on behalf of the British Empire.
Gillo Pontercorvo's Burn!, a portrayal of an English-instigated slave revolt on a 19th Century Portugese colony in the Caribbean, is a captivating follow up to his debut feature "The Battle of Algiers".
Considering that one of the early images of the movie is a white island whose land was colored or rather dis-colored by the dried bones of African slaves brought to the island after the total destruction of the native population by Portuguese "settlers", it does point to Brando's ability to fill a screen.I had never seen a film by Gillo Pontecorvo, which is pretty blasphemous for any self-respecting, pompous cinephile such as myself although Battle for Algiers is high on my list, along with other films that my friends can't believe I haven't seen, like Rashomon, Apocalypse Now, or The Wild Bunch.
This film, however, is kind of what I expected from someone whose work is as politically-informed as Pontecorvo's and very characteristic of late 60s-early 70s cinema: frenetic camera movement, jump cuts, hammy yet stirring close-ups, and the highlighting of political injustice.Brando plays SIR William Walker, a colonial troubleshooter for England's sugar industry, or interests.
Basically, Walker goes to Queimada to foment revolution against the Portuguese, meets and "trains" the porter Jose Dolores (played by the studly Evaristo Marquez).
I think this is Brando's best film (although perhaps only an ordinary performance for him, which is good).
But William Walker plays the Africans against the Portugese if only for the British to flourish over there.The film wasn't that nuanced or anything.
not only addresses similar topics, it's also as good.Sir William Walker arrives in Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean, to instigate a revolution that will overthrow the government and set up a new one open to business with the British crown.
It is also hard not to simultaneously appreciate and loathe the slick operations of Sir William Walker, an English agent provocateur who expertly manipulates one courageous man, Jose Dolores, into fomenting an effective rebellion that is actually planned to ultimately fail ten years later.
Marlon Brando gives a masterful performance as Walker. |
tt0048545 | Rebel Without a Cause | Behind the opening credits, the film opens on a suburban Los Angeles street with teenager Jim Stark (Dean) drunkenly lying down on a sidewalk. He is arrested and taken to the juvenile division of the police station for "plain drunkenness". At the station he meets John "Plato" Crawford (Mineo), who was brought in for shooting a litter of puppies with his mother's gun, and Judy (Wood), who was brought in for curfew violation (she was wearing a bright red dress with matching lipstick and was mistaken for being a streetwalker). The three each separately reveal their innermost frustrations to officers; all three of them suffer from problems at home:
Jim feels betrayed and anguished by his constantly bickering parents, Frank (Jim Backus) and Carol (Ann Doran), but even more so by Frank's milquetoast attitude and failure to stand up to Carol and her mother, who lives with them. His frustrations are made manifest to officer Ray Fremick (Edward Platt) when Jim is released to their custody.
Judy is convinced that her father (William Hopper) has callously withdrawn his affections from her because she's no longer a little girl, so she dresses up in racy clothes to get attention, which only causes her father to call her a "dirty tramp".
Plato comes from a broken family. His father abandoned them when he was a toddler, and his mother is often away from home, leaving Plato in the care of his housekeeper.
Jim sets out for his first day at Dawson High School and again meets Judy (who lives nearby) waiting on the corner and offers her a ride. Seemingly unimpressed by Jim at first, she declines and sarcastically says, "You know, I bet you're a real yo-yo," and then is picked up by her "friends", a gang of delinquents led by "Buzz" Gunderson (Corey Allen). Arriving at school, Jim immediately gets in hot water for unknowingly stepping on the school insignia. While shunned by most of the student body, Jim befriends Plato, who comes to idolize him as a father figure. That afternoon, Jim's class goes on a field trip to Griffith Observatory, where they see a dramatic presentation of the bleak future of the Earth as the Sun goes through its red giant phase and post red-giant phase. As he walks out, Buzz and his gang slash one of Jim's tires and then begin taunting him by clucking and calling him "chicken", which is sure to set him off. When Jim asks Judy, revealed to be the "property" of Buzz, why she hangs around with them, Buzz pushes Jim away from her, then whips out a switchblade and challenges Jim to a knife fight. Having no knife, Jim refuses, so Buzz orders one of his gang to lend Jim his knife, but even then Jim still refuses. When Buzz again calls Jim chicken he goes off, and the two begin fighting, each one getting minor jabs on the other until Jim knocks Buzz's knife away and subdues him. Buzz wants another shot at Jim, which he accepts but not with knives. Buzz suggests stealing a couple of cars to have a "Chickie Run" at Millertown Bluff, a high seaside cliff. Jim agrees to meet them that evening before the observatory security guard runs the gang off. After they leave, Jim asks Plato what a Chickie Run is.
At home, before leaving for the chickie run, Jim ambiguously asks Frank for advice about defending one's honor in a risky, dangerous situation. But Frank, dressed in a frilly apron and doing housework while Carol is sick in bed, instead gives Jim a long-winded speech about avoiding confrontation of any kind. Jim changes his clothes and drives to Millertown Bluff. Buzz shows him the two stolen cars they'll be racing, and then go to the edge of the cliff alone and share a cigarette, where Buzz confides in Jim that he likes him. When Jim asks Buzz why they're doing the run, Buzz replies "You gotta do something, now don't you?". Meanwhile, Judy asks Plato about Jim; though they barely know one another, Plato calls Jim his best friend. When Judy asks what Jim is like Plato merely replies "You have to get to know him," but adds that people Jim likes most get to call him "Jamie".
As they prepare to race, Buzz explains the rules: the two are to race toward the edge of the cliff, and whoever jumps out of their car first is declared the "chicken". As the two cars speed toward the cliff, Jim tumbles out of his car, but Buzz's jacket sleeve gets caught on his door handle, preventing him from jumping out before both cars plummet to the rocky shores below, with Buzz screaming, until he meets his death in the fiery crash below. The rest of the gang flee leaving Judy stranded, but Jim, with Plato in tow, gives Judy a ride home, giving her back the purse mirror she left at the police station. Still with Plato along, Jim drives home. Plato then asks Jim if he would like to go with him up to an old abandoned mansion near the observatory and stay there for the night, but Jim declines and sends him home, but not before Plato writes down Jim's address in his pocket notebook.
Jim tells of his involvement in the crash to his parents who saw a news report about it on TV, but when Jim considers turning himself in, they warn him not to volunteer himself to the police. When Carol declares they're moving again, Jim asserts that he won't let her use him as an excuse to keep running away. Jim then begs Frank to stand up with him against her, but he doesn't. Jim angrily jumps and strangles Frank until he is pulled away by Carol. He storms off to the police station and is accosted by Buzz's fellow gang members Crunch (Frank Mazzola), Goon (Dennis Hopper) and Moose (Jack Grinnage) who were just released from custody. Jim ignores them and goes in looking for Fremick, but the desk sergeant rudely tells him that Fremick will be out all night. Before leaving, Jim tries to call Judy at her home, but the call is intercepted by her father who abruptly hangs up.
Jim drives back home and finds Judy waiting at the same spot where they met that morning (she greets him with "Hello, Jamie"). When Jim reveals he was attracted to her from the moment he saw her (and even gently kisses the side of her forehead), Judy apologizes for the way she treated Jim that morning, blaming peer pressure, and the two begin to fall for one another. Agreeing that they will never go back to their respective homes, Jim suggests they go to the mansion Plato told him about, saying "You can trust me, Judy."
Meanwhile, Plato is just arriving home on his motor scooter when he is grabbed by Crunch, Goon and Moose. Convinced that Jim ratted them out to the police, and looking to avenge Buzz's death, they demand to know where they can find Jim, but Plato refuses to talk. They grab Plato's pocket notebook as he gets to the front door and run off. Plato runs upstairs to his bedroom and, after throwing away a child support check from his father, grabs his mother's gun and runs off to find and warn Jim. At Jim's house Frank and Carol hear knocking at the front door. Frank answers to find a live chicken hanging over their door, and Buzz's friends asking about Jim, but Frank hurriedly shuts the door. After they take off, Plato shows up for the same reason, but when Frank asks Plato about Jim, Plato quickly apologizes and hurries off to the mansion where he finds Jim and Judy.
The three new friends act out a fantasy as a family, and Plato tells them about when the "head shrink" got him to open up about hearing his parents fight when he was a baby, and how his mother later decided the money being spent on his therapy was better spent going off alone to Hawaii. Wishing they could stay there, but unable to ignore his situation, Plato decides he "might as well be dead anyway" and lies down to doze. Judy hums the Brahms' Lullaby to him before she and Jim go exploring the rest of the mansion. Jim and Judy find a place, and they exchange their first kiss. Crunch, Goon and Moose, now armed with chains, find their way to the mansion and wake up Plato. Frightened and distraught, Plato fights them off, both in the empty swimming pool, and in the mansion, until he finds his gun and shoots Moose, and then mistakenly fires at Jim when he comes back. Jim tries to restrain Plato, but he runs from the mansion, shooting at police who have just arrived.
Plato runs to the observatory and barricades himself inside as more police converge including Fremick who, with Frank and Carol, was out looking for Jim. Jim and Judy follow Plato into the observatory, and Jim persuades Plato to trade the gun for his red jacket; Jim silently removes the ammunition before giving the gun back. Jim then convinces Plato to come outside after asking Fremick to turn the police lights off. As they start to come out the police notice Plato still has the gun and turn their lights back on, which incites Plato to break away and charge the police. When he is shot down, Jim screams, "I got the bullets!! Look!!" Seeing Jim's jacket, Frank believes at first that Jim had been shot. He runs to comfort the openly grieving Jim, and promises to try and be a stronger father, one that Jim can depend on. Judy's father takes Jim's jacket, and covers Plato's body. Now reconciled to his parents, Jim introduces them to Judy saying "She's my friend", first briefly opposed by Carol, until Frank assures her that it's all right.
As dawn encroaches, and as everyone leaves in their respective cars, a lone figure in a business suit with briefcase walks toward the observatory, completely unaware of what just transpired. | cult, violence, romantic | train | wikipedia | It certainly added more to the disjointed feeling and wasn't just there for style purposes like todays movies.The only point at which the film falters is the pat resolution between Jim and his parents at the end.
His actions provide an easy way for the director/writer to answer all questions about his character, and then to facilitate an ending which is tragic, but more than a little contrived.Despite what I feel is a cop-out ending, _Rebel Without a Cause remains a thoroughly powerful film.
Dean's on-screen persona, together with his vivid, intense performance, overwhelms all other elements in this film about 1950s teenage confusion and angst.Newly arrived in town, Jim Stark finds himself trapped in a typically hostile high school, and confronted by an in-crowd of leather-jacketed hoods with names like "Buzz", "Crunch", and "Goon".
In his three film trilogy James Dean worked with three of the best directors around, George Stevens in Giant, Elia Kazan in East of Eden, and Nicholas Ray for Rebel Without A Cause.
The problems of this crowd just don't seem as serious as those in the other two films.But because of the quality performances of James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo you do sort of feel for these kids.
If ever a player left the scene with fans begging for more it was James Dean.Seen today over 50 years later Rebel Without A Cause still remains the ultimate film in teen angst.
Brilliant cast of well-known Hollywood icons in hard-hitting treatment of story that focuses on the hopelessness exhibited by many middle-class teenagers who were too young to recall the pains of WWII, but saw daily reminders of the threat of "the bomb", as well as inequities around them.James Dean stands out as the troubled kid whose parents keep "moving" to escape their community's effects of their son's strange behavior.
Equally great are the performances of Natalie Wood as a "wanna-be-bad-girl" who is hurt by her parents' implications that she is a "tramp"; and the child-like Sal Mineo, who lives in a mansion with a maid, but feels the pains of neglect from never-present parents.The trio first meet at a police station, where they all see a well-meaning officer who is genuinely interested in getting these troubled kids back on the right track rather than throwing the book at them.
1950s America was definitely unprepared for any "spelling out" of suggested terms, so for nearly 50 years now anyone's guess as to what was going on here is as good as the next.The supporting cast include Jim Backus as James Dean's well-to-do yet wimpish and henpecked father as well as a young Dennis Hopper as a member of a greaser gang.
Carefully watch the final scene as the end credits are shown, when this "point" is driven home.Rebel Without A Cause is one of the great classics with a sociological impact that has seldom been reached by any film, and likely never surpassed.
He finds underdog youth as Plato (Sal Mineo) and Judy (Natalie Wood , to whom Ray was rumored to have made advances) in a Police Station and soon later they befriend turning into three outcast friends .Good film dealing with adolescence problems from the 50s , being magnificent played by a group of splendid young men .
Ray, screenwriter Stewart Stern, costar James Dean, and Sal Mineo himself all intended for Mineo's character Plato to be subtly but definitely understood as gay , although the Production Code was still very much in force and forbade any mention of homosexuality, all worked together to insert restrained references to Plato's homosexuality and attraction to Jim, including the pinup photo of Alan Ladd on Plato's locker door, Plato's adoring looks at Jim, his loaded talk with Jim in the old mansion, and even the name "Plato," which is a reference to the Classical Greek philosopher ; for that mansion scene, Dean suggested to Mineo that Plato should "look at me the way I look at Natalie." Furthermore , the film packs a colorful and glimmer cinematography in Technicolor by Ernest Haller .
It was only when Ray met 24 year old James Dean at a party did he realize that this hot new talent would be perfect for the role of Jim Stark, a troubled youth whose world is unraveled in a 24-hour period.
(as an aside, the person who argued that Plato was gay, I agree that this is intentional, [how else would he be so attracted to James Dean after only knowing him 3 seconds] and the movie does get some points for slyly tackling a taboo thing like that).
and for the rest of it, you feel like cringing every time one of these badly acted emotional scenes comes along.It may've been good for its time, but, really, its drivel.It must've just been hype about Dean's death that has over-inflated the reputation of this film..
Rebel Without a Cause is incredibly weak on every level, and the little that's offered is so absurd and incoherent it would destabilize the most tolerant.Whether it is the plot itself, uninteresting because almost non-existent, or the characters you are told nothing about and who are even a bit creepy in their behaviours, everything just stays superficial in this scenario which, as often happened in those days, tried to mix different genres but never went deeper on any of them, the most blatant example being the rushed and totally unbelievable love story between Jim and Judy.The content hardly could have been worse and unfortunately the form doesn't compensate for, the direction is clearly poor, the editing and soundtrack don't match the action..
For Jim Stark this is more than he can handle.Nicholas Ray's classic Rebel Without a Cause is a look into the life of Jim Stark (James Dean) and his attempt to try and figure out what he wants to do with his life.
I'm going to go out on the unpopular limb here and say that the reason Rebel Without a Cause is such an iconic movie is because of the tragic death of James Dean just before the film was released.
Nicholas Ray directed this popular and influential film that stars James Dean as Jim Stark, who has just moved to a new town, and tries to make a good impression on his high schoolmates, but they prove reluctant, and instead challenge him to a switchblade fight, then a "chicken run" with their cars.
The general consensus- on which one might dub a film like Rebel Without a Cause overrated- is that this film is THE film on teenage angst and dislocation from the adults of the period, and that it's essential because of James Dean, or that it might be considered director Nicholas Ray's best film.
From a historical perspective, however, and for the significance of James Dean, it is worth a viewing, at least once, if you want to know at least what the industry leaned towards in the 50s.Now, on to the actual film- it's the story of Jim Stark, who is disaffected and with a sort of glow about him (if glow is the word, maybe just, um, malaise), and its more of a reflection on his parents (Jim Backus, who is actually quite good here, and Ann Doran as his mother) than on society as a whole.
Entwined in a web of maturity, conformity, social-acceptance, rejection, love and friendship, this film provides a vivid picture of teenage anger, rebellion and the difficult task of proving one's self to society's obscure ideals and morals.The plot is simple; Jim Stark is the new kid in town who's stuck in a desperate search for a sense of self-worth and acceptance, but can never find it because he and his family is always on the move due to Jim's troubles with school and the law.
So once again, his character and courage is tested with knife-fights to "chickie" runs, leaving one to wonder, is this a promising beginning or the "end of the road" for Jim Stark?James Dean stars as Jim Stark, a lost and confused character who's always tried, but has failed so many times to be the son his parents always wanted him to be.
At times, his monologues could not be understood due to his mumbling, but overall, his performance was top-notch throughout the entire movie.Rebel Without A Cause tells a wonderful and original story while skillfully portraying the constant struggle of today's youth trying to escape alienation.
Despite a few superficial characters flaws, like Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato's (Sal Mineo) broad 2-dimensional acting, this movie is still worth watching..
"You are cold, I will warm you." This is a recurrent theme, and a human answer to the existential dilemma.There are other symbols I love in this movie, like the recurring use of the color red, and the mismatched socks.I loved the secondary characters, especially the policeman, Jim's parents, his grandmother, and Judy's father (loved seeing William Hopper in a role away from Perry Mason).
Released in 1955, "Rebel without a Cause" is a youth drama about a troubled teen, Jim Stark (James Dean), a new kid on the block in Los Angeles, where he meets other confused mid-50's youths, e.g. Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo).
I mean, this film didn't help at all to resolve the growing concern of delinquency which was rearing its ugly head amongst the American youth.But RWAC did make it clear that a problem such as hooliganism was a two-sided coin where full blame for its existence could neither be laid solely on the confused parents' indifference, nor on their bored children's defiance.All-in-all - RWAC, with its timely message, was well-structured story-telling that literally screamed out at the top of its lungs - "Money can't buy me love!" *Trivia note* - If James Dean were alive today he'd be 83 years old..
On the 1970's movie called "Over The Edge" there were the same type of scenes in Rebel Without A Cause such as: kids shooting at police officers, kids getting into fights with weapons, kids doing drugs, kids talking back to their parents and getting slapped in the face, kids running away, kids not understanding that they will be able to look back when they are adults and say, "How stupid of me?" The same type of thing happens today such as shootings, but the only difference is that it's being reported more often.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE Aspect ratio: 2.55:1 (CinemaScope)Sound format: 4-track magnetic stereoA troubled teenager (James Dean) struggles to find his place in a new school, where he falls in love with a fellow student (Natalie Wood) and is forced into a confrontation with her bullying boyfriend (Corey Allen), leading to unexpected tragedy...Nicholas Ray's quintessential Fifties melodrama arrived during a sea-change in American cinema, at a time when the glossy fantasies made popular during wartime were becoming supplemented by tougher movies offering a realistic depiction of contemporary society (cf.
Stewart Stern's coy script may seem a little dated now, but the drama still resonates with modern audiences, and there's a wealth of surprising subplots and subtexts, including Natalie Wood's impressive turn as an immature teenager who feels rejected by her father (William Hopper) because he refuses to indulge the kind of affections he lavished on her as a child, and Sal Mineo as the brittle interloper who keeps a picture of Alan Ladd in his school locker and develops an obvious crush on the dazzling new boy, played by Dean.
The fact of the matter though is that the film here is more Nicholas Ray's than Dean's and with the star's energies focused by a sympathetic director into an altogether more congenial role than Jett Rink in "Giant", consequently my enjoyment of the movie soared.It would have been all too easy for the likes of Ray to dumb down his talent and vision in adapting to a film aimed fore-square at the burgeoning teen market but it's to his credit that he fully engages with subject and character and delivers a well-rounded end-product which to these eyes and ears crosses the generation gap better than the fictional protagonists manage here.That said the story does take some time to heat up and I found many of the scenes and situations in the first half somewhat unnatural and forced, with acting occasionally to match.
The language employed by the youngsters could for me have been a little more contemporary with a bit more slang usage at the expense of an occasional speechifying tendency but in the dead quiet of the planetarium at the conclusion, Ray shows his mastery of control as the final tragedy is played out in near-darkness with his actors at last speaking quieter, shorter and altogether more telling lines.There's many a film with an exaggerated reputation in terms of its historical context and "Rebel Without A Cause", its lustre propelled into the limelight by Dean's demise and his being latched onto by the young rock'n'roll generation as a symbol of rebellious youth, has a bigger cross to bear than most.
There are moments of dialog that so perfectly capture what its like to be a teenager that you want this film to be preserved for people to see in thousands of years to come.The protagonist of this film and its notoriously famous and over-parodied title is Jim Stark, aka James Dean who was killed in a car accident before the release of this film, and before he was nominated for Oscars for his other two films: East of Eden and Giant.
Along the way he also, as many film-rebels rarely do, sticks up for the underdog Plato and makes a compelling father figure.The best scene comes when Buzz admits, shortly before the "chicky race," that he likes Stark.
Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and of course James Dean all seemed destined for great things, and this film truly showcases what phenomenal talent and dramatic prowess the three of them possessed.
(There are Spoilers) Being picked up for drunkenness Jim Stark, James Dean,is at the police station where he meets, without any formal introduction, Judy and Plato, Natalie Wood & Sal Mineo, who would become bonded with him later in the movie to the point where their a family.
In the case of Buzz ,Corey Allen,his involvement with Jim would be his last day on earth.Released just under a month (October 27, 1955) after James Dean's tragic death at the young and tender age of 24 in a car crash on September 30, 1955 the Nicholas Ray directed film "Rebel Without a Cause" impact on the youth of America, as well as the movie going public all over world, was like that of an 100 plus megaton hydrogen bomb.
With the local police now out looking to arrest Plato for shooting Crunch he runs into the Griffith Observertory with Jim and Judy running the police roadblock and dragnet to try to talk Plato into giving himself up before he ends up getting shot and killed.One of the best youth movie of all times "Rebel without a Cause" breaks away from to usual family stereotype in the movies and TV and shows real people with real emotions that shocked moviegoers back then and even now, over 50 years later.
Jim Stark (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood) Plato (Sal Mineo) are the stars of this movie.
Fans of 50's movies and anyone that was once a teen will love `Rebel Without a Cause'; especially because James Dean is in it.
We'll never know "what could have been", only that his was a talent that was taken too soon.Everything about this film is stunning from the acting to the camera angles, not to mention the stark use of color in different sequences.James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo make up a sort of fractured family, the castoffs whose normal families just don't understand.
The film begins when the three characters are in a police station,Jim Stark(Dean)has some behavior problems;Judy(Natalie Wood)an insecure young lady who felt "abandoned" by her father and similar to her is John or "Plato"(Sal Mineo) who desperate needs a father figure.The three of them meet again at school(who resembles a police station) they quickly formed an "Alliance" against incomprehension and adults.
James Dean would have continued to wow us if not for his car wreck and Sal Mineo still had some good movies left in him as did Natalie Wood too.
Eventually it mixes it up with a gang of teenagers at his school but he then forms a relationship with the equally troubled Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo).As everyone knows, Dean died before REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE was released and I've always wondered what would have happened had he lived.
A Classic High School Drama That is a Must See. The high school drama Rebel Without a Cause is directed by Nicholas Ray and stars James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.
Beautifully acted by James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo who would have to do it all so differently if this film was to be re-made in 2004.
It is a shame that the ending is a cop-out and wraps things up too easily, but Rebel Without a Cause is otherwise a must see for particularly James Dean's performance and as a textbook example as to how to make a film with the teenager-struggling-to-fit-in theme.
It is special because of the power of its performances, and because it was James Dean's last movie before the car crash that claimed his life.The story of "Rebel Without a Cause" is simple, a format followed often by subsequent films in the same genre.
I think 'Rebel Without A Cause' is a great movie and James Dean gives a very good performance..
The film almost seems like a eulogy when seen today, since so many of its cast members -- James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Nick Adams -- died young.
This only makes the movie more genius, for its time and for the modern day as well.And the actors in the film were genius as well, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood, and James Dean all doing a terrific job. |
tt0244244 | Swordfish | Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) is a highly skilled computer hacker. Having served time for infecting the FBI's Carnivore program with a computer virus, he is now on parole but forbidden from using computers. His alcoholic ex-wife Melissa (Drea de Matteo), who married a rich porn producer and is currently a part-time porn actress, has sole custody over their daughter Holly and a restraining order preventing him from visiting their daughter. One day, he is solicited by Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry), speaking for her boss Gabriel Shear (John Travolta), for his hacking skills. He goes to meet Gabriel in Los Angeles, where he is put on the spot to crack a secure government server within a minute while simultaneously held at gunpoint and receiving fellatio. When he succeeds, Gabriel offers Stanley $10 million to program a multi-headed worm, a "hydra", to siphon $9.5 billion from several government slush funds.
Stanley begins work, learning that Gabriel leads Black Cell, a secret group created by J. Edgar Hoover to launch retaliatory attacks against terrorists that threaten the United States. He also privately discovers Ginger is a DEA agent working undercover, and further is surprised to discover a corpse that looks like Gabriel. He goes to see Holly home from school but finds he is being followed by FBI agent J.T. Roberts (Don Cheadle), who had previously caught Stanley. Roberts, though monitoring Stanley closely, is more interested in Gabriel as he does not appear on any government database, and after learning that another hacker, Axl Torvalds (Rudolf Martin), had been killed by Gabriel's men, warns Stanley to be cautious. Stanley opts to secretly code a back door in his hydra that reverses the money transfer after a short period. Meanwhile, Senator Reisman (Sam Shepard), who oversees Black Cell, learns the FBI has started tracking Gabriel and orders him to stand down. Gabriel refuses, and narrowly avoids an assassination attempt ordered by Reisman. Gabriel personally kills Reisman in revenge and continues his plan.
Stanley delivers the hydra to Gabriel and leaves to see Holly, only to find that Gabriel has killed Melissa and her husband and kidnapped Holly, framing Stanley. Stanley has no choice but to participate in the bank heist to get Holly back. Gabriel and his men storm a Worldbanc branch, and secure its employees and customers as hostages, fitting each with ball-bearing-based explosives similar to Claymore mines. When police and FBI surround the branch, Gabriel takes Stanley to the coffee shop across the street to meet with Roberts, but Gabriel spends the time to discuss the film Dog Day Afternoon and the nature of misdirection. Once back in the bank, Gabriel has one of his men escort a hostage to demonstrate the situation. A sniper kills the man, and other agents pull the hostage away from the bank, causing the bomb to detonate, ravaging the buildings and vehicles on the street and killing several people, a scene shown in medias res at the start of the film.
Gabriel instructs Stanley to launch the hydra, and turns Holly over to him once completed. However, Stanley's back door triggers before they can leave the bank, and Stanley is recaptured while Holly is rescued. Gabriel threatens to kill Ginger, who he knows is a DEA agent, unless Stanley re-siphons the money back to a Monte Carlo bank. Despite doing so, Gabriel shoots Ginger. Gabriel and his men load the hostages on a bus and demand a plane wait for them at the local airport, but while en route, the bus is lifted off by a S-64 Aircrane and deposited on the roof of a local skyscraper. Gabriel deactivates the bombs and departs with his surviving men on a waiting helicopter, which Stanley shoots down using a rocket-propelled grenade from the bus.
Roberts takes Stanley to verify the corpse they found, believing Gabriel was a Mossad agent while there was no record of a DEA agent named Ginger. Stanley recognizes the corpse as the one he discovered earlier and personally realizes that the whole scenario was misdirection. Gabriel had escaped a different route, and Ginger had been wearing a bulletproof vest and was working with Gabriel. Roberts arranges for Stanley to have full custody of Holly, and the two tour the US together. In Monte Carlo, Gabriel and Ginger withdraw the money, and later watch as a yacht at sea explodes. Over the film's credits, a news report describes the destruction of the yacht, carrying a known terrorist, as the third such incident in as many weeks. | murder, cult, violence, flashback, psychedelic, action, entertaining | train | wikipedia | (A Great Scene, Not Explict, just cool)Anyway, he is recruited by John Travolta to hack into a dormant DEA Fund worth 9.5 Billion Dollars to finance his terrorist activities.Full of Slick Dialogue, cool Direction and the simply gorgeous Halle Berry, this turns out to be a very enjoyable Thriller, with some clever twists (some of which don't quite work) but are forgivable anyway.Not a classic, but a good film none the less.
This movie can be summed up as: lots of very cool action scenes (fans of both bullet time and explosions will really enjoy this), a lot of style, and a standard implausible plot.
This movie is very entertaining if you like non-stop action in a cool high-tech environment.The ingredients are pretty standard.
But it's by far not as obnoxious as in "I, Robot".The filming is top-notch, unlike some other movies you can actually see what's happening in the action scenes (which is sometimes due to the amazing slow-down effects in some scenes).
The good guy (Jackman) didn't always do the right thing, and the bad guy (Travolta) could hardly be accused of sinister motives.The film starts off with a bang ...
The out-of-order editing was actually effective and interesting, rather than seeming like yet another failed attempt to mimic Pulp Fiction and those other movies that brought attention to the idea of showing a film out of chronological order.Jackman was great as computer hacker Stanley Jobson, devoted father who just happened to get brought down for computer-related felonies after hacking into and making public an FBI e-mail surveillance operation.
He can keep up with the smooth-talking, fast-moving Travolta as well as show enough emotion to make him seem like a real person and not just a run-of-the-mill action hero.The plot of the film is fantastic.
There are so many films in the action genre that result to dumbing down the smart villains, just so the hero of the story will look good when he comes up with a relatively weak solution to the complex plot.
Here's a film I really liked the first time, and was totally turned off on the second viewing as the Hollywood bias machine was in high gear again, and you can guess in what director (left or right).
Every script line is either wannabe-cool or plain stupid.To add some aggravation, the movie opens with a John Travolta's monologue in which he digresses about the unrealistic nature of Hollywood films.
No, for much of the film, "Swordfish" rocks, with plenty of action and two notable performances, Halle Berry and John Travolta.
And as for the hip techno-gadgetry that underlines the movie, I wonder whether the production team had any semblance of an idea of what goes on the hacking world, I mean can you imagine Kevin Mitnick hacking into the FBI mainframe in 60 seconds with a gun at his head and a blonde between his legs?When Travolta reveals the motive for his maniacal tendencies - to hit back hard at terrorists who threaten the good old US of A, I cringed at the prospect of American Neanderthals whooping in support.
I have difficulty imagining why wealthy big-name stars like John Travolta, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, and Hugh Jackman allow themselves to be involved in this sort of enterprise.
And later, rising to even greater heights of taste and intelligence, the head honcho, Gabriel - no angel, he, as we quickly discover - played by John Travolta, has a gun put to Stanley's head and forces him to hack into a government site in 60 seconds, or his brains will be moved someplace else on the business end of a heavy calibre slug.
The world's a complicated place, and it might actually help if movie-makers would divert some of those millions of production dollars to making intelligent films about complicated issues, rather than mindless trash like this..
Let's hope his next pairing with Halle Berry is much better.Now to some of the many incomprehensible situations in the movie:You detain a ostensibly "Finnish" but inexplicably German-speaking hacker but leave him alone and unguarded so that two Euro-trash thugs can trick you with a misleading phone call and prance into an federal interrogation area with guns brandished?!The hacking is so silly and unbelievable.
John Travolta plays off his roll as the villain of the film wonderfully although still running off his Pulp Fiction character, Sad though that the writers and producers thought not to support him with a worthy script.Apart from the dramatic opening sequences with its impressive cgi there is nothing else offered to keep you watching.
Even the most computer illiterate would expect the roll of top hacker to be more of an aged old man whose time is modestly spent whiling away the hours reading technical books and attending seminars as opposed to the hunky womanising Mr Smooth, Hugh Jackman.For a 14-year-old boy this film will be a first-rate movie, full of aimless action scenes, no plot to follow and the addition of the very provocative Halle Berry (especially as she appears topless).
Halle Berry plays the same character she did in Die Another Day, but this time she takes off her top and John Travolta plays the kind of bad guy who can't stop talking.
Most of the money probably went on getting decent actors like Don Cheadle and Vinnie Jones, (and the once great Travolta) because they certainly can't have been attracted by the god-awful screenplay.As it happens, Travolta is spectacularly awful in this, as his character is exactly the same slightly deranged fast talking megalomaniac we saw in Broken Arrow and Face/Off - and he was equally abonimable in those.Of the many painful and awful plot points, one of the worst was the theme of Hugh Jackoff trying to get his daughter back.
Done, and done, time and time again by Travolta.Don Cheadle is so solid, so good, and so competent, it breaks my heart to see him in this piece of tripe.Also, honorable mention must be given to Rudolph Martin as Axel Torvalds.That having been said, I will remark that Halle Berry's gratuitous semi-nudity, and excessive camped up performance as a manipulative sex goddess was so over the top in terms of bad acting, I was amazed enough by it to be able to stay awake 'til the bitter end.The transparency of her character was so offensively obvious, I guessed what she was about within seconds of her appearance.
This is the worst film I have "survived" in my life.Everything is wrong:The viewer feels no emotional attachment to any character in the entire film.The movie tries so hard to be hip and ends up being revolting and nauseating.Advice to John Travolta: retire.Advice to Dominic Sena: watch at least ten minutes of SEVEN SAMURAI before ever thinking of making another film.
But you'd be too young for this since there's sex and nudity (oh yeah, and lots of people getting blown away, but that's to be expected in an American action movie).In case you haven't guessed by now, the script is *incredibly* moronic.
As soon as we get done watching the opening logos, we immediately hear John Travolta's unintentionally funny dialogue in which he describes why he doesn't understand Hollywood and their films, specifically "Dog Day Afternoon." Soon after, he is taking people hostage and we see a "Matrix"-style Bullet Time effect, which is shown for no other reason other than to "impress" us.Personally, I think "The Matrix" was an overrated movie.
Decent premise and good visual effects make this movie worth seeing, but if you've ever touched a computer and give yourself any credit as a fan of these types of films, please try not to laugh too hard.
backs up a close to no suspense original script on cyper-terror-control-mechanisms by Skip Woods, when supreme Hollywood producer Joel Silver gives director Dominic Sena and his fellow cinematographer Paul Cameron another chance, after "Gone In Sixty Seconds" produced by Jerry Bruckheimer in season 1999/2000, to create an Hollywood instant-classic 100-Million-Dollar production starring John Travolta as terror-pushing Gabriel in reptitious Los Angeles live-action exterior environment, when co-starring up and coming Hugh Jackman, at age 32, fills in scene oblivion with charm and wits as high-end-hacker "Stanley" keeping close relations to scene-stealing just about to win an "Academy-Award" for best leading actress for "Monster's Ball" African-American Halle Berry, showing off topless, in eye-winking scene of slight action-comedy not too serious entertainment, when the only highlight remains a digital-enhanced 360° dregree-encircling shot within an tensión point-given L.A. heist opening sequence, letting "Swordfish" prevail to be revisited in its 90-Minute nevertheless descending editorial by surviving as capable Stephen E.
Being a big John Travolta fan i was very excited to see how he would perform in this (following his recent not-so-good movies!!), and i can safely say that i loved his performance in Swordfish (easily his best since Broken Arrow in 1996).
However it's not just his performance which carries this movie; other great cast include hugh jackman, halle berry and don cheadle.
There are some fantastic action sequences as well, like the opening scene or the car chase (which is fantastic, by the way, as you would expect from Dominic Sena) To sum it up, a fantastic action/techno thriller; if you liked John's other movies (like broken arrow, face off, pulp fiction) then you will probably really enjoy this.
I think the breast nudity scene with Berry and Jackman was interesting, because it kinda showed some of Ginger's characteristics, she definitely is a sexual character, and uses her sexuality to her advantage with different men.
Hugh Jackman is a great professional actor, and he for sure does not disappoint in this film, he is smart, focused, likable, and looks good while doing it ;) lol.
Even if John Travolta has come off the back of the biggest flop of his career with "Battlefield Earth" Hugh Jackman was following up his first stint as Wolverine in "X-Men" likewise Halle Berry was following up the same movie.
Where the movie works is Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry.
The cast are good, John Trvolta as ever is quality and Hugh Jackman as launched himself as a top action man, in that apart from being quite big he can actually act as well.
Shadowy government agent Travolta recruits Jackman to hack into a 9.5 billion dollar slush fund, to transfer the monies.The interplay between the two was excellent, the technology side of it wasn't utter BS for a change and Halle Berry was absolutely lovely as usual.Good fun, well scripted, acted and directed.
This was one of those highly anticipated summertime movies (of 2001) that turned out to be about as memorable as a fart in the wind.You'll be somewhat entertained (perhaps a lot less than somewhat) while watching it, but as soon as it's over, and you remember it's time to do homework, or walk the dog, or whatever else you need to do, it will fade from your memory because, despite having Hugh and Halle and John all looking good and well-photographed, and lots of quick action cuts and things that go boom, at it's core is nothing but a lot of forgettable fluff.I voted this movie a 2, not only because it deserved it, but basically because whenever this film is mentioned in the future of film history, it will be remembered for two reasons--as the first film that Halle Berry bared her (admittedly luscious) breasts...for a little extra cash..
Horrendous dialogue, appauling special effects, stupid and incomprendible plot, irrelevant scenes, bad casting, retarded cinematography....And don't think that just because it is directed by the 'Matrix people' it will automatically have top quality effects, because it doesnt, and in fact the action sequences are very badly done, and the explosions are almost cartoon-like.
"Swordfish" is a rock'em, sock'em action no-brainer with Travolta as a deliciously likeable villain, Berry as a deliciously topless DEA agent, Jackman as a the world's faster typist, and Cheadle as an FBI agent.
The guy who wrote the script either was bored, or just don't have imagination.I can line up countless series of films that are JUST like this one, that follow the same method of climax, same rapid dialogue with smart remarks, and the same "newthinking" way to end the movie.
Still, I think that it can be pretty cool for those of you who haven't experienced so great many movies, or just want to see some thin slender women in undies, listen to cool music, and watching highly explosive, yet unrealistic scenes follow eachother like an ocean over a beach.This really proves that Travolta was made large due to the directors Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) and John Woo (Face/Off + Broken Arrow) NOT through his acting skills.
If you want to see a good John Travolta movie, sorry, there isn't any.
It's loaded with stars - Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and John Travolta (of all people) take the leads, with supporting shots from Don Cheadle and Vinnie Jones - but abysmally acted and thoroughly stiff, narrow and postured.
Berry and Travolta didn't appear to have any character chemistry.If the plot was more developed there would have been more to talk about afterwards instead of guessing,"what the hell went on here." Strong stories make for great movies that make you want to look at them again and again and again.Swordfish the Matrix?
The new film, Swordfish, opens with Travolta giving a direct to camera monologue about the lack of realism in Hollywood movies, and how just once he'd like to see the bad guy get away in the end.
Stanley doesn't know whether to do the deed, and use Gabriel's money to sue for custody of his daughter, or cooperate with over zealous FBI agent, Roberts (Don Cheadle) in order to stay out of prison.In the end, Swordfish is an action thriller of slightly above average intelligence, which makes it light years more intelligent than the recent crop of below average action flicks, such as Sena's last effort, Gone in Sixty Seconds.
You want to watch a movie with Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and John Travolta, some silly 2001 hacking montage, and a fun thriller.
Obviously some criticms can be levelled at swordfish, true, Halle Berry's topless scene adds little to the plot and the car chase is a bit unrealistic, but let's be honest, it wouldn't be a particularly good film if the lead characters got killed halfway through (except pulp fiction!), because that would bring something of a halt to the action don't you think?
Swordfish is so expensive and cynical that Sena expects you to be impressed with its profundity, and if you are like me--see Halle Berry topless and say, "Nice"--and move on from what you just saw because you know that you're being played, you're going to find that this thing pegs the needle in the red for dumb and dull.Sena directed Gone in Sixty Seconds a couple years before, and before I realized it, I thought that this thing sure reminds me of GISS, only without the pleasing characters.
Unless you enjoy watching Travolta being ham-handed as an evil genius (read: imbecilic), Hugh Jackman being cardboard-like, and Halle Berry trying for sexy (and getting creepy instead), skip Swordfish..
Good Fun. The world's most dangerous spy (John Travolta) is hired by the CIA to coerce a computer hacker (Hugh Jackman) recently released from prison to help steal $6 billion in unused government funds.The film received a great deal of press initially because it featured Halle Berry's first topless scene.
Halle Berry and John Travolta spend most of the time patronising Hugh Jackman.
It is very amazing that a film is trashed by everyone and your expectations with the movie is very less still the movie performs above your expectations.Same thing happened with me while watching it.I am a fan of Hugh so i planned to see it but my friends told me that its bad.But this movie was superb.The plot was a little weak but its presentation was really cool.Right from the first scene it held my attention.Its screenplay was so crisp and fast.Some comic one liners were really funny.It gives you a feel of old fashioned action movies.If they have paid a little more attention to the script then the film would have been more entertaining.Hugh was great.He played his role with perfection.Halle berry was average and her topless scene was a forced one.I like John travolta but this time he completely missed the mark.He was too bad.Surprise twist in the end was good but not great.Overall a good action thriller.....
Hugh Jackman is well casted for the lead and Halle Berry is really good as well.
He is approached by Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry) with an invitation to work for the mysterious Gabriel (John Travolta), "What we only fantasise, he does".Gabriel wants Stanley to hack into a secret government bank account.
After watching X-men, I suddenly realised that there was this heaps cool movie that also starred Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman, namely this one.
Swordfish is an action/suspense movie that does not end the way that one would expect it to end, that is the good guy ends up beating the bad guy.
Pretty cool opening if I do say so myself.However, that is near the end of the movie, and immediately after that scene, we are transported four days earlier to see how Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) landed up on the wrong side of a bank robbery (meaning that he was with the bank robbers rather than the hostages).
That movie was 'Swordfish', a high-gloss actioner from the people that brought you 'The Matrix' and 'Gone in 60 Seconds'.
I'm a fan of Hugh Jackman's, so I looked forward to seeing "Swordfish," which also stars another actor I like, John Travolta.
'Swordfish' is no exception to all these, on the other hand one can ask a few questions about credibility of many of the scenes, as well as about the moral values of the character played by John Travolta, but overall when you have Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry near Travolta in the cast you cannot go too wrong. |
tt1059836 | Transit | The film opens up with an armored truck coming across a car accident in the middle of a road. The driver finds this suspicious and prepares to drive off, but the truck is suddenly attacked by masked robbers. The driver tries to make a break for it, but his partner is revealed to be in on the heist. They execute the driver when an alarm in the truck goes off, and then his partner when he questions the lead robber's motives.After the heist, local law enforcement have created road blocks in search of the robbers. The four robbers, Marek, his girlfriend Arielle, Losada, and getaway driver Evers know that they fit the profile of the robbers and so, to prevent themselves from being caught, hide the $4 million in a sleeping bag belonging to a family of four who are on a camping trip. They manage to hide the bag full of money in the family's camping gear on top of their Land Rover while the family uses restrooms at a small gas station.Both the robbers and the family drive off and arrive at the road blockade. The robbers are immediately pulled over by the police and their vehicle is searched. As it is, the family passes through the blockade with no trouble. Aside from a police scanner belonging to Marek, the police are unable to find any incriminating evidence against them and let them go. The robbers catch up to the family in their black Mustang. The father, Nate (Jim Caviezel) notices the Mustang coming up behind him very fast. He tries to outrun the vehicle, but a police car detects his speed and pulls him over. The robbers manage to get away because Arielle detected the cruiser with the scanner. Nate tries to tell the officer the Mustang was chasing him, but the patrolman insists because they were following him at great speed, it allowed them to get away with it.Because of Louisiana state law, Nate is given a misdemeanour for wreckless driving. Nate pleads with the officer not to give him the ticket because it will violate his parole, having spent the last 18 months in jail because of real estate fraud he committed. When he innocently begs the patrolman further, he is arrested and taken to the police station. Meanwhile, his wife Robyn (Elisabeth Rohm) and his two sons Shane (Sterling Knight) and Kenny (Jake Cherry) drive to a motel to spend the night while await Nate's release. Nate is put in a cell block for the night. Back at the motel, the robbers invade Robyn's motel room and attack her. She locks herself in the bathroom door, then escapes through the bathroom window. The robbers are forced to leave when they learn the police are on their way. Marek is frustrated they didn't find the money in Robyn's room and gets angered further when Evers revealed the family had two motel rooms, insisting the bag must have been in the other room.The police arrive on scene, and bring Nate along once learning of the attack on his family. They decide to reduce the charges against Nate and give the family an escort out of town. Robyn and Shane demand to return home, but along with Kenny, Nate insists they need the trip in order to repair their relationship as a family and have family memories. The next morning, they leave the motel for the campgrounds. A police cruiser escorts them a few miles down the road before turning back and racing to another emergency. Meanwhile, the robbers spot the family Land Rover and head on after it. As they keep driving, one of the straps holding the camping gear comes loose and so the family pulls over to fix it. As Nate and Robyn unload the camping gear, he hands her the sleeping bag full of money. When she opens it, her face turns white. She tells the boys to get back into the car before lashing out at Nate. Robyn believes Nate actually stole the money from members of a laundering scheme that exposed his real-estate fraud and threw him in jail, and that they were the ones who attacked her at the motel, and insists the camping trip was nothing but a ruse for them to "start over". Nate is confused by her allegations and pleads with her he didn't do anything wrong. She throws the bag at Nate and drives off with the two boys, leaving him stranded. When he looks into the bag, he realizes that the money belongs to the robbers.Shane and Kenny plead their mother to turn the car around to get Nate, but they are attacked by the robbers in their Mustang. They drive them off the road and cause them to crash into a log. Marek demands to know where the money is, and Robyn tells him her husband has it. Marek and Arielle drive off with the family while Losada and Evers remain in the Mustang in-tow. Meanwhile, Nate walks on-foot, first down the road and then through the swamp adjacent to it. He hears a motorboat pass by and shouts for help. The driver of the boat spots Nate for a split second, but continues on and doesn't stop. Nate hides the money in a tree trunk and returns to the road. As soon as he does, the Land Rover speeds pass him. He chases after it, but is too late to stop it. Suddenly, the Mustang appears and Losada and Evers apprehend him. They take him captive and drive off after the others.Losada informs Marek they have Nate and the two cars intersect. Marek demands Nate to hand over the money, but Nate says he'll get it once his family is let go. Marek refuses to negotiate and holds Nate at gun point to show him where the money is hidden. They return to the spot with the tree trunk, where to his horror, Nate discovers the money is missing. He doesn't tell the robbers this and returns, stating once his family is set free he'll give them the money (he keeps eye contact with Losada while saying this). This angers Marek again, who says he's in charge and makes the rules, however this angers Losada who claims he should be in charge instead.Nate manipulates the two into a brawl, which allows him to run off. Arielle sees this and tells him not to do anything stupid, unknowingly allowing Robyn and the boys to escape. She drives off, but Arielle clings onto the back of the Land Rover but the boys manage to knock her out. Nate runs up to the road and Robyn slows down the car to let him get in. They speed off, but turn around after Nate tells them the next town is 40 miles away and so they're better off returning to the town with the motel. The family manages to flag down the same patrolman that arrested Nate, but he doesn't believe their wild stories of anyone chasing them. Suddenly, he's hit by the robbers and the family flees again. Marek steals the cop car and tries to gun them down. As the Mustang and cruiser try to box the Land Rover, Nate notices gas leaking from the tank of the cruiser. Nate swerves the Land Rover into the cruiser, which ignites the fuel, causing the cruiser to spin out of control and crash into a ditch. Evers and Losada retrieve Marek and several weapons from the cruiser. Marek tells a wounded Arielle "he won't lose to this man." Fed up with Arielle slowing them down, Losada and Evers turn on him who insist on killing her. Marek turns the tables and holds them at gunpoint, but surprises them when he shoots Arielle in the back of the head.Meanwhile, the family tries to escape by boat but Nate uses it to distract the robbers' attention so that they can escape. Unfortunately, this backfires as the robbers take the boat to track the family down. Robyn, Kenny and Shane come across an abandoned cabin in the swamps. They find a radio inside and manage to contact someone for help, who says the police will be there in 30 minutes. Shane says that's not enough time. Nate hides in the bushes as Marek searches for the family. A snake however causes Nate to be spotted and forces him to run, however Marek shoots him down, demanding him to reveal the location of the money, and then his family. Meanwhile, Robyn, Shane and Kenny find the money and several loaded guns inside a locked up closet in the cabin, finally proving their father's innocence. Suddenly, they spot Evers and Losada outside. Robyn hides the kids in the closet and shoots Losada just as he breaks down the door. Evers retrieves him and a gunfight breaks out. When the firing stops, Shane sets fire to several portions of the money and throws them out the window, threatening to burn all of it if they don't let them go. Marek and Nate arrive. Marek threatens to execute Nate if they don't bring out the money. When Shane brings it out, Losada refuses to give him back his dad and is about to shoot him, however he is shot again and killed by Robyn. Shane flees back into the house with the money. Marek and Evers try to level the cabin by firing bullets at it. This allows Nate to grab Losada's gun and shoot Marek in the shoulder. He quickly grabs his machine gun and fires at Evers, whose last words to Nate are "watch your back". Nate turns around and sees Marek swing a machete at him, wounding his chest. Nate seemingly falls into the swamp as Marek takes several swings at him. Marek then enters the cabin and attacks Shane, but Robyn threatens to burn the money. Marek says she has nowhere to run, but she burns the money away. Marek knocks her out cold.Nate appears and tackles Marek, and the two engage in a brutal fight. The two of them try to choke each other, however Nate slams Marek's head into a nail on a wooden deck outside the cabin, finally killing him. Robyn, Shane and Kenny mend to him, and the four of them reconcile. In the last scene, a revving car engine is heard as well as the application of brakes. A shot of Nate's wedding ring lies covered in blood on the road (Losada chopped Nate's hand when he found him on the side of the road) and a hand, presumably Nate's, picks it up before the screen goes black. | violence, boring, murder | train | imdb | Coming into the movie, I suspected mediocre acting at best, a semi-terrible script, and illogical actions and decisions from the characters - keeping in mind that I had never heard of this movie until I stumbled across it by chance.
The characters did things that seem implausible - but the action and suspense of the movie was so well done that that simple flaw was easily ignorable (for me anyways).
So, if you have stumbled across this film and wonder if its worth giving a try but don't know because this movie is one of those that never made it to the big screen, this is my opinion.
This film was extremely linear, predictable and full of moments where you were wondering how 4 criminals, who planned a decent heist, would be so idiotic when it came to retrieving the bag of money.
This isn't as easy as they thought...The movie focuses mainly on the robbers chasing the family, while also shining a light on the personal problems of the father and their marriage.The story is decent.
I have to say I am a fan of Jim Caviezel and his acting performance was fairly good but the intelligence of the characters left a lot to be desired.
I had no idea what this movie was all about because i couldn't find a decent review online, i was expecting a cheap flick with some action here and there.
Really enjoying and a true thriller...With movies like these most of the times you enjoy them but at the same time its very much predictable but as far as Transit is concerned most of your guesses would be wrong as i already mentioned its a roller coaster and you will enjoy every single bit of it......
keep up the good work and i must mention the lady who played the mom of the family done a superb because most of the times the hero seems to be very plain and expression less while the lady who played his wife did an awesome job.Bravo ***.
I was not sure it was a film for me because the cast and director are not well known, from a British point of view, but by the time the opening credits were over I was hooked good and proper.
Dad played by Jim Cavaziel has just been released from federal prison for some white collar fraud and he's trying to get to know wife Elizabeth Rohm and kids Jake Cherry and Sterling Knight.But while they're trying to get the family unit functioning, a gang led by Harold Frain has committed a 4 million dollar armored car heist and to elude the police blockade put the loot in the Sidwell's wagon.
It is a powerful thriller that can excite you from the beginning minute and the very last minute, not to mention it is a movie filled with action including great car chasing and fighting scenes.
The family is portrayed from a sense of disconnection to a sense of connection.Transit is a one-and-a-half-hour-long thriller that appeals to the audience from the first moment; it is full of intense action and exciting moments.
It actually deserved a little more, due to Caviezel's acting, but the script is just plain dumb, to the point it made me angry every time the gang outsmarted themselves in a loop of idiotic decisions that I just couldn't believe were part of a (supposed to be) serious movie.
If in order to give another twist and add "entertainment" to the plot the characters constantly behave like babbling idiots and do absurd things my brain sends "not credible" signals all over and then the fun is over!For example: criminals racing the car like mad men and making "specialist" u-turns when they should be avoiding detection (when the good guys don't even have a car to run anymore).
Transit (2012) ~umR ☛ 5/10 Director: Antonio Negret Stars: Jim Caviezel, Diora Baird and James Frain 89 Min - Crime | Drama | ThrillerA family, five robbers & and bag full of money thats Transit.
Nothing really special in this movie, you have seen this story number of times under different production team.
Totally predictable and the only thing i don't understand is actor like Jim Caviezel signed up for movies like this.
Just below OK direction, however, acting is somewhat good and the actors tried their best to lift the movie up.
STORYLINE(same old story!...) A family on a road trip is stalked by criminals who stashed stolen money in their car.For more of my reviews please visit: https://www.facebook.com/unitedcbaMR.
I really didn't know what I was expecting getting into this but I really can't remember when I've gotten a shot of adrenaline like this, it truly was a good film.
Jim Caviezel is a great actor and was a fine pick for the dad in turmoil as was the acting of the entire family.
I know a lot of people are bashing it for that reason but I believe that if you just go with it as an action film it will deliver enough to satisfy.
Start naming other recent action flicks that go perfect with life, ridiculous explosions & never ending bullets & clips for guns,short list.It didn't state these thugs were smart people, so obviously they are going to make stupid mistakes, I heard of a bank robbery a few years back where the robber left his driver's license on the counter.
He hides the money and has to figure out how to get his family back with whom the bad guys have caught up.Transit is one of the better movies of the genre.
I normally judge movies and how they'd turn out based on the first 5 to 10 minutes.First few minutes were slow and didn't know what to expect, and then the movie took off and I got hooked.The action sequences were superb, and the main plot is: "A family on a road trip is stalked by criminals who stashed stolen money in their car."Although the main plot is consistent, many of the interaction sequences between the characters turn out different than what I expected, which is the high point of my experience.Highly recommended..
I had seen another flick from director Antonio Negret, namely Seconds Apart (2011), some kind of horror but I liked it and here he showed us that he can carry a road movie too.
i like to say road movie with an thriller overtone because most of the action takes place with chasing cars.The acting was rather okay but one face took my attention, James Frain (Marek).
Surrounded by road blocks, all they can do is stash the loot, and what better place than on top of a family mini-van, on it's way to a camping trip.
As the father, trying to escape a dark past, Caviezel is amazing as the simple father, turned action star, once his family is threatened.
Transit is your typical action chase film, with two exceptions, one, a very interesting back story, and two a top star, who seems to enjoy staying below the grid in Hollywood.
It's not much different from all the other Action films you've seen, but it has it's moments, and it was definitely fun to watch..
You'd think with Jim in there and a hefty action squad supporting the movie that it'd be engaging at least on an entertainment level, but its really not.
Here's The Lowedown on "Transit" (A Thriller DVD review)...LIKED IT!!Become a fan of The Lowedown on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Lowedown/386583633764Genre: 8 Movie: 6 What's it about?
Characters sometimes seem to be irrational and the focus of the film seems to shift a couple of times, but it's still a very nicely done B-action movie.
This film makes a great example and proves that you don't need to have a huge budget to make a good movie.The story is in a nutshell, about a family attempting to get to know one another again after going through a ordeal prior to the events of the movie by going on a road trip despite the reluctance of Shane, the elder son.
It is a mix of Suspense, thriller, action, horror with very amazing twists which keep you on the edge the whole time.
The bad guys are an evil-eyed psycho (that somehow, always manage to get someone to fall in love with them), another that is even worse (he has no woman) and a middle-of-the-road kinda guy who is only a sociopath.The family has a white collar ex-con Father ("it was only mortgage fraud", he says..."Only?," says the cop) a disbelieving nervous wife, who can handle an assault rifle when needed, a foul- mouthed, drug smoking teen (who does make some smart decisions), and a little fella that just loves having Dad back.There are some exciting road antics and shoot-em-ups, a couple of mild twists.
It's not that the film isn't a thrill ride; it's just numerous action scenes that have been done a hundred times over.
This at times makes the movie entertaining and others just frustrating.Even with the issues this is a decent rental that will satisfy.
This is a movie you can watch without boring,coz there's nonstop action & its very good.Im not going to say whats in the movie,coz it will spoil the Story..
I just want to say Don't believe some of the reviews.just Watch the movie& its damn good .
That said, cinematography has some great scenes, even if it gets a little nauseating with the hand-held work during some action sequences.
As for the plot, it had potential, but quickly gets embroiled in typical action scenes, car chases and shootouts.
Why anyone would stay on the road in bushland in that situation, when chased by a car that wouldn't go anywhere in mud or scrub, let alone shallow rivers (aside from a brief trip past some swampland obviously), is beyond explanation - either the script writer or the characters in this film are retarded, its impossible to know which.
James Caviezel stars as a dad who takes his family on a trip to the Bayou with a bag of stolen money 4 killers put on his SU while escaping a police road block.
When they come to get the money back, they find a family who will to survive fights stronger than they anticipated.I was very surprised at how well directed, acted and scripted this movie was, not to mention the excellent action.
I think he did a fine job carrying this film.James Frain as the main bad guy (Marek) was also great.
But I am sorry to say that it is not a movie to remember.So guys, you may watch it, and have a good time...
It's not exactly a good film, and it's nothing new -- it has all the architecture of a predictable thriller flick; one man and his family, road trip, and modern-day bank- robbing pirates.
A couple of scenes had some great acting that was believable.I guess it is also the unbelievable coincidences that make these style movies so hard to watch.
Very good action film and Jim is at his best.
Another normal man confronted to the bad guys, and has to fight all the way in order to protect his family.A nasty gang has hidden the money stolen from a robbery in a car of holiday makers, to escape the police.
The cast is quite good and the pace satisfactory but as you progress in the story you start to realize this is just another movie packed with a common story with guns, speedy cars, violence and sort of expected ending.
I don't remember if Cavaziel's wife in the film was a ex-CIA or ex-FBI or something, but what it looks like a pretty and normal woman, she unexpectedly manages to escape of a motel room within millimeters from the bad guys' grasping hands and later in the movie we'll see her holding and fully operate an old Kalashnikov that would make Rambo blush big time.
I won't spoil your enjoyment of the film by giving too much away but what seems to be a simple plan on behalf of the robbers spirals out of control as the family begin to fight back.The acting is uniformly excellent with a special mention to James Frain who plays the lead bad guy with just enough restrained menace to really get under your skin.There is no excessive violence or nudity and the bad language such as it is simply forms part of the plot.Transit is simply a well written, well acted plausible thriller with enough action, twists and turns to keep you guessing to the very end 'How are they going to get out of this!!'9 out of 10.
At first it seems like the whole thing should be a smooth operation, but a couple bumps in the road make it a hard time for both the family and criminals.The music is generic and sometimes a little too active in my opinion, but it gets the job done.
Although there's only one or two actors (one from LOST) that you'll recognize, they all do a fine job and the compositional quality of the film is excellent.For a movie that's mainly set on the road, it's a great film and not nearly as predictable as you may think..
sometimes we don't know what to expect in a movie, in this case even though the story may sound familiar to you i am sure you wont be disappointed a gang approaching a police check point, had to exchange a bag with 4 million dollars from a robbery in a family car making a trip here its when the action begins!!
it kept me on my sit the entire movie, it has some twists and a lot of action, and a pretty good one, its almost like you felt the kick and bullets, its not overact, very real and for all the fans of caviezel this is one you have to see it!!!
in my opinion one of his best, sit around and enjoy a great action film, there's is no better way to start this new year.
What starts off is a film about a family of four going camping as the husband and wife are having some difficulties, they want to try and work things out as a family.
I was totally impressed by the casting of this movie and with enough people watching this I hope this gets noticed for being one of THE better action films of the last 5 years and that's coming from someone who sees almost every action film that comes out.
First of all the gang of criminals decide to force the car off the road in broad daylight instead waiting to take it from the family without them knowing.
Transit is an action, driving movie where weak scripts and acting are useless and the only thing good is the location.A family is in ruins after the father has been in jail due to fraud.
Jim and his family are travelling to go camping with one son who has a huge chip on his shoulder and one who has amazing hair.Meanwhile, a bunch of Thieves who have just robbed an armoured truck, are making a getaway, but them darn roadblocks stop them from doing so.They have a brilliant idea of hiding the money on Jesus' range rover, and then pick it up later on.What they didn't expect was that not only is this man Jesus, but he can make even the slightly interesting premise appear boring.And thats the problem with this movie, it's boring and never gets going until about ten minutes from the end.
Transit is a glossy b movie with a simple premise that is stretched out for all of the 80 minutes running time.
I won't say which finger he lost; I will say that it factors into the final shot of the film, one that seems threatening but is in fact the start – or, rather, the restart – of something good.This movie is by no means groundbreaking in story or execution.
First of all I'm not so sure to how some people can give this a 10 star rating, it is a good film in terms of action and entertainment but not much else.
I decided to watch this because I loved the movie 'Outlander' which starred Jim.The storyline isn't anything new.
That scene made me cringe, a lot.This movie revolves solely around Jim's relationship between his family and how he wants to make things right after spending time in jail for committing fraud, a son who doesn't respect him and a wife who doesn't trust him.
the cast are very good by what the movie itself that who or whom should be picked to play those roles.
while almost every Americans of all races still mostly cling to their own ethnic or racial backgrounds, the most popular friendly communication still stays on the starting level of: "hi, how are you doing?", "what's up?", the touching scenes in all of the TV commercials or movies always showing we are a big loving family but at least in this film, it's different: we got a black team member of the 4 robbers, he never agreed or cooperated with the other 3 white members, and this is at least not so formulaic as what i have above mentioned, so he just killed all the whites in his way any time he got a chance.
Jim Caviezel turns in a very good, if not great performance.
Don't expect more than a lot of car chases, flying lead and improbable outcomes and you will be thoroughly entertained.The toughness of the characters is really what drives this film, and while the plot may seem improbable, it's still believable.
It's not something you'd likely find in a fishing camp deep in the bayous and swamps of Louisiana.Other that that little thing, this is one enjoyable movie..
A dysfunctional family on a cross country road trip have four million dollars in stolen cash stashed in the back of their car. |
tt0164184 | The Sum of All Fears | During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egyptian and Syrian forces are on the verge of defeating Israel. As a last-ditch precautionary measure, a nuclear-armed A-4 Skyhawk is launched to ensure that Israeli ground forces are not completely overrun. The fighter jet is engaged by a Syrian surface-to-air missile battery and shot down. Among the widely scattered wreckage littering the barren desert below is an intact nuke, burrowed deep into the crater left by the crashing debris.Fast-forward 29 years to 2002. US President J. Robert Fowler (James Cromwell) and his national security team are at Mt. Weather, Virginia participating in a nuclear war drill. After the drill, the President dispatches CIA Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman) on an inspection tour of Russian nuclear sites according to the terms of the START arms treaty.At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, young analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck) is part of a group watching current video of Russian President Zorkin and sarcastically commenting on his recent weight gain. Simultaneously, a shadowy Neo-Nazi group is meeting in Vienna. Their leader, Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) laments the impotence of modern Europe in the face of global dominance by the United States and Russia. On the Golan Heights, an Arab scrap metal dealer is excavating the Israeli plane crash site from 1973. He strikes a hard object a few feet below the ground and realizes it is some type of bomb. Thinking it valuable, he and his helper carefully finish uncovering the weapon and use a hoist to lift it onto their truck.The next morning, Jack Ryan is lazing in bed with girlfriend Dr. Cathy Muller (Bridget Moynihan) when he receives an emergency phone call summoning him to Langley. President Zorkin has dropped dead of an apparent heart attack and has been quickly succeeded by Alexander Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds). As Ryan hurriedly dresses, his girlfriend wonders aloud what would constitute an emergency for a "historian." Arriving at CIA headquarters, Ryan is collared by Director Cabot and hustled into a meeting. As part of his analyst job, Ryan had previously prepared an intelligence estimate on Nemerov. Cabot unexpectedly orders Ryan to accompany him on the trip to Russia.In the desert, an international arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore) meets with the Arab scrap metal merchant and quickly recognizes the type of bomb he sees before him. He tells the Arab that the bomb is worthless, but offers to give him $400 for it since the man lost a son in the war. Once in possession of the weapon, Olson contacts Dressler and offers to sell him the bomb for $50 million.After a brief meeting in Moscow with Nemerov, Ryan and Talbot inspect a Russian nuclear site. Ryan shrewdly notices that three top nuclear scientists are absent from the facility. When questioned by Ryan, the Russian host gives a pat and unsatisfactory explanation. Cabot comments that if someone wanted to build a clandestine nuke, the missing scientists are the exact three they would need.Returning to Washington, Ryan is invited by Cabot to attend a black-tie gala at a posh hotel where President Fowler is speaking. Ryan and Cathy are thoroughly enjoying the evening until the President's speech is interrupted by aides who quickly whisk him away from the podium. A good percentage of the attendees also stand and exit. Ryan and Cabot hurry back to the White House situation room where they learn that Russian forces have shelled the breakaway province of Chechnya with chemical weapons, inflicting massive casualties. Those in the room debate the proper US response, eventually favoring some form of diplomatic recognition for the Chechens. Ryan speaks up and suggests that President Nemerov had nothing to do with the attack, that a separate hardline faction may have acted without his approval. Ryan's hypothesis falls flat with the others in attendance. After the meeting, Ryan finds a TV in another room and watches Nemerov give a conventional hardline speech justifying Russia's actions. After the speech, however, Nemerov boards an elevator in the Kremlin and angrily queries a senior advisor about the source of the chemical attack. He learns that hardline generals in the military acted on their own, just as Ryan had suggested. Nemerov issues orders to make the generals quietly disappear.In Vienna, Dressler's group meets to discuss their plan for the future of Europe. Dressler is seeking to provoke a nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia. With the centers of capitalism and communism destroyed, fascism can arise once more in Europe. When one of the men expresses his doubts about the strategy, he is strangled to death.In the meantime, a CIA operative named John Clark (Liev Schreiber) has been dispatched to Russia to investigate the disappearance of the three nuclear scientists. He manages to pinpoint an abandoned Soviet military base in the Ukraine where the men might be working. Cabot sends Ryan to assist him and they manage to penetrate the compound, which shows no signs of current activity. Once inside, they discover that the entire nuclear team has been murdered. There is also clear evidence of nuclear weapons activity, but it looks as if the finished product has already been crated and shipped. Ryan asks a colleague at Langley to track down recent shipping activity from the area, and he reports that a large crate was indeed picked up and sent from Kiev to its final destination by air and sea. That destination was the port of Baltimore.At a dockside warehouse, one of Dressler's true believers uses a forklift to load the refrigerator-sized crate onto a pickup truck. The deadly cargo is delivered beneath Baltimore's NFL football stadium, where it is uncrated and revealed to be a cigarette vending machine with a small nuclear weapon concealed inside. President Fowler is scheduled to attend a game at the stadium later in the day.Ryan calls Cabot to warn him about the threat, not realizing that he is attending the football game with the President. Boarding a helicopter for Baltimore, Ryan keeps trying to get through and finally reaches Cabot. Cabot suddenly realizes with horror that the stadium is the likely target. The President is immediately hustled out and his motorcade speeds away from the stadium, but they are unable to outrun the shock wave from the exploding nuke. The Presidential motorcade is blasted off the highway as Ryan's helicopter is also knocked to the ground. Military rescue personnel retrieve the slightly-injured President from his limousine and put him aboard Air Force One. A stunned Ryan is able to escape from the wreckage of the helicopter. In the distance, he sees a mushroom cloud forming over Baltimore. He can only hope that Cathy is safe.As the President tries to sort things out aboard Air Force One and Nemerov tries to maintain a safe distance from the tragedy, a corrupt Russian Air Force general in the pay of Dressler tells a squadron of his Backfire bomber pilots that the US has attacked Moscow. He orders an attack on a US aircraft carrier in the North Sea. The Backfires launch a salvo of cruise missiles at the ship, turning it into a sea of flame. President Fowler orders a retaliatory strike by F-16s against the Russian airbase from which the Backfires were launched. The US and Russia teeter on the edge of nuclear war, just as Dressler had hoped. Each escalation by one side is matched by the other.Convinced that Nemerov didn't order the attack, Ryan urgently requests a soil sample from the blast site. An analysis conclusively proves that the plutonium came from a US nuclear processing facility, not Russia. Ryan manages to locate the mortally injured William Cabot, who suggests that he enlist the help of John Clark in tracing the bomb's origin. Cabot then expires and Ryan, before leaving, takes a plastic bag holding Cabot's effects. Clark, in the Middle East, learns that the plutonium was provided to Israel in 1968. He tracks down the Arab scrap metal dealer, who is dying of radiation sickness. The man tells him that he sold the bomb to Olson, the arms dealer. A CIA hacker is able to penetrate Olson's computer and link him to Dressler.Racing against time as missile silos are opened and strategic bombers are launched, Ryan gets a policeman to drive him to the Pentagon. Using Bill Cabot's pass card, Ryan makes it into the National Military Command Center. He convinces an Air Force General to send a message directly to Nemerov, explaining Dressler's plot and begging him to stand down. Only thirty seconds before missile launch, Nemerov backs away from Armageddon.A few weeks later, as Presidents Fowler and Nemerov are signing a new arms reduction treaty, a series of actions around the world avenge the unforgivable plot that nearly led to WW III. In Damascus, John Clark enters Olson's apartment and slits the arms dealer's throat. In a snowy Russian forest, KGB assassins run the rogue Air Force general to ground and shoot him. And in Vienna, as a panicked Dressler tries to escape his fate, a bomb destroys his car in a fiery blast. | cult, humor, murder, suspenseful | train | imdb | I read the book "The Sum of All Fears" with fascination--Palestenians discover an Isreali nuclear device lost when the aircraft is shot down in the six day war, sell it to Al Queda, and the arab terrorists proceed to blow up Denver with said nuke.I was very much looking forward to this movie, only to find that for fear of offending Al Queda, the director and screenwriters had substituted some ridiculous plot about German Nazi's and turned the whole thing into a melodramatic hash.This could have been a GREAT, prophetic, movie.
The story itself is not really too bad and if you forget the title, the mention of Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan, then the movie is decent enough.
First the casting of Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan just doesn't make sense, chronologically (he's already been played by the much older Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin) or physically Affleck just isn't commanding enough for the role.
Secondly the movie is simply capitalizing on North America's new found fear of terrorism on home turf, and thirdly the screenwriter Paul Attanasio took huge liberties with the Tom Clancy novel, including, in a stroke of misguided political correctness, changing the bad guys from Middle Eastern to Nazis.
Morgan Freeman also didn't seem to have a solid cast in this movie.The story was fairly captivating however, Cromwell was good to watch as always and Morgan Freeman did his best given the role Overall worth a rent but probably not a buy guys.
People seem to expect jack Ryan movies to be more or less the way they imagine the books to be.
The sum of their fears." It deals with CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck) along with a ranking member (Morgan Freeman) of Presidential administration must thwart the plans of a terrorist faction that threatens to induce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and Russia's newly elected president by detonating a nuclear weapon at a football game in Baltimore.
The picture has a very good support cast who gives excellent performances such as James Cromwell as President Fowler , Bruce McGill as National Security Adviser , John Beasley as General Lasseter , Philip Baker Hall as Defense Secretary , Joseph Sommer as Senator , Michael Byrne , Liev Schreiber , Alan Bates , Sven-Ole Thorsen , Ron Rifkin , Colm Feore and special mention to Ciaran Hinds as Russia President .
The picture is well directed by Phil Alden Robinson , though Philip Noyce, director of previous entries, was offered to direct but turned it down and Wolfgang Petersen was also offered the chance to direct but declined.This blockbuster is an entertaining adaptation of the novel by Tom Clancy , companion to ¨The hunt for Red October¨ by John MacTiernan with Alec Balwin and Sean Connery , followed by ¨Patriot games¨ (1992) by Philip Noyce with Harrison Ford taking over the role of Ryan from Alec Baldwin and again ¨Clear and present danger¨(1994) by Philip Noyce with Harrison Ford and Anne Archer .
He's young, good-looking, intelligent and Affleck's low-key acting fits the Ryan role like a glove.
If field of dreams is any indication, he is just good a writer as he is as a director, and I am excited to see what other sorts of ideas he might produce.The movie also has tremendous performances by Morgan Freeman, and (surprisingly) Ben Affleck.
The bottom line is this: If you love Tom Clancy and you've read every one of his books, you're probably going to hate this movie.
The location of the action (Baltimore), the time (2002), the time the activity took place in Jack Ryan's life (early), the level of his position within the CIA (low), the lack of any other fears to sum up, all were very different from the book and while I was able to enjoy the film as I watched it is has been bothering me more as I reflect on it.So my recommendation is see the movie then read the book, I have found that to be true with most of Clancy's work.
Oliver Cromwell plays the dumb president, Morgan Freeman plays the slightly more intelligent Seceretary of State John Cabot, and Ben Afflect plays our hero, CIA operative Jack Ryan.
However, the story in which CIA analyst Jack Ryan tries to uncover a plot to bring Russia and the United States to the brink of nuclear war, more than makes up for the lack of characterization.
In fact, if the names involved weren't "Jack Ryan" and Tom Clancy, and if we hadn't actually seen some terrorist disasters in the last eight months, I would've thought it a really well-done intelligence thriller, looking at how Russia and the U.S. might head towards nuclear war if somehow a nuke went off in the U.S. during a time of tension.
And than the unimaginable happens: a nuclear bomb explodes in U.S. city and America is quick to blame the Russians...What I probably liked most about this movie was the acting by Morgan Freeman.
Even though I don't consider it to be very likely that a Neo-Nazi group would be able to start a nuclear war between Russia and the U.S., that doesn't mean that a terrorist attack with a 'dirty' bomb isn't possible.Overall I would say about this movie that Morgan Freeman's performance the best reason to watch it.
I'm not a Tom Clancy fan but his books made big money and i guess he must be doing something right.I never read any of his books but i've seen all the Jack Ryan movies and i like all other 3 of them,this one is pretty bad.The plot is totally off the wall,and since it must be similar in the book ,i guess he managed to explain things in some rational manner in the book that Hollywood didn't care to transfer to the movie.As it is,you get the impression this was written by some megalomaniac screenwriter who was so caught up in the importance of his story that didn't care about anything that has to do with basic common sense.All that matters in this story is that everything can and will go wrong,and that the US and Russia will be unable to do anything about it without the help of Mr.Ryan.
However, as it moved into the heavy action the plot became rather trite.Cliché #1: The young upstart with great potential but no experience (Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan) who is right about everything, but the old guard (James Cromwell as President Fowler and his advisors) refuses to listen to him.
Surprisingly, The Sum Of All Fears is my favourite film version of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels.
Enjoyable but also a disappointing two hours, an extra half hour to an hour would have given it the missing edge this movie seriously needed in giving its characters a bit more development and a lot of modernisation to update the 15 year old novel would have helped this movie immensley by adding more action.People who followed the book, might remember Tom Clancy's amazing prediction of the Israel-Palestine peace accord over a decade ago(now in tatters), middle eastern nuclear terrorism and that Israel having an illegal nuclear weapons program for the last forty years!
Being a Tom Clancy fan and a follower of the books, you start to get a feel for what could be converted into a movie maintaining the thrilling nail biting story with the the key characters being utilised with the upto date fashion of the world of geo-politics or current affairs and trends e.g Red October(cold war), Patriot Games(irish terrorism) and Clear President Danger(columbian drugs).This movie based on the book fails to maintain the key bad guys in the novel, Arab Terrorists trying to sabotage the Israel-Palestine Peace talks (tip for a movie)!
This film tries to make us believe unconvincingly that there is a both a threat by WWII German neo-nazi's decendants and the poor loser of the cold war, former Soviet Union, now a part of Nato for the past year, duh!This story is so out of touch even the winning combination of Harrison Ford and Philip Noyce the Director of Patriot Games and Clear Present Danger, avoided this script and turned it down like a four day old sandwich and who could blame them!
Not impressed, I only enjoyed one bit which you just have to watch the trailer for.I have always been a fan of the character Jack Ryan, it wasn't even that Ben Affleck did it badly.
I could have gotten over the fact that they changed to villians in the name of political correctness, but fundamentally changing the personalities of the characters ruined the film, on top of a terribly written script and gross over-acting.I was somewhat skeptical of Ben Affleck taking over the part of Jack Ryan, because he seemed too young.
Affleck's character seemed exaggerated and the actions he took would most likely not be possible in real life.Morgan Freeman should have known better than to take this script, although he did do an admirable job with a bad movie.There were so many characters that remained unidentified, and it was too long.
For those of you who have seen The Jack Ryan films or read the Tom Clancy novels (Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear Present Danger) you would likely be familiar with the character of Jack Ryan.
Despite that, I found the movie to be interesting though not quite as good the other Jack Ryan films..
First of all, this movie is about the Germans trying to ridicule both Russians and Americans by stealing the bombs from both country and framing them like the bomb was launched by the middle east by placing the bomb in a Baltimore NFL stadium where the president is meeting at.Secondly, Ben Affleck did okay as novice type of Jack Ryan in a weak way.
Ben Affleck isn't as good as some of the other actors to have played Jack Ryan, but I think he does a decent job.
This was then used by the group against the United States for it's (perceived, although arguable) propping up of the 'Isreali Terrorist State'.When it came time for Hollywood to make a film of it however things changed course and it was a radical right-wing group working for Aryan(?) supremacy that became the villain.I have to laugh when a book following the fictional, although believable, course of events when a Muslim group bombs the financial backers of the Jewish state gets engineered into 'euro Nazis' attack the U.S for world domination.The idealogical stranglehold of Hollywood continues and anyone who questions it is usually sanctioned and/or accused of antisemitism.Let's see if this one makes it to the board....
Goodness knows how the opinions and advice of CIA agent Jack Ryan are supposed to hold weight with those in power because from where I was sat he looked like a delivery boy who had accidentally strayed into a top-level meeting and wanted to see how long he could stay before someone noticed.
Of course Affleck is no Ford (or Baldwin, for that matter), but is surprisingly effective in this re-imagined version of a younger Jack Ryan, which still feels enough like the original character to work.
Phil Alden Robinson's direction is taut and exciting.While "The Sum of All Fears" doesn't equal "The Hunt for Red October" or "Clear and Present Danger", it stacks up favorably against the uneven "Patriot Games", and is a welcome addition to the Jack Ryan film franchise..
Nothing in the movie is as it should be in the book and, to make matters worse, any connection to previous versions of Jack Ryan are also destroyed by ignoring or completely changing aspects of his personal life.
This movie isso lame and stupid that it might as well have had Steven Seagalas the lead.Please Mr. Freeman, I know you like to work, but as a role modelfor future actors I would think you might take a smaller paycheckfor a film that is actually worth making..
(That last aspect falls to Ben Affleck alone by the way) Perhaps if they would have made an effort to make this movie a prequel instead of a sequel it would have made some sense Ryan and Clarke seem to be about 20 years younger.
Movie Review: "The Sum of All Fears" (2002)Paramount Pictures presents this "war-on-terror" thriller as an event movie for the masses in May 2002, which hardly delivers any suspense in an 115-Minute-Editorial by just ultra-conversative footage-given to editor Neil Travis (1936-2012), where just puzzling scenes get mixed together in order put the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCI) William Cabot, performed with professionalism and picture-carrying convictions by Morgan Freeman, but then due to a miscast Ben Affleck in the role of 30-year-old Jack Ryan, who turns from bureau analyst to his first mission as CIA spy operative, when this flaw-struck adaptation from one of the weaker Tom Clancy novels falls short in order to build Paramount-desired reboot efforts of a Harrison Ford led smash hits from the 1990s with an already-established Ryan in "Patriot Games" (1992) and "Clear and Present Danger" (1994); a circumstance, which brings high-end budget-granting producer Mace Neufeld into poor decision-making with regard to Director Phil Alden Robinson, at age 51, who should have enforce a proper pre-production for actor Ben Affleck, who completely missed action high pitch moment for international audiences to share on, who are just able to turn their heads with two massive scenes of left-out-cold disaster as an attacked aircraft carrier going up in flames, while the CIA-initiated task forces by all-too-depressed playing under-appreciated actor James Cromwell as U.S. American president gives orders without delegating his staff to "Martial Law" proportions, when threats are at its peak at an game-given American Football station in late Tom Clancy's former hometown of Baltimore only to get pushed into safety, when on-screen terror takes its turn to fully-missing character confrontations for Jack Ryan despite a satellite phone call in a mid-air helicopter.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend
The Sum of All Fears is a good movie with a well written storyline and a great cast.It is a very good thriller and it has some great special effects as well,but I didn't find any of the action or dialogue very breathtaking.Its definitely the worst Jack Ryan film to date,although I did really enjoy Ben Affleck as Ryan,he's certainly no Harrison Ford but he was definitely better than Alec Baldwin,I would have liked to see more Ryan films with Affleck in the main role but it dosen't seem like that will be happening anytime soon.I wasn't impressed with the amount of screen time Morgan Freeman received,they made it seem like he was a very main character in this but he probably had 20 minutes of screen time,I was surprised to see James Cromwell in this,I thinks he's an underrated actor who would rarely star in movies like this,but he played an important role and did a great job.Fans of previous Jack Ryan films won't love it,but you won't hate it either,Sum of All Fears is an enjoyable movie that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good thriller or drama if it's ever on television.
I've never read the book that it was based off of, but I know that this movie was a pretty good action-packed time for everyone involved.
Plot is Cold War themed and finds America in a sweat when it is found that renegade terrorists have a nuclear weapon in their possession; just as a new supposed radical president takes up office in Russia.Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.2002 saw two great thrillers released that starred Ben Affleck, one was Changing Lanes, the other was this Jack Ryan based effort that attempted to reboot the series.
The film isn't solely a Jack Ryan movie.
In this film, Jack Ryan is played by Ben Affleck, who is certainly no slouch in front of the camera.
Mobilized into action by CIA director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman), Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck) follows a danger-ridden trail to a shocking conclusion: terrorists plan to provoke a war between the U.S. and Russia - by detonating a nuclear weapon at a championship football game!" according to Paramount's home video edition..."The Sum of All Fears" was criticized for changing the original novel's Middle-Eastern terrorists to Neo-Nazis.
They also made the Denver bomb a real Baltimore nuclear threat, but do not explain Mr. Affleck's invulnerability...****** The Sum of All Fears (5/29/02) Phil Alden Robinson ~ Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber.
Then the unthinkable happens: a nuclear bomb explodes in a U.S. city, and America is quick to blame the Russians.Jack Ryan was a role that seemed to belong to Harrison Ford in the other Clancy films, but here that role is assumed very well indeed by Ben Affleck.
The movie started off slow and somewhat boring but by the end I was hooked on every scene.This film is about Jack Ryan who works for the CIA.
May choosing ben affleck as jack ryan is not a decision but apart from this the film contained a lot of events regarding war , terrorism, espionage and spy games.
This is my favorite of all the Jack Ryan movies and i thought Ben Affleck was very watchable in the role his chemistry with Bridget Moynnahan, Morgan Freeman and Liev Schreiber was great.
Another Jack Ryan, CIA super agent, outing with Harrison Ford - Clear and present Danger - held more closely to the book plot and was enjoyable to watch.
And in a way it is, big things happen in this movie but...I like this type of film, Patriot Games/Clear and present danger were excellent political thrillers and The hunt for Red October remains for me unsurpassed as far as claustrophobic tension goes. |
tt0096028 | Salaam Bombay! | Before the start of the film, Krishna has set fire to his bullying elder brother's motor-bike. This has landed him in big trouble with his mother. She has taken him to the nearby Apollo Circus and told him that he can only come home when he earns 500 rupees to pay for the damaged bike. Krishna agrees and works for the circus.
The film begins as the circus is packing up to move on. His boss asks him to run an errand, but when Krishna returns, he finds that the circus has left. Alone, with nowhere to turn, and without the money to repay his mother, he travels to the nearest big city, Bombay. As soon as he arrives, he is robbed of his few possessions. He follows the thieves, befriends them, and ends up in the city's notorious red-light area of Falkland Road, near the Grant Road Railway Station.
One of the thieves, Chillum, a drug pusher and addict, helps Krishna to get a job at the Grant Road Tea Stall. Baba, a local drug dealer, employs people like Chillum who are addicted to his drugs. His wife is also a prostitute and they have a little daughter. Baba's wife is annoyed that she has to raise her daughter in such an environment. Baba earlier promised to start a new life elsewhere, but it is a promise which Baba cannot, or has no intention of fulfilling.
Krishna gets a new name, "Chaipau", and learns to live with it. His goal is still to get the money he needs to return home to his mother, but he soon finds out that saving money in his new surroundings is next to impossible. To make matters worse, he has a crush on a young girl named Sola Saal, who has been recently sold to the brothel. He sets fire to her room and attempts to escape with her, but the two are caught. Sola Saal, who is considered valuable property since she is still a virgin, denies starting the fire and tearfully tries to resist her enslavement. The madame of the house asks Baba to 'break her into' the business, which Baba agrees to do.
The fire causes Krishna to get a severe beating, and he loses his job. He works odd jobs to feed himself and look after Chillum, who can't live without drugs. To get more money, Krishna and his pals rob an elderly Parsi man by breaking into his house in broad daylight. Krishna eventually checks on the 300 rupees he has saved, and finds out that they had been stolen by Chillum who had used them to buy drugs, which he then overdosed on and died.
One night while returning home from work, the boys and Baba's daughter are apprehended by the police and taken to a juvenile home. Eventually, Krishna escapes and goes back to his world. He finds a new recruit in Baba's drug business has taken Chillum's place and name. Baba's wife is told that the authorities will not release their daughter, because the mother is a prostitute. Krishna meets Sola Saal and tries to convince her to run away with him. She reveals that she is charmed by Baba and not interested in Krishna; she is driven away to service her first 'client'. In a fit of rage, Krishna kills Baba, and attempts to run away with Baba's wife, but they become separated in a parade honoring Ganesh. | violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1265990 | The Roommate | At the University of Los Angeles, new freshman Sara Mathews (Minka Kelly) is moving into her dorm. Her roommate isn't there yet, so Sara chooses her side of the room and settles in. She meets another freshman, Tracy (Ali Michalka) and her roommate Kim, and the three go to a frat party. Sara drinks and dances and catches the eye of the drummer in the band. As she leaves the floor, she turns and the drummer runs into her, spilling beer all over her shirt. He introduces himself as Stephen (Cam Gigandet), and he's in the fraternity and also a student. As the chat, they see a drunk Tracy lift her shirt and flash the party, and they decide to take her home. She thanks him and kisses him goodnight.When she enters her room in the dark, she trips over luggage... her roommate Rebecca has moved in. She sleeps off her drunken state and wakes the next day to actually meet Rebecca (Leighton Meester). They shop together at the bookstore for supplies, and Sara's phone rings-she sees it is Jason, and explains to Rebecca that he was her boyfriend, but she broke up with him. They both applied to college, and Sara got into Brown, but Jason didn't. So, they decided to go to ULA together. A week ago, Brown had an opening for Jason, and he took it, even though Sara passed up her chance to go there because of him. She declines the call, and when they are back in the room, they look at each others art: Sara is a fashion design major, and Rebecca is an art major. Rebecca likes Sara's portfolio, but when Sara asks to see Rebecca's sketch book, she firmly tells Sara "no". She doesn't share it until it is finished; "it is part of my process", she explains.Sara goes to a fashion design class, and is late, and stands at the door. Professor Roberts (Billy Zane) lectures, and after class, Sara asks him if he will sign a waiver and add her to the class, as it is full. He says 'no', but tells her she can take it in one of the other three sections. Sara says that she'd rather wait until next year so she can take it with him. He changes his mind and signs her in, saying that she has two things he cannot teach: style and desire.Tracy stops by Sara and Rebecca's room and invites them to go to a nightclub with her. Rebecca declines. Sara goes, and puts her phone in Tracy's purse for the evening. A guy hits on Tracy, and after a while, Sara notices that she is gone. Without a phone or purse, she is stuck. She walks to a diner and calls Rebecca collect. Rebecca arrives a short while later, and they order pancakes, and Rebecca says she is taking Sara to see the sights of the big city tomorrow.The next day, Sara and Rebecca go to an art gallery and Rebecca explains that the artist, Richard Price, is her favorite. Sara looks at Rebecca's favorite painting, and is a bit disturbed by the image, but just smiles. They walk past a tattoo store, and Rebecca says she could never do that, and Sara tells her its no big deal that she has a tattoo. She shows Rebecca: it is above her breast, and says 'Emily'. Sara explains that Emily was Sara's older sister, who died when Sara was 9 years old.Sara goes jogging, and Rebecca looks through her stuff, and puts on her perfume and the necklace. When Sara returns, she tells her she can borrow anything of hers, EXCEPT that necklace, as it is the only thing she saved of her sister's.Another day or so later, Sara finds a stray kitten and sneaks it into the dorm. Rebecca likes it, too, and says they should keep it. They name it Cuddles, and they share him.Stephen comes to the coffee house where Sara has gotten a job. It's her first day, and she's not very good at it when she blows up a blenderful of smoothie. He asks her out to dinner and she accepts. At home, Rebecca is all dressed up, and got them tickets to a gallery show of the artist Richard Price. Sara tells her she already has plans seeing Rebecca's sad face, she says she'll cancel and goes with Rebecca. Sara sends Stephen a quick text and cancels their dinner date.The next day, Sara gets a text from an older friend, Irene (Danneel Harris), who is also from her home town and a fashion major grad. She is a stylist, and travels all over the world. She lives in L.A., and she and Sara are going to get together. Sara drops in on Stephen studying in the library, and asks him out to dinner.That night, Tracy goes in the dorm showers, and the lights go out. She checks the room but finds nothing and nobody. The lights go back on and she returns to her shower, and is she is attacked and smothered by someone holding the shower curtain down over her, and the person whispers in her ear, "You are a bad influence on her, you trashy party whore". And then she tells her if she tells anyone about this, she will kill her, and then rips out Tracy's belly ring and throws it at her. Tracy is crying, left on the shower floor.Rebecca is frantic in the dorm room; it is 1:00 am, and Sara isn't home. She keeps calling her cell phone, and finally she hears Sara in the hall. As Sara and Stephen kiss, Rebecca comes out and yells at her, wanting to know where she's been, and that she was worried. Sara and Stephen looked at each other thinking that this is strange. Sara tells her she doesn't need to call or worry again.Walking to class, Sara passes Tracy and asks her why she moved out of the dorm building. Tracy tells her that she switched dorms because it had a better vibe. Rebecca joins them and Tracy looks scared and leaves mid-sentence. Rebecca just says that Tracy was always flakey.A few days later, Sara and Stephen are in a park, looking at a view of L.A. after a date. She asks him if they are going to her place, with a twin bed and a roommate, or his? They go to his room, and they have sex. Meanwhile, Rebecca is back in the dorm, frantic again since Sara isn't home. She doesn't call her this time. She hears a phone ring and its is Sara's phone, which she has left behind. The I.D. says it is Jason. Rebecca answers it, and mumbles while Jason talks. She whispers and tells him she misses touching him and asks if he misses touching her. While he talks, she masturbates, and then tells him, "Don't ever call me again!", and hangs up.Since the R.A. (resident advisor) caught them with the cat, Sara walks to Irenes and asks her if she wants Cuddles. She says no because she travels too much and doesn't have the time to raise a cat. Irene gives Sara a bunch of expensive hand-me-down clothes, and tells her she should move in with her, as the place is enormous, she travels a lot, and then she could keep the cat. Sara thinks its a terrific idea. When she returns to the dorm, Sara tells Rebecca about the idea, and Rebecca freaks out. Sara tells her to relax, that it is just something to think about and if she does move, they can keep the cat. When Sara leaves the room, Rebecca takes the cat with her to the laundry room, and puts the cat in the dryer, puts in coins, and starts it up...Next, Rebecca hits herself in the face quite hard, leaving bruises. She also bruises her arms and legs, and slices her stomach with Sara's art blade. She waits for Sara to return, and when Sara sees the blood, Rebecca tells her that the cat got away and when she went looking for it, she was jumped and beaten by some thug in a vacant alley. Sara tells her to go to the police, but she refuses. Sara cleans her up and helps with her stab wound. Rebecca makes Sara promise to never leave her alone ever again.A few weeks later, Professor Roberts asks Sara to stay after class. He tells her that when he goes to Fashion Week in Paris, the budget allows him to take an assistant and if she would she like to go with him. Before she can answer, he leans in and kisses her. She pushes him away and leaves, disgusted. She tells Rebecca about it, and how sick it was, especially since he is married.That evening, Rebecca pays him a visit at his office, pretending that she wants to add his class. She says she'll do anything, and when he tells her to kiss him, she starts screaming, and yelling, "No! Stop! Ouch, you're hurting me!" She shows him that she has recorded the whole conversation on a mini-recorder, and leaves. In the morning, Sara has a substitute for her class; Professor Roberts is on a leave of absence. She explains to Rebecca that the gossip is that someone played a recording of him hitting on a student, just like he did to Sara, to the dean, and that he won't be back.Another few weeks later, Sara joins Rebecca for Thanksgiving at her family's estate in Beverly Hills. It is huge, and obvious that she has a wealthy family. Rebecca's parents Jeff and Alison (Tomas Arana and Frances Fisher) are surprised she is home, as she didn't call and say she was coming. The next day, Rebecca is going to show Sara around town. Her mother speaks to Sara when Rebecca isn't there, and asks if she is taking her medication.The two girls sight-see and go for coffee at Rebecca's favorite place. A group of girls come in and glares at Rebecca. She says they are girls she knew from high school. Rebecca is uncomfortable and they leave. On the way out, one girl (Nina Dobrev) tells Rebecca, "You were never my friend."When they get back to the dorm, Sara gets a text that Irene is back in town and if they want to meet. Rebecca tells her she feels inspired, and is going to the studio to sketch, and not wait up for her. After Rebecca leaves, and Sara looks through her stuff... and finds a prescription. It is for medication used to treat psychotic problems like schizophrenia and bi-polar syndrome. The medication is untouched meaning that Rebecca has apparently never taken it. Sara and Stephen think that maybe it is time for Sara to move in Irene's place.Meanwhile, Rebecca doesn't go to the studio as she told Sara. She goes to a nightclub where Irene is dancing and drinking with other random women. Rebecca sexually hits on Irene in the restroom, and they decide to go back to Irene's apartment.In the morning, Rebecca arrives back at the dorm. Sara starts to tell her that she is moving out, but then Rebecca begs her to go with her to get a tattoo, before Sara has a chance to say anything. She goes with Rebecca and waits. When she is done, Sara asks to see the tattoo: it is a replica of Sara's, that says 'Emily' above her breast. Rebecca says, "Now you can think of me as your sister". Sara is sickened, and runs out. She packs and takes a taxi over to Stephen's frat house to stay until Irene returns to town; she has called Irene but just gets her machine, and assumes she is away again. While packing, she can't find her necklace, but won't go back and look for it.Jason comes to town and leaves a message on Sara's phone; she never answers it. He goes to her dorm and slips a note under the door that says he wants to see her and for her to come to his hotel room. Rebecca goes in the shower-as she showers, dark hair dye runs down her back; she is dying her hair to look like Sara.Rebecca goes to Jason's hotel and swipes a room key from a maid. She undresses and slips into bed behind sleeping Jason. He is groggy and starts to wake up. She kisses him, and straddles him. He wakes up, and sees the necklace and tattoo and smells the perfume, and assumes its Sara. Rebecca yells at him, "She doesn't love you!", and stabs him with Sara's art blade.There is a party at the frat house and Sara is supposed to meet Stephen at 10:00 pm, but she is a no-show. He checks his phone and has a message form Sara: Irene is back and needs her, so she is going there and wants him to meet her there.Sara arrives at Irene's apartment and sees the front door wide open. Alarmed, she carefully enters and looks for Irene. Sara goes in the bedroom, and Irene screams; she is tied up to the bed and gagged. Rebecca is there with a gun pointed at Sara, and tells her to sit down. She says that all she ever wanted was to be her friend, and that is why she got rid of Tracy, the cat and Professor Roberts. Sara tries to calm Rebecca and tell her she is her friend, and asks her to forgive her. But just then Stephen comes in and tried to grab the gun. A big fight breaks out, and Stephen is knocked out. The gun goes sliding out the room, and Sara and Rebecca fight, turning over furniture. Rebecca goes to get the gun, and Sara locks her out of the bedroom. She tries to free Irene, but Rebecca gets the gun and begins shooting at the door. Irene tells her to go out the window, but there is no fire escape and they are up quite high. She is at the window, when Rebecca shoots her way in, and Sara falls out, clinging to the curtain. Stephen attacks Rebecca from behind and knocks her out. He pulls Sara back up and as she is about to climb in the window, Rebecca hits Stephen hard, and he is unconscious. Rebecca pulls Sara in, and Sara hits Rebecca. They fight again, and Sara gets the gun. She holds it pointed at Rebecca, but Rebecca doesn't think she'll shoot. She does, but the gun is empty. Rebecca screams, and lunges at Sara. They fight and the purse is knocked over, spilling the contents, which include Sara's art blade. Rebecca chokes Sara, and Sara struggles to grab the blade. She does, and stabs Rebecca in the back, saying, "I was never your friend". She goes to Stephen, who is just coming around, then gets her necklace back from Rebecca, who dies, and there are sirens in the background.Epilogue. Sara moves into a new dorm, and Stephen joins her in her new room. She asks him to help her with one thing: they slide the other bed out in the hall and leave it there. | mystery, murder | train | imdb | When Sara returns to her room, she meets her roommate Rebecca Evans (Leighton Meester) and they become friends.
If you took any kid in school sat them down and told them to write a scary horror movie that is set on a university/college campus this is pretty much what they would come up with exactly.
That is the case in this rainbow version of the 1992 classic film 'Single White Female.' The film starts with our main character Sarah Matthews (Minka Kelly) moving into her dorm.
When a movie makes you think a ninety-one minute run time is insufferable, wow is it bad.The Roommate's biggest problem is that it is one big tease.
The makeout scenes could very well win the worst sex award as well.The plot is a girl named Sara (Kelly) is starting College and gets a new dorm.
It is Fatal Attraction mixed with Single White Female, and it creates a disastrous and lame film.Starring: Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly, Cam Gigandet, Billy Zane, and Alyson Michalka.
Does anybody else agree?But I do think the movie could have been a little better, longer.The Roommate can't be taken seriously.For all Meester's genuine efforts, it's basically moronic games with the mentally ill.
One thing I would like to see more if they decide to make a sequel , Rebecca should have been scarier you know , All she does is make herself look like some crazy stalker / obsession over Sarah but she should have killed her enemies people that are close to her in a more dramatic and scarier way.
Meester is somewhat good as the troubled student and Kelly looks beautiful but for the most part the movie has no real acting to speak of.
Maybe it's only fair that Sara's roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester) is a psychopath.The one thing that I liked about "The Roommate" is that it's a horror movie rated PG.
Well let me get the obvious out of the way The Roommate is Single White Female.to a tee but unlike other Sony/screen gem films like Prom night, and stepfather, it does not retain the same name, you could set your watch to the beats that "roommate " has .THE PLOT :Sara Matthews ( played by Minka Kelly) Goes to college and it one of those only in movie colleges where there little to no classes and you can go and drink at any bar with your freshmen buddies even though you only 18 years old .
Then of course a guy ( Cam Gigandet) get between them and dates Sara .Then the great new roommate turn crazy Judgement: One Problems with this movie is the "evil' Roommate is actually the most likable character in this movie for the first 30 minutes, she smart, and loyal friend, only goes nuts when the script goes "oh crap that right she got to be crazy".At least with "Single White female" Jennifer Jason Leigh character is showing signs of problem very early on.
It would be easy to say that The Roommate is a lazy attempt at a remake of the 1992 movie, Single White Female without claiming to be, but it isn't really
.
That said, let's go...Summary: A story about a freshmen college student, Sara (Minka Kelly) and her obsessed psycho roommate, Rebecca ( Leighton Meester) who feels the need to remove everyone from Sara's path, her newly acquired BFF - a destination established by Rebecca and by Rebecca alone, after only two days.As much as I like a flick with a demented chick, I must admit, there was something lacking in this - a movie I truly thought was going to offer so much more than it did
I like the concept of the movie because I was able to see what it could have been, through the glimpses of the psychotic potential shown by way of the character, Rebecca.
Sara ends up tied to Rebecca (Leighton Meester) her roommate who is about as private and withdrawn as Sara herself, but with a spicy twist - she's insane, well not really, she's suppose to be on medication, but apparently doesn't actually take it - the audience will not know why.This movie had so much more potential of being a true psychological thriller had the writers allowed Rebecca's deranged character to shine, instead they focused on the dullness of Sara which brought true dullness to the movie.
Not certain if they wanted to showcase Minka Kelly as a leading actress or what, but it did not work well for this particular vehicle; as her character was too dull to carry what was suppose to be a thriller movie, that fell short of it's mark.
This truly is a terrible film and should be avoided at all costs.I gave 'The Roommate' a 2/10 because Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester are gorgeous so they slightly distract the horrible film you're watching with some eye candy relief.
Movies like this get a bad rap because you know exactly whats going to happen.But this was shot in a film-noir style and didn't resort to being a slasher-esque movie, unknown foreign director christensen builds the suspense up well, there's nothing long winded here and the 90 minute running time is perfectly paced.No harm that all the characters are easy on the eye, and while no-one stood out, there wasn't any cringeworthy or cheesy performances.Its unfair to compare this to other "obsession" movies, I feel this film stands out on its own and is a solid thriler much better than the 4.5 rating on here.
Also having two of the elite actresses such as Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly in the leading roles certainly make a great film that much better.
The dialog is about as dull as it gets, especially the cheesy lines between Sara and her new boyfriend Stephen (Cam Gigandet).I never felt any kind of sympathy for any of the characters, so it pretty much did not matter to me, who lived and who died, which results in a 90 minute waste of time.
The "fighting" scenes especially towards the end are beyond ridiculous and the "suspense" is created by a close-up shot of the character looking suspicious in a room without proper lighting.The reasons why I still decided to give this one 4 out of 10 are that it's relatively easy to watch and does not demand a lot of attention, so I guess it might work for some people as a decent way to kill time if you lower your standard.
After a party at Stephen's fraternity house that lands Tracy drunk, Sara arrives back at her dorm late at night and meets Rebecca Evans (Leighton Meester), her new roommate, whose parents live only 20 minutes away and who is great at drawing portraits of people.
Long story short she gets a roommate named Rebecca (Leighton Meester, "Gossip Girl") who becomes overly obsessed with her.
Random unimportant story tangents develop concerning the death of Sarah's sister when she was nine, a random introduction of the character Irene (Danneel Harris, "Fired Up") and throwing in a creepy teacher named Professor Robberts (Billy Zane).There were two good things about the movie that aren't important at all to the movie itself.
As stated before by many critics, "the film isn't even bad enough to be good"."The Roommate" fails on every single level and does not even have a twist ending of any sort to mae the movie somewhat worth it.
After Sara (Kelly) meets her new college roommate Rebecca (Meester) she thinks she has found a new friend.
Go See It. I know this movie resembles a lot from One of my favorite movie of all time Which is "Single White Female", but i guess there's no harm in trying, so yes i did see this film and was somewhat expecting the same thing that will happen.
Roommates are crazy.I wanted to copy and paste the plot to Single White Female and then change the character names to the one from this movie, but that would involve me putting effort into describing this movie.
The point of realization for Sarah that her roommate isn't all their, is when she gets the exact same tattoo, of Sarah's dead sister's name.....awkward.The film is targeted towards young teenage girls, so it's not scary or thrilling what so ever.
The characters weren't totally dumb like in a classic horror film, and they had the same reactions I feel that real people would have, so it was a relief when they were actually not doing stupid things that would lead directly to their untimely death, which tends to be a trend in movies like this.
By the way, Leighton Meester & Minka Kelly looks like almost identical twins; they could have used this one as benefit to the story but failed.
I personally really enjoyed this movie, probably because I am a huge Aly Michalka fan (she does a great job in the film for the parts shes in) and also a fan of Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester.The film is basically much a remake of Single White Female.
A poorly directed and even more inadequately imagined exercise in genre calisthenics, The Roommate wanly goes through the motions of the psychological thriller playbook, but never manages to raise an eyebrow, let alone a pulse.an attractive young cast, simply pitched conceit and streamlined marketing efforts will turn out modest adolescent audiences for opening weekend, but poor word-of-mouth (the film did not screen in advance for critics) and limited demographic appeal will consign The Roommate fairly quickly to justifiably anonymous life as cable TV filler.No fun not really worth the time.....
Unfortunately, it is not the sort of small-budget overachieving thriller.Instead, this movie has a very predictable storyline interluded with scenes supposed to be thrilling that fit bad on the flow and look like they were just appendages thrown there to reduce boredom at expense of cohesion in editing.Supporting characters are brought into the story and then dropped without any construction or introduction, on an almost random manner.
My final impression is that the writers had a very simple, brief, 20-min story that they then worked backwards to enhance with add-ons, cliché characters and failed twists, even if one can perceive they really tried to make it a nice movie.I don't give very terrible marks to this film, though, because I don't think acting is that terribly bad given the bad story they were given first place.
Meanwhile Sara's new roommate, Rebecca Evans (Leighton Meester), quickly forms a great affinity towards her, soon spiralling into unhealthy fascination and murderous obsession.The movies brings back nostalgia.
I wouldn't call anyone in this outstanding, but Leighton Meester does come across as appropriately creepy as roommate Rebecca and Minka Kelly manages as Sara.
As unoriginal as this may be, there's an appropriate amount of suspense to it, Rebecca shows herself to be totally evil as she does away with her rivals for Sara's friendship and the final confrontation is pretty well done.For all that, if you want to see the basic story done well, you need to watch "Single White Female." If you want to see the same story with a bit of a twist, this will suffice, but it isn't as good.
It's not 'Single White Female' or 'Basic Instinct.' In fact, I'm not sure if I've seen a good female-stalker thriller since those films...oh, wait, loved 'The Crush,' but that also from the SWF time period.
Then an ending that's so anti-climactic and just plain ridiculous you will actually cringe and maybe even yell at your TV.Still of Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester in The Roommate The movie felt terribly forced.
The first two thirds of the film actually play out more like a depressing character study drama leaving the viewer feeling more sorry for Rebecca than afraid of her but then of course the end turns to routine third act 'B' movie trash and we finally get some action.
The first two thirds of the film actually play out more like a depressing character study drama leaving the viewer feeling more sorry for Rebecca than afraid of her but then of course the end turns to routine third act 'B' movie trash and we finally get some action.
He's either in the wrong line of work or trying to make a quick buck—I'm not sure which is worse, but neither paints a very flattering portrait.This movie had so much more potential of being a true psychological thriller had the writers allowed Rebecca's deranged character to shine, instead they focused on the dullness of Sara which brought true dullness to the movie.
Though there was the brief unannounced trip to her parents house during the Thanksgiving holiday, the scene briefly eluded to the parents being quite afraid of their (un)medicated-behind daughter, as did a trio of young women she probably attended high school with, there was no real insight or depth to that portion of the movie, or what part those characters played in Rebecca's past life or present condition.
Though there was the brief unannounced trip to her parents house during the Thanksgiving holiday, the scene briefly eluded to the parents being quite afraid of their (un)medicated-behind daughter, as did a trio of young women she probably attended high school with, there was no real insight or depth to that portion of the movie, or what part those characters played in Rebecca's past life or present condition.
Freshman Student Sara (Minka Kelly) is looking forward to starting college life, but when she is assigned a new roommate (Rebecca) she discovers everything is not what it seems.You could say this film is a modern spin of the classic 'Single White Female' except it isn't as good, or as good as any other film you've seen in the last five years (Yes, even worse than any Jennifer Aniston film)Sara (Minka Kelly) is our main star, but fifteen minutes into the film we realise she is somewhat boring, luckily her looks distract us from her lack of personality (sometimes!) Her on screen boyfriend Stephan (Cam Gigandet) is the weak link in the entire movie; he pouts his way through the film and becomes quite useless.
The only decent actor in the film is the crazed roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester) who delivers a believable potent performance, psychotic one moment and sweet the next.
The actors/actresses in this movie are generally good looking but in a realistic way, not like in teen horrors or cheer leading flicks were students all happen to be ridiculously "hot." Minka Kelly is attractive, Leighton Meester's looks are more of an acquired taste but still good looking, and the boyfriend I can see would be handsome to most, but not all.
Things go great, that is until Sara meets her new roommate Rebecca, a wealthy girl with mental problems who quickly become obsessed with her.
Of course it was promoted well due two of the cast of Vampire Diaries to be seen but even they are only for a short note in it, Kat Graham (Kim) being in it for a few minutes but the one every Vampire Diaries fan is waiting for Nina Dobrev (Maria) only for a few seconds.You really have to wait until the end before things got out of hand, before that we just see some kind of sick jealousy from Rebecca (Leighton Meester) taking revenge on the life of Sara (Minka Kelly).
College student Sara (Minka Kelly) finds that her new roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester) has an obsession with her, which quickly turns violent.This is 'Single White Female' the college years.
The Roommate has the most attractive cast out in a movie in a long time: Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester, and Danneel Harris; Nina Dobrev also makes an appearance.
The next day she meets her roommate, Rebecca, who is somewhat antisocial and becomes more and more controlling as the movie goes by.Leighton's character, Rebecca, gets obsessed with Sara; she thinks she's her best friend, while Sara doesn't care all that much about her.
New college student Sara (Minka Kelly) moves into her dorm and meets her roommate, Rebecca (Leighton Meester).
I have seen far worse than this...the only thing I'll say is it seems like a modern, but carbon copy of the 1992 phenomenal thriller 'Single White Female'.6/10 from me, as the acting wasn't that bad.
It also plays on the psyche of female competition amongst one another in trying to go one up constantly, and the slightest of provocation means a smile on the outside and contempt on the inside.But to make it a little bit more palatable, the antagonist has got to be an outright psycho, which Leighton Meester does in her role as Rebecca, a Beverly Hills rich kid who is as mental as can get, although you have to admit possessing a brilliant criminal mind in scheming and plotting to get her way with her roommate, the fashion designer wannabe Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly, who had the bit role as Autumn in (500) Days of Summer), who comes with enough emotional baggage such as a good looking (hardly any ugly folks in this movie, people) ex-boyfriend, and a deceased sister who gets constantly mentioned together with a precious necklace, a small town girl looking toward making it big after her fashion education, aspiring to be like her more adult friend Irene (Danneel Ackles).Simply put, it's the classic tale of desire and unhealthy obsession, of needing to feel wanted, loved, and accepted by someone else.
Maybe I must see other thrillers to have a non interest in this film, but until then, I like the movie!.
But the story and most of the cast makes me glad that I saw The Roommate for free because this was for the most part a waste of time.Sara is starting her freshman year of college.
The two main characters are Sara (played by Minka Kelly) and Rebecca (played by Leighton Meester). |
tt1686327 | The Oregonian | An unnamed Oregonian (Lindsay Pulsipher), the protagonist, leaves behind an abusive past as she delves into her unknown future. She wakes up bloody behind the steering wheel of a crashed Station Wagon. There are two dead people in front of the car. Did she run them over?Dazed and confused, she begins her journey to find a phone to contact society to find help, not only with her current position, but with her life as a whole. Her first encounter is an elderly, decrepit woman. The Oregonian then has a series of flash forwards in which depicts her future in the film. The elderly decrepit woman pays no attention to The Oregonian so The Oregonian continues and happens across a creek.She cleans her wounds to the best of her capability and continues to not only find a car, but also a shotgun, which she uses to defend herself throughout the film. In the car, she is introduced to a large green frog character. She leaves scared and confused and continues to an abandoned town and is confronted by a mysterious man in a trashed van. The man gets out of the van and urinates for an exceptionally long time and his urine is flowing in colors of the rainbow.This portrays the uniqueness of the man and of the film up to this point. The Oregonian and the mysterious man end up in a motel. The man drinks gasoline furthering the confusing nature of the film. She has flashbacks of the crash, the old woman and the green frog. She leaves the motel and meets numerous people in a green room. The characters act senile and The Oregonian cannot handle the scene. It seems that The Oregonian cannot figure out the events that seem to be happening. Is this all a dream? Or is this reality?As the film comes to an uncompromising end, The Oregonian comes to a realization that the characters fit her past. She feels content with the characters and her journey through the maze of her unknown future. She ends up becoming one of them, and she fades away into her death, the path that was bound to happen. | psychedelic, violence | train | imdb | Young Lindsay Pulsipher on her farm in rural Oregon is hearing and seeing many strange things so she leaves the place, rifle in hand and face bloodied to see what's going on.
On the way she encounters a lot of weird people and the question is whether this is real or hallucination.I think the person who wrote and created this film must have been on something, possibly coming down from a bad acid trip.
It tries for the lost in woods feel of Blair Witch, but substitutes screams and flashed images for genuine scares.Story wise, it seems like they were trying to do an Alice In Wonderland finds herself in hell.
You need to know what you're walking into see when you buy your ticket for The Oregonian: a tactful, minimal, indulgent terror experimental film.
The film is saturated with harsh, glaring and alarming flash cuts and bizarre scenes which offer it a streak of unpredictability, keeping the viewer constantly alarmed and constantly plagued with a very unpleasant vibe.
These cuts and 'montages' which pretty much assault your senses are carefully placed and timed, heightening the disconcerting tone which the movie rides on.
The second time I watched the movie, I muted it to see how a lack of noise would affect the viewing, and I was impressed to see how much the score lent itself to the construction of the scenes.
Overall, I was pleased with The Oregonian so much so (as an experimental film) that I've watched it numerous times with numerous people and had a different experience each time.
If you like dark, terrifying experimental work which relies heavily on imagery and sound, you will love The Oregonian..
This film really wants to be a cult-classic midnight movie kind of deal - the sort of idiosyncratic horror film that could be screened alongside D.
Whereas the best midnight movies seem to spring from uniquely personal visions, this one feels like some people spent a weekend throwing around half-baked ideas, hoping that something would stick.
And, while the best cult films feel original and strange, this film feels more-or-less like a generic bit of horror, just without a discernible script.
Going into this movie looking for a plot is like waking up in the morning and looking for the plot to your life.
Why do people demand so much more from film than they do from real life?
Where is this 10 Commandments of what film should be that people seem to be referring to when they say what should or shouldn't go into a movie?
Then there films like the Oregonian that shun the template and carve their own footing in cinema.
Those telling people not to watch this, or any film, is a disservice to all art forms.
If you want films to break free from the shackles of convention, you need to be okay with them playing out in unconventional ways.See this movie for yourself.
This terrifying, relentless Lynchian journey into Hell never lets up.The imagery is stark, shocking, strange and compelling, and the acting is spot on.Reeder is obviously creating something of an homage to David Lynch, using some of his scariest techniques in a frantic death-ride to oblivion.It's bleak, horrific and brilliant.Lindsay Pulsipher in particular is spot-on, and completely believable, as are the cast of mad characters capering in and out of her reality.Destined to be a cult classic, and deservedly so..
If you like story, logic, and acting in your films this is not for you.
Containing a slew of undeveloped, characters who add nothing to the film who drink gas, and yell not at anything just yell Cinematography that causes motion sickness.
This has a feel of a film done by a 19 year old film student who wants to share his vision with the world who finds out once his acid trip ends that vision doesn't make much senseWARNING if you get stuck watching this you may feel the need to finish it, thinking it has to come together at some point DON'T it never does and the attempt to make it do so only makes annoyance at an otherwise horrible film transcend into a feeling of rage at the time lostThe last spoken line is "you shouldn't have come here" I agree.
The scenes in the movie seem to carry you along and its strangeness fits with the experience the director is trying to take you on.
You are definitely going to have to be in the mood for this or it will probably rub you the wrong way(Or you will just turn it off after 10 minutes).My advice to potential viewers is to skim through it before watching it if you can.
Rarely can a film make you laugh out loud while your skin is crawling at the same time.Not everything in the film works, but what does is beyond effective and if you appreciate Jodorowsky, Bunuel, Lynch or Kiyoshi Kurosawa you'll dig the hell out of The Oregonian.Then again, you might be looking for something a little more worn out and painfully predictable.
You really have to wonder about the type of sadist that rushes to IMDb to write a bad review for a film like Oregonian.
I like it when films have an element that is left open to audiences interpretation.
The Oregonian would like to do things to you and with you.
Previous to watching I read all the interviews I could find with the director and from those I had built a sense of what to expect in terms of how he cared about this film.
I think that other creative people should adore this movie.
what i may have liked about it seemed to be reeder's attempt to depart from lynch and leave his own mark, to be imaginative and elliptical, departing f which is sadly only ten percent of the film.
you think you're getting something different when he's playing a hipster making fun of hipsters, but reveals himself as a wannabe director making a b-movie that somehow got way too much attention because everyone leaves it to lynch.
And of course how can we forget the lovely granny in the red a truly inspiring character in this movie and executed perfectly.
i hope one day I will sit down with my family in our living room and we will all enjoy watching The Oregonian..
The film has a mysterious monster, and twist that will leave at the edge of your seat.
The main girl in this exquisite movie breaks my number one rule, don't trust a girl that smokes Marlboro red cigarettes.
Personally I loved attempting to put one and one together to figure out what in Gods name is happening in this movie.
In my opinion this has got to be one of the most underrated movies of all time and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in being mind blown and down for a good time.
The lessons are undeniable in this movie, but the one I felt the most confident about was no matter where we are in life we will all have a green monster that tries to control us, but we cannot ever let the green monster dictate our path through the woods..
To be honest, when I watched this movie I never at any point had any clue what was going on or what the purpose could be.
I think this is the reason why this movie has gotten some negative reviews, because the critics don't appreciate true intellectual weirdness, aka genius.
I did not have my true appreciation for this movie until afterwards, lying awake at night wondering what the hell I just watched, and looking up explanations on my phone.
After reading various websites, I came to the conclusion that the true genius is that there is no right answer as to what happened in this movie.
You can guess and use logic all you want to but two people may never have the same interpretation of the content and story which makes it a different experience for everyone.
P.S. if you planned on calling your grandma any time soon I would do it before you watch this film.
If you're looking for 81 minutes of pure thrill, mystery and awesomeness then look no further, The Oregonian is the film for you.
This is hands down, no questions asked the best movie ever made and those who haven't seen it are missing out.
As the story progresses the viewer can never clearly see what direction the plot is going and just when you think you have it figured out, it changes completely, making it the best mystery of all time.
As she wanders through the new land she sees many bizarre things including the man driving the van and the green monster which make no sense at the time.
As the movie nears the end the message begins to become clear, the green monster shows that that one should never screw over the ones that care for you.
In conclusion, I spent my night watching The Oregonian and needless to say, it was the best night of my life simply because this film is so amazing.
to anybody who unwisely went to see it.This movie is supposed to be a horror (I think), but none of it was coherent or made sense in any way whatsoever.
The only way I can think to explain it all is to imagine that it was like a series of thoughts/images that might go through a person's mind at the instant of a traumatic death.At no point can I say with any confidence that what we were seeing was a bit of "reality" (the real world in the film that is) or if it was, beginning to end, in someone's mind, or if it was just all an excuse to try out different camera angles, lighting setups, scene ideas, or makeup techniques on film.I almost feel bad judging this movie.
The movie ends, but I couldn't tell you what happened or if any of the characters were real or imagined or what.So, my advice.
I like lots of bad movies, and I can appreciate the ones that are so bad they're good.
The best thing I can say about this movie is it's the first one I've actually had to turn the sound down to hear it instead of way past 11.It takes a lot to get removed from my Netflix queue, but the Oregonian made the cut.
I don't know what is like to go insane but I think this movie gives you about a close a look at it as you can get.
I mean nothing made sense in this movie and it was creepy as hell.
In the film The Oregonian, the woman (Lindsay Pulsipher) is on a direction-less journey that seems as if the Oregonian is just wondering in some sort of abyss or in the unknown of a purgatory sort of world.
After the Oregonians's car wreck, she encounters different people and each has an uneasy sense in their character.
He then proceeds to pour gas on it, all happening while the necrophilia man is having the time of his life.
When she comes back to life she brutally clubs the necrophilia man to death in the bed of a truck while he is wearing a frog mascot costume.
More events unveil in what seems to be an unorganized and random way to unravel, however this plot summary can be seen as the final destination of the Oregonian's journey in life, and the events that happen in her last moments of travel to said destination..
The Oregonian is a tragic telling of a woman who gets in a car wreck in the middle of nowhere and tries to find her way to help.
She comes across many individuals throughout her journey that bring her down different paths and show her a certain way of life.
What the movie represents is life itself and the different paths we can go down on that journey.
The green that often appears with the green monster thing and the green room she goes through shows the path of life that she had the option of going down.
With this being said, The Oregonian is a horrifying experience of one girl's path of life or death and the influence her infertility had on that choice..
The Oregonian is an action packed drama that will keep you guessing, literally guessing, what will happen next throughout the movie.
Many scenes will have you scratching your head and wondering what is going, and who would even think of something like this.
It may seem like there is no point, but every viewer has his or her own way of watching it and can make their own conclusions about it.
Then the rest of the movie trails off from there including a car wreck, crazy old lady, omelet making van driver, shirtless mustache man, a person with a gauze covered face, and a man wearing a green cookie monster/Gumby costume.
A series of events occur before it all leads to her death when she appears to be driving into a field of high radiation.I believe that this movie has many different plots and views that a person could take from it.
The two people she kills in the car crash at the beginning of the movie is when she begins to hallucinate and starts to see things.
We see all of the strange people in the movie drinking this drink and then doing odd things and start laughing.
She then starts laughing and playing with the dead people like they are dolls from the car accident form the beginning of the movie.
That is why I think the green creature symbolizes her and the monster she becomes when she is on the drug.
The independent film, The Oregonian, is one which is highly underrated and teaches the audience a valuable lesson in addiction.
We can only assume that our main character performed sexual acts in order to obtain more drugs from this man.At this point in the film, we can see that the director is attempting to communicate to us that this woman is clearly tripping balls.
As the movie ends, we see our main character drive away with her future, cracked-out self as her face slowly distorts, reflecting upon the inevitable years of future drug abuse..
It is in my opinion that the plot of the movie is that the main protagonist is in Hades, Hell but she does not realize it yet.
Later in the film she comes to a small town where she finds a man in a van wearing some aviators.
While in the desert with the strange people, she sees the man in the frog suit, and after a horrific hallucination, she murders him with a lead pipe, thus concreting her presence in Hell.
The ultimate thing sending her to hell was the killing of the two people she ran over and a man she had an affair with.With all this said the movie was amazing and did not get the recognization it deserved.
Greatest Film Of All Time.
The main character is a good looking blonde female who gets in a car accident.
Its film quality, dialogue, and story line are just a few of the qualities that cause me to put The Oregonian at #1 on my top ten movies list.
This movie has that, along with more twists and turns than a roller-coaster hand job.
In my eyes, the green monster and the Movie itself are our saviors.
I recommend that you watch this movie with your woman and a couple of gasoline margaritas.
No matter what movie you may be looking for, The Oregonian can satisfy your cinematic needs.
Through the many twists, turns, and bloody pissing scenes, The Oregonian keeps you on the edge of your seat, never being able to guess what will happen next.
Despite The Oregonian being labeled as a "movie" I know it is so much more.
In all, if you feel that you are ready (you aren't) to experience this beautiful work of art, then go right ahead and experience this life- altering movie first hand.
While single handily making you rethink who you really know and can trust in this world, the film will ruin any love for green fluffy monsters that you have.
This movie has changed my life for the better and simply watching this film has made me 2x the man I was before.
At the same time she also learns life lessons such as don't dress up like a green monster so that you don't get an omelet cooked and made in/on your back while getting railed from behind.
Through the twists and turns presented throughout the movie, The Oregonian makes sure everyone knows that it's unsafe and unwise to leave your farm.
The star studded cast drives this film's intensity, including a night-maringly scary "Green Monster" character that you are always on the lookout for.
With an extremely unpredictable plot and major character development, this film is a refreshing take on the horror genre.
"What does the omelet represent?" "Can I trust my own Grandma the next time I see her?" "How much gasoline can one man drink?" You may interpret the ending how you like, but there is no denying this is an amazing film that pushes the boundaries of what we know to be true in the horror industry.
Throughout the very confusing and almost non existent plot, there are few words ever exchanged by any of the characters and this leaves the audience to make their own depiction of what is truly going on in this movie.
I feel as though this is the common theme throughout the movie, it is simple and leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
But just like the main character, we have no idea what the future holds for us and it is the uncertainty that is most frightening to most people. |
tt1384929 | Rokland | Böddi (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) returns to the village of Krókur after 10 years of studies in Germany and he's going to change the way Icelandic people think. On his blog he preaches noble, highbrow German ideals mixed with Viking-Era romanticism. He's a bit too enthusiastic and is fired from his teaching position at the local high school after an ill-advised trip with his students to Drangey Island.
Being a man of ideals, Böddi continues his crusade but has little luck. The girl he loves doesnt want him and the one he's using ends up using him. On his blog he continues to criticizes everything and everyone, much to the locals dismay. Nothing will change in Krókur Village.
So Böddi rides south to the big city of Reykjavík on his sturdy steed Nietzsche. He's got a gun in his pocket and noble ideas for the people. He is ready for the revolution. And his revolution is quite real. | romantic | train | imdb | null |
tt1311067 | Halloween II | In a short flashback, Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombie) visits her son, a young Michael Myers (Chase Wright Vanek), at Smith's Grove Sanitarium. Deborah gives Michael a white horse statuette as a gift. Michael says that the horse reminds him of a dream he had of Deborah's ghost, all dressed in white and leading a horse down the sanitarium halls toward Michael, telling him she was going to bring him home.Flashing forward 15 years, picking up where the first Halloween film left off, a dazed and bloodied Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), is found wandering around in a state of shock and covered in blood after shooting the adult Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) who attempted to kill her. Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) takes Laurie to the emergency room. Meanwhile, the paramedics pick up the Sheriff's daughter Annie (Danielle Harris), as well as Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), both of whom are still alive after having been attacked by Michael, and take them to the hospital. Presumed dead, Michael's lifeless body is loaded into a separate ambulance. When the driver has a traffic accident, Michael awakens and escapes the ambulance, walking toward a vision of his mother Deborah dressed in white and leading a white horse.Michael appears at the hospital, and begins murdering everyone he comes across on his way to Laurie. Trapped in a security outpost at the gate, Laurie watches as Michael tears through the walls with an axe, but just as he tries to kill her, Laurie wakes up from the dream. It is actually two years later and Laurie is now living with the Bracketts. Michael's body has been missing since last Halloween still presumed dead and Laurie has been having recurring nightmares about the event. While Laurie deals with her trauma through therapy, Loomis has chosen to turn the event into an opportunity to write another book.Meanwhile, Michael has been living in an abandoned cabin in the woods somewhere in the Midwest, having grown long hair and a beard, living like a mountain man while healing from his wounds he sustained in the previous film. Michael is revealed to be having visions of Deborah's ghost and a younger version of himself, who instructs him that with Halloween approaching it is time to bring Laurie home; so he sets off for Haddonfield.As Michael travels to Haddonfield, Laurie begins having hallucinations that mirror Michael's, which involve a ghostly image of Deborah and a young Michael in a clown costume. In addition, her hallucinations also begin to include her acting out Michael's murders, like envisioning herself taping Annie to a chair and slitting her throat while dressed in a clown outfitsimilar to how a young Michael murdered Ronnie White.While Laurie struggles with her dreams, Loomis has been going on tour to promote his new book, only to be greeted with criticism from people who blame him for Michael's actions and for exploiting the deaths of Michael's victims. When his book is finally released, Laurie discovers the truth: that she is really Angel 'Boo' Myers, Michael's long lost sister. With the truth out, she decides to go partying with her new friends Mya (Brea Grant) and Harley (Angela Trimbur) to escape how she is feeling.Michael appears at the party and kills Harley, then makes his way over to the Brackett house and stabs Annie repeatedly. When Laurie and Mya arrive back at the house they find Annie bloodied and dying. Michael kills Mya and then comes after Laurie, who manages to escape from the house. While Laurie manages to flag down a passing motorist, Sheriff Brackett arrives home and finds his daughter dead. Laurie gets into the motorist's car, but before they can escape Michael kills the driver and flips the car over with Laurie still in it. Michael takes the unconscious Laurie to an abandoned shed he has been camping out in.Laurie awakens to a vision of Deborah and a young Michael, ordering her to say "I love you, Mommy". The police discover Michael's location and surround the shed. Loomis arrives and goes into the shed to try to reason Michael into letting Laurie go. Inside, he has to inform Laurie, who believes that the younger Michael is holding her down. But from Loomis (and the viewers') point of view, no one is restraining her and Loomis tries to tell her that she must maintain her sanity and not fall over the edge just like Michael did. Just then, the ghost of Deborah instructs the older Michael that it is time to go home, and Michael grabs Loomis and begins repeatedly slashing his face and stabbing him in the chest. Stepping in front of a window while holding Loomis's body, Michael is shot twice by Sheriff Brackett and falls onto the spikes of some farming equipment. Apparently released of the visions, Laurie walks over and tells Michael she loves him, then she stabs him repeatedly in the chest and finally in the face. The shed door opens and Laurie walks out, wearing Michael's mask.As she pulls the mask off, the scene transitions to Laurie in isolation in a psychiatric ward, with a deranged grin on her face as a vision of Deborah dressed in white stands with a white horse at the end of her room. | insanity, violence, murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0253474 | The Pianist | "The Pianist" begins in Warsaw, Poland in September, 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, first introducing Wladyslaw (Wladek) Szpilman, who works as a pianist for the local radio. The Polish Army has been defeated in three weeks by the German Army and Szpilman's radio station is bombed while he plays live on the air. While evacuating the building he finds a friend of his who introduces him to his sister, Dorota. Szpilman is immediately attracted to her.Wladyslaw returns home to find his parents and his brother and two sisters, packing to leave Poland. The family discusses the possibility of fleeing Poland successfully and they decide to stay. That night, they listen to the BBC and hear that Britain and France have declared war on Germany. The family celebrates, believing the war will end once the Allies are able to engage Germany.Conditions for Jews in Warsaw quickly deteriorate. Wladek meets with Dorota, who accompanies him around Warsaw to learn of the injustice Jewish people have to face under the new Nazi regime. Businesses that were once friendly to them now won't allow their patronage. Wladek's father is harshly forbidden to walk on the sidewalk in the city by two German officers; when he begins to protest, one of the men hits him in the face. The family soon has to move to the Jewish ghetto established by Nazi rule. The Holocaust is starting, and the family, though well-to-do before the war, is reduced to subsistence level, although they are still better off than many of their fellow Jews in the overcrowded, starving, pestilential ghetto.Wladyslaw takes a job playing piano at a restaurant in the ghetto, turning down an offer from a family friend to work for the Jewish Police, and the family survives, but living conditions in the ghetto continue to worsen and scores of Jews die every day from disease, starvation, and random acts of violence by German soldiers. One night the family sees the SS march into a house across the street and arrest a family. The eldest man is unable to stand when ordered because he is confined to a wheelchair and the SS officers throw him over the balcony to his death. The other family members are gunned down in the street and run over by the SS truck if they survived.By 1942, the aged father must apply for working papers through a friend of Wladek's, so that he can take a job in a German clothier. However, the day comes when the family is selected to be shipped to their deaths at the Treblinka concentration camp. Henryk and Halina are selected and taken away and the rest of the family is sent to the Umschlagplatz to wait for transport. They are later reunited. As the family sits under the blazing sun with hundreds of other Jews waiting for the trains, the father uses the family's last 20 zlotys to buy a piece of candy from a boy (who apparently isn't aware of his own impending doom). Each family member eats a tiny morsel of candy, their last meal together.As they are going to the trains, Wladyslaw is suddenly yanked from the lines by Itzak Heller, a Jewish man working as a police guard. Wladyslaw watches the rest of his family board the train, never to be seen again. He hides for a few days in the cafe he played piano in with his old boss there. He later blends in with the ten percent or so of the Jews that the Nazis kept alive in the ghetto to use for slave labor, tearing down the brick walls separating the ghetto and rebuilding apartment houses for new, non-Jewish residents. He is put to work, under grueling, abusive conditions, building a wall. He thinks he sees an old friend Janina Godlewska (a singer), but she passes quickly. He learns that some of the Jews are planning an uprising, and helps them by smuggling guns into the ghetto. While carrying bricks, he drops a load of them and is given a new job supplying the workers with building supplies. He also helps smuggle guns in potato sacks -- the weapons will be given to the resistance fighters on the other side of the wall for the uprising. At one point, he is almost caught by a German officer, who suspects that Wladek is hiding something in a sack of beans. After this close call, he decides he must escape and take his chances in the larger city, so with the help of friend, Majorek (who was the friend that got his father working papers), he escapes and finds Janina and her husband.They take Wladyslaw to his caretaker Gebczynski (a man with the Polish resistance), who hides him for one night. The next day Gebczynski takes him to a vacant apartment near the ghetto wall, where he can live indefinitely on smuggled food; he must be silent however, since several non-Jews also live in the building and believe the apartment is empty. There, Wladek watches the Jewish Ghetto Uprising of April/May1943, for which he helped smuggle the weapons, and watches weeks later as the uprising is finally crushed and its participants killed. Later, Gebczynski wants to move Wladek as the Nazis have found the weapons of the Polish resistance, forcing Gebczynski to be on the run also. Gebczynski says it's only a matter of time before the Nazis find the apartment Wladek is hiding in. Wladek decides to stay put, feeling safer where he is. His friend gives him an address to go to in case of an emergency, and leaves, gravely warning Wladek not to be caught alive by the Nazis. Wladyslaw remains in the apartment a few more months until he has an accident, breaking some dishes. The noise has blown his cover, and he has to scurry out of the building, being chased by an angry German woman who suspects him of being Jewish.Wladek goes to the emergency address he was given, where he surprisingly meets Dorota, who is now married, pregnant, and her brother dead. Dorota and her husband hide Wladek in another vacant apartment, where there is a piano, but his new caretaker, Szalas, is very slack about smuggling in food, and Wladyslaw once more faces starvation, and at one point almost dies of jaundice. Dorota and her husband visit him, finding him gravely ill. They report that Szalas had been collecting money from generous and unwitting donors and had pocketed it all, leaving Wladek to die in isolation.Wladek recovers in time to see the larger 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Poles tried to retake control of their city. Soon, Nazis start attacking the building and he has to flee. The Poles had expected the advancing Soviet Red Army to help them, but the Russians did not come, instead allowing the Germans to put down the revolt, and drive the entire remaining population of Warsaw out of the city. Wladyslaw hides in the abandoned hospital that had been across the street from his second hideout. The Germans had by then decided to burn Warsaw to ashes, so Wladyslaw flees the hospital and jumps back over the wall into the ghetto, now an abandoned, desolate wasteland of bricks and rubble.He stays there, rummaging through burned-out buildings to find something to eat, and continues to hide, until one night a Nazi officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, finds him. To prove to Hosenfeld that he is a pianist, he plays a somber and brief rendition of Chopin's "Ballade in G Minor", the first time he has played since he worked in the Jewish ghetto years before.Hosenfeld, moved by Szpilman's playing, helps him survive, allowing him to continue hiding in the attic even after the house is established as the Captain's headquarters. Hosenfeld eventually abandons the house with his staff when the Russian army draws closer to Warsaw. Hosenfeld gives Wladek a final parcel of food and his overcoat. He asks Wladek his surname, which sounds exactly like "spielmann", the German word for pianist. Hosenfeld promises to listen for Wladek on the radio. Hosenfeld also tells him that he only needs to survive for a few more days; the Russian army will liberate Warsaw soon. Shortly afterward, Wladyslaw sees Polish partisans, and, overcome with joy, goes outside to meet his countrymen. Seeing his coat given to him by Hosenfeld, they think he is a German and try to kill him, before he can convince them he is Polish.In the Spring, newly freed Poles walk past an improvised Russian prisoner of war camp, and Hosenfeld is among the prisoners. The Poles hurl insults at the Germans through the fence, but when Hosenfeld hears that one of the Poles is a musician, he goes to the fence and tells him that he helped Wladyslaw, and asks him to ask Wladyslaw to return the favor, before a Russian soldier throws him back down on the ground. The Polish musician does indeed bring Wladyslaw back to the site to petition the Russians, but they have departed without a trace by the time he gets there. Wladyslaw is unable to help Hosenfeld, but he returns to playing piano for the radio station.Closing title cards tell us that Hosenfeld died in a Soviet gulag in 1952. Wladyslaw lived to be an old man, dying in Poland at the age of 88. The cards are intercut with footage of Wladek triumphantly playing Chopin's Grand Polonaise Brilliante in concert. | murder, dramatic, cult, violence, historical | train | imdb | null |
tt1234719 | Red Dawn | In the opening shots, there is a montage of news reports and politicians speeches about North Korea, interlaid with the opening credits and finally, the title of the movie itself appears on the screen.Spokane, Washington. There is a high school football game where Matt Eckert's (Josh Peck) team loses because he gets cocky and keeps trying to run the ball in, even though he should be making more passes as the quarterback, like the coach tells him to.After the game, he gets picked up by his girlfriend, Erica (Isabel Lucas), who's one of the cheerleaders in the school, and they go off to a party that night. At the party, the power suddenly goes out, but not knowing the circumstances of it, the teenagers continue to party, cheering loudly.Back at the Eckert house, Tom (Brett Cullen) tells his returned son Jed (Chris Hemsworth) that he can't find the extra mattress, to which Jed replies that he could simply sleep on the couch. Matt arrives home and asks his dad whether he saw the game, to which he proudly replies that the team is lucky to have him regardless of the outcome. Tom is a police officer within Spokane and he needs to leave in order to investigate the power outage. Matt walks up the porch, sees Jed, and walks into the house without saying a word to him.The next morning, Matt and Jed wake up to the rumbling sounds around them. Items around their house start to fall over, and they run outside to find out whats going on. They look up and see dozens of large aircraft with soldiers parachuting from them. One plane gets shot down by a ground-to-air missile and crashes into a nearby house.The brothers get into their pickup truck and drive off to find their dad, who meets them along the way as he was driving towards them as well to regroup. They follow him towards the direction of the town outskirts as a descending paratrooper fires at them, but the Eckerts manage to run him over. Tom tells his sons to drive away to their cabin in the mountains for safety as he stays behind to help the rest of the townspeople. Reluctant at first, they soon comply and speed off.We get our first detailed glimpses of the invading troops and realize they are North Koreans as they wear the symbol of the North Korean military. The Eckert brothers are pursued by other North Korean military vehicles that spot them as they try to save Erica before she is captured, but it is too late. Reversing direction, they manage to pick up a few more people, including schoolmates Robert (Josh Hutcherson) and Daryl (Connor Cruise), as some other escapees follow them in another car. They get to the cabin and try to compile as many supplies as they can. At night, they see a vehicle driving by, and Jed takes point with a rifle in case its a hostile. It turns out to be a non-military vehicle, but Pete (Steve Lenz) fires a wild shot at it with a handgun he found earlier, almost hitting Jed in the process. Jed orders him to hand the weapon over, but Pete refuses, so Jed takes it by force.The following morning, they find out Pete left with all their food, so they gather what they can and leave the cabin. They scout around, but hear some sounds and see that a North Korean officer named Captain Cho (Will Yun Lee) is at their cabin with some soldiers and uses Tom and Daryl's fathers as bait to draw them out from the woods. Pete had betrayed them and gave away their location. Although Daryl's father is more compliant, Tom tells his sons through the megaphone to kill the bastard, pointing at Cho, and is shot by him as the soldiers burn down the cabin.After a moment of mourning, Jed gives a speech about how this is their home, and the group decides to sow chaos among the invaders with guerrilla tactics, and learn how to operate the various weapons they could gather.On their first raid, Toni (Adrianne Palicki) is sent as bait. She approaches a checkpoint and suddenly turns to run away, prompting several soldiers to chase her around a corner where she immediately ducks as the rest of the group rise from their cover and shoot down the soldiers. They then strip all their weapons and gear to take with them back to their new makeshift base in the woods.Over the course of the next few days, they cause more chaos among the invaders by using stolen C4 and other explosives to blow up various military checkpoints, and outright shooting down other ground soldiers from rooftops with their captured small arms. They exclaim themselves to be the Wolverines, based on their school mascot, and the word spreads, causing others to rise up against their invaders.At one outdoor public gathering where North Korean officials are speaking to the remaining people of the town, along with collaborators (Americans who have chosen to work with the invaders to spare their own lives) and a few allied Chinese and Russian military personnel, the Wolverines are preparing to take them out with live fire and explosives. However, Matt sees Erica, who is a prisoner at this point, being transported away in a school bus and sets off the explosions early. He is able to free her, and they escape within the chaos, but one of the other Wolverines is gunned down.Jed is angry at Matt for disobeying and risking all their lives. Matt runs off, but after a few days, Jed goes to have a brotherly talk with Matt, where Matt accuses Jed of disappearing for six years when their mother died, leaving him and his father who too out his frustration by physically beating Matt. Jed admits he was wrong to do so since he was emotionally lost and needed to find himself, but that he needs him now, and they eventually reconcile and return to the group.Meanwhile in Spokane, a high-ranking North Korean military officer barges into Cho's office, furious at him for being unable to stop the Wolverines, but Cho says he has a plan.As the Wolverines rest up in their hideout, their shelter is suddenly destroyed when enemy jets bomb a large area of the woods. Two more are killed, and they go on the run. Only Matt, Jed, Toni, Erica, Robert, and Daryl are left. In the woods, they meet three American military personnel, led by Tanner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who coincidentally have been looking for the Wolverines.Over a campfire, they realize that both groups had independently come up with the conclusion that the briefcase that Cho always carries with him is crucial to the invaders and must be captured. They go ahead with a raid on the local police station which the enemy personnel within the district have utilized as their base and manage to take down many of the soldiers. As Daryl is running away, he is caught and stabbed by some enemy Russian associates, but manages to escape. Meanwhile, Jed fights Cho, and they eventually end up in his fathers office inside the station. Cho gets the upper hand as Jed ducks under his father's desk, but he pulls out a gun from a hidden compartment to shoot Cho in the legs, causing him to collapse. Jed then finishes off Cho. Matt manages to retrieve the dropped briefcase from a fallen soldier, and he rejoins Jed to make a run for it.They get away and hide out in a broken down house somewhere for shelter. Jed is proud of Matt, stating that he was never good at giving props to his brother, but that he deserved it this time. He gives his brother a beer, to which Matt replies it would be his first one, and they laugh. Jed then gets up to walk over to Toni, who is smiling at him in the hallway with another beer in hand, when he is suddenly shot and killed. The invaders had found their location and begin firing upon them. Matt yells for everyone to get out, and they manage to do so, getting into a car and speeding off.They stop briefly in the woods to rethink their situation, and figure out that the enemy soldiers were able to find them because of a tracking device that has been embedded in Daryl's side. During the earlier battle, the Russians had actually embedded a tracker into him and allowed him to escape so that he would lead them straight to the rest of the group. Knowing it can't be removed, Daryl decides to stay behind with only a rifle as the others drive off.The next scene shows other American military personnel and the four remaining Wolverines in a field as they load the briefcase onto a helicopter and prepare to take off. Tanner offers the surviving Wolverines the chance to go with them, away from the battle zone, but Matt refuses. The Wolverines decide to stay.The final scene shows Matt atop a car, giving the same speech his brother gave to them near the beginning to more individuals wanting to fight against the invaders. That night, they storm the detention center where the invaders are keeping prisoners. The Wolverines attack with heavily armed jeeps and vehicles as people start shouting the name, and the last shot shows many of the resistance running forward with an American flag fluttering in the wind among them. | revenge, murder, violence | train | imdb | null |
tt0053084 | The Mouse That Roared | The Mouse that RoaredThe world's smallest nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, which lies on the Swiss-French border, is quietly and prosperously ruled by the Grand Duchess Gloriana XII (Peter Sellers), with the assistance of the Hereditary Prime Minister, Count Rupert of Mountjoy (Peter Sellers), the Hereditary Field Marshall and Grand Constable, Tully Bascombe (Peter Sellers) and the Leader of the Loyal Opposition, David Bentner (Leo McKern).Disaster strikes, however, when the Duchy's only export, its wine, Pinot Grand Fenwick, is undercut in the United States by a Californian copy, Pinot Grand Enwick. Faced with bankruptcy, and having had no reply to its protests, the Duchy decides to declare war on the United States, Mountjoy having reasoned that it will certainly lose and will then be magnificently rehabilitated by the generous, victorious Americans. A Declaration of War is duly sent, but is considered a press-room joke by its recipient in Washington.Tully Bascombe, his lieutenant Will Buckley (William Hartnell), and twenty soldiers, in chain mail and armed with longbows, including Roger (Timothy Bateson) and Cobbley (Monte Landis) and (Alan Gifford), are sent to invade the United States, making the first part of their journey by bus and then by tramp steamer, captained by Pedro (Harold Kasket), encountering, en route, the QEII (captain Stuart Saunders, second officer Ken Stanley), which they mistakenly attack.In New York, an air-raid exercise has closed the entire city, with the exception of the laboratory of Professor Alfred Kokintz (David Kossoff) at the New York Institute of Physics, where he and his daughter Helen (Jean Seberg) are working on the new Q-bomb: an air-raid warden (Wally Brown) tries to get them to take shelter, but the Professor shows him the Q-bomb - an active working model on a hair-trigger - which he must deactivate first. The Grand Fenwick party land, but can find no-one to surrender to: in Central Park, they encounter a decontamination squad, Mulligan (Richard Gatehouse) and O'Hara (George Margo), who believe the Fenwickians in their shiny mail are "men from Mars" invading the city: this rumour rapidly spreads through the crowds in the shelters. The Grand Fenwick party takes the decontamination squad's van, trying to reach the Arsenal, but instead end up at the Institute of Physics, where they take Prof. Kokintz, Helen and the Q-bomb captive.General Snippet (Macdonald Parke), in charge of the New York exercise, alerted by an army captain (Bill Edwards) of the spread of rumours of "men from Mars", arrives with four New York policemen (Bill Nagy): they are also taken captive. Leaving the Grand Fenwick flag flying from the New York customs shed, the Grand Fenwick party re-embarks and returns home. Prof. Kokintz persuades Helen to try and seduce Tully, to persuade him to allow her father to deactivate the Q-bomb, but Tully, seasick, is unreceptive. In France, the Americans cannot get anyone (ticket collector, Jacques Cey) to listen to them.Back in Grand Fenwick the whole country is excitedly preparing to welcome the American victors, and planning what to spend the money on: they are dumbfounded when Tully arrives with his prisoners and declares that Grand Fenwick won. The Q-bomb is taken to the dungeons, Prof. Kokintz and his daughter to the castle, and the General and policemen to the "Museum of Ancient Torture" before the policemen are also taken to comfortable quarters in the castle: the General, insisting on his exact rights under the Geneva Convention, is shown to a small, dim cell with a tin plate of food.The U.S. Secretary of Defense (Austin Wills) finally puts together the pieces and realizes that the United States has been defeated: he has to tell the President, persuade the Pentagon generals (Lionel Murton) that this is the only course, and then go to Grand Fenwick to surrender. Meanwhile Grand Fenwick by its possession of the Q-bomb has now become the most powerful nation on the planet, as explained by the BBC Announcer (Colin Gordon).In Grand Fenwick's parliament, messages of support arrive from numerous other countries - all offering also to take the Q-bomb. The British (Charles Clay), French (Henry de Bray) and Soviet (Guy Deghy) Ambassadors convene at the frontier, and Will Buckley makes the U.S. Secretary of Defense, arriving to discuss the U.S.'s surrender, wait also. In frustration, Mountjoy and Bentner, and their parties, all resign, leaving Tully as the new Prime Minister.Mountjoy and Bentner now decide the only course is to help the Americans to escape and take the Q-bomb with them: they release the General and policemen, and give them the Q-bomb, and they also persuade Helen to leave, but not before Tully has declared his love for her: Prof. Kokintz, being entertained by the Duchess on the harpsichord, cannot be found. Taking the Duchess' elderly car, the Americans drive away, but are pursued by Tully. The car stalls and has to be pushed over a hill-crest: it then runs away with the General and the Q-bomb on board, running into a haystack, which sets the Q-bomb into high alert mode: tossed from hand to hand, it is captured by Tully and returned to the Duchy.Tully and the U.S. Secretary of Defense now discuss the peace treaty terms; the Californian wine will be discontinued, Prof. Kokintz and Helen, who will now marry Tully, will remain in Grand Fenwick, and so will the Q-bomb: as the Duchess points out, any atomic war would destroy Grand Fenwick anyway, and the big nations have not succeeded in nuclear disarmament, so now it is time for a League of Little Nations to try.Prof. Kokintz, finally allowed to disarm the Q-bomb, drops it! It was a dud all along: or was it? The little white mouse that emerges from it may know. | anti war, satire | train | imdb | null |
tt0058092 | Father Goose | It's 1942, and the war in the Pacific is not going well for the Allies. At the moment, the British are evacuating the island of Salamaua, taking what they can and destroying the rest. In all the confusion, scruffy beachcomber Walter Eckland (Cary Grant) arrives, ties his launch to the pier and begins helping himself to cans of His Majesty's Royal Navy petrol.A young officer, Stebbings (Jack Good), spots him and indignantly asks what he's doing. Walter pauses long enough to look at Stebbings, and say, portentously, "Do you know who I am?" Taken aback, Stebbings admits, "Well, no, I don't." "Well...we'll let it go this time," says Walter, magnanimously, and resumes stacking cans by his boat.In the harbormaster's office, Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard) is talking on the radio to the admiral, reassuring him that everything will go as planned. Stebbings bursts in, meaning to ask Frank if he knows the cheeky Yank at the far end of the pier. Frank motions him to hush, then tells the admiral that yes, all the coast watcher positions have been assigned...all except for Matalava. But at that moment, Frank catches sight of Walter and his face brightens. He tells the admiral he has found his man for Matalava. As they walk down the pier, Frank tells Stebbings that Walter is a hard-drinking drop-out from civilization, but he knows the islands like the back of his hand and is as sharp as they come.Frank and Walter greet each other in a way that suggests they share a certain amount of history. Frank explains the coast watching service to Walter, and asks him to go Matalava, just for a while...until they can find someone permanent. Walter cheerfully refuses. Frank immediately turns to Stebbings and orders him to confiscate all the small boats on the pier (although Walter's is obviously the only one). At first Walter protests, but he soon realizes Frank will indeed follow through on the order, so he cheerfully agrees to go to Matalava. Frank is not fooled. In the next scene, Walter arrives at Matalava...escorted by a large British destroyer, with Frank and Stebbings watching from the bridge. As sailors transport Walter's supplies to the island, Stebbings asks Frank what's to prevent Walter from sailing out again the moment they leave. Frank chides Stebbings for having so little faith in his fellow man...and orders him to get underway by turning hard a-port. Stebbings starts to obey, then stops, uncertain...he asks Frank to confirm the order, then he nods happily, and orders the coxswain to turn hard a-port. As the destroyer turns, it tears a big, ragged hole in Walter's hull just above the waterline.Using his dinghy (which is equipped with a small outboard motor), Walter tows the launch to a tiny, sheltered lagoon, and makes his way to a little grass hut just off the beach. The supplies have been left here; there's a cot, table and chairs, radio, and charts of Japanese planes and ships on the walls. Frank calls up on the radio to give Walter further instruction on his duties, and on the use of code names when talking on the radio. Frank is Big Bad Wolf, Stebbings is Little Bo Peep...and Walter is to be Mother Goose. Frank hastily switches off the radio on Walter's angry, profane response."I don't see we've accomplished anything," says Stebbings. "After all you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." "Oh, if he gets thirsty enough, Stebbings, he'll drink," replies Frank, dryly. And sure enough, a moment later Walter calls to ask about the case of whiskey that was delivered with the supplies. Frank tells Walter his men have hidden the bottles in spots he will never find on his own. Whenever Walter calls to report any Japanese planes or ships he's seen, he'll be given directions on where to find one bottle. Walter immediately tells Frank that he's seen a couple of Japanese planes, and starts giving him a detailed description. "CONFIRMED sightings, Walter," says Frank, interrupting Walter's attempted ruse.Walter resigns himself to an indefinite stay on Matalava...at least until he can repair his boat. He works on it whenever possible...and diligently reports any Japanese plane and ship movements...and loses no time applying for the promised bottle afterward.Stebbings informs Frank that another of the coast watchers, Perry on Bundy Island, is ringed in by the Japanese and requesting to be withdrawn. A quick look at their map shows shows that Walter is the only one near enough to help. Frank calls Walter and offers him a bargain: if he'll go to Bundy, and pick up Perry, Perry will help him fix his boat and stay on at Matalava in his place. Walter refuses at first, shrewdly guessing Frank hasn't told him everything. Then he calls Frank back and makes a counter offer: after all, a man in a seven-foot dinghy traveling over all those miles of open sea would need a little comfort...after a failed attempt at bartering, Frank agrees to provide directions to all the remaining bottles of whiskey.Walter lands at the south jetty on Bundy after dark, as instructed...but Perry isn't waiting there for him, as promised. He cautiously makes his way to Perry's shack...and stumbles just outside over what looks like a grave, marked with a rough cross. He goes inside and sees that the hut has been strafed from the air...everything has been shot to pieces.He hears a faint noise, turns, and sees a shadow behind the window blind. He creeps over, pulls it up suddenly, and finds himself pointing his gun at a lovely young Frenchwoman (Leslie Caron)--who is pointing a gun right back at him. He asks her about Perry, and she answers if that's the man who lived here, she found him dead and buried him. A Japanese patrol boat passes...they duck...the light sweeps over them, but they are not seen. Walter tells her they should get out of there, and she motions to someone out of sight, and whispers, "Come on, we're leaving." Walter watches dumbfounded as seven little schoolgirls, each in a neat uniform and hat, and carrying a suitcase, file past the window and follow the woman down to the jetty. Walter protests that his little dinghy won't hold all of them. "All right," says the woman, "Tell me which of them you want to leave behind?" Realizing he's beaten, he helps them all into the dinghy. But he throws away all their luggage, growling "This isn't the Queen Mary," when they protest.The trip back is harrowing...the dinghy rides very low in the water. At one point, two Japanese destroyers pass on either side of them in the dark, and the little craft is almost swamped: all must bail to keep it afloat. When they arrive at Matalava, Walter angrily jumps off the boat and storms up to the hut, leaving the girls to make their own way. He calls Frank on the radio and accuses him of tricking him into picking up the girls. But Frank is as puzzled by their presence as Walter, and the woman takes the radio mike to explain. She is Catherine Freneau, daughter of the French Consul at Rabaul...the girls are the daughters of other diplomats. They were being evacuated to Australia when their pilot got a distress call from a downed bomber. He dropped them off at Bundy, promising to return for them...but then the Japanese landed on the island.Frank asks them to stand by while they figure something out. Walter opens a bottle of whiskey, and drinks...opens a can of food, and begins to eat out of the can as the girls look on. Catherine points out that they could all do with some food. He tosses a can to her, and goes on eating. She sighs, and begins to order the girls to straighten up the hut, clean off the table, open some tins...she asks Walter where he keeps his tea things. He watches warily, but only intervenes when one of the girls starts to move his hard-won whiskey.Frank comes back on the radio to inform them that he can't take the girls off Matalava...they may have to stay there for several weeks. He will arrange a parachute drop in a couple of days, to deliver additional supplies. Walter is outraged. He wants them off his island, immediately...especially Catherine, whom he calls "Miss Goody Two-Shoes." For her part, Catherine tells Frank that Walter is "a rude, foul-mouthed, filthy beast." But there's nothing to be done, they're all stuck with each other.Catherine sends the girls outside, and tries to convince Walter that they must work together, and their main concern must be the children: He must let them have the hut, and help her keep them safe and secure; above all, he must stop swearing and drinking in front of them...after all, he is the "Father" figure. Walter retorts that he has no intention of being a "Father" figure...all he intends to be is a "Total Stranger" figure. He tells her to get out and let him get some sleep. He defiantly takes off his pants in front of her, and lies down on the cot. She leaves...but a few moments later her little guerilla fighters attack the hut with sticks and coconuts. Walter comes outside with a blanket wrapped around his waist, pants over his arm, and a bottle in his hand..."Lady," he says to her threateningly, "you're making a powerful enemy." But it's an empty threat, and they all know it. He retreats to his boat, where he will stay for the duration.Later, one of the girls comes down to the boat to fetch him: Frank is on the radio. Walter hurries off to the shack...not noticing the girl stays behind, and beckons to the others, hidden in the trees nearby. Walter finds Catherine alone in the shack, mending a piece of clothing. He looks around nonchalantly for the whiskey..."I asked you to stop drinking in front of the girls," she says, primly, "but you wouldn't." She has hidden it all away again, to Walter's supreme frustration!Frank is no longer on the radio, but he left a message, and after some suspicious fumbling and stalling, Catherine finally produces it. Frank has been unable to arrange a parachute drop...they'll have to make do with what they have. Catherine asks Walter if he would consider sharing some of his personal belongings with her and the girls. He tells her he'd trade for his whiskey. She refuses, and he leaves.As he starts back down to the boat, the girls run past him one by one, each concealing a bundle of clothing, tools, blankets, which they've taken from his boat. As the last little girl runs by, Walter finally gets wise...he tries to stop her, and she hits him on the toe with the hammer she's stealing. By the time he recovers, all the girls are inside the hut with Catherine standing guard. Out-maneuvered again, he retreats to his empty, empty boat.He keeps a watch on the hut, and on Catherine and the girls, now wearing bits, pieces and strangely-altered versions of his clothes. There's Elizabeth (Stephanie Berrington), 14, pretty, but shy and bespectacled; Anne (Pip Sparke), 12, sullen and aloof, whose answer to every question is, "I want to go home"; Harriet (Jennifer Berrington), ten, a cheerful tomboy who prefers to be called Harry; Angelique and Dominique (Laurelle and Nicole Felsette), the twins, nine, who speak only French, but may understand more than they let on; Christine (Verina Greenlaw), about six, a no-nonsense little Brit; Jenny (Sharyl Locke), also British, around six, very quiet and sad. He waits for his chance: he'll give up the hut, and they can have the clothes...but he wants that whiskey!One day he spots a Japanese destroyer in the bay, and an inflatable raft with four armed Japanese sailors coming ashore. He runs up to the shack and finds only Catherine and Christine there. The rest are on the beach gathering coconuts. He and Catherine run down quickly to find them. They find four of them coming back from the beach, their arms full of coconuts, and send them back to the shack to hide. They continue to the beach, where they find Anne perched precariously, but more or less hidden, high up in a palm, near where the sailors are landing. Jenny is nowhere to be seen. Walter motions to Anne to stay where she is, and he and Catherine crouch down behind a couple of fallen logs. The sailors set off down the beach, away from them...just as Jenny appears, oblivious to what's going on, to add two more coconuts to the pile under the palm. Walter whispers to Catherine that if Jenny makes a sound they're done...Catherine murmurs that Jenny hasn't spoken since she left her parents. "She can still scream, can't she?" says Walter grimly, and runs swiftly to Jenny while the sailors' backs are turned. He puts his hand over her mouth to silence any outcry (managing not to cry out himself, when Jenny give him a good, hard bite), and hides her until the sailors are out of sight. Then he brings her back, frightened and crying, to Catherine, who comforts and quiets her.It turns out that Catherine understands Japanese, and she tells Walter that they are trying to find turtles for soup. Unable to find any, the Japanese return to the dinghy, and shove off. They don't leave a moment too soon: Anne is slipping from her perch. Walter manages to get under her, and, quietly but painfully, break her fall. When the sailors are back on board, and the ship is out of sight, they all leave the beach. No one notices that the bright red bandana Anne was wearing (one of Walter's) has snagged in the fronds of the palm.Walter is working on his boat when Jenny suddenly appears, staring silently over the railing at him. He looks back at her for a moment, surprised, then tells her to beat it. She produces a bottle of whiskey, and sets it on the railing near him. Dumbfounded, he looks at it, then at her...and says, "Thank you", in a slightly hoarse voice. He removes the cap, takes a healthy swig, and thanks her again. He asks her name--she doesn't answer. He reaches into his pocket and produces a small silver whistle on a chain. "Would you like this?" he asks. She nods. "All you have to do is repeat three words after me." She nods again. "Elephant," he says. After a pause, she repeats, "Elephant." "Rhinoceros," says Walter. "Rhinoceros," she repeats. "Wrong!" says Walter. "Why?" she demands, indignantly. "No, not 'Why'..," says Walter, " 'Wrong!' That was the third word--you lose." He puts the whistle back in his pocket...and Jenny snatches back the whiskey. Muttering about poor losers, Walter hands her the whistle, and she returns the whiskey. He takes another swig, and when he looks again, Harry is standing next to Jenny, smiling happily. They offer to help him fix his boat, and he tells them they can swab down the deck. Soon all the girls are there, working on the boat in one capacity or another.Catherine arrives, looking for the girls. She orders them back to the shack for lessons, but Jenny protests that they'd rather stay and help Mr. Eckland. Catherine stares at Jenny in surprise, and Elizabeth brightly explains that Mr. Eckland got her to talk. "Better do as she says," Walter tells the girls, and reluctantly they head back to the shack. A little jealous, Catherine says tartly that next time she needs the girls to do anything, she'll just call on Mr. Eckland. "It's not my fault that boats are more fun than lessons," he replies, mildly. As he's talking, he wades out into the lagoon a little way. He crouches, and after a moment plunges his hands into the water and skillfully flips a fish onto the shore. "Why don't you teach them something useful, like that?" he says. Catherine tries it, but fails miserably. Walter approaches to show her how it's done...but standing so close to her, he suddenly realizes that he's very...attracted to her. Startled, he backs away. Confused, Catherine asks, "Mr. Eckland, are you or aren't you going to teach me to fish?" After a moment's consideration, he replies "I aren't". He wades deeper into the lagoon, and begins to swim away, while she watches, mystified.Catherine and Anne are foraging for berries, near a little pond. Catherine slips off a log, into the water. "Oh... Something bit me", she exclaims, and looks at two little holes near her left ankle. "A snake, a snake!" cries Anne, pointing to a long, dark shape in the water nearby. Catherine jumps out of the water, and they flee to the hut. After a moment, the dark shape emerges fully from the water: it's only a branch, with thorns and a couple of wilted leaves.Catherine is on the cot surrounded by the girls when Walter comes in, summoned by one of the French twins. Catherine briefly explains what happened; he sends the girls out, and examines the tiny wound gravely. With his knife (sterilized over the stove's flame) he makes a small cut across the marks, and attempts to suck out the venom. Then he calls Frank on the radio: "What kind of snakes have they got around here?" he asks. "Uh, is that a rhetorical question, I hope?" asks Frank, warily. "Miss Freneau went and found one," replies Walter, evenly. Frank sends Stebbings for a doctor, and tells Walter to stand by. "And Walter," he adds, "until we know what we're dealing with, don't try to be a movie hero and suck out the venom, ok?" Walter and Catherine look at each other a little sheepishly.Frank returns shortly, and asks Walter to put on the headphones. The doctor tells him there are three varieties of snakes indigenous to the islands, all extremely poisonous. Nothing can be done for Catherine...the end will come very soon: She'll experience a general feeling of numbness, then dizziness, and then death. The doctor tells Walter to make her comfortable, and recommends the liberal use of any strong, analgesic sedative he may have on hand to do so. "I don't have anything like that," protests Walter, and Frank replies, "Nonsense, Walter, you've been using one for years."Walter persuades Catherine to tell him where he can find a bottle of whiskey...best medicine for snakebite, after all. She drains her first coconut cupful quickly...and as he pours another, she tells him she doesn't disapprove of drinking, only excessive drinking. As she's working on her third cupful, she says that since the death of her mother, she has served as hostess at every consulate function for years. "We had martinis before dinner, white wine with the fish," she says, running through the checklist, "red wine with the main course, champagne with dessert, cognac with coffee, and port after dinner." Walter takes a swig of the whiskey and comments enviously, "Sounds GREAT!"After her fifth drink, Catherine observes that it's getting very hot in the shack...and seems unable to keep from waving her very limber legs in the air and giggling. She asks Walter what her blood tasted like. After some discussion as to whether or not it was too salty, Walter decides to close the blinds and pull the curtain over the door. Listening on the porch with the other girls, Anne suddenly shouts she's going to kill that rotten snake, and runs off toward the pond.Catherine admits she's obsessively disciplined. "I'm a picture-straightener," she laments. "Whenever I see a picture hanging crookedly, I straighten it. And I brush my teeth every morning and every night, no matter what." She tells him that she's lived in 11 countries and speaks seven languages...that she once had a fiance named Cesare...he worked for the Italian Consulate, and whenever he kissed her, he would first ask "Permesso", and afterward he would say "Grazie." She giggles wildly, and tells Walter that Cesare would never have done to her leg what he did. She tells him earnestly that she liked what he did to her leg.Then she asks Walter what "she" was like. "What 'who' was like?" asks Walter. "The woman who drove you to this," she says, gesturing all around her, to the shack, the island...to his solitary life. "It was no woman," he replies, "it was a necktie." Believing that she will not live to pass the story on, he tells her that eight years ago, he'd been a professor of history at an American university. One morning, in a rush, he'd gone to class without his necktie...and they'd refused to let him in. He'd thought they'd care more about the content of his brain than what he wore around his neck, but he'd looked at them, then, and realized they all wore neckties. They all looked the same, talked the same, and thought the same, and they weren't learning anything...at least nothing he had to teach...and they were perpetuating the same old problems. So he'd packed up and departed for the South Seas the next day.Catherine listens with interest...then giggles to think that he was once a school teacher...then remarks that she's beginning to feel numb. Recognizing this symptom of approaching death, he helps her lie back on the cot. "Oh, I'm dizzy," she murmurs, "I'm so dizzy!" She suddenly sits up and exclaims, "Oh, dear!" in a surprised little voice...and passes out cold.Slowly, gently, Walter takes Catherine's cup of whiskey from her hand, crosses her hands on her breast and pulls the blanket up over her face. Then he drinks the whiskey left in her cup (waste not, want not!)Meanwhile, Anne has returned, carrying the snake-resembling branch in her hand. "What's that?" asks Elizabeth. "It's the snake," replies Anne. "That's not a snake," says Jenny. "It LOOKED like a snake," says Anne. "You ninny!" declares Christine. "Oh, la!" sighs one of the little French twins.Walter calls Frank: "It's over," he says, "Miss Freneau is...gone." "I'm sorry, Walter," says Frank. "Have the girls been told?" "No," replies Walter, "Stick around, why don't you...I may need you later."Walter comes out and sits down on the porch, and the girls gather around him. He tells them gently that Miss Freneau is gone. They tell him earnestly that she's not. Anne produces the stick, and he asks, "What's that?" "It's the snake," says Anne. "Well, that's not a snake," he replies. "It LOOKED like a snake," says Anne. She hands it to him, he looks at it, and after a moment, agrees, "That looks like a snake." He goes back inside, and pulls the cover back from Catherine's face. Her eyes open, and she looks at him, quizzically...."Is it morning already?" she asks, and he covers her up again. He goes back to the radio, and calls Frank. Frank has summoned the chaplain to say a few words of comfort. "Never mind," says Walter. "Miss Freneau's alive. It's the snake that's dead." Leaving Frank sputtering on the radio, he takes what's left of the bottle of whiskey, and heads back to his boat.He's tinkering with the patch he's rigged for the hull when Catherine, walking gingerly due to a monstrous hangover, comes in to talk to him. She asks him if she said or did anything for which she'd need to apologize. He tells her no...except when she put the flower between her teeth and danced naked around the room. "I couldn't' have done that!" she protests, then asks doubtfully, "Did I?" He asks her what she does remember. She replies nothing, really, and he relaxes. Or at least, she adds, nothing after his story about the necktie, she adds, and he explodes. He shouts at her that he never wants to hear about that again. She doesn't see why it should bother him so much, she'd thought he was running away from something much worse. He shouts that he wasn't running away, he was escaping...from hypocrits like her who have to get drunk to let themselves go. "If you'd start letting men wear their own pants, maybe they'd feel they could touch you without asking 'Permesso'," he shouts. Catherine slaps his face, crisply. He thinks about it...and slaps her back, not hard, but with sincerity. She isn't hurt, physically, but her face crumples into tears, and she runs off the boat. Walter watches her go with the beginnings of shame on his face.Later, as the girls are sitting down to dinner, Walter arrives at the front door. "Look," says Jenny, in wonder, "he's combed his hair." "And he's actually wearing socks," says Christine, awed. He apologizes for interrupting, and says he thought that if they had any extra food, he might... Catherine jumps up to prepare a plate for him. She is wearing the blouse and skirt she wore when they first met. They look at each other shyly, knowingly, and she sits down and passes the plate she has fixed for him down the table."I'm tired of tinned beef," says Anne. "Why can't we ever have fish?" "Professor Eckland was giving me fishing lessons," says Catherine, demurely..."but he never finishes what he starts!" Walter chokes on the bite of food he's just swallowed...the nearest girls all begin to pound on his back, while the others shout advice. In the midst of the confusion, practical little Jenny brings him a bottle of whiskey. He takes off the cap and prepares to have a swig...but Catherine says, "Uh-uh-uh, Mr. Eckland," and he reluctantly, but respectfully, puts the bottle aside. Shuddering a little, he has a sip of coconut milk instead.Suddenly, they hear a plane...very loud and close. A Japanese pilot has spotted the red bandana in the coconut tree, and is flying by it repeatedly, trying to figure it out. Walter runs out of the shack, and watches the plane from behind a palm tree, as it circles around. When it's gone, he immediately calls Frank. But Frank is unimpressed, convinced this is another ruse on Walter's part to get off the island. Angry, Walter stalks out of the shack, knowing that at some point the plane will come back.Later, Catherine comes down to his boat, to talk to him about the girls. She notices that the hole has been patched and he's working on the engine now. The talk turns to their own situation, and raised voices follow as they try to deny they have feelings for each other. Finally, after Catherine calls Walter a drunken escapist, and Walter calls her a frustrated old spinster, Catherine slaps Walter's face again...And, Walter slaps her right back. But instead of running away this time, Catherine gets a very determined look on her face, and slaps him again. Walter pauses, considering what to do next.Stebbings calls to Frank, and tells him that Walter is requesting a chaplain. "Good heavens," Frank exclaims, "he's finally killed her!" "No," declares Stebbings, "they want to get married!" "Married?!?" says Frank, astounded, "Goody Two Shoes and The Filthy Beast?!?"A chaplain is summoned, and a sailor with an accordian. Catherine has put her hair up, and all the girls have dressed in their neat school uniforms. Walter has dressed up again, and even fastened his collar button. Harry removes her necktie and offers it to Walter. "Oh, no thank you, Harry," says Catherine, "neckties don't suit Mr. Eckland," signifying that she's ready to accept him "as is".Frank says he needs to fill out a little paper work on their behalf...they each tell their full name for the record, and each smiles a little at hearing the other's for the first time. Frank asks the name of the maid of honor, Catherine supplies Elizabeth's name, and Elizabeth looks pleased. Frank asks the name of the best man...Walter looks around at the girls, and finally announces, "Harry MacGregor." Harry smiles radiantly.The sailor begins to play "Oh Promise Me" on his accordian, and the chaplain begins to read the text. Just as he asks if there are any objections to the marriage, the angry sound of an airplane engine interrupts them. Walter runs to the door, and looks up...the Japanese fighter plane has returned, and is lining up for a strafing run on the shack. They dive for cover just in time, as bullets rip through the shack. The plane turns around for a second run, and they scurry out to hide in the trees. Walter darts back inside, while the plane turns around for a third run...he interrupts the chaplain who is droning on about Walter taking this woman, and asks for Frank. He tells Frank the plane has returned. Frank is still doubtful, but Walter leaves the mike open so Frank can hear the bullets from the plane's last run, and Frank hurries off to make arrangements to get them all off the island.Catherine runs into the shack to make sure Walter's all right, and the chaplain asks if there's anything he can do. The plane has gone, so Walter tells the chaplain to finish the ceremony. Lying under the table in the ruined shack, and using a bandaid for a ring, Walter and Catherine are pronounced man and wife. Frank breaks in at this point, and tells Walter that an American sub is running submerged a few miles away. When they surface at nightfall, he'll get a radio message to them, and they should be able to make Matalava by dawn. He advises them to stay away from the hut, to sleep on the beach and be ready to signal the sub when it arrives.That night, as Walter and Catherine keep watch over the sleeping girls, she whispers to him, "You'll not be coming with us, will you?" "I can't leave the boat," he replies. "It must be a good one," she says, wistfully. "Good or bad, it's all the dowry you're going to get," he responds. "I'm thinking of starting a charter service, after the war...somewhere around the Solomons or maybe the New Hebrides. There'll be good money for anybody with a boat who knows the islands." Walter, it seems, has plans to rejoin the human race for Catherine's sake.At dawn, they hear the sound of a heavy engine approaching. But as the ship comes into view, they see it's not the promised American submarine, it's a Japanese patrol boat. Walter hurries the girls off the beach, telling Catherine to hide with them at his launch. Trying to distract and delay them, Walter runs up to the shack, and sets it on fire. Two rubber rafts have landed, with a dozen or so armed Japanese sailors. He ducks them as they run toward the shack, and runs down to their rafts on the beach, slashing them with his knife to deflate them.Catherine and the girls are hiding, but come out when he returns to the launch. Catherine points to the transom, where Walter has neatly painted "Catherine", with "Matalava" underneath, and asks when he did that. "Last night while you slept," he says...and adds in a meaningful tone, "There wasn't much else to do." He tells them to get into the dinghy, but to stay hidden in the lagoon. The sub will not surface while the patrol boat is there, but they will be watching, and he will decoy the patrol boat out past the reef where the sub can sink it. As he jumps into the launch, Catherine calls after him to be careful..."I look simply awful in black," she says.On the submarine, just outside the bay, the captain and the mate are taking turns watching the hut burn through the periscope. They see Walter's launch dart out of the lagoon, and watch as the patrol boat comes about to pursue it. The patrol boat is firing on and lobbing shells at the launch...some of the shots come perilously close. The captain watches tensely as both boats approach the reef, and as the launch crosses over it, he orders the torpedos readied. Just as the patrol boat clears the reef, one of its shells hits its mark... and the launch is blown to smithereens. The captain orders the torpedos to be fired, and the patrol boat is itself destroyed. The captain orders the mate to surface and look for survivors...without much hope.Catherine and the girls have piloted the dinghy out into the bay, and they are desperately looking through the wreckage of the launch for Walter. The motor has stalled, and Catherine is frantically trying to get it started again. One of the girls notices Walter's hat floating by, and Catherine sorrowfully reaches out to retrieve it. Suddenly Walter himself swims up to the boat, and they greet him joyously. At the last second, he'd been able to tie off the wheel and jump overboard. "I'm sorry about our boat," Catherine says. "Well, in a war, everybody loses something," he says, philosophically..."I'm just glad it was THAT Catherine." She leans down to kiss him, and he tells her to wait just a moment, and let him get in the dinghy. He puts a leg up over the side, and the boat rocks ominously. The girls squeal, and Catherine protests that he's going to tip them in. "No, no, no," he says, "this will work...all of you get over to that side. Look, will you just do it MY way for once?"In the next scene, the little boat is upside down in the water. Walter, Catherine, and all the girls are sitting on top of it, soaking wet. They all look at Walter accusingly. "Shut up," he says, morosely. The sub commander has been watching, and smiles. "Looks like we're going to be taking on passengers after all," he tells the mate. As the sub approaches, Walter muses, "I wonder if they serve coconut milk on submarines." | comedy | train | imdb | He was nicely paired with Leslie Caron, and the two struck an engaging chemistry for these capers.Grant also had the good sense to say farewell to these leading man parts (being aware that he could never become a "character" actor) threw in the towel and moved on to better things, like Fabrege.
Cary Grant and Leslie Caron were very intelligent in this movie: the way they brought out character they played - Mr. Eckland and Madame Freneau.I feel connected with the story.
In Father Goose, Cary Grant played a character, which was quite different from other of his movies such as Indiscreet, That Touch Of Mink, To Catch A Thief, etc.., He was unshaved, uncombed, filthy, untidy, insensitive, and care-free.
Leslie Caron's Catherine Frenau is not as zany as Hepburn's Susan, but still manages to irritate Grant for most of the film until he finally realizes that he is in love with her.
The reluctant recruit is rewarded with a bottle of whiskey (previously hidden somewhere on the island by the Royal Navy) each time one of his reports is confirmed.Walter seems to thrive on this assignment until he has to share his island with a French teacher Catherine Frenau (Leslie Caron) and seven young charges.
"Father Goose" is not my pick for the best Cary Grant flick (I think that's "Operation Petticoat", if you exclude his collaborations with Hitchcock), but it's a pleasant--if a little overlong--movie that works very well as light entertainment.
The usually pleasant Leslie Caron rises to nearly Audrey Hepburn status in his presence.Film historian David Thomson called Cary Grant the finest actor in Hollywood history and Time critic Richard Schickel once called him "a technician of genius".
Father Goose cobbles together elements of The African Queen, The Beachcomber, and the Monty Woolley WWII comedy, The Pied Piper.Cary Grant, as a South Seas wastrel, plays against type.
He was as charming in person as he is on the silver screen.I love Cary Grant's movies and "Father Goose" is by far one of his funniest and most underrated.The first time I saw this movie was December 1965 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, NY, with my parents, brother and sister.We waited 3 1/2 hours in line to get into the theater and my Dad kept running to get hot chocolate for all of us to help keep warm.
It's timeless - Cary Grant, Leslie Caron, the children and the whole cast are excellent!If you want to see a good, fun family film, this is the one to see!.
I had no conception of perfect timing, flawless delivery, or crackling wit, but, luckily, Grant could more than supply my deficiencies.Walter Eckland is, in fact, my patron saint, because he embodies the hope that when I am an old broken-down drunk with a hole in both my boat and my bottle, without a penny to my name (and in fact $200 in hock to Old van Der Hoven), I, too, can get a hot chick like Leslie Caron.
I wanted to watch this movie initially because I am a big fan of Cary Grant, who was an amazing actor and terrific in the majority of what he has done.
It is a Odd Couple- type of set up, but the gags that ensue between these two very different people are not one bit funny, and as a result of Leslie Caron's irritating performance, is a bit painful to watch.It is also a complete drag, a two hour movie that should not have stretched beyond ninety minutes, it never uses the war theme to add any sort of emotional depth and build up characters' relationships, instead going for one lazy gag after another.
In the intervening years, I have come to recognize Cary Grant's immaculate precision as a comic actor, and even playing a grizzled, alcoholic beachcomber like Walter Eckland, he still exudes the sharp wit and crack timing that is his hallmark.
This movie is so silly and unbelievable the comedy seems to be straining and never hits home.Cary Gant and Trevor Howard put in good performances.
Family-oriented comedy with a dash of harmless salt is hardly a step up from the live-action Disney films of this era, with only Cary Grant's ruffled panache holding interest.
The Good One. I think that Cary Grant still had a lot to offer in the 60's (take Charade for example and, most of all, his 1968 movie Walk, Don't Run, which is fantastically funny and smart).
I still don't think that Nort By Northwest is a very good movie, although it's not a bad one, and if I had to scan thru his filmography, I'd take his early movies with Katherine Hepburn (I Was A Male War Bride, Holiday) and the before-mentioned Walk, Don't Run. As for Father Goose, he updates his film role from Operation Petticoat with Tony Curtis and does a very fine job..
With movies like Father Goose, they usually set up a comedic crisis, onto which more and more outlandish crises are stacked.Through it all, Mr. Grant keeps his powder dry.I personally prefer `Operation Petticoat' (directed by Blake Edwards) for boys will be boys' comedy.
But the romanticism of Father Goose (Leslie Caron is great) makes this film play far better to couples.You cannot go wrong with either..
This is a great little comedy deserving of all the praise it has here from other posters.Cary Grant shakes off his usual polished self as the grizzled hard-drinking loner, Walter Ekland, staying out of the war and harms way.
I remember watching it as a child in the 1960's and it still delights me every time it happens to come on t.v. Cary Grant, who was known for playing suave, debonair characters in most of his movies, plays against type as a scruffy, hard drinker who was a professor before he decided to drop out of society and make a living as a boat captain.
Leslie Caron is perfectly cast as the uptight Catherine, headmistress to several young ladies of different nationalities who are dropped on a deserted island during World War II as the Japanese prepare to invade.
Hilarity ensues as Walter (Cary Grant's character) and the girls and headmistress all meet up and try to live together on the island until they are rescued.
All poor Cary Grant wanted to do was sit out World War II in peace, but the British Navy and the Japanese in the Pacific had some other ideas.
Drafted by his friend, Royal Navy Commander Trevor Howard into being a coast watcher on some Pacific tropic isle, Grant's problems multiply exponentially when he finds himself on the same island as Leslie Caron and several school girls, playing Father Goose.Ms. Caron is a schoolteacher with several young ladies in her charge and they've been stranded.
Father Goose is a nice change of pace for Cary Grant and there's a bit of Elsa Lanchester and Katharine Hepburn in Leslie Caron's portrayal as the spinster schoolteacher.
His country is fighting the Japanese in a war for survival following Pearl Harbor, but this character just wants to drink and fish--or drink like a fish.Then he meets the Leslie Caron character and the seven little girls in her charge.
(As a side note, I put a copy of this DVD in her casket when she passed away six years ago.) The movie has good clean humor, you never hear a swear word in the movie, even though you know that Walter Eckland swears like a drunk sailor, they use creative ways to get around it by innuendo as well as others.Grant's interaction with the children is great, especially with a young girl who refuses to talk, how he gets her to open up and speak is heart warming, and hilarious the way the child reacts to him.The movie is filled with humor from beginning to end, and regardless of your mood, you will always find yourself laughing at some point in the movie..
In this zany but delightful comedy, the film " Father Goose " takes Cary Grant and nearly replicates his actual persona.
The chemistry between Grant & Leslie Carron makes this one worth watching.The plot & type of humor is aging & wink & hint kind of stuff but is brought off well enough that it is better than the average movie fair being produced in this era.
That allows Walter's friend, Navy Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard) to coerce him to go to one of the islands to watch for and report enemy Japanese ships or planes.
Who doesn't want to watch Cary Grant alone on an island with a schoolteacher and children as they try to avoid the Japanese and mess everyone's life up.My Grade: B+.
He hasn't slowed down in his age (this being his next to last movie), and keeps everything well together, along with his co-star in Leslie Caron, who basically take the ball and run with it, making their story of strange love the forefront to this cute little film.
When the film begins, the British commander (Trevor Howard) deliberately strands an 'American'(!), Walter (Cary Grant), on a small island so that he can be an observer for the navy.
Unfortunately for Walter, this routine is disrupted when he's asked to go on a rescue mission to a nearby island--but when he arrives, he only finds a school teacher and her seven young charges."Father Goose" is an enjoyable family film.
On a South Seas island during WWII, beach bum Cary Grant is paid (in alcohol) by the Allies to watch for Japanese planes and ships.
Grant seems to be having fun in his penultimate film, although he was perhaps too old to be getting romantic with Caron, nearly 30 years his junior.
Not that his last picture, Walk Don't Run, is a stinker, I just feel this particular film leaves a more fitting impression to the great man's comedic ability.Playing against his sophisticated image, Father Goose sees Grant playing a drunken beach bum who is stuck on a South Sea island with Leslie Caron and her seven young lady scholars.
Cary Grant's penultimate film was one I had missed out on countless times on Italian TV: it is a curious blend of romantic comedy and war adventure (winning the Best Screenplay Oscar no less) that proves a surprisingly palatable, if overlong, confection.
As I said, FATHER GOOSE goes through several moods (a battle-of-the-sexes scenario, child interest, thrills, exotic locale) and does so relatively successfully on all fronts: naturally, Grant is always worth watching and the film undeniably very funny in spots and good-looking to boot..
But during World War 2 Royal Australian Navy Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard) pushes Walter to become a watchman on a desolate pacific island so he just searches for Japanese planes.
One day he comes across Catherine Freneau (Leslie Caron) a snobby school teacher and all of her female pupils who inadvertently end up on Walter's island.
During World War II, a man (Cary Grant) persuaded to live on an isolated island and spot aircraft finds himself responsible for a teacher (Leslie Caron) and several students, all daughters of diplomats.Some people complain that there is nothing likable about Catherine (Caron), and they make a very fair argument.
During the start of World War II, Walter Eckland (Cary Grant) buys a boat on cheap to sail around in the south Pacific.
How odd.I now intend to remedy that fact by posting a few as I do believe he was one of the most versatile performers and gifted comedy actors ever to hit our screens.My favourite Cary Grant comedy is 1937's The Awful Truth and it is an amazing tribute to his talent that in Father Goose made 27 years later, he seems to have aged very little and has not lost one iota of the spark or zest that graced his performances throughout the decades.In his penultimate screen appearance, Grant for once plays a character far removed from his immaculately dressed man about town persona as he takes on the role of Walter Eckland a south sea drifter complete with dirty slacks, tennis shoes and beard.
It is only after he agrees to take her off the island to safety that life goes from bad to worse as it appears she is not travelling alone, but with seven schoolgirls.The interplay between Grant,Caron and the kids is hilarious, as the contrast of lifestyles between Walter and his reluctant family is immediately apparent and almost at once they become warring factions.She wastes no time in confiscating and hiding his liquor, evicting him from his house, and commandeering his clothes, his tools, his food and just about everything else she can get her hands on.Walter is more or less banished to his half submerged boat.
Cary Grant was 60 and Leslie Caron was 33 when this film came out in 1964.
This movie gets its title from his code name, Mother Goose, and when he was forced to share his South Pacific island with a teacher (Caron) and her seven little girl students, he became more like a father goose.ssssome SPOILERS, READ FURTHER AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Eventually the kids softened him up, and he softened up the school marm.This is just silly fluff of a movie, the only reason to watch it are Cary Grant and Leslie Caron.
The film was the film comedy FATHER GOOSE, co-starring Leslie Caron as Catherine Freneau (the daughter of a French colonial governor), and Trevor Howard as Commander Frank Houghton of the Royal Navy.
As with the other two pairings they eventually fall in love.But the humor in FATHER GOOSE is Grant's attempts to maintain his control over the island, even while thrown out of his hut by Caron and her charges.
Overall an excellent movie and one of Cary Grants best roles after Arsenic and Old Lace and Philadelphia Story, although most all of his films are eminently watchable..
Father Goose is directed by Ralph Nelson, has a screenplay by Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff and stars Cary Grant, Leslie Caron and Trevor Howard.Cary Grant plays a character here who is far removed from the suave and immaculate characters he played in the 30's and 40's, but is just as lovable.He and Leslie Caron have a wonderful chemistry and he gets to show his comic abilities, the film is an excellent blend of romance and comedy.Father Goose is set during the Second World War, Walter Eckland(Cary Grant)is happily living alone in the Pacific repairing his boat and boozing.
His solitude is shattered when Commander Frank Houghton(Trevor Howard)asks him to stay on one of the islands and radio back any sightings of Japanese air activity.This he agrees to do until his solitude is shattered again by the arrival of young French schoolteacher Catherine Freneau(Leslie Caron)and a group of schoolgirls.
They are stranded on the island and need to get back to the mainland.After a failed attempt to take them to the mainland they must stay with him which causes a lot of friction.As he gets to know her better though Eckland grows to like and even love the bubbly Catherine.He even becomes a surrogate father to the girls.Danger comes in the form of Japanese soldiers, bomb threats and poisonous snakes.Father Goose proves once again why Cary is one of the best and most likable actors ever to grace the screen.He himself said this was one of his favourite films and it's easy to see why.For once he's playing someone very unlike himself and it's such a shame that he didn't get a chance to do more roles like this in his long career..
A romance/comedy in a World War II setting, with a little bit of action to boot.I didn't like the film much at the start.
I know the plot sounds awful -- Cary Grant marooned on an island with Leslie Caron and half a dozen young girls -- but I found this pretty consistently funny.
Of course you can predict just about everything that happens but it's so well written and the cast good enough that it should entertain most people.Grant is a grizzled, irritable, hard-drinking loner in New Guinea at the start of World War II and is finessed by the local Navy Commander, Trevor Howard, into manning a coast watcher station on an isolated island.
Cary Grant's effortless screen charisma was the primary selling point of a 1964 comedy called Father Goose.Grant lights up the screen as Walter, a beachcomber who lives on an isolated south seas island who has been recruited by the military to spot enemy aircraft during World War II, where he is allowed to pretty much live like a hermit and drink to his heart's content who finds his quiet existence disrupted by the arrival of a teacher (Leslie Caron) and seven young girls who have become shipwrecked on the same island as Walter.Peter Stone's screenplay, which seems to have been tailored to Grant's comic sensibilities, actually won an Academy Award, but it's not just the screenplay that works here, but the offbeat choice of character for Grant as well.
Now it's being offered on blu ray in a great version from Olive Films.The story revolves around Walter (Cary Grant), a loner who's left the world behind to live off his wits in the south pacific.
Taking them with him back to his island the film becomes a comedy of wills as the teacher Catherine (Leslie Caron) sets about taking over the place until help can rescue her and the girls.With the Japanese in the area the best the allies can promise is a rescue in a week.
It is a treat for those who remember movies like this and who want to enjoy yet another Cary Grant classic..
Trevor Howard is enjoyable in a supporting role as a military commander, though again, this is far from his best work.If you want depth in a World War II film, you'll be disappointed. |
tt1411697 | The Hangover Part II | Two years after the events of the first movie in Las Vegas, Stu Price, Phil Wenneck, Alan Garner and Doug Billings travel to Thailand to celebrate Stu's upcoming wedding to Lauren. Much to Alan's dismay, they are joined by Lauren's younger brother, Teddy. At the rehearsal dinner, Lauren's father's reveals his disapproval of Stu during a toast. Later that night, Stu hesitantly joins Phil, Doug, Alan and Teddy for a beer. Sitting at a campfire and roasting marshmallows, the group toast to Stu and Lauren's future happiness.
The next morning, Phil, Stu and Alan, along with gangster Leslie Chow - whom Alan befriended after Las Vegas - and a chain-smoking capuchin monkey, awaken in a dirty hotel room in Bangkok. Stu has a face tattoo (a replica of Mike Tyson's) and Alan's head is completely shaved. They cannot find Teddy, and discover only his severed finger. Chow begins to relay the events of the prior night, but he seemingly dies after snorting a line of cocaine. Panicked, the trio dispose of Chow's body in an ice box.
Through a tip from Doug who is still at the resort (he left the campfire earlier than the others), they go to a police station to pick up Teddy but are given a wheelchair-bound elderly Buddhist monk, who knows more about what happened; however, he refuses to reveal anything, having taken a vow of silence. After finding a business card, they travel to the smoldering ruins of the business. They enter a nearby tattoo parlor where Stu got his tattoo, and they learn that they started a fight that escalated into a riot. The trio returns the monk to his Buddhist temple, where they are encouraged by the head monk to meditate. Alan is able to recall that they had been at the White Lion strip club, where they learn that Stu was sodomized by a kathoey prostitute named Kimmy. Upon exiting, the trio are attacked by two Russian mobsters who steal the monkey, and one shoots Phil in his arm.
After Phil is treated at a clinic, Alan confesses that he had drugged some of the marshmallows from the previous night with muscle relaxers and ADHD medication in order to sedate Teddy but accidentally mixed up the bags. Phil and Stu become furious that Alan drugged them again. Stu blames Alan for ruining his life and attacks him. Phil breaks it up and tells them that they have to stick together. They notice something on Alan's stomach: an address and a time for a meeting. They meet a gangster named Kingsley, who demands Chow's bank account password by the next morning in exchange for Teddy. They return to the hotel to try to find Chow's password, only to discover that he is still alive. They steal the monkey (who had the code given to him and put inside his jacket for safe-keeping by Chow) back from the Russian mobsters through a violent car chase, during which the monkey is shot and injured. After taking the code and leaving the monkey at a veterinary clinic, the group completes the deal with Kingsley. Suddenly, Interpol agents appear and arrest Chow. Kingsley turns out to be an undercover agent, who tells the trio that the police had used the information that Teddy had disappeared to arrest Chow and Kingsley actually does not know where Teddy is.
Desperate and out of clues, Phil calls Doug's wife Tracy to tell her they can't find Teddy. Stu decides to call off the wedding and live in Bangkok and say that Teddy died. While Alan is playing a game of PAC-MAN the power goes out again. Stu suddenly realizes where Teddy is. The trio rushes back to the hotel to find Teddy who is in the elevator unharmed (albeit still missing a finger). Teddy had woken up in the middle of the night to get more ice for his severed finger (after the first bucket of ice had melted) but became trapped after the power went out. The four use Chow's speedboat, the Perfect Life, the keys for which were in Teddy's pocket, to travel back to the wedding reception.
Arriving on land just as Lauren's father is about to cancel the wedding, Stu makes a defiant speech where he rejects being boring and instead states that he is in fact quite wild. Impressed, Lauren's father gives the couple his blessing. After they exchange their vows, Alan presents Stu with a special gift at the post-reception dance: a musical guest performance by Mike Tyson. Teddy later discovers that he had taken many pictures during the night on his cell phone. The group, along with Tyson, agree to look at the pictures together once (some of which reveal Teddy lost his finger playing the knife game) before erasing the evidence of their exploits once again. | bleak, violence, boring, flashback | train | wikipedia | Two years ago, director Todd Phillips presented a highly creative, hilarious, raunchy, unique film comedy called The Hangover.
Bangkok instead of Vegas.Now I fully understand WHY most sequels follow the formula created by the successful original film.
not re-treads.The key characters are all back and played by the same guys: Bradley Cooper (Phil), Ed Helms (Stu), Zach Galifianakis (Alan), Justin Bartha (Doug), and Ken Leong (Mr. Chow).
All of these guys have worked constantly since the first film, but it makes perfect sense to return to the scene that put them on the Hollywood map.This time around, Stu (Ed Helms) draws the long straw and has the storyline based on his pending marriage to Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch).
Instead, we get Todd Phillips copying Todd Phillips.This is certainly an above-average comedy and there are plenty of laughs from the characters we kind of feel like we know - though, wish we didn't.
The Hangover Part 2 is exactly the same movie except this one takes place in Bangkok, and isn't nearly as good or as funny as the first film.This time around Stu (Ed Helms) is getting married and they're having the wedding in Thailand, which is his future wife's home country.
They wake up and have no idea as to what happened the previous night and have to go on another wild adventure to try and figure out everything that happened, only this time it doesn't seem nearly as interesting.They even go as far as to bring back characters from the first movie that have no business even being in this one.
There were about two times that I actually laughed out loud and another few times where I got some chuckles but that was pretty much it.All in all, this movie felt like it was made just to cash in on the very successful first movie and they ended up just remaking the first one only this time it wasn't nearly as good.Rating: 4/10.
I wish they had tried to do something fresh with the story and the characters, but it was the same old gags.When I first saw the original Hangover, I thought the movie might become a classic comedy.
But honestly after watching it a few times, it seems less funny where as many comedies you pick up on small things on multiple viewings that make the movie even funnier.
With the Hangover, the element of surprise is lost the next time around and the story loses its appeal.So taking what I just said into account, if you've watched the first movie multiple times and then have expectations that the second movie will be a fun adventure with fun surprises around the corner, you will be somewhat disappointed.
Rating 6 of 10 and this is being nice because like I said, I got some enjoyment out of the film simply because seeing some of the same characters from the first movie was nostalgic..
I was happily surprised by how funny and just how well made it was for a film that looked like it would be another silly comedy movie.
The dentist Stu Price (Ed Helms) is getting married with Lauren (Jamie Chung) in Thailand and his best friends Doug Billings (Justin Bartha), Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper) and Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis) travel for the wedding.
However he dies and Phil, Stu and Alan follow a lead to begin to unravel their crazy night."The Hangover Part II" is a replay of the same jokes of the first film.
I couldn't wait for it to end so I could do anything else.Throughout the movie, the Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms characters were distorted into such idiotic caricatures of their roles from the original that it was insulting to watch.Outside of a few funny moments and Ken Jeong's time on screen, this movie about as fun as getting a root canal..
Don't bother....This movie was complete and utter garbage, no originality and suuper boring, save your time and money...I wouldn't even bother downloading this movie if it was free so as to not waste my bandwidth...A bunch of re-hashed jokes and all of the actors have a certain smugness about them now like they think people are going to laugh just because their highness is on the screen.Weak script and lame additional characters ( ie the monkey instead of the baby from the first and stealing the monk instead of the tiger..
It was less crude humor and more crazy, surprising, and original humor with a relatively unique way of telling a story.This movie follows the EXACT same format down to a slideshow at the end that they can only view once before they have to delete.
In the absence of a funny script, a few 'shock' value scenes, but that's about it.I kid you not, but no-one in the audience laughed out loud and one couple walked out half way.I find it suspicious that the critics have panned the movie, yet the net is full of audience reviewers saying how funny it is ( check a rival site).
Visits to a monastery, tattoo parlor and a Thai strip club lay in store as the Wolfpack of Phil (Cooper), Stu (Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis) try and find out how they got drugged and lost Teddy, a 16-year-old who happens to be the brother of Stu's bride-to-be and child prodigy of his disapproving father- in-law.
Despite antics from a drug-trafficking monkey, the return of Ken Jeong's crass and effeminate Mr. Chow and a barrage of inappropriate inserts from Alan, the laughs are few and far between, with some of the best already having been revealed by the trailers.Normally, comedy sequels' undoing comes from such painstaking desperation to top the antics of the original that the follow-ups come across as blunt and hollow despite the laughs.
He has a 50-50 success rate, but he's kind of left out to dry because Phil and Stu simply aren't funny in this movie.Laughs aside, however, the real killer proves to be the predictability.
at best it can be classified as a flick.the level of humor and comedy in this "civilized" culture we call the human race of the 21st century is far removed from what was once a form of popular cultural expression, that at least was funny.you could see comedy changing back in the 90s with worthless junk like "There's Something About Mary." The only film I ever walked out on, until this one.Hangover II was a mistake from the beginning.I dread the future..
That having said...yesterday I was unfortunately invited to the cinema with some friends, tickets were already ordered, so no way out.I wanted to sleep the first 90% of the movie...only the last 15 minutes brought some original jokes and got me to smile a little bit.I really became annoyed when Alan fell backwards over a table and the audience bursted into laughter...I mean COME ON, the guy just fell!
As usual the scenes are acted in such a bad way you can just see its staged, I know its comedy and all, but put in some effort please.To make sure you guys now what taste I have in comedy and you can judge for yourself if my review is suited for you, I hated Hangover 1 AND 2, but LOVED Sexdrive!Hope this review will help determine you to decide if you're gonna see it in the cinema...where I silently hope you won't so that none other of these monstrous pieces of work ever see the light of day..
Some scenes were so hilarious that for a second I almost forgot that it was a sequel.It may not be as good as the first movie, but it was a pleasant relief from the drought of comedies this year.
But then, you don't expect the sequel of a movie like Hangover to be original, do you?
I think the director did the best he could with this movie and delivered a gut-busting, rollicking experience.Hangover-II is the best comedy this year and if you watch it without any cynicism, you're sure to have a laughter riot..
Two parts of the movie made me laugh, one was a "realization" one of the guys had in Thailand and the other was a cameo appearance at the end of the movie.Watching this movie reminded me of how spoiled I've been with sequels of late (ie Wall Street - which was actually pretty good).
The second installment in the Hangover franchise is very predictable since it almost exactly follows the plot line from the first film, but for some whatever odd reason, I laughed more in this film and thought the gags were a little better.
I liked Ken Jeong's return somewhat but I found him more annoying in this movie than funny.Overall, this film is on par with the original film, maybe even a little funnier.
The second installment of the box office hit, "The Hangover" was not that great through the eyes of critics, but I honestly enjoyed watching these guys drunk again, even if they were too lazy to come up with new material.
The film reunites the gang from the previous movie, as they all celebrate Stu's wedding in Thailand, but once again, after a long night of partying, they forget everything and they have to find the missing brother of the fiancée, and go on a little drunken scavenger hunt.....again!
About half way through the movie, there was a scene where the main characters went into a stripper bar in Bangkok, looking for the groom's 16 year old, soon to be brother in law.
People will like this film or pretend too, just because of the first movie, for example laugh when Alan or Phil do anything out of the ordinary, like most of the audience did at my theatre.
There was some racism but it was funny and not especially offensive.The only thing that bugged me about the film was that after watching the first Hangover, it was a but predictable.
Anyone who swears by 'The Hangover' is likely to be disappointed by its sequel, which as it turns out is a carbon copy of the earlier film.
cooper held the movie as the straight men as helms was very funny as the wild party man stu and zach g was still funny as alan and still got the most laughs.
People really need to start thinking for themselves and stop believing a movie is funny or good or not just because some film critic tells them it is.
Like the first film, the rest of the story is about finding their friend and making it to the wedding.Those who have seen the first will find nothing new in the second and newbies may miss out on humor having roots in the original.
The film does have some genuinely funny moments, like Alan's dinner speech and Stu's song on the boat, but those come between long lulls.
'THE HANGOVER PART II': Three Stars (Out of Five) Following the likes of 'GHOSTBUSTERS II' and 'HOME ALONE 2' this sequel is an exact carbon copy of the original with mild variations for setting and time differences.
I think the writer change-up might be one of the film's biggest problems because the movie is not only unoriginal but it's not nearly as funny as it's predecessor, with many of the jokes (as well as performances) feeling forced and weak.This time around Stu is getting married to a young Asian beauty named Lauren (Jamie Chung), who's father completely disapproves of him.
Comparing the film to the first movie makes me want to give it something like a two out of five star rating but I know that wouldn't be fair.
I liked the Hangover part 1, i didn't love it, but i thought it was funny and worth watching.
I would've enjoyed re-watching the first film more because the plot is very similar and there were a number of scenes i genuinely laughed at whereas this movie hardly made me laugh.
I've got to say i've been waiting to see this film ever since i new there was a Hangover 2, i've watched the first Hangover a million times and it still makes me laugh out loud as they say.
Don't get me wrong there are funny parts and i did find myself laughing to myself but soon stopped, i cant tell you how disappointed and gutted i am after waiting for so long to see this film, maybe go and watch it for your self and you may like it but i wont be watching this Hangover 2 as many times as i have and probably will still have watched the first one..
It was an awesome movie and the best comedy i had seen in a long time.People have a habit of criticizing everything that comes after the first.This movie was a no brainer agreed but that was the best part.Zacks expressions were speechless and everything which he said sounded funny,he is a great actor,the pictorization was awesome it felt like going to bangkok.People all over the world are liking this film you can see its grossing.The best about seeing this movie was little kids were also enjoying this movie in the theaters there was no age barrier.Bradley looks very handsome and was a treat to watch,the girls also looked quite pretty.I couldn't stop laughing at any minute of this movie,by watching this movie i have become a great fan of Zack,his expresssiooonnnnnssss!!!!.I really enjoyed this movie and would watch it again and buy the D.V.D when it comes out..
When you are following the comedic formula of what could possibly be the second funniest movie of recent times (Superbad holds #1 by a slim margin in my view) it is not exactly a condemnation of the movie, at least as I see it.The first one was probably funnier by a bit and gets better marks due to the originality but if you liked the first Hangover and did not laugh out loud at least five times you should check your funny bone..
Before word of mouth start going around a lot of people(like me) will have seen the movie because part I was good thinking(and having been let down a lot of times) that part II would be good if it was half as good as part I but it isn't.
If you fail to see the humour in the repetition from the first than you missed the biggest joke of the film...shame on you.From another perspective what else can you do in a movie called the hangover II?
Now, two years later of that movie, we have a sequel with the same cast and the same director, which leaves us with two possibilities: The Hangover Part 2 will capture the humorous magic from the first film without any difficulty...or it will miserably fail due to the pressure of the spectators' expectations and the arrogance from the creative team.
The reality is that this sequel is on some intermediate point, because on the one hand, it has some funny parts and it preserves the good chemistry between the actors; but on the other hand, it relies too much on repeating the same elements from the first film, something which avoids it from getting the same level of surprise and irreverence.In order to give you an idea of how many things from the previous movie are repeated, I can mention the following examples (all of this was already shown in the trailers, so they do not qualify as spoilers): instead of finding a tiger in the room, the guys find a monkey; instead of having lost a tooth, Stu wakes up with a tattoo which covers half of his face; instead of losing the groom, the guys loose the bride's sister; instead of singing a song accompanied by a piano, they play a guitar...and I could go on.
Ed Helms shows enough charisma, and he is well complemented by Bradley Cooper and Zack Galifianakis, while Ken Jeong brings a good amount of energy to his character, despite the fact his character's presence requires strong squeaks from the narrative gears.In conclusion, The Hangover Part 2 is a moderately entertaining but unnecessary and mediocre sequel of the first film...it is not nearly as funny, not nearly as ingenious and it is very far away from reaching the same subversive surprises from its predecessor.
But I re-watched 'The Hangover Part II' recently, and although its not as original or as funny as the 1st one...this sequel is still Pure Adult Fun!
they try to stop another one of these things happening but after a drink on the beach it happens all over again this time they lose teddy the brides brother and have to find him before the wedding.this movie in a way felt like a remake just with different things happening to them and replacing the old things with new things .
There's barely a laugh to be had in "The Hangover - Part 2," a dreadful sequel to the original box office smash from 2009.This time the boys - and I do mean "boys" - are trapped in Thailand, where they've gone to celebrate Stu's nuptials and where they immediately fall into a series of misadventures after a riotous night of bachelor party celebration in Bangkok, all of which has been mysteriously erased from their collective memory.I wish I could say that, from all this, hilarity ensues.
This time out Stu (Ed Helms) is about to be married in Bangkok so of course Phil (Bradley Cooper), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) goes along with him and sure enough they wake up one morning not knowing what happened the night before.
To people who said "I only laughed once" or "I didn't laugh one time" well they just don't have a sense of humor, or they are just trying to hate on this movie because it's successful.Another critique I read of the Hangover 2 was that it was too similar like the first one. |
tt0082245 | Deadly Blessing | Martha (Maren Jensen) and Jim Schmidt (Douglas Barr) live on an isolated farm named 'Our Blessing', where most of the neighboring population are "Hittites", an austere religious community who according to one of the characters "make the Amish look like swingers". Jim was a Hittite, but left the community when he got married.Jim tells a neighbor, Louisa Stohler (Lois Nettleton), who is the mother of Faith (Lisa Hartman) that his wife, Martha is pregnant and that Louisa's services as a mid-wife will soon be needed by them. Louisa and Faith are not part of the Hittite community, either. In fact, they do not like them due in part to the constant harassment of Faith by William, who chases her and calls her Incubus. That night, Jim searches in the barn after hearing strange noises from inside, but is murdered when a mysterious figure runs him over with his tractor. This is seen as a mechanical accident.Friends Lana Marcus (Sharon Stone) and Vicky Anderson (Susan Buckner) come from the city visit Martha after Jim's funeral.William Gluntz is sneaking around the barn when Martha comes in. He manages to escape unnoticed, but accidentally leaves one of his shoes behind.When William Gluntz (Michael Berryman) goes to the house at night to search for his shoe, he spies Martha through her window getting undressed. Then he is stabbed through the back by an unseen figure.The following day, William's father Matthew, and Jim's father and the leader of the Hittites, Isaiah Schmidt (Ernest Borgnine) come to the farm looking for William after he does not return home after being sent by his father to retrieve a his lost shoe. Martha tells the men she has no idea where William is and they start to leave. Then Isaiah goes back to the door and offers to buy the farm from Martha but Martha refuses.The three girlfriends are at breakfast supporting Martha when Lana describes a nightmare she had about a scary man that turns into a spider. Faith joins them and brings them some eggs. She decries the Hittites, saying how much she hates them.Later, Vicky goes jogging along a trail and meets John Schmidt (Jeff East), Jim's Brother. The two strike up a conversation and spend time together. Isaiah interrupts them, and instructs John to shun all outsiders.Lana enters the barn to look for a part for the tractor, but all the doors and windows suddenly close, trapping her inside. In a panic, she searches for a way out but encounters a figure dressed in black. When escaping out the now open barn door, William's corpse swoops down at her, hanging from a rope.The Hittites take William's body away, refusing an autopsy, insisting that he was killed by the incubus. The sheriff (Kevin Cooney) advises the three friends to leave town, as someone may be after them.An unseen figure creeps into the house that night and drops a snake into the tub with Martha.
She manages to get out of the bathtub and kill the snake with a fireplace poker.John , Martha's brother-in-law is unwillingly engaged to Melissa (Colleen Riley) his cousin. However John feels attracted to Vicky. When he meets Vicky again at the store, Melissa sees him and runs off. John follows after, pleading. He accidentally rips her dress.Meanwhile, Martha practices shooting her new pistol.When Isaiah finds out that John ripped Melissa's dress, he whips John. John stops him, and is cast out of the community by Isaiah.Louisa stops by to visit Martha and apologize for Faith's intrusions.John meets Vicky outside the cinema. Meanwhile, Lana has a nightmare in which a pair of hands take hold of her head, forcing her to open her mouth as a spider falls in. She wakes suddenly.Vicky lets John drive her car, giving him a sense of freedom. They stop at the side of a road and begin to make out but they are attacked by an unseen figure who stabs John multiple times and sets fire to the car, which blows up with Vicky still inside.Lana and Martha are worried about Vicky since she hasn't returned. When Lana goes to the kitchen for a drink of milk,she finds blood in a milk carton. Then Martha finds a scarecrow tied in her room with a flower that was buried with Jim. When Martha hurries to Jim's grave she finds the grave dug up. When she opens the coffin, she is surprised by a flock of chickens that jump out at her.Suspecting Louisa or Faith, she hurries to their home, where she finds a painting of herself being stalked by Death and the dead body of her husband Jim hanging nearby. At the same time, she discovers Melissa on the front lawn approaching the house praying against any evil that exists. Louisa bursts outside, attacking Melissa.When Louisa sees Martha, she tosses Melissa aside and comes after her.Then Martha is attacked by Faith. During the struggle, Faith's shirt is ripped open, revealing her to be a man who has been in love with Martha.Martha rushes home to rouse Lana and get the pistol, but when there is rapping at the door Lana begins to panic because of her fear of Death. Martha hits her, knocking her out and sending her sprawling. Martha shoots Faith as she(he) comes through the window. She tosses the pistol on the couch.Then Louisa breaks through the door with a shotgun and chases Martha. A chase and struggle ensues, when finally Louisa is finished ohh by a bullet shot by the now conscious Lana.However, Faith has survived her gunshot and tries to stab Martha once more, but she is killed when Melissa stabs her in the back. Isaiah turns up and tells them that the messenger of the incubus is now dead.The day after, Lana leaves Martha to go back to LA. When Martha enters her home a ghost of Jim warns her about the incubus. The film ends immediately after the real incubus bursts through the floor and pulls Martha back into the floor. | violence, cult, murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0117500 | The Rock | On a rainy morning at Arlington National Cemetery, Brigadier General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris) visits the grave of his wife, Barbara, who had recently passed away from an illness. He tells her that he misses her, but there is something he has to do now, and most of the world isn't going to like it. He hopes that wherever she is, she understands that he did what he had to do. After saying a final goodbye, he places his Medal of Honor on the headstone before he leaves.Later that night, Hummel leads a group of rogue Force Recon Marines on a raid of a Naval Weapons Depot. They seize a stockpile of rockets armed with weapons grade O-ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid, more commonly known as VX gas. They lose one of their men in the process, a horrific death caused by an accidental release of the chemical when one of the canisters was dropped and a sphere containing the deadly substance shatters.In an FBI lab in Washington DC, Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) is called in to inspect a package sent to Bosnian refugees. He and a trainee, Marv Isherwood (Todd Louiso), find a small doll inside that sprays them with sarin gas and contains a bomb made of C4 explosive that could destroy the lab and kill everyone in the building. As Stanley works frantically to disarm the bomb he turns down a hypodermic needle loaded with a dose of atropine. Stanley disarms the bomb successfully. At home that night, he relaxes until his girlfriend, Carla (Vanessa Marcil) arrives home. She tells him she's pregnant, and Stanley accepts her marriage proposal.Hummel is joined by other Marines who have served him over the course of his career; Major Tom Baxter (David Morse), who he served with in Vietnam, Captain Hendrix (John C. McGinley), who he served with in the Gulf, and Captains Frye (Gregory Sporleder) and Darrow (Tony Todd), who organized the raid on the weapons depot. They seize Alcatraz Island and take 81 tourists hostage, placing them in the prison cells, then threatening the FBI and Pentagon with launching the VX rockets against the population of San Francisco, unless the government pays ransom and reparations to the families of Marines who died on illegal, clandestine Marine Force Recon missions ("Black Ops") that were commanded by General Hummel.After Goodspeed makes love to Carla, he receives a call telling him to report to San Francisco. He assures her that it is probably just a training exercise, and they can be married there when it is finished. When he arrives, he is greeted by senior agent Ernest Paxton (William Forsythe) and Bureau Director James Womack (John Spencer). They brief him on the situation, asking him to consult. Goodspeed agrees, but asks Paxton for a gun having left his own sidearm at home. SEAL Commander Anderson (Michael Biehn) offers to lead an incursion team to the island to neutralize the warheads and free the hostages. In need of reliable first-hand knowledge of the physical layout of Alcatraz, Womack is forced to turn to long-time federal prisoner John Mason (Sean Connery), the only former inmate of Alcatraz to ever successfully escape. There is a considerable amount of bad blood between Mason and Womack, so Goodspeed is tasked with talking to him. Mason is willing to cooperate, however, shortly after he signs his pardon, Womack tears it up. Goodspeed notes that while they were talking to Mason he mentioned the names of several historical figures who were wrongfully imprisoned like Nelson Mandela, Sir Walter Raleigh, Archimedes and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Womack brushes it off, accusing Goodspeed of asking too many questions.Part of Mason's agreement includes a short stay at a luxury suite at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. He calls in a large amount of food to distract his minders. Out on the suite's balcony, Mason, while shaking on the deal he made with Womack, slips a rope around Womack's wrist and throws him over the side, holding the rope. When Goodspeed calls the other agents to help him pull Womack to safety, Mason escapes. He steals a Humvee from a hotel patron and drives recklessly through San Francisco, colliding with cars and other obstacles to block the pursuit of him. He finally makes it to the Palace of Fine Arts and meets with his daughter, Jade (Claire Forlani). The two seem to reconcile, Jade being bitter after her mother's death and Mason's (unintentional) abandonment. Goodspeed shows up and tells Mason they have to rejoin the FBI team. Upon their return, Goodspeed learns that he himself will accompany Mason and the incursion team to Alcatraz, despite his minimal combat training and fear of deep water. Paxton appeases him by having his men get Carla to safety.With Mason's guidance, the SEAL incursion team successfully infiltrates Alcatraz undetected, but as they work their way through the tunnels of Alcatraz and enter the shower room, their presence is detected by sophisticated equipment set up by Hummel's men. Hummel attempts to talk Anderson down, but Frye and Darrow grow impatient and open fire, leaving only Mason and Goodspeed alive. With Mason deciding to leave the island, Goodspeed must reveal the true purpose of the mission. Realizing his daughter's life is at risk, Mason agrees to stay and help.They begin the process of seeking out and disabling the 15 rockets one-by-one, traveling through the underground catacombs to avoid detection. After twelve rockets are sabotaged by Goodspeed and Mason, Captain Hendrix is ordered to take a fireteam down to the catacombs, resulting in a pitched battle in which Goodspeed uses lethal force for the first time. After learning that Hendrix's squad has been killed, Hummel threatens to execute one of the hostages unless the guidance chips of the sabotaged rockets are returned to him. Goodspeed grapples with the idea of surrendering the chips for a few moments until Mason destroys the chips, then surrenders to Hummel to buy time for Goodspeed to disable more rockets. During a tense confrontation in the prison courtyard, Mason insinuates that Hummel is actually insulting the memory of his fallen soldiers by threatening innocent civilians, and tests the general's resolve by calling him an idiot and denouncing his sense of patriotism as "a virtue of the vicious." (he quotes Oscar Wilde). Hummel angrily strikes Mason and prepares to shoot him in the head, but instead orders him locked up. Goodspeed is able to disable the thirteenth rocket just before he is captured. Meanwhile, realizing that the SEAL team is lost, the Pentagon readies a backup plan, an attack by armed F-18s that will neutralize the poison gas by releasing thermite plasma bombs, which would also kill everyone on the island.Paxton confronts Womack, asserting that given the severity of the situation, he has earned the right to know why Mason was imprisoned, and why Womack hates him so much. Womack reveals that Mason was a Captain for the British SAS. He stole a microfilm containing serious secrets about U.S. and other world leaders and events. The information came from the personal files of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Mason was captured at the Canadian border and refused to divulge the location of the microfilm. After being disavowed by the SAS, he was kept locked up, without benefit of trial, and told he would not be released until he gave up the microfilm. After Hoover died, the agency became a different beast, but it also became harder to come clean about the incident, so Mason remained locked away and forgotten.Mason is imparting this same information to Goodspeed as he fashions the bedding of his cell into a knotted rope. He explains that the government had no intention of ever letting him go; had he given up the microfilm, they would have simply killed him. Goodspeed furiously asks how he managed to get out of the cell in the first place. An annoyed Mason ignores the question, simply throwing the rope until it finally hits a security switch that unlocks their cell doors. Once they have safely made it to the beach, Mason again decides to leave the island, convinced that Hummel is only bluffing. Goodspeed insists that the military will need more than Mason's assumption to call off the airstrike, and he will finish the mission alone if he has to. Goodspeed is captured before he can find another rocket, but he's rescued by Mason, who decided to come back, he did not want to see Stanley's child grow up without a father, as Jade has.The deadline Hummel gave the FBI/Pentagon arrives, and when there is no ransom paid and more time requested, Major Baxter demands he take action. Hummel orders a rocket fired. It's headed for a full stadium at Candlestick Park, but Hummel secretly enters revised coordinates on his computer keyboard and redirects the rocket so that it falls into the ocean. The surviving officers are furious, as Washington will now believe they are weak and hit them with everything they've got. Hummel tells them that the whole operation was a bluff that the government didn't fall for, and since he's a professional soldier, not a murderer, it's all over. He tells his men to take some hostages and leave, he will surrender and take the heat for it all. Frye and Darrow refuse. They consider themselves mercenaries working for pay, and they want their money, or to make good on the threats. A Mexican standoff ensues, and Mason and Goodspeed arrive just in time to witness its conclusion. As shots are fired, General Hummel and Major Baxter are fatally wounded. As Mason opens fire on the mutineers, forcing them to disperse, a dying Hummel tells Goodspeed that the last rocket is in the lower lighthouse.Goodspeed heads to the lighthouse while Mason covers him from the rooftops. As Goodspeed disarms the last rocket, Darrow corners him, menacing him with a combat knife. Goodspeed launches the now unarmed rocket, which hits Darrow squarely in chest, causing him to plummet to his death. As Goodspeed is handling the final string of green VX spheres, one of them drops on the deck. He catches it before it can shatter, but before he can safely stash it away, Frye attacks him. With the thermite plasma-armed jets approaching, Frye overpowers Goodspeed and proceeds to strangle him, threatening to choke his million bucks out of him. Out of options, Goodspeed shoves the loose sphere into the captain's mouth and hits him in the jaw, crushing the vial and releasing the contents. Captain Frye dies almost instantly, violently convulsing as his flesh melts away. The liquid also gets on Goodspeed and he immediately stumbles away and pulls the atropine antidote from his boot and injects himself in the heart with it. He is then able to grab and light off two green flares, the prearranged signal that the threat is over. The flares are spotted from land, but only after one of the jet pilots has released his bombs, exploding on the rear of the island, missing all the hostages and sending Goodspeed flying into the sea.Mason reappears to pull the unconscious Goodspeed to shore. Paxton calls on the radio and learns from Goodspeed that all the hostages are still alive, but that Mason had been killed. That provides Mason time to escape before the FBI arrives. Goodspeed tells Paxton and Womack that Mason was "vaporized" by the thermite plasma missile.The film ends with Goodspeed running from a church in Ft. Walton, Kansas, as Carla urges him to hurry and get in the car so they can get away. Goodspeed has in his hand a canister containing microfilm. Mason had told him where to find it. He looks at the microfilm and asks Carla if she'd like to know who really shot JFK. | comedy, mystery, murder, violence, action, revenge | train | imdb | The name alone sounds powerful, and behind it is two hours of incredible special effects, superb acting, great action set pieces, and good dosage of writing, and Michael Bay on top of his game.Few action movies carries as much morality and questionable circumstances as this one.
The supporting staff helps as well, as we see the likes of David Morse, John Spencer, and Cage's love interest Vanessa Marcil.Unlike Michael Bay's latest films, which run from mediocre to just plain bad, he blends plenty of drama and suspense along with action here.
Add to the mix, Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris and a great supporting cast including John Spencer, William Forsythe and David Morse, and "The Rock" is one of the best ways to spend two hours.
Nick Cage - in a performance which approaches his best work - adds a bit of campiness and humor to this explosive mixture, and John Spencer, Tony Todd, David Morse, and Michael Biehn all contribute substantially to an exciting, fast-paced and emotionally draining film.
This raises the line of tension even further.· Most of the production takes place in a high security prison, Alcatraz, crafted with a complex, awe-inspiring atmosphere towering over that of most action movies.· Sean Connery handles the complicated role of John Mason with mere simplicity, yet easily torments the audience with a sense of omniscient knowledge of the plot.· The picture is unpredictable and contains several inducing and unexpected twists proving this movie is imaginative and free to surprise us.
Thus, a film that I would have otherwise said was "okay" became a really good action movie with some characters that I actually cared about.There was lots of violence and profanity, and a brief sexual situation (although no nudity) near the beginning.
He is a highly-ranked general who is doing this to teach the government a lesson: they've been neglecting forgotten soldiers who died in the Gulf and Nam, and instead of their families being told the truth, they've simply been marked as "Missing in Action." He is played by Ed Harris, who does such a good man torn between duty, conscience, and vengeance, he is the best film villain since Jack Nicholson in "The Shining."Goodspeed is a computer nerd working for the C.I.A. He's never been in combat situations, but because of his advanced knowledge of chemical bombs, they've sent him into Alcatraz with a group of Navy SEALS, and he has no idea how to react in war-like situations.
`The Rock'The film that solidified Nicolas Cage as an action star and Sean Connery as
well
a guy who uses the F-word a lot, `The Rock' never ceases to slow on the action; its plot is, of course, ridiculous, but I'm not looking for an Oscar winner in an action movie.Cage plays Stanley Goodspeed (weird name number 1), a chemical specialist whom disarms chemical bombs and such.Ed Harris plays Himmel or Hummel or something like that (weird name number 2), a respected General who one day decides, `What the heck!' and takes Alcatraz prison hostage; he demands respect for dead marines from the government, or he will release some ba-a-a-ad gas on San Francisco.
So, it is more than humorous to see him running around defenseless; especially seeing that it is Nicolas Cage, who usually plays action roles where he is the master of the weapons.Sean Connery is perfect for the role of John Mason; he blends wisecracks, action and
well
Sean Connery.Ed Harris is also very good as Himmelhummelwhatever; he seems a bit held back at times, but overall, his acting is as good as ever.The direction style in `The Rock' reminds me very much of other Nicolas Cage films, like John Woo's `Face/Off' and such.
Ed Harris also shines as the Good/Bad General who just wants a Burial for his Ex-Comrades, and he especially shines when he and Commander Anderson (Brilitantly played by Michel Biehn) have an argument in the now famous Shower Room Massacre scene, one of the best bits of the film...All in all, a very good Action film, with a truly wonderful cast!, A classic!.
In the case of The Rock, you get a LOT of extras: top-notch performances by A-list leads (Connery, Cage, Harris) and by some of the best supporting actors around (Morse, Biehn, Forsythe, Spencer, Todd, McGinley); a setting, the decrepit bowels of Alcatraz, that's a visual feast and almost a character in the movie itself; character development (!!!); and an action flick that ain't afraid to quote Oscar Wilde.Granted, it ain't Filet Mignon, or Schindler's List.
Every aspect of 'The Rock' shines; The performances are phenomonal, Hanz Zimmer's Composing is amazing(I highly suggest going to downloading the main theme off any file sharing)the direction is good, the charactors are well developed, solid, unlike a hulking retard who walks around aimlessly with a huge machine gun such as rambo...Any American will feel compassion about American soldiers losing their lives and not being honored or remembered Which is a the cause of the action in the film.
(I really liked Sean Connery's character; maybe a sequel with "Mr.John Mason"?)And then there are the heavyweights in acting, a rarity in action films.
The Rock has what people go to the movies for (well, the majority anyway), big action, good characters and reused plot stuffers, not to mention Sean Connery.
Oldtimer Sean Conery as good as in his best Bond movies, OK maybe not that good but how cool can a 65 year old man be, i think you can say like this!My absolute favorite actor, not just because I do look at lot like him, Nicolas Cage is so cool and good looking as always.
The action is not mindless like in some films but witty and has a point to the destruction of fellow human beings.(in very graphic ways such as one of the opening deaths due to a deadly toxic nerve gas) there are many aspects which lift this film to what I believe to the greatest of all time, such as the accelerated pace, the fast action chase scene, the humour between Cage and Connery, the hilarious hair dressing scene, the tension, the action, the violence, the danger, the thrill and the adrenaline of the legend that is the THE ROCK!The Actors give this film its fantastic edge.
This is Nicholas Cage's best performance ever, I love his character FBI Special Agent Dr. Stanley Goodspeed who did saved over 1000 human lives in San Francisco while he raced against time to disarm the bombs!
There are no CGI in this film, mostly Nicholas Cage is more interesting in here than Sean Connery is."Welcome to the Rock." Plot: Nicolas Cage is Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI chemical weapons specialist who is brought into a hostage situation involving a crew of former US Marines, led by a rogue US Marine general (Ed Harris), who have taken over the former prison on Alcatraz Island and are threatening the city of San Francisco with a launch of missiles filled with deadly VX poison gas.
Goodspeed finds himself going along on the mission to retake the prison with a squad of US Navy SEALS and John Mason (Sean Connery), a former SAS operative who has been imprisoned illegally for the past two decades, and the only man to have escaped the prison and can use his knowledge infiltrate "The Rock".So that is basically the plot of the film.
Overall: I love this flick to death I am giving 10 out of 10 for one of my favorite Nicolas Cage action films.The Rock is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, written by David Weisberg and Douglas S.
Boom, Bang this is one of the best action movies in the 90's quite possibly OK maybe I'm getting too bold but i really loved this movie what can i say it has everything you need from an action movie and a little bit more first the action itself is very intense and is paced with story very well this isn't no one after another action sequence like tomb raider cradle of life this has a darn good story to wrap around it also unlike the latest tomb raider you wont be falling asleep unless you haven't slept in like 10 days because even when the action isn't going on the plot keys the characters the action and the emotion will keep you glued to the screen i forgot i had to use the bathroom when i was watching it and i nearly peed myself but back to the topic it also has some really funny stuff not comedy style but for an action movie it is great and I've hardly ever seen a movie where every cast member big, small, cameo and any other kind is all excellent but this movie shows that Mason's daughter even gives a good performance and whoever the heck it was playing the barber had me laughing my @$$ off well that sums it up two thumbs up i would give more but i only have 2 thumbs......................recommended greatly.
Cooke with ongoing support by producers Jerry Bruckheimer & Don Simpson (1943-1996) raising the budget from 55 to 75 Million Dollar in order to engage Academy-Award Winner Sean Connery as master escapist John Patrick Mason, Nicolas Cage as bio chemist Stanley Goodspeed and Ed Harris as the memorable character of U.S. General Hummel, who puts the prison island Alcatraz under siege to restore honor toward fellow Vietnam War fallen soldiers, where measures of doing the right thing turning into a area of grey, indulging the audience to consider the situation.
The action scenes are of such high-visceral quality, captured in shutter speed changes, blood / guts and splintering bullets in 360 degrees views, especially in an infiltrating shoot-out scene at the sanitation bath rooms of Alcatraz.Shot on location in San Francisco and on the infamous prison island, where easy Californian living turns for the main characters into hostile life-threatening situations on urban streets, underwater, rock and stone of Alcatraz block buildings to prevent a major bio-weapon menace targeting the whole bay area.
Light-hearted character Goodspeed gets turned into a combat soldier against all odds by a fully-trained Navy seals and special addition to the infiltration team portrayed by Sean Connery's interpretation of the character of Mason, creating a mystical touch to the picture of being the man, who escaped the prison island, which benefits to the entertainment levels of "The Rock", which stands out in retrospective as daring, hard-boiled and at times fair ingredients of humor in an unless serious hyper-realistic scenario of an action-thriller for the senses.Trageting the young adults with his R-rating, which came to the movies for motion picture entertainment in the summer of 1996, where the balance between 1980s live-action hardcore-boldness and 1990s digital-enhancements of visuals felt intact; a circumstance that with an inflation-cleaned-up ticket price of 2017 in comparison would bring a box office success of roundabout 670 Million Dollar at today's international box offices; due to shifts from overpriced live-action units to run fast-cheap digital effects factories a seldom kid in action cinema to come by nowadays.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC).
'THE ROCK' was directed by Michael Bay, and stars Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris.
When ex US General Frank Hammel(Ed Harris) threatens to launch chemical weapons against San Fransisco from Alcatraz, the US government send in Stanley Goodspead(Nicholas Cage), a biochemist, and John Mason(Sean Connery), the only man to ever escape Alcatraz alive, to combat the general and save the city from annihilation.This is the best action movie with mediocre action.
Continuing my plant to watch every Sean Connery movie in order, I come to The Rock (1996)Plot In A Paragraph: A group of U.S. marines, under command of a renegade general, take over Alcatraz and threaten San Francisco Bay with biological weapons.
Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage) chemical weapons specialist and John Mason (Connery) the only man to have ever escaped from the Rock are the only ones who can save the day.I love this movie.
Any way you look at it, The Rock stands the text of time, and after 21 years, remains a perfect example of nineties action cinema and one of the most is one entertaining action movies ever made.The cast are all on top form, Connery and Cage make for a great double act, and it is a pity that nobody had the idea to reteam these characters in a sequel (OK it may have been more than a tad far fetched) or someone else reteamed them as they do have genuine chemistry that you can not buy.
But with likable performances by our leads Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery, adrenaline-fueled action set pieces, and a blissful taste of light-heart humor; the film is quite a bit of fun.
The film follows a story of Stanley Goodspeed (played by Nicolas Cage), a biochemist for the FBI who's called on a mission to bring down General Francis Hummel (played by Ed Harris) who along his fellow Marines has taken prisoners of Alcatraz Island hostage and set wipe out San Francisco with chemical missiles unless the FBI does one thing: pay him the $100,000 he demands for his military service.
Fighting by Goodspeed's side Mason (played by Sean Connery), a prison escapee who assists him on his no-holds-bar mission to thwart Hummel's attack and save the citizens of San Francisco.Director Michael Bay doesn't offer anything out of the ordinary for an action film.
It is also very funny at the times, with best lines coming from Sean Connery - his "seen it all" character creates a great contrast to Nicolas Cage's character.Overall, "The Rock" is a bad-ass action film with superb performances and great action scenes.
Their intention: to launch the rockets with VX gas onto San Francisco and kill the hostages unless the US government pays $100 million from a military slush fund, from which General Hummel will distribute to his men and the families of Recon Marines who were killed in action on clandestine missions under his command and whose deaths were not compensated by the US Government.The FBI call upon chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage who has never been better) who is brilliantly intelligent yet is barely experienced in the field and counter terrorism operations.
Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage star as John Patrick Mason and Stanley Goodspeed in an action-packed film where they lead a counterstrike on a rogue group of military men led by renegade General Francis X.
Hummel (Ed Harris), who threaten a nerve gas attack from Alcatraz against San Francisco.This is a fast-paced movie from start to finish, combining good acting (for the most part), drama, witty comedy, adventure and incredible special effects that make this an exhilarating and unique film.
The Rock is a fantastic movie with a very well written and developed storyline with a star studded and talented cast.The movie is without a doubt my favourite film from Michael Bay,I enjoy him as a director most of his films are usually very cliché action movies with too much action and not enough story,but this is a perfect mix of both.Sean Connery's performance as John Patrick Mason is easily my favourite in any Michael Bay film,he is a fantastic actor a delivers a brilliant performance to a character that is very different for him.I'm not a huge fan of Nicolas Cage,but thought he did a pretty good job in this,and I really enjoyed Ed Harris as a very unique villain,he is able to play any type of character.Fans of action and Michael Bay films will definitely enjoy the Rock.When a group of military men held a bunch of tourists hostage in Alcatraz and create a gas attack that will destroy all of San Francisco,the faith of everyone is put in to the hands of a former Alcatraz prisoner and a chemical weapons specialists..
With the help of ex-Alcatraz prisoner John Mason (Sean Connery) and a team of Navy Seals, chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) tries to prevent them from succeeding.I've been having a bit of a nostalgia trip as of late, re-watching some classic action films of the 90s; sadly, my second-hand DVD of The Rock was scratched, meaning that the picture regularly froze or skipped.
Hummel; Sean Connery plays Sean Connery (yet again); and Nicolas Cage acts like a lunatic as only he can.There are, of course, better action flicks from the 90s—this is still a Michael Bay film, after all—but it's good enough that I could be tempted to stump up one more pound coin should I see another copy at my local car-boot sale.
Along with its talented cast (Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris), The Rock has a good story and a fast pace, which keeps the audience wanting more.
None of the disgustingly sappy American patriotism of Pearl Harbor, nor the offensive, borderline racism of the Bad Boys films is present here - just a good, solid action movie which never attempts to be anything more profound than entertaining.Sean Connery is perfectly cast as John Patrick Mason, the contemptuous criminal, enlisted to help save San Francisco by the government he despises so, and he fills the screen with his indomitable, natural charisma.
Sean Connery has always been one of my favorite actors,and three decades after letting go of the James Bond label,he proves that he still can do leading roles in action movies.At the age of 66,that is by no means something ordinary.In this film he plays British S.A.S. operative John Patrick Mason who has spent thirty years in prison in the U.S..He is also the only one who escaped from the high security prison Alcatraz,also known as the 'The Rock'.
Ed Harris gives a very good performance as the rogue marine general and that really puts this movie above the action film crowd.
*** 1/2Starring: Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery, and Ed Harris.An easy-going chemist teams up with an aged criminal along with other soldiers to infiltrate Alcatraz Prison (aka The Rock) and stop a madman from launching a nuclear bomb.The movie has great characters filled in an action-packed setting that will never bore you. |
tt0027387 | Born to Dance | The film's plot involves three submarine mates, Ted Barker (James Stewart), Gunny Saks (Sid Silvers), and Mush Tracy (Buddy Ebsen), arriving in New York City after four years at sea. The film opens as their sub reaches New York harbor with the sailors singing "Rolling Home." Featured in the number are Gunny, Mush, Ted and a quartet called The Foursome.
As many of the sailors receive liberty, Gunny and Mush were denied shore leave until their Captain sends them to deliver a letter to Rear Admiral Stubbins. Nora Paige (Eleanor Powell), a singer and dancer, who has just lost out on a Broadway show, enters the Lonely Hearts Club suitcase in hand. The club's receptionist, Jenny (Una Merkel), offers to share her apartment with Nora. When she introduces Nora to the others at the club, Nora demonstrates her talents by singing and dancing to "Rap Tap on Wood" (Miss Powell's vocals are dubbed by Marjorie Lane). Also featured was The Foursome, a quartet of harmony singers, who also play a penny whistle and different sizes of ocarinas (also known as sweet potatoes).
Ginny tells Nora about her marriage to a sailor who was her partner in a twenty-eight day marathon dance. They conceived a daughter, Sally, in the two days they had together before he shipped out and she never told the guy he was a father. That guy was Gunny, who is anxious to rekindle a relationship with his wife. Meanwhile, Mush falls for a talented singer/waitress, Peppy Turner (Frances Langford).
Romance enters Nora's life in the form of Ted Barker. At their first meeting at the Lonely Hearts Club, Ted sings "Hey, Babe, Hey" to Nora as they dance. Then several other members of the cast sing a chorus including Nora, Gunny, Ginny, Peppy, Mush and the Foursome. The number ends with the sailors and their girl friends tap dancing. Later, Captain Percival Dingby (Raymond Walburn) announces Lucy James (Virginia Bruce), a famous actress, is coming aboard the sub. The men sing about her arrival. Once she comes aboard with her cute little dog under her arm, Miss James sings "Love Me, Love My Pekinese." During a photo session with the Captain, he drops her dog overboard; all the sailors dive in to rescue the pup. The next days newspaper features a photo of Ted handing the soaked dog to Miss James. McKay, her agent, immediately plots to cook up a romance between Ted and Lucy to generate publicity for her new show.
The next scene is one of the most, if not the most, famous musical sequence from the film. Ted begins crooning "Easy to Love" to Nora as they stroll in Central Park. After they kiss, Nora sings; they kiss again and she dances while Ted conducts an imaginary orchestra. A Central Park policeman (Reginald Gardiner) takes over the symphony maestro role as he directs the imaginary orchestra in a combination of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" and "Easy to Love." By the end of the number, the policeman/conductor keels over in a dead faint.
Lucy and McKay arranged with Captain Dingby for Ted to have dinner with Lucy at the Club Continental. The evening's entertainment was Georges and Jalanas (Georges and Jalana appeared as themselves) ballroom dancing to "I've Got You Under My Skin." Ted had told Nora he would meet her later in Central Park, but, after waiting far past the appointed time, Nora dejectedly leaves.
The next morning's newspaper features a photo of Ted and Lucy together, which, of course, disturbs Nora. When Ted calls to apologize, she hangs up on him. Ted goes to McKay's office to bargain with him to give Nora a job in Lucy's new production, but he doesnt want Nora to know about their arrangement. McKay makes her Lucy's understudy.
Ginny, Sally, and Nora visit the sub, but Ginny still isn't sure she wants Gunny to know he has a daughter, so Nora claims Sally as her child. Ted assumes Nora is married and backs off.
Lucy begins to care for Ted and refuses to allow any further publicity about their relationship. She says if any more articles or photos appear in the newspapers she won't perform on opening night. During Ted's visit to Lucy's apartment, she confesses her increasing affection towards him by singing the film's most famous song, "I've Got You Under My Skin."
Peppy Turner reprises "Easy to Love" in a rehearsal of Lucy's show while the limber-limbed Mush, now out of the Navy, dances around her.
Lucy gets more and more upset. She doesnt like a costume and thinks the song's arrangement is undanceable. McKay asks Nora to dance to the arrangement, which she does brilliantly. When Lucy realizes what is happening, she demands McKay fire Nora, which, reluctantly, he does.
Ginny confesses to Ted, who is also out of the Navy now, that Sally is her child, not Nora's and that Nora loves him. She also tells him about Nora getting fired from the show. Ted calls the press and gives them a cooked up story. When the next morning headlines proclaim that Lucy James is going to marry an ex-sailor, she stays true to her threat and won't go on (which means, of course, that her understudy, Nora, would become the show's star).
The film's finale is a gigantic production number from the show, "Great Guns." Set on an Art Deco battleship, it opens with Peppy singing "Swingin' the Jinx Away," backed by a male chorus of singers and dancers. After some acrobatics by sailors, Mush takes his turn with the tune as he sings and dances backed by a female chorus of singers and dancers in front of the ship's stylized guns. After more singing by the male and female chorus, Peppy and the Foursome perform more of the song. Finally, Nora makes her entrance down the spiral stairs of the ship's superstructure and then slides to the stage via a pole. Dressed in a stylized drum major outfit, she taps to "Swingin' the Jinx Away" and then leads the band and chorus in "Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue," a very patriotic finale for a non-wartime movie.
Just before the credits roll, Ted congratulates Nora on a splendid performance and Ginny finally tells Gunny he's a father (unfortunately, he has already signed up for four more years in the Navy). | romantic | train | imdb | Regardless, BORN TO DANCE ranks the best of the trio, thanks to a fine score by Cole Porter, witty dialogue, particularly from the secondary characters (Sid Silvers and Una Merkel), as well as the very young James Stewart surprisingly effective singing through his soft-spoken Fred Astaire-ish style of vocalizing.The second of its annual Eleanor Powell musicals, BORN TO DANCE brings back her co- stars from her initial MGM musical, Broadway MELODY OF 1936, including Sid Silvers, Una Merkel, Frances Langford and Buddy Ebsen, with Virginia Bruce substituting for June Knight as the temperamental actress.
As an added plus Frances Langford, who, in Broadway MELODY of 1936, only participated in the song numbers, this time gets to belt out her songs and take part of the plot.Following the opening titles with a background of musical notes (yes, this is a musical) and still silhouette dancing images of Eleanor Powell, the story opens with singing sailors submerging from a submarine and going on shore leave in New York City.
Ted Parker (James Stewart) meets Nora Paige (Eleanor Powell) at a Lonely Hearts Club, managed by Jenny Saks (Una Merkel), who is married to a Ted's fellow Navy partner, "Gunny" (Sid Silvers), whom she hasn't seen in four years, and through him, is the mother of a three-year-old daughter (Juanita Quigley).
Their romance is soon broken up when Lucy James (Virginia Bruce), a famous musical-comedy star, along with her press agent, James McKay (Alan Dinehart), visits Ted's ship for publicity pictures, and after her Pekinese dog falls over board with Ted jumping in to save it, McKay then makes a romance story out of it.
As Ted is going through his complications such as believing Nora to be a mother to Jenny's little girl, there is "Mush" Tracy (Buddy Ebsen) who finds time in becoming the romantic interest of another Lonely Hearts Club employee, "Peppy" Turner (Frances Langford).Song numbers include: "Rolling Home" (sung by the Foursome Quartet, Sid Silvers, Buddy Ebsen and James Stewart); "Rap-Tap on Wood" (sung and danced by Eleanor Powell); "Hey Babe, Hey Babe" (sung by James Stewart, Eleanor Powell, Sid Silvers, Una Merkel, Buddy Ebsen and Frances Langford); "Here Comes Lucy James" (sung by sailors); "The Captain Had a Very Bad Night Last Night" (recited by Raymond Walburn); "Love Me, Love My Pekinese" (sung by Virginia Bruce/ chorus); "Easy to Love" (sung by James Stewart & Eleanor Powell); "I've Got You Under My Skin" (danced by George & Jalna/ sung by Virginia Bruce); "Easy to Love" (sung by Frances Langford/ danced by Buddy Ebsen); "Love Me, Love My Pekinese" (audition dance by Eleanor Powell); "Swinging the Jinx Away" (sung by Frances Langford/ with Buddy Ebsen/ danced by Eleanor Powell); and "Easy to Love" (sung by cast).
The other members of the cast consists of Raymond Walburn, Barnett Parker, Jonathan Hale and Reginald Gardiner, making his movie debut, in an awkward but amusing cameo as a policeman in Central Park who fantasizes himself as conducting to the score to "Easy to Love" with an unseen orchestra (only in New York!).As with Powell's other "Broadway Melody" series, BORN TO DANCE includes moments of singing and dancing on cue, with a full orchestra playing in the background, whether it be at the Lonely Hearts Club, on the Navy vessel or in the middle of Central Park.
Troy must have been an inspiration for Lily Tomlin's comedic character in later years when appearing as a telephone operator in the late 1960s variety comedy show of LAUGH-IN.BORN TO DANCE is light on plot, memorable on songs and well constructed with dance numbers as choreographed by Dave Gould, highlighted by the lavish but classic 13 minute finale of "Swingin' the Jinx Away" (portions would be reused again for the finale in Eleanor Powell's latter 1943 musical titled I DOOD IT, newly re-scored to appeal more to the big band era for the time of its release).Other than having its presentations on commercial television some decades ago, the original soundtrack recording to BORN TO DANCE was displayed in record stores in the late 1970s.
Even though they look like brother and sister, Jimmy Stewart and Eleanor Powell ease into one of the most endearing and uplifting love affairs in musical film.
Stewart is all right, but the part isn't exactly a stretch for his thespian talents and for cryin' out loud, Jones was one of the best movie singers ever.The other standard is introduced by Virginia Bruce, spoiled mantrap of a Broadway musical star who takes a shine to Stewart after he saves her Pekingese from drowning while Bruce is visiting his ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Bruce sings I've Got You Under My Skin directly to Stewart with a come hither glance to lure him from Eleanor Powell who is her show's understudy.Borrowing from Hit the Deck with a plot of three sailors and three civilian women, Born to Dance pairs off Stewart with Powell, Buddy Ebsen with Frances Langford, and Sid Silvers with Una Merkel.
Raymond Walburn is at his avuncular best as the ship's captain who keeps entrusting Silvers and Ebsen to deliver a message to the Admiral and they keep getting sidetracked by their women.With Powell as the understudy to Bruce and them both vying for Stewart, you can readily guess how this story will resolve itself.
Eleanor dances divinely, especially in the finale number Swinging the Jinx Away which Frances Langford sings and Buddy Ebsen also dances.With all the talent involved and a plot which is a walking cliché, but easy to take, it's easy to love Born to Dance as I do..
If you like pretty movie stars, this one's the picture for you -- Eleanor Powell, Virginia Bruce, Una Merkel, Frances Langford are all beauties.
Outstanding Cole Porter songs include classics "Easy to Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin." But my personal favorites are " Hey, Babe, Hey" and "Swingin' the Jinx Away." As always, Eleanor Powell's dancing is spectacular.
If ever a person was truly "born to dance," it was Eleanor Powell--the first of MGM's great dancing stars and a performer still considered by many to be the single finest tap dancer to emerge from Hollywood.
The musical numbers are staged with a more subtle flash than one normally finds in 1930s musicals, and there are several complex ensemble numbers and the memorable "Easy to Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin."Not only was Powell a greatly gifted dancer, she was a clever comedian with a pleasing singing voice, and her playful performing style is particularly charming in such numbers as "Rap-Tap on Wood" and "Swinging the Jinx Away." Her leading man, somewhat surprisingly, is none other than James Stewart--and although he wasn't really a singer or a dancer he does extremely well with both, and he and Powell make a very entertaining couple.
Eleanor Powell has come to New York to make it, and make it she does in "Born to Dance," a 1936 musical also starring James Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Buddy Ebsen, Una Merkel, and Sid Silvers.There's not much of a story, and not much of one is needed.
Lucy ends up walking out of the show; Powell then becomes the star - you can guess the rest.Certainly this is a wonderful score, one of the best, with the wonderful "Easy to Love," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Rolling Home," "Rap-Tap on Wood," and others.
The surprise of the cast is James Stewart, singing in a Fred Astaire sort of way - he's delightful, very musical, with a sweet voice that goes well with his boyish demeanor.Eleanor Powell is one of the great film tap dancers, and she gets to do a lot of numbers.
Secondly, the bits with character actors: Charles Trowbridge as a model home spokesman with stiff upper lip (movie butlers probably took notes); Reginald Gardiner as a policeman in Central Park who conducts an invisible orchestra (his wild, flopping hair and frantic moves are much like Danny Kaye as a music teacher in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 1947); Helen Troy as McCoy's telephone operator must be the inspiration for Lily Tomlin's snooty switchboard gal on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in the late 1960s; and Virginia Bruce singing 'Love Me, Love My Pekinese' is sheer Gilbert & Sullivan in its wit (the cast is smiling behind the lead stars because they know it's a very funny number.As for the stars, Elenore Powell is especially good at tap dancing and OK at singing.
James Stewart has charm and good looks but hardly dances, and he sings much like Fred Astaire (who was a top-notch dancer).
Otherwise, it's a mildly entertaining MGM musical, given big production values and some glossy photography but missing on several counts.Aside from the musical genius of Powell, JAMES STEWART is a strange choice for her romantic leading man when he has to warble the classic "Easy to Love", a Cole Porter classic.
VIRGINIA BRUCE gets through a couple of songs with her modest talent but again, neither performer is capable of putting over Cole Porter standards.The story is that of a girl aspiring to be a Broadway singer/dancer, and it's tailor-made for the bubbly, energetic Powell who rescues the plot from being completely banal by her mere presence.
SID SILVERS is amusing enough in a minor role, as is REGINALD GARDINER, but clearly the film belongs to Powell whenever she goes into her dance.Directed by the reliable Roy Del Ruth, it's pleasant enough but clearly a product of its time..
I know Eleanor Powell and Frances Langford are the real stars of this movie because I don't think Jimmy Stewart was up to that status yet.
The plot, such as it is, of this movie is best forgotten.What is impossible to forget are the musical numbers, many of which have become American classics, like "You'd be so easy to love." Add to that Eleanor Powell's spectacular dancing, especially in the finale, which is downright breathtaking, and you have one very entertaining movie.Sure, you could find fault here and there.
The movie is too long - too much plot - and the story is too complicated.But all of the musical and dance performances - and I do say all, including James Stewart's - are a joy to hear and behold.I doubt they could get away with making a movie like this today.
Una Merkel and Sid Silvers deliver in supporting roles, while Buddy Ebsen, who also appeared in "Broadway Melody of 1936," appears in this one as well and is just as weird as in the previous film performing dance routines in his inexplicably gangly, floppy style.
Cole Porter's song, "I've Got You Under My Skin," was also nominated for an Oscar, though personally it's my least favorite song in the score.A bit front loaded, "Born to Dance" slows down as it goes and nothing in its last half is as good as in the first, but it's still a really fun movie.Grade: B+.
Buddy Ebsen is a good enough dancer, but his singing is very minimal and does little justice to the wonderful musical numbers.I hate to say this, but Stewart was a rare disappointment in this one.
His singing is flat and quite limited in range mostly, Easy to Love is listenable but there are other times where he sounds as though he knows the songs are too big for him, while his dancing is heavy and flat-footed.Problems aside, Born to Dance does have a number of good things.
Reginald Gardiner's cameo is very awkward but also quite amusing at the same time.In my mind, Eleanor Powell gives the best performance, her acting is great, her charisma is infectious, her singing is well-above average and energetic and her dancing fares best of all as it is incredible.
The background scoring is beautiful and very memorable, while the songs especially Rap-Tap on Wood, Love, Love my Peckinese and the big production number at the end are outstanding with catchy melodies and witty lyrics as one would expect from Porter.In conclusion, interesting film musical but I would be lying if the pang of disappointment wasn't in the air.
Born to Dance has all of the charm and reality suspending fluff that makes these Broadway Melody style movies so wonderful: liquid, ludicrous plot, witty repartee, and catchy little songs that evolve into spectacular dance numbers, showcasing the multiple threats talents the stars of the days needed to possess.Other reviewers have highlighted the Cole Porter songs and analyzed the plot and performances, their strengths and their flaws, far more eloquently than I could aspire.Rather than highlight the big names involved, my attention was drawn by the supporting cast: the charming young Buddy Epsen and in particular to Sid Silvers, a.k.a.
Those greatest musicals from the past were dated now, it's too weird to see James Stewart sang those slow down and boring songs , he wasn't able to do that, but when Cole Porter's band coming along it's another thing, a powerful songs under so aclaimed musicians, looking around you find out some interesting characters who stolem the show as Buddy Ebsen dancing and his odd manerism, and the funny Captain played by Raymond Walburn in a amazing performance who didn't get delivery a single letter by own inability, fishing in the harbor among others so priceless moments!!Resume:First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.
Standard wartime musical with sailor Ted Barker (Jimmy Stewart) falling in love with beautiful tap dancer Nora Page (Eleanor Powell).
Buddy Ebsen is in this too.The songs are good, the tap dancing by Powell is incredible and there's a HUGE all out production number at the end--but I didn't really like this.
Such standards as "Easy to Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" everyone knows, but the unknown gems include the fantastic "Hey, Babe, Hey," the delightful "Rolling Home" and "Rap Tap on Wood," and the insane and memorable "Love Me, Love My Pekingese." Aside from the great score, there's the terrific dancing and personality of Eleanor Powell, the funny supporting cast, and most of all the unique musical style of the greatest of all movie stars, James Stewart, who gives one of his most charming performances..
Well, now I'm a bit disappointed, because mister Stewart is not only not the main character in the film (that is Powell), he doesn't dance also, so I don't see any reason why I will see this film again.I like Buddy Ebsen, in the 30's he acted in a lot of funny musicals like this one.
Sinatra rules off course, nobody messes with Blue Eyes, but the actress who sung it in this picture, sung it very well too.No, Stewart's performance isn't his best in 'Born to Dance', but the great ans powerful songs in this musical make it a very pleasant experience to watch it.And thank you very much, mister Porter..
Frances Langford gets less singing time than Bruce or Stewart but does much better.Every once in a while, the movie is fun.
The movie ended up speaking just how outstanding Cole Porter is that even the likes of Jimmy Stewart's nasally warbling only enhances the song--"Easy to Love".
In this case, navy man Jimmy Stewart (you have to call him 'Jimmy;' he looks like he's only about 19 years old) meets aspiring dancer Powell at a Lonely-Hearts boarding house, with fine support from the extremely gangly Buddy Ebsen and semi-newlyweds Una Merkel and Sid Silvers (who offer an interesting subplot as kids who impulsively married immediately before he shipped out- and four years later really don't know each other and are parents of a 3-year-old).
The film's two big centerpieces are Stewart crooning "Easy To Love" to Powell in a park (a scene much remembered from the 1974 documentary THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!) and the finale, which shows understudy Powell finally getting the lead in the show (42nd STREET, anyone?) to the song "Swingin' The Jinx Away." This number has to be seen to be believed.
Featuring songs by the great Cole Porter, "Born to Dance" is a pleasant MGM musical in the "boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl" mold.
Virginia Bruce was also an excellent choice for the role of the selfish, bitchy prima donna Lucy James, not to mention the delightful performances of Sid Silvers, Buddy Ebsen, Una Merkel, Frances Langford, Raymond Walburn, and Alan Dinehart.My favorite highlights from "Born to Dance" include the following (DON'T read any further if you haven't yet seen this musical).
James Stewart's other lesser known number titled "Hey Babe", which he sings quite well, is enhanced by the singing and dancing of the entire party of six: Ted, Nora, "Peppy" Turner (Langford), "Mush" Tracy (Ebsen), "Gunny" Saks (Silvers), and Jenny Saks (Merkel).A decade after "Born to Dance" was released, when James Stewart's acting career was in a slump, he watched his performance in this film and wanted to vomit.
One final point: of all the various Cole Porter numbers we hear in this film, only two of them maintained widespread popularity - the aforementioned "Easy to Love", and "I've Got You Under My Skin", which Lucy sings to a fairly embarrassed Ted..
Ted meets also Lonely hearts newcomer Nora (Eleanor Powell) while there and romance takes off beautifully as they merge into one of my favorite songs of the film "I'm nuts about you", with Mush and the beauty he meets (Frances Langford) who are also falling for each other while they're all singing and dancing, I loved it.
One cannot imagine a finer cast of the time in this film than Buddy Ebson, James Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Una Merkel and Eleanor Powell who should have had been offered better material.
This Cole Porter Musical features a singing James Stewart, Eleanor Powell.
Directed by Roy Del Ruth, with a story co-written by Sid Silvers, who plays the unluckily married sailor 'Gunny' Sacks, this average Cole Porter musical features a singing James Stewart, in only his tenth film! |
tt0167404 | The Sixth Sense | Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist in Philadelphia, returns home one night with his wife, Anna, after having been honored for his work. Anna tells Crowe that everything is second to his work, and that she believes he is truly gifted. A young man then appears in their bathroom, and accuses Crowe of failing him. Crowe recognizes him as Vincent Grey, a former patient whom he treated as a child for hallucinations. Vincent shoots his former doctor before killing himself.
The next fall, Crowe begins working with another patient, nine-year-old Cole Sear, whose case is similar to Vincent's. Crowe becomes dedicated to the boy, though he is haunted by doubts over his ability to help him after his failure with Vincent. Meanwhile, he and his wife seldom, if ever, speak or do anything together. Crowe feels he must help Cole in order to rectify his failure to help Vincent and reconcile with his wife. Cole's mother, Lynn worries about his social stamina, especially after seeing signs of physical abuse. Cole eventually confides his secret to Crowe: he sees ghosts, who walk around like the living unaware they are dead.
At first, Crowe thinks Cole is delusional and considers dropping his case. Remembering Vincent, the psychologist listens to an audiotape from a session with Vincent when he was a child. On the tape, when Crowe leaves the room, Vincent begins crying. Turning up the volume, Crowe hears a weeping man begging for help in Spanish, and now believes that Cole is telling the truth and that Vincent may have had the same ability. He suggests to Cole that he should try to find a purpose for his gift by communicating with the ghosts and perhaps aid them with their unfinished business. At first, Cole is unwilling since the ghosts terrify and sometimes even threaten him, but he finally decides to attempt helping.
Cole talks to one of the ghosts, a young girl named Kyra who recently died after a chronic illness. He goes with Crowe to her funeral reception at her home, where Kyra directs him to a box holding a videotape, which he then gives to her father. The tape shows Kyra's mother poisoning her daughter's food. By proving she was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, Cole has saved Kyra's younger sister, the mother's next victim.
Learning to live with the ghosts he sees, Cole begins to fit in at school and is cast as the lead in the school play, which Crowe attends. The doctor and patient depart on positive terms and Cole suggests to Crowe that he should try speaking to Anna while she is asleep. Later, while stuck in traffic, Cole confesses his secret to his mother, saying that someone died in an accident ahead of their traffic and he knows because the person is next to him. Although his mother at first does not believe him, Cole proves his ability to her by talking about how his grandmother visits him. He describes how his grandmother saw his mother in a dance performance, even though Lynn thought her mother was not there. He further relays the answer to a question his mother privately asked at her mother's grave. When Cole says that his grandmother feels proud of Lynn, his mother tearfully accepts the truth and they hug each other.
Crowe returns home, where he finds his wife asleep with their wedding video playing. While still asleep, Anna asks her husband why he left her, and drops Crowe's wedding ring, which he suddenly discovers he has not been wearing. He remembers what Cole said about ghosts and realizes that he was actually killed by Vincent and was unknowingly dead the entire time he was working with Cole. Because of Cole's efforts, Crowe's unfinished business – rectifying his failure to understand and help Vincent – is finally complete. Crowe fulfills the second reason he returned: to tell his wife she was never second, and that he loves her. His goal complete, he is free to leave the world of the living. | psychological, mystery, boring, paranormal, dramatic, cult, horror, plot twist, flashback, atmospheric, psychedelic, tragedy, suspenseful, sentimental | train | wikipedia | The surprise ending to "The Sixth Sense" has gotten so much attention that it threatens to overshadow the film.
When I first saw this film back in early 2000, I knew nothing about it other than that it was about the relationship between a psychiatrist played by Bruce Willis and a child with some sort of psychic power.
A movie must work on its own terms before springing a surprise.Nevertheless, there can be no denying that the twist in "The Sixth Sense" is particularly clever.
Willis believes he has failed, and he wants to make amends by helping a new child (Haley Joel Osment) who appears to be having the same problems (and perhaps the same abilities) that his former patient once displayed.
Like all good horror films, "The Sixth Sense" allows the suspense to build and does not rely on either excessive violence or cheap scares.
Still, if you have not seen the film by now and remain woefully ignorant of the surprise lurking in its plot, I urge you, before someone ruins it for you, go and watch the movie!.
Maybe I read too much into this very wonderful film, but I believe it will be difficult to find a movie that has touched on these subjects so poignantly and so well for years to come..
He succeeds at this task beautifully, convincing us while never going over the top; indeed, by the time Cole utters his now-famous line, you not only believe him, you are chilled by the fact that Osment the actor may actually believe it himself.Bruce Willis turns in a stellar performance, complimenting his young co-star while never overshadowing him.
Cole's innocent little face hidden behind his absent father's large-framed spectacles betrays a child coming to terms with a terrifying secret in the only way he can.You don't need to go and see this film again to realise why the end is such a surprise but you will rush out to watch it again purely because it's an almost perfect example of it's genre.Laugh, cry, jump a mile out of your seat, sigh with relief - but not too early...
The prime emotion; fear, is a difficult emotion to generate in a modern audience that has seen it all before, but this film succeeds where others fail, praying on your imagination and generating suspense from subtle devices rather than blatant horror.It is such a relief that the performances of Willis and the excellent Osment live up to an excellently directed quality storyline.
Willis has had many action-packed, profane macho roles in his career but I like him best when he's low key, as he is in here (and in "Unbreakable," to name another fairly-recent movie) The story is slow-paced but it sure is not boring.
Not only did it turn out to be a better movie than BLAIR WITCH is, but it turned out to be one of my favorites.THE SIXTH SENSE is about an award-winning child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), who is depressed because one of his former clients committed suicide because Crowe was unable to help him.
He is definitely the best child actor I've ever seen, and I am glad that Bruce Willis let him have the spotlight.The plot is very entertaining, though at times you may wonder where it is going.
I applaud the advertisers of THE SIXTH SENSE for not leaving a trace of the surprise ending in the previews of the movie (unlike DOUBLE JEOPARDY) and I certainly will not give it away in this comment.
(I think many that say that they saw it coming are probably lying.)THE SIXTH SENSE is one of my favorite movies, and I think it is surely one of the best films of 1999.
Luckily most of the people I had spoken to who had seen the film did not spoil the 'twist' at the end, which, although is rather a laboured point by now in reviews, certainly adds to the "Oh, I see now" factor.The story revolves around a child psychologist played characteristically by Bruce Willis.
But if you want to see one of the best Hollywood manufactured horror films in a long time, give Sixth Sense a chance.
A child psychologist, played by Bruce Willis, tries to help a troubled boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, who says he sees ghosts.
Because of this, Cole is named geeky in the college where appear various dead people who ask his help.The film provides creepy scenes, a well-knit drama, grisly terror when the living dead appear and suspenseful throughout.The flick contains the more famous plot twist from cinema history, because the ending leads to a breathtaking and unexpected outcome on what's happened before.
Acting by main actors is top notch, Bruce Willis is magnificent as restrained psychologist and Haley Joel Osment is awesome as traumatized little boy, carrying the movie on his frail shoulders; furthermore, appear future promising actors as Mischa Burton(OC) and Trevor Morgan .
And I think it was realistic at how long it took for the boy to learn to trust the doctor and for how long it took the doctor to discover what was really going on.Having said all that, in addition to the pace, there were some times when I felt a little queasy, like I wasn't sure what exactly the movie was trying to say.
It details these points to graphic effect.Young Haley Joel Osment is terrific as Cole, the young boy who sees 'dead people', and portrays his emotions and his mind to an easily captivating audience.
Also wonderful to see Bruce Willis turn away from his usual 'action man' sequence to allow us into the equally troubled mind of Dr. Malcolm Crowe.A divine and heartwarming film combining elements of horror and suspense has made The Sixth Sense an engaging film that is simply unforgettable.
One of these days I'm going to watch a Shyamalan movie in the right frame of mind.) "The ending." How would you like to be a filmmaker judged solely on "the ending?" In the case of THE VILLAGE, it worked for me.
this film has the best twist ever anyone who says they knew that the film would end like that is a liar!!!the acting of Haley Joel Osment is incredible he was also brilliant in AI.
this is not one of those films that drags on or that is forgettable like a lot of other thriller/horror films (the grudge, dark water)your remember this one forever!!!!Main good points: great acting, great storyline, great twist-------------- main bad points: none.
This is the best horror movie i have ever seen.It's terryfying and interesting from beginning to the very end.Yes, the ending is so great that you could say "the director couldn't make something better.Michael Night Shamalyan is the next Alfred Hitchcock.And for the first time in his career Bruce Willis showed us that he is very good actor..
Besides, he can be considered as a faraway cousin of Danny, the little boy in Kubrick's "shining" because they've got a common point: an odd power supernatural and all in all, the dead people who haunt Cole aren't so terrible as they look like: they're simply asking him for help...
The rest of the cast are good, but really it's the central relationship between Willis and Osment that makes this film.The plot may have some holes in (some ghosts hang around where they died, one comes to find Cole etc), but overall this is very good.
The director weaves an interesting story that stands on its own, but makes it even more memorable by challenging how we accept and assume things in movies by delivering a great, clever twist at the end..
Don't get me wrong, The Sixth Sense is a good film, but not a great one by any means, and has no right to be regarded as a horror masterpiece, that is just absurd.
The plot of this slow-building horror-noir, heavily drawing on cult classics like the certain 1980 movie directed by the late, great Stanley Kubrick, is not without merits, courtesy of a poignant treatment of a disturbed, misunderstood child prodigy.
M. Night Shyamalan made a brief appearance, which didn't really make me hold my breath.The good thing about the movie is it's overall creepiness and sense of fear.
HJO did give a good performance and Bruce Willis was OK, but when you promise fans a movie based upon a twist at the end, you have to deliver.
The Sixth Sense is one of those movies that once you've seen it the first time, you're never going to be able to watch it the same way again, due to the gasp-worthy twist near the end.
I remember vividly both times I saw it in the cinema, the crucial turning point of the piece bringing a collective audible gasp from the viewers sunken in their respective seats, that's the sort of impact that carries a films reputation far and wide, and that's the reason why I will never rate the film lower than 10/10.Repeat viewings of The Sixth Sense obviously dim its star appeal because we know the tricks of the directors trade, but the film still ranks to me as one of the best of its type for so many other reasons rarely mentioned.
The writing from Shyamalan {Academy Award Nominated Best Screenplay} is surprisingly complex, the piece masquerading as a horror picture is emotionally charged, linking children with the paranormal thru loss and a need for understanding, the need for closure of unresolved differences, but chiefly and crucial to the films heart is the message of connection before it's too late.The performances are incredible, Bruce Willis as Malcolm Crowe is perfectly understated, all the pointers for the denouement are there for us to see, but such is the actors performance, and we now know he is cutely having to play his cards close to his chest, are hidden from us until the revisit of the picture reveals it all.
Hayley Joel Osment {Academy Award Nominated Best Supporting Actor} is wonderful, for a child performance in a film of this type to not be over sentimental, is quite an achievement.
This movie unfolds with precision in story telling and character development with the good Doctor and the boy and then when it goes to the end, it twists and you are left feeling that cold chill once again.
"The Sixth Sense" does have a good surprise ending, it's a kind of ending that makes you want to see the movie again after you finished watching it for the first time.
It contains everything one could ask for in a film.For a basic plot summary, "The Sixth Sense" tells the story of young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), who is prone to visions of dead ghosts and as such is not fitting in very well at school or at home.
With the help of a very unique child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), however, Cole is finally able to face his fears and begin to move on with his life.Since it is easier to come at this review from this angle, about the only people who WON'T enjoy this movie are those who only like the mindless actions of explosions, car chases, and flexing muscles.
The Sixth Sense is an entertaining film, better than some, not as good as others, but it is most certainly not the masterpiece many seem to make it out to be.
While he still made some very good movies, notably Signs and the Village, he never again reached the height of The Sixth Sense.One of the things that surprised me most was how good Bruce Willis is.
The Sixth Sense An Effective Thriller With A Good Twist Ending.
The Sixth Sense is an effective thriller with a good twist ending from director M Night Shyamalan whose admirable in making this movie which was his first back in 1999.
The cast are good in their roles including Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, and especially Haley Joel Osment as the boy who can see dead people.
Overall The Sixth Sense is a solid thriller with some suspense, creepy moments, drama, a little humor, and exceptional performances by the cast who make this movie worth the time to watch..
"The Sixth Sense" is a good movie but perhaps a little overrated.
Plus, unlike his other films, Bruce plays a likable character here.Aside some absolutely unnecessary scenes, this movie is generally good.
One of the best parts is when Cole (Haley Joel Osment) finally reveals his secret to Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis).
Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment play the most believable characters in this film.
i'm not going to give much of the plot of this one away,just in case you're one of the three people on the planet who hasn't seen this movie.suffice to say that it is one of the greatest psychological suspense thrillers in modern time.this is one eerie movie,strongly anchored by the performance of Haley Joel Osment.,who plays the character to which the title refers.Bruce Willis and Toni Collette also put in strong performances.and watch for a brilliant performance from an unrecognizable Donnie Wahlberg(yes that Donnie Wahlberg from "New Kids on the Block" fame).who knew he could act?you will almost certainly have to watch this movie more than once,and you will discover something new each time.if you have'nt seen it,and somehow have managed to avoid knowing anything about it,i highly recommend it.to end,i will just say that this movie is a modern Masterpiece.10+++/10.
I love this movie because it's a really good ghost story and has a thought-provoking plot.Yeah, this film was famous so I already knew the ending before it even happened but that didn't distract me from watching the movie.
Throughout the movie is a masterpiece.The acting by Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, and Toni Collette were all fantastic and some like Olivia Williams and Donnie Wahlberg were all great, too.If you want an intelligent ghost movie with some scares and twists and turns, this is the movie for you.
The ending of Unbreakable is about as shocking, but I don't think Shyamalan will ever make another film as good as this..
In such an atmosphere, it's easy to overlook that the one thing that makes "Sixth Sense" so popular is that it's so incredibly good.The art of storytelling is at the heart of the film, the way it quietly unfolds at its own pace, pulling you in with eerie moments and occasional shocks to a place that gets deeper as you get closer.
Cole explains at one point to Dr. Crowe that the trick to a good story is that it have "some twists and stuff." People who downgrade "The Sixth Sense" do so on the basis of the twists, which was what got the film so talked about in the first place.
All your worst childhood nightmares: the noises in the attic, the intruder in your house, that cold breath that makes your hair stand on end are here and then some.Bruce Willis gives one of the best performances of his career as the child psychologist trying to get himself back on track after a violent encounter with a former patient and it would be a crime if Haley Joel Osment were overlooked at coming awards ceremonies for his powerful performance here.
All your worst childhood nightmares: the noises in the attic, the intruder in your house, that cold breath that makes your hair stand on end are here and then some.Bruce Willis gives one of the best performances of his career as the child psychologist trying to get himself back on track after a violent encounter with a former patient and it would be a crime if Haley Joel Osment were overlooked at coming awards ceremonies for his powerful performance here.
'The Sixth Sense' is a horror film about a young boy who has the power to see the ghosts of people who have passed away.
Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a Philadelphia psychiatrist meeting with Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a boy who can - OK, I'll say it this one last time - see dead people.
If you do know how it ends but haven't seen it, rent it just see see Bruce Willis (among many others) give really great performances..
THE SIXTH SENSE Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound formats: Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDSWhilst recovering from a recent trauma, a child psychologist (Bruce Willis) helps a little boy (Haley Joel Osment) who claims to see ghosts.Released the same year as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999), another 'spook' movie which divided audiences and reaped dividends at the international box-office, M.
You care about what happens to Cole Sear, so hauntingly played by Haley Joel Osment, and you want to see Dr. Malcolm Crowe(Bruce Willis, in arguably his best performance) help him.
The sixth sense wasn't really a bad movie, per se, but the problem with it lies in the fact that any entertainment value it may hold is in one aspect of it which you find out when watching the film for the first time - if it hasn't been spoiled for you.
This movie is a big-time rip off of Jacob's Ladder (1990).And the fact that everybody was all hyped up about the 'surprise' at the end just goes to show that Hollywood hasn't made a good suspense or horror flick in years.I had it figured out about half way in what was going on, and once I figured it out, I sat there sulking, "I've seen this before.
I can only assume either (I'm not a horror movie fan), that the supposebly overwhelming atmosphere of Bruce Willis talking to some messed up little boy entertained people, much like horror films or either the modern cliche of adding a big twist on to the end of film to try to make sense of the piffle before it.
Haley Joel Osment is excellent, and the only good reason to see this movie. |
tt1872194 | The Judge | Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is one of the best defense attorneys in Chicago. He's in the bathroom at the courthouse when the prosecuting attorney Mike Kattan (David Krumholtz) questions his ethics and the fact that he defends so many guilty people. Hank tells him that innocent people can't afford him. Kattan asks how he sleeps at night. Hank tells him, he sleeps in a beautiful house with a smoking hot wife.In the courtroom, Hank gets a phone call from his brother telling him that their mother died. Hank requests that the trial be suspended until he can return. Kattan doesn't believe him, so Hank plays the voice-mail. The case is suspended.Outside Hanks house, Hank bonds with his daughter Lauren (Emma Tremblay). He goes inside and tells his wife (Sarah Lancaster) that he wants custody of Lauren once they're divorced. The happy life he painted for Kattan, isn't exactly the truth. His wife tells him that he is a horrible father because he doesn't know when Lauren gets up for school, who her teachers are, what her favorite color is. Hank leaves and heads to Carlinville, Indiana for his mother's funeral.Hank goes to the local courthouse and watches his father, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) deliberate over a case where a guy says he can't afford child support even though he just bought a new truck. Judge Palmer dispenses small town justice and orders the man give his truck keys over to the pregnant woman suing him so that she can sell it. The Judge also points out that she is responsible too by asking her, "You do know how babies are made, right?" At the end of the case, Judge Palmer struggles to remember Bailiff Gus's name. His memory is slipping.Hank pays his respects to his mom at the funeral home viewing. We meet his younger brother Dale (Jeremy Strong) who seems to be Autistic and hides behind a Super-8 camera filming everything. We also meet oldest brother Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio). He used to be the local star baseball player, but his career was sidelined by a car accident. Now he's an out of shape guy who owns a shop.At the Palmer house, Hank discovers that his dad stores all of his junk in his old room and no one made preparations for him to stay. The next morning all of the Palmers leave early to get breakfast at the local diner before going to the funeral. Hank shows up late and sarcastically thanks them for inviting him. The Judge gets up and leaves without really acknowledging Hank at all. Hank sees that his old high school girlfriend Samantha (Vera Famiga) works at the diner. They haven't seen each other in years.At the mom's funeral, the Judge is warm and friendly to everyone except Hank. They don't get along at all. They go to the cemetery and bury the mom.That night, the Palmer boys decide to go to a local bar and the Judge goes to the convenience store.At the bar, locals start to give Glen shit because they've all had poor experiences in the Judge's courtroom. Glen is about to fight them when Hank steps in and through fast talking shames the locals into leaving. This impresses young bartender Carla (Leighton Meester) who starts making out with Hank later that night.When the Palmer boys get home they see that their dad damaged the front of his car. The next morning the Judge yells at them for taking his car out. He doesn't remember causing the damage himself.The police show up and question the Judge about his whereabouts the night before. Someone hit and run Mark Blackwell and now he is dead. The Judge goes with the police for questioning, but Hank rushes in and stops things. The Judge insists that because he didn't do anything wrong, there was no harm in talking to the police. Both the Judge and Blackwell were seen at the convenience store last night. The Judge says he went a different way home than where Blackwell's body was found.The Palmers all go home and the Judge makes fun of Hank for not being able to hold his marriage together. This infuriates Hank so he leaves and gets on a plane to go back to Chicago. Before the plane takes off, Glen calls him to tell him that the Judge has been arrested. Forensics shows Blackwell's blood on the Judges car.Hank goes to the jail and bails out his dad. The Judge refuses to let Hank represent him and instead hires local inexperienced attorney C.P. Kennedy (Dax Shepard). Lawyering seems to be a side job to Kennedy running a shop. They find out the Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton) is going to be handling the prosecution. Dickham has a reputation, so Hank sticks around to help Kennedy pick a jury. He does it entirely by asking what kind of bumper sticker each candidate has on their car. If its something about having an honor roll student or anything like that, he passes. He does accept people if they have stickers that say things like Gun Control means using two hands and Missing: Wife and Dog, reward for Dog like from the trailer for the movie.Hank breaks out his old Metallica shirt and bike and starts riding around town. He rides no handed on his bike and wipes out. Samantha and her daughter Carla the bartender pick him up and give him a ride. Carla and Hank don't tell Samantha that they made out the other night, but their stories clash regarding whether or not they've met. She is honest, he's not.Hank and Samantha hang out and catch up a little. They break into the diner like they did as kids and then she tells him that she doesn't just work there, she owns it now. They didn't have to break in, she wanted to because it was just like old times. Plus it was worth a broken window to see Hank climb the building. They eat pie and she comes on to him, but he rejects her advances and explains that he is going back to Chicago as soon as he can. She is insulted that he'd think she wanted anything more than just a hook up and tells him to lock up when he leaves because she is going to go home and masturbate.A security tape shows that the Judge lied about his trip home. He said he went one direction, saw that the road was washed out and went back the other way. The security tape shows that his timeline doesn't match up.Hank asks Dale about the Judge's condition. Dale says that he is fine and keeps a routine where he goes and plays Chess with Doc Morris (Denis O'Hare) every week. Hank remembers his dad doesn't play Chess so he asks if Dale has any footage of that. He does. They look at the film and we find out that the Judge is getting some sort of medical treatment.Hank goes to meet with Doc Morris and finds out that his dad has Cancer and has been getting chemotherapy even though they caught it too late. Hank asks what the side effects are and finds out that they include memory loss.Hank tells the Judge that he knows about the chemo and wants to use that in court. Blackwell was a kid who the Judge went light on. After Blackwell did minimal time, he killed his girlfriend. Then the Judge threw the book at him. Blackwell had just gotten out of jail. So the prosecution has the Judge at the scene of the accident and motive to make it murder. The Judge's pride prevents him from wanting to use being sick as a defense. No one, aside from the doctor and the late wife, knows about the Cancer. He says that people don't remember any of the great stuff Ronald Reagan did, they only remember him as a senile old fool. He doesn't want that to be his legacy too. Hank points out that he is just a small town Judge and he'll have no legacy.Since Hank is going to be in Indiana for awhile, he has his daughter Lauren come visit. He warns her that his father is a mean man and she shouldn't take it personally. Much to Hank's surprise, the Judge is delightful to Lauren and tells her that she's the first girl they've had in the family in a very long time. That night, Hank and Lauren are hanging out and hear a noise from the Judge's room. Hank goes to investigate and sees that his dad is out of it, struggling to walk and has soiled himself. Hank takes him into the bathroom, undresses him and helps him in the shower to clean him off.The Judge wants to take the stand during his case, but Hank doesn't want him to. The Judge says that only guilty people refuse to defend themselves. They talk about the best lawyers they've ever seen. Hank tells the Judge about one he respected and the Judge tells Hank about one who had integrity, clearly something he feels his son lacks. Hank and the Judge have a huge fight.Hank was driving under the influence the night Glen got in the car accident and got injured. His dad threw the book at him. He was always hard on Hank, but points out that because of that, Hank turned out fine. Hank says he turned out fine on his own. The Judge reminds him that he is the one who paid for Hank to go to law school and become a lawyer. Hank graduated at the top of his class and never got a congratulations from his dad. In all fairness, Hank also never thanked his dad. This visit to Carlinville is the first time they've spoken since Hank left home at 18.Hank takes his daughter to the airport to go home and notices that she has a lot of the same mannerisms that Carla has. He goes home and checks dates for homecoming and realizes that Carla was born nine months after the last night he spent with Samantha. It looks like he may have been seriously making out with his daughter!The Judge takes the stand. Dickham jogs the Judge's memory and we find out that on the night Blackwell died, they were both at the convenience store. When Blackwell saw the Judge he told him that since the Judges wife was buried in the same cemetery as the girl Blackwell killed years ago, when he goes there, he can piss on both of their graves. Motive established. Hank questions him. We find out that the reason the Judge was initially easy on Blackwell was because when Blackwell was a child the Judge saw he was no different than Hank, a young boy who screwed up from time to time. Hank brings up the chemo, much to the surprise of everyone. This infuriates the Judge who tells Hank that after this they're done forever. The Judge admits to memory loss. He still can't remember Gus's name even though Gus has been his Bailiff for over 20 years. Dickham cross examines. The Judge absolutely does not remember killing Blackwell. Dickham says he has no further questions, but the Judge volunteers, that while he doesn't remember killing Blackwell, he's glad he is dead.The jury deliberates. They come back with a not guilty verdict to murder, but guilty to manslaughter. He's sentenced to four years in prison.Hank goes back to Chicago and runs into Kattan in the bathroom again. He's a changed man. He's on a losing streak with cases and decides to stick with it.Seven months later, the Judge is released from prison on parole. Hank picks him up. They go fishing. The Judge tells him that the reason he was hard on Hank for so many years is because while he saw Hank in Blackwell, he also saw Blackwell in Hank and worried that if he hadn't been tough on Hank, he wouldn't have turned out to be the man he is today. The Judge tells him that before when Hank asked him who the best lawyer he ever saw was, he was wrong. The best lawyer he ever saw was Hank. Hank finally gets his dad's approval. Then the Judge dies in the fishing boat.Hank asks Samantha if Carla is his daughter. She's not. She's Glen's daughter. Samantha was mad that Hank ditched her, so she hooked up with his brother since he seemed really sweet, unlike Hank at that time. Glen doesn't know. He's married now and has two sons, so she never wanted to bother him with that.After the Judge's funeral, Hank goes into the courtroom where his dad sat for so many years. He spins his dad's chair seemingly contemplating. | melodrama, flashback, plot twist, murder, home movie | train | imdb | Not a simple courtroom drama at all, the story is more about Hank Palmer (Downey)'s struggle to understand his relationship with his father and to accept where he came from.
This movie is definitely worth sitting through for amazing performances by both Downey and Duvall, who could both be up for Oscar nominations for their roles as the son and father, respectively.
While its premise is not necessarily unique and it has its fair share of clichés, The Judge is a deeply moving film that showcases the acting powerhouse that is Robert Duvall and the undeniable versatility and magnetic screen presence of Robert Downey Jr. There are also strong supporting performances from Vera Farmiga (she and RJD have great chemistry), Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Jeremy Strong.
Farmiga, Dax Shepard and Billy Bob Thornton are all great, but I felt they were somewhat underused.Even though I think that there was a bit too much going on and at times it got a bit too sentimental, I still very much enjoyed The Judge for the most part.
The Judge is a deeply moving film that showcases the acting powerhouse that is Robert Duvall and the undeniable versatility and magnetic screen presence of Robert Downey Jr. Don't listen to the critics, they clearly don't know everything!
When looking at the posters (without giving much away) I got the impression that this film looks like something out of a John Grisham novel or an episode of Law and Order, and while there is the trial going on, the movie is more of a focus of this man's (Downey) relationship with his father (Duvall), his family, his unresolved issues with his present life and the life he left behind.
As I said before, it's good to see him again playing an adult male character other than Iron Man, he's great as Iron Man but this actor can do serious adult drama movies and killed it as well.
It's also great to have Robert Duvall back because for the past few years he was just a cool supporting actor showing up for few scenes and that's pretty much it; but here he's GOOD!
Finally, I feel like there weren't enough of the court room scenes, that are my favorite ones; they keep showing those a bit boring and useless family drama dynamic argument when the main plot take place around this super interesting case.
Overall The Judge is an effective and well directed movie with performances that all are very good, the story is very interesting, showing family bonding and doing something good for the world as when you walk out of this movie, the only thing you want to do is call your father..
"My father is a lot of unpleasant things, but murderer is not one of them."The Judge may not be the highly effective powerhouse courtroom drama we were expecting when we first heard about the pairing of Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall, but it isn't the terrible film some critics are describing it as either.
It is a somewhat effective melodrama when it centers on the father and son family dynamics, but when it tries to include other subplots like the courtroom drama scenes and the relationship with a former lover, the film falls flat and feels overlong.
Audiences who were expecting a Grisham style courtroom drama will be disappointed because that aspect of the story falls flat, but as a film centering on a dysfunctional father and son relationship it succeeds thanks to the two lead actors.
There are some powerful scenes, but they are ruined sometimes by the clichés the film follows.Aside from Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall's powerful performances (they are both at their best here), there is also a very interesting supporting performances from Vincent D'Onofrio.
Focussing on a stubborn old Judge (Robert Duvall) who is alleged to have killed an ex-convict in a hit and run, and his estranged lawyer son (Robert Downey Jr) who is defending him in a small-town court, all the while trying to reconcile their broken relationship, I wanted to be swept up in it.
Take nothing away from the cast though, Robert Downey Jr nails his key dramatic scenes (although he relies on his trademark cocky charisma a tad too much in the opening 30 minutes), Robert Duvall is fearless in his portrayal of an aging man losing his faculties, and Vincent D'Onofrio demonstrates why he should be getting more big screen supporting work, with a nuanced take on Downey Jr's older brother who never got to leave town for bigger and better things.
Wasn't expecting this to be as amazing as it was.Downey's always good, but this was a Best Supporting Actor winner for Robert Duvall.
Based on the trailer, my anticipation for seeing "The Judge" was high – – Robert Downey Jnr, Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton
great cast.
When on the day of the funeral Judge Palmer gets into his own brand of legal trouble, a battle ensues as to whether Hank can overturn his father's stubborn views that he is better represented by the local hick lawyer cum shopkeeper C.P. Kennedy (played extremely well by Dax Sheperd).Surrounding this main story are the various sub-plots involving his relationship with his three brothers, his past high school flame and his hauntingly torrid past within his home town.There is great acting on display here.
However, I felt Downey Jnr sometimes drifted into being (as my son neatly put it) "a bit Tony Stark-ish in places": playing out the old disarming comedy schtick works brilliantly in the Iron Man or Sherlock Holmes films, but in this intense drama it sometimes detracted from the character of the film.
'THE JUDGE': Three Stars (Out of Five)Courtroom drama film about a successful Chicago lawyer who returns home to Carlinville Indiana (a fictional town), where he grew up, when he finds out his mother died.
The film is emotional, at times, and well acted but it's also pretty uninvolving and extremely uroriginal.Downey Jr. plays Hank Palmer; a wealthy Chicago defense attorney.
While RDJ does his best with what he's given to work with, and Robert Duvall proves, yet again, that he can turn in a great performance regardless of the screenplay, it is the screenplay itself that pulls the legs out from under what could have been a nice little film.
Even though the film boasts of two stand out performances from Downey Jr. and Duvall, they can do little much to save this hotchpotch of courtroom dramatics and familial dysfunction, neatly wrapped in a conventional package that does whatever it takes to shout IMPORTANT, and, please remember us at Academy Awards time.The only surprise in this long, drawn-out, mushy, clichéd, melodrama is a risqué bit of incest; a refugee from a previous draft, perhaps, that somehow made the screen, possibly at the insistence of Downey Jr, who realized his flick needed a little spice.
He travels to his hometown, Carlinville, Indiana, and meets Glen, his estranged father, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) and his slowed brother Dale (Jeremy Strong) that is obsessed for making films.
"The Judge" is a movie with great cast and performances in an average family drama.
In its current form, however, it's a rare hot mess that succeeds mostly because of the audacity and chemistry of its performers, on top of the entertaining content it provides us, despite its lengthy runtime (one-hundred and thirty-seven minutes minus credits).The film concerns Hank Palmer (Robert Downey, Jr.), an immensely successful, arrogant Chicago lawyer, who returns to his hometown of Carlinville, Indiana for his mother's funeral, leaving behind an unsatisfied wife who wants out of their marriage and a young daughter who knows a bit too much for her age.
After being granted the ability by Joseph, Hank now has to go about defending his father, as he is up against the equally-renowned prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton).I cannot proceed further into analysis until I recognize the beauty of Downey, Jr. and Duvall's chemistry and their individual performances.
When put together and given personalities that the men can convey in their sleep (Downey Jr.'s cocky, holier-than- thou attitude and Duvall's all-knowing attitude but occasionally vague intentions), the film explodes on screen.Then there's the man who is likely going to get little praise, due to his minimal involvement until the final act of the film, Billy Bob Thornton, doing the best Billy Bob Thornton performance possible.
The movie really takes its time, but without any actual gain.Duvall's acting is good as the father but Downey seems more arrogant than it should be to emit the emotions such a dramatic theme requires.Overall: I personally would pass it if I was aware about the premise, but if you have 2 1/2 hours to kill....
Reading that a couple other actors were considered for Duvall's role, I can't imagine anyone else as "The Judge." The plot is riveting with a couple other plot lines interwoven, and in a very meaningful way.Duvall and Downey carry the film, but other performances are equally good.
This is a touching and emotional movie about the bonds we have with our family, our roots, and what is truly important in life.Definitely not just a legal drama, although as you would except with a title like "Judge", there are a few courtroom scenes.
The real story and bulk of the movie is about family and coming with grips of who you are and what you stand for in life.Great, great acting by Robert Duvall (almost perfect) and not bad acting by Robert Downey Jr. I generally like Robert Downey Jr, yet his representation of the character here was a bit flat in some scenes, but powerful and very convincing in other scenes.I gave this movie a 9 mostly for the storyline and flow, and also for the powerful acting.
So whoever you are, wherever you are, you will be touched by this story, it will make you think and realize that if there's something you need to correct in your life, now is the right time.This is something different, something special, it's a great drama with great laughs, there's a lot of wit and heart in it, and we all hope to see more movies like this in the future.
There's mystery, humor, charm, love and a great deal of tension in this story, and the brilliant performances by Downey and Duvall are remarkably matched by the supporting cast.
He's a smart character and does have a way of saying exactly what we want him to.Even then, the whole thing has a very "just out of film school" feel to it- some really obvious editing, and blatant music cues (that try to make you think you're feeling more emotion than you are) also add to the amateur feel.So in conclusion, I wouldn't really recommend this unless you love Robert Downy and Robert Duvall and don't mind an otherwise mediocre 2.5 hour film.
But if you want a great story, lots of character development and first rate acting then The Judge is about as good as you'll get this year.Robert Downey, Jr. has always shown himself to be a top quality actor.
and i love duvall so...the trailer is so inadequate as an appetizer.wowmany times during the film i simply looked at my sweetheart in joyful disbelief and when the credits rolled i was floored.i heard that RDJr. wanted to make this for quite some time and i might realize whyit is in part a proactive completion of some of the 12 steps ritualizing on film, thru acting, a lot of themes of addiction and form whence it may comethere's a couple lines in the film where he tells someone to seek help, which he echoes in real life as on the howard stern show from last week where he tells a caller to go to al anon meetingsRDJs character uses the non violent warriors way approach when confronting many themes of family history and addiction which can lead one astray and the consequences there-inwhile plugging the judge on the same stern show afore mentioned he said he wished to pay his old girlfriend sarah jessica a visit, to just catch up on life.
Ugh, a simply dreadful hodge podge of courtroom thriller and family drama.Good actors like Robert Duvall, Robert Downey, Jr. and Vera Farmiga are asked to do something with a preposterous script that no one could save.
I saw the judge ,Robert duval is one of my favorite actors,he is a good man also,but why he did this movie had to be money!!!,I wasted my money seeing this movie-downey at times can be a good actor but this story was sick, incest hinted ,not a movie you go home feeling good about ,instead a movie that you seen 100 times as a court drama -nothing new here.i will not ore you with the details that is for you to see and judge.i judge this movie as 1 of the 10 worst of the year.no creativity no soul, just boring people .1 star.
It's basically says that since Duvall's character is a judge, he should be allowed to walk on a hit and run murder charge.Robert Downey play a hot shot lawyer, whose expertise is more or less in defending rich criminals and keeping them out of jail.
Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is a big-city lawyer representing his estranged father, Judge Joseph (Robert Duvall), accused of murdering a man in a car-bicycle accident late at night.
The Judge stars an all star cast featuring the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Robert DuVall, Ver Farmiga and Billy Bob Thorton and is as surprisingly bad as a film can get.
The plot follows Hank Palmer, a stereotypical hot shot lawyer played effortlessly by Downey as he begins to prep for the case of his life, defending his own father, played by Robert DuVall.
he just has to take the long way home.Robert Duvall seems to enjoy playing the small town Judge who never could balance his professional and personal life...and now faces an even bigger challenge.
There are elements of drama and comedy, thriller and court procedural, love story and family dysfunction all haphazardly thrown together in a 2 hour and 12 minute mess of a movie.Downey is great in his role as a prodigal son returning home to defend his judge father who is accused of a crime hard on the heels of his wife's death.
Instead of making this film fantastic, the reputations of the two huge legends Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall just feel like they weigh this story down.
The film stars Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vincent D'Onofrio, Vera Farmiga, and Billy Bob Thornton.Hank (Downey) comes home to Carlinville, Indiana, for his mother's funeral.
The Judge is an impressive picture, much due to the incredible performances of Robert Duvall being Joseph Palmer and Robert Downey Jr. playing Hank Palmer, father and son.
The film stars Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Dax Shepard, and Billy Bob Thornton.
I absolutely loved this film,Robert Downey jr is such an underrated actor I think.He is soooooo good in this film showing his emotions,Robert Duvall was excellent as well.Bit of a tear jerker but really worth the watch.Robert Downey jr is a hot shot lawyer who never loses a case.When his father ,who is the judge back home is accused of murder,he steps in to defend his estranged father.I thought the acting was outstanding in this film and would definitely recommend it.It shows the tribes and tribulations that lots of families go through and how they still love each other when life gets hard.Set in Massachusetts the scenery is beautiful..
Duval and Downey are terrific but there are also some excellent support performances from the likes of Billy Bob Thornton and Vera Farmiga.
Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall gave us great performances of a father( who is judge) and a lawyer son.
Robert Duvall's performance as an irascible old man dying of cancer in the title role both got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and is the highlight of the film.
Big city lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) returns to his childhood home where his father (Robert Duvall), the town's judge, is suspected of murder.
This one is almost completely centered around the family where Robert Duvall is the father and the judge of the title, and Robert Downey Jr. is his hot-shot, big-city lawyer son.So, if you really enjoy quality films with VERY powerful, intense family Drama, then you should really like this movie..
Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr) a lawyer and estranged son of Judge Joe Palmer (Robert Duvall) defends his father accused of a hit and run accident that resulted in a death.
It's been a long time since I watched a movie with acting this strong and it comes from ALL the characters - Duvall's ailing, demanding, proud Judge Palmer, Downey's hurting, haunted small town boy comes home, D'Onofrio's brother who was robbed of a brilliant ball career by his brother's recklessness, Farmiga's touching girl left behind carrying a torch for a past long since gone - AND YOU BELIEVE THEM.
The acting was great, as expected from Duvall and Downey, but the formula of the film is something that you have seen before: estranged offspring comes back to his backwater home due to some death or sickness in the family and then emotional stuff happens, usually involving some hard headed old relative.
Robert Duvall, acting his age, gives a horrifyingly beautiful performance in the last stages of his very ethical character of the Judge and in his role as the father who was more lenient with the defendants than with his family. |
tt2176668 | Er ci pu guang | Song Qi is a young woman with a sad past, having been orphaned in tragic circumstances. Her father was lost at sea when she was a child; years later, she witnessed the murder of her mother.Currently, Song Qi lives in Beijing, where she works for a plastic surgeon doing computerized facial reconstructions. Her boyfriend, Liu Dong, is a surgeon who works at the same medical clinic.
After finding Zhou Xiao Xi , her best friend, is having an affair with Liu Dong, Song Qi confronts her, a fight occurs, and Xiao Xi is accidentally strangled. Song Qis life is once again catapulted into tragedy and uncertainty. While initially covering up the murder and denying involvement in Xiao Xis disappearance, circumstances cause Song Qi to acknowledge her complicity in the crime. In her subsequent confession to the police, Song Qi s account of the murder is brought into question by the authorities as her confession and subsequent investigation uncover evidence that points to a different reality than that recounted by Song Qi. Song Qi admits to where she buried her friend, but rather than a body, the police unearth a book that appears to have been buried years before. Through passages written in the book, a dual, but forgotten, period of Song Qis past emerges that confuses the boundaries between what is real what is constructed in the imagination. The uncovered truth necessitate an understanding of parallel narratives in Song Qis life, opening the possibility of a future that could not have been foreseen, but one that offers the release from a past that has imprisoned Song Qi in dark passages of memories; actual, false and constructed. | murder | train | imdb | null |
tt1699231 | Quarantine 2: Terminal | Los Angeles. Jenny and Paula are two female flight attendants on their way to LAX for a flight to Nashville, at the gate they meet George. George frequently flies to his parents on either side of the country and rejects Jenny's attempts at kindness and guide of control. Aboard the plane, we meet the rest of the crew and passengers; Captain Forrest and co-pilot Wilson, an elderly couple Bev and Sylvester (who has Parkinson's, unable to speak or move his body), Louise (another elderly woman who brings her cat), Henry (a teacher who has brought a cage of hamsters on the flight but is made to put them in the cargo hold), Nial and Susan (a germophobic couple with a baby on the way), Shilah (an Army Medic), another couple, Hvorst and Nicca (who are both foreign and speak heavily accented English), Preston (a businessman), and finally, Ralph (a heavyset golf player).As they board the plane, Ralph is accidentally bitten by one of Henry's hamsters. As the flight progresses, he deteriorates quickly and demands that the plane land. His mouth begins to foam and he vomits on Jenny, before running in a rage for the cockpit. Preston, Henry, George and Paula manage to knock Ralph out and restrain him with plastic cuffs while Wilson locks the cockpit door as per terrorism protocol.The plane is directed to land at the Las Vegas Airport, but communication with the tower is cut off as they land. Ralph reawakens and bites Paula's nose, severely injuring her. Shilah uses the plane's emergency first aid kit to administer an anesthetic, but Paula is losing a lot of blood and needs immediate medical attention. Frustrated with the lack of communication from the tower, Captain Forrest taxis the plane to a gate, as the other passengers attempt to trap Ralph in the bathroom. Ed, a baggage handler at the terminal, sees the plane land and opens a gate so they can disembark. As they attempt to gain access to the airport, they discover that all the doors into the terminal are locked. Ed leads them to an employee entrance. Forrest and Wilson hold the plane's bathroom door shut while everyone else (except for Bev and Sylvester) escapes into the staging room (a giant warehouse of loading docks and various equipment to move bags).It is here that they are first notified that they are being quarantined. Because of Paula's worsening condition, Shilah tells Jenny that she has a medical kit in her luggage, and Jenny enlists Ed's help to save her friend. The power in the staging room goes out as Preston, Henry, Jenny, Ed, and Nial move back to the plane to find that Wilson and Forrest are gone and the bathroom is filled with blood. Sylvester is still in his seat but his wife is gone as well. He uses his eyes to call the group's attention to a pair of plastic cuffs on the floor that have been chewed through.Ed manages to find a sort of trapdoor from the cabin area of the plane into the hold. Jenny searches for Shilah's medical kit while Nial grabs a gun from his suitcase, and Preston stays with Sylvester above. Nial is bitten by a rodent, and says that it looked like a rat. Jenny reasons that it must have been a hamster. Before climbing back out of the hold, Jenny looks up through the trapdoor to see Preston's laptop spattered with blood. She turns to find Forrest, mouth foaming, eyes red. He attacks her, forcing Nial to shoot him in the back. He is splattered with blood but everyone has escaped without getting bitten.The group moves out of the hold and into the aisle of the plane, where they find Sylvester on the ground, thrown from his wheelchair, and Preston bitten on the back of the neck. They go to regroup with everyone else and are attacked by the infected Bev, whom they lock in the walkway. When they meet up with the rest of the group, they begin to realize that the infection is probably being spread by bites and that the symptoms appear to be those of a "super-rabies" virus turning people bitten in to a rabid type of zombie (or more likely "were-rats"). Sylvester tries to alert the group to a rat lurking above him, but they fail to hear him and the rat attacks him. George notices the rat perched on his head seconds after and knocks it off, drawing enough attention for everyone to see it. They proceed to lock him and Paula up in the fear that they're infected as well.George takes this opportunity to accuse Henry of being responsible for the infection, accusing him of bringing rats onto the plane, and not hamsters. When Henry denies this, George says that he saw long tails peeking out from the carrier, pointing out that hamsters have short, stubby tails. Jenny takes Henry aside to talk to him, and Henry claims that George is just confused. It's illegal to bring lab rats onto a plane, and Henry reasons that if he had he would have been caught by security. It is here that they are attacked by the infected Ralph again. Jenny's screams attract the attention of the group, and together they strangle him with a rubber hose.A team of four CBDT officers arrive and enter the building heavily armed. They direct the group to take Sylvester and Paula out their makeshift cells and administer 'protocol' to them, a pressurized injection to the neck. They demand the others step forward to receive it as well. They are all hesitant, as the CBDT officers refuse to explain what's going on. Louise finally steps forward. While attempting to administer it to her, her cat (who had eaten Ralph's vomit earlier) bites her neck. The team fires and misses several times and Sylvester jumps in and bites one of the officials. After killing him, the three other officials attempt to flee, but find they are locked in. They shoot out the locks and run. They, along with Hvorst, who attempts to flee with them, are all apparently shot to death by the surrounding military personnel.Ed drags a wounded surviving officer inside, and the group flees the infected, now including Nial (from the rat bite he received earlier). He grabs Susan as she attempts to escape with the others. They take shelter in a large catering truck. The group interrogates the CBDT officer.The officer tell them about the quarantine building in L.A. (from the first Quarantine movie) and about a possible outbreak. But before giving them any real answers, he shoots himself.Wilson attempts to attack the group from a opening in the top of the trailer whilst Ed directs George to activate a lift that crushes Wilson between the trailer and a beam above it. They exit the truck and flee, but Henry turns back, alone, without telling anyone where he's going. Ed leads the remainder of the group to a blueprint office to try to find an old drainage tunnel that doesn't appear on the new blueprints. While fleeing, Nicca is dragged away from the group and moments later Paula attacks the rest of them. Jenny reconciles with killing her friend, and attacks her with a metal bar. The infected Paula falls off the catwalk and dies.The surviving group (currently consisting of Jenny, George, Ed, and Shilah) reach the airport engineer's office and start looking for the blueprints detailing where the tunnel is. George snoops into Henry's briefcase, discovering alarming documents and a case containing a vial and a syringe. The infected Nial and Susan arrive and attack, but Henry saves the group by shooting the two to death with Nial's gun. It's discovered he was bitten, but George accuses Henry and pulls out the vial. Henry admits to having started it all, claiming he's, "One of two good guys. [He's] doing something. Otherwise, the population will just keep growing and growing while the planet is dying." Henry is apparently part of the so-called Doomsday Cult (referenced briefly in the previous movie) to bring about the end of the world through a weaponized rabies virus. He threatens to kill Jenny if George doesn't hand over the antidote. Ed promptly attacks him to try getting the gun away, and Henry shoots him dead. The others are immediately scared into compliance.While administering the antidote, Henry admits that he has "friends to the cause" that are helping him with everything, and that they helped him get the rats and antidote through security and let him know his 'lab' in L.A. was compromised and that he should skip town. After administering the antidote to himself, an injection into his brain through his eye socket, he leaves and forces George to come with him, hitting Jenny with the gun when she tries to stop him.Shilah offers to go ahead as Jenny's a little overwhelmed and out of it. While separated, Jenny is attacked by the infected Preston. After a close chase, she kills him by bashing his head over with a piece of machinery. She then gets a second wind and continues her search for George.Shilah shows up, bitten, but with one of the CBDT's thermal/nightvision camera goggles, which make it easier to walk around and see the unknowing infected in the dark. She gives it to Jenny, telling her to go rescue George and "kill that rat." At this time there are only four infected besides Shilah, and Shilah uses herself as a distraction to allow Jenny to escape and find George. She is seen to be attacked by all four infected.Jenny finds George abandoned and crying near the drainage tunnel. It turns out Henry's antidote has failed and the man is now infected. George (unable to see anything in the dark) begs Jenny to stay up out of the tunnel, but she comes down anyways, and is attacked by Henry. She drops the goggles, and George puts them on and is instantly able to see the gun laying on the ground. He grabs it and shoots Henry. He then hands the goggles back to Jenny, who sees that Henry is incapacitated on the ground but still alive. She proceeds to use a metal bar to repeatedly strike Henry's head, killing him.The two remaining survivors escape through an air vent as the terminal is being burnt down by the soldiers. Jenny is revealed to be infected and she begs George to leave her. George refuses to go without her, and Jenny reluctantly agrees to follow. At the end of the tunnel, there are metal bars that George is barely able to squeeze between. He turns back and calls for Jenny, who is now fully infected and attempts to grab him. However, she is too big to fit through the bars and she retreats back into the dark tunnel. George drops the goggles and is seen walking away from the airport fence... free and clearly not infected, but alone.After George leaves, the scene skips to the point of view of the goggles, which you then see Louise's cat through. The cat shakes off what appears to be part of the virus, letting it splatter onto the lens, before assumingly heading into the city of Las Vegas.... | murder | train | imdb | null |
tt0203009 | Moulin Rouge! | In the year 1900, a British writer named Christian (Ewan McGregor), suffering from depression, begins writing on his typewriter ("Nature Boy"). As Christian narrates, the film flashes back to one year earlier upon Christian's move to the Montmartre district of Paris to become a writer among members of the area's Bohemian movement. He soon discovers that his neighbours are a loose troupe of performers led by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo). Toulouse-Lautrec and the others ask for Christian's help, and his writing skills allow them to finish their proposed show, "Spectacular Spectacular", that they wish to sell to the owner of the Moulin Rouge, Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent). The group arrives at the Moulin Rouge as Zidler and his "Diamond Dog Dancers" perform for the audience ("Zidler's Rap Medley"). Toulouse arranges for Christian to see Satine (Nicole Kidman), the star courtesan, in her private quarters to present the work, unaware that Zidler is promising Satine to the wealthy and unscrupulous Duke of Monroth (Richard Roxburgh), a potential investor in the cabaret ("Sparkling Diamonds").
Satine mistakes Christian for the Duke, and dances with him before retiring to her private chamber with him to discuss things confidentially ("Rhythm of the Night", "Meet Me in the Red Room"), but soon learns he is just a writer ("Your Song"). The Duke interrupts them; Christian and Satine claim they were practicing lines for "Spectacular Spectacular". With Zidler's help, Toulouse and the rest of the troupe pitch the show to the Duke with an improvised plot about an evil maharajah attempting to woo an Indian courtesan who loves a poor sitar player ("The Pitch (Spectacular Spectacular)"). The Duke backs the show on the condition that only he may see Satine. Satine contemplates on Christian and her longing to leave the Moulin Rouge to become "a real actress" ("One Day I'll Fly Away"). Christian goes back to Satine to convince her that they should be together, she eventually falls for him ("Elephant Love Medley"). As the cabaret is converted to a theater, Christian and Satine continue seeing each other under the pretense of rehearsing Satine's lines. The Duke becomes suspicious of their frequent meetings and warns Zidler that he may stop financing the show; Zidler arranges for Satine to dine with the Duke that evening, but she falls ill from tuberculosis ("If I should die (Górecki)"). Zidler makes excuses to the Duke, claiming that Satine has gone to confession ("Like a Virgin"). Zidler learns that Satine does not have long to live. Satine tells Christian that their relationship endangers the show, but he counters by writing a secret love song to affirm their love ("Come What May").
As the Duke watches Christian rehearsing with Satine, Nini, a jealous performer, points out that the play is a metaphor for Christian, Satine and the Duke. Enraged, the Duke demands the ending be changed with the courtesan choosing the maharajah; Satine offers to spend the night with the Duke to keep the original ending. At the Duke's quarters, Satine sees Christian on the streets below, and realizes she cannot sleep with the Duke. ("El Tango de Roxanne (Roxanne)"). The Duke attempts to rape her, but she is saved by Le Chocolat, one of the cabaret dancers. Reunited with Christian, he urges her to run away with him. The Duke tells Zidler he will have Christian killed if Satine is not his. Zidler reiterates this warning to Satine, but when she refuses to return, he finally informs her she is dying ("A Fool to Believe"). Zidler tells Satine that to save Christian's life, she has to tell him that she will be staying with the Duke and she doesn't love him ("The Show Must Go On"). Christian tries following her, but is denied entry to the Moulin Rouge, and becomes depressed, even though Toulouse insists that Satine does love him.
The night of the show, Christian sneaks into the Moulin Rouge, intending to pay Satine to return his love just as the Duke paid for her ("Hindi Sad Diamonds"). He catches Satine before she steps on stage and demands she tell him she does not love him. Suddenly they find themselves in the spotlight; Zidler improvises and convinces the audience that Christian is the sitar player in disguise. Christian denounces Satine and walks off the stage. From the rafters, Toulouse cries out, "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return", spurring Satine to sing the song Christian wrote to express their love. Christian returns to the stage, joining her in the song and reaffirming his love for her. The Duke orders his bodyguard to kill Christian, but is thwarted, while the Duke's own attempt is stopped by Zidler. The Duke storms out of the cabaret as Christian and Satine complete their song ("Come What May (Reprise)", "Coup d'État (Finale)").
After the curtain closes, Satine succumbs to tuberculosis. Before she dies, Christian and Satine affirm their love and she tells him to write their story. A year later the Moulin Rouge has closed down, and Christian finishes writing the tale of his love for Satine, a "love that will live forever" ("Nature Boy (Reprise)"). | dramatic, flashback, psychedelic, satire, tragedy, sentimental | train | wikipedia | The cast fills their roles with relish, even when the entire scene totters on the edge of overkill--but oddly enough, it is the focus that sets "Moulin Rouge" apart from other films these days.
A telling comparison: Luhrmann has Nicole Kidman and Ewen MacGregor sing the film's love song.
Witness Luhrmann's audacity: the opening number includes a melding of Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." And here's the spooky part: it works.The entire movie plays this way, and for the most part it works.
It realized that the world of film is only being represented in one small way, whereas Moulin Rouge uses a camera and screen to make something bigger and more extraordinary than has ever been made before.
I have not ever felt for a movie the way I do about "Moulin Rouge." It is not just a movie...it is a cinematic experience the likes of which I have never before seen.
The story, the music, the acting, the visual imagery strikes emotion in me I never before thought possible from a film.
It's one of the year's best films; "Moulin Rouge!" may be a cliché-ridden love triangle, but Baz Luhrmann, the film's director, shines a fresh, stunning originality on a familiar plot.
The joy of watching "Moulin Rouge!" is in the visual stimulation; the plot is more interested in its own character's discoveries than playing mind games with the audience.
"Moulin Rouge" may be one of the first movies to open musical doors for its leading performers.
I will never look at any of these stars in the same light again, even, to my great reluctance, John Leguizamo.The film takes place in the early 19th century, as Christian (McGregor) enters Paris hoping to write love stories.
Much effort was obviously spent on both the visual and audio aspects of this film, and by choosing not to focus on one over the other, and sacrifice the songs for the story or vice versa, the filmmakers were able to make a truly unique, modern musical which those of us who have hated musical since childhood could enjoy.
Moulin Rouge is a blend of old, established techniques with innovative experimental ones, resulting in a movie which could only have been made in our time, yet which has a classic feel.
The end result is a stunning film with unbelievable performances; a cinematic experience that people will be loving, analyzing and trying to imitate for year..
It could be, the film is full of knowing lines "He could make you a star and you're dallying with the writer!" or "They dressed me with the Argentinean's best clothes and passed me for a famous English writer" There is something of Ken Russell's second period in "Moulin Rouge" Everything is emphasized, underlined and repeated at least three times for safety.
Ewan McGregor, superb, and so charismatic that no one would blame me if I confess I had a had crush on him as soon as he broke into "The Hills are alive with the sound of music..." Kidman and McGregor, this film proves it, are the closest thing we've had in years to the big stars of yesteryear.
I say it doesn't matter as long as it allows glorious film talents of the caliber of Kidman and McGregor to give us the pleasures they have even in a bag of wind such as "Moulin Rouge".
`Moulin Rouge,' written and directed by Baz Luhrmann, takes you into a world that is bright and brilliant, fast and flashy and filled with all of the things that make life worth living.
He may not have the greatest voice in the world, but it's a good `stage voice,' and most importantly, he can sell a song, as evidenced by the scene in which he puts across Elton John's `Your Song.' McGregor has a charismatic screen presence, and in this role he really gets a chance to demonstrate his versatility as an actor.As Satine, Nicole Kidman is saucy and sensuous, bringing her character vividly to life, this woman who makes her living by being every man's fantasy as she sings and sashays her way through this world of the Moulin Rouge.
`Moulin Rouge' is an explosion of sights and sounds, a film laced with humor and visual largess that holds a poignant and dramatic story at it's heart.
The bad commercial campaigns of the best movie of all time failed to give Moulin Rouge!
He meets a group of bohemians who are planning to set up a musical play at the famous club Moulin Rouge and they invite him to rewrite the story of their play but at the same time to lure the famous courtesan Satine as to star in their play.
Mr. Luhrmann also takes us comprehend the importance of the visual world of movies with Moulin Rouge!
Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor show off their acting and singing capabilities and at the same time director Baz Luhrmann mixes them together and forms his finest masterpiece up to date.
Can you say "technicolor vomit?" The idea for this film actually has a lot of potential: Take a mish-mash of modern pop songs and blend them together in a creative way to create a romantic musical.
The music has moments of creativity, as when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is blended together with "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend", but all of the scenes come across as little more than videos, not pieces creating a coherent whole.
If however you like movies to have an interesting plot, authentic acting, characters you can care about and a camera that stays still for a few seconds at least, then save your money.
I have read so many posts on this message board concerning the adoration and delight people have expressed for "MOULIN ROUGE", for both its usage of creativity and for its stars, Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor.
I skipped seeing this film when it was playing at the movies but my curiosity was spiked by the time it hit the video rental shelves at my local video store."MOULIN ROUGE" has indeed garnered much favoritism from critic's circles, award panels and esteemed film reviewers alike.
I thought the musical pieces in "MOULIN ROUGE" were 'ear-bleedingly' awful, especially the sequence where both Ewan and Nicole are serenading each other with snippets of songs such as "I Was Made For Loving You" and "Silly Love Songs".
There is one truly awful moment in the film that involves a man screeching out an unforgivable horrendous rendition of The Police's "Roxanne".It was about the scene where John Leguizamo and his side-kicks gate-crash Ewan McGregor's personal home-warming to have him join their performing art troupe where Ewan finds himself bellowing out a sonnet of "The Hills Are Alive" from "THE SOUND OF MUSIC" that I found myself losing patience for this movie.
You could say, the Monkees on acid would be a fair description.The slapstick comedy was boring, the acting abysmal, the plot made no sense, the sets looked like a second rate Disney animated film.
Never have I had a movie make me physically sick, but this one has managed to achieve that distinction and not just because of the editing.I can't say what the story is actually about because I couldn't discern that amidst the cluster of technicolor overload, ridiculously hyperbolic characters, and MTV music videos cinematography.
Kiss songs, U2 songs, gawd this really is a mess.What a dreadful waste of money, of actors and of just about everything else.Seen a few bad films in my time, but this may be the very worst.In a word, it's 'merde'.An embarrassment for all concerned.I am amazed that the makers managed to sit through the final screening without cringing with embarrassment..
At times it wanted to be a good film and that is what people are liking.
Moulin is an MTV style music video at heart featuring good music, fast editing, color, costume, cartoon-like characters, and weak and dreamy love story.
Moulin should have stayed true to its MTV genre and limited itself to 15 minutes in length.Beyond being a well produced music video the film failed miserably in every measure of a full-length feature.
"Moulin Rouge!" is the kind of film that makes you really consider with a jaundiced eye the sorry state of contemporary mass culture with desperate questions like 'Have we sunk so low?', 'Can we possibly survive?' and 'Don't we all deserve to die from shame for having had anything to do with the kind of society that can produce such a film and call it art?' I know it was produced by Australians and we should all cut them some slack for their relative lack of sophistication.
And I can only see this movie for what it really is: a desperate attempt at meaning from feeble minds and, now that Oscar time is approaching, a desperate grasp for Academy members' attention and the supplementary mazzoola that Oscar's prestige can still confer on this undercooked, overripe tripe."Moulin Rouge!" - the exclamation point is meant to express revulsion - is to movie musicals what "Family Guy" is to TV sitcoms: a cheap gimmick for retards, a cheat and an easy way out..
I love this movie.Baz has the greatest ideals and the best taste.This movie is even greater than than even Brassed off.I of course love Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman are the greatest actors\ress.That dynamic duo both have great singing voices.The only part I don't get is why The Duke didn't die instead of Satine.I almost cried.
Luhrman's original style and the sheer talent of the cast (McGregor, Kidman, Broadbent, and more) prove that the musical genre is not dead and, more so, that it can be extremely enjoyable to watch.
Beyond this, add the fact that Ewan Mcgregor cannot sing, Kidman's voice was flat, and both of them gave up trying to act before the movie had even begun, and you have an undeniably excruciating experience..
Moulin Rouge is probably the worst film I've seen this year and That really is something when you know this year I have watched things like Drop Dead Gorgeous and Hour of the pig!
I was totally disgusted by this film.The Aztec Mummy is an Academy Award winner compared to this "TRASH".I've Never seen a worse film than this.The people at FOX who were behind this garbage should be Imprisoned for life and forced to watch the film every waking hour of their lives.Everyone I know who saw it has the same opinion and tell others not to waste their money seeing this film.I can't get over how these people can put out "TRASH" like this and think that they can get away with it.I would have demanded a refund from the theater if I had paid to see it,thank goodness for free movie passes.This film Ranks a rating of "DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME and MONEY"..
Perhaps I have reached a point where I can no longer communicate effectively with a significant proportion of today's movie fans.My advice to readers is that those who can enjoy watching music videos continuously for an hour or more might love this film, anyone else should consider staying away.
But, either way, do not watch this film to experience the magnetic attraction that the Moulin Rouge exerted in the Paris entertainment district for such a long period of time.
It is my habit to refrain from commenting on movies that are not to my taste because it is not fair to the product to slang it just because it doesn't appeal to you; however, in the case of Moulin Rouge I'll make an exception.Baz Luhrmann got it wrong-wrong from the very opening right to the end.
Its like watching a music video which is already too fast on fast forward.When the film is not going off at this crazy pace, it is then comprised of extreme close-ups.
Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor were so beautiful in it and their voices too, this is an amazing story and film and I believe that Baz Luhrman is talented....like I said absolutely moving..
In this sense, when comparing Julianne Moore's unforgettable performance to Kidman's in the same film, you understand in what ways she could also be viewed as unconvincing as the doomed courtesan Satine in Moulin Rouge.
My final words on Moulin Rouge are that if I'm going to watch a gaudy, noisy song-and-dance with funny characters talking in silly voices, give me the original Muppet Show series any day..
The story is the epitome of triteness, creating a soap opera melange out of Camille, Orpheus, and the old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney movies where they decide `let's put on a show.' As a deconstructive musical, it depends on send-ups of popular songs to fill out most of its excruciating two-plus hours (there is some undistinguished new material), and this is interspersed with bits and pieces imitating scenes from a wide variety of films of the past, most notably the works of The Three Stooges.
After that, it settled into a frustrating love story and the bogged down drastically the rest of the way.As for the music, there are too many slow numbers sung by mediocre singers like Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke, the two romantic interests in the film.
And so I went, journeying into the unforgettable trip that was "Moulin Rouge!" - now and forever one of my all-time favourite MOVIES (not just movie musicals) ever!
Likewise with "R+J", "Moulin Rouge!" oozes with theatrical energy, gorgeous costumes/set designs, terrific music, and of course, first-rate acting from its wonderful two leads, as well as the supporting cast.Watching the first few minutes, I could unfortunately see why this movie was ignored and laughed at by many critics, filmgoers, etc.; apparently it developed a bit of a "cult" following of sorts after that.
Never has a film stolen so much from previous songs, previous movies, previous musicals, and called itself inventive and inspired.
If you want to watch a film that reinvented the musical with a classic work (Romeo and Juliet) but original songs, go rent the amazing West Side Story (1961) starring the deceased but incredible Natalie Wood.
With all of the media attention bestowed on this project because of Nicole Kidman, and the fact that this was a musical, I was curious to see how it had turned out (plus my girlfriend wanted to go).The film begins quite promisingly, with an elaborate computer generation of Paris in 1899, including some whimsical touches, showing very interestingly the area of Paris in which the Moulin Rouge ("Red Windmill" in English) is found.
You're not going to believe this, but the film I was most strongly reminded of when I watched "Moulin Rouge" was "Mission: Impossible 2".
The fact that one is an action movie and one a musical seems a very minor difference to me.The plot of "Moulin Rouge" is both hackneyed and bad, which is a disasterous combination.
"Moulin Rouge".Many say you either love this film or hate it.
Everything that was horrendous about Inspector Gadget is equally true of Moulin Rouge, plus much more besides.I can't believe this film was nominated for awards, I actually feel sick after watching it and created an IMDb account purely so I could rate it 1 out of 10 and write this review in an attempt to exorcise the demons.
The quick cut-cut-cut editing, the forced and cheesy acting, the wanna look cool visual style, the 'they've done this story a hundred times before but I'll show that I'll do it the best' comes down to this: the director wants us to believe that this is great by those things.
For instance: a can-can type number sung by the Moulin Rouge cast alternates with the audience singing back lines from Nirvana's `Smells Like Teen Spirit': `here we are now, entertain us' etc.; Christian eventually wins over Satine in a conversation come musical duel comprised almost entirely of lines from pop songs brilliantly imaginative & witty.
`Moulin Rouge' is a truly modern musical; Luhrman has taken hold of an old & cliched genre, injected it knowingly with 21st Century irony, imbued it with great energy, imagination & talent; & has produced a post-modern masterpiece, one of the most audacious & original films seen in a very long time - & one for which he deserves every success.
After having a great time watching one of the best musical movies I've seen, I was left wanting more so I went to my Netflix recommendations and saw Moulin Rouge.
It wasn't my type of movie, and I loved it.The interesting thing is, if this film hadn't been a musical, I doubt I would have liked it as much.
A musical romance, two of my least favourite genres, that produced a hit song which I loathe, and I ended up loving the film.
Whole fairy tale like feeling of the story makes this movie more enjoyable to watch.I am not huge fan of musicals, but I must confess that I adore Moulin Rogue.
Ewan Mcgregor does mans work as Christian, a romantic, who fells in love radiant Moulin Rogue courtesan Satine, played Nicole Kidman, who has never looked more stunning.
I think the 'Moulin rouge'is the most romantic film I have ever seen!
For the skeptics who haven't seen it-this film is a visual masterpiece even if you don't think you'll like the movie see it for that reason.I had really looked forward to seeing this a lot and luckily this was one that DIDN'T disappoint.
The Duke (Richard Roxburgh) is definently overacted, and frankly, Zidler (John Broadbent), is sooooo horribly annoying, you really would want to throw yourself off the Moulin Rouge windmill.I love this movie.
The sets and costumes are beautiful, and very colourful, and the dancing is really Spectacular Spectacular (excuse the pun...), but long periods of time with the Bohemians, or at the Moulin Rouge can make you feel like you're stuck in a circus tent. |
tt0109412 | Chik loh go yeung | ''Basic Instinct'' meets ''Nikita'' with a touch of ''Vertigo'': a cop with various male-related problems finds himself involved with a group of feuding female assassins, and is convinced one of them is his former girlfriend !Kitty (Chingmy Yau) is a vicious young woman who has no qualms about stabbing girlfriend-bullying men in the genitals. Tinam (Simon Yam) is a cop who is undergoing a rather traumatic period: he shot his own brother by accident and as a result vomits every time he handles his gun.When Kitty severely injures a man by stabbing him in the groin, Tinam attempts to arrest her but can't manage it. Kitty later turns up at the police station and twists and turns the facts to the point that Tinam has no choice but to start a relationship with her. This reveals Kitty as a subtle manipulator. Tinam, who has also become impotent, finds that with Kitty he no longer feels this way, though, for now, she is content with just leading him along.Kitty's father is married to a new wife but it is a tense marriage and one evening he catches her with another man called Bee (Ken Lo). In the fight that follows, Kitty's father falls down some stairs and is killed.Furiously determined on revenge, Kitty breaks into Bee's office and proceeds to kill him, his bodyguards and most of his staff (there is some indication that he is involved with organised crime). In the course of her escape she takes a woman hostage but then, unexpectedly, the woman helps her out, disposing of many of the pursuers herself.The woman turns out to be Sister Cindy (Wai Yiu) who is in fact a professional assassin. She was probably out to kill Bee herself. Seeing that Kitty has potential, she proceeds to train her and give her a new identity. The training includes the killing of enraged, chained-up paedophiles in Sister Cindy's cellar. Before long the pupil is outsmarting the teacher.For her first mission, Kitty accompanies Sister Cindy and murders a member of the Japanese yakuza. This leads to a contract being placed on them and the assignment is entrusted to Princess (Carrie Ng), one of Sister Cindy's former protégés and a lesbian with an equally deadly young lover called Baby (Madoka Sugawara).While investigating the murder himself, Tinam goes to check up on an air hostess whom the victim met. The witness is Vivian Shang who Tinam recognises as Kitty. She denies this but renews their relationship.Sister Cindy proceeds to murder other people who could connect Kitty to Vivian Shang, including Tinam's superior and a witness to the crotch-stabbing incident. Kitty does however stop her from killing Tinam himself. Kitty and Tinam consummate their relationship, but their different professions means that it will be difficult for things to go any further.Sister Cindy for her part decides that Kitty has lost the killer touch, but on the other hand has found happiness with Tinam and tells her to leave and make the most of it.Princess, who is supposed to kill Kitty, builds up an obsession of her own for the girl, which leads to some conflict with Baby. They do however set about killing Sister Cindy who, with death approaching, puts up a good fight. But she is ultimately defeated due to a ploy used by Princess earlier that day: she kissed Sister Cindy but her lipstick contained poison which, combined with some wine she has drunk, kills her.Kitty goes into hiding but later confronts Princess, apparently willing to become her partner both in business and in bed. Princess subsequently falls into the same trap she set Sister Cindy: when they kiss, Kitty passes on some poisoned lipstick of her own. Tinam then bursts in, shooting away at Princess' henchmen, apparently having overcome his vomiting problems.In the battle, Tinam also kills Baby and a furious Princess pursues him and Kitty back to Sister Cindy's home. The poison in her system catches up with her however and she dies with Kitty taunting her by claiming that she on the other hand will get to hospital in time to survive.In fact the poison inside Kitty has also taken effect. Unwilling to lose her again, Tinam fires his gun into the gas oven causing them and the house to go up in flames. | neo noir, cruelty, murder, violence, flashback, revenge, sadist | train | imdb | If you've been wondering what all the fuss is about Hong Kong cinema, but didn't know where to start, watch this very sexy very action packed film about a bunch of too beautiful to believe lesbian hit women.
Sure, John Woo did make the best Hong Kong films around, but this is the sexiest.
There is one watershed scene (for Hong Kong censorship), where a couple of women make out in a pool, after killing a guy, the bloody water spreading around them.
How her relationship with Sister Cindy and Tinam also keeps it interesting....and heck, add Princess and Baby in the mix for more fun!Then, you have the action.
From gang shootouts, training exercises, and assassinations, the action scenes are fast and frantic and done really well.
Plus, Wong Jing's eccentric flair adds quirkiness; recall the crime scene where the cops are looking for something and you'll see what I mean.A great film with a bit of everything added in.
If you want to check out this movie prepare for 100 minutes of wild Martials Arts, high class erotic and deadly femme fatales!
In fact, "Naked Killer" doesn´t bore a second, because it satisfies in all sectors: fitted with elegant pictures that could be taken from John Woo´s 1980s-gems, heavy gunfights, violent killings and some naked female flesh this film will surely delight the fans of Asian action movies - and probably not only them!
The sometimes campy acting doesn´t bother, however I liked the performances of "Bullet in the Head"-star Simon Yam, main actress Chingmy Yau as Kitty, Kelly Yao as her mistress Sister Cindy and last but not least Carrie Ng as lesbian killer chick Princess.
I´d give 9 out of 10 for this great sex´n violence-comic strip from Hong Kong!
I've always wondered why films like this have little appeal to the female sex.
I always thought it was a lack of enthusiasm for thinly-plotted junk food movies that are full of action, sex and violence.
This movie has tough women in the lead roles while the men are all submissive, dorky or just plain scumbags.
I now see that this movie was made by men to appeal to men who want to be submissive to charismatic, sexy and deadly beautiful women.
It's no wonder this film appeals to those like me who have often watched movies to make up for their awkwardness in social situations, especially involving the opposite sex.
But anyway this film is a darn near perfect mix of stylish sex, wild action, black comedy and gory violence perpetrated on scummy males..
Yeah, I just finished this brand new DVD of the highly-acclaimed, sexy Hong Kong action thriller...
or that camera angle..." Sure enough, I check out the running times online and it seems that the US version is 11 minutes shorter than the Hong Kong version.
Probably just some female nudity (since there doesn't ever seem to be anyone really "naked" in this movie...
If you're into so called 'chinatown' action movies then this is one to watch.
When you see this you will find some cliches in it between some of the characters, following a well worn path, but the story and action more than make up for it.
I gave it an 8 but then generally I prefer Hong Kong and Japanese action movies to American ones..
this is one of the better Hong Kong action/romance/killers films.
This one is a delight, although not always deep, it has a great cast of characters played very well by veterans of the Hong Kong film industry.
This film is an excellent example of the finest in second generation HONG KONG action.
More importantly, the story is simple but captivating, with characters you can love or hate respectively, and the cinematography is razor sharp, using strong hues to paint each scene in mood and mystery when needed, or flooding scenes with light in time to punctuate the occasional comic relief.
In short, a fun romp with lots of killer scenes.
NAKED KILLER admittedly has some very cool and stylish action going on, but that's about it.
The storyline is convoluted and goofy at times, and it just didn't really hold my interest.A girl is taught to become a female assassin and the cops are out to get them.
An OK action-film but nothing really extraordinary.
There are some hot ass chicks who show their tits a few times, and again - some well staged action sequences, but nothing for me to really write home about.
May be worth a look to the CATIII enthusiasts or action-junkies, but there's better material from both genres out there.
Okay Hong Kong female actioner..
"Naked Killer"/"Chiklo Gouyeung" is a typical example of Hong Kong vicious action cinema.It has plenty of bloody violence-the action is fast-paced and never lets up.There are some energetic fight scenes reminiscent in style to John Woo's explosive action flicks.All women contained here are beautiful and deadly.The film actually reminds me similarly-themed Hong Kong thrillers like "Black Cat" or "Beyond Hypothermia".The acting is decent-the performances by Chingmy Yau and Simon Yam are especially worthwhile.So if you're an action buff give this title a look-you won't be disappointed.7 out of 10.A perfect film for fans of highly energetic action stuff!.
NAKED KILLER is a landmark film in Hong Kong cinema, one that was successful enough to help kick-start a whole wave of 'erotic' thrillers that would fill cinema screens for the next decade.
Despite the sexiness in this one, it's more of an assassin thriller, albeit with lots of erotic interludes, near-nudity, and saucy shenanigans between the cast members.I wanted to enjoy the film, and indeed on a superficial level it is enjoyable.
This guy's films always seem incredibly dated to me because of his over-stylised editing and the like, and NAKED KILLER is no exception.
I actually enjoyed NAKED KILLER 2 (directed by Andrew Lau) more because of this, not to mention 2004's SO CLOSE.Still, NAKED KILLER provides some things of merit for Hong Kong movie fans, not least an amusing role for Simon Yam as a disturbed cop who vomits every time he draws his gun.
Chingmy Yau garners all of the attention as the impossibly beautiful young woman who becomes an assassin, and she's well supported with a knowing performance from Kelly Yao as the older professional.
I also spotted Jackie Chan's bodyguard, Ken Lo, playing a sleazy businessman.As is usual for these films, the movie is surprisingly light on nudity, with the main actresses teasing throughout but delivering little; only the unknown supporting actresses are willing to strip off.
The action scenes come out of nowhere and are way over the top, with the shoot-out in the car park being a particular favourite of mine, although the ending is also fun.
NAKED KILLER is certainly no classic but it passes the time for fans of this sort of stuff..
Mainly due to the fact that this movie seems to rely more on the sexiness of the actresses then the actual action scenes.
However, what seperates this film from Charlie's Angels is that it is more violent and more sexy (without havng to show gratuitess nudity.
And when the action scenes come, they are extremly stylised and and almost fantasy-like.
That ius not to say that the action scenes incredably spectacular, in fact, they seem like pale imatations of John Woo or Yuen Woo Ping as well as their being more flips and twirls then actual kicks and punches.
What almost saves the action scenes though is the demented violent acts committed by the characters.
What also helps is that the actresses are always carressing each other and such in between the action scenes.note: as mentioned before this review is for the cut version.
That being said, there are certain scenes that appear to be cut short (like 10 minutes had to be cut to get it down to an R-rating so one has to wonder what was done in the movie).
the good thing about this R-rated version is that you can get it for a relatively cheap price, 15 bucks, under the HK classic series along with jackie Chan's CIty hunter and Hong Kong 1941 with Chow Yun Fat.
Hong Kong action movie that is full of sex and action....
I remember having this movie on VHS way back in the early 90's, and remembered the movie to be fairly alright, so I got it on DVD here in 2012, many years after having thrown out the VHS version.
But of course, I have always been a fan of Hong Kong cinema, so it was just a matter of time before it would end up in the movie collection again.The story in "Naked Killer" is about the young, attractive and flirtatious Kitty (played by Chingmy Yau) who end up in training at Sister Cindy (played by Wai Yiu) to become a professional killer, using her looks and sexual appeal to get close to the targets and then eliminate the target.
However, Kitty falls in love with police man Tinam (played by Simon Yam) and is torn between loyalty towards her mentor and the love for Tinam."Naked Killer" takes your average Hong Kong action movie from the 1990's and spices it up with a healthy dose of sexual flavor, like that seen in "La Femme Nikita" and "Basic Instict".
And it is helped along by the action and gun fights, which of course is a given trademark for the Hong Kong movies from that particular period.
But, of course, it is no secret that the movie her really plays on the sexual appeal and makes heavy use of semi-sexual contents, which can be discussed whether or not it was really all that necessary.
And oddly enough, there wasn't actually much killing going on in the movie, despite many of the characters were professional contract killers - kind of anti-climatic in a way.Those familiar with Hong Kong cinema will of course be familiar with this, at the time of its release, very controversial movie.
And it was of course also the movie that put Chingmy Yau on the map.
And you have Simon Yam, of course, though his character was a bit too much (as a police man who accidentally having shot his own brother, and now vomits every time he just holds a gun - it was just a bit too unrealistic), but still, he is a familiar face in Hong Kong cinema.
And it should also be said that Carrie Ng (playing Princess) actually did a great job in this movie as well."Naked Killer" is well worth checking out, especially if you have an interest in the 90's wave of Hong Kong action movies.
Chingmy Yau is the female equivalent to femme action movie as Chow Yun Fat was to the male action movies to come from Hong Kong in the 90's.I enjoyed the movie back in the early 90's, and I enjoyed it still here in 2012.
I would have give the movie a 6/10 rating, but settled on a 5/10 rating because, in my opinion, there was just a little bit too much focus on the sex scenes and the usage of sexual situations.
Hong Kong Legends have a fabulous digitally restored and remastered version out of DVD that is well worth checking out and it comes with some good extra material as well..
That's Kitty (Chingmy Yau), the lead in this action yarn that has a hot edge.
It is the prelude to Raped by An Angel (aka naked Killer 2).Mom's lover kills Kitty's dad and she goes on a rampage that leaves a couple of dozen dead.
Of course, she is helped by Sister Cindy (Wai Yiu), who teachers her how to do it right - be a cleaner, that is.The movie is really funny.
When one of the cops eats a victim's "wedding tackle" thinking it was a sausage, I busted a gut.It was funny, lots of action, beautiful girls, but it was PG-13 at best..
Excellent Action / Fantasy film.
I was in Hong Kong when this movie was released, and I saw it as a feature movie there.
There was a big poster (about 40' x 20') on building walls hanging everywhere around town with sexy rear end of Chingmy Yau in leather shorts with a gun in her hand.
At the time I'd say Chingmy had the cutest rear end in all of Hong Kong.
This is one of the best (if not the best) erotic fantasy / action movie Hong Kong has ever produced, and features again three of the best Hong Kong talents (Yau, Yam, Ng) in one of their most intriguing roles.Chingmy Yau despite her sex symbol status was a fairly conservative working woman.
I greatly enjoyed this movie.
Chingmy Yau is a beautiful actress and a pleasure to watch.
However watching the video I felt as if I were in a Hong Kong cinema.
The real beauty of the movie is in the way it is produced rather than in a unique story line.
I highly recommend it to those who like a movie that is great to watch..
A DVD verdict on Naked Killer.
This movie was shallow, boring, clichéd and overly glossy (trying to be an Asian Basic Instinct) but at least that Hollywood movie had good acting, the acting or should say "posing" in this movie is horrible, and the dialogue, my baby brother has more interesting words.
The story is poor too, but there is some violence and a little nudity, but this doesn't cut the mustard.If if you think I'm too harsh because I am a prude, check out these classics that at least have something to say and are stylish and clever...
go get Red to Kill (shocking), Ebola syndrome (to be sickened), Baise Moi (realistic sex and violence), Last Exit (underground sex and violence), Combat Shock (bleak and violent), as top examples of movies that do it right.Give it 5-10 because there is some nice girls but it's all so fake..
Producer-director Wong Jing is notorious for throwing together disparate narrative elements, gratuitous action and silly sight gags without bothering to blend them into a homogeneous whole, and the result is usually an infuriating headache trying to pass as cinema.
The result is so wildly contrived that it wanders into the territory of self-parody, but the wild energy of the movie keeps things entertaining if you don't think too much, the production design gives everything a surprisingly posh look for an HK actioner and strong central performances hold the affair together between punch-ups.
Carrie Ng, normally cast in sympathetic roles, plays Hong Kong's most virulent man- hater, Princess, a hard core lesbian and stone cold killer, who hires out as an assassin, but you get the feeling she would off guys for grins.
Simon Yam takes a break from his usual rolling-eyed psycho types to play a straight-forward cop on the trail of Princess, and producer Wong Jing cast his then-mistress Chimgmy Yau as a rookie assassin who becomes an object of fascination for Princess, but who then spurns the killer's offer of girl-girl love.
The second half of the the movie involves Princess stalking her intended and their former mentor, Sister Cindy, eventually getting into a brutal throwdown with Yau that may be nastiest girl-fight in the history of Hong Kong cinema, and this is saying something.
Naked Killer in the UK.
I must disagree with Le Froque, who states that Naked Killer is banned here in Britain; I myself bought a copy of the uncut version some five years ago.
It seems to be a common misconception that us Brits are too straitlaced when it comes to sex and violence but the opposite is true - yes, it isn't seen in everyday life but we've got more than our fair share going on behind closed doors.Naked Killer is good film but the English subtitles are a nightmare.
Good HK action flick.
Not as good as John Woo's or Ringo Lam's films, but still a nice change of pace, a lot campier than Woo or Lam.
Good cinematography by William Yim and stylish direction by Clarence Fok Yiu-Leung, a couple of very impressive action sequences.
As usual with Hong Kong movies, the wonky subtitles provide a bit of unintentional entertainment..
Beautiful Naked Killers.
*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*I never thought Asian women were attractive until I saw this movie.
Thank you "Naked Killer".
This is the first time I actually liked a movie solely for the looks of the women.
Not because of sex or nudity, just to look at them.
I say again, gorgeous.So four beautiful women are assassins.
No real story to speak of, just beauty to look at.
Then there is Princess who is a very hot lesbian assassin.
There were some cool fight scenes.But again, it's really about looking at beautiful women killers.
One point against the flick: Only one killer technically gets naked.
But there's enough beauty and mayhem to keep the movie enjoyable..
A Hong Kong version of Romeo and Juliet (Sort of).
I guess it is the erotic scenes that add much more to it as this fully delves into the love that exists between the killer and the cop.Naked Killer is about a woman, Kitten, who witnesses her father murdered by her stepmother's lover.
He is determined not to leave her, and in the end she folds and runs to his arms, but can now never return to the world of the killers.It is the plot that gives this movie a lot of strength.
The action scenes in this movie are at the excellent standard of Hong Kong cinema, and the movie climaxes in a tragic ending.As is typical for this movie, a path is created that leads to only one ending.
Though choices exist, they are not ones that she is willing to make.I must say that this is a brilliant movie, though the one that I watched was the unedited version.
I do not know what the Chinatown Video version is like, but the movie is still one that is phenomenally brilliant. |
tt2193215 | The Counselor | A high-level cartel lawyer (never addressed by any name except as "the Counselor") and his girlfriend Laura are talking sexily in bed. Meanwhile, somewhere in Mexico, cocaine is packaged in barrels and concealed in a sewage truck, driven across the border and stored at a sewage treatment plant.
After the Counselor goes to Amsterdam to meet with a diamond dealer to purchase an engagement ring for Laura, he proposes and she accepts. At a party back in Texas thrown by Reiner and girlfriend Malkina, a former call girl with a greedy lust for money, the Counselor discusses a nightclub he and Reiner intend to run, as well as an upcoming drug deal, which would be his first.
The Counselor meets with Westray, a business associate of Reiner's. He hears of the deal's four-thousand percent return rate, but Westray warns the Counselor about becoming involved, saying that Mexican cartels are merciless. The Counselor remains outwardly confident and unconcerned.
Malkina gains knowledge of the deal through her access to Reiner and by conveniently overhearing various intercoms in Reiner's home. Reiner describes an execution device called "the bolito" which gradually strangles and decapitates the victim. Reiner also tells the Counselor how disturbed and oddly aroused he was from an incident where he witnessed Malkina masturbate with his Ferrari California's windshield.
The Counselor visits a client, a prison inmate named Ruth who is on trial for murder. Ruth's son is a biker and a valued cartel member known as "the Green Hornet," recently arrested for speeding. The Counselor agrees to bail him out of jail.
Malkina senses an opportunity to undermine the Counselor's upcoming deal and to profit for herself. She employs "the Wireman" to steal the drugs. He decapitates the biker, Ruth's recently released son, with a wire stretched across the highway. Then the Wireman steals the truck containing the cocaine.
Learning of the theft, Westray meets with the Counselor to notify him that the biker is dead and the cocaine stolen, bleakly intoning the Counselor's culpability. Westray says he is leaving town immediately and suggests the Counselor do the same. Westray explains that the cartel's ruthlessness extends to creating "snuff films" where murder victims are filmed having necrophilia performed on them on camera. The Counselor makes an urgent call to Laura, arranging to meet her in another state, where he will explain.
The cartel has learned that the Counselor bailed out the Green Hornet, which appears as suspicious timing and fully blameworthy for the punitive purposes of the cartel. In Texas, two cartel members pretending to be police officers pull over the Wireman and his accomplice, killing both and also gunning down an innocent driver who comes upon the scene.
Reiner is accidentally killed by cartel members while they are attempting to capture him. The cartel then kidnaps Laura. In a last-ditch effort, The Counselor contacts Jefe, a high-ranking cartel member, for suggestions on what to do next. Jefe darkly and mordantly advises the Counselor to resign himself to the choices he made long beforehand.
The Counselor goes to Mexico, hoping to find and rescue Laura there. A package is slipped under the door of his hotel room and in it he finds a DVD with "Hola!" written on it, breaking down in heavy sobs at the awareness that the disk likely contains a snuff film of Laura sent by the cartel. In an unnamed location, Laura's headless body is dumped into a landfill.
Malkina's failed effort to steal the drugs does not deter her. She tracks Westray to London, where she hires a blonde woman to seduce him and steal his bank codes. She then has accomplices steal Westray's laptop, and he is killed with the "bolito" device that Reiner had previously described. Malkina then meets her banker at a restaurant, coolly explaining how she wants her profits and accounts to be handled. | neo noir, philosophical, murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | With three of his novels being adapted into critically acclaimed films, Cormac McCarthy has opted to try his hand at screen writing, and the fruits of his labor can be seen in The Counselor.
Directed by Ridley Scott, the film stars Michael Fassbender as a high-priced lawyer who decides to dabble in something a bit less than legal in order to make some extra cash.Against the advice of associates Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt), The Counselor (whose name is never mentioned) has somehow gotten himself involved in the drug trafficking business, although the film remains ambiguous about the specifics.
Motivated by the love of a beautiful woman (Penelope Cruz) and the desire to maintain the lifestyle he's enjoyed for so long, he never takes into account the sort of consequences he may be subjected to, should things not go according to plan.As the trailers for the film make abundantly clear, things do not, in fact, go according to plan - at least, that's what we're led to believe, since the details of The Counselor's involvement in said plan are never actually revealed.
Despite being warned about this scenario from the very beginning, by nearly every other character in the film, The Counselor remains inexplicably shocked and stunned when things begin to unravel.Ridley Scott's latest directorial effort is peppered with lengthy scenes that find The Counselor engaged in conversations with other characters as they try to impart kernels of wisdom, truth and philosophy.
Despite the brilliance of his literary works, he doesn't take into account the fact that living, breathing people rarely speak in monologues, and there's scarcely an ounce of naturally delivered dialogue in any of these exchanges.Indeed, if you watch closely you can actually see the actors struggling to wrap their heads (and mouths) around these complex conversations that are surely meant to sound intelligent, but come across as anything but.
At first glance, it seems as if it's impossible for The Counselor to be proved a disappointment from the looks of its amazing cast (the likes of Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt, and Penelope Cruz), exceptional director with a credible resume, and a totally prestigious author signed on for his first screenplay.
Was so very reluctant to go see this due to the amount of extremely negative reviews, glad I didn't listen.Like all of you I was drawn to the writer, director & cast combination which told me this film had a chance at greatness, well I'm not so sure about greatness but this is a very good movie, one which both my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed.The plot is secondary, only the story outline is necessary ("honest citizen" buys into a onetime drug deal which goes bad and there are serious consequences) to act as a framework around the events that unfold.
With a star studded cast, featuring the likes of Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt, and directed by Ridley Scott, with a script from one of the greatest American novelists alive, Cormac McCarthy, obviously I went to see "The Counselor" on face value alone.
It was written by the talented Cormac McCarthy, this is his screenplay debut and his lack of experience shows, he seems to forget that he is writing the script of a modern film and not a novel or a play.
A great film, but not an easy film.And as good as Fassbinder is -- and he is -- Cameron Diaz steals the movie even with minimal screen time, using her eyes like a weapon, as far from her role in Charies Angels as the earth is from the moon..
I don't think we even cared that much about what happened anymore and were frankly just glad we didn't have to watch any more.I don't know how anyone could really enjoy this movie unless they were looking for something with no action, no plot and dialog performed by actors who seem more bored than I was just watching the film.
The story, like most McCarthy tales, is simple: a nameless lawyer (Fassbender), madly in love with his fiancée Laura (Cruz) and seeking to provide for her and give her the life she deserves, decides to get in a once-and-I'm-out deal: namely, to get involved in a venture dealing with twenty million dollars worth of drugs being ferried to the States from Mexico.
The counselor's associates in this job are the flamboyant Reiner (Javier Bardem, returning to McCarthy's bleak world yet again, though this time sporting a Brian Grazer-esque hairdo instead of Chigurh's pageboy) and middleman Westray (Brad Pitt, sporting a Tom Petty style), both of whom warn the counselor that this deal will change his life in ways he cannot fathom.
The Counselor is not an easy watch, both because of its violence and because Scott and McCarthy (I have to credit both men; it feels like such a collaborative creative effort) don't dumb it down.
On the other hand, if you are among the diminishing number of movie-goers who actually enjoys deeply portentous dialog (this is a GOOD thing), first-rate acting, and a story line leading to a denouement that that will leave you wanting to see this film again and again, then this is a film for you.
I've read reviews complaining its too predictable but I feel like that's the point, as it involves a relatively "good man" getting in bed with a drug cartel and everyone kind of tells him to be sure that he understands, that bad things could/will happen.
I don't see this as a complaint, since A.) real people get involved in this stuff knowing bad things can happen despite all the warnings heard ahead of time and B.) some of the obvious foreshadows have great pay offs, and C.) knowing what's to come and watching anyways has a sort of knowing dread about it.
Fantastic dialogs, which although unlikely because we will never find lawyers and killers as poetic as the ones depicted on this movie (Cormac McCarthy, after all, is a great writer) summarize and propose precise reflections on how little we really understand about the violence and brutality of drug trafficking.
It's not cryptic dialogs as some suggest, you just have to pay close attention to the details.Adding that the violence displayed in the film is unbelievably cruel considering that this is a AAA movie ( big budget, great director, big-name casting, famous writer, etc), this become the most pleasant surprise I've watched this year.
Ridley Scott does a superb job of capturing the essence of McCarthys screenplay, make up your own mind as there are too many negative reviews.In my opinion this will grow a following and be considered a great film in the future, the performances are superb the story quite simple when you think about it (to many people saying it's complicated, it is not.It's a cold movie with cold characters and not your usual Hollywood nonsense which is where I think the bad reviews are coming from, people see Scott with Fassbender, Pitt, Cruz etc and expect the usual fair.Go into this with an open mind and enjoy the story for what it is..
Written by Cormac McCarthy, it's very similar in tone to his best known work, "No Country for Old Men".I know some will disagree (well, many already have with the lukewarm ratings and disappointing box office it's getting--the R ratings crowd apparently opting for MTV's "Bad Grandpa", sigh), but I think this is Ridley Scott's best since "Gladiator".
When I first heard about this film and its pedigreed credentials: Director Ridley Scott, Starring Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt, I was excited to see it.
However, for some reason this film never really completely discloses, he still felt the need to get himself involved with a Mexican drug cartel for additional cash, peppered with colorful characters, like the wild-haired Reiner (Javier Bardem), his slinky girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) and the urban cowboy Westray (Brad Pitt).
In this review, I reveal important plot details regarding "The Counselor," "Blood Meridian," and "No Country For Old Men."A lot of people are trashing Ridley Scott's new film, "The Counselor"...but honestly, I think they're misunderstanding the film's characters, monologues, and themes -- chiefly because they're not familiar with Cormac McCarthy's style, outlook, or world view.
This movie was way too predictable!" But again, because he's so unfamiliar with McCarthy's "universe," he didn't enjoy the film.For the record...I have read EVERY (published) McCarthy novel and I have seen MOST of Scott's films (I never saw "A Good Year" or "Legend" or a few others not worth mentioning)...so I feel that I'm in a very good position to offer my opinion concerning "The Counselor" -- perhaps the best film I saw in 2013.To my friend who said that "The Counselor" was too predictable...I will agree; upon second viewing, this film is FILLED with not-so-subtle hints that death and misery will befall its main character, the Counselor.
Later in the story, a juggler tells fortunes using tarot cards...and later, the men are killed in various ways.Cameron Diaz's character, Malkina, like the Judge from "Blood Meridian" or Anton Chigurh from "No Country For Old Men," orchestrates death...and ultimately finds immunity from it.
Speaking of the art of killing, there is a chilling scene in which Westray (Brad Pitt's character) gives a graphic account of a hapless young girl who was slaughtered by one of the drug cartels in order to make a snuff film for a rich client who even went on to rape her headless corpse.Vintage Ridley Scott, McCarthy's cynical world is on full display here, in all its glory.
The second takes place towards the end of the film during which Rubén Blades' character Jefe demystifies the true meaning of life and death for the Counselor.
The character development and especially the dialogue felt like it was ripped from the pages of an unpublished Mcarthy book.On a raw level, this film tells the story of a lawyer who embraces greed and decides to take a path which leads him into a world of violence and deception.
While most are not opposed to a thought provoking movie, and would even probably prefer a movie to have a message and to have interesting intellectual material, I believe this movie goes WAY too far in trying to weave in themes, metaphors and complex dialogue, at the expense of developing the plot and the characters in the movie to a satisfactory extent.Probably the best feature of the movie is the performances from its actors, in particular Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem and Michael Fassbender.
Do the math, take an all star cast where even the likes of Rosie Perez and John Leguizamo play only bit parts, add the writing talents of Cormac McCarthy then put one of the greatest (if not the greatest) movie directors of his generation in charge and wrap it all up in a tale of greed and depravity you should be onto something pretty special.
The cool parts of this movie: Bruno Ganz as a diamond dealer in Amsterdam and the two live cheetahs.The parts of the film that could have been interesting: the wardrobes of all main characters, Javier Bardem's Brian Grazer-inspired hairdo, the line-up of luxury vehicles (Bentley, Ferrari, etc), and the "bolito".The parts of this movie that were never going to work: the opening scene with Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz frolicking under the sheets, dialogue that is too poetic for the characters, Brad Pitt as his grown up scammer from Thelma and Louise, Fassbender's Texas accent, and Cameron Diaz.The part of this movie that is an outright disgrace: Cameron Diaz doing the splits while having intimate relations with the windshield of Bardem's Ferrari ...
The film has an star-studded cast and a screenwriter with a big reputation as a novelist, but the end result doesn't add up to anything more than a routine suspense thriller masquerading as a cautionary tale.As far as plot is concerned, the corrupt attorney soon gets out of his depth among the drug smugglers, hit-men, wicked women and a couple of cheetahs, but Scott provides little reason to care about the fate of his worthless characters.
For the life of me I cant understand how Ridley Scott convinced Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem to make this film.
They thought to follow the recipe of the Expandables perhaps and throw in a rubbish movie a lot of well-known actors (Pitt, Diaz, Cruz, Fassbender, Bardem) maybe, people will go and see it.
And that is the only reason why I went to see the movie after all.Cameron Diaz is not believable as villain, broken story that makes little to no sense, poor dialogue and boring action.
Disjointed, hollow, depressing and thoroughly miserable, this was a huge disappointment given the director and actors involved.I really began to think at one point that Scott must have been affected so badly by the suicide of his brother during the making of the film that he subconsciously projected his emptiness into his work.I so wanted some character sympathy to be shown but there was none.
This film is not recommended.Even with its line-up of big name stars, a distinguished director at the helm, and a first-time screenplay by renown novelist, Cormac McCarthy, the majority of critics have universally panned The Counselor unmercifully.
Surprisingly, I think Cameron Diaz & Brad Pitt may have given the best performances in the film, even with Fassbender's accomplished acting resume.
I've liked most of Ridley Scott's films, I was one of the few who actually loved Prometheus, and I also think that Cormac McCarthy is a great novelist (No Country for Old Men being his masterpiece) so when I heard the two were going to work together I couldn't help but add this to my watchlist.
This film easily has one of the most memorable murder scenes I've seen all year, but at the same time it has many scenes that really felt out of place (like the scene involving Cameron Diaz and the yellow Ferrari).
The Counselor feels more like a McCarthy film than a Ridley Scott movie, and his dark humor and anti climatic scenes are all over the place here in this suspenseful thriller (if I can really call it that because it isn't really generic at all).
Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt actually lift this film in my opinion and make their characters bearable to watch on screen.
One film I liked a lot that was actually loathed and vilified as garbage by a majority of critics: Ridley Scott's filming of Cormac McCarthy's first original screenplay, "The Counselor".I found it tells a disturbing and deadly-serious morality play about how a bad choice can propel even a fairly good man into a nihilistic nightmare that takes away all he loves in life, leaving him to fester forever in the lowest hell of despair.
Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy have created something different here and, like the line in my summary quoted from the movie, it's no coincidence that their collaboration resulted in a bleakly nihilistic film.
I think that "The Counselor" builds too slowly and doesn't explain some characters' actions clearly enough, but Cormac McCarthy's script is generally well-written and Ridley Scott's direction is excellent.
THE COUNSELOR is a visually stunning movie with good performances by its star-studded cast, but the overly talky nature of the film made it feel like a collection of scenes rather than a cohesive movie.
Ridley Scott did an impeccable job as usual in delivering a visually compelling film, with a few great action sequences (as well as one scene with Cameron Diaz which I will not spoil...suffice it to say, you won't have seen anything like it before).
I consider Brad Pitt to be one of our finest American actors and Javier Bardem has done some excellent work as well.With all this in mind, I was anticipating The Counselor to be superb.It wasn't.Yes, there were some amazing plot twists, gritty violence and good acting.
Javier is such a scene thief.Michael Fassbender puts forward a very strong performance as does Cameron Diaz who simply reeks of sex throughout the film.At the end of the movie there is a conversation by Ruben Blades which is over the top.
Who for some reason, wants even more money to have a comfortable life for his new fiancée.Bottom line..If you like films that do that confusing thing about telling you nothing of the story, yet just throw random scenes together with a bit of music from a library of "drug movie music stuff" then go ahead, sit back, and wait for brad pitt to enter the screen.
In this film it was obvious that they thought "ok lets take some star names, a well known director and screenwriter, Bardem always does the trick with "crazy" characters, add a lot of (unecessary) violence, two beautiful women and some "intellectual" quotes and we have a movie that will attract both a sophisticated audience and those who love violence.Well it doesn't work like that.
McCarthy's script is that of a man set on creating metaphorical and hypothetical jargon that looks to act as a deep and wise thesis on love, life and sin yet comes off as pretentious and weirdly amateurish.Director Ridley Scott has been in the cinematic doldrums for some years now, but all those that thought low points had been reached with such cinema scum like A Good Year, Robin Hood and the overblown mess that was Prometheus can now add The Counselor to that ever growing misfire list and perhaps sit it atop of Scott's worst films.
If your idea of a good time is movies like batman, the avengers, etc., this film is not for you.
Written by the incredible author Cormac McCarthy, who wrote a similarly simple and violent book-turned movie called No Country For Old Men, the script follows five characters; the aforementioned, Reiner's oversexed girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz), and the mysterious cowboy middleman Westray (Brad Pitt). |
tt0301976 | The United States of Leland | The film begins with a flashback narrated by Leland P. Fitzgerald, describing how he could not remember the details of the day that he killed an intellectually disabled boy named Ryan Pollard. Leland is arrested. Ryan's parents, Harry and Karen, sisters Becky and Julie, and Julie's live-in boyfriend Allen grieve the loss of their loved one. Leland's divorced mother, Marybeth, is desperate to see her son, while his father, famous writer Albert Fitzgerald, discovers his son's fate in a newspaper and returns home to be there for the trial.
While in juvenile hall, Leland is schooled by teacher Pearl Madison, an aspiring writer who is searching for a breakthrough story. Like many others at the detention center, Pearl senses something is different about the emotionally detached Leland, and helps him circumvent the prison rules so he can keep a journal. While his girlfriend is out of town in Los Angeles, Pearl sleeps with a coworker and tells her that he is going to write a book about Leland.
Through his discussions with Pearl, Leland reveals his childhood memories such as his grandmother's funeral and traveling long distances to visit his father. One time, he decided to stay in New York rather than continue on to see his father. After he could not find a hotel, a kindhearted family, the Calderons, decided to take him in for his stay. He continued to visit the family over the years, and was especially captivated by Mrs. Calderon. The two also discuss Leland's history with Becky, Ryan's sister. He had met her innocently at a record store and begun regularly walking home with Ryan and her after school. They had grown to love each other, and Leland recalled a time when Becky asked him to promise her "everything's gonna be okay", despite his objections that he had no control over bad things that could happen. As she explained, sometimes it is just nice to hear things one hopes to be true.
Pearl covertly arranges a meeting with Leland's father at his hotel. After he asks for more information on his family's past, Albert realizes Pearl is researching for his book and refuses to let his son be exploited - something of which he is guilty himself. He eventually tells the prison supervisor about Pearl's prohibited meetings with Leland, leading him to be reassigned to another section of the prison.
Leland discovers through Allen that Becky had an affair with a drug dealer named Kevin who is due to be released from prison. After he gets out of prison, Becky starts to see Kevin again and decides to break up with Leland. In a rare display of emotion, he argues with her, but ultimately realizes the futility of anything he can do or say to change her mind, saying that neither the tears nor the amount of his love - he says he still dreams about her - can change the fact that she does not love him in return. Pearl says he should be angry with her since she betrayed him. Leland replies that he is sad, but not angry.
Pearl begins to realize the implications of his sexual indiscretion through his discussions with Leland, and admits his own failings. Eventually, his girlfriend discovers his tryst and they have a fight over the phone. Meanwhile, Julie decides to break up with Allen and does not want him to go to college with him. Brokenhearted, he holds up an auto repair shop and allows himself to be arrested in front of Julie. He is sent to the same juvenile hall as Leland, where he steals a knife (from Pearl) and kills Leland in the prison yard as revenge for what he has done to the Pollard family.
Pearl flies to LA to reconcile with his girlfriend and reads Leland's final entries in his journal. On one of his return trips to New York, Leland had discovered that Mrs. Calderon had divorced her husband and that the spark for life that she had before was gone; it is implied Leland and Mrs. Calderon had slept together. Afterwards, Leland writes, he begins noticing a sadness in everyone around him, driving him into a deep depression. One day, as he walks Ryan home from school, the boy becomes frustrated with an obstacle on the bike path. Leland helps him off his bike, gives him a hug, and whispers in his ear that "everything is going to be okay". | murder, bleak, violence, revenge, flashback, romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0077269 | The Boys from Brazil | Young, well-intentioned Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) stumbles upon a secret organization of Third Reich war criminals holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay and finds that Dr Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), the infamous Auschwitz doctor, is with them. He phones Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), an aging Nazi hunter living in Vienna, Austria, with this information. A highly skeptical Lieberman tries to brush Kohler's claims aside, telling him that it is already well known that Mengele is living in Paraguay.
Having learned when and where the next meeting to include Mengele is scheduled to occur, Kohler records part of it using a hidden microphone, but is discovered and killed while making another phone call to Lieberman. Before the phone is hung up with Lieberman on the other end, he hears the recorded voice of Mengele ordering a group of ex-Nazis to kill 94 men in different countries, including Austria, West Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Although frail, Lieberman follows Kohler's leads and begins travelling throughout Europe and North America to investigate the suspicious deaths of a number of aging civil servants. He meets several of their widows and is amazed to find an uncanny resemblance in their adopted, black-haired, blue-eyed sons. It is also made clear that, at the time of their deaths, all the civil servants were aged around 65 and had cold, domineering and abusive attitudes towards their adopted sons, while their wives were around 42 and doted on the sons.
Lieberman gains insight from Frieda Maloney (Uta Hagen), an incarcerated former Nazi guard who worked with the adoption agency, before realizing during a meeting with Professor Bruckner (Bruno Ganz), an expert on cloning, the terrible truth behind the Nazi plan: Mengele, in the 1960s, had secluded several surrogate mothers in a Brazilian clinic and fertilised them with ova each carrying a sample of Hitler's DNA preserved since World War II. Ninety-four clones of Hitler had then been born and sent to different parts of the world for adoption.
As Lieberman uncovers more of the plot, Mengele's superiors become more unnerved. After Mengele happens to meet (and then attacks) one of the agents he believes is in Europe implementing his scheme, Mengele's principal contact, Eduard Seibert (James Mason), informs him that the scheme has been aborted before Lieberman can expose it to the authorities. Mengele storms out, pledging that the operation will continue.
Seibert and his men destroy Mengele's jungle estate after killing his guards and servants. Mengele himself, however, has already left, intent on trying to continue his plan. He travels to rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where one of the Hitler clones, Bobby Wheelock (Jeremy Black), lives on a farm with his parents. There he murders the boy's father (John Dehner), a Doberman dog breeder, and waits for Lieberman, who is on his way to the farm to warn Mr. Wheelock of Mengele's intention to kill him.
The instant Lieberman arrives and sees Mengele, he attacks the doctor in a fury. Mengele gains the upper hand and shoots Lieberman. He taunts Lieberman by explaining his plan to return Hitler to the world. Then, with one desperate lunge, Lieberman opens the closet where the Dobermans are held and turns them loose. The dogs corner Mengele and attack him. Bobby arrives home from school and, despite telling from the carnage that something is wrong, calls off the dogs and tries to find out what has happened.
The injured Mengele, having now encountered one of his clones for the first time, tells Bobby how much he admires him, and explains that he is cloned from Hitler. Bobby doubts his story, and is also suspicious of Mengele because the dogs are trained to attack anyone who threatens his family. Lieberman tells Bobby that Mengele has killed his father and urges him to notify the police. Bobby checks the house and finds his dead father in the basement. He rushes back upstairs and sets the vicious dogs on Mengele once again, coldly relishing his bloody death. Bobby then helps Lieberman, but only after Lieberman promises not to tell the police about the incident.
Later, while recovering from his wounds, Lieberman is encouraged by an American Nazi-hunter, David Bennett (John Rubinstein) to expose Mengele's scheme to the world. He asks Lieberman to hand over the list (which Lieberman had taken from Mengele's body while Bobby was calling for an ambulance) identifying the names and whereabouts of the other boys from around the world, so that they can be systematically killed before growing up to become bloody tyrants. Lieberman objects on the grounds that they are mere children, and he burns the list before anyone can read it. | murder | train | wikipedia | A lesser actor would find playing the part of a Nazi Death Doctor, responsible for some of the worst atrocities in human history, a perfect excuse to ham it up and click into the black-hatted, moustache-twisting token villain.The less impressive acting of Steve Guttenberg overacting into a telephone and Jeremy Black with a really strange german accent as Erich Doring.
In the meantime Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) makes the scene and after Kohler's bugging of a secret meeting goes wrong, Lieberman is left with only a thread of a much deeper story, which he sets about to unravel...Even though the plot is fairly well known by now, I will assume some people are not familiar with Ira Levin's book or the film.
In fact the less you know about the plot the better; I think that the dust jacket gives far too much of the story away...Anyway, THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL is a film that toes a very dangerous line, I mean few film makers want to turn a man like Menegele into a camp figure.
A very well done (if quite implausible) fictional account about a post World War II Nazi plot based in Paraguay and led by Josef Mengele that could lead to the establishment of the Fourth Reich.Gregory Peck was well cast as the evil Mengele.
In The Boys From Brazil, Gregory Peck gives a truly mesmerizing performance as the infamous Nazi scientist Josef Mengele.
Is a good thriller, which allows two of the greatest actors there has ever been a chance to ham it up a bit.The plot involves Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) trying to unravel a devious plot by Dr Josef Mangele (Gregory Peck).
The film at times almost slips in to horror with it's certain plot elements, and also containing a horrific confrontation between the two leads at the end.It is not perfect by any means though, as some accents are all over the place and can become a little distracting, and some may find the films idea to unbelievable to take seriously, which i can't say i had a problem with.A good film, with two acting powerhouses, worth a watch just for them.
Based on Ira Levin (Rosemary's baby)'s readable novel , this is an exciting thriller about The Doctor "Joseph Méngüele", (Gregory Peck), known member of the Nazi party German, and cruel medic of the concentration camp of Auschwitz .
A young American, "Barry Kohler" (Steven Guttemberg), contact with the Nazi hunter "Ezra Liebermann" ,( a Simon Wiesental-alike ,magnificently played by Laurence Olivier) , helped by his sister (Lilli Palmer), who begin to investigate and discover the horrible plan of "Méngüele .
In the picture appears some of the best actors of all time, the three principals as Laurence Olivier, James Mason and an awesome Gregory Peck who however overacting in some scenes .
The soundtrack by the classic musician Jerry Goldsmith, is the most part of time lively and nicely like is heard at the beginning and the end of the movie , nevertheless in some moments he composes strangely, perhaps attempting to remind Puccini and other musicians so admired by Mengele, but conveys us a mirth that it is not fitting to the plot.
Laurence Olivier gives possibly the worst performance of his career while Gregory Peck seems to be giving an impersonation of Basil Fawlty , oh gawd even James Mason is bad and that's not something I can say lightly Yeah this is an entertaining movie but if you're making a thriller it's vital that you thrill the audience and not have them rolling in the aisles with something that feels like it's a sequel to THE PRODUCERS .
You're intrigued to follow Olivier's Yiddish caricature around the world as he pieces together the perverse conspiracy, encountering bizarre, scene-stealing characters along the way played by the likes of Rosemary Harris, Uta Hagen (making a rare film appearance), and Bruno Ganz.
And you're intrigued to watch a group of Nazis viciously and spectacularly murder a bunch of old guys for no apparent reason, especially when Peck is hamming it up as their leader.It's a seventies thriller through and through, replete with killer Dobermans and a gloriously Germanic score by Jerry Goldsmith that could legitimately rival the best of Wagner and the Strauss dynasty.
The thing is, explaining how would diffuse the freshness of the plot's surprises, but the point is it's a narrative that, whatever else you can say about it, is not the least bit boring.Indeed the plot brushes comic book superhero proportions, but the diabolical master plan conceived by Gregory Peck's grimacing, straight-backed Nazi death camp doctor Mengele is a refreshment of that sort: In stories of bombastic color and adventure, especially those of godlike stock characters and dictatorial genius antagonists, there are often caveats that make them silly or forgettable rather than engrossing in their suspension of disbelief.
Laurence Olivier stars as Nazi Hunter Ezra Lieberman, who is contacted by a young student(Steve Guttenberg) that he has discovered the whereabouts of infamous Nazi criminal Josef Mengele(Gregory Peck); Ezra dismisses it as a crank call, but when the student turns up murdered, Ezra decides to investigate further, and discovers to his horror that Mengele is alive, and working on a sinister plan to resurrect the Fourth Reich!
Gregory Peck chews the scenery as Nazi-loving doctor who wants a Fourth Reich; growling like a pit bull, his face intentionally pasty-white and his mustache intentionally Hitler-black, Peck's over-the-top performance would easily slip into camp were it not for the off-putting material, which makes all his rotten deeds less intriguing and decidedly more nauseating.
"Boys" is a highly absurd movie, with tasteless bits of business involving the females in the cast, and big introductions to the many supporting characters, each of whom get a turn in the spotlight to try and outact Peck and Olivier.
Like the British Harrington boy's, "Don't you understand English, you a*se." He said that perfectly.Gregory Peck was excellent and it is he who should have been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and not Olivier.
Cheezy "German" accents, A-list actors (Olivier, Peck, et al), lots of beige clothing, rude pubescent clones with sinister pale blue contacts UND a dash of history all add up to the wonderfully awful "Boys from Brazil."
Characters act in totally unbelievable ways (the famous nazi hunter isn't the least bit interested when somebody tells him about a serious nazi plot, the apparently calm and sophisticated Dr. Mengele nearly strangles somebody to death for no reason) and just about everything else, up to the overly dramatic score, is exaggerated.
An...interesting film, it probably wouldn't be even half as good without impressive performances by (surprise!) Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier.
Olivier plays a Nazi-hunter whose work was responsible for Eichmann's capture follows on a lead from Steve Guttenberg's quickly deceased character, which leads to a plot by Joseph Mengele (in hiding in Paraguay) to repopulate the world with Hitler clones.
Schaffner (Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970)), is an event movie with a budget and an A-list cast that plots a Jewish Nazi-hunter against a tyrannical doctor hell-bent on creating a new fuhrer.Such a mainstream movie could be labelled as insensitive for creating outlandish fiction out of such a terrible event and for profiteering from it, but The Boys from Brazil, although handsomely filmed and mostly well-performed, is pure pantomime exploitation.
When a conspiracy to assassinate 94 civil servants headed by SS surgeon Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) is brought to Lieberman's attention by young Jewish activist Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) - who quickly vanishes - the old man travels throughout Europe to investigate the potential targets.Mengele's plot seems like random, senseless madness at first, but it doesn't take long to figure out what's going on.
I'm not going to spoil the plot of the movie, even though it's almost impossible to approach this movie without knowing "the big surprise", but for those of you who have never seen Boys from Brazil, do yourself a favor and try and watch the movie without prior knowledge and see how long it takes you to figure out the mystery.A great double feature with this movie is The Marathon Man, in which Olivier plays a Nazi war criminal.
"The Boys from Brazil" is very entertaining on several levels if you love history and you love asking those "what if" questions.Even though most of this film is fictional, amazingly enough, a few parts of this film accurately predicted historical/scientific events before they happened.If you can, do yourself a favor and don't read too much of the plot beforehand- when you go into this film not knowing its big reveal, you will understand what an effective thriller it was in its time.
I think the film plays much better when you look at it from the perspective of someone who doesn't know the ending.Gregory Peck's portrayal of Dr. Mengele is gripping, the work of a true master of the acting art.
The film deals with the famous fugitive Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengele and his intent to create the Fourth Reich.The first part is most entertaining and "catching" as Mengele's plan comes to life and director Franklin Schaeffner handles the clues very well so that we finally discover what the "Angel of Death" is up to (it will be easier to find out for those of us interested in Hitler's biographies).
James Mason is there too in a not much demanding role as well as the always reliable Lilli Palmer as Olivier's sister and assistant.For those who enjoy thrillers based on real characters and what they could have been up to in fiction -like me- "The Boys from Brazil" stands a most entertaining and enjoyable product..
Laurence Olivier is brilliant as the aging Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, and Gregory Peck gives a chilling performance as Dr. Josef Mengele.
The nomination for best actor instead went to Laurence Olivier for playing Ezra Lieberman, a man in hot pursuit of Mengele and other Nazi animal war criminals.
They took the tale of a fugitive nazi doctor and combined it with the demonically messianic tale of a newborn "antichrist." The result, a viewable yet strained thriller about a Jewish nazi hunter and Josef Mengele, whose genetic experiments have produced numerous clones of adolf hitler, which are all now in their early teens and living secretly with families similar to hitler's all across europe and north america.Laurence Olivier, who played the sadistic nazi Szell in marathon man, modifies his german accent to a jewish one, and goes to work as a wise grandfatherlike caricature of Simon Wiesenthal.
Buckner get caught up with his obsession of cloning by somehow morphing, instead of cloning, himself into Adolf Hitler?In 1978 the word gets back to Nazi hunter Ezra Liberman, Laurence Olivier, from a young Lieberman wannabe Barry Kohler, Steve Guttenber, about Dr. Mengela resurfacing in Paraguay.
Gregory Peck worked his butt off, manfully, but getting Mengele right was a bit too tough for him.The file has some good dialogue, too, to recommend it, though the plot is a bit too much, as they say!All in all, watch it for Laurence Olivier, and some good photography.
The almost 2-hour-length contained some protracted and unnecessary scenes as well.Luckily, there are at least good actors even in supporting roles, and Gregory Peck as Dr. Josef Mengele and Laurence Olivier as Ezra Lieberman are pleasant to follow both together and separately.
Saying more about dogs and the plot introduces a spoiler, so I shall say no more on the topic.Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) was among the very worst of the Nazis, the quack doctor who used his medical skills solely for cruel ends in the service of Hitler.
Nazi hunter Ezra Liberman (Laurence Olivier) tries to stop him.The plot is ridiculous--purportedly even Ira Levin said it was just preposterous--but this movie pulls you right in.
We didn't even have to do the whole "Shut up you ugly bitch" line,we'd just start the little Mengele growling "Sh" and howl with laughter.We'd usually do this under our breath when some woman began to drone on...Liebermann's lines counteract the growling with an almost Dr. Zachary Smith (Lost in Space), "Oh the pain, the pain" shtick.The climactic fight scene is uproarious -- starting from the "Did you kill Mr. Wheelock/ no he's making us cocktails" exchange to the Bobby "man, you're weird -- ACTION!" ending.Ah the days of the late 1970s / early 1980s comedies: "Animal House", "Airplane", "Pink Panther" sequels, "Blues Brothers", "American Werewolf in London" and yes the previously mentioned "Omen" (same dogs as TBFB?)series, especially "Omen II" with the raven appearance/truck rolling over the reporter with the mud flaps providing the final insult.They don't make them like they used to and we don't have the superstars any longer -- as Joan Crawford/Dunaway said in "Mommie Dearest": "they gave the bad scripts to me because they knew I could make them work!".
I named "The Boys From Brazil": Franklyn Shaffner's exquisitely captivating thriller, starring two of the most beloved and respected actors of Hollywood's Golden Age: Gregory Peck and Sir Laurence Olivier.
Two classy gentlemen in two roles that couldn't have been more antagonistic: Gregory Peck as the evil Dr. Jozef Mengele and Laurence Oliver as Ezra Lieberman, a veteran Nazi Hunter, whose life is dedicated to honor the memory of the Holocaust's victims by chasing and punishing their executioners.And the first surprise that will probably tease your mind in the first part of the film, concerns the acting department.
While Olivier proves again his tremendous versatility by playing a venerable and inspiring Nazi-hunter after having portrayed the evilly iconic Nazi dentist, Dr. Christian Szell two years before in "Marathon Man", Gregory Peck surprises us through a role which is a 180 degree turn from good old Atticus Finch...
Ira Levin's "The Boys From Brazil" was a tough, mean thriller that worked because it fashioned a preposterous idea – that Dr. Josef Mengele was alive in Paraguay and attempting to clone Hitler - into a setting that seemed to have the pace of real life.
However, this movie turns that fact into a pot-boiler, about how a Nazi hunter named Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) is fed information that Mengele is operating in Paraguay with a plot to kill 94 men around the world in an effort to make multiple clones of Hitler.
Before moving on to their acting though, I will describe the plot of the film.The story starts in Paraguay, late seventies, where Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) discovers that several high ranking Nazi party members are having a meeting about something which seems important.
I was pretty young when I saw this movie for the first time and I have never forgotten it.I even thought Olivier was an old Jewish guy!Amazing performance.I watched it again today for the first time in about 25+ years and I still love it.Mengele,played by Peck,was the most evil man I'd ever seen on film.He is not so scary now but I would disagree with the reviewers comment about a stiff and unconvincing performance.Maybe not as incredible and perfect as Olivier (seriously,who could be?)but still,a tremendous job of portraying a seriously whacked out nazi who nonetheless possesses great charm,charisma and presence.One of my all time favourites..
Obviously, as talented as he is, this role asked him to use talents he didn't have.The movie starts out introducing us to Steve Guttenberg in Paraguay as he follows James Mason, Gregory Peck, and other Nazi war criminals.
SPOILER: Nazi-themed thriller The Boys From Brazil, based on Ira Levin's bestselling novel, features a great central cast, most notably veterans James Mason, Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck.
Very original and innovative script, based on the novel by Ira Levin.The cast is a prestigious one - Sir Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, James Mason - and they all put in great performances.
Great actors Gregory Peck and Sir Laurence Olivier are two excellent reasons to watch this film about Nazis..
Best part is watching two real pros, Gregory Peck as Dr Mengele and Sir Lawrence Olivier as a Nazi-hunter named Lieberman.
The fictional story involves real life German WWII "Angel of Death", Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) having cloned 94 baby boys from the cells of you know who and placed them around the world in environments that closely approximate the real life conditions in which the donor was raised, in the hope of reproducing an exact duplicate.
Student Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg in an excellent early performance) discovers the plot and tries to alert famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier).
It may be an outlandish concept, but the whole movie is quite intense once you realize what Mengele and his cronies are planning.*Interestingly, Laurence Olivier had played a Nazi in "Marathon Man" two years earlier..
Twenty years before the birth of the sheep Dolly, the actor Gregory Peck plays the doctor Josef Mengele, Nazi who lived refugee between Brazil and Paraguay carrying out genetic experiences.
Much of the film consists of watching Peck do this evil deed to various families.Somewhere along the way, Laurence Olivier finds out about the Mengele plan from a young reporter.
Olivier's soft-spoken but determined Nazi hunter is a great counterpoint to Peck's charismatic villain and their meeting at the end of the film leads to a climax that is shocking, bloody, and, ultimately, ironic.There are several other very good scenes in the movie.
Laurence Olivier is brilliant as the "Simon Wiesenthal" character, (Lieberman), a Nazi Hunter who makes a living chasing Nazis all over the world.This film discusses the scientific art of cloning as the plot thickens.
If THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL does anything, it proves that GREGORY PECK had his limitations when it came to playing evil characters (as opposed to his Atticus Finch real-life image), and that LAURENCE OLIVIER was indeed a very gifted actor in the right role.
Peck makes a convincing departure from his good guy roles as the sinister Nazi doctor masterminding the Hitler resurrection plot, Olivier putting on an accent is terrific, and Mason does well in the short time he has on screen. |
tt0052169 | The Screaming Skull | Eric and Jenni Whitlock arrive at the stately home that he shared with his former wife to ostensibly recapture his happiness and reinvigorate the abandoned home. Eric's new wife, Jenni is a sensitive and impressionable person who needs encouragement and companionship. They appear to be very much in love and Eric declares his desire to share his life with her and put his past behind him. Jenni is introduced to Mickey, the simpleton gardner, who was devoted to Eric's first wife, Marriane and we learn that Marriane was accidentally drowned in the pond on the property. Jenni encounters the Reverand Snow and his wife who have come to celebrate Eric's return and meet the new woman of the house. Jenni shares with the reverand that her own parents died of drowning and she clearly has nevere recovered from their death. When Eric leaves Jenni at home alone while he is travelling for work, she encounters the strange sounds of the old house from blowing wind to the erie cry of the peacocks that inhabit the garden. She is clearly on edge and when Eric returns he assures her that everything is fine. Jenni reaches out to Mickey to comfort him and try to build a relationship, and has some success when she helps him find flowers for Marriane's monument. Another night comes alone for Jenni and she again hears strange sounds but this time she enters a room that contains an old oil painting of Marriane and discovers a skull in a closet. She tosses the skull out the window, only to find it reappear on the front porch. Again, Eric reassures Jenni and accuses Mickey of terrorizing Jenni. Erics suggests that he and Jenni burn the painting so they can put the past behind them. Jenni does not at first find the burning comforting but relents and as she and Eric go to disperse and water the ashes from the fire, she sees a skull in the ashes and hears an erie scream which Eris says he does not see or hear, and she faints. While she is unconscious, Eric recovers the skull, which he clearly knows is there and hides it in the pond. Eric now tells the reverand Snow that Jenni suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide, for which she was institutionalized. The reverend suggests they leave the house, but Eric insists that it is the best place for her. Mickey sees Eric hide the skull and in turn he hides it himself and tells the reverand and his wife about the deception. The reverand and his wife prepare to go and confront Eric. Before they arrive that night Jenni goes out into the garden to search for Eric and sees a ghostly form in the garden shed which chases her to the house. Eric, who was preparing a rope with a noose, takes the opportunity to hide and wait for the distraught Jenni to appear. He then leaps out of hiding and apparently strangles Jenni to death. As Eric descends the stairs he begins to see images of a screaming skull everywhere he turns and he encounters a ghostly and skeletal form. Running from the house he cannot escape the skull, which physically attacks him by the edge of the pond. Eric and the skull fall into the pond, still struggling and Eric is drowned. Jenni recovers from her near strangulation and descends the stairs finding the discarded robes of the skeletal figure. The reverand and his wife arrive and comfort Jenni, who is in a state of shock. The reverand discovers Eric's body in the pond. The next day, as Jenni is leaving the house with the reverand and his wife, she asks why? The reverand concludes that Eric was after her money and that they also may never know if Marriane's death was accidental or not. | cult | train | imdb | Comments about a lack of gore and such are pretty telling as to the age and tastes of those who hate this flick so passionately.The Screaming Skull is a creepy, atmospheric tale that relies on mood rather than effects to generate chills.
"The Screaming Skull" IS NOT A BAD MOVIE!"Mystery Science Theater 3000" is not the ultimate judge of a film's worth.
Making fun of the film is one thing, but, if they thought this movie was actually bad, they don't know very much at all about film.
(Hey, they mentioned Renoir's "Rules of the Game," so they clearly have some knowledge of real film, unlike you cretins.)Here's the thing: You people have absolutely zero notion of the concepts of 1) "Suspension of Disbelief" and 2) "Filmmaking." If you could wrap your mind around either of these ideas, you'd be able to tell that this movie is, at the very least, effectively made.
Basically, in direct opposition to the ultimately judgmental, condescending stance most people take to all movies in general and older horror films in particular.).
I agree with Shane Man, Screamig Skull may not be the best picture ever made or fine art, but it is a very good scary, chiller movie.
Though it is short on scares, has grossly cheap special effects, and a story with virtually no "flesh," The Screaming Skull is one of those fun, bad movies to watch.
On seeing the rather less than stellar rating average on IMDb you could be forgiven for thinking that The Screaming Skull would be terminally dull dreck, the sort of typical best forgotten b movie product of its time.
I remember watching "The Screaming Skull" on the late show (when TV actually showed decent stuff) and it scared the living hell outta me.
It disappeared from TV, and of course years later having found it on video, it's not gonna scare me under the covers but it's still one of the best and most clever horror films of the 50's.The plot is good enough - the ghost of a man's first wife haunts his new wife in their super-large house.
But the film has a lot of great horror elements that work in its favor - the big house, the creepy house grounds, the grave on the grounds, the path through the woods area, the "odd" person (the gardener), the howling wind, the noisy windows, the scary painting, and much more, especially the skull that keeps on showing up all over the place.The husband is the guy who played the husband in "50-Foot Woman" and he's just as good here.
All the other actors/characters are just fine (there aren't many as the whole film takes place at the house), especially Mickey the Gardener, who loved the first wife (as a friend) and still talks to her as if she was alive.The whole film has great horror atmosphere, one of the best instances ever of such I believe.
Even after seeing the film so many times, when that door knocks, and the husband's face shows pure fear because he probably knows what's behind it, and he slowly goes to answer it, still gives me shudders!It's great that "The Screaming Skull" is on DVD.
You have to lighten up your screen some, to see all that goes on, and parts of it are too funny now---but it's not a bad premise for a scary story, and images like the skull in the bridal gown I will never forget.
Yes, the director plays one of the characters, which is pretty much always a bad sign for a horror movie (Glen or Glenda, Eegah, Incredibly Strange Creatures, etc.).
As most movies of this era, it has a bleak ending that comes on abruptly and in an odd point, leaving questions unanswered.All in all it was an enjoyable film that most fans of older horror will appreciate..
The Screaming Skull had everything you'd want in a 1950's horror film.All you need to enjoy this movie is an hour to kill and a bowl of popcorn..
This horror tale finds a newly married husband(John Hudson)and wife(Peggy Weber)haunted by the memory of his previous wife and screaming skulls found throughout their empty mansion and lily pond.
I swear at times the screaming skull sounds much like it should be in a Godzilla movie.
The Screaming Skull is a rather creepy little movie from American International.A newly married couple move to the husband's home where he lived with his late first wife.
The husband tries to make his wife think she is going mad, but at the end the skull turns on him...The Screaming Skull is accompanied by a rather eerie music score and there is also a thunderstorm.Only five people star in this movie and I've never heard of any of them.Check this out and have a good scare with The Screaming Skull.Rating: 3 stars out of 5..
A slow-moving exercise in high-test Padding, "The Screaming Skull" is riddled with the cliches of its time--man loses his wife, remarries mentally unbalanced girl, they move into an isolated villa where an unwashed gardener (the director, Alex Nicol) wanders around.
When the producers feel the need to provide a FREE CASKET to anyone that dies of fright from viewing "The Screaming Skull", you know you're in for the longest two hours of your life.
As the film begins a narrator warns us THE SCREAMING SKULL is so terrifying you might die of fright--and if such happens a free burial is guaranteed.
THE SCREAMING SKULL is the sort of movie that makes Ed Wood look good.Very loosely based on the famous Francis Marion Crawford story, SKULL is about a wealthy but nervous woman who marries a sinister man whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances.
It is true that THE SCREAMING SKULL has a few howlers--but the film drags so much I couldn't work up more than an occasional giggle, and by the time the whole thing is over your head will roll from ennui.
When you have a disembodied skull, an empty mansion, a schizophrenic wife, a scheming cad and a nutzo gardener, throw in a minister and his wife - what have you got?AIP's answer to insomnia."The Screaming Skull" gets points for audacity, offering free caskets for anyone who dies of fright from watching the film.
It has its moments, but not enough of them.HOWEVER, thanks to a certain Mike Nelson and his two robot pals, there are several moments of pure joy, especially in the copy THEY got hold of ("The film jumped, and it was really scary!").One star for "The Screaming Skull", eight and a half for the MST3K version.Talk about a "Screaming" bore.....
But they seem to think that people who say it's not very good are a bunch of 20-year-olds who only get "scared" by gore and have to have nudity and special effects to enjoy a horror film.
I happen to think the Ring was one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen, and it has practically ZERO gore, definitely no nudity, and no crazy special effects either (at least until the end scene).
The Screaming Skull is fun to watch for the cheese factor, and it isn't the worst movie out there by any stretch.
The Screaming Skull is again one of those 1950's horror flicks a lot of people in their teens and twenties will not enjoy, because they mostly can not get into horror and science fiction films from other eras.
I first saw this movie when I was a teenager on late night TV.All I could remember was Peggy Webber running around in a see through night gown for half the movie.The best half of the movie.I recently viewed it again on a large screen TV and my memory was 100% correct.The best part of the movie is Peggy Webber running around in a see through nightgown.Those scenes are so good and sexy and scary that I give the movie an 8 out of 10.If you are a man you will be excited by this movie and if you are a woman you will be scared and excited.It was ahead of it time as far as special effects and implied nudity are concerned and implied nudity is always better than nude nudity.A must see just for Peggy Webbers performance alone..
The Screaming Skull (1958) ** (out of 4)A husband (John Hudson) takes his new wife (Peggy Webber) back to the home of his wife that recently passed away.
Pretty soon she starts to lose her mind and we learn that she was once locked up in a mental hospital.If you're looking for high art then you're certainly not going to find it in this low-budget horror film.
THE SCREAMING SKULL is basically just a watered down and weak version of GASLIGHT but I must admit that I personally find it to be entertaining as long as you don't' go into it expecting anything too serious or dramatic.I think the film benefits from some of its low-budget nature and charm.
I also thought Russ Conway was good in his role as the preacher.Again, THE SCREAMING SKULL is rather silly and it's certainly not scary but if you enjoy "B" grade horror movies then there are much worse out there..
Well (in my opinion) there are better horror films to watch from 1958 than "The Screaming Skull" BUT 'Screaming Skull' is not a down right bad film - it's mediocre.A man's former bride dies, he remarries a woman who has a history of mental illness - begins to see things like a 'Screaming Skull'.
The gardener is suspected (a man who was a friend of the first wife/bride).The movie is a good rainy day film - when there's not much else on to watch.
There are better horror films from 1958 to watch - but 'The Screaming Skull' is worth a watch too - it does have it's boring moments (lulls) but will pick back up again.5/10.
Making a big impression in this film is the director himself who plays Mickey, the grounds keeper/ gardener and best friend to the departed first wife of John Hudson.
Believe it or not there was a time when kids of about the age of six were really creeped out by things as simple as skulls so the idea of a screaming one really sent tykes into the theater to pee in their seats when things got rolling in the last fifteen minutes.The Weakest point of the film and there are many is the fact that the skull sounds more like a peacock than anything else.
Upon warning us that this movie could cause us to die of fright, THE SCREAMING SKULL begins.
Well, the screaming skull may not kill you, unless you are susceptible to suggestion and loaded and marry the wrong jerk - one who may have killed his first wife.This is more thriller than horror as it is basically an attempt by a husband to drive his new wife back to a mental institution so he can whoop it up with her money.Unfortunately for him, the creepy gardener liked his old wife and is keeping an eye on him..
So does Jenni (Peggy Webber), the protagonist of "The Screaming Skull." After coming to live at the estate of her new husband, Eric, she becomes convinced she is being haunted by the spirit of his late first wife, Marion, often in the form of a skull that pops up in unexpected places.
Occasionally, for variety, Jenni and Eric talk to a friendly minister and his wife, but for a kooky gardener (director Alex Nicol) the only other people in this film.Words can't do justice to how stiff a movie this is.
I wish there was some way to thank..." "Perhaps she slipped on a leaf..." "Dead people don't cry..." "The only cure for her fear is to teach her she is loved...""The Screaming Skull" is famous for one thing: A promise to patrons to pay for the "burial services" of anyone scared to death by the film.
You won't get halfway through The Screaming Skull when you recognize bits from Rebecca and from Gaslight, a pair of infinitely better films.John Hudson has brought his new and second wife Peggy Webber to an old mansion of a home where his first wife passed away under mysterious circumstances.
The groundskeeper and director of this monstrosity Alex Nicol is devoted to the memory of wife number one and keeps the grounds on the place as immaculately as he can get it.Not long after the couple settle, strange things start happening as a mysterious skull keeps popping up out of nowhere for Webber to see.
I will never understand why movies in the 70 minute area are always so full of nothing.This is another movie with many long periods of no dialog or action.It should have only been 30 minutes.The story is also very confusing.A very rich man had a wife that died so he moved all the furniture out of the mansion and into storage and then he went away for two years.Now he's remarried and all they can talk about is the dead wife.Of course there's a retarded gardener that drags his leg and he was best friends with the dead wife.I'm not really sure what was going on after that.A skull shows up and they can't get rid of it.They never explain if it's the wife's skull or not.At one point there's even a full skeleton.This movie is a mess.I did like how the skull just rolls at people, that's really funny.This is another movie that should never be seen..
The marketing for "The Screaming Skull" promised to provide free burial for anyone who would die of fright while watching the movie.
this flick wasn't that good at all it was just a bit dull and too talky for it's own good it has a cheesy plot but also has some creepy atmosphere at times and the finale is decent if a bit silly but it also has some bad dialog and nothing particularly interesting going on the acting isn't great John Hudson does okay here and spurts out some bad dialog at times but overall he did alright Peggy Webber is good here she screams and faints well to Russ Conway is good here as the caring Reverned the rest of the actors do okay too decently directed but this is really nothing more then drive in movie skip it.
Not only did he use a total cast of five people (no extras at ALL), but he also decided to use sub-par special effects with a confusing and boring plot, he also, and I AM NOT kidding, put a warning at the beginning of the movie that you might DIE OF FRIGHT!!!
The ghost consists of a skull in a sun bonnet, the revelation of the husband as the Bad Guy comes as no surprise and the fact that the director of this mess has a pivotal role in his own film, playing a retarded handyman who suspects the truth, should tell you everything you need to know about this un-scary, low-budget dung heap.
The shocking finale" is absurd to the point of being laughable, and I can't imagine anyone dying of anything but boredom while watching this film.Dragnet fans may enjoy seeing Peggy Webber play the distraught and innocent Jenny here, but the MST3K version of this movie is really your best bet if you have no desire to suffer more than is absolutely necessary for an hour and a half.
The one good thing is that the film only runs about 70 minutes so that is not too much time to lose on a waste like this.
The only things I liked about watching this film is the hilarious commentary by the MST3K boys and the setting of the movie.
This movie involves a man who tries to drive his new bride insane by leaving his dead wife's skull everywhere.
The producers of this film offer to pay funeral expenses for anyone who dies of fright while watching this movie.
That is the best way I can describe this movie which centers on a newly married couple who move into a house that is haunted by the husband's first wife who died under mysterious circumstances.
But THE SCREAMING SKULL is just so horrible, there is no way I could have possibly even gotten interested in anything that was actually going on in the film, and thus the "suspension of disbelief" was indeed non-existant.One of the worst, and probably the most boring movie I've ever seen.1/10.
I can't imagine sitting through this without the SoL boys making comments--or spending most of the time in liplock with a cute guy.Made by someone who'd heard of Hitchcock's "Rebecca" but didn't have either the budget or the talent, "The Screaming Skull" begins in a histronic manner typical of B-movies of the period: a disclaimer promising free burial services for anyone who dies of fright during the production.
"The Screaming Skull" is the grandaddyof all dumb horror movies!
Meanwhile, the mentally impaired gardener Mickey (played by Mr. Nicol) is devoted to the memory of Eric's first wife Marian, whose portrait can be seen inside the home.Also co-starring Russ Conway as the Reverend Snow and Tony Johnson as his wife, "The Screaming Skull" is fairly effective.
"The Screaming Skull" opens with a warning and an offer for free burial services if you should die watching it - Now there's a hook!
Because of all the negative reviews, The Screaming Skull was one of the movies I never bothered to watch. |
tt1340138 | Terminator Genisys | In the year 2029, John Connor (Jason Clarke), leader of the human Resistance against Skynet launches a massive final offensive on Los Angeles. He is notified by his unit, Tech-Com, that Skynet will attack on two fronts in the past and future, thereby changing warfare forever. Connor sets up two attack forces, one to strike at Skynet's main defense grid in Colorado, and a second one, led by John and his trusted lieutenant Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), to destroy Skynet's main weapon, a time machine hidden at a remote storage facility.Before the Resistance can reach the time machine, Skynet sends a T-800 terminator back in time to 1984 to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor. Reese volunteers to go back in time in order to protect her and ensure John's existence. Moments before Kyle disappears, he witnesses a cyborg posing as a Resistance soldier suddenly attack John. As Reese floats in the machine's magnetic field, he receives fragments of memories belonging to an alternate 12-year-old version of himself (Bryant Prince) with a young Sarah, including a cryptic warning of events that will happen in 2017.Both Reese and the original T-800 arrives in 1984 Los Angeles. The T-800 materializes near a garbage truck, and goes to the Griffith Park Observatory, where it confronts three punks and demands their clothes, as before in the first film. All seems to go just like it happened in the first film, that is, until a new, much more aged T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) appears to confront the original. The three punks run away just as the two cyborgs engage in a one on one brawl, with the younger one gaining the upper hand. However, just as the younger T-800 is about to finish the older one off, a sniper allied with the T-800 shoots it from the observatory's roof, disabling its onboard computer.Meanwhile, Reese materializes in a back alleyway. He steals a pair of pants from a homeless man. Moments later, a police car arrives and its officer chases Reese into the alleyway. Reese corners the officer, taking his revolver and demanding to know the date and year, just like before in the first film. Much to Kyle's astonishment, the cop reveals that he knows Reese was to arrive at that precise time. Reese fires several shots at the officer, revealing that it is a T-1000 terminator. The shots stall the T-1000 long enough for Reese to escape into a nearby department store, where he grabs some new clothing. While fleeing, he inadvertently runs into two officers, Garber and O'Brien, who subdue and handcuff him.Garber and O'Brien lead Kyle away in handcuffs, failing to see the T-1000 emerge from a dressing mirror. It impales Officer Garber through the back. Kyle and O'Brien manage to take cover behind another counter. Just when it seems like their luck is about to run out, an armored van driven by Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) bursts through the storefront, and knocks the T-1000 out of the way. She then empties a Desert Eagle pistol into it, stalling it long enough for Reese to get into the truck with her ("Come with me if you want to live!!"), and then drives off.As they drive, Kyle finds out that the original timeline has been altered: Sarah already knows about Skynet, Judgment Day, and his role as her protector.Furthermore, Kyle learns that the T-800 sent from 2029 was already dispatched by Sarah and the new Terminator, who is now known as "The Guardian" (or as Sarah sometimes calls him, "Pops"). As Kyle is taking in the new revelations, the T-1000 attacks the vehicle. The Guardian and Sarah plan to lure the T-1000 into a trap from an abandoned factory. From there, the T-1000 disables the Guardian and re-activates the fallen T-800. The T-1000 then pursues Sarah while Kyle fends off the T-800. After destroying its flesh, Kyle finally destroys the T-800 by blasting its head off. Moments later, Sarah finds herself in a chamber beneath an acid bath set up as a trap for the T-1000, when she's approached by two Kyles. Unsure which Kyle is the actual Kyle and which one is the T-1000, she takes a lucky guess and shoots one of them in the foot. By sheer luck, it's the T-1000, which morphs back into its cop form. After yelling to the real Kyle to run, Sarah fires at the ceiling, unleashing an acid bath on the T-1000. The terminator is mostly melted, although it takes some assistance from the Guardian to do so (and not without damaging the flesh on the Guardian's right arm).Sarah then explains to Kyle that the Guardian was sent to protect her from the T-1000 back in 1973, where the Terminator's arrival had caused a fractured timeline that differs from Kyle's. After saving Sarah, the Guardian began training her to face her destiny. The Guardian has built a time machine similar to Skynet's and Sarah plans to use it with Kyle to travel to 1997 to change the events that would lead to Skynet's initial attack on humanity. However, Kyle, convinced that the future has changed because of his new memories, persuades Sarah and the Guardian that they should travel to 2017 instead. He believes that Skynet will begin its attack on that year of the altered timeline; Kyle and Sarah time-travel while their Guardian spends the next 33 years preparing for their arrival.In 2017, Kyle and Sarah materialize in the middle of a busy highway and are apprehended by police. The Guardian watches from a distance and follows them to a hospital. While being treated for injuries, Sarah and Kyle learn about "Genisys", a soon-to-be-unveiled operating system that will be used on every computer system worldwide: they realize that it is Skynet's precursor. She and Kyle are then rescued by what appears to be John Connor. As he leads the pair to a parking garage, the Guardian appears and shoots John, revealing "John" to be a nanomachine hybrid. John has been converted into a T-3000, and explains that shortly after Kyle was sent back, he was infected by a T-5000, and was subsequently transformed. His mission here is to ensure that Cyberdyne would receive Skynet's technology and secure its rise. The T-3000 John tries to convince Sarah and Kyle to join the machines and end the conflict, but they refuse. After a brief battle, the T-3000 is temporarily incapacitated with an MRI machine.The Guardian takes Kyle and Sarah to a safe house in southern Marin County, where they make final preparations to destroy the Cyberdyne's Genisys mainframe before it comes online. The T-3000 pursues them to the Golden Gate Bridge, where Kyle, Sarah, and the Guardian are all taken into police custody. While awaiting interrogation, the trio is freed by O'Brien, (J. K. Simmons), who discovers that Kyle and Sarah are time-travelers, and the officer that Kyle and Sarah saved from the T-800's attack back in 1984. The three hijack a helicopter on the rooftop and head toward the Cyberdyne's San Francisco headquarters, with the T-3000 in close pursuit. During the airborne chase, the Guardian dive bombs into the T-3000's helicopter, causing it to crash.Emerging from the helicopter crash, the T-3000 enters the Cyberdyne complex and advances the countdown mechanism from 13 hours to 15 minutes. As Genisys begins to gain sentience, the Guardian, Kyle and Sarah plant bombs at key points in the facility while holding off the T-3000. After a lengthy battle, the T-3000 reveals its true self before easily defeating the Guardian, only to be attacked by Sarah and Kyle. With not much time left, Sarah and Kyle escape while the Guardian traps the T-3000 in the magnetic field of the prototype time machine, where T-3000 manages to throw the Guardian into a vat of mimetic polyalloy liquid just beneath the magnetic field. Kyle and Sarah manage to reach a bunker beneath the facility moments before the time machine explodes, setting off the bombs, and preventing Genisys from coming online. The explosion also kills off the T-3000, destroying it once and for all. The Guardian, now upgraded with mimetic polyalloy components that the T-1000 usually has, appears and helps them find a way out of the debris.Later, the trio travel to young Kyle Reese's home, where they repeat the warning about Genisys to young Kyle, ensuring the events leading to their arrival. Sarah is relieved believing that she is now free to choose what to do with her future. She decides to stay with Kyle.In a post-credits scene, it is revealed that the Genisys system core was located in a hidden subterranean chamber and has survived the explosion. | good versus evil, humor, murder, sci-fi, flashback | train | imdb | As the tough leader of the human resistance sends Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and safeguard the future, an incredible turn of deeds creates a fractured time-line .
I probably won't be watching it like 30 times like Judgement Day, but its not like I expected it to ever live up to Cameron's work....First off, the action was good and so was the pace, the film never became boring even with how complex the story was so it certainly gets points for that.The film itself runs like the greatest hits of the the franchise which is both good and bad.
Overall: It's no Judgement day but you know what, it was actually a decent film and it was great to see Arnie as the Terminator again, and not saying "talk to the hand" .
In 1984, fans of sci-fi with action were surprised by "Terminator", one of the best films of this genre in the cinema industry.
Rise of the Machines started the series' decline and had its faults but also had some good things that made it better than its reputation, while Terminator Salvation although with its moments was even more disappointing.
The rest of the cast are not good at all, with Jai Courtney being by far the worst actor for Kyle Reese of the series in a performance that is both insipid and annoying (which didn't entirely surprise me seeing as out of the little I've seen of him he's always struck me as a lazy actor with an arrogant ego).
It's also very dull, not just because of the leaden pacing but because there is not much new and little interesting is done with the ideas presented in the film and it completely lacks atmosphere, thrills, mystery or suspense, and any drama is both heavy handed and lacking in heart.Direction from Alan Taylor is lazy, favouring spectacle over depth and story and character development.
The ending also felt incredibly forced and tacked on.Overall, Terminator Genisys was a pretty poor and disappointing film, and is by far the worst of the Terminator franchise.
The battle scenes play homage to the aesthetic and look of the future wars in the 1st two movies.Emilia Clarke did a pretty good job of playing Sarah Connor although she might have been a little softer looking than Linda Hamilton, I think the justification of the plot makes you understand a little more of how and why she is the way she is.I'll tell you what they didn't do in this film.
I won't lie, to date no terminator movie after T2 has even come close to making me feel exited watching it the first time the way T2 did, until now.I thought this latest movie was fantastic, and I was not alone.
The newest entry to the Terminator franchise, strives with towering efforts to reclaim the glory of its two James Cameron-directed predecessors, but miserably fails to deliver even a faint hint of wit and sense, in the wake of its convoluted confusion-infested time-travel narrative.In this fifth installment, ill-wittedly conceived and called GENISYS, The Terminator is definitely back, but his legacy is dead, butchered to bits of rusty metal junks through lazy and uncreative reinvention of its original source material.
At the time, Sarah is already being protected by her guardian terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), whose reasons of arriving in her time, is seemingly set to be never known.Time-travel has always been a fascinating subject, and it in such fashion that Terminator: Genisys, attempts to build its own stronghold in the mold of the first two films.
It hurt me, Im genuinely distraught.When I heard they were producing a new Terminator I was apprehensive, what started out as a once great franchise has been marred with misgivings for quite some time but I wanted to believe it could be something again.
At the very least I was expecting some thrills and a mildly entertaining action film, what I got was a train wreck of muddled plot points, illogical structures and a complete crumbling of a much beloved film franchise.Im a fan of the Terminator franchise, while 3 and Salvation are often considered pretty dire, I honestly thought thats as low as you could get but this film s*&ts all over those two.
The problem is this movie markets itself as the third true sequel of the early Terminator films, so it's not unreasonable to expect it to be on the same level as the other two.
When John Connor (Jason Clarke), leader of the human resistance, sends Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and safeguard the future, an unexpected turn of events creates a fractured timeline.
The story takes places primarily in three different times, but its not too hard to follow if you pay attention.Bottom line: If you liked the first two movies, you will enjoy this one.Watch for a scene at the end of the credits.
The battle scenes play homage to the aesthetic and look of the future wars in the 1st two movies.Emilia Clarke did a pretty good job of playing Sarah Connor although she might have been a little softer looking than Linda Hamilton, I think the justification of the plot makes you understand a little more of how and why she is the way she is..
Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney played John Connor and Kyle Reese brilliantly with each stepping easily into the role and exploring sides of the character we have never seen before.
The CGI in this film is also outstanding, it's great to see just how realistic the terminator world looks in 2015 (especially seeing how cgi has made the T- 1000 even more bad-ass)!
Terminator Genisys offers new, excellent cast members to the series and new fans may really enjoy the film, but I was kind of disappointed that it was mostly a rehash.
Since it played a lot on the stories, characters and humor from those two movies.Also liked that they stayed true to the Terminator-universe in both story/time line and technology shown in "the future"-part..
Man, if you care about your childhood favorite movies, every time there's a new installment there's a great hype about it, but if George Lucas teach us something from the Phantom Menace, it's that sometimes is better for fans to leave a franchise rest in peace (even if the producers disagree).
Example: there's a scene that looks like a musical (or any STOMP show), and i'm not kidding.But, the BIGGEST, the WACKIEST thing they did to the WHOLE TERMINATOR FRANCHISE is...renaming the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as: POPS.
Only one thing is watchable in this film which is Arnold Schwarzenegger,he did a great job.Action scenes are copied from first two terminator films,everything is CGI so nothing has intensity of any kind.That Bus chase scene is hilarious beyond levels!Director Alan Taylor who made Thor 2,thought that it is another dumb Marvel film,He made characters like T800,T1000,John,Sarah Conner,Kyle Reese look like 10yr old kid.Just a Pure Bad movie!.
Previous terminator movies contained a powerful inspiring character who make "Arnold Schwarzenegger" a house hold name, a Governor and in Genisys, its replaced by a weird looking, horrible man who don't inspire at all.
The story may be a bit confusing for some people, but as a fan of time travel movies I was happy, I mean I like doctor who so this was child's play for me.
I don't want to get too much into it but the two things that stand out from the story for me was the connection between Sarah Connor and the T800 and also the 'twist' of John Connor becoming the main villain (this is a curse with this franchise, moments that would have been awesome twists in the movies are shown in the trailers).
Hopefully we won't have to see him again in future installments...Overall this is a great action movie, not as good as Mad Max, but much better than Jurassic World!
The storyline was good and as others mentioned, Arnold's (the Terminator's) ability to relate with Sarah and other humans was often humorous and handled very well, adding to an already enjoyable movie.
I wouldn't be surprised if it gets rated r in a few days.When you go into this movie I highly recommend you see at least the first movie as there is a lot messing with the time line and I'm just going to say that as the rest would spoil the movie.Arnold's Performance is the best, I found myself laughing my butt off at some of the stuff he says.
Ultimately a little of each of the previous Terminator films were sprinkled throughout, some even combining them all together at once.The action was pretty effective throughout the two hour and five minute running time, lots of cool explosions and sound editing was pretty amazing.
Visually there were ups and downs, but nothing like I was prepared for.Overall, I really did have a blast watching "Terminator Genisys.The costars – including Byung-Hun Lee as the new T-1000, Matt Smith, JK Simmons, and Courtney B.
But it's really the action set pieces, massive detonations, and all-out hand-to-hand combat that are the real stars of Terminator Genisys.The blend of top-notch CGI, realism, stunts, and breakneck pace keep all the exploding balls in the air, and the 3D is blissfully easy on the eyes.'ve always loved the story and the time travelling aspect, this did the trick and I believe did a justice to the series even though most would disagree with me there.
It shows what must have happened in the future of the first Terminator Moovie: it gives us a great image of that, even though this version of John Connor looks like "Ugly Lenny" - The bass Player of the Punk Rock band "Social Spit".
If you've seen the previous Terminator movies, all of which I absolutely loved, I think you'll be very disappointed with this unoriginal and derivative addition to the series.
(Emilia Clarke looks like she's struggle with a heavy handbag) Basically nobody making this movie gives a rats if the film is any good, they just know it will make money.
"Terminator Genisys" is one more movie about terminator but in this we watch John Connor sending Sgt. Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor and safeguard the future.
Although if you are not a fan of terminator I also believe that you are going to like it because it combines very well all the previous information that we have from the previous movies of terminator and the result which comes from it is simply very good.
Arnold Schwarzenegger for one more time was very good in his part as the protector - guardian and I also liked the interpretation of both Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney.
Last but not least Jason Clarke made a very nice interpretation too.To sum up I believe that "Terminator Genisys" is a very interesting movie to watch with plenty of action and many twists.
But Alan Taylor proved me very wrong, this is the best terminator film I've seen in many many years!When I look at my favorite of the franchise, T2, the things that made it a huge success is the following.
Emilia was fine but the character wasn't as tortured as she was in T2 and that is part of the story and that Emilia plays more of a full on brute force, then a tortured women with emotional and physical scars.At the end of the day, if you like the first two terminator films you should watch this.
The story is a bit hard to understand at first with all the different time-lines and time travelling but overall it's a very enjoyable movie with good and also pretty funny script and action.
Plot with twists I liked to follow, action that is understandable yet sci-fi-styled and of just right amount, very respectful usage of T1/T2 material, nice cast of actors (though I'd prefer another Reese - Emilia and Arnie were great), all seasoned with a humour.Reminded me of Men in Black 3 - that was also much better than I thought it would be..
With enough allusions to former Terminator lore to please serious fans of the genre, along with great plot twists and as-expected awesome special effects, I wasn't disappointed.
Like a lot of time travel movies, I may need to watch some parts again to completely understand what's going on with "loops" and all the "time travel rules," but, for the most part, I thought it was fresh.
Still, this is a creditable piece of writing that attempts to change a constant that runs through the past four films - the John Connor genealogy.The movie feels bogged down by having to explain all the time travel mumbo jumbo (as usual, it gave my wife a headache and she couldn't keep up) in uncreative ways.
this was the best since part 2 and it's really a reboot which is a retelling of the first 3 films as it reffers to things happened in first two films mostly but also part 3 is not completely ignored.only salvation is ignored.A fresh new take with arnold at his best and the action and suspense are constant and u never get bored.the new sara connor is very beautiful and talented and u like kyle and john too.there are twists and all in all if u are a fan of those films u will love this one which is a great improvement over the previous salvation film which was the worst terminator film even worst than part 3.the only flaw in the film is that it repeats the same terminator formula which after 4 films may get u tired but that was to be expected.The film was excellent and that counts the most..
OMG this new Terminator film is amazing, fantastic alternative time- line to the original film, great writing and acting.
This is terminator at its best and a new beginning for the fans, looking forward to the other two movies that follow this movie in 2017 and 2018.Stay till the end credits because it's not ended.Emilia Clarke is amazing in this film, perfect look and double of the original.
Arnold is fantastic for comic relief and they did a great job of not letting his age effect action sequences.I saw it with 5 people and all of us were confused by the poor reviews we had heard prior to seeing it after seeing it, we all liked it a lot..
And probably that is at fault too, cause at no time did I really buy into these new-look terminators.I think I speak for a lot of people when I say the franchise stopped with T-3, and the rest have all been failed attempts at building on a wonderful movie franchise..
In a film about time-traveling terminators to kill of people in the past to change the future, would you not expect something like what we have here?
And used dialogue that was sparing and to the point.The dialogue in TERMINATOR GENYSIS is reminiscent of an early 1980s network TV show, with scenes between Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor that are SO BAD the producers of THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL would have laughed them out of the writer's room.And then, to top it all, the third act of this travesty actually asks us to care for the plight of these people when the movie has done nothing to earn it.
Sending a Terminator back in time to 1984, to kill Sarah Connor(Emilia Clarke) to prevent John from ever being born.
Like James Cameron mentioned a couple of weeks ago in an interview, Terminator Genisys has all of the great characters that were in the first two films.
I'm pretty sure that the Terminator fans have had imaginations (deep down in their back-head) about how it would be like if a T-800 was sent back to 1984 to stop the T-800 which was programmed to kill Sarah Connor or to see how Kyle Reese manages to fight against T-1000.
on to this amazing movie!I felt the movie was easily a 8.5 to 9 out of 10.The effects, story lines, acting are all on par and most importantly - they follow the flow and feel of the original Terminators which makes it such a huge success.To those "critics" that were confused by the time-travel aspects of the film..
The movie does explain it very well and hey, if you think it is too crazy or confusing then you cannot appreicate what the terminator and Skynet is all about.To those "critics" that thought Arnold is too old for this role..
The only decent performance is by Jason Clarke as John Connor and that's probably by default In summary TERMINATOR GENISYS is a cynical money making exercise by Hollywood to ditch the previous movies and start all over again .
I think that what it comes down to, is whether or not you are a true fan of Terminator one and two.I am 43, and Those first two films still rank in my top ten all-time movie favorites.
Sure it's impossible to imagine a Terminator film without Schwarzenegger but what the writers have done with his character here is too painful to watch and if this is any indication, it's only going to get worse in future instalments.Emilia Clarke takes the coveted role of Sarah Connor and does put in some effort but she is no Linda Hamilton.
But after their victory they discover that a T-800 (played by a CG Arnold Schwarzenegger and a body double) has been sent back in time to 1984 in order to kill Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and they send Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to protect her.
But in trying to do this it feels more like a homage to the Terminator films than it does a new instalment. |
tt0094715 | Beaches | The story of two friends from different backgrounds, whose friendship spans more than 35 years through childhood, love, and tragedy: Cecilia Carol "C.C." Bloom (Bette Midler), a New York actress and singer, and Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey), a San Francisco heiress and lawyer. The film begins with middle-aged C.C. receiving a note during a rehearsal for her upcoming Los Angeles concert. She leaves the rehearsal in a panic and tries frantically to travel to her friend's side. Unable to get a flight to San Francisco because of fog, she rents a car and drives overnight, reflecting on her life with Hillary.
It is 1958; a rich little girl Hillary (Marcie Leeds) meets child performer C.C. (Mayim Bialik) under the boardwalk on the beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hillary is lost and C.C. is hiding from her overbearing stage mother (Lainie Kazan). They become fast friends, growing up and bonding through letters of support to each other. A grown-up Hillary goes on to become a human rights lawyer, while C.C.'s singing career is not exactly taking off. They write to each other regularly and give updates on their lives. Hillary shows up at the New York City dive bar where C.C. is performing, their first meeting since Atlantic City. She moves in with C.C. and gets a job with the ACLU. C.C. is now performing singing telegrams, leading to a job offer from John (John Heard), the artistic director of the Falcon Players, after she sings his birthday telegram.
A love triangle ensues as Hillary and John are instantly attracted to one another, leaving C.C. in the cold and feeling resentment toward her best friend. Matters are made worse when Hillary and John sleep together on the opening-night of C.C.'s first lead in an off-Broadway production. When Hillary returns home to care for her ailing father, the two friends resolve their issues about John, as John does not have romantic feelings for C.C. After her father passes away, Hillary spends time at her family beach house with lawyer Michael Essex (James Read), eventually marrying him. C.C. and John spend a lot of time together, start dating and eventually marry. Hillary and Michael travel to New York to see C.C. perform on Broadway, where she has become a star. When C.C. finds out that Hillary has stopped working as a lawyer, she accuses Hillary of giving up on her dreams. Hillary responds that C.C. has become no more than a "pretentious, social climber" who is obsessed with her career. After the argument, Hillary ignores C.C.'s letters, throwing herself into being a dutiful, but unchallenged, wife.
John tells C.C. that her self-centeredness and obsession with her career has him feeling left behind and he asks for a divorce. Despite the separation, John tells her, 'I love you, I'll always love you. I just want to let go of us before us gets bad.' Upset at the thought of her marriage failing, C.C. turns to her mother, who lives in Miami Beach. Her mother tells her that she has given up a lot for her daughter, and C.C. starts to understand when her mother tells her the effect that her selfishness has had on those closest to her. Meanwhile, Hillary returns home from a trip earlier than expected to find her husband having breakfast with another woman, both wearing pajamas. When Hillary learns that C.C. is performing in San Francisco, she makes contact for the first time in years. They learn of each other's divorces, then discover that they have been secretly jealous of each other for years: Hillary is upset that she has none of the talent or charisma that C.C. is noted for, while C.C. admits she has always been envious of Hillary's beauty and intelligence. The two then realize that their feud could have been avoided by honest communication.
Hillary tells C.C. that she is pregnant and that she has already decided to keep the baby and raise the child as a single parent, a decision that wins her much admiration from the feisty and independent C.C., who promises she will stay and help her out. C.C. even starts talking of settling down and having a family of her own, having become engaged to Hillary's obstetrician. However, when C.C.'s agent calls with the perfect comeback gig for her, C.C. quickly abandons her fiancé and any notions of the domestic life and races back to New York City, discovering that the comeback gig is at her ex-husband John's theater, bringing her full circle to where she began her theatrical career. Hillary eventually gives birth to a daughter, whom she names Victoria Cecilia (Grace Johnston). When Victoria is a young girl, Hillary finds herself easily exhausted and breathless, a state she attributes to her busy schedule as a mother and a lawyer. When she collapses while at court she is diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy, requiring a heart transplant if she is to live. Having a rare tissue type, she realizes she will most likely die before a heart is found.
In the meantime C.C. has become a big star, having won a Tony award and completed her latest hit album. When she learns of Hilary's illness she agrees to accompany Hillary and Victoria to the beach house for the summer. Hillary becomes depressed due to her debilitated state and inadvertently takes her frustration out on C.C. who she sees having fun with and connecting with Victoria. Hillary eventually begins to accept her prognosis bravely, appreciating her time with Victoria and C.C. Hillary and Victoria return to San Francisco, while C.C. heads to Los Angeles for her concert. While Victoria is packing to travel to the concert, Hillary collapses, leading to the note C.C. receives at the start of the movie which prompted her overnight drive to San Francisco. C.C. takes Hillary and Victoria to the beach house. The two friends watch the sun setting over the beach, transitioning directly to a scene of C.C. and Victoria at a cemetery (all with C.C. singing "Wind Beneath My Wings" in the background). After the funeral, C.C. tells Victoria that her mother wanted her to live with her. C.C. admits that she is very selfish and has no idea what kind of a mother she will make, but also tells her: "there's nothing in the world that I want more than to be with you". She then takes Victoria into her arms and the two console each other in their grief. C.C. goes forward with her concert, and after the show, she leaves hand-in-hand with Victoria, and begins telling stories of when she first met her mother. C.C.'s and Victoria's voices fade as we hear the younger C.C. and Hillary from 1958: "Be sure to keep in touch, C.C., OK?" "Well sure, we're friends aren't we?" The film ends with a young C.C. and Hillary taking pictures together, in a photo booth, on the day they first met. | melodrama, sentimental, flashback | train | wikipedia | Some of us may never find our romantic long-lasting "soul mate", but this movie makes the excellent point of showing that if you find a true friend in life you are truly blessed..
from the hilarious 'Otto Titsling' song (which had me in creases!) to the powerful and emotional ending to the film, in which 'Wind Beneath My Wings' is immortalised.This is a film that has touched everyone I know that has seen it, and is a timeless classic that really illustrates the true meaning of friendship.A true 'Chick Flick'......
Beaches definitely goes into the latter category Actually I didn't get to see it until a few years ago, maybe because I'm a guy and this kind of movies aren't what guys usually rent but as one grows up, so does the appreciations for sensitive movies like Beaches.The book is even better and I wish they had made the movie even longer with more stories from the novel.I recommend Beaches to both women and men, if you think you couldn't cry from a movie - watch this and see if you're wrong - I was....
And for one, I am tired of the syrupy ending that was popularized by 1970's excellent "Love Story".But despite that, Marshall has directed a very good movie here.
That may sound corny, but it's true and many of my favorite films are that kind of film: "10" (Blake Edwards, 1979), "The Man Who Loved Women" (Edwards, 1983), "Skin Deep" (Edwards, 1989), "The Apartment" (Billy Wilder, 1960), "The Fortune Cookie" (Wilder, 1966), "Harry and Tonto" (Paul Mazursky, 1974) and "An Unmarried Woman" (Mazursky, 1978) to name a few.The performances are first rate, especially Bette Midler, whom I'm only used to in comedies.
The cast in the movie, including Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey and Mayim Bialik, who plays the younger version of Bette Midlers character all give wonderful performances here as usual.Beaches is simply a classic amazing movie.
I love it for many reasons, one being I'm a fan of Bette Midler and Mayim Bialik, who are both absolutely brilliant, the music in the movie is amazing and I absolutely love, "Wind Beneath My Wings".
Midler also shines with her musical talent much of the time, especially with the theme song "Wind Beneath My Wings." All things considered, the movie is great.Midler is Ceceila Carol "C.C." Bloom, a New York aspiring entertainer with attitude and a drive to be successful in show business no matter what it takes (which she does).
The small supporting cast is nice as well, including Lainie Kazan as Leona Bloom (C.C.'s mother), John Heard as John Pierce, C.C.'s theater director husband, James Reed as Michael Essex, Hillary's husband, Spalding Gray as Dr. Richard Milstein who Midler takes interest in while living with Hillary in San Francisco, Mayim Bialik and Marcie Leeds as young C.C. and Hillary, and Grace Johnston as Victoria, Hillary's daughter in the latter half of the film.
a very moving movie, about a friendship with barbara hershey and bette midler..
After watching it, the people around me were shocked and said, "I like American movies now!"Two unlikely friends meet by chance in childhood and keep up their friendship over the years through ups and downs, crises and victories, and reversing economic positions more than once.
However, in this film Bette Midler, (CC Bloom),"That Old Feeling",'97 plays a very self-centered person who will stop at nothing to get what she wants and if it is a career on the stage, just forget about love or a husband and children.
Midler sings outstanding songs we all know by heart and it is a very entertaining film, but very very SAD!.
Although I'm Only 14yrs Old This Movie Is My Favourite...I Don't Know Why But Since I First Watched I Was 7yrs Old...And It Still Remains My Personal Favourite...Especially...The Part When They Are At The Summer House The Last Time And She Dies Facing The Sunset...And Then Wind Beneath My Wings Starts Playing And Then U See C.C And Victoria At The Funeral...I Start Crying..Thats My Favourite..Part.....Even The Soundtrack..The Music In It Is Very Good...!!!...I'm Even Trying To Find The Special Edition Of This Movie But I Cant Find It Anywhere...I Only Found The Original Version....:(:(....Beaches The Best Movie Ever.....
So I suggest you grab your best friend and a box of Kleenexes, for this film is a very successful one in make you cry, and laugh.When the irrepressible C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) and the shy and proper Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) first meet under the boardwalk at the beach, all the 11-year-olds have in common is the need for a best friend.
I think I like the movie so much because I have a best friend like that and I know that no matter what I can always turn to that person in a time of need and that person knows that she can always turn to me.
Barbra Hershey and Bette Midler have great chemistry together and make me truly believe that they have been friends forever.
The cast truly shines and Bette Midler's voice just adds to making the movie that much better.
I think that no matter how old I get I will always find my way back to watching this movie when I am thinking of my best friend and when I am in a time of need.
Anyone who has seen this movie will see that how much these two women have put into their characters to make us feel and see that real lifelong friends go through good and bad times but no matter what happens they are always there for each other.
I first saw it about 10 years ago, and ever since then, every time i have watched it i cried a little.The great soundtrack makes the movie even more dramatic and it will stay in my heart as one of my favourite films of all time..
Bette Midler is great as CC Bloom and sings a great soundtrack including the now classic hit "Wind Beneath My Wings." I really liked this movie and have purchased it both on VHS and DVD and often share it with friends.
Iris Ranier Dart's novel was obviously written with Bette Midler in mind (there's even a mention of a movie called "Jilted" which is the Midler character, Cee Cee Bloom's version of Midler's own fiasco, "Jinxed.") So, she's wonderful in the role, and Mayim Bialik is perfect as the 11 year old Cee Cee.
The movie replaces this scene with more of Hershey being cold and Midler being angry.Midler gives some terrific musical numbers, but they don't work within the structure of the movie (its understandable that they couldn't realistically flashback to her being a 19 year old in summer stock, but "The Factory" and "Otto Titzling," respectively fascinating and funny, belong in another film.)I understand when books are changed a bit in order to fit into a two-hour-movie.
I LOVE Bette Midler, but in a movie where she must play sympathetic and dramatic at some point, she comes across as if she's in a comedy.
I love to look at Barbara Hershey and listen to Bette Midler in top form, particularly when she sings, but this picture is embarrassingly bad.
I wanted to see a male version of this with the Spalding Gray doctor character just to have a movie titled "Sons of Beaches," but the only things in this waste of celluloid are the performance of Mayim Bialik as a young Bette Midler and the song "Wind Beneath my Wings." So save yourself some pain and get the song, and if you absolutely must rent this movie on some video format, fast forward only to the Bialik scene and see a better Garry Marshall film (which means pretty much all the others he did) like the underrated "Flamingo Kid." I rented this thing once because Oprah went on and on about it gushing like a teenage girl, and had to stop the video several times because it was just too damned painful to see without constant bathroom breaks.A far better "Chick Flick" is "Fried Green Tomatoes." At least the writing didn't embarrass the talent within it.And I want my two bucks back for the waste of rental....and that's a wrap!.
Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey star as long time friends who sacrifice their personal lives for their careers, but remain loyal to each other through the years.Midler shows off her singing and dancing talents as CC Bloom, and it is a role that's perfect for her.
John Heard and James Read as CC and Hillary's husbands turn in good performances as well, but they take a back seat to the women.The film is entertaining, and the friendship as it unwinds is both interesting and engaging to watch.
Masterful performances by Bette Midler, who thoroughly deserved the Grammy for her song "Wind Beneath my Wings", and Barbara Hershey.
It is a rollercoaster ride of emotions.It is hugely entertaining,humerous and heart-wrenching at the end.The music is a plus for Bette Midler fans and the brilliantly sung 'Wind Beneath my Wings' is the perfect accompanyment for this film..
I love Bette Midler and think she is perfect in this movie.
I first watched Beaches with my childhood best friend - she said it was her favourite film, and it swiftly became mine.
one of us went on to be seriously ill, the other to develop an amazing singing voice (guess which one!) At the time watching the film always made me really sad (must have know inside how it would turn out) but now it makes me smile slightly, in the way an old musical, or a cartoon i watched when i was a baby does.
We see their lives as they grow up and apart from each other, only to see that the true friendship has never gone from their lives, no matter how burdensome their relationship has become.Barbara Hershey is wonderful as the friend from the right side of the tracks, and Mayim Bialik is eerily yet perfectly cast as a young Midler.
There's one particular line right near the end and, if I'm not already crying by then, I'm gone!!Any friends will see parallels to some aspect of their own friendships in this film - it's straight from the heart.And the soundtrack....buy it now!!.
This movie really affected me and I know it has because I may have seen it over 20 times but I still cry at the ending and I also start to get teary eyed whenever I hear "Wind Beneath My Wings".
Very fine performances by Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.This movie is a cute little story, that I love watching.
I still can't hear "Wind beneath my wings" without a tear coming to my eye.Last year when this was played in my favourite restaurant my eyes filled and to explain this to my six year old I had to give a quick synopsis - I was sobbing before I got to the end!The first time I saw the movie I was so broken-hearted at the end that my husband thought he was going to have to call a doctor to sedate me.
This movie is definitely one of the best I've ever seen.It's a beautiful story about true friendship that lasts forever.The music is so beautiful !
I specially like the song: "The wind beneath my wings", magistrally performed by Bette Middler.If you haven't seen this movie, don't wait any longer.
Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey are alright, but they're mismatched, and the child actresses that play their characters at the beginning of the film are a lot better.
Still struggling to make in on the stage, obviously Broadway-bound Bette Midler (as Cecilia Carol "CC" Bloom) welcomes beautiful attorney Barbara Hershey (as Hillary "Hill" Whitney) as her New York City roommate...Trying to separate herself from her father's millions, Ms. Hershey wants to help poor people with her lawyer skills.
Young performers Grace Johnston (as Victoria), Mayim Bialik (as little CC), and Marcie Leeds (as little Hill) benefit beautifully from Garry Marshall's direction.****** Beaches (12/21/88) Garry Marshall ~ Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, John Heard, Grace Johnston.
Tho both of them are from vastly different backgrounds they strike up a friendship that will literally last a lifetime.Directed by Gary Marshall, Beaches is adapted by Mary Agnes Donoghue from Iris Rainer Dart's novel, and stars Bette Midler & Barbara Hershey as the two female protagonists taking on the trials and tribulations of life and friendship.
This is a decent enough exploration of the lifelong friendship between two very different women, CC (Bette Midler) and Hillary (Barbara Hershey.) Meeting as children on a beach in Atlantic City, CC and Hillary are about as different as they can possibly be, but they establish a bond which for many years is basically a pen-pal relationship until they reconnect.
Bette Midler gives a great performance, there are a couple of very brilliant and fun singing numbers, and at times it is actually touching.
The reason i wanted to see this movie is because i heard the amazing and powerful song by Bette - Wind Beneath My Wings and the video to it had scenes from the film from it.
Im my opinion, this is one of the greatest films ever made, it makes you think about that one best friend that you had when you were little, and wonder, if you still don't talk to them, what life would be like.
One of the things I most enjoyed about this movie was not only Bette's wonderful performance, but also the interplay between her character and the other main character, played by Barbara Hershey.
She has gone on to star in such classic films as The New Women, Riding in Cars With Boys, and The Princess Diaries.All in all, this is a touching, sweet, wonderful movie - if you watch it, it will live in your heart forever..
Bette Midler plays a Divine Miss M type character, grating, scattered, nervous, self-absorbed, incessantly chattering.The music is for the most part disappointing except for the astounding Wind Beneath My Wings which overpowers the end of the film.
It is a movie that celebrates friendship, not just at the end, but all through the film.The child actors who play the young version of the adults not only looked like the adults, but they had their mannerisms.
I love Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.
I had to buy the soundtrack because I love it so much.The bond that these two women share in this movie is unbelievable and it shows you how being a great friend really matters and makes a difference.
The whole movie is about two women and their life long friendship (That's original) Bette Midler couldn't be more annoying.
CC and Hilery both get married CC gets her big break and Hilery is a housewife CC and Hilery become filthy rich but their is a big bad surprise which will fiscally pull them apart, but emotionally bring them closer together.They met on a beach when they were both very young, brassy C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) and classy Hilery (Barbara Hershey).Through good times and bad times, through broken marriages and budding careers, they still had each other.
Beaches is one of those films that you enjoy watching possibly talk about, if you are very emotional you might even weep, however it does not stand out as one of the great movies as it is a bit tacky.It follows the trials of a lifelong friendship between two girls on holiday and later two women, with their ups and downs.A nice story not badly portrayed with a cheesy soundtrack, I think the best part was the idea that with life's ups and downs you can get through anything if you have a true friend.No matter what!!!.
Bette Midler's early film acting years were not especially good as I can't find anything worth recommending in such films as "Down And Out In Beverly Hills", "Ruthless People" and "Outrageous Fortune." "Beaches" is the worst one of all.
The real treasure was Mayim Bialik, who would later star in "Blossom," and did a terrific Bette impersonation, complete with excellent singing (at least, I think it was her).The plot was kind of hard to follow in parts, but basically ended up being like a lesbian version of "Love Story," without any actual lesbianism.
The scene near the end when Wendy is dying, and her and CC are sitting next to each other at the beach, and then Bette Midler's song, Wind beneath my wings, begins to play, was just fantastic.
Starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, this movie is about two women who first meet on the beach in Atlantic City when they were kids; one is from a rich family and the other is into show business.
This is a truly unforgettable movie to watch and will make you realize for sure that you should always have friends to stick with you through thick and thin, good times and bad.
Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey really convinced me that their friendship was real, and believe me that is no easy thing to do!!
bette midler is a personal favorite of mine and its just amazing to see how she puts her heart into this movie.
i would highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of chick flicks, bette midler, or mushy movies in general, this one brings tears and love to every eye.
My mom told me about this film ages ago and I seen it on TV twice before and let me tell yeah that this movie was so so sad to watch I literally cried every time I watch and hear that song Wind Beneath My Wings(yeah that is hands down the saddest songs of ALL time for me as it moves me and i always cry at it).The movie tells the tale of two best friends who meet up in Atlantic Beach and knew each other since they were kids. |
tt1038043 | Mammoth | Leo and Ellen are a successful New York couple, totally immersed in their work. Leo is the creator of a booming gaming website, and has stumbled into a world of money and big decisions. He has to board a business flight to Thailand in order to sign a contract. What ensues in the next few days is a critique on the social dilemmas that result from globalization.
Ellen is a dedicated emergency surgeon who devotes her long shifts to saving lives. During her work, she becomes attached to a dying boy who has been stabbed in the stomach by his mother. Leo and Ellen have a seven-year-old daughter named Jackie. Due to her parents' absence in the household, she spends most of her time with her Filipino nanny, Gloria, who introduces the girl to her Filipino culture and reads about Jackie's favorite subject, astronomy. Even with the little time that Ellen has for her, Jackie often prefers to be with Gloria, which provokes jealousy on Ellen's part.
Gloria has two children of her own, young boys residing in the Philippines with their grandmother. The older boy, Salvador, who misses his mother dearly, makes frequent phone calls to her and begs her to come home. His grandmother scolds him for calling his mother so much; she urges her daughter to stay in America to make money for a better life for her family. Salvador tries to find a job so that Gloria does not have to work abroad. One night Salvador is robbed by homeless children then lured and molested by a pedophile who saves him from his attackers. The next morning he is found unconscious under a bridge and is rushed to a hospital. When Gloria is informed of this incident she quits her job immediately and leaves to the airport to return to her country.
In Bangkok, Leo finds out that his colleague has to spend additional time in negotiations, which creates time for him to travel to Thailand. Leo's trip so far has been uneventful. At a club, Leo meets a prostitute named Cookie and pays her to not have sex with any client that evening. Later on Leo reluctantly has a romantic fling with the girl but regrets it afterwards. He has his colleague accept the terms offered so that he can finish the work and return to his family in the US as soon as possible. We find out at the end that Cookie is a working class single mother who is also living apart from her baby girl. | dramatic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0052784 | El esqueleto de la señora Morales | Pablo Morales (Arturo de Cordova) is a quiet down-to-earth taxidermist who enjoys his humble work and loves children and animals. His wife Gloria (Amparo Rivelles) is a hypochondriac who suffers psychologically from a physical deformation and sees her husbands work as well as his mild affection as pornographic. Their life is one of marriage without a bond of love, while additionally Glorias sister and sadistic brother-in-law are constantly harping in and loudly demanding that Pablo treat Gloria better, causing Pablo to seek solace in food and drink with his own friends. Added to the stress-full home life is a Priest, a reminder that the Church demands that a husband treat a wife with a mannered relation that does not accept divorce. When Gloria gives away money to the Church that Pablo was putting aside for a camera, he objects. Pablo demands the cash be returned from the Priest. Gloria stages a domestic abuse, screaming loudly for the benefit of the nosy neighbors and actually giving herself bruises so that Pablo will be held responsible. It is then that Pablo decides to poison his wife by diluting her food with a toxin that immediately kills her. Pablo then with loving care dissects Glorias body and reassembles her skeleton and places it in the front window of his workshop. When the local Priest sees the skeleton he has Pablo arrested and brought to trial and a panel of experts to examine the bones and testify that the irate husband has murdered his loving wife. When the experts say that the bones are not those of the missing wife, and a group of witnesses enter to affirm the positive side of Pablos character the Judge releases the seemingly innocent man. But there are lingering elements of such an act that stay with Pablo and his neighbors in the aftermath of the court room confrontation. | comedy, murder | train | imdb | The director/writer had one brilliantly mad sense of humor..
This film is charmingly macabre, about a taxidermist with a sincere love and lust for life, and his terrible antithesis of a wife.
The performances are absolutely convincing, and the pompous catholic padre is unforgettable during the confession at the end, as is the lead character.
The attention to detail makes it a pleasure to watch this film again and again..
A rare film where the audience is rooting for the man to kill his wife!.
I love films from all over the world and I understand that this makes me kind of weird--particularly here in the United States where most folks have little tolerance for subtitles.
Perhaps it's because I have seen and reviewed so many films that I often look for something different--and The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales is certainly different-- and in some very good ways.In the past, I've written some articles about cheesy Mexican films-- such as the Aztec mummy films and the luchador (masked wrestler) films of the 60s and 70s.
These films are pretty bad, but also are wonderful for a good laugh.
But this does NOT mean that all Mexican films of yesterday are bad or silly--there are plenty of wonderful older Mexican movies that I've seen and I hope to see many more.
For examples, the comedies of Cantinflas are quite charming and Pedro Infante's musicals are quite enjoyable--plus I am always hopeful that readers will write to me to recommend their favorites (hint, hint--PLEASE send me the names of your favorites)!
The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales is an interesting tale because it's one of the few older films I've seen that would seem to endorse murder!
Like the wonderful Hollywood film The Suspect (with Charles Laughton), the story is about a nice man who is married to a truly horrible woman.
However, Mrs. Morales is unusual in her awfulness because she is two-faced.
To her many friends in the local church and her extended family, she is a virtual saint who is forced to live with a terrible husband who drinks too much, abuses her and is irreverent.
However, this is all part of Mrs. Morales' sick personality disorder.
He is actually a very good husband and tries to love her, but she is both frigid and very cruel towards him--and being married to her is impossible.
She wants others to think she's a martyr for staying with such a monster and he just wants a wife who will love him and so he puts up with a lot during their long and very unhappy marriage.
All the while, most audience members are hoping that Dr. Morales will either leave this woman or kill her.
I was rooting for him to kill her--especially after she smashes the camera he saved up to buy for two years and then convinced her friends that HE beat her!
Well, the word 'skeleton' is in the title...so you might be able to guess SOME of what will happen.
However, like all wonderful dark comedies, guessing exactly what will happen is just about impossible!
And it features a wonderful twist ending that made me smile.The bottom line is that while most people are much more likely to watch a recent Hollywood movie, there are wonderful films waiting to be discovered from all over the world.
And, in the case of The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales, you don't have to travel that far from Hollywood to find a classic..
Exquisite black humor movie.
Few times has the Mexican movies industry explored this type of comedy.
This particular film is surprisingly very well made, specially since its 2 main characters are played by an Actor, Arturo de Cordova, and an Actress, Amparo Rivelles, whose background is in tragic and/or very formal performances.
It is a story of a married couple whose life has come to the point of a disaster, basically due to the jealousness of the wife.
The Husband a taxidermist announces to their friends that she has gone to another City on vacations, but keeps in his shop an skeleton.
This of course is the center plot of the movie and all black humor situations are derived from this.
The movie is light and keeps the viewers entertained throughout its entire length..
Great Mexican film.
I used to have tape of this movie I made when it appeared on TV down in Mexico City during one of my visits there years ago.
I only saw it a couple of times and don't have the tape anymore.
I was always hoping it would come out on DVD.This film could be compared to some of Alfred Hitchcock's more macabre and darkly humorous films.
This was made towards the end of the golden period in Mexican cinema.
In the 1960's things took a turn towards the cheesy side and only within the past several years has Mexican cinema seen a bit of a turnaround, with some world-class productions.The black and white photography is excellent and the acting is superb in this film about a man who stuffs animals for a living and has a wife who is even colder than the dead creatures in his workshop.
I won't say more so as not to have any spoilers.
Skeleton Story.
Although there is no doubt that "El esqueleto de la señora Morales" is a cult film, it caused no big impression in 1960.
The style was too conventional, but there is a playful fluctuation between extremes that moves the story, and makes the film an attractive, enjoyable and enduring production.
It is —above anything else— the work of Spanish scriptwriter Luis Alcoriza, who wrote without his usual collaborators (his Austrian wife Janet Riesenfeld, or Spanish Luis Buñuel), in a more direct relation with "Mexicanity", in contrast to Buñuel, who favored everything French, although a few of his best works were about the Mexican cultural being, from Alcoriza's scripts, as "Los olvidados", and "Él".
However there is nothing in Alcoriza's filmography as "The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales".
The source is an attractive tale told in first person, by Welsh author Arthur Machen, who introduced the search of the Holy Grail in contemporary British literature, and influenced the works of Lovecraft and other authors of the macabre.
"The Islington Mystery" (1927) is not a horror tale.
It is a direct narration about imperfect crimes, a duel between certainty and probability with a few characters, in which the protagonist Harold Boale does get away with murder, as he sails to the New World and finds a young Swedish wife after killing his detestable wife, a Mrs. Boale who is hardly alive for more than two sentences, giving way to her sister as the leading feminine character: Mary Aspinall, a nurse who is suspicious of the reasons Harold gives to explain why his wife is missing.
There is also a medicine student in the plot, who buys a skeleton with a deformed leg and presents it as "evidence" to the police, which leads to Boale's trial, the part of the tale I enjoyed the most, led by a brilliant defense attorney.
In Alcoriza's adaptation —more sardonic and moralizing than Machen's tale—, Pablo Morales (Arturo de Córdova) exhibits his wife's skeleton in his shop window, goes through a similar trial as Boale, but has a different ending.
The atmosphere of I World War, which in Machen's tale distracts from clumsy crimes and unresolved disappearances, is turned into the fears of Mexican middle class, and the repression of the Catholic church.
Morales enjoys a few little pleasures in life: a photographic camera, occasional talks with his friends at the local bar, and, first of all, his work as taxidermist.
His wife, a good looking woman with a deformed leg and lameness, is his enemy, rejects his sexual advances, and is allied to the local priest.
Morales tries to deal with his sexual urges because —as a rare bird inside the Catholic universe, and unfortunately for him— he is faithful.
In spite of his skillful tasks and a few defensible titles (especially comedies), the filmography of director Rogelio A.
González has nothing comparable to "El esqueleto de la señora Morales".
On the other hand, the film triggered Alcoriza's career, perhaps because he could have made a better job.
The following year, he directed his first film, followed by remarkable titles as "Tlayucán", "Tiburoneros", and "Tarahumara". |
tt2051879 | Europa Report | The whole movie is made to look like it was made from a collection of recovered video footage. The movie begins with an introductory screen saying, "The Europa One mission was the first attempt to send men and women into deep space." Various camera feeds are shown of the ship's interior and exterior. In one video, Engineer James Corrigan (Sharlto Copley) is shown recording a video diary; in others team captain William Xu (Daniel Wu) is seen adjusting various panels, Dr. Katya Petrovna (Karolina Wydra) is seen fixing gear, Andrei Blok (Michael Nyqvist) and Dr. Daniel Luxembourg (Christian Camargo) are seen enjoying a floating game of chess and pilot Rosa Dasque (Anamaria Marinca) is seen adjusting panels and monitors in the cockpit. The camera feeds slowly start to get distorted and eventually stop, with the feed from the cockpit of pilot Rosa Dasque being the last image before a static.Back on what appears to be earth at that present time, Dr. Samantha Unger (Embeth Davidtz) is apparently giving an interview on the Europa One mission, saying, "These were the last few images from the Europa One craft. At that time it had already traveled further than any human being had ever traveled before. For 16 long months I have been asked the simple but loaded question: What happened?..all...I am sorry.." She is visually upset while recalling the mission details.It appears that somehow the rest of the mission video footage was later recovered and then compiled to tell the story of the crew aboard Europa One.The footage of Europa One resumes with the team assembled in the central living area, all except James Corrigan. Everyone is upset; it is obvious something bad must have happened. Katya asks about informing 'his' family and whether they should go on. Back on earth Dr. Umber explains she was on board a transatlantic flight when she was informed that feed transmission from Europa One had stopped, and what they expected to be just delayed was already over 15 hours of dead feed.The recorded video diary of pilot Rosa is shown and she confirms the death of James Corrigan, and how badly it affected the whole team, saying how the "exhilaration of it all left." The rest of the team appear in various camera feeds visibly stressed and broken down, Andrei seemingly most distraught. Daniel and Katya pack James' bag. A year after James' death the team is still depressed and trying to cope.The mission video feed now goes back 19 months, 10 days and 14 hours to explain the events that lead to the current situation. The viewers are now taken back to the launch day. The administration including Dr. Umber are all excited to introduce the mission and reveal its purpose. The team pull off a successful launch and are up in space on their way to Europa. The 6 man crew, the first to journey beyond the moon, is applauded loudly at mission control. On board James starts his video diary by introducing the ship's interior, their daily life and the rest of the excited crew. Dr. Umber (back on Earth) cuts in saying how far they have come and how far they yet have to go. Several pre-launch interviews are shown explaining that the purpose of the mission is to seek out life in Europa, as it has been confirmed that free water does exist beneath its very thick layer of ice, and even heat signatures have been found in the area called the "Conamara Chaos." On board, the team continues with their regular life. Various interviews of the team members back on earth are shown, including more information about the trip prior to the launch. Going forward again to the 19th month of the mission, team captain William Xu and Daniel confront Andrei about his slow recovery and after he leaves rather rudely the two decide that they will be taking him with them in the lander to Europa.21 months, 16 days and 23 hours into the trip Jupiter is very close and pilot Rosa records in her video diary that the closeness of the planet brought back the excitement, and the team is ready to work for the mission again. The crew soon reach Europa and prepare the lander. They reach close to the surface smoothly but face radiation interference close to the landing site and choose an alternate landing zone about 100 meters away from the Conamara Chaos- their preferred site. Back on Earth at that time Dr. Umber still had no idea about what happened to the crew, and stared at Jupiter in the night sky hoping that they made it. Dr. Sokolov (Dan Fogler) informs again that the objective was to do extensive surface tests with a robotic arm to find life that would have been possible had they landed at the preferred site. At 22 months Daniel says it will be difficult to get the samples that they wanted since they did not land where they were supposed to. Dr. Petrovna suggests they should investigate under the ice since there is nothing else they can do. At 22 months, 1 day the whole landing craft shakes violently twice. Andrei is up in the cockpit and after the camera there gets interrupted by radiation, Andrei peeks out his window and then quickly grabs his camera to record something. While the team below is investigating the cause of the frequent ice shifts, Andrei climbs down and says, "Guys I saw something." Andrei reports he saw a light about 100 meters out and it was like an LED down with refraction, and it definitely moved. The team investigate feed from various cameras but cannot find anything, although they do notice radiation interference in all of the ships cameras. Daniel believes Andrei might have imagined the light, but Dr. Petrovna says it might also be the first indication of exactly the thing they came here to find. The team still worries about Andrei's condition and Rosa describes the teams emotions as a raw mix of awe, excitement and fear.
At 22 months and 3 days the ice drill finally breaks through to the ocean below. The team is very excited and wants to explore immediately by putting in a submarine probe. They are filled with awe seeing the beauty of the completely untouched environment. Dr. Petrovna the marine biologist is especially overwhelmed. They try to head to the target zone but also notice thermal activities closer than expected. The ocean is a 100km deep. The team is excited to find any signs of life. The thick layer of ice above prevents any radiation from interfering with the data but when even then they get a radiation spike, Dr. Petrovna figures it's coming from below, from much deeper into the target zone. The team prepares to readjust course, but as the radiation spike continues, they see a flicker of light and then something hits the probe lens, smashing it. The team loses control of the probe; the only way to get sufficient samples now is a surface walk 100m to the target zone. The team break into an argument because the radiation from Jupiter makes this very risky and yet this is the only way they can get samples.Going back to 3 days, 8 hours and 38 minutes into the mission, engineer James Corrigan is alive and challenges that no life will be found in Europa. 6 months, 16 days into the mission, James records in his video diary how tough it is getting for him to stay focused. While the team continues with their daily duties, a solar storm hits the spaceship, damaging key components including communications. Their contact with earth is severed. This explains the image of Rosa in the cockpit being the last image received back on earth. What Earth doesn't know until later is that James and Andrei go out in their suits to fix several things across the ship. When they reach the communications panel Andrei tries to pry open a circuit board despite James' unwillingness and tears a whole in his suit's glove. Rapidly losing oxygen, he somehow manages to hold it with the other hand. James pulls him to the airlock to the decompression chamber, but Andrei was losing oxygen rapidly and seconds away from losing consciousness. Just when they are about to enter, James notices hydrazine spread all over his suit from the panel explosion. The chemical is very toxic and will contaminate the ship's environment, so he can't enter. Captain Xu tries to keep calm and asks James to push Andrei in before he dies, and they will come for James later. The veteran Andrei, on the verge of unconsciousness, tells James to get out of the suit and that he can make it into the decompression chamber without the external suit. Andrei won't go in without him. Andrei becomes unconscious due to depleted oxygen and James, after a moment of hesitancy, pushes Andrei in. The two astronauts are no longer tethered together and James in his hurry with Andrei forgot to tie himself to the hull. The ship drifts away and James is left with only minutes of oxygen. Captain Xu says he can no longer be rescued, because by the time they get to him, James will be lost. All he can do say he's sorry. James says it was an accident, and although terrified, he tells them to thank Andrei (still unconscious) for trying to save his life. He remembers his family, tells them goodbye and slowly asphyxiates to death. Andrei regains consciousness in the decompression chamber, and howls in despair on realizing what must have happened.On Europa again, the team debates the possibility of a surface walk. Dr. Katya Petrovna volunteers and is very excited to do it. The 5 member team decides to vote. It's an even split save Rosa; she votes yes and Katya suits up for the walk. Once outside on the surface of Europa Katya can't believe she is there. She is filled with awe. Rosa climbs up to get a direct view of her from the cockpit window. On her video diary Rosa says saying yes seemed to be the right thing to do, and describes Katya's one hour excursion as a seeming eternity. On the surface, Katya sends back data from several samples. All are negative for life, but when she analyses a subsurface specimen, the team detected an unicellular organism. They can't believe it: Europa 1 has detected life outside Earth. William calls her back, but Katya sees a luminescence in a dark area that she thinks might be the one Andrei saw earlier. On her reserve oxygen she goes in to investigate. On reaching the area they again notice radiation spikes. Katya turns off her lights to see if the blue light she is seeing under the ice responds, and the luminescence shifts closer. The radiation interference spikes, and the crew advise her to get back inside. She is too curious, and as the luminescence quickly spreads around her she can't hear anything the team says. In a world of confusion she slips and the team is horrified to see her signals coming from underneath the ice. She is sinking and they can do nothing. On Katya's helmet camera feed, only her face is visible, her eyes wide with horror and a pulsating blue light all around her while she sinks deeper into the ocean. The team only receives static, and then nothing.The death of Katya knocks the wind out of the team. They stipulate that the reaction of the luminescence to Petrovna's light suggests a complex organism, and they have to leave for Earth to let everyone know of the discovery, without further understanding of this organism, lest they all die and the news of their discovery is lost.22 months, 12 days and 6 hours into the mission, the team attempt lift-off from the surface of Europa. Things go wrong from the start; the lander stalls and hurtles back towards the surface. While they are falling Captain William Xu gets out of his seat and tries to release the water shield to slow them down and soften their landing. He is successful and saves the crew, but is killed on impact.After the ship's cameras come back online we see that Rosa, Daniel and Andrei are still alive; Captain Xu's last moment of bravery saved them all. Andrei does a damage assessment and it's not looking good. They are losing both heat and oxygen,and he predicts they will freeze before they asphyxiate. In hopes that the propulsion system is still intact, the team quickly goes into action. Daniel however quickly loses all hope as he realizes the ice under the ship is melting quickly. On her video log Rosa says it quickly became obvious that they had somewhat ironically landed in their original target zone where the ice was much thinner and constantly shifting. Andrei declares that it will take two men to work on the engines outside for two hours to get the engines back. Rosa suits the two guys up and says in her video log "that was that and that brings us to now...." It is now revealed to the viewers that the video log Rosa has been seen to be recording the entire time was only started after Andrei and Daniel set out to try and repair the lander's engine. Rosa records this video "just in case" they don't make it, hoping someday it is recovered by future explorers. She connects the recorder to the comm panel.Immediately on opening the hatch, Daniel's suit camera catches radiation interference. He tries to descend using the skewed ladder and when he reaches the surface the ice underneath him gives away. Rosa loses contact with him and Andrei reports he was surrounded by blue light and then disappeared under the ice. Daniel is lost. Rosa asks Andrei if there is still hope and Andrei says says yes, but not for them getting off Europa. Andrei says he can fix the communications module by salvaging parts from the life support, so that they will be able to send their data to Earth. Rosa steadies herself to accept that they have to die and proceeds as per Andrei's instructions. Andrei reaches the surface without trouble and starts to transfer parts from the life support system to the communications panel. A blue luminescence appears right behind him underneath the ice. Rosa spots it with the lander cam, but there is severe radiation interference. The light starts to come closer to Andrei but he manages to finish his job. The lander goes mostly dark inside and the comm panel jumps to life. Rosa immediately starts uploading James' and her video diaries, along with all other on deck and external camera data, and data from the sample analysis. The ice underneath Andrei breaks and he falls, reporting in his last moments that the ship is about to sink. Rosa, in the cockpit, keeps the camera pointed behind her as the ship sinks below the ice. As she watches, crouching in the pilot's seat, the ship fills with water. Lights are seen moving under the surface, attached to some sort of tentacle. The last image seen is a that of an enormous octopus-like bioluminescent creature, closing in on the camera.Mission director Dr. Unger explains how she got the final images and how their mission has finally come back to them. She says they witnessed the sacrifices made and the lengths the team went to push the discovery further. Dr. Unger reveals that in the last moments in the lander Rosa decided to open the hatch to let everyone see what might potentially be there. The discovery of the creature was beyond their most farfetched theoretical models and only shows how our universe is far stranger and far more alive than ever imagined.The movie ends with a group picture of the whole team taken near the beginning of the mission, smiling and excited. | boring, storytelling, flashback | train | imdb | null |
tt2404181 | Belle | Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay was born in 1761, the natural daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Captain Sir John Lindsay, a British Royal Navy officer. After the death of Dido's mother, Captain Lindsay takes Dido to England in 1765 and entrusts her to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, and his wife, Elizabeth who live at Kenwood House, an estate in Hampstead outside London. Lord and Lady Mansfield raise Dido as a free gentlewoman, together with their niece Lady Elizabeth Murray, who came to live with them after her mother died and her father remarried. When the two nieces reach adulthood, the Mansfields commission an oil portrait of their two great-nieces, but Dido is unhappy about sitting for it as she is worried that it will portray her as a subordinate, like other portraits she has seen depicting aristocrats with black servants. Dido's father dies and leaves her £2,000 a year. Lady Elizabeth, by contrast, will have no income from her father, whose new wife has been named his sole heir. Arrangements are made for Elizabeth to have her coming out to society, but Lord and Lady Mansfield believe no gentleman will agree to marry Dido because of her mixed-race status.Lord Mansfield agrees to take a vicar's son, John Davinier, into an apprenticeship for law. In 1783, Mansfield hears the case of Gregson v. Gilbert, regarding the payment of an insurance claim, for slaves killed when thrown overboard by the captain of a slave-ship an event now known as the Zong massacre. Dido helps her uncle with his correspondence and after John tells her about the Zong case, she begins sneaking correspondence to him which he believes will advance the cause of the abolitionists. Lord Mansfield and John have a disagreement on the main issue of the case and John is told not to see Dido again. Didos aunts, Lady Mansfield and Lady Mary Murray, Lord Mansfield's sister, seek to steer Dido into an engagement with Oliver Ashford, son of a scheming grand dame and younger brother to the bigoted James Ashford. At first James is interested in Elizabeth but stops courting her once he finds out she will have no inheritance. Oliver proposes to Dido and she accepts, even though she continues to see John. After James threatens Dido with violence, she tells Elizabeth and says she will give part of her inheritance to her for a dowry so she can find a different match. Lord Mansfield finds out about Dido's visits to John and confronts both of them. During the confrontation, John professes his love for Dido. Sometime later, Dido meets with Oliver and breaks off their engagement.Dido is relieved when the painting is unveiled, showing her as Elizabeth's equal. She tells Lord Mansfield that the portrait commission proves that he can defy convention. Dido sneaks into the balcony of the Inn of Court, so that she can hear Lord Mansfield narrowly rule that the Gregson slave-trading syndicate, based in Liverpool, were not due insurance payments for the loss of slaves during a voyage, when they were thrown overboard by the crew. The ship's officers claimed they ordered this action because they were out of potable water. It appeared to Lord Mansfield that the slaves were over-crowded, making them sick and not likely to fetch a high price at auction, so the officers decided they would be worth more in insurance payments after their loss. Lord Mansfield sees John and Dido outside the Court after his ruling and says that Dido can only marry a gentleman. Therefore, he agrees to resume John's apprenticeship in law, so that he can become a gentleman.On-screen text informs the viewer that Dido and John married and had two children, that Elizabeth also married and had children, and that the painting hung at Kenwood House until 1922, when it was moved to Scone palace.© Wikipedia | historical | train | imdb | null |
tt0060616 | La lama nel corpo | THE MURDER CLINIC aka THE BLADE IN THE BODY [MORLEY 1870]
As the lights go down at night in a remote mental asylum, Ivan (Germano Longo as Grant Laramy) is in bed with Katty (Rosella Burgamonti as Patricia Carr), one of the nurses. He begs her to stay longer, but she tells him she must get back to work. Dr. Vance gets furious if she is late, she tells him. He rants about how he hates the place and wants to leave very much. Lighting a lamp, she suggests that maybe he likes it here because he has everything he wants and has made no attempts to find another job. He admits he stays because of her. Suddenly there is a knock at the door and someone calls for Katty. She tells them to go on without her and that she will catch up with her. As Ivan is leaving, he drops a straight razor on the floor. She notices and he picks it up without saying anything. He kisses her and leaves.Sheena (Harriet Medin as Harriet White) is leaving a room. A mans voice from within tells her he will call her when he wakes up. She carries a lamp and goes to the room of an old woman who pets a stuffed cat. She tells the old woman that it is nine oclock and time for lights out. Snuffing out the room lamp, she leaves and checks on another room.Mary (Barbara Wilson) is reading from a book entitled MARY STUART to patient Janey (Anna Maria Polani as Ann Sherman) where the title character is about to be beheaded. Sheena interrupts, saying Mary is off-duty and must leave. Mary tells her that she would like to remain and finish reading to Janey. Sheena chides her that this is against the rules and leaves the room. Mary promises to return in the morning to finish reading the story. Janey (who is mute) mumbles and obviously wants Mary to remain. Outside in the hall, Mary is chastised for getting too close to the patient.Mary is shown to a very ornate room where she is told she will stay temporarily until a nurses room is prepared for her. Sheena tells her the previous nurse left the room in a terrible mess. She lights a candelabra, and bids her goodnight.Mary, now dressed in her nurses uniform, extinguishes a lamp and is observed from an upper walkway by a black-hooded figure. The figure goes downstairs and enters the room of Janey. Approaching the sleeping girl, the figure removes the covers and pulls out a straight razor. Janey awakes (unable to scream) and flees out the window for her life as the figure begins slashing. She runs through a field where she stumbles and continues running until she comes to a fountain. As she drinks from the fountain, the figure approaches with the blade and kills her.The hooded figure darts into a doorway of the building as a guard dog barks. Walter (William Gold) attempts to chase the suspect through hallways, including a laundry room where clothing is hung to dry. Down another hallway, Walter hesitates before entering a room he suspects the figure entered. Inside he is questioned by Lizabeth Vance (Mary Young), wife of Dr. Robert Vance (William Berger), head of the clinic. Vance enters and chides him for entering without knocking. Walter apologizes, saying he thought an intruder had come in. He slinks away. Vance asks if Lizabeth would like him to lead her to the bedroom. She refuses, saying she is able to do it herself.The next morning Mary brings a tray in to Janeys room and finds the bed made up freshly. There is no sign of the patient, but Mary finds the book on the floor with a slash mark on the cover. Vance enters and asks if there is a problem. She asks about Janey and is told that relatives came early this morning and took her away. Mary seems puzzled about this. Sheena apologizes to the doctor, claiming she forgot to tell this to Mary. He tells her to introduce Mary to the patients.After skipping one room, Sheena introduces Mary to Mrs. Hurley, who shows Mary the stuffed cat but then turns defensive when Mary reaches for it. Sheena tells the old woman to behave or she will take away the cat.They go to another room where Sheena looks in through a slot in the door. Entering the room, she introduces Mary to Fred (Massimo Righi as Max Dean), whom she warns can be dangerous. Fred speaks to Mary, telling her that he is not allowed any chairs or anything that he might use to hurt someone or himself. She tells him that soon he will be well. He hangs his head in doubt. Suddenly there is the loud sound of footsteps from the ceiling. Fred becomes more panicked, saying the footsteps drive him mad. Finally Sheena has to ring for Ivan to come and subdue Fred until he is calmer. Vance enters and calls for a sedative. Telling Mary that the attacks are getting more frequent, Vance gives Fred an injection. Mary looks at the ceiling, still hearing footsteps. Dr. Vance goes upstairs toward the source of the footsteps. Mary follows and asks if she can help. He tells her to go back downstairs.Mary hesitates but curiosity gets the better of her. She follows until Ivan grabs her, telling her that no one is allowed upstairs. He puts his hand on her as if to molest her, but she leaves.Vance goes down another hall and enters a room where a woman talks to him. He tells her that her footsteps are heard all over the house. She walks with one foot wearing a heavy shoe. She refuses to show her face, but we see that her hand is gnarly and deformed looking. He begs to help cure her in his clinic, but she refuses, saying she will forever be tied to him. He holds up a black-hooded robe, implying that she wears it. She tells him to leave her alone and he does.Outside, it is windy and dark. Through the forest a carriage is riding, carrying a man and a woman. Gisele (Francoise Prevost) complains of the long uncomfortable trip and wants to stop. Marc de Brantome (Phillipe Hersent) at first ignores her, until she begins to suggest a warm bed for them both. He promises this when they reach the coast.All at once the carriage breaks down and Marc examines the wheel and axle. Complaining of the poor condition of the carriage, he tells Gisele to come and help him. She knocks him out, but spooks the horses, which run away with the carriage.Later she arrives at a cavern where she hears chopping sounds. She is able to observe Vance burying the body of Janey. He hears something and grabs a pickaxe, but is unable to hear anything else and goes back to his work.The next morning when Vance is leaving, he finds Gisele sleeping and asks where she came from. She tells him the carriage with the horses bolted, trampling the driver and that she wandered through the forest all night. He tells her he will allow her to stay at his clinic for a few days.Lizabeth sees them arriving from an upper window. As they enter the drawing room, Lizabeth is playing the piano. Vance introduces Gisele and explains that she was involved in an accident where a man was killed by spooked horses. Lizabeth welcomes her to stay. Sheena enters and tells Vance he is needed by a patient. He tells her to prepare a room for Gisele. Sheena suggests the room that was occupied by Janey. He agrees and leaves.Mary shows the room to Gisele, including the bathroom. In conversation Gisele refers to Robert by his first name, which surprises Mary.Lizabeth complains that Gisele should not have been brought there to Vance. She questions where he has been and what he was doing. Incensed, Vance replies that he doesnt have to account for every minute of his day to her. As he pours himself a drink, Lizabeth tells him that he cant continue to seduce women and then- He demands to know what she is going to say. She tells him it was because she loves him that she spoke on his behalf and freed him from imprisonment in the past. She perjured herself and that they should go away together and start a new life.Gisele hears the footsteps from above in her room. Suddenly Sheena knocks and tells her that it is lights out at 9:00 for all patients. Gisele insists that she is a guest and not a patient. She says she was invited by Dr. Vance. The footsteps are heard again by both women. Gisele asks about them, but Sheena replies that she has heard no footsteps.Unable to sleep, Gisele plays cards. She hears footsteps outside her door and goes to investigate. She sees Vance going around a corner. Putting on her robe, she follows him to the top floor, where he enters a room. She opens the door to find another passageway to another wing of the building. Hearing someone coming, Gisele retreats to where she left her candle at the top of the stairs. Someone covered in a sheet blows out the candle and Gisele flees to her room in terror.Fred is seen taking the light globe from the lamp and breaking off part of it. He comes to Giseles room and gets in, threatening her with the broken glass. In one of his maddened states, he pulls off the bedcovers, scattering the cards and glaring menacingly at her. When Gisele goes to open the bathroom door, she finds only a white wall. A struggle begins on the bed between Fred and Gisele. Mary comes in and calls to Fred, appealing to his right mind. As she talks him into surrendering the glass globe to her, this is observed by Sheena, Ivan and Dr. Vance who enter the room. Finally with the glass in her hand, she calms Fred down and Ivan takes him away. Dr. Vance thanks Mary for her help. Then, hearing Gisele moan, he goes to her and notices cuts on her arm. He calls for Mary to get bandages. He tells Gisele that it will not happen again.Ivan takes Fred and puts him in an isolated cell. Mary comes in and wants to know who ordered putting him in this cell. Ivan tells her it was Dr. Vance. She speaks kindly to Fred, telling him that it will not be for long.Dr. Vance and Sheena are working in the laboratory, where he is trying skin grafts on animals. He is seen applying a paste to a guinea pig.Gisele throws a scrap to the guard dog who accepts it. Ivan comes out and expresses surprise that she gets along so well with animals. She asks him who is housed on the top floor. He says he does not know. She puts her hands on him as if to encourage his help. This is seen by Mary and Katty, who are returning with supplies. Mary tells Ivan that the doctor wants to see him.Dr. Vance and Sheena complete their work. He is hoping they will be successful. Ivan knocks and asks if he was summoned by the doctor. Sheena tells him that he must have been mistaken. He leaves.Gisele hears the footsteps above her room again. Putting on her robe, she goes out and listens to an argument between Vance and Lizabeth. She observes them from an upstairs passageway, and then goes to the room where Vance went before. Knocking and getting no response, she enters and sees Laura, sister of Lizabeth (Delfi Mauro as Delphine Maurin) facing the wall. The woman turns around and Gisele is horrified to see her disfigured face. Laura tells her to go. Gisele faints and Laura bends over her, touching her face. Rising, Laura begins moaning and shuts her door. Gisele is left in the hallway unconscious.Sheena is seen trying to revive Gisele in her bed. Dr. Vance comes over just as she awakens and chastises Gisele for betraying his hospitality by spying. She tells him that the authorities might be very interested in what she would have to tell them. He tells Sheena to leave the room. Gisele threatens to tell what she knows, including that he buried the dead girl Janey. She wants a large sum of money, which he tells her will take some time to get. She threatens him further and he leaves. As he walks away from her room, we see Sheena, who apparently was listening in.Upstairs, Laura emerges from her room wearing the black-hooded robe. Meanwhile, Lizabeth goes through the laundry room and down a corridor. This is observed by the old woman holding the cat. Suddenly a scream is heard as the old woman sees something. Lizabeth is found on the floor. Gisele runs out and finds Lizabeth, who is also seen by Sheena, Ivan and Walter. Ivan and Walter carry Lizabeths body away. Sheena picks up a razor and suggests something to Gisele, who will not be frightened or blackmailed.Dr. Vance attends to Lizabeth in her bed. Someone suggests that maybe Fred is involved, but it is said that he was safely locked in his cell.Someone wearing black gloves is seen getting the key to Freds cell and unlocking it. Pulling it open slightly, a straight razor is placed on the cell bars to incriminate a sleeping Fred.The next morning Mary goes to bring a tray to Gisele and discovers that she is dead and bloody. She interrupts Dr. Vance who is trying to get Lizabeth to drink. She calls him aside and tells him about Gisele. They go to her room and he covers her with a sheet. Mary tells Vance that the authorities will have to be called. He says no. She reminds him that a woman has been brutally murdered. He tells Mary that no one knew Gisele came here. He picked her up in the forest.They go into his office, where he locks the door behind them. He begins explaining about his life and then we see in a flashback of when Laura arrived after Robert and Lizabeth had married. She and Robert spent much time together and they obviously like each other. Several happy scenes are observed with Robert and Laura enjoying each others company while Lizabeth looks on. Then he tells about building the new clinic and how they went to see it during construction. Walking along high scaffolding, he shows something to Laura as Lizabeth watches from a few feet away. Suddenly a rope gives way and Laura plunges into a pit of lime acid. He confesses that it is Laura who hides herself upstairs and that he is the only one she will see. Although he was tried for her accident, Lizabeth testified on his behalf. He was freed, but unable to practice as a doctor anymore. He resigned himself to working only at his clinic. For this reason he tells Mary that he cannot be associated with another death.There is a frantic knock at the door. Vance opens it and Ivan informs him that Fred is missing from his cell and that a razor was found.Lizabeth hears voices speaking loudly and rises to put on her robe. Mary enters and cautions her to remain in her room. She offers to stay with her, but is told Mary might be needed elsewhere. As she opens the door to leave, a bloody arm falls down from above, dropping a razor to the floor. Mary screams and Vance puts his hand on her mouth. He explains that Fred, who is seen above, killed himself in remorse for killing Gisele and that the authorities will be told this.That night the staff is eating together. Ivan comes in late and touches Katty on the neck. He sits and ladles soup into his bowl. Mary makes excuses and leaves the table. She goes to a room but it is empty. Sheena comes in, takes the lamp and tells her to leave.Passing Vances room, Mary notices the lamp is still burning. She goes to extinguish it, not noticing that he is seated there before the fire. He speaks to her, telling her of the anguish he has endured these last few days and years. He tells Mary that his wife no longer loves him since Laura was in between them. He moves to kiss Mary, suggesting that she help him.Lizabeth, seeing them kissing, shouts Robert! and runs away. He follows. Running through the halls, he calls for his wife. Sheena comes out and he tells her to look for Lizabeth.In the laboratory, Mary selects a large knife from several instruments. Suddenly Sheena comes in with a lamp, asking what Mary is doing in there. Mary makes an excuse. Seeing the guinea pig, Sheena exclaims that the transplant has been successful and that Dr. Vance needs to be told.Laura comes out of her room wearing the black-hooded robe and ambles down the hallway. Meanwhile a search is being made outside by all the staff for Mrs. Vance. Sheena comes out to tell him of the discovery. He says he will attend to it after his wife is found.In her bed, Mary hears footsteps outside her door. She sees the shadow of feet go past her door and back again. She lies back down. The door opens quietly and the black-hooded figure enters with a razor. Approaching the bed, the figure begins slashing at the covers. Feathers fly as it is revealed to be pillows only. Mary comes out from behind the curtains with her knife and confronts the figure, who turns out to be Lizabeth. At the same time we see Laura, who confronts Lizabeth about the accident. Laura says it was Lizabeth who released the rope that caused her to fall (we see in a flashback). Lizabeth denies this but stabs Laura, who falls. Lizabeth flees the room. Vance comes in and sees Laura on the floor. Mary tells him it was Lizabeth. He runs after her. Lizabeth goes up to the top floor, screaming madly. Vance goes downstairs and outside where others are still searching. Lizabeth comes to an open window and is seen by Vance and the others. He cries out for her not to jump, but she does. Crowding around her, Vance cradles her as she confesses to doing all she did for love. As she dies, he announces that the nightmare is over.The next morning Vance is seen leaving. As the carriage passes Mary, it stops. Vance helps her into the carriage and they leave together. She realizes that Vance was not the murderer. | gothic, murder | train | imdb | Sadly neglected Gothic giallo..
Mary is a new nurse at the prestigious Vance Clinic which is run by Dr. Robert Vance and his wife Elizabeth.A female thief named Giselle is put in the clinic by Dr.Vance.She begins to hear strange sounds in the attic and discovers badly disfigured woman there.In the meantime a mysterious black cape wearing killer stalks and attacks female patients with a razor.Stylish and sadly neglected Gothic giallo with splendid performance of William Berger and stylish direction by Elio Scardamaglia.Great score by Francesco De Masi plus several suspenseful and pretty violent stalking/murder sequences.It's a crying shame that "The Murder Clinic" is rather forgotten or even ignored by Eurohorror enthusiasts.7 lime pits out of 10..
Seen on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1979.
"The Murder Clinic" (1966) is a fairly obscure Italian-French Gothic that first aired on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1979, and repeated only once four years later.
It was also part of a notorious triple bill that frequented drive ins in the early 70's (under the name REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD), shown with CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD (Mario Bava's KILL, BABY, KILL!) and FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD (Amando De Ossorio's MALENKA, NIECE OF THE VAMPIRE).
The print I have runs 83 minutes and looks to be a third generation copy, with English dialogue and foreign subtitles.
William Berger, later the star of Mario Bava's "5 Dolls for an August Moon" (1970), plays the handsome doctor working on skin grafts that all the women swoon over, with a jealous invalid for a wife, and a mysterious woman on the third floor who refuses to see or be seen by anyone.
Murder by razor plagues the clinic, but only one victim is completely innocent of her fate.
Nothing terribly memorable, but fondly recalled in the 30 years since.
The blonde actress who plays the nurse Mary is not the same brunette Barbara Wilson who appeared in 1957's "Blood of Dracula" and 1962's "The Flesh Eaters.".
Good, scary atmosphere makes movie worth watching.
I saw this on late night TV and fell in love with it.
It starts with a great, weird opening credit sequence and contains a music score credited to "Frank Mason" that you will find yourself humming all through the rest of the movie (and maybe the rest of your life).
It also has great color photography and atmospheric dark lighting which all works together to create a scary mood before the movie even gets going good.
Too bad almost no one else I've met has ever heard of this film.
My girlfriend and I really enjoyed it, although she got very mad at me for humming the title theme while she was trying to listen to the dialogue.
Oh, what I wouldn't give for a laserdisc of this movie.Actually it turns out the composer of the great music score is an Italian by the name of Francesco De Masi and he also did the score for the movie THE GHOST (1963).
There is a scene in the beginning with a couple in bed that got cut out of the TV version even though it doesn't really show anything and in fact, I think the first murder may have been cut.
Luckily, there is now a soundtrack CD but it is not officially available on DVD yet, and there are some really lousy prints floating around out there.
I am not sure the Anglicized credits are imposed on the film by the American or British distributor or if the Italian production company pulled a "Riccardo Freda" and tried to make it seem like the film was made in England or America by giving the crew American-sounding names..
As the title suggests, it's murders at a clinic!.
Murder Clinic is one of the lesser known Giallo's that has yet to be brought into the spotlight like many of the better examples of the genre have been already.
In my opinion, this is a film that will never get the shiny DVD release; and the reason for that is simply that it's not all that good.
That's not to say that it's a terrible film; clearly director Elio Scardamaglia has an eye for Gothic visuals; the sets and atmosphere bode well with the plot line and the film does emulate the classic Universal horror style very well...but there's really not enough of the film and what there is of the plot is very clichéd and since most people that bother to seek out this film will be hardened horror veterans (like myself), no viewer of Murder Clinic is likely to find anything they haven't seen before.
As the title suggests, the film focuses on murders at an English clinic and the story takes place in the 1870's.
Basically, a bunch of the clinic's vulnerable residents are being picked off by a razor-wielding maniac and we get a handful of possible suspects.The plot actually doesn't play out too badly; we get treated to a few murders before being introduced to the 'monster' of the story and the back-story behind that monster (which is actually fairly interesting but could and should have been handled in a much better way).
However, the film does have a tendency to run into the melodramatic and while Elio Scardamaglia's direction is sound, the film was clearly shot on a low budget and he doesn't ever manage to make the film look anything more than a cheap affair (although in fairness, the VHS copy I saw does the film no favours).
The film only runs for about eighty minutes and that's a good thing to be honest as it definitely would have started to get boring if it were any longer; although the runtime we do have only just keeps the film from becoming boring.
The way that Murder Clinic handles red herrings is good and we get four main ones and to the film's credit, it's not immediately obvious who the killer is before it's revealed.
Overall, this is not a great Giallo by any means and only hardcore genre fans should check it out; but it's a decent watch at least..
I hear Italian models like being killed.
Hey girls!
Here's a piece of advice: When you discover a man trying to secretly bury the corpse of someone who has clearly been murdered, don't try to blackmail them - The fact that they are burying a dead body probably means they might be prone to fits of murderous violence, or at least know someone who's mental.This is a standard template Giallo film with the black gloved killer, sexy victims, loads of suspects, body count and stalking sequences, but it's also fast-paced, fun and of course for this period is set in a huge creepy mansion - there must be millions of them in Italy!
Hey William Bergers!
Try to find a better excuse for trying to cover up all the murders at your insane asylum for Giallo Red Herring Actors because the one you gave our heroine was a bit lame.
Love that flashback, however!
Also, if you want to keep your disfigured sister-in-law secret up on the top floor, give her slippers rather than the giant shoes she had on.
And tell her to lift her feet when walking!
It is fun that most of the characters own or have something already displayed by the killer (a straight razor, a big black gown etc) and am I going mad or did one of the non-killer character actually murder a coach driver?
That was weird.
Also, it supposed to be set in Norfolk!
Hey recently unmasked killers!
Do not under any circumstances when being chased by an angry mob try to put any height between you and said mob, because this always results in a short but fatal struggle with gravity.For another, far, far more filthy giallo set in an insane asylum, look no further than Slaughter Hotel!.
Rarely played period slasher.
I'm really amazed that there aren't more comments on this Giallo (OVERUSED TERM) from 1968.
Creepy opening credits really set the mood in motion as a hooded fiend slithers around a Baroque private clinic for the mentally unstable.
Set in Norfolk, circa 1840/1870, this neat little Belgian-French-Italian flick, in my opinion, seems to have influenced those string of Harry Towers' Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that were shot in South Africa around the late 1980s/early 1990s.
You remember them?
They were simultaneously gaudy & Gothic and were definitely an extension to the '60s renaissance of period psycho-chillers that were spearheaded by all of those Euro shockers and Corman's E.A.P flix.
But back to this film, without giving anything away, all is not what it seems and the initial denouement, or wrap up explaining all of the craziness that transpired beforehand, would later be haphazardly copied in many slice and dice movies from the slasher craze of the '70s & '80s.
In other words: Very well done for it's time.
Also of note: I first saw this on Creature Feature in Florida in the '80s and the print was clear as day but the only version I have been able to procure is dark and muddy.
Owning it is better than not having it in my book anyway.
Worth checking out for the 'Giallo' buff and of note to collectors/researchers: the version I have runs approximately 82 minutes..
Passable early Giallo.
"Murder Clinic" is one of them obscure and early (mid-60's) Gialli that you'll probably never see, unless you're willing to purchase a prehistoric VHS copy or even worse - a bootleg DVD ripped from the aforementioned prehistoric tape.
You know those things that are practically unwatchable because the original colors faded and the picture is constantly fuzzy?
In other words this Giallo is only meant for the eyes of avid Giallo-buffs, as I sincerely doubt a proper release on disc will ever follow.
"Murder Clinic" is a very passable Italian horror effort, but nevertheless amusing and it certainly contains a handful of potentially good ideas.
It was the sixties, so Gialli movies still leaned towards Gothic settings and darkly sinister filming location.
But, on the other hand, the Giallo-formula was still relatively new and thus the screenplay (penned down by veterans Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano Martino) is very straightforward with clear twists and logical red herrings.
The year is 1870 and the sinister events take place in a private clinic run by the demanding Dr. Vance and his obnoxious wife Liz. The movie doesn't waste too much time, as there quickly pops up a hooded killer who waves around a sharp razor and butchers patients as well as staff members.
There are a number of possibilities for whom the killer might turn out to be, and the least you can say is that the denouement is acceptable.
The murders sequences are decent, obviously not outrageously gross but definitely bloodier than I anticipated for a 60's film.
There are some tedious parts and the acting performances with the exception of William Berger as the Doc are very much below average.
The music is atmospheric and luckily the film only ran for a good 80 minutes.
Not so much because I was bored to death, but because the incredibly poor bootleg disc hurt my eyes and ears. |
tt0177789 | Galaxy Quest | Galaxy Quest was once a popular "geek" TV show that eventually got cancelled but was so popular among a a cult group that it has spawned 18 annual conventions where fans gather, often in costumes based on the shows, to watch old episodes, meet cast members and actors who played even bit parts on single episodes. At Galaxy Quest 18, hosted by Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell), an actor who played in episodes 81 and died by the first commercial, the fans are seeing a "lost" episode which is part one of a two parter dealing with the Omega 13 device. As this episode is screening in the main room back stage sits the original cast and crew:* Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman), who played half human/half alien Dr. Lazarus and moans about how he was once a great actor on the English stage.*The beautiful and buxom Gwen DeMarco who plays communications officer Lt. Tawny Madison (Sigourney Weaver), and whose job on the ship was to repeat what the computer said, complains that her TV guide article was all about her bustline and how it fit into her uniform.
* Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell), the child actor who has since grown up and found no life other than Galaxy Quest conventions remarks about how the commander and star of the show Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) is more than an hour late.Nesmith finally shows up and gets into the "been there done that" groove asking if Dane has already done his "I was once an actor" thing. This, plus the fact the Nesmith is about to do a solo gig without the rest of the cast almost has everyone walking out of the dressing room and heading for home, as Jason tries to explain the gig is a couple of kids with cardboard in a garage and is nothing major.Out on the convention floor Guy now starts introducing the crew of Galaxy Quest, who snap into their roles, especially Dane after Nesmith says the magic words to convince him that "The show must go on!" They go outside to the waiting fans, the spotlights and the roar of the crowds to sit and sign autographs and give the fans a taste of the dream.Gwen happens to smile at Nesmith, basically because Tommy told a hysterically funny and true crack about the fans loving Nesmith almost as much as Nesmith loves himself. In that brief moment Nesmith see's Gwen and remembers times that once were and hopes for a rekindling of old on the set romance, which Gwen promptly shoots down when fans ask he if she and the commander once had a thing and Gwen replies, as Nesmith comes up behind her. Nope!Gwen is ushered off by officials to do a "look a-like" Tawny Madison and fans in costume photo shoot. Nesmith tries to follow and is confronted by Mathesar (Enrico Colantoni), an actual alien come to Earth to seek the help of Commander Peter Quincy Taggert, the character played on Galaxy Quest by Nesmith. Nesmith thinks this is the group of kids who are paying him to do an appearance in their garage tomorrow and tells them to keep things hush-hush, finalize details with his agent and bring a limo. The brushed off alien contingent mutter a bit and go off to do as he asked, while Nesmith tries to corner Gwen who brushes him off with a "it was cute before I got to know you" line.Nesmith eventually goes into the men's room and locks himself in a commode where he overhears two non-geeks who are making fun of the whole Galaxy Quest event and participants and calling the stars losers who haven't done anything in acting since the show, especially Nesmith who is bad-mouthed by his co-stars. Nesmith gets a wake up call and falls totally out of character for the rest of the day. He signs autographs with a "phone it in" mentality, doesn't look at the fans and when confronted by the real hosts of his next day gig turns on them, get's angry and tells them it's just a TV show.Gwen overhears this and later that night talks with fellow co-star Dane about it on the telephone from their respective homes. She expresses concern about Nesmith and Dane just expresses contempt for the whole thing.Nesmith, climbs into a bottle of booze on ice watching reruns of Galaxy Quest on TV and waking up when Mathesar and his fellow aliens come a knocking at Nesmiths' back door. Nesmith doesn't quite rise to the occasion and more like crawls around in his shirt and undies looking for shoes. Eventually they all get into a limo and head to the gig with Nesmith trying to make a play for the pretty alien girl Laliari (Missi Pyle) who can't speak because her translator device broke. Nesmith asks for a coke and promptly takes a nap as they explain the situation to him on the way up to the ship, which is a real Galaxy Quest space ship.Once there, the unshaven, groggy and very unkempt Nesmith is taken to the bridge where he confronts the evil bad guy alien Sarris (Robin Sachs) on the Vid screen. Nesmith orders them to fire blue and fire red and fire other stuff. He says that should take care of Sarris and then he asks to be taken back home to Earth. Teb (Jed Rees) really appreciates that Nesmith has saved the people.Nesmith is shown into a room where he is covered by goop that turns into a plastic shell and then he is shot out into space, landing at home by his swimming pool in a state of shock. He runs, as is, unshaven and unkempt, to the electronics store opening they have been contracted to do and tells his fellow actors about his real adventures in space with the "termites" as he calls them.Everyone thinks he's drunk and crazy, even after Mathesar and his fellow aliens show up and want him and the crew to come up and negotiate with Sarris. Nesmith tries to convince his fellow actors to come along and help him. Instead they all give Nesmith the brush off and leave, climbing into the same van hostile and critical, except for Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) who plays the Tech Sgt. Chen on the show and said they all should have taken the gig because who knows when Nesmith would offer them a gig again!A gig? They all say, looking at each other and getting out of the van and meeting up with Laliari, whose image remains on Earth as Nesmith thought they might change their minds. Laliari orders up pods for all of them and in short order the acting crew of Galaxy Quest realize they are now on the real deal in outer space and that's a little more reality than they were planning on.We see the aliens in their real form for the first time and they are a type of pastel octopus or squid who use a device to take human shape and speech.Fred Kwan is the only one of the actors who is so out of it he's here now, probably due to too much Hollywood living, he is the only one blindly up for the adventure. Down deep inside he's as crazy as Nesmith only it didn't take him a first time to be that crazy. Gwen and Dane are the only sane ones who think it's totally insane to do this gig! Tommy's trying to deal with it all.They get a tour of the facility, go aboard the ship where they get more of a tour and meet the crew and other "termites" as Nesmith calls them. They take their places on the bridge and take the ship out into space to meet with Sarris.We learn that Mathesar and his people think Earth TV is serious documentary news and that shows like Galaxy Quest and Gilligan's Island are reality TV or new reports like the war in Iraq. Gwen and Dane take issue with Nesmith who is going along with this blindly because they think he's on an ego trip and maybe he is! He sure likes inspecting the troops.The audience eventually discovers that Sarris had captured and tortured the last commander who told Sarris all about things on Galaxy Quest, including the coveted Omega 13 device, which Sarris wants to own at all costs. The "termites" don't know what the Omega 13 does, but badly-constructed, the device will disintegrate every matter atom in the universe. However, nobody knows where it is.This sends the actors packing, except for Nesmith who still thinks he can handle Sarris. Well, he has to as Sarris has arrived and they must confront him. Sarris overhears Nesmith talking about his plans of attacking him with all their weapons because Gwen didn't follow Nesmith's order to cut the microphone, so he shoots first. The engine dies off, but synergy leads the starship to a landmine abandoned since an old war. When they leave the place, they manage to stop the starship.The crew tries to explain that the Galaxy's adventures are a fiction, not historical documents, but the concept doesn't entirely resonate with the aliens: they have just started to understand the concept of "lie" and "deceit" as Sarris promises something and then does another thing. A new sphere of the energy source called beridium is found in a planet nearby, so they have to go and pick them. Arriving to the planet where the sphere is, it looks like the rocky Nevada desert, and they can breathe naturally. A kind of home appears. Some little monkeys are working on the mines. Guy is worried that he's the extra - the sixth crewmember- who hasn't got even a simple surname. One of the cute little monkeys is weak and sick, so the rest of the mining monkeys eat it alive.The crew try to steal one of the beridium spheres by rolling it away. Hundreds of monkeys appear. The starship leaves with the sphere but without Nesmith, as Lazarus complains that Nesmith needs to be always the main protagonist. A large animal is about to eat Nesmith. The animal is tele-transported, and it dies painfully, becoming a ball of goo. The monkeys keep on shouting "Gorignak ", which is a monster made of rocks. Finally, Nesmith is tele-transported to the ship.Back at the spaceship, Sarris has invaded the ship. Apart from that, Nesmith is told that there are no more people on planet Earth. Nesmith says that there is no use in torturing Mathesar, as he doesn't know what the Omega 13 device really is. He and Gwen show Sarris the "historical documents", who immediately understands the situation. He forces Nesmith to explain to Mathesar in simple words that a child can understand that they are not heroes, but only actors.Sarris tells his thugs that they are going to make the starship explode with everybody inside. However, Nesmith and Lazarus pretend to fight, and they use the distraction to throw their guardians to the space void. Gwen reminds Nesmith that neither of them can activate a neutron engine. But Nesmith knows somebody who will know how to operate it. Brandon (Justin Long) is a nerdy geek who asked a lot of technical questions during one of the gigs. Gwen and Nesmith follow Brandon and his friend Kyle (Jeremy Howard)'s instructions. When asked what the Omega 13 device may do, Brandon says they think that it may allow to go back in time in 13 seconds. Hollister (Jonathan Feyer) discovers the rhythm of the smashing iron poles.Lazarus and Quellek (Patrick Breen) open the door to bring oxygen to the Thermians. Laliari and Fred kiss like crazy. Finally, Nesmith reaches the blue button which will stop the explosion. Brandon can't help Nesmith and give him an alternate solution when the blue button doesn't stop the countdown because his mother, Katelyn (Kaitlin Cullum) forces him to take the rubbish out. Nesmith and Gwen hug, listening to the last seconds of the countdown. However, in the series, the countdown always used to stop a second before, and that's what happens.Nesmith orders Tommy to drive the spaceship into the minefield. There, the magnetism of the ship attracts many mines. Nesmith's ship faces Sarris' ship, and goes down in the last second. The mines destroy Sarris' ship.However, after going through a black hole, Tommy mentions an increase of energy from Sarris' ship. Sarris has entered Nesmith's ship. Pretending to be Fred, he wounds Nesmith and kills the rest of the crew. Nesmith shouts to Mathesar to turn on the Omega 13 device, so he arrives back in time - only 13 seconds, but time enough to hit Fred as soon as he enters the control room.All the Thermians leave the spaceship, except for Laliari. They arrive at the convention they were supposed to attend - where thousands of geek fans are already disappointed they are not there - crash-landing with their spaceship thanks to Brandon and his friends. In the convention, each cast member leaves the ship half-suffocated and dizzy. Sarris also wakes up, but he is killed in a second, something which drives the fans wild.CUE to the new season of Galaxy Quest - the cast includes a character called Laliari, performed by Jane Doe and who kisses Fred, and a new security lieutenant, interpreted by the extra actor Guy Fleegman. | comedy, murder, cult, feel-good, good versus evil, satire, entertaining | train | imdb | While it poked fun at science fiction and its fans, it never resorted to the kind of mockery you see in other films.Galaxy Quest is a solid, funny movie.
Tim Allen doing William Shatner doing a Heroic Spaceship Captain is worth the rental all by itself, not to mention Alan Rickman's memorably dry performance as the I-Am-Not-My-Strange-Looking-Alien character.The first thing I thought upon leaving the theater was that I had to see this film again.
"Galaxy Quest" is an excellent feel good comedy that's enjoyable for the entire family.Even though the concept of the movie is not original anymore, the story is still enjoyable and fun enough, mainly thanks to the cast who seemed to be enjoying them selves during filming.Tim Allen is surprising good as "William Shatner" like captain and Alan Rickman is perfect in his role.
Indeed there is more plot and budget than many films that try play it straight.The crew being actors think there may be a buck involved and go along with what, they initially think, are over-the-top fans and before they know it they are in space having a fully formed adventure.Jokes about spacemen, mad Trekkies, transporters with side-effects, token blacks, interracial love, British thesps who detest what they do, aliens who don't have a sense of humour, characters who think they are going to be killed because they don't have a second name, and lots, lots more.Once again I stress that this subject was a sitting duck for satire, but what is amazing is how clever the script is, worse will win Oscars.
GALAXY QUEST (1999) ***1/2Starring: Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub, Alan Rickman, Daryl Mitchell and Sam Rockwell Directed by Dean Parisot, written by David Howard.
Tim Allen as the pompous hero, Alan Rickman as the whiny has-been 'Shakespearean'-actor-forced-to-play-an-android, Tony Shalhoub as the funny Fred, Sam Rockwell as the terrified-of-being-the-first-one-to-die Guy, Enrico Colantoni as the gullible Mathezar and last but not least, the incredibly sexy Sigourney Weaver as the tired-of-playing-dumb-blonde Gwen (the total opposite of her famous Ripley character) play their parts.I'm glad that I bought this film on impulse yesterday as most American spoofs I have seen, like the abysmal Scary Movies (puke) or the silly Screams (yawn) and the ridiculous Naked Guns (okay this last one was kind of funny) hardly have anything more to offer than silliness.
The references to Star Trek, the movies and its fans are clever, sly and wonderfully incorporated in the story and writing, the characters are immensely likable and engaging as well as being alive to every character nuance and the direction is done with precision.Galaxy Quest couldn't have had a more perfect cast either.
Tim Allen seems to be having a ball, Sigourney Weaver is charming not to mention very, very hot, Alan Rickman is hilarious doing what he's best at bagging all the best lines and an endearing sense of bitterness, Tony Shalhoub is the wonderful Tony Shalhoub he always is with a deliberately burned-out character and Sam Rockwell is also very good.
But there is also something special about Galaxy Quest, it flawlessly satirises the acting profession and parodies fans of sci-fi and Star Trek without being rude about them and it is an engaging and original space saga in its own right.
The reason is simple - never before have I seen a parodying comedy that works without vomit, urinal and fecal jokes, a parodying comedy that doesn't need to make fun of George WC Bush.Where many serious-looking sci-fi movies try hard to explain how the futuristic technology works, Galaxy Quest in a clever way lets the spectator to find out (to his/her amusement) that sci-fi writers sometimes accidentally correctly guess something functional.Where other movies either depict extra-terrestrials as blood-sucking carnivorous monsters, or as peace-loving beautiful creatures, both easily distinguishable as such by appearance, Galaxy Quest in a clever way makes the E.T.'s surprising and twisty.Jokes about nonsensical equipment/machinery, jokes about "cult remarks", obvious nods and eye-blinks to other cult series or movies, as well as a multitude of mocking remarks aimed at the very same series and movies - that all adds a lot of fun to this fantastic movie.So to somehow wrap it up - I highly recommend this movie, it's probably the best it can be..
After having been to half a dozen conventions in glory to this campy old sci-fi show, I have to say that this movie manages to target PERFECTLY every strange quirk and idiosyncrasy which surrounds "fan boy" groups.I was also pleased by the character development which allowed for personalities that were as equally funny as they were original.
It's hard to imagine how this movie could have been improved upon.The plot is simple: typecast actors from a long-ago-cancelled sci-fi adventure series (led by Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver as the stars of the show, with Alan Rickman a close third in his role) earn a reluctant living on the convention circuit, making special appearances in character.Allen plays James Nesmith, who played ship commander Peter Quincy Taggart.
The supporting cast is notable as well: Sam Rockwell plays Guy Fleegman, who gets dragged along for the ride when the crew suddenly finds itself aboard the alien ship based on their show, and Tony Shaloub (from the TV series Wings) does well as Fred Kawn (Tech Sargent Chen on GQ).Now for the plot: while at a convention, the "Thermians" confront Nesmith, who is convinced they are just another group of obsessed fans in character, as they inform him that their race is about to be obliterated by an evil space villain (Sarris, played by an over-the-top Robin Sachs).
To that extent, the story is also a coming-of-age tale about a group of actors who, when all is said and done, realize with a new appreciation that there are many worse fates for an actor than to be "typecast," such as being forgotten, without fans, and without work, and who seemed by the end of the film to have finally accepted that GQ is all they will ever be known for.Some sci-fi movies are "so bad they're good." This movie is just "so good, it's great." A must-see..
While spoofs of the horror genre (Scary Movie etc.) are sometimes grotesque and desperate to keep laughs coming every second, Galaxy Quest is a lot better paced and has an impeccable comic timing.
As other reviewers have said, it carries off an astonishing balancing act that manages to hit all the right notes, combining laugh-out-loud comedy with some genuinely moving scenes that could easily have teetered over into schmaltz.It somehow achieves the feat of being both merciless and affectionate, poking fun at all the clichés of Star Trek and its legions of fans, without ever being snide or mean-spirited.
I especially enjoyed the pre-teen fans who had the entire ship schematics on their PC at the age when most people are still playing with Power Rangers figures and Barbies, which is an all-too real phenomenon in the Trek fan community.The acting is top-notch, (Tim Allen plays the scene-stealing hack down to the last detail, Sigourney Weaver is hilarious as the token female on the ship, Alan Rickman adds wonderful conflict as a furious Shakespearian actor who is convinced his role on the show ruined his career) the special effects are just fabulous, and the few poignant moments are done so well that it's damn near tear-jerking.
It is very close to perfect.The entire cast delivers a high quality performance totally convincing you of the reality of this "historical document." 9/10Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub (who is brilliant as Fred Kwan/Tech Sgt. Chen), Sam Rockwell (who plays 'Guy' fits right in), Daryl Mitchell, Enrico Colantoni (who played 'Mathesar' was totally convincing), Robin Sachs (who played the evil General Sarris, brought him to life), Patrick Breen (who played 'Quellek' is why this gets a 9/10), Missi Pyle (who played 'Laliari/Jane Doe' was beautiful by just smiling), Jed Rees (who played the Thermian Historian 'Teb'), and all four fans: Justin Long who played 'Brandon', Jeremy Howard who played 'Kyle', Kaitlin Cullum who played 'Katelyn', and Jonathan Feyer who played 'Hollister.-Zafoid.
Push those thoughts aside, Galaxy Quest is truly one of the most original concepts for a film in a LONG time.It basically makes a play at Star Trek, and the actors who play the crew in the movie (from the TV show they are in) are forced into taking on a real life scenario a sci fi TV show exhibits.With the help of a clumsy albeit charming cast of aliens that emulate the show and bring the actors show to life (ship and all!) Galaxy Quest manages to produce some funny moments.The movie never loses it's charm.
Surprisingly, this film moves along good and will shock you when details you thought were irrelevant come into play later.Galaxy quest takes itself seriously in it's own created world, but never loses sight that we viewers know it's a take on star trek.It does a better job then you would imagine in distinguishing itself as memorable.Excellent film.
Galaxy Quest is science-fiction movie wrapped in a parody of the Star Trek TV series phenomenon.
This piece makes fun of the fans, the actors, all the paraphernalia surrounding them, as well as those milking it for all its worth.That being said, it's only half of what you're going to see, because you'll have a true sci-fi flick on your hands, with special effects, space ships, exotic planets, scary aliens and creatures.It might not have a very complicated story, but really it's a character movie, and based on that, it's quite a success.
Sure it had some funny moments, but overall I felt a lot like I was watching a cross between Star Trek the Original Series and a Mel Brooks film.
Galaxy Quest is funny on its own, but the humor of it only REALLY becomes outright tear inducing if you remember some of the old Star Trek episodes, like the one where Kirk fabricates a weapon to fight an alien.
All in all, I think this is a great film with a fun plot, the ending is cute, and the cast is what makes this movie a must see, and incredibly entertaining.
Galaxy Quest is a comedy sc/fi action adventure film rolled into one.it is a spoof of Star Trek and and other sc/ci TV shows/ movies.but more than that,and more importantly,it also pokes fun at popular culture and how absurd we have become as a society.for instance, the worshipping of Celebreties as idols."the cult of Celebrity" plays a prominent role in this movie.any movie that skewers celebrities and brings them down a peg is always a good thing.this is great satire.in this case it also happens to be hysterically funny at times,with great action and even some romance.the movie is not done in a mean spirited way,so is not overtly offensive or insulting to it's targets(well,okay,to some it would be,but we won't get into that here)although i guess,to be fair it is pretty blatant.oh well,cry me a river.honestly,the average human being that enjoys laughing frequently will enjoy this movie 9/10.
Rockwell plays the doomed other guy--the "Ensign Jones" character from Star Trek--and delivers one of the funniest lines in recent memory, "Did any of you even WATCH the show?"Galaxy Quest is a keen parody of science fiction in general, and of Star Trek in particular, and it pulls off the impressive feat of poking fun at the genre without ridiculing or belittling it.
I'm an avid Star Trek fan and I haven enjoyed "Home Improvement", so I was pleased to hear that Tim Allen was going to make a sci-fi parody movie.
(What a way to start, with a big player like Dreamworks and with stars like Allen and Weaver!)In the movie, "Galaxy Quest" is a classic sci-fi TV show with a cult following, much like the original "Star Trek" is today.
Examples include: Nesmith getting his shirt torn off in a fight on an alien planet; Weaver's character, Tawny Madison, not having anything important to do on the ship besides talk to the computer and look pretty; a cold, calculating first officer; "transporters" turning things inside out; fans who believe the show is real; discord among the "Galaxy Quest" cast; parts of the ship that serve no useful purpose except to provide danger for the episode; etc.It should be noted that the movie does poke some fun at Star Trek and its obsessive fans.
Some Trek fans may not like being object of some good-natured ridicule, but the majority of fans (those who don't take themselves too seriously) will enjoy and join in on the jabs at their own sci-fi enthusiasm.The story, sound, music, special effects and humor in "Galaxy Quest" are all excellent.
Especially interesting are some of the added features on the DVD, including scenes cut from the final version of the movie, and dubbing of the entire film in Thermian, an alien language in the movie, for that oh-so-geeky touch.If you've already seen "Galaxy Quest", see it again and catch all those in-jokes you missed the first time around.
Hysterical comedy, decent enough sci-fi film, and stellar parody of "Star Trek", its fans, and the friction existing between its stars.Tim Allen leads the cast as actor Jason Nesmith, who in turn played the fearless commander Peter Quincy Taggart.
Excellently played by Ms. Weaver, letting her sci-fi hair down after the "Alien" series character Ripley.Alan Rickman stars as Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus.
In a parody of the Star Trek TV series, the cast of a popular sci-fi TV show Galaxy Quest are kidnapped by an alien race who thinks the show is actually real.
In my opinion, the show stealer is Sam Rockwell playing the hapless glorified extra who just wants to be part of the crew.If you love sci-fi, Star Trek, space movies or just comedies - this one is a mandatory watch.
Allen is superb as the jaded Kirk character with Sigourney Weaver also excellent as his woman that got away with a wonderfully dry Alan Rickman as an "I am sick of playing Spock" character, but for me the real scene stealer is the excellent Sam Rockwell as Guy Fleegman, an extra who was killed in one episode of the original series who is terrified that art will truly imitate life.Kudos to the rest of the cast who all do a great job, but especially Robin Sachs who plays a particularly nasty real alien villain Sarris, who truly is frightening and adds the sense of danger that the film needs.
This time, I can rate it 8/10 instead of 7, just like I did after my first viewing.It has been seventeen years since the cancellation of "Galaxy Quest", a cult sci-fi TV series, but the former members of the show's cast appear at conventions and grand openings.
The starring roles in this 1999 movie are played by Tim Allen (Nesmith), Sigourney Weaver (Gwen DeMarco), and Alan Rickman (Dane), and these three all deserve credit for a job well done.
"¡Three Amigos!" parodies the western genre and "Galaxy Quest" parodies sci-fi, but the main characters in both movies are actors who find themselves actually doing what they've only been known to act out on screen, and both of them can certainly be funny.
Fans of sci-fi shows, particularly 'Star Trek', will appreciate it all the more because there are many in-jokes (such as the geeky fans at the convention who need to know every detail of the show) that they will recognise.I'm not a huge fan of Tim Allen but his portrayal as Jason Nesmith, a character that is a parody of William Shatner, was just great as he depicts the character's sheer arrogance and narcissism without losing heart.
There are times when he doesn't even have to say a word, just his facial expressions portray the character's disgust with the situations he is placed in (check out the deleted bathroom scene on the DVD for a great example of Rickman's expressiveness).'Galaxy Quest' is probably one of the best cinematic spoofs out there, making the 'Scary Movie' collection looking positively amateurish and infantile in comparison.
Rounding off his main crew are Sigourney Weaver, who plays buxomy blonde Gwen DeMarco/Lt. Tawny Madison, whose only job is to repeat what the ship's computer says, and Alan Rickman, as Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus, the token non-human on-board the ship, making him the butt of many alien jokes.While the cast and crew of Galaxy Quest are made to be all chummy and such, in reality, they are a bunch of quarreling has-beens whose show has been canceled 20 years ago, and are now making ends meet by attending conventions, and opening electrical stores.
When the 'fans' turn out to be aliens convinced that the Galaxy Quest actors are the saviors of their civilization, the results are laugh out loud funny.The plot is original and the jokes just keep coming.
Galaxy Quest is a surprisingly clever comic adventure that does stretch credibility, but provides a little more substance than you might expect from this kind of comedic adventure.The title of the film is actually the title of a short-lived, sci-fi television series that during its brief time on the air, developed cult status, a fictionalized STAR TREK, if you will, that continues to live on through conventions and live appearances for its cast, whose careers have pretty much been reduced to these live appearances, which most of the cast seems bored with, except for the star of the show, Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), who lives for these live appearances until he accidentally overhears a couple of fans talking about how ridiculous the show and Nesmith are, which sends Nesmith on a drunken bender.
The ultimate homage to "Star Trek" series and fans, "Galaxy Quest" also comes off as one of the best movies ever made about the film industry, actors and "make-believe".
A delightful sci-fi comedy about aliens who accidentally mistake a corny Sci-Fi TV-show for "historical documents" and kidnap the actors to help them, this is a great, fun family film.Eighteen years ago, Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), Alexander Dane (Rickman), Fred Kwan (Shalhoub), Gwen Demarco (Weaver) and Tommy Webber (Darryl Mitchell) were the stars of "Galaxy Quest", a popular "Star Trek"-esque TV series about a group of space explorers who get into various adventures across the galaxy. |
tt3381008 | Grimsby | The opening scene shows Nobby Butcher (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife Dawn (Rebel Wilson) having passionate sex. Turns out they're in a mattress store testing out the product, to the disgust of one of the store's employees. They buy the mattress and take it home, where their children help them with taking it upstairs. Nobby and Dawn have about 11 children and one grandchild, living in the poor English town of Grimsby, which is full of drunken degenerates and low-lives. Nobby has a whole room kept for his brother, whom he was separated from 28 years ago.His brother, Sebastian Graves (Mark Strong), is MI6's top agent. He goes on a mission to catch a target, with Jodie (Isla Fisher) being his eyes and ears. Sebastian chases after the villains and kills them all until he reaches the final target. He poisons the man and orders him to tell what his team, Maelstrom, is planning. The villain says they are planning to release something big, and he mentions the name Rhonda George (Penelope Cruz), whom the agents know to be an actress and philanthropist. The villain dies before Sebastian can figure out the entire plan. The head of MI6 (Ian McShane) then tells Sebastian that Rhonda will be at a charity ball, and he must find her.Meanwhile, Nobby is in a pub watching a football game and getting drunk with practically the whole neighborhood. He gets crazy drunk and puts a firework up his ass, only to slip and get it stuck up there. He panics as it's about to blow, but a woman gets a fire extinguisher and thumps Nobby with it, allowing the firework to shoot out his ass before it blows up. One of Nobby's friends comes in and excitedly tells him that they finally found his brother, knowing he will be at a "posh event" and that this man's cousin nicked a ticket for Nobby, who is greatly excited to hear the news.Nobby goes to the event, while Sebastian is keeping an eye out for a target. He observes a hitman, Pavel Lukashenko (Scott Adkins) triggering a camera with a gun to aim in Rhonda's direction. Rhonda goes up to present a Jewish-Palestinian boy with AIDS named Schlomo Khalidi (Yusuf Hofri) as part of her campaign to try and cure the world. As Sebastian prepares to shoot the camera, Nobby goes up the stairs to find him and give his brother a hug. This causes Sebastian's shot to hit Schlomo, with his blood flying into Daniel Radcliffe's mouth, giving him AIDS. The camera gun goes off and hits Javier Alvarez (Jorge de Juan), the World Health Organization leader. The other agents think Sebastian has gone rogue and begin shooting at him. Nobby is thrilled to see his brother, but Sebastian feels the opposite.The brothers go on the run from authorities and other assassins. Sebastian jumps off a ledge, and Nobby follows suit, crushing Sebastian's ankle. They get in the latter's bulletproof car. Nobby tries to turn it on and accidentally launches a rocket that blows up an officer that was writing Sebastian a ticket. Nobby then rolls down the window to brag about being in a bulletproof car, giving the gunmen a chance to fire at them. The two drive away, only for Nobby to be distracted while driving because he's watching the game. The car flies off a bridge into the river. Sebastian pulls them out safely. When they get to a safe hiding spot, he injects his leg with a serum to readjust the bones in his leg. He then tells Nobby that he has to leave him again so he can hide. Not wanting to lose his brother again, Nobby decides the best thing to do is to bring him home.At MI6, the head is pissed when he believes Sebastian has gone rogue. He orders an assassin named Chilcott (Sam Hazeldine) to go after Sebastian. Sebastian calls Jodie and proclaims his innocence. She warns him about Chilcott. He asks her to help him find the real assassin.Nobby brings Sebastian home to meet his family, all of whom are delighted to finally meet him. The kids show Sebastian a wall of photos Nobby kept of Sebastian as a child. This triggers childhood memories in Sebastian of when the two were boys growing up in Grimsby. The two lost their parents when they were young and were brought to an orphanage. On the day they were set to be adopted, Nobby abandoned Sebastian on the train, leading Sebastian to resent his brother.Nobby then takes Sebastian to the pub to meet all the locals. However, the townspeople, geniuses that they are, put up a banner to welcome "Grimsby's very own spy", tipping off Chilcott and his team of assassins. Sebastian spots them, so Nobby's kids create a diversion to stop the hitmen. The brothers run away, but Sebastian is hit with two poison darts. Nobby sucks the venom out of Sebastian's shoulder, but the other dart hit him in his balls. Sebastian orders Nobby to suck the venom out, which he reluctantly does for his brother. To make it easier, Sebastian has to teabag Nobby. He nearly dies, but Nobby saves his brother and sucks his balls. Nobby is elated until he gets pre-cum in his eye.Sebastian sends Jodie a picture that Nobby took in which Lukashenko can be seen. After giving Sebastian the identity of Lukashenko, Jodie also informs him that the villain was doing a deal with a man named Joris Smit (Nick Boraine), and that he is in South Africa. Sebastian then invites Nobby to join him.The brothers arrive in South Africa. Nobby immediately makes friends with a heroin dealer (Barkhad Abdi), who sells him a bit of the drug. Sebastian goes to inject himself with the bone serum for his ankle, only to accidentally take the heroin. Nobby must then assume his identity and go undercover. Jodie guides Nobby to seduce Smit's wife Lina (Annabelle Wallis), informing him that she's wearing a green dress and is gorgeous. Nobby ends up laying his eyes on a maid at the hotel named Banu (Gabourey Sidibe). Thinking it is HER that he has to seduce, Nobby makes his move.Nobby clogs up the toilet in his room and calls for help. Lina shows up at his door, and he believes she is the help. She attempts to seduce him and talk about his penis, but he thinks she's talking about his turd. Banu enters, with Nobby still believing they are going to get it on. Nobby ends up eating her out until Lina sends Banu out. Lina tries seducing Nobby again until her husband shows up with two men to kill Nobby. Sebastian arrives and shoots them, having come out of his drug-induced state. They then ask Lina what her husband and Lukashenko were dealing with. Lina says they were handling a powerful weapon, but she is shot by Chilcott before she can give up anymore info. The assassin launches a rocket at the brothers' room, forcing them to jump out.The brothers then hide from the hitmen inside an elephant's vagina. The hitmen lose track of them, but before the brothers can get out, a male elephant arrives and starts having sex with the female, leaving the brothers to get hit with its massive penis. They try to jerk it off so it can finish faster, which ends up with Sebastian getting a face full of elephant semen. Then another elephant shows up and starts hitting Nobby in the bum with his penis, sending another load their way.The brothers take a long bath to wash off the mess. Sebastian then asks Nobby why he abandoned him as a child. Nobby recounts how he overheard the couple that was supposed to adopt the two of them discussing with the head of the orphanage that they only want to adopt one of the boys. Nobby then left Sebastian so that he could go on and have a proper life while he was stuck in Grimsby. Sebastian forgives Nobby.Realizing that the villains plan to unleash their weapon at the upcoming football match, the brothers go to the arena in fan gear to make sure Sebastian is undetected. Unfortunately, Nobby's family and the idiots from the pub show up and start singing about Sebastian being an MI6 agent. A drone overhead gets a visual on Sebastian's face, forcing him to run. He tries to escape, only for a group of villains to capture him, just as Nobby shows up and watches him get taken away.Sebastian wakes up chained. He is met by Rhonda, the mastermind behind Maelstrom's plot. Thinking she was going to detonate a bomb, Rhonda says she plans to launch a deadly virus called WorldCure into the arena to wipe out the surplus of scum on the planet, starting with Grimsby's residents.Nobby gets a reading on Sebastian due to a tracker he accidentally shot into his neck earlier. He runs to the outside of the building he's in and encounters Lukashenko. The villain beats Nobby with his hands and feet, knocking him to the ground. Nobby's phone rings as he receives a call from Dawn. Lukashenko insults Dawn, angering Nobby. He grabs Lukashenko's gun and shoots the man in the head, which starts Nobby's love for shooting things. He easily shoots the other hitmen before reaching Sebastian.The brothers head back to the arena to stop Rhonda. Nobby goes to the Grimsby residents and encourages them to storm the field to create a diversion, as he tells them they are being targeted. The people rush the field with the brothers leading them, but since they're all out of shape and drunk, they slow down quickly. Nobby and Sebastian reach the villains, while Chilcott is nearby and tries to kill Sebastian. Nobby's kids aid in the diversion once again, with them throwing Schlomo and his wheelchair onto Chilcott, causing him to fall over and be impaled on someone's helmet.Nobby tries to catch up to Rhonda as she runs to to detonate the fireworks, one of which contains the virus in the tip. He attempts to shoot at her, but his gun jams. He realizes he must stop the firework himself. From his earpiece, Jodie tells Nobby which firework has the virus, and that it needs to go off in a contained area. Nobby decides to sit on the firework and let it go up his ass, but the firework next to him also has the virus. Sebastian shows up and follows Nobby's lead. The fireworks go off and launch the two in the air before they hit the ground again. Nobby's gun then goes off and hits Daniel Radcliffe, whose blood flies into the mouth of Donald Trump.It is reported that Rhonda was arrested and that Nobby and Sebastian died after saving the world. It is also mentioned that Trump now has AIDS.The brothers are really recovering in the hospital, albeit with massive damage to their anal cavities. Jodie shows up and gives them new identities. She then kisses Sebastian. Nobby's family arrives to join the brothers.In the end, Nobby becomes part of Sebastian's spy team. They're on a boat, and Nobby goes around shooting all the gunmen he encounters. He reaches Sebastian at the top, who asks him if he's met the team. Nobby's face then says it all.There's a quick text to remind viewers that neither Daniel Radcliffe nor Donald Trump were involved in this film and that neither of them are HIV positive. | comedy, murder, violence, flashback, absurd, humor, satire, revenge | train | imdb | null |
tt0324133 | Swimming Pool | Sarah Morton, a middle-aged English mystery author, who has written a successful series of detective novels, is having writer's block that is impeding her next book. Sarah's publisher, John Bosload, offers her his country house near Lacoste, France for some rest and relaxation. Sarah takes him up on the offer, hinting that she hopes John may come and visit as well. After becoming comfortable with the run of the spacious, sun-filled house, and meeting the groundskeeper Marcel, Sarah's quietude is disrupted by a young woman claiming to be the publisher's daughter, Julie. She shows up late one night explaining that she's taking time off from work herself. She eventually tells Sarah that her mother used to be Bosload's mistress, but that he would not leave his family.
Julie's sex life consists of one-night stands with various oafish men, and a competition of personalities develops between the two women. At first, Sarah regards Julie as a distraction from her writing. She uses earplugs to allow her to sleep during Julie's noisy nighttime adventures, although she nonetheless has a voyeuristic fascination with them. Later she abandons the earplugs during one of Julie's trysts, beginning to envy Julie's lifestyle. Sarah sneaks into Julie's room and steals her diary, using it in the new novel she's working on. The competition comes to the fore when a local waiter, Franck, is involved. Julie wants him but he appears to prefer the more mature Sarah, having struck up a relationship with her during her frequent lunches at the bistro.
An unexpected tragedy occurs after a night of flirting among the three. After swimming together in the pool, Franck refuses to allow Julie to continue performing oral sex on him, once Sarah, who watches them from the balcony, throws a rock into the water. Franck feels frightened and tells Julie he is leaving. The next day, Franck is missing. While investigating Franck's disappearance, Sarah learns that Julie's mother died years earlier, though Julie had spoken of her mother as if she were alive. She returns to the villa, where a confused Julie thinks that Sarah is her mother and has a breakdown. Julie eventually recovers and confesses that Franck is dead because she repeatedly hit him over the head with a rock as he tried to leave her at the pool. His body is in one of the sheds.
When Marcel becomes suspicious of the mound of fresh soil where Sarah and Julie have buried Franck's body, Sarah seduces the elderly gardener to distract him. Julie leaves, thanking Sarah for her help and leaving her the manuscript of an unpublished novel written by her late mother, which she had previously claimed that John made her mother burn. Sarah uses the mother's manuscript in her novel-in-progress.
Sarah returns to England and visits John at his publishing office with her new novel. His daughter Julia also shows up just as Sarah is leaving, but is revealed to be a completely different person than the girl Julie that the viewer was introduced to as John's daughter. The viewer now must question whether the story that took place at the country house was a fictional plot dreamed up by Sarah. | pornographic, cruelty, murder, dramatic, flashback, psychedelic, plot twist | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0072195 | Space Is the Place | A spaceship travels through space. Sun Ra Arkestra singer June Tyson sings, "It's after the end of the world - don't you know that yet?" The camera tracks over a painting of a forest.Sun Ra walks through a forest, followed by a mirror-faced person. Strange alien life forms surround him. Sun Ra says the planet he is on is different from Earth. He explains that he might bring black people here from there so they can thrive without white people.It's Chicago, 1943, in a bar with girls dancing on a stage. Sun Ra plays the piano, wearing glasses. The Overseer (Raymond Johnson), a black man in a white suit and hat, walks in with two black women. The Overseer calls the manager over, telling him that the piano player "sounds like sh*t," and to "get him out of here, start the show."The manager steps onto the stage, whispers something to Sun Ra, and says, "Let's hear it for the piano man, Sunny Ray!" He then announces the next group of dancing girls. Sun Ra starts playing wildly. More girls come out dancing as the music gets very chaotic, then they are ushered off of the stage. Glasses explode. Smoke pours from the floor and stage. People run away in a panic.Sun Ra and the Overseer are left sitting in the bar. The Overseer says, "I should've known you'd pull some sh*t like this," then asks Sun Ra, "Are you ready for me?"Sun Ra and the Overseer are suddenly seated in a desert, facing each other and playing a card game with unsaid but clearly enormous stakes.Aboard the spaceship from earlier, the Arkestra plays a frenzied tune. Sun Ra steps to the controls of the ship. The ship's monitor shows that they are approaching Earth. Then, the monitor shows the Overseer driving a red convertible car with a girl beside him.It's 1972. Jimmy Fey (Christopher Brooks), a reporter in Oakland, California, announces that a landing from space will happen by Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra, and they will announce their plan to save the black race. The Overseer stands next to his parked car and complains that Sun Ra is late.The ship lands. The Overseer watches. Jimmy heads to it, accompanied by a crowd. The ship's door opens.Sun Ra and his entourage emerge from the ship, dressed in costumes with dancers dancing. A member of Sun Ra's entourage puts a strange helmet onto Jimmy's head. Sun Ra says, "I am the alter-destiny" and plays some bizarre music on a keyboard, affecting Jimmy. The crowd carries a groggy Jimmy, not wearing the helmet anymore, away.Jimmy Fey is wheeled into the back of an ambulance that is driven away. The Overseer climbs into his car, saying, "Well, let's get it on."Two black boys sell newspapers with a headline on them about the spaceship's landing. In the desert, the card game continues.Two young black guys approach an unconscious drunk who sits in the doorway of a building. They admire his shoes, then they take them, stepping into a youth center. Inside of the building, there are pictures of Black Power icons on the walls and a bunch of black youths singing, clapping, chanting and playing cards, pool and ping-pong.Sun Ra appears along with two costumed black people. He greets the youths, who stop what they are doing. The youths question Sun Ra, making jokes about his clothing. Sun Ra tells them he's not real, just like them, whom he says, don't exist in their society - if they did, they wouldn't be seeking equal rights. He says that black people are myths, and he came from a dream the black man dreamed long ago. Sun Ra says he'll be here until he chooses which of them to take with him to outer space. One of them asks what the crystal in Sun Ra's hand is. He holds it up to the camera and there's a cut to June Tyson singing about "living in the space age."The Overseer pulls his convertible to a stop by the building. The drunk next to him wakes up and realizes he has no shoes on. The Overseer gives him some money.The Overseer and the two youths who stole the man's shoes play a game with some coins and talk. The Overseer bad-mouths and questions Sun Ra, then one youth argues with him that Sun Ra hasn't betrayed black people yet. The Overseer says that Sun Ra wants them "to buy his records." One youth responds, "Maybe." In the desert, the card game continues.An unconscious Jimmy Fey is wheeled through a hospital. A "Doctor Overseer" is called to intensive care. In a room, Tania (Erika Leder), a nurse, says that Jimmy - who lies in a nearby bed - has been in a coma for three days. The Overseer says, "Looks like we got another dead n*gger on our hands." The Overseer revives Jimmy, then tells the nurse to get a friend because they're going to party tonight.The Overseer tells Jimmy to get on the phone with Sun Ra. In the ship, Sun Ra picks up the phone. While Sun Ra talks, two agents monitor the call. Tania and a black nurse, Candy (Barbara Deloney), arrive in Jimmy's hospital room, then take off most of their clothes. Jimmy says he's aroused by the nurses, then the Overseer makes him leave the room, getting into bed with them.At the "super space employment agency", a man walks into the door. Sun Ra sits inside the place. The man explains his credentials to Sun Ra, and says that he's afraid of his family getting forced onto the street or onto welfare. Sun Ra gives him a speech about work on outer planes. The man thanks him and leaves.A black guy steps into the agency and has a conversation with Sun Ra. The black guy says he needs a job. Sun Ra asks him, "What have you been doing lately?" The guy replies, "Nothing, really, nothing." Sun Ra says, "How long have you been doing nothing?" The guy answers, "Quite some time." Sun Ra responds, "You must be an expert at it." Sun Ra tells the black guy he'll get paid nothing for the work he does through the agency. Sun Ra has a talk with a woman who steps in next. We see Sun Ra is still being monitored by the agents.Jimmy steps out of his parked car, ready to meet Sun Ra. He is being watched by one of the agents. The other agent pulls a gun out of a van. Later, in the spaceship, Jimmy runs a deal by Sun Ra and the two men shake hands.Sun Ra is being driven through the ghetto with two members of his entourage while Jimmy Fey interviews him. Sun Ra explains his philosophies about black mens' place in society and music, as well as the "alter-destiny." The two youths from earlier listen to them on the radio, and debate whether Sun Ra has "sold out" or not.The contentious game in the desert goes on. The Overseer's card shows two black guys playing pool in a hall and talking. A very fat guy sits behind them, watching them.The Overseer's car pulls to a stop with Jimmy Fey and two women in it. They all get out, entering a brothel. The establishment's madam, Bertha (La Shaa Stallings), greets them at the door. The Overseer says he has "two big men coming." The group goes upstairs, where the women start to strip. The Overseer says to Jimmy, "Wait for me outside." A frustrated Jimmy leaves, then curses and protests beside a group of hookers.Two white men step to the brothel's door, greeted by Bertha. Bertha tells the women that the men are aerospace technicians from NASA, and to have sex with them. The prostitutes start to party with the NASA technicians, but as it turns out, the men cannot perform sexually. One prostitute refers to the men as "punks." The Overseer and Jimmy barge in, prodding the NASA men to leave.The NASA men re-enter the room where there are now three prostitutes and no Overseer or Fey, and they slap the women around. Bertha steps in. The NASA men say their goodbyes to her, calling her a "n*gger,"
and they leave.The name Sun Ra is displayed outside a concert hall. Inside the hall, Sun Ra works on some music. One guy says to another that Sun Ra has been working for four days and nights straight, asking when he's going to take a break. Sun Ra says that "forces have been set in motion, forces none of us can control."Back in the brothel, the Overseer, Jimmy and Bertha tend to the bloodied women.In the desert, the card game continues.In the hall, Sun Ra's buddy tells him to go home and get some rest, and then he'll pick Sun Ra up in time for the concert. Sun Ra leaves. The two black youths from earlier see as Sun Ra is captured and loaded into a van that is driven away. They get into a car to try to rescue Sun Ra. To their surprise, the fat guy from the pool hall appears in the back of their car.These three guys drive to the rescue, as people sitting in the hall wait for the concert. The agents interrogate a tied-up Sun Ra about his powers, such as "transmolecularization." Sun Ra doesn't talk, so they put headphones on his ears playing some corny music and leave him while they go to get something to eat.The three youths find the agents' van and open a garage door next to it. They race up some stairs, kick down a door and find Sun Ra. They untie him. The agents see the three guys drive off with Sun Ra and run back to their van, pursuing them in it.The Overseer and Jimmy Fey talk backstage at the hall. The Overseer remarks that there's no Sun Ra and tells Fey to send the audience home. The hall is filled. Fey cracks some corny jokes on a microphone in front of the crowd and the audience chants, "We want Ra! We want Ra!" Jimmy introduces Sun Ra after he makes it to the place. Sun Ra takes a seat behind some keyboards. The Overseer stands back, waiting for what he calls Sun Ra's "concession." Sun Ra and the Arkestra perform some electronic music, with him and June Tyson doing some chanting together.The two agents from earlier step backstage, one of them holding a handgun. He points it at Sun Ra. The two youths who rescued Sun Ra see this. They run across the stage, and one of them leaps between the agent and Sun Ra. The agent fires his gun, accidentally shooting the youth. The fat guy grabs the shooter and pulls him to the floor. The other agent points his gun at Sun Ra, who makes the wounded youth and his friend disappear, only to show up in Sun Ra's spaceship. The youth who was shot is somehow unhurt and blows bubblegum. Sun Ra magically transports the fat guy to the ship, then he disappears himself.The Overseer returns to the brothel, greeting two seated prostitutes, one of them bandaged due to the beating from the NASA men. She disappears, then the other one vanishes, both of them appearing in Sun Ra's ship.At the pool hall, the two guys from the earlier scene see the door mysteriously open. They stop playing pool, then one of them drops his dope-shooting tools onto a table and steps outside through a crowd gathered around Sun Ra's ship. This guy tells Sun Ra that he did drugs because he felt he didn't fit in anywhere. Sun Ra lets him onto the ship. Jimmy is also allowed onto the ship, but Sun Ra says that he will take Jimmy's "black part" with him, allowing Fey to go without it. In the brothel, the Overseer calls for Jimmy, who appears in front of him, his speech sounding more stereotypically "white." Tania, the nurse from the earlier scene, sits beside the Overseer. Jimmy escorts Tania out of the brothel. The Overseer yells, "RA, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" and storms outside.Sun Ra, surrounded by his entourage, says farewell to Earth, then his spaceship takes off. On the ship's monitor, we see the Overseer's car pull up to where the ship was. The Overseer steps forward and angrily throws his hat down. Scenes of apocalypse can be seen on the ship's monitor.As the ship gets away from the Earth, the planet explodes. | cult, psychedelic, blaxploitation | train | imdb | null |
tt0405094 | Das Leben der Anderen | The Lives of Others is at once a political thriller and a human drama. The film opens in East Berlin in 1984 with a sequence that alternates scenes from an interrogation with scenes from a training class for aspiring officers of the Stasi, or secret police. Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), code name HGW XX/7, is demonstrating his interrogation technique using audio of his own interrogation of a suspect. Wiesler instructs the students on how to tell whether a subject is lying. A student asks a question that Wiesler judges to be a bit too compassionate (read "bourgeois"), and the professor marks the student's name on the attendance record: surely this student has just flunked the course, or worse. During the feature's first thirty minutes, writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck draws a portrait of Wiesler that borders on caricature: Wiesler is a highly skilled officer of the Stasi, a proud, zealous, disciplined and entirely cold-blooded professional. He is one of the many cogs in the wheel of "the System," working anonymously and tirelessly, convinced that his efforts are building a better Socialist society.At the end of the class, Lieutenant-Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), Wiesler's old school friend (and probably his only friend), who has risen to the position of head of the Culture Department at Stasi, comes to invite Wiesler to a theatrical premiere. The play is by the celebrated East German playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and its leading character is played by Dreyman's lover, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), an actress of great reputation. Dreyman, who writes plays about the heroic proletariat, lives a rather comfortable life in a plush East Berlin apartment, enjoying a certain notoriety among DDR officials who value him because he's one of the few East German writers whose work is read in the west. He preserves the respect of the artistic community by using his (relatively) secure position for occasional interventions in favor of dissident fellow artists. Wiesler at once suspects that Dreyman's loyalty to the party is not as strong as it would seem on the surface, even if the high party officials are convinced.Following the performance Grubitz has a brief conversation regarding Dreyman with Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), who also attended. Hempf is attracted to the leading lady. However, since Dreyman is in the way, he must somehow be eliminated. Hempf, who happens also to be a member of the ZK ("Zentralkomitee") which has authority over the Stasi, tells Grubitz about his reservations regarding the playwright's loyalty to the SED ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands," or Socialist Unity Party), suggesting full-scale surveillance of Dreyman. Grubitz, always eager to better his own political future, asks his friend Wiesler to manage this procedure (the highest level of monitoring of suspected individuals), code-named "Lazlo." (Laszlo is a Hungarian name -- perhaps a reference to the high suicide rates in Hungary, which we'll touch on later.) Soon after, Hempf meets Dreyman and Sieland at a party, and in a rather unsubtle way lets Christa-Maria know of his feelings toward her. He also tweaks Dreyman about the naiveté of the belief displayed in his plays that people change; Hempf is convinced that people never change.Wiesler stalks Dreyman, noting his comings and goings, and while the playwright is away he has Dreyman's apartment systematically bugged. As the bugging team leaves the apartment, Wiesler notices that a neighbor is watching them through the peephole in her door. He knocks and tells the neighbor that if she tells anyone what she saw, her daughter will lose her place at university. Wiesler sets up his surveillance headquarters in the attic, just above the apartment.As Dreyman and Sieland prepare for a party in the flat in honor of Dreyman's fortieth birthday, Sieland presents him with a necktie and reminds him that he promised to wear it. She wonders if he knows how to tie it, and he replies that he's from the middle class and grew up wearing ties; he's since had to transcend his background (presumably to succeed in a socialist state). When he goes into the hall to put on the tie, though, it becomes clear that he was not telling the truth, and he makes a mess of it. He nips across the landing to knock on his neighbor's door and ask her to tie it for him. She comes into his apartment and ties the tie competently, but she's so nervous (about the surveillance) that Dreyman asks whether she's sick -- but of course she can't tell him what's the matter. The neighbor goes home with Christa-Maria none the wiser; she's mildly impressed at Dreyman's unexpected skill with a necktie.At the party Dreyman's close friend, theater director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), is shunned by the other guests. Because Jerska has been blacklisted for his anti-government opinions he hasn't been able to work for years; now people are afraid to be seen talking to him. Jerska's birthday gift to Dreyman is sheet music for a work called Sonata for a Good Man.In a lunchtime scene at Stasi headquarters, a young agent starts to tell a joke about SED leader Erich Honecker. He's overheard and forced to finish it by Grubitz, who then threatens to have him transferred to the most low-level, soul-crushingly boring job available, and finally claims he was kidding.Soon Wiesler's observations indicate that, contrary to his prejudices toward artists as free-thinkers, Dreyman's attitude toward the DDR and its SED is not particularly scornful. In the meantime, Christa-Maria has been "convinced" by Minister Hempf to be receptive to his advances, and when Wiesler finds out about this development, it dawns on him that maybe Operation Lazlo has more to do with the libido of the Minister than with the DDR's security. From his surveillance post, Wiesler makes Dreyman's doorbell ring to draw Dreyman down to the street door in time to see the minister drop Sieland off and tell her when she must meet him again.Dreyman is provoked to take action by the awareness of his lover's coerced sexual relationship with the minister and the suicide of his blacklisted friend Jerska. After learning of Jerska's death, Dreyman sits at his piano and plays the piece Jerska gave him, the Sonata for a Good Man. Wiesler, listening in the attic, is moved to tears by the music. Christa-Maria comes in and Dreyman quotes Lenin saying if he'd kept listening to Beethoven's Appassionata he'd never have finished the revolution. Then he asks, "Can anyone who has heard this music, I mean truly heard it, really be a bad person?"In the following scene, a small child in an elevator asks Wiesler if he's really with the Stasi, and confides that his father says Stasi agents are bad men who put people in prison. Wiesler starts to ask the boy his father's name, but stops himself.The film showcases Wiesler's empty life -- he apparently has no family -- in an episode with a prostitute. After sex he asks her to stay a little while, but she has another appointment. Saying that he needs to reserve any time he wants in advance, she leaves him alone.Dreyman resolves to help reveal the true face of the DDR government to the outside world. With the help of well-positioned West Germans who provide him with a typewriter that can't be traced back to him, he plans to publish an anonymous exposé in one of the leading West German weeklies, Der Spiegel. The article concerns the DDR government's cover-up of the high suicide rate in East Germany; the government stopped collecting suicide statistics in 1977, at which time East Germany's suicide rate was higher than that of every other country in Europe except for Hungary.As they work on the article, Dreyman's friends worry about being overheard. Dreyman is sure his apartment isn't bugged, but his friends suspect otherwise. They devise a test: a contact in West Germany comes to visit Dreyman's flat and they discuss his plans to return to West Germany with his son, an East German citizen, hidden under the seat of his car. They describe the car, a gold Mercedes, and the intended route, then announce their departure. Wiesler hears everything but decides not to tip off the border guards. When the car makes it across the border, Dreyman and his friends conclude that his apartment is safe and unbugged.Wiesler has heard enough by now to know that Dreyman is writing something that will be smuggled out for publication in West Germany; he's in a position to provide a victory to the DDR and a feather in his own professional cap by foiling Dreyman's plot. However, Wiesler is starting to waver in his determination to bring Operation Lazlo to its conclusion. In the process of snooping in his victims' everyday lives, including their love lives, he has unconsciously been drawn into their world, which in turn has put his own in question. At one point, he approaches a despondent Christa-Maria in a café to tell her how much he admires her work. She replies that he's a good man. He does not tell her his name. When Wiesler returns to the surveillance post, he learns that Christa-Maria went home to Dreyman, skipping her appointment with the minister, and that she won't see the minister again.When Dreyman's article is finally published in the West, it is a public disaster for the DDR, and the playwright becomes a prime suspect. Grubitz is incredulous that with all his expertise, Wiesler could have missed the indications that Dreyman was writing the article. (Wiesler, like Dreyman, has relied on Dreyman's cover story that he's writing a play in honor of the DDR's 40th anniversary.) Minister Hempf uses Christa-Maria's drug addiction as an excuse to have her arrested and threatens to terminate her acting career unless she collaborates with the authorities and denounces her lover as the author of the embarrassing article, which she does. The Stasi searches Dreyman's apartment, but comes up empty-handed.Now Wiesler, who had withheld evidence concerning the source of the article, must decide where his allegiances lie: with the DDR and his brilliant career as a top Stasi officer, or with Dreyman and Christa-Maria, whose honest lives he has come to appreciate. In a tense scene, he sits in an interrogation room as Christa-Maria is brought in, knowing that she will recognize him from their encounter at the café and that Grubitz is watching through the one-way glass. But Sieland is too good an actress to give anything away. Wiesler offers her a choice: never work in the theater again, or become an informant and tell him where Dreyman has hidden the typewriter he used to write the suicide article. He tells her that they already have enough evidence to put Dreyman in jail, so there's nothing she can do for him, but she can save herself and hide her involvement with the Stasi. She agrees, miserably.Wiesler rushes to reach Dreyman's apartment before the rest of the Stasi search team. He extracts the typewriter from its hiding-place and spirits it away. A newly released Christa-Maria comes home and feeds Dreyman a line about being away in the country; she's in the shower when the Stasi team arrives and she emerges in her bathrobe in time to see Grubitz start to pry up the floorboard that still, she believes, conceals the typewriter. She makes bleak eye contact with Dreyman, who knows she must have told them where to look. She leaves the house before Grubitz can get the board up to reveal -- nothing. When she reaches the street, Christa-Maria steps deliberately into the path of a truck and is hit. Wiesler speaks to her briefly as she lies bleeding in the road, but retreats as Dreyman embraces her and apologizes; he believes she removed the typewriter. She dies. Grubitz, who seems slightly abashed by this development, calls off the investigation. However, he tells Wiesler that although Wiesler was clever enough to leave no tracks, Grubitz knows he covered for Dreyman. Grubitz assures Wiesler that he will spend the remaining 20 years of his career steaming open the correspondence of his fellow citizens in a dank Stasi basement.About five years later Wiesler is, indeed, steaming letters open in a basement office; a colleague behind him is listening to the radio. (It's the same young officer who got in trouble for telling a joke about SED leader Erich Honecker -- demoted despite Grubnitz's assurance that he was kidding about punishing him.) The young officer hears on the radio that the Berlin Wall has fallen and shares his earpiece so Wiesler can listen too. When Wiesler gets up and walks out of the Stasi office, the other workers follow him.Two years later, Dreyman runs into ex-Minister Hempf (who has survived the political upheaval very well, thank you), and asks him why his (Dreyman's) apartment was never bugged. Hempf (before throwing in a spurious insult about Dreyman's inability to sexually satisfy Christa-Maria) assures Dreyman that his home was thoroughly bugged, tells him about Operation Lazlo, and advises him to look behind his light switches. Dreyman does so, and then visits the Stasi archives, which have been made public. In the lengthy records of Operation Lazlo, he discovers gaps covering evidence that would have been damning, along with beneficial misinformation, all attributed to a Stasi agent identified as HGW XX/7. He also learns that Christa-Maria was released from custody too late to have extracted the typewriter from its hiding place, and he notices a red fingerprint on one of the pages -- left there by an agent who must have handled the mysteriously missing typewriter with its distinctive red ribbon. The file's final entry notes the transfer and demotion of HGW XX/7, who is blamed for the failure of the operation. Dreyman looks up HGW XX/7's real name and tracks down Wiesler (who now delivers mail for a living), but doesn't speak to him.Two year later still, Wiesler walks past a bookstore advertising a new release with huge posters of the author's face. The book, billed as a novel, is called Sonata for a Good Man, and the author is Georg Dreyman. Wiesler goes inside, opens a copy, and reads the dedication: to HGW XX/7, in gratitude. At the checkout counter the clerk asks whether he should giftwrap the book, and Wiesler replies, "no, it's for me." | psychological, suspenseful, murder, mystery, dramatic, intrigue, flashback, humor, romantic, historical | train | imdb | Many of these snitches were blackmailed or other pressures exerted (threats to children and loved ones) and a few obliged voluntarily.What is truly amazing is that this is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's directorial debut, and he maintains a masterful hand throughout and keeps the story and the tension rolling from the first scene of interrogation which is filmed back and forth between a tape educating new Stasi as to interview techniques and to the actual cell itself where it was recorded.The movie circles around three main characters and there is a wider circle of the powerful who pull the puppet strings for a variety of reasons which become clear as the movie unfolds.First is Georg Dreyman, a playwright on the verge of celebrating his 40th birthday.
I've been taking German lessons for about 2 months now, and since movies were great in helping me learn English language I'm always looking for German films to watch (as well as German music to listen to) in order to educate my ears.Anyway, I went to this place where I get all sort of rare movies and this one caught my attention...
This is the kind of movie that gets your attention from the first moment, and makes you interested in understanding the characters' psyche, which is very varied: you have the idealistic good guys, the idealistic bad guys, the people that broad their minds understanding that no political dogma is better than individual freedom, etc.
And even though the movie has very tough moments it is all so well done and presented with such a good taste that in the end you feel some sort of relieved.In this present day, when the ghost of authoritarian regimes still fly over our heads (in my country we're getting closer and closer to that reality), this movie will make you think about how important love, life and freedom are.A must see!.
I saw this film in its North American premiere in a packed theater at the Toronto Int'l Film Festival this past week and was pleased to be part of a standing ovation at the end for the director and star, who were both on hand."The Lives of Others," set in East Germany not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, tells the moving story of a police investigator forced to confront himself and the work he does.
In a society poisoned by secrecy, fear and the abuse of power, a number of the movie's characters -- artists, actors, writers -- must look deep inside and decide what they are made of; none more so than the investigator.This is a movie that took me to a place and time that felt very authentic, for a tale that was very satisfying.Ulrich Muhe, who plays the investigator, is mesmerizing, and the young director is to be applauded for this, his first full-length film.
But he is far from the only good actor in this movie, Ulrich Mühe as the State Security (Stasi) agent whose task it is to monitor Koch's suspiciously free thinking playwright, brings another near perfect performance to the movie.
There is an undeniable link between the two characters even though they never share a single scene and Georg Dreyman (Koch) doesn't even find about Wiesler until the last 10 minutes of the movie, which leads us up to what should go down as one of the greatest endings in cinema history.
having had the joy - while not living in the old gdr itself - to have some "accidental" run ins with the good old stasi then, i found it awkward that a German director from the "west" would have the guts to take on the subject of this "ministry of greyness".writer/director florian henkell von donnersmarck (nice name for a teutonic director, me thinks, very fancy - makes you bang your heels) not only survived this bout of pretension which could have let him drowned in a swamp of reproaches and allegations about executing the "justice of the winners", but he transformed the tale into a story that can and will be understood anywhere in the world: a tale about power, treason and the almost anarchistic potency of emotions.while at the same time not falling into the trap of moralizing with a waving finger but showing us "the system" as an bureaucratic nightmare powered by - eventually - once even good intentioned human robots of socialist self-righteousness who actually destroy all real positive socialist impulses in the ones they plague, this film is - even if one disagrees with it's premises - probably the most important political drama coming out of Germany for years..
"Who knows the secrets of the human heart?" Col in The Crying Game WhenI saw 2006's Oscar winning Departed, I was satisfied it could be the best picture of the year; then I saw Pan's Labyrinth and thought it imaginatively superior; then I saw Lives of Others, the Oscar choice for best foreign film, and I knew it was the globe's best film of the year, no argument.Lives of Others is what all movie making should strive to be: interesting characters, thrilling plot, superb acting, and thematic weight.
Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe), a Stasi teacher and coldly efficient information gatherer, surreptitiously watches playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) to get compromising details that would damn Dreyman and open the romantic way for the culture minister, Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme).
First-time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck misses not a beat in slowly revealing the hearts of all his principals while he creates a plot remarkably interesting for a character-driven piece.Few films could mine the rich conflict between the totalitarian state and artists who yearn for freedom of expression, between the loyalties of friends and lovers and the crushing exigency of survival.
The Captain is so talented in interrogation that he gives lectures on interrogation techniques to Stasi cadets.For complex reasons, Wiesler is investigating a prominent couple-- Christa-Maria Sieland, a beautiful and talented actor (Martina Gedeck), and Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) an accomplished author and playwright.Artists in East Germany were strictly controlled by the state.
Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in his feature film debut gives the screen this wonderfully compelling story of life behind the Iron Curtain in the years leading to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and continues into 1991 after the reunification of Germany.
As one who live in such a country, I think this movie is a masterpiece and Ulrich Muhe made a brilliant role, and maybe he's the man who should win the Oscar this year.
The characters were brilliantly wholesome and the story was lacking in nothing.The film is set in the 1980's in Germany and details the lives of those living under the regime in East Germany, focusing on some of the more "controversial" types in society; namely artists, play writes and actors.
For me, this movie was really good, so I am a follower of the positive reviews I have read.What I would like to do, is comment on the negative reviews I have read about the character development, and in particular the role of Ulrich Muhe (Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler).A lot of people state that the transition from a very strict Stasi agent to the helpful 'friend' isn't realistic and human.
It took its writer/director several years first to thoroughly research still very painful events of the recent German history, the ones that deal with infamous and evil STASI (State Secret Police) and how it infiltrated and affected almost every aspect of GDR life.
The film explores the lives of those who watched and listened and those on the other side of the wire.I was shocked to find out that such astounding movie was a directorial debut of 33 years old Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - so artistically impeccable this honest, human, horrifying, harrowing yet hopeful film is.
As great as "The Lives of Others is", it would not have been the same without Ulrich Mühe, as Captain Gerd Wiesler, a highly skilled and efficient STASI officer and a loyal member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, who spies on successful playwright and his actress girlfriend by the order of corrupted hypocritical member of the government.
While listening to the Lives of Others, Wiesler's own life would change in the way he had never expected.Once you start watching the movie, you'll see how Ulrich Mühe effortlessly over towers every other performance on the screen, and they are all excellent.
I am talking about real life, the real events that took place in East Germany before the Fall of the Wall.While I was watching 'The lives of others'I couldn't help comparing it to another film, 'Good Bye, Lenin'; both are widely applauded approaches to the recent history of East Germany.
But I think one of them is definitely superior to the other; read on if you'd like to know which.Both films are German and were released more or less at the same time -around 2005- and they share factual accuracy and the atmosphere of that historical period, although the first one takes place mainly in the years before the Fall of the Wall and the second, in the years immediately after.
In addition, both films were recorded on set and on location -we can enjoy watching what Karl Marx Allee looked like almost thirty years ago.However, although both films portray our recent history very convincingly, I strongly recommend 'Good bye, Lenin!'because it is funny, moving and grabs your attention from the very first moment.
While the credits begin to roll, and as Captain Wiesler's (Ulrich Müle) face - transformed by muted joy - fades to black, I pondered, for a long time, the sheer brilliance of this finely crafted narrative from an equally brilliant first-time writer/producer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.This film is positive proof that, for the most part, it is the story that makes or breaks.
That's not to say this film is without flaw; but, I'll come to that below.Fade in starts in 1984 - a nicely ironic touch, I thought, given that the setting is the police state of the GDR East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down.
Set in East Berlin in the mid-80s, some five years before the infamous Wall crumbled, it follows the STASI as they plot to find incriminating evidence against playwright Georg Dreyman, who'd been the regime's darling until a ruthless minister frivolously develops a lecherous desire to possess his girlfriend, renowned stage actress Christa-Maria Sieland.
When a movie is trying to teach me something, is taking itself so seriously and present something as if it's history, I can't.The main character is introduced to us as a long career STASI agent, an expert in interrogation techniques, as cold and inhuman as required, a guy who lives alone, who (apparently) has no family, no love, only the too short company of a very busy prostitute.The guy is good with torture which probably means he's a sadist and/or fanatical and dedicated to the nation and who can go past the pain he inflicts to people.Somehow, the story will be about how this man will suddenly grow some empathy, sensitiveness and an ability of betraying what he's been living for all these years because while spying on some "others" for a very short period of time, he will be living their lives and discover his own humanity.This movie is political correctness at its worst.
In my opinion it one of the very few German movies that meets the international standards in this area of entertainment: It tells a very intelligent and interesting story, keeps the audience entertained and excited from start to end and leaves the viewer affected and thrilled.I would not be surprised at all if this film became a great international success..
But this...it blew me away at how good it was.The acting by all the cast was great, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch...just brilliant, but Ulrich Mühe, top performance as the Stasi officer.
And the cold Stasi agent will share empathy for his future victims.The way the inhuman agent (greatly plays by Ulrich Mühe) slowly becomes an anonymous hero ( he'll stay a serial number to the end, hidden in the shadows of more brightly people) to the contact of passion, love and art (music, theater and literature), symbolized by the couple he's suppose to watch, is very convincing and greatly develops.
Don't miss it, as you will be missing rare acting greatness if you do, and at least the equal to the brilliance of Massimo Triosi in Il Postino.Also, along with the greatest movie-ending lines in history, the very last line in this film summed up everything that happened before in the best and fewest words possible, and it will surely move you greatly, not only from immense sadness and pity for what happened to the disgraced former cop but also from great hope and gratitude for the people in this world who finally see the true light as did Muhe's transformed police captain, and then put it to work bettering the world even though the personal cost may be great.
An heroic act of course, but even more, one worthy of emulation by all of us."The Lives of Others" was so emotionally powerful throughout but nearly overwhelming at the end, as it showed so well one of the greatest life-lessons that can be learned by anyone, and one never to be forgotten....some of your good deeds will be rewarded in some way.(added 1/23/08: one of the best movies and lead role acting in decades.
It has been suggested that the story of Hauptmann Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), a senior, dedicated and zealous Stasi East German (DDR) secret police officer who starts to empathise with the subjects of his investigation is rather improbable, but to me it rings true emotionally.His subjects are Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a playwright currently in party favour, and his actress lover Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck).
It tells the story about an officer of the secret East German police who in November 1984 is assigned by a general secretary named Anton Gribitz to surveil a writer named Georg Dreyman who lives in an apartment block with a theater actress named Christa-Marie Sieland.Distinctly and precisely directed by German filmmaker Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, this finely tuned fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws a consistently involving and nuanced portrayal of an author who is looking for ways to reach readers in West Germany, his popular actress girlfriend and a man who spends most of his time following his life.
While notable for it's distinct and mostly interior milieu depictions, sterling production design by production designer Silke Buhr, cinematography by German cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski and brilliant editing by film editor Patricia Rommel, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven neo-noir and dense chamber-piece depicts three engaging and empathic studies of character and contains a great score by composers Gabriel Yared and Stéphane Moucha.This political, romantic and modestly sensual thriller about surveillance and the ongoing conflicts between supporters and opponents of the dictatorship in DDR during the Cold War which is set in East Berlin and Berlin during the mid and late 1980s and the early 1990s, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development and the poignant acting performances by German actors Ulrich Mühe (1953-2007), Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur and German actress Martina Gedeck.
With a run-time of over 2 hours, the film doesn't let you take your eyes off even for a single momentOther than Donnersmarck's brilliant direction, the movie's fascinating and morally complex characters, acted out flawlessly by the three leads, keep you involved right from the beginning.
It can also be viewed as an allegory for the art of film making (or stage directing and writing) and the craft of acting, as we see the fractured psyche of the Stasi police officer--much like the blacklisted director character who commits suicide-- who so desperately wants to intervene and direct the troubling lives of those he surveys (the writer and actress--both wrestling with their own internal demons as their lives soon become not their own).
Sonata for a Good Man. In 1984, in East Germany, the popular actress addicted in pills Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) becomes the pivot of an investigation of the successful writer and her boyfriend and mate Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) by the secret police.
However, Wiesler becomes fascinated with the lives and thoughts of George and Christa and covers his findings from his superiors."Das Leben der Anderen" is another powerful German movie, showing the repressing and corrupted system supported by fear in East Germany in times of Cold War. This movie is practically perfect: the screenplay and story are engaging, disclosing a triangle of love that causes a political surveillance of an innocent man based on several characters that are perfectly developed.
The set-up is simple but highly resonant: in 1984 East Berlin, by-the-book Stasi agent Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is assigned to wiretap and listen in on playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).
Not many recent movies ask the question "What does it really mean to be a good person?" and even fewer answer it with the honesty and depth that this film does."The Lives of Others" does not over-explain itself--none of the characters can confide in anyone, so they make their difficult choices without talking about why they've acted that way.
Perfect ending.Great performances all round, especially from the three main actors - Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Muhe and Sebastian Koch.Well deserved its Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2007, and should have been nominated for more than just that..
Before the Berlin Wall came down, the government was very interested in "The Lives of Others," a brilliant 2006 German film directed and written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.The story concerns a dramatist, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and his actress-girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).
It is rare to see a film that is so totally convincing as Das Leben der Anderen.The movie focuses on Stasi agent Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), and the wiretapping of Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a famed author, and actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). |
tt0775536 | Skid Marks | "SKID MARKS" is the hilarious tale of two rival ambulance companies and their misfit medics; the Bayside Ambulatory Life Services ( B.A.L.S) team and the Downtown Intensive Care (D.I.C.) Unit. When budget cuts strike their quiet town of Bayside, it's clear one ambulance unit must go. Now with their jobs on the line, these below-average EMT's (emergency medical technicians) are about to prove they'll stop at nothing to save their patients, their alter egos and their beer money. Hold on to you seat cushions and take your meds, as the heroes of "SKID MARKS" penetrate a theater near you. - karlk-1When budget cuts in the sleepy town of Bayside force the locals to choose between one of two rival ambulance companies, the competition to be the best quickly devolves into a battle of sheer stupidity in this raunchy comedy from ~San Diego Film Festival co-founder and programming director Karl Kozak. Bayside Ambulatory Life Services (B.A.L.S.) and the Downtown Intensive Care Unit (D.I.C.) have always shared a friendly rivalry, but when both companies realize that there's only room in town for one ambulance service, the race is on for each to prove they can save more lives than the other. Unfortunately, competence isn't a strong point for either D.I.C. or B.A.L.S., and before long these bumbling EMTs are more concerned with their bruised egos than their ailing patients [D-Man2010]SKID MARKS, "a hardcore comedy about softcore medics," is the hilarious tale of two rival ambulance companies and their misfit medics; the Bayside Ambulatory Life Services (B.A.L.S) team and the Downtown Intensive Care (D.I.C.) Unit. When budget cuts strike their quiet town of Bayside, it's clear one ambulance unit must go. Now with their egos and beer money on the line, these below-average EMT's (emergency medical technicians) are about to prove they'll stop at nothing to save their patients, their jobs and their alter egos. Hold on to you seat cushions and hide your meds, as the heroes of SKID MARKS penetrate a theater near you. [D-Man2010] | cult, sadist, prank | train | imdb | For me, it felt very much like the 1980's comedies of which when I was closer to my son's age just loved.
Titles that came to mind were Police Academy, Moving Violations, Stripes (Ox/John Candy being the Karl character, Rich being the Bill Murray character, the female love interest the nudity and raunchiness in general), Porky's, Revenge of the Nerds etc.If it was up to me I'd probably give the movie a six, but for my son's sake I gave it an 8.
A caution to other parents however strong language, nudity, gross out humor, and general distaste for decency..
This movie will definitely not be for everyone, but I found its lowbrow humor to be hilarious.
The characters were very well cast and, though unknown, really did a nice job.
The movie can be overly loud which was somewhat annoying, but the fact that the jokes and sketches come at you fast and furious more than made up for that.
The idea of competing EMT companies gives it just enough of a story line to tie all of the crazy antics together.
though the first 15 minutes was somewhat slow the movie picked up and was a lot of laughs.
If you want to see a movie that has just got a lot of slap stick humor and puts a smile on your face then go see this one.You can't help but laugh with Neal and Bob .
filmed in San Diego about two EMT groups that will do anything and I mean anything to under cut the other out of business.
I was impressed with all of the actors and felt the casting job for the people who played in this film was perfect.I would highly recommend this comedy to anyone who need some humor in their lives.
Shocking, lurid, raunchy & REALLY FUNNY !!.
I just caught the late night screening of Skid Marks, and I can tell you this film is like a slap in the face to all that is politically correct and sacred.
The characters are an unknown bunch of new-comers, but I must admit they did a pretty nice job and several are really hilarious.
I would imagine that EMT's and Paramedics should love this movie, assuming they're not easily offended.But not to pull any punches here.
Make no mistake, this movie is raunchy, lurid, gross, shocking and will likely offend you at least once, if not more.
It's only redeeming quality -- it's REALLY FUNNY at times.
I mean the audience laughed louder at times, than the audience I sat with for Superbad.
So, if you like crazy, outrageous, over-the-top comedies -- this film is for you.
Overall - I give it a "recommend" to comedy fans.
A Little Gross yet Hilarious.
Skid Marks is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach or for those with dainty ears, eyes and mouths!
It is what it is, a BALS out comedy with a lot of DIC references !
The movie is chocked full of hilarious skit after skit about 2 ambulance companies trying to sabotage each other.
It is a movie that you will either Love or hate, depending on how perverted your sense of humor is!
Guaranteed to laugh and be entertained either way .....
Skid Marks is super good.
The movie is a fast paced ride to hilarious laughter!!
The laughs never come to a skidding stop.
The ambulance crews are great at the outrageous and subtle humor the script is providing.
Skid Marks is a must see movie for every person who wants to drown their everyday problems in laughter!!
Neil and Bob are two soft core ambulance medics that bring you to laughter at every turn.
You will forever remember Neil and Bob's bathroom scene in their joint effort to "come" together.
The patient transfers and tank exchanges are also scenes with laugh out loud humor..
pretty darn funny.
I like these kind of movies.
Crude humor and pretty girls.
Probably would not take my grandmother or pastor to see it but it kind of reminds me of my old college days.
Great acting with some of the EMT guys.
A lot of laugh out loud scenes.
The length of the movie was just about right.
This has the potential to generate a cult falling which could also lend itself to possible sequels like Police Academy..
This is a really funny and well made comedy intended for a younger audience.
There were lots of laughs throughout, and I almost fell out of my seat on a few occasions.My only real criticize is that the plot got mixed up a few times.
The basic camera work was good but not excellent for the actions scenes.
I particularly liked the great looking girls in the beach scenes, but would have preferred a little more skin.A couple of the actors and actresses tended to overact at times.
Some of the lines were a little gross at times, but did not really take away from the particular scene.
Skid Marks captures the spirit of competition!.
The basic plot of this movie is two competing ambulance companies attempting to embarrass each other.
It's been my experience that EMS'ers within the SAME agency do a better job of harassing, embarrassing, terrorizing, undermining and ridiculing each other than folks from the "other outfit." This movie is funny.
Lots of gross, squeamish scenes.
In other words, just like a normal day at work (okay, maybe a REALLY fun day at work) The actors look like they had heaps of fun making this movie, and that was pretty contagious.
It is the current generation's "Mother, Jugs and Speed." At an east coast EMS service we would pull many of the same stunts documented in the film on our best friends.
Throughout the film, I would enjoy flashbacks: "Hey, Mambo did that!" "We called that a Garcia special," "take away the dwarf and it's the same as a Sludge Slam" and "Spanky invented that, but he'd wear a rubber bodysuit." Now that I am in San Diego, I loved seeing some of our beautiful city featured in the movie.
Wait, what does that say for me?
If you are in E.M.S. you will like this movie.
If you are thinking about a career in E.M.S. you will be scarred by this movie.
This movie kicked butt.
This movie kicked butt.
It reminded me a lot of the classic comedic films that I grew up watching as a kid.
It is like a Police Academy, Animal House hybrid for the new millennium, but better.
Just about every single character in the movie was funny and memorable.
Especially the Neil and Bob characters.
I felt like these guys should be on Saturday Night Live or something.
They were definitely my favorite part of the movie.
Skidmarks has been diagnosed as funny, gross and a little bit stupid at times!
It provides non stop entertainment from a group of zany Emergency Medical Tech characters.
The outrageous situations that the EMT's get themselves into and out of keeps the audience laughing out loud throughout many scenes.
If you like physical humor and wonderful comedic chemistry, then you will really enjoy the interplay between Neil and Bob of the Downtown Intensive Care Unit.
I have seen Superbad and the 2 cops in that movie don't hold a candle to the comedy that Neil and Bob bring to the screen..
Add "Skid Marks" to your list of guilty pleasures!
I'm not necessarily a snob, but this is not the kind of movie I generally go out of my way to see.
No, there is no redeeming social value to be found in "Skid Marks".
No, there is no possibility of intellectual stimulation (although sexual stimulation seems to run a bit rampant - ha!) No, you won't be debating the plot points over a serious cup of coffee and dessert after the movie.
But you will laugh your ass off watching these guys run around like a "puppy on crack"!
Good laughs!.
If you want to laugh, I suggest you go see this movie.
The bathroom scenes are unforgettable and turn it into a classic comedy that you can watch again and again .
You laugh just as hard every time.
It is the kind of movie you start laughing out loud, get a little embarrassed and then realize everyone else is just as loud so it doesn't matter.
It was perfect for my date as he is the typical guy who likes boobs, pushing-the-edge comedy, and more boobs.
I rate this film a 9 with all the physical comedy and newcomers..
A non-Stop laugh....
I came into "SKID MARKS" not really knowing what to expect, but I couldn't stop laughing.
The writing and acting in this film is HILARIOUS!
"Neil" is by far the funniest of the film....totally steals the show from everyone!I will def.
see this again, but I wouldn't recommend bringing your parents or children to it.Another refreshing thing about this film is that all the actors are "unknown"...however after seeing this movie I know they won't be for long.
Usually you go to the movies to be entertained, but Skid Marks delivers more and a few moments where you are looking through your fingers....ya wanna see, but know you shouldn't!!
Whoever says this movie is for the 17-20 year old audience has aged too quickly.
The laughs are real and hit you in the face with no regard to being "politically correct".
Great cast and I loved the pace!A few of my buddies and I are going to hit the town this weekend and I'm going to suggest we start the night with Skid Marks.
This movie truly seemed as if it were written by a pair of stoned fourteen year olds that just discovered softcore porn and boobs.
Nothing but crude and unfunny dirty jokes, sexually repressed writing and bad characters.
The lead in this movie may just be the most unlikable character in recent comedy history.
Disgusting film with a ridiculous plot, pitiful and childish writing followed by terrible performances from actors portraying annoying characters.
The concept of this movie is weak, the bad guys are boring, very unfunny - the good guys totally lack any charisma, and their pranks and jokes are very week to make this movie valuable.
The movie is just a sandwich without anything saucy in it.
Scenes are busy, unoriginal, plot is hysterically stupid.
This movie is anything but even remotely funny comedy.
The natural chemistry in "the good guy-good girl" is misisng here, too it doesn't come out of the concept, the main character in my opinion failed in fitting into positive role, somebody viewer could be interested in or laugh at.
I normally like easy and dull comedies - for example scary movie series - but this failed even for me.
This was below any college movie where bunch of nerdy guys want to get laid.
You know, I wonder sometimes how stupid a film promoter can be....Every review but one here is by a person extolling the different virtues of the film in PR speak, and bad PR speak at that.If you want to shill a movie, then at least have the decency to credit the members here with some degree of intelligence.3 pages of PR, all obviously written by the same amateur promoter does NOT entice anyone to watch what is basically a single fart gag retold in 10 different ways.I rest my case.
I watched the first screening, I thought the sound quality needed a bit of work but I got a good amount of laughs.
I liked it better than some BIGGER named movies that have looked way more expensive from trailer to opening.
Skid Marks is "spring break" type of movie attraction for young college audiences who need a toke of natural high!
Neil and Bob were hilarious!
The story line could've been a bit more polished but over all there were some good laughs.
I wouldn't watch it with my mom and dad, but i think it makes a good movie to see with your friends if you want a good comedy.
It would make a good blockbuster night with 'the guys'.
If you need a good laugh this movie is for you..
This is a great comedy.
There are comical scenes throughout the entire movie.
It has laugh out loud jokes and an original storyline.
If you liked Super Troopers then check out this movie.Guys, this movie is particularly geared for your enjoyment but girls if you accompany your man to this film you won't be disappointed either, you will probably even catch yourself laughing along as well.
There are definitely some lines that I kept laughing about once I left the theater.
Also, check out the PSA's on You Tube, those are pretty funny as well.
Skid Marks will go down as the Revenge of the Nerds or Animal House for this generation.
I'm sure some critics will get on here and attempt to rip on this film, but the people in the theater were laughing their asses off.
I haven't heard, or laughed for that matter, like this since Bad Santa.
For a small budget indie comedy, you'll get your money's worth with this film.
David Leo Shultz plays the character of Neil, and there is no doubt this kid is talented and going to make it big as a comedic actor.
If you liked Super Troopers, Superbad, or Bad Santa - you'll like Skid Marks.
Skidmarks is one of those movies where you go in with low expectations and leave with a big smile on your face.
What a funny movie.
The story revolves around competing EMT companies and how they try to sabotage one another.
The characters are all unique and, while the actors are all unknowns, I bet we will be seeing a lot more of them in future comedies.
The movie was filmed in and around San Diego so the scenery is gorgeous and the film and sound quality is great.
At least every reviewer or comment posted that raved about this movie, in which I bothered to click on, has only one single post on IMDb. Yep, you guessed it, the only review or comment made is in reference to this pile of donkey cum.
I do like all kinds of movies, including the genre that this UNFUNNY bowl of desperation soup falls into.
You will probably hit the eject button after the 10 minute mark.
There is nothing more painful than an unfunny comedy, and Skid Marks is a perfect example.
Unlike a terrible horror or drama, where at least some enjoyment can be gotten out of unintentional humor, a god-awful comedy is just ....humorless.
If your main reason for watching it (as was mine) is to see San Diego locations, forget it, because in the 45 minutes I lasted before walking out, I saw none (and I never walk out of movies).
I viewed a lot of bad movies during my time as a video store clerk, but this one may just be the worst (and at least those I hadn't paid for)..
The Most Offensive Movie This Year...
If you're easily offended, this movie'll shock the hell outta you.
They make fun of the handicapped, different races, overweight people, little people, people with speech impediments, there's even a certain dog/peanut butter scene if you know what I mean.
It's sort of like South Park and Family Guy, but I think what makes it most offensive is that it is not a cartoon.
I am not sure why there were old ladies in the audience for this one, but I thought they were going to fall right out of their chairs (specially since the movie made fun of them).Did they go too far?
I did have a lot of laughs though so I guess they accomplished their goal.
I think this is one of those movies that people will either really love or really hate.
Tread lightly, this movie isn't for everyone..
Its a low rent, low brow version of the Bill Cosby film Mother Juggs and Speed which had a similar plot line.
What can I say about this film?
There are jokes about the companies not wanting to pick anyone up, they pass accident scenes.
Its a collection of half thought out jokes that the writers and director must have thought were going to work once they edited the film.
In fairness I laughed a couple of times, but I didn't really enjoy myself.
If you must see this wait for cable..
I literally fell on my face laughing at this movie.
Skid Marks is an unbelievably hilarious comedy about dueling EMT's.
Right off the bat, they show the EMT companies are dic and bals.
So, right off the bat, this is a hilarious film.
Along with their friends and assistants, these two companies battle it out in hilariously raunchy and nasty pranks.
Skid Marks is at times guaranteed to disgust everyone who's ever been disgusted, but unlike some of the disgusting comedies of the past couple of years, you'll still be running out of breath from cracking up too much even when it is extremely disgusting.
The cast features a load of young, unknown actors, and they are quite good here.
It's a fun, fast paced film that's more than worth it.
I wasn't expecting much, but it seemed like my type of movie, so I wasn't expecting to hate it or anything, and I was more than pleasantly surprised- I ended up absolutely loving this film.
It's a movie with a couple of laughs per second.
It's one of the funniest films I've seen in years, even if it is filled with just plain mindless pranks, I still couldn't stop cracking up at every second.
I definitely recommend this to anyone with a sense of humor who is able to be grossed out a little. |
tt0097722 | Lean on Me | In 1987, Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, is plagued with numerous problems, especially drugs and gang violence. Furthermore, the students scored poorly on the state's test of minimum basic skills.During the opening credits sequence, after a teacher is brutally beaten in the cafeteria for trying to break up a fight and the state legislature has recently passed a law proclaiming that schools that cannot meet minimum test requirements will be put in receivership, Mayor Bottman (Alan North) consults school superintendent Dr. Frank Napier (Robert Guillaume), who suggests the school hire elementary school principal Joe Louis Clark, aka "Crazy Joe" (Morgan Freeman), who was a teacher at Eastside High 20 years before, as the new principal. The mayor is reluctant at first as he knows about the trouble the radical Clark has caused in the past with his tyrant-like methods, but Clark is hired. Tension arises immediately when Clark dismisses from the school hundreds of students identified as drug dealers or abusers and troublemakers. A meeting between the parents of those students and the academic board only fans the flames as the parents side with their trouble-making kids, either refusing to believe that their kids are bad seeds or not caring about their kids actions (mostly because the parents were themselves troublemakers and bad seeds when they were in school). Clark refuses to re-admit the expelled students despite lawsuits and pressure from the parents.The next day, Clark runs into one of the expelled youths, Thomas Sams (Jermaine 'Huggy' Hopkins), who asks to be let back into the school. In a dramatic rooftop scene, Clark gives him a sharp lecture about crack and what can happen to Sams if he keeps on using it. Clark then dares Sams to commit suicide by jumping off the roof, but Sams, breaking down in tears, refuses and promises to clean up his act. Clark grants him a second chance to turn things around.However, another expelled student manages to get inside the school and attack another student before Clark comes to break up the fight. Knowing he is breaking the fire code, Clark orders all doors chained and locked during school hours to keep drug dealers out, and enlists security guards to keep the fire chief out of the school. Clark's unusual and brutal methods lead him to clash with numerous teachers and with his vice principal Joan Levias (Beverly Todd). He fires one teacher for not singing to the school anthem, and he suspends another for arguing with him in front of the students, though the suspension is reversed by the superintendent.The students take a practice version of the basic skills test, but only 33% of them pass it (the minimum passing requirement is 75%). Clark embarks on a campaign to prepare the students for the real test, culminating in a motivational assembly the morning of the exam. Over the 1987-88 school semester, the students bond with Mr. Clark, not just as a principal, but as a father figure. Clark highly values school pride, and several times throughout the film insists that all students learn the school song and be able to perform it on demand.Meanwhile, one parent whose son was expelled from Eastside by Clark, civil activist and pot user Leona Barrett (Lynne Thigpen), aligns herself with the mayor in an effort to oust Clark as part of her personal vendetta. The fire chief eventually catches Clark with chains on the doors and Barrett makes a tape recording of him ordering them removed during a surprise inspection. Clark's arrest comes after a key scene involving Kaneesha Carter (Karen Malina White), who remembers Clark from grade school. Clark is offering counsel about Kaneesha's unplanned pregnancy just before he is arrested.That night, while Clark is in jail and the mayor is preparing to remove him, the entire student body converges on the Central Office of the Paterson Board of Education in a passive demonstration. They demand that Clark be released from jail and retained as principal. Mrs. Barrett tries to convince the students that Clark has made too many wrong decisions and is not the right man to be principal of Eastside, and asks that they return to their homes before any trouble starts. The students claim that Clark cares for them and has done so much good that they will not accept anyone else as their principal, and shout down Mrs. Barrett with chants and cheers.Eventually, Clark is freed from custody to calm the crown, and to good news: enough students passed the basic skills exam, which means the current administration will retain control over the school. With that, Clark shuns both Mrs. Barrett and the mayor: "You can tell the state to go to hell!" Then Clark leads his students in singing Eastside High's school song. The closing credits feature scenes of graduating Eastside High Class of 1988 seniors, including Sams. | violence | train | imdb | Lean on Me is based around the experiences of Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman), who becomes the principal of a destitute New Jersey high school plagued with violence, drugs, and abysmal academic performance.
Despite outside resistance Clark becomes a pillar of hope for numerous students inspired by his harsh but ultimately uplifting demands for disciple, self betterment, and loyalty to their school and educational achievement.What sets Lean on Me apart from numerous other sentimental inspirational flicks is the unconventional style of Clark and Morgan Freeman's masterful portrayal of him.
Also in the cast, Mr Darnell(Michael Beach) and Dr. Frank Napier(Robert Guillaume) along with Joe Clark(Morgan Freeman) were probably the most dominant actors.
Freeman is perfectly cast as 'Crazy' Joe Clark, a radical, newly appointed principal at a deteriorating, gang-ridden school who gets through to his students with a tough, opinionated, no-nonsense approach to the pursuit of academic excellence.
I work in a school that was totally struggling and considered hopeless, marked as "failing" and basically in the same position as Eastside High in Paterson, NJ, the subject and setting of "Lean on Me." "Lean on Me" is a very good, nearly great movie.
He's helped by a solid supporting cast, leading to some truly memorable scenes as principal Joe Clark (Freeman) battles teachers, parents, and administrators who are outraged by his controversial methods.
Rocky and Karate Kid director, John Avildsen takes his stand-up-and-cheer style from the ring and the dojo to the halls of New Jersey's Eastside High School in this true story of the mercurial, and controversial, principal, Joe Clark.
The story strains credibility and often goes over the top, but the fast pace and great Freeman performance allow this to still be an entertaining film.Freeman's Joe Clark is recruited by Superintendent, Frank Napier (Robert Guillaume) for the seemingly impossible task of turning around the violent and out of control Eastside High School School and somehow motivating the staff and students to improve their results on the State Literacy Exam, or else see the school fall under state control.
Clark uses a bullhorn, a baseball bat and a confrontational style with his staff and combines it with a tough, nurturing relationship with his students to try to bring this about, while battling alienated staff and angry parents, led by Ms. Levias (Lynne Thigpen) to try to bring about the desired changes.Sure, this film is far-fetched and overblown and even has a couple scenes that approach unintentional humor, but it has enough strengths to compensate and make it worthwhile viewing for those who enjoy the true story school genre that Hollywood loves so much.
It should've been nominated for Actor and Picture.Overall the movie is a fantastic film and shows the true story of Joe Clark..
Morgan Freeman made himself into a star with this film, and also made the movie a hit with his great performance.
He IS the movie playing fascinating real- life high school principal Joe Clark.
Morgan Freeman owns the role of Principal Joe Clark so well that it might just be, over-the-top bits and all, one of his most commanding screen performances.
Freeman is so good and scene stealing and all those wonderful things we love him for that he makes one forget that the film he's in is only 'alright' at best and at worst is preachy and confused in its tone going between super tough/realistic and sentimental.It's about a notorious school in Paterson, New Jersey, and how Joe Clark- who taught there in the 60s- is begged to be brought back to bring it back to some normalcy from the degradation of hardcore 80s madness (crack and gangs and other things infiltrating the high schoolers).
While it is, as Ebert pointed out, kind of an unsympathetic character Clark is, I somehow can forgive the faults in the script for the acting (aside from Freeman there are other actors, like Robert Guillame and Michael beach and Beverly Todd, who can go up to bat with the likes of the star).
Good film about a high school principal in New Jersey (Morgan Freeman) who will stop at nothing to make the school the best it can be.
It is a good film to begin with, but Morgan Freeman's powerful performance makes it even better.
(Credit IMDb) The dedicated but tyrannical Joe Clark is appointed the principal of a decaying inner-city school that he is determined to improve.This is a very important film about education.
I may not agree with all the tactics Clark used to whip his school into shape, but Freeman does an excellent job in showing what a no-nonsense man Joe Clark was.Overall, Lean on Me is a very powerful film and is essentially a version of the old rags-to-rich tale, but here it's more of a dumb-to-smart tale.
Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman) was brought in to clean the school up and get the test scores up before the state took over the school.This was a fantastic movie with a fantastic story and fantastic performances.
Morgan Freeman stars as the boot jack wearing thuggish high school principal Joe Clark.
The filmmakers make him out to be some sort of scholastic zealot who bullies and schmaltz's his way to the top (he even brings in his own brown shirts!) If you want to see the exploits of Mr. Clark then check out Lean on Me!The movies not that great but Morgan Freeman's performance is real good and believable.
As a direct result of his fiery temper and defiant attitude a high school teacher named "Joe Clark" (Morgan Freeman) is removed from his position at Eastside High School and sent to an elementary school instead.
This is a very underrated and under-appreciated film based on a true story of a New jersey school principal who is faced with the task of trying to turn a struggling school back around.This concept has been done many times before like in dangerous minds and other alike movies but this movie is different as it came first, is based on a true story and lastly that Morgan Freeman absolutely nails this role.
All of the acting is strong in this film, even though there are a lot of no name one time actors in this movie the main characters are strong and again Morgan Freeman gives the performance of his life.If you are a Morgan Freeman fan and have not seen this movie you need to watch....
Lean On Me follows a former teacher at Eastside High School who comes back twenty years later as the Principal, and finds that the school is in need of dire help in order to keep the state from gaining control of the school.I first heard about this film due to my mother, who watched it several times when I was younger, and that was how I remember scenes like the ending and the song, Lean On Me. So, when I saw the film was going to be on for the last time for a while, I recorded it and sat down to watch.
I have no idea how Freeman didn't get nominated for Best Actor for his role as Joe Clark, because he does a fantastic job, what with all the speeches and the powerful scenes he has to carry.
Beverly Todd does a great job as Mrs. Levias, and the best scene she does is one toward the end of the film, fighting against Morgan Freeman's character about what he's supposed to be doing with the kids at the school.Alan North does a fine job as the Mayor.
The cinematography, and set design, especially in the shots of the rundown Eastside High all look very convincing and the school looks even better when it's redone.The script was very riveting and was great at really portraying how these kids acted and how Mr. Clark was going to deal with them.
Mr. Clark played by Morgan Freeman, show strong self motived character that was going to be unstoppable and will go through the fire for his kids in that high school of Eastside High..
Based on the true story of Joe Clark, 'Lean on Me' features Morgan Freeman as the controversial teacher tasked with recovering Eastside High, a decaying school that has become a den of violence, drug abuse and all-around despair.
True to the real-life Joe Clark, Freeman portrays a tough, quasi- tyrannical teacher that is not afraid of taking extreme measures to keep (or instate) the discipline in the school.
'Lean on Me' shows that bettering the behavior is a step on the right direction, but is not everything; Clark demands from the professors the same hard-work, dedication and discipline he does from the students.After all, how can you help them if you don't lead by example?This screenplay is not perfect though: the ending seems to flirt with the idealistic feel of other school dramas, and there seems to be plot contrivances.
Morgan Freeman's performance, as Principal Joe Clark, is hands down the best thing about "Lean On Me".
It could even be considered today to be one of Freeman's Top 5 most iconic performances, easily ranking alongside "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994), "Se7en" (1995), and "Million Dollar Baby" (2004).Freeman effectively displays a take-charge attitude with his performance that the real life Joe Clark most likely had when he took over the real Eastside High School in Patterson, New Jersey.
Following his rousing speech, one student, Kaneesha Carter (Karen Malina White), remarks, "Mr. Clark don't play!" You really can't disagree.The beginning of the movie shows the thriving educational institution Eastside High School was in the late 1960's, when Joe Clark first taught there.
Just like "A Tale of Two Cities", where French peasants are drinking wine off the Paris streets, things are bad!Much to the reluctance of Patterson Mayor Don Bottman (Alan North), Dr. Frank Napier (Robert Guillaume) convinces Joe Clark to take over as principal of Eastside High, and attempt to restore its former glory.
It's also inspiring to see the students who stay in Eastside High School warm up to Mr. Clark, and appreciate his disciplinary actions as "tough love".However, the antagonists in this movie caused the most inconsistency, seemingly not even acknowledging a lot of the good Mr. Clark did, which unquestionably outweighed the bad.
He is not a negative actor, but his skill is so great it makes you really want to beat the daylights out of Joe Clark...with a pipe, on a windy Tuesday in Lent.As others have pointed out, Freeman is worth seeing, even if the film is not..
Innovative agitating teacher Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman) is transferred from the idyllic Eastside High School so the union can get a raise.
Always enjoy the great acting skills of Morgan Freeman, who played the Principal, (Joe Clark) in this film and gave an outstanding performance.
What makes Morgan Freeman a great actor is that he is a great student of the people around him.It's that simple.Overall,this film is a bit overdone,as many of John Avildsen's films have been since that certain Oscar winner about the underdog boxer back in '76,but what makes this film at least reasonably good is the performance of Freeman.Very few are better at getting lost in a character than this man.It's based on a true story,about how renegade Principal Joe Clark,turned Eastside High School in Patterson,New Jersey from that "terrible cauldron of violence",to a respected institution of learning.He has his enemies, who disapprove of his unorthadox methods,and he must fight his way through them to succeed.If you love films with this typical underdog theme,it's definitely for you,but Morgan Freeman's performance alone is well worth the rental price.Good movie..
there are so many movies out there dealing with the problem of kids not learning anything in schools,and dropping out,ending up in a life of crime,or dead.but this movie came out at a time when these movies weren't so commonplace.Morgan Freeman plays Joe Clark,who has been recruited as principal of a once proud school,but one which has been overrun with hoodlums for years.the teachers are powerless to do anything,and the kids fall through the cracks.it's Clark's job to restore the reputation of the school and get the kids learning again.the movie is inspirational,for sure,and the commanding presence of Morgan Freeman lends it a lot of legitimacy.the only problem i found was that it is a bit long,and a few of the songs are a bit too maudlin.but that's just my opinion.it's still a good movie.for me,Lean on Me is a 7/10.
"Lean on Me" is based on the true story of Joe Clark, a teacher recruited by the New Jersey school system administration and mayor to restore "Eastside High," which has become a poster-child for the urban decayed inner-city school.
"Lean On Me" is a thoroughly inspirational movie.Crazy Joe Clarke returns to a school from which he wasbooted unceremoniously years ago.
Morgan Freeman does a great job playing Joe Clark.
In this movie, he gives a solid performance in his portrayal of Joe Clark, a domineering inner-city principal ahead of his time.
The film would have just ended up as another rowdy high school movie if Freeman had not been cast as principal Joe Clark..
LEAN ON ME is an astoundingly inspirational film based on the life and accomplishments of Principal Joe Clark, an unyielding and determined educator who refused to accept the state's conclusion that his high school students were academic failures and decided to change the perception using unorthodox methods of teaching and stern discipline.
"Crazy Joe" became a household name and set a valuable example to numerous inner city school systems.(p)This movie has a profoundly realistic and an unforgettable performance by one of the great actors of our time, Morgan Freeman, playing the role of Joe Clark.
I hope to someday inspire young minds as a high school teacher the way Joe Clark did in this film.
The inspirational story of tough as nails principal Joe Clark, beautifully portrayed by the great Morgan Freeman, is at turns heartbreaking, gritty, hilarious and enlightening.
More than that, there is no reason that a teacher couldn't and shouldn't be that role model.Not to dwell on those other films, this movie is a nicely crafted adaptation of the events of which Joe Clark turned around East Side High School.
Clark (played outstandingly by Morgan Freeman) is appointed the principal of a "failing" inner city school.
I liked this movie when I was in high school, and thought that Morgan Freeman was effective as a principal who was trying to make the lives of the kids better.However, as an adult, it seems that this movie was all about "Kids won't learn unless you threaten them.
That's a problem when the movie is trying to siphon that hateful character into an inspirational teacher movie.The movie stars Morgan Freeman as Clark a loud-mouthed, bull horn-toting educator who is brought back to the once proud Eastside High School to clean it up and get the students through the state exam.
Although his tyrannical approach and hard-line policies alienate many members of the staff and the community, his uncompromising campaign gets results.This make him popular to the dismay of his critics and powerful enemies.Morgan Freeman provided a great portrayal as Joe Louis Clark that the viewer of the movie would somehow overcome the film's flaws such as predictability and having a formulaic screenplay.Aside from that,it was also cheesy.Although the viewer knows that that Clark will be able to achieve the impossible task of reforming Eastside despite his unorthodox methods and the tensions that were created by the people - students and faculty members - in the school,one will definitely enjoy and get entertained by his interesting peroformance.I could have given this film a rating of 8 BUT Freeman was simply excellent and remarkable that the viewer will definitely care more about his character as well as the actions he has taken instead of the flaws of the film as a whole..
This takes place in New Jersey and Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) plays Joe Clark, a former teacher turned principal who is asked to clean up inner-city high school, Eastside after 20 years that's become drug-infested and lacks education.
Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman) is a dedicated teacher and principal determined to fix the broken and crime infested Eastside High School in Trenton, New Jersey.
When the movie starts, we see Joe Clark teaching class at Eastside High School in 1967.
Plays a lot like "Stand and Deliver", only better, the movie's balance of drama and humour is very good.Morgan Freeman gives an outstanding performance as Joe Clarke.
However, there are some problems with Lean on Me, when compared to the REAL Joe Clark story.SPOILERS: As a subplot, the movie creates a fictitious account of a minimum basic skills test that 75% of the student's must pass by the end of the school year to prevent take over by the state.
However, once again, Morgan Freeman generates so much power and feeling in this movie that you will find the ending very moving.I recommend this film because of the brilliant acting of Morgan Freeman as Joe Clark, even though some of the subplots are not based on the exact truth..
"Lean of Me" is a movie about a hard and tough principal trying to turn Eastside High around from being a terrible school into an excellent school.
He gets into his character very well, making you believe he was the "tough" principal, but the storyline and how his character is portrayed in the movie was terrible."Lean on Me" begins with Joe Clark (played by Morgan Freeman) in a well run Eastside high, being transferred out.
This movie leans on Morgan Freeman to carry it to greatness.
"Lean on Me" would probably have been a likewise forgettable experience if it had not have been for Morgan Freeman's perfect casting for the role of Principle Clark.Based on true events, the film takes place in Eastside High School, one of New Jersey's worst public schools. |
tt0410764 | Tideland | Jeliza-Rose lives in Los Angeles with her junkie parents. Their only income is from her father's rock concerts and Jeliza-Rose only has a few belongings, mostly just broken toys and a hardcover copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. When she isn't imagining things in her mind, she's busy looking after her parents and even filling their heroin needles for her father, who spends great amounts of time unconscious on the living room armchair. He has Jeliza-Rose believing that one day things will improve and that they'll run away together to live in Denmark. Jeliza-Rose's overweight chain-smoking mom has erratic mood swings, spends all day lying in bed eating a seemingly limitless supply of chocolate bars (and smacking Jeliza's hand and calling her a bitch if she tries to eat one) and she doesn't have the right mindset to be a parent, nor does the father.One day Jeliza's mom chokes to death on a piece of chocolate after smoking too much. Not wanting the police to see the drug paraphernalia and give Jeliza to child services, her father helps Jeliza build her mom a shroud, and they then pack some things and get on a bus to Texas (Jeliza believes it's Denmark). Jeliza's father is obnoxious, vulgar and disgusting on the bus, purposely farting and telling the other passengers that it was Jeliza just to embarrass her. Eventually they arrive at an old shack vandalized by teenagers and literally falling apart. Rude phrases are spray-painted on the walls and evidence of squirrels living in the attic is seen by Jeliza, but she tries to make the most of her new "home" by showing it to her four imaginary friends, which happen to be the disembodied heads of vintage Barbie-dolls. Her favorite, named Mystique, becomes her closest companion for much of the film.When Jeliza's father overdoses and dies that very night, Jeliza believes he is just unconscious. She plays elaborate imaginary games to pass the time, and although her father is visibly decomposing more and more every day, Jeliza tells herself that he isn't dead and retreats further away from reality. While playing under a tipped-over schoolbus by some train tracks, Jeliza meets Dell, an eccentric and mean-spirited lady who has a fear of bees and claims to have destroyed her family's beehives as a teenager. Jeliza at first believes Dell is a witch until she meets Dell's epileptic, intellectually-disabled brother Dickens and is determined to become part of the family. She begins snooping around and sees Dell having oral sex with a delivery boy to avoid paying for delivered groceries. Dickens tells Jeliza that doctors removed half his brain a long time ago to stop him from having seizures and he has a long scar on his head. Jeliza befriends him and joins him in a game where a pile of trash becomes a submarine in their minds and the train that passes by every afternoon becomes a "monster shark".Eventually Jeliza can no longer tell fantasy from reality and when she accidentally drops Mystique down a rabbit-hole on Dell's property, she thinks that the other doll heads will turn against her. Dickens tries to rescue Mystique but is unable to. Eventually after living off of just a jar of peanut butter from her father, Jeliza faints and is rescued by Dell. Dell is a taxidermist and her unstable mind is revealed when, instead of trying to help Jeliza get to the police and report the death of the father, she preserves the father as a grotesque doll using his dried skin. She starts accepting Jeliza's presence but when Jeliza breaks down and cries, Dell shows no affection and seems to harbour some sort of grudge against Jeliza and her father. Jeliza lets Dell put all the old doll heads into the body of her father, sewing him shut and trapping them inside. Afterwards Dell, Dickens and Jeliza paint the whole house white, pray to God and then eat a bunch of Dell's home-made food. Jeliza begins to act less withdrawn, seeing the brother and sister as the closest thing to a family she's ever had.One day while Dell is out in town and Jeliza and Dickens are alone in the old shack together, Jeliza puts makeup on him and begins to fall in love with him. Dickens doesn't understand that this is inappropriate, nor does Jeliza. Dickens recalls how as a little boy, his mother would tongue-kiss him and act in a perverse manner towards him, and about how his mother didn't really die from bee stings as Dell claims, she just fell down the stairs and died. Jeliza and Dickens kiss and then go off to play in the field after hearing a loud explosion noise. It turns out to be coming from a nearby mining quarry. Dickens reveals that he stole from the quarry an "atom bomb that will end the world and make Baby Jesus come alive like chemicals" (he shows this to Jeliza and it turns out he stole two packs of dynamite from the quarry but that in his mind it's an atom bomb). Jeliza tells him that if he shows her his bedroom, she'll let him keep her doll's arm. They also set a live squirrel free that Dell has caught and plans to kill. While in his bedroom, Dickens climbs on top of Jeliza and they tongue-kiss. Dickens' relationship with her nearly turns pedophilic, but then Dell catches them both.It is revealed that Dell and Dickens' mother and father had relationships with their children and that Jeliza's father was a brother to Dell and Dickens, too. Dell and Jeliza's father had an incestuous relationship which was ended when the father ran away to marry his wife and play music. Jeliza was born later on and Dell is her aunt. Dickens is her uncle. Because of the abuse Dell suffered as a child and her devastation after Jeliza's father left her and her mother died, she snapped and became a recluse who has preserved her dead mother using taxidermy to avoid her grief over the dead.Furious that Jeliza was about to kiss Dickens, thinking that she'll take him away from her, she threatens Jeliza and Jeliza accidentally squishes in the skull of her taxidermied grandmother. Dickens has a seizure and Jeliza runs away, crying hysterically until an explosion suddenly shatters the window to the shack. Realizing that Dickens used his dynamite to kill the "monster shark", Jeliza goes outside to investigate, finding that beyond her imagination the case is really that a mentally-disturbed man has caused a train crash, hurting tons of people. Still unsure of what's real and what isn't, she searches everywhere for Dickens but instead comes across an injured woman who kindly gives her a half of an orange she'd been eating and offers to help her. Jeliza sits down with the woman and stares off into space; meanwhile Dell can be seen in her nightgown wandering up and down the tracks through the flames and hurt people, calling her brother's name. The woman asks Jeliza if she's traveling alone and Jeliza tells the woman that fireflies are her friends and that she can speak to them in her mind. The woman just assumes that Jeliza is in shock since she has no knowledge of the girl's neglect or abuse. The film ends with an image of Jeliza's glazed-over, emotionally-distant eyes. | fantasy, avant garde, cult, alternate reality, flashback, insanity, psychedelic, storytelling | train | imdb | null |
tt0458481 | Sin City: A Dame to Kill For | Like the first Sin City film, this one is made up of sub-stories that, in some way or another, tie in to the main plot.Just Another Saturday Night:Marv (Mickey Rourke) is thrown from a vehicle. He has no idea how he got there or what just happened. There's a dead body lying near him. He grabs his pills and pops several into his mouth.He recalls walking through the projects of Basin City, an area where he was born and raised. As it was a Saturday night, Marv remembers being at Kadie's, getting drunk and checking out stripper Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), along with all the other men in the joint. Outside, Marv sees a man on fire running and screaming. He comes across four preppy college boys dousing another man with gasoline. Marv breaks a bottle in front of them and tells them to let the guy go. One of the boys pulls out a gun and calls Marv a "Bernini Boy", but Marv thinks he called him "Bernie". He shoots Marv in the shoulder. Marv is mostly unfazed and when he doesn't go down, the boys get frightened and run. Marv catches two of them on the rooftops, aiming their guns at him. Two arrows come down, and Marv knows who's near. He makes a gesture to show he's on their side, and then points at the boys. Two more arrows hit them. Marv meets the two boys and asks the one that shot him why he called him Bernie. The boy says Bernini is the maker of the coat Marv is wearing. Marv then calls for a knife and slashes the boy's throat, while the other one takes another arrow. Marv then hijacks a cop car and chases after the other two, ramming into their car and bringing him to where we found him. He steps on the last boy's chest and crushes his lungs before lighting up the gas and blowing the cars up and fleeing the scene.The Long Bad Night (Part One):Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) is playing poker in the backroom of Kadie's with his associates, including a crooked cop. A drifter named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes into the place. He's approached by a stripper named Marcie (Julia Garner). Johnny takes out a coin and walks with Marcie to the slot machine. He tells her to blow on the coin and then places it into the machine. He hits the jackpot. He gets another coin and tells Marcie to kiss it. She does, and he drops it into the machine, winning big again. Johnny takes the coins and Marcy to the backroom to play poker with Roark. Despite being warned against this move, Johnny plays well enough to beat Roark at his game. He takes his winnings and Marcie with him. The cop warns Johnny that he can't protect him.Johnny takes Marcie out for a night on the town. While walking the streets, they're followed by two thugs. Johnny tells Marcie to step aside while he handles them. He punches one thug in the face and grabs the blackjack from his hand, then beats the other thug before finishing off the first one. A limo pulls up. Johnny tells Marcie to meet him at a hotel. He gets in the limo, where Roark and his men are sitting. The goons beat Johnny's face, and Roark hands one of them pliers to break Johnny's fingers from his dealing hand. They throw Johnny out of the limo. Roark steps out and admits that he knows Johnny is his son, but he only ever considered his deceased son (Roark Jr/The Yellow Bastard) to be his own blood. Roark shoots Johnny in the leg and leaves him there to die. As he and his men leave, Johnny vows revenge on Roark.A Dame To Kill For:Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) is spying on a man named Joey (Ray Liotta) and taking pictures of him as he goes into a hotel room to have sex with a prostitute named Sally (Juno Temple). He handcuffs her to the bed and roughly has his way with her. After they finish, Joey takes out his gun to kill Sally for fear that she'll say something to his wife. Dwight crashes through the skylight and lands on Joey, beating him unconscious. He takes Sally into Old Town where she'll be safe. Afterward, he goes to collect his payment from his client, which turns out to be Joey's wife, giving her the pictures she asked him for while her lawyer pays him.Dwight is driving the Mustang at high speed down a mountain road, and feels a sense of rage overcoming him. He warns himself not to let the beast out. At home, he gets a call from a familiar voice, one that he hoped he'd never hear again - Ava Lord (Eva Green). She has him meet her at Kadie's. He wants nothing to do with her, but she begs him for forgiveness and protection against her husband Damien. Dwight indifferently says he forgives Ava and tells her to leave. She pulls him in for a kiss, and he's hooked. Manute (Dennis Haysbert) enters and threatens Dwight before taking Ava away. Marv, watching from the bar, offers to step in for Dwight. He tells Manute this isn't Marv's fight. Manute takes Ava with him.We next see Dwight up on the rooftop at Ava's home where he takes pictures of her as she swims naked in her pool. Manute's men ambush him and hold him down while he's brutally beaten by Manute. They toss him out of their limo as it's still moving, leaving him in front of his place. As he stands up, he sees his Mustang parked outside and wonders how it got there. He goes into his apartment to find Ava waiting for him, naked on his bed. She asks to be punished, for him to make her feel the pain that HE feels. Dwight slaps her, and then they get into rough sex. After they're finished, Ava tells Dwight that she's tried to get out of her marriage several times because Damien is an abusive husband who has Manute torture her using methods that leave no noticeable signs of injury. She tells him that her husband abuses her, and does not care where she goes off to, as the servant Manute (Dennis Haysbert) will always find her and take her back to him. At this point, as if right on cue, Manute suddenly appears from the shadows. Dwight punches him twice in the face before Manute punches him so hard in the chest that Dwight flies out the window. Back in Dwight's bedroom, Manute helps Ava back into her coat, saying she has an "appointment to keep."Dwight goes to Kadie's to ask Marv for help. He gets Marv drunk enough to get him riled up and ready to kill. They get to Ava's home, where Marv annihilates everybody in his path. He takes on Manute, where the two hulking brutes beat each until Marv knocks Manute out cold, and then plucks his right eye out. Dwight enters the house to confront Damien (Marton Csokas). Damien pulls his gun on him, but Dwight beats his face and crushes his throat, killing him. Ava asks Dwight what it "feels like to kill an innocent man." Dwight realizes he was set up, and Ava pulls out her gun to shoot him. She misses Dwight's heart and head, but she manages to shoot him out the window. He lands on the concrete and is unconscious.Marv grabs Dwight and puts him in the back of the car. Dwight's right eye is nearly hanging out. Marv evades the cops and makes it into Old Town. The cops don't follow them any further, knowing their limits, save for one cop who Dwight figures to be a rookie. The girls of Old Town shoot at the car and blow it up with flamethrowers as the cop flees. Marv brings Dwight to Gale (Rosario Dawson) and her girls. Gale sees Dwight looking really messed up. She tends to him but is angry with him for leaving Old Town. Gale's girls even think they ought to just kill him, specifically twins Goldie and Wendy (both played by Jaime King). Miho (Jamie Chung) gets her sword ready to kill Dwight until Gale introduces him as the man who saved her years ago when two thugs nearly got the drop on her.Back at Ava's home, she's interviewed by the lieutenant Mort (Christopher Meloni) and his partner Bob (Jeremy Piven). She pretends to be devastated over Damien's death, and she subtly comes onto Mort. Bob notices the attraction and even feels a bit aroused by her. Eventually, Mort succumbs to the temptation and goes over to Ava's house to have sex with her while also trying to find Dwight. Dwight ends up calling Ava's home, which makes her tense. Mort drives away with Bob, who berates Mort for the affair. Mort loses it and shoots Bob in the eye and then stops the car, throws his body over a cliff, and then kneels in the road and shoots himself in the head. Dwight says this is part of Ava's seduction that drives men mad.Gale decides to help Dwight get back at Ava. We see her inside a party held at Ava's home where she overhears Ava conspiring with another mobster, Herr Wallenquist (Stacy Keach Jr.) to kill Dwight. Later on, Dwight arrives from getting facial reconstruction surgery to go back to Ava's home undetected. However, Manute recognizes him from his eyes. He takes Dwight to Ava's home, where Gale and Miho have gone to kill all the guards before allowing Dwight to reach Ava. Dwight first shoots Manute into Ava's pool, and Gale throws a bomb that blows up and gets glass across Ava's face, scarring her. Ava shoots Manute down for good, and then tries to seduce Dwight once again. They kiss one last time before Dwight shoots Ava. She slowly dies, and Dwight plans to take the backstreets with Gale and Miho to get out of there undetected.The Long Bad Night (Part Two):Johnny goes to Dr. Kroenig (Christopher Lloyd) with only $40 to get himself fixed. Kroenig gets the bullet out of Johnny's leg, and offers to fix Johnny's hand in exchange for his shoes. After this, as Johnny is walking away in the rain, he remembers Marcie and runs to the hotel. Unfortunately, Roark and his guys got there already. They show Johnny Marcie's severed hands before throwing her head to him. Roark says he could kill Johnny but then laughs maniacally and says he likes him the way he is.Johnny is remorseful for his quest for vengeance as it has gotten Marcie killed. He goes to a diner and meets the waitress Bertha (Lady Gaga). She gives him a dollar out of sympathy. He takes it to Kadie's and hits the slots again for a rematch with Roark. He deals with his left hand this time, being ambidextrous. Roark taunts him about his mother, calling her a whore. Johnny folds on the first several hands, letting them go by but which we see by the cards he would have won, and then finally calls 'all in' and beats Roark with four Aces over Kings. He then acts cocky once again, telling Roark that he has now beaten him two nights in a row, and that stories about it would get around making everyone aware that he beat him, and that in this way he would keep beating him forever. However, Roark gets angry at this, tells him off and finally says "power is as power does", then he lifts his gun and shoots him in the forehead. He has his men get rid of the body.Nancy's Last Dance:Nancy visits the grave of her former protector John Hartigan (Bruce Willis). Since he killed himself to protect her, she has become a bitter alcoholic. She continues to work at Kadie's as a stripper, with her new act as a gunslinger. On multiple occasions, she's aimed at Roark, desperate for revenge, but she's never been able to pull the trigger. She goes to the shooting range and practices frequently, imagining Roark's head being shot at. Not even Roark himself realized that the girl his son had kidnapped grew up to be the same stripper he saw at Kadie's every night.Nancy sees hallucinations of Hartigan telling her that he'll never leave her. It begins to haunt her mind as she can't bring herself to kill Roark. She has a nightmare that he is in her room, threatening to kill her.After performing onstage, Nancy smashes her head in the mirror and grabs broken glass, cutting her face. Later, she gets stitched up and is confronted by Marv. He offers to help Nancy get to Roark. Outside Kadie's, three thugs come in with guns. Marv grabs two guns from one thug, knocks him out, and shoots the other two. Nancy finishes off the last guy.Nancy and Marv make their way to Roark's estate, where Marv once again slaughters his way through all the goons, while Nancy kills some men with her crossbow. They make it inside, but Marv is wounded. Nancy gives him a cigarette and lets him sit this one out. She makes it to Roark's room and sees him. She shoots at him, but it's just a reflection. The actual Roark shoots Nancy in the side and taunts her. He shoots her two more times before deciding where he should shoot her since Hartigan shot his son in the groin. Before Roark can deliver the final shot, he sees Hartigan in the mirror, throwing him off. This gives Nancy a chance to grab her gun and shoot Roark in the shoulder. It brings him down, giving Nancy another clear shot. Roark looks at her in horror as she says, "This is for John Hartigan...fucker!" BLAM. | comedy, dark, neo noir, murder, violence, flashback, revenge | train | imdb | It's both.) I don't get all the criticism of how this "look" has grown tiresome --not for me in 3D.All the actors in big roles to small look like they are having a sinful amount of fun, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt is almost as strong as Green in a new role in one the new stories written for the movie.
If you saw "Looper" (or "Inception") you already know that JGL can play a tough guy despite his physical size.Make no mistake this movie is a feature length Roadrunner cartoon for adults --emphasis on "adults"--with all of the ridiculous action & over- the-top violence that only a cartoon can get away with because of the way it's rendered.(No kids, please: there is just enough gore that isn't so cartoonish to make it unfit for children.)Like the first Sin City 9 years ago, this new Sin City is B-movie bliss.
Almost ten years later, writer/directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller try to strike gold again with a second screen adaptation of the Sin City graphic novels.Unfortunately, A Dame to Kill For suffers from all the afflictions of a bad sequel: an overcomplicated plot forcing a resolved story forward, recasting of previous roles and the addition of new but significantly less compelling characters, and exploiting the spark that made the first film great while still not having that magical appeal.Once again we find ourselves in hardened and corrupted town of Basin City where the inhabitants exist and resist against the sinful city, while others revel in its reprehensible environment.Producers started working on a sequel seven years after the initial film was released.
It also looks the same, feels the same, and with mostly the same actors appearing on screen (though with a sad nod at the absence of Clive Owen), the fact that this second volume has been released a long 9 years after the original is quickly forgotten.I have to say that Eva Green's performance as the character Ava Lord is really the strongest point of the movie for me.
The story arc featuring her character was the movie's best, in my opinion.Mickey Rourke as Marv, Powers Boothe as Senator Roark, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Johnny also delivered great, convincing performances that really draw you into the chaotic and villainous world of Sin City.
This film is not recommended.Frank Miller's Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For may seem like an excessively long title, but excessive and long do perfectly describe this film.Filmed in black and white, with spatters of killer red blood to give it some panache, the film is a stylish crime thriller with live action and graphic (as in novel and/or violence) effects.
Similar to its 2005 predecessor (which I thoroughly enjoyed), but now lacking in its originality and inventiveness, Frank Miller's Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill seems like a cheap knock-off.
Deformed goon Marv (Mickey Rourke), pitiful stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba), seedy PI and hero type Dwight (now played by Josh Brolin), prostitute and dominatrix Gail (Rosario Dawson), corrupt politician and main villain Senator Roarke (Powers Boothe), even dead dick (Bruce Willis) appears briefly.
And while Sin City 2 isn't as a good as the original,it's a wonderful sequel that works as a memorable follow-up.Set before and after the events and stories in the first film,Sin City:A Dame To Kill For gives viewers four more thrilling and intense tales of Sin City.The original Sin City was a brilliant,unforgettable and groundbreaking Comic Book film and is one of my all-time favorite movies and seemed like a film that would get a sequel.
Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller have given viewers a stylish sequel that right from the beginning gives viewers the same energy and thrills that made the first movie work in the first place and the whole time you're watching the film you can't take your eyes off of it.
The movie works as a sequel and prequel combining two stories from Frank Miller's books(A Dame To Kill For and Just Another Saturday Night)and new stories written for the film(The Long,Bad Night and Nancy's Last Dance)where each story interconnects with one another.
Where as the first film was 2 hours and 4 minutes,SC2 is much shorter and while 1 hour and 42 minutes isn't bad I would have loved for the movie to be ten to twenty minutes longer because with the exception of A Dame To Kill For(which is almost 50 minutes and is the longest and best segment)the other two of the four tales The Long,Bad Night and Nancy's Last Dance while wonderful and compelling are too short,rushed and feel like they both should have been longer at 30-35 minutes like the stories in the first film.
Good score,Rodriguez.In final word,if you loved the first Sin City,the graphic novels,Robert Rodriguez or Frank Miller,I highly suggest you see Sin City:A Dame To Kill For,a terrific and entertaining sequel that is not as good as the original but still a worthy and memorable follow to the first film.
Awakening on a deserted highway outside the city, Marv recalls his altercation with a group of frat boys beating up a wino before he blacked out and his subsequent return to Kadie's saloon, where he keeps an eye on its resident stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba) whose tragic past was the subject of the previous movie as well as whose obsession for vengeance bookends this current one.But Marv and Nancy ain't the only ones who are back; Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) returns to play the much-reviled villain of this chapter, the father of the notorious Yellow Bastard slain by Hartigan (Bruce Willis) before the latter met his own unfortunate death which Nancy spends the last tale trying to avenge.
It is Roark whom Joseph Gordon Levitt's brash hotshot Johnny confronts one night during the former's backroom poker game, his arrogance leading not just to his unceremonious downfall but also the death of an innocent dancer Goldie (Jaime King) whom he picks up at Kadie's.In between the two consecutive nights of poker which Johnny challenges Roark, Josh Brolin steps into the role which Clive Owen previous inhabited as private investigator Dwight McCarthy, whose former lover Ava (Eva Green) reaches out to save her from an abusive husband Damian (Marton Csokas) and his henchman named called Manute (Dennis Haysbert, who replaces the late Michael Clarke Duncan).
It's easy to take it for granted, but you have to give credit to Rodriguez for his sheer effort at reuniting such an ensemble group of cast and characters to ensure that his sequel does indeed feel, look and tell like one.In part of course that has to do with the way the 'Sin City' movies are structured; and like its predecessor, this one weaves several of Miller's lightly entangled tales into a larger narrative piece, with loose connections between the characters of each individual vignette.
after a nine year wait, we finally have sin city 2, was it worth it?, yes it was :), I caught this on the opening night with my step dad and I thought it was better and even more intense than the first movie, it had more action, more blood, more gore, more deaths, and more eye candy for the guys :-), and trust me, this is strictly for the adult crowd only, no kids allowed at all lol.
The Long Bad Night (Part I) is a two part story focusing on an entirely new character in the Sin City universe, named Johnny (Joseph Gordon Levitt), a gambler, with a secret mission.A Dame to Kill For, the main story: reveals that years before "The Big Fat Kill", Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin), works as a P.I, and is trying to contain his inner demons, and would give any thing to get out of the numbing hell that his life has become.
*** This review may contain spoilers *** i was waiting for sequel when i first watched Sin City (2005) for awhile great to see Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller BACK TO Direct to this sequel that i head for 9 years i have no clue what toke them to direct this sequel for a longtime i really enjoyed this flick one of my top movies in 2014 why was it better then first sequel, remember it was my opinion.New Actorsand New Characters Were Very good lucky actors i liked of the replacement why wasn't same person playing that role of first person Another character Eva Load is pretty good (Eva Green)Casino Royale James Bond, 300 Rise of Empire was awesome as Perfect Great Villain again like in (300 Rise of Empire) showing of herself Naked More in movie then 300:Rise of Empire Angelina Jole could be better for that role i won't mind seeing her in that role in movie playing Eva Load she would kick a lot more ass in this movie then Mr Ms Smith including she was with her Pregnancy but another choice was Salma Hayek,Rose McGowan,Rachel Weisz but who knows why didn't they toke role for Eva Load.
actors replaced another for Bit I find them still good and better new actor replaced (Michael Clarke Duncan)(1957-2012)may rest in peace i think why it toke a bit while for sequel because of actor past away hard to find another actor to play Michael character (Dennis Haysbert) actor of (24 TV Series)Dennis as Manute wasn't great as Michael Clarke but i could say Michael Clarke was much better actor then Dennis Haybert but i was still happy with Dennis Haybert playing Manute Better then Noting new and old characters were in different stories Nancy (Jessica Alba)old actors, old character bring them back to kick more ass in movie !
more of Nancy everyone top character i loved Jessica Alba as Nancy was only in story but she was part of movie characters like,(Mickey Rourke)Marv was crazy, Psycho Badass characterthat did a lot in this movie then first movie people wanted to have more of Marv because it was the story before everything happen in first Sin City (2005),(Rosario Dawson),(Josh Brolin)Replaced Clive Owen Character Dwight telling what happened before he turned Clive Owen.better sequel then first one i wanted to see more of Marv i know these characters did die but it is like back story for a bit then it Continued from the story what first film ended ,(Josh Brolin)as Dwight McCarthy was my favorite he kicked a lot of ass in movie was awesome good Dialogs including it was bit stupid when he gets betrayed buy Eva too much but find the scene bit stupid Dwight should have hang up he left Eva for 4 years good i expect him to run far but he comeback wanted to see her but he always loved Gail(Bruce Willis) But He Still Was role in movie like a Ghost, the story's were prequel like tellingthe story and about Characters before the first one was very interesting.
Marv rescues Dwight and takes him to the Old Town where Dwight finds his former lover Gail (Rosario Dawson) that helps him to recover while Dwight plots revenge against the manipulative Ava. The neo-noir "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" by Frank Miller is the sequel of the 2005 movie.
This being said, it would be a wise choice to watch the first movie again before you get to see its sequel because the new film refers to several events that have happened before in Sin City.The style and spirit of the movie has been copied many times after its original release in rather similar flicks like "V for Vendetta" (2006), "Max Payne" (2008) and "The Spirit" (2008) which just proves how influencing the original was.
Mickey Rourke convinces as brutal yet charming outlaw, Josh Brolin excels as broken man with a raw appearance but a soft core who definitely makes me forget that his character was performed by Clive Owen in the first film, Powers Boothe delivers as antisocial, corrupt and pitiless politician and Eva Green perfectly portrays the sexy yet evil miss misery.
The other side is filthy rich, decadent people whose greed and pride has blinded then to the point where murder is routine if it means aims are achieved.The meeting point of good and evil is a strip joint where the girls are seen as angels by some and a piece of meat for others.With a look and feel very similar to the original, with its moody conversations, the seeking of pleasure, the highly artistic cinematography dealing with the filth of sin city in a game of life and death, this movie is a trip and a joy to watch..
While it's still all admirably looking and also consists more blood and flesh, the vibe that makes the first movie so fun was lost halfway through the film, which fails to justify this as a bigger sequel.Just like the first movie, it was never about the depth of the stories, it's all about being aesthetically faithful, letting the characters do anything that can only happen in the graphic novels and embracing the lurid world.
As of the actors in the new cast: Eva Green seems to be having fun at making her psychotic character's easy seduction look like an impending devour.Newcomers might be impressed in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, but there is already a better version out there that is more fulfilled with grim and style.
Well I guess I just like Robert Rodriguez's movies (Spy Kids films (especially No2), From Dusk Till Dawn, Planet Terror, Sin City, Machete Kills and the really cool and often forgotten 'The Faculty')IF YOU LOVED THE ORIGINAL 'SIN CITY' THEN YOU SHOULD LOVE THIS TOO.Marv and Dwight TEAM-UP...This is COOL!!!Johnny's Story (the superb Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is perhaps the weakest but is still done with GREAT STYLE.Nancy (Jessica Alba) is terrific here (a better role for her than in Sin City) and my has she changed by the end of it.Senator Roark (portrayed by Powers Boothe) is the sly, unforgiving terrific villain of the piece.And then then we get......
Fella's your just gonna love her, just not so sure you'd want to make love to her (character) as she'd eat you for breakfast.This is a really well made sequel...better in some regards (styling, Eva, the Team-up) not in others (some stories are weaker) but the STYLING and FEEL of the Film is just as COOL as EVER!There are Plenty of Fantastic Cameo Roles too...Rosario Dawson as Gail is back (and is still a busty beauty)Bruce Willis picks up a nice cheque for a few nice minutes of work.Ray Liotta gets to play with Juno Temple, the lucky fella (if they ever remake that 'BARBARELLA' film one day then it would be a close call between Juno & Alexa Vega for the Title Role)Alexa Vega is here too :-) but blink and you'll miss her (she's one of the dancers)Christopher Lloyd has a fun little role as a Doc tending to Johnny.Jeremy Piven gets on the wrong end of his infatuated cop buddy.Special mention for Dennis Haysbert as Manute who I think did a sterling job of standing in for the sadly departed Michael Clarke Duncan.The only cameo that was disappointing was the super looking Jaime King but at least there were two of her :-)BEST CAMEO?
Unfortunately, the numerous delays in these years for this sequel have influenced a bit 'on the final quality, but it is still enjoyable, and especially to the eyes of us boys.The film is logically recommended for fans of this genre splatter / thriller, in particular for those who have read the graphic novel or who already know the saga , because they've seen the first Sin City in 2005.I hope that "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" will have a revenge against the negative critics with good sales when the film will be released on Blu-ray/DVD and with digital download on : Google TV, iTunes , PSN , Xbox Media Video and convince Miller and Rodriguez and concluding the saga with the third chapter.
But with this one we get a look into the lives of the characters from the first in a bit more depth, some stories set before Sin City 1, some after.They still decided to stick with that whole, black & white, "Film Noir" style, using colour only to highlight things and for not-so- subtle symbolism, such as green eyes when a certain someone tries to control people with lust and envy.Bruce Willis was also sorely lacking from this film, showing up only once or twice, which is understandable considering the first movie, I won't say more for fear of spoilers, but it was still a bit sad.
Quickie Review:After 9 years Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller brings us back to the world of Sin City with the sequel A Dame to Kill For. The movie follows four different interweaving short stories, each focusing on a particular character.
Complete with the graphic novel visual style, woven story lines, and inner monologues, A Dame to Kill For does everything to keep it faithful to the experience of the original Sin City.
Meanwhile, there's the tale of the temptress the titular suffix is referring to, Ava (Eva Green), who's got embittered tough guy Dwight (Josh Brolin) wrapped around her little finger.In an industry where the cash cow sequel is quickly churned out to a hugely successful film, writer/director duo Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez have shown admirable restraint, if nothing else, by making fans wait nearly a decade for this follow up to 2005's adaptation of Miller's graphic novel starring Bruce Willis, who has only intermittent moments this time round as a mere spook.
The sequel, Sin City 2 IS a film noir - and people didn't like it.Personally, I thought it was better than the original.One thing stands out though: why were Jessica Alba and Rosario Dawson billed higher that Eva Green, since this movie is about her?
The movie like the original is split up into three different stories that follow around three different characters in Sin City. |
tt0378230 | The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration | Littlefoot has nightmares involving the "Great Circle", and when he mentions it to his grandparents, they reveal they are sharing the experience, with Grandpa lamenting that they need to go somewhere. Led only by their instinct, they leave the next day. Out of curiosity, Cera, Spike, Ducky, and Petrie follow them. During their trek, Littlefoot and his grandparents are joined by Sue, a Supersaurus who is driven on by the same sense as Littlefoot and his grandparents. The group is joined by dozens of other Longnecks feeling the same instincts. Meanwhile, Littlefoot's friends meet Pat, an elderly Apatosaurus.
Littlefoot's herd reaches a large crater where hundreds of Longnecks have gathered. There, he meets his father, Bron, for the first time. After been separated from his mate in an earthshake, he has become guardian to a young Brachiosaurus, Shorty, who becomes jealous of Littlefoot taking all of his father's attention. Meanwhile, Pat shares to Littlefoot's friends that the Longnecks are being driven by a tradition involving a solar eclipse, which was taken as a sign that the Sun will be sent crashing down into the Earth. Every solar eclipse, Longnecks from all around the world gather in one location to stretch their necks up and "catch" the Sun, so they can propel it back up into the sky. Soon after, Pat steps into a pool of magma, which scalds his leg, but he is still able to move.
On the day of the eclipse, Littlefoot wakes up to see Shorty traveling over the crater walls and running away, out of spite for being ignored by Bron. He catches up to Shorty and convinces him to stay; the two reconcile and agree to see themselves as brothers. Moments later, as Littlefoot reunites with his friends, a Sharptooth attacks the group. Pat defends the children but is slowed down by his injured leg. Bron rushes to their aid and defends them from the Sharptooth, only for it to be joined by two other Sharpteeth. Littlefoot's grandparents assist in the fight as well. As soon as the three Sharpteeth are defeated, the eclipse occurs, and the sudden darkness scares away the Sharpteeth.
Littlefoot, his grandparents, Bron, and Pat take their place among the other Longnecks, who have all gathered on top of the crater walls. They succeed in "catching" the Sun, and everyone rejoices as the eclipse ends. With their mission completed, the different Longneck herds depart on their separate ways. Sue departs with an Ultrasaurus. Littlefoot's friends ask Pat to come live with them in the Great Valley, which he accepts. Littlefoot is initially hesitant in leaving Bron, as he is the leader of a migratory herd, but he eventually realizes that he belongs in the Great Valley. Accepting this, Bron leaves with Shorty and his herd, promising to keep in touch with Littlefoot and visit him. Littlefoot returns to the Valley with his friends, grandparents, and Pat. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | The Great Longneck Migration.
The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration, the tenth installment in the Land Before Time series.
This is the best sequel I have seen so far!
Seriously, this is a really good animated film and deserves a higher rating.
Again, I am so confused, when I started watching these movies I was expecting nothing but trash from what the users have been rating them.
But I always try to give my best honest feedback on the film and honestly this was a terrific story.
The animation is getting a little bit more computer which I agree is sort of taking away from what the original was giving us, but it's a new generation and still the bright colors and characters were still a pleasure to watch.
We finally get to meet Littlefoot's father and also more Longnecks for Littlefoot, so we get to see what his life could be like if he grew up with his mother.Plagued by mysterious dreams, Littlefoot, his grandparents and all the other Longnecks depart the Great Valley, joining up with other Longneck herds as they travel to a single location; with Cera, Petrie, Spike, and Ducky following the herds to an enormous crater, which they believe is the culmination of their journey.
Littlefoot learns that long ago, that the sun was going to fall.
However, a number of Longnecks came together to this very spot and raised up their necks, lifting the Circle back to where it had been.
According to this myth, this stretching of their necks is how the Longnecks got their long necks.
History is about to repeat itself, and so the Longnecks have returned to the crater in order to save the sun once more.
Littlefoot's friends miss him though and decide to travel to find him and take him back home meeting another Longneck along the way.
However, another surprise is in store, as Littlefoot meets his father, Bron, for the first time in his whole life.
However, Bron isn't alone.
Since parting from his now deceased wife, he has become guardian to another young brachiosaurus, Shorty, who becomes jealous of Littlefoot since Bron is spending more time with him.
One dawn, Shorty tries to run away, but Littlefoot stops him and convinces him to rejoin the migration, he even goes as far as to suggest they become brothers.
At this point, Littlefoot's friends arrive.
Soon after, following a Sharptooth attack there is a furious battle that the group must face.The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration is the best sequel that I've seen so far of the series.
I can't wait to see the next sequel which I do have to wait for sadly, so a comment will be coming soon.
But I have to tell you the humor is much more for the kids as the adults, I even laughed a few times, which I have with the previous sequels, but not as much as with The Great Longneck Migration.
I mainly loved watching Littlefoot's friends going on their own to find Littlefoot, especially Ducky and Spike, they are so cute together.
This was a touching story as well with Littlefoot discovering his dad and the relationship they could have together.
I highly recommend this movie, if you are going to watch one of the Land Before Time sequels, I suggest this one.7/10.
I'm amazed!.
As a loyal L.B.T. fan, I swooped on this & was amazed.
Littlefoot sets out with his grandparents to discover the meaning of a dream.
His friends can't resist following and soon get into trouble.
Meanwhile Littlefoot makes an astonishing discovery.
This milestone film has quality animation, talented guest stars, cute songs and sympathetic new characters.
Olivia Newton John lends her fantastic voice to the end credits.
Grease is my favourite musical so this was a real thrill.
My only quibble is that Ali, the female longneck from IV did not return.
Opportunity lost.And if they make XI, I'll be first in line.
Fantastic.
The Land Before Time 10: The Great Longneck Migration i think is a fantastic movie.
This was made in 2003, after 16 years (1988 - 2004) there is still more the land before time movies coming out, THE LAND BEFORE TIME = 1988 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 2: THE GREAT VALLEY ADVENTURE 1994 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 3: THE TIME OF THE GREAT GIVING = 1995 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 4: JOURNEY THROUGH THE MISTS = 1996 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 5: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND = 1997 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 6: THE SECRET OF SAURUS ROCK = 1998 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 7: THE STONE OF COLD FIRE 2000 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 8: THE BIG FREEZE = 2001 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 9: JOURNEY TO BIG WATER = 2002 THE LAND BEFORE TIME 10: THE GREAT LONGNECK MIGRATION = 2003Yet there is more the land before time movies to be released.THE LAND BEFORE TIME 11 = 2004The 11th title has been rumoured with a title called: INVADING THE TINYSAURUS.
Also one of the cast has rumoured that THE LAND BEFORE TIME 12 is in the greenlit.
I have enjoyed watching the 10th installment of the land before time.
I am looking forward to see the 11th title when it does come out, hopefully in December as there has been no news just yet on the land before time 11.
Hopefully there will be some news.
I give THE LAND BEFORE TIME 10.
Could be worse, I guess.
This is another entry in the neverending "Land Before Time" series and it isn't that terrible.
I admit that it's been a long time since I've seen the series and it was at least nice to see all the characters again.
I mean, they don't really do anything outrageously out of character in this.
This movie features a great longneck migration but that only makes up less than half of the actual movie.
This movie features Littlefoot having a dream about a migration which all the other dinosaurs have, which is kind of weird.
All the longnecks go to this one place while Littlefoot's friends follow their tracks.They actually did do something kind of nice and that's introduce Littlefoot's father.
Honestly, these scenes are pretty good because in such a long running series they actually are making some important new revelations about the main characters.
Of course, this is far from saving the film.
It's amazing how the original film from 1988 has animation that easily surpasses this.
The songs are pretty annoying, but at least it's better than "George Of The Jungle 2".
Then again, what wouldn't be?
Not absolutely brilliant, but a decent sequel nonetheless.
I like most of the sequels of the Land Before Time series, though none of them are as good as the original.
This is a decent sequel, without being one of the best.
The songs are forgettable here and the dialogue is rather simplistic, plus the film does feel rushed in places.
But the animation is decent with some nice backgrounds especially, and the plot is well thought out and rounded off.
The voice acting is the best asset though, easily one of the better LBT sequels in terms of voice acting.
The characters still have their likability also, and there is some very admirable messaging.
Overall, not great but not awful either.
6/10 Bethany Cox. I've been waiting for this movie....
********BEWARE OF POSSIBLE SPOILERS!*************The Land Before Time was one of my favorite movies when I was around 4-5.
It actually taught me about death.
It's a cherished childhood memory, therefore I'd like to see it treated with a little respect.
Instead I've seen it abused over the years, milked for sequels whenever the studio goes broke.
Each one is worse than the last, chock full of fruity singing.
So wasn't I surprised when I saw LBT X!Honestly, it's like a breath of fresh air after being stuck downwind from a fart.
Where do I begin?
First of all, the voice acting is better.
Instead of paying some homeless guy with a sandwich and a roll of toilet paper, some actual celebrities were hired.
And who should be supplying the voice of the most important character, but Kiefer Sutherland!
This is a big thing for me, I'm a huge Kiefer fan.
So much that I don't really give a toot about other important people voicing other important longnecks.Second of all, the plot of the first movie ties in with this one.
In all the other sequels, Littlefoot is just happy as a clam and never mentions or even thinks about his mother.
For the love of cake, people, she died in front of him!
If your mother was shredded apart by a vicious dinosaur and you were left to survive yourself, would you be frolicking around singing songs?
I don't know about you, but I'd be cowering in my "safe corner".
Not to mention Littlefoot's home is rife with morons.
But not in this movie.
Here, a series of dreams leads Littlefoot to a place where he meets his father.
Finally he's forced to take off his rose-colored sunglasses and remember his past.
The result is a movie that's at least somewhat mature.A nicely thought out plot (parts actually mirror a fan fiction story I wrote), Kiefer Sutherland voicing Littlefoot's father, and I really don't think there were quite as many songs.
All together I'm more than satisfied with this movie.
Granted, there are better cartoons out there to entertain you.
But if you were a fan of the first movie and are disgusted with the sugary sequels, I think you'll find Land Before Time X pleasantly refreshing..
Littlefoot Meets Someone Unexpected In The Next Land Before Time.
At long last we arrive at the 10th installment in the Land Before Time series.
It turns out that both Littlefoot and his grandparents have been having a recurring dream where the sun goes dark and falls from the sky.
It turns out that other longnecks all over the place have been having this same dream and have all decided to go on a trip, which Littlefoot's friends eventually decide to follow along on.
I won't give anything more away but when he and his grandparents arrive at their destination, he meets someone unexpected and very special.
Overall, this may just be the best sequel since Stone of Cold Fire.
The animation quality is declining (though still good for
direct-to-video) and I didn't care much for the songs in this one where in the previous movies I was able to find at least one song that I liked.
But with that said, it's very nice that Littlefoot gets another figure in his life and I like that Littlefoot's mother is mentioned..
The Best Land Before Time Sequel.
The Great Longneck Migration is my favorite of the sequels so far.
Bron and Shorty are interesting and fun new characters, the story was interesting, if not somewhat based on dream logic, and the animation was pretty good even though it's CGI.
I think the best thing about this movie is the conflict Littlefoot goes through.
In fact, he's now the most relatable character to me.
As a person who's lost friends due to movie, I can say that this conflict is portrayed perfectly in the final song which does get me teary-eyed every now and then.
I also really loved the climax of this movie.
It's gorgeously animated and just amazing!
Of course, the relationship between Littlefoot and his dad and the journey itself are fun and heartfelt!
In fact, this movie might be almost as good as the original if not better than the original movie.
I also love "Adventuring" and "Best of Friends.".
Fair Movie.
I just don't get why people pick these poor movies to pieces.
Sure, they may be low-quality, but it's a CHILDREN'S MOVIE, for crying out loud.
If you're overly critical and over the age of 25 and hate these movies, then stop nitpicking them and get a life.
They're awesome movies and always have been.
I'm 15, I've grown up with them, and I love every one.To me, number 10 wasn't the best.
The story was awesome (hey, we finally get to meet Bron, Littlefoot's dad!).
I just thought the parts involving Cera and the others were a little bit cheesy..if not downright boring.
They should've been left out and make it a surprise for them to show up later and explain how they came to be there.The songwriters could do better.
The songs are a bit cheesy, and the singing isn't too good.
The voiceacting sucks, particularly where Littlefoot is involved.
I loved Scott McAfee and I wish they'd bring him back because he actually knew how to make Littlefoot's laugh sound authentic and not forced.
Same with the screaming.
Half the time the guy doesn't even sound like he's screaming, it's more like a low moan.
C'mon, people, you can do better than that!
And he of all the voiceactors Littlefoot had could actually sound like the original, Gabriel Damon.
Way to go, Scott.
Rock on.Anyway I must say it's great to know that Littlefoot actually had a father.
First time around I actually was kind of sad that Littlefoot almost chose to go with Bron instead of staying with his grandparents.
I love Grandma and Grandpa so I was like 'yay!' when he decided to stay with them.
This one rates a 6 because of the voiceacting and such.
I love the first five movies, and the 6th-8th hold their own charm.
Number nine I thought had no relevance or even a lesson to learn from the plot..it was all hunky-dory fun and exploring the whole dang movie!
The people who wrote that one should be shot.
This one is okay and it's actually kind of dramatic and has a cool plot.
All around it's a pretty good movie..
Finally, a sequel that does the original classic justice (spoilers).
The Land Before Time was one of my most beloved cartoons.
It was a far cry from Disney, being dark, moody, and really sad and morose.
But since Universal betrayed Don Bluth and started cranking out cheap direct-to-video sequels, I've been unhappy with the series.
I liked II and III because I was still in kindergarten, but since then I haven't seen any until I got XII, XIII and IX.
I intended to get 'em all, each time hoping for a revival of the old style.
In Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration, you will not find anything like the art direction of the first one, albeit there is a shadow of it in a gloomy swamp.
The Great Valley must be bright and cheery, which I forgive, 'cause it's heaven on earth, isn't it?
Well, the rest of the sequels acted like the last movie never happened; it's like a TV series with episodes like Dexter's Lab or Johnny Bravo, with no connection between the countless "adventures".
However, the tenth installment ties in with the first, featuring a realistic plot.
Migration instincts in dinosaurs probably arose not in dreams, but just some weird chemical reaction that said, "Time to haul ass!" But, the animators probably knew that, and kiddies wouldn't get it if you involved scientific mumbo-jumbo in a cartoon that calls tyrannosaurs "sharpteeth".
As far as animation goes, the gist of the last paragraph repeats itself: this is the only REAL sequel.
They actually seemed to want to do the classic justice this time around.
The animation in the other video releases was no better than a TV show, despite some amateurish attempts at CG effects in the ninth.
Now, the hand animation looks smooth and fluent, not quite like the first, but good enough to pass with some confidence, since the sequels Disney's churning out aren't exactly masterpieces.
The CGI is the most noticeably improved: the trees, the rocks, the water, every non-character element is CG, except for when a character hits the wanter - then you see a hand-drawn splash.The voice acting is much better.
The filmmakers didn't just walk up to a random guy on the street and ask him if he could read.
Some celebrities tag along for this finale.
I heard that someone heard that a good source had confirmed that XI was in the works: I don't think so, or hope so.
The narrator certainly seemed to say that was it, since he just said that Littlefoot and his dad would have some more adventures, and everything turned out hunky-dory.
So I doubt that they'd have the audacity to make another sequel.
I think if you're a Don Bluth fan (this ISN'T a Bluth film), you'll like The Land Before Time.
If you do, there isn't any real need to see any of the sequels but The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration.
It's the only REAL sequel to Bluth's masterpiece. |
tt0164912 | Stuart Little | The film opens with Fredrick and Eleanor Little (Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis) and their son George (played by Jonathan Lipnicki) on the day they are intending an adoption. George wants to go to the orphanage with them, but has to go to school. While George is at school, the Littles go to the orphanage where, among all the kids there, they fall in love with a thoughtful, observant mouse named Stuart (voiced by Michael J. Fox), who knows almost everything about the other children, having been at the orphanage for a long time. Despite the warnings of Mrs. Keeper (the woman in charge), who says that humans should not be adopting mice, the Littles decide to adopt him as their second son.Immediately after getting home, Stuart meets Snowbell (voiced by Nathan Lane) the family cat, who immediately attempts to eat Stuart. George arrives home and is surprised when his parents introduce Stuart as his new brother. George at first thinks it is a joke, but is shocked when he realises they are being serious. That night, Snowbell visits Stuart and requests that he keep a low profile, so as to avoid getting seen by the other cats and damaging Snowbell's image (the alley cats would laugh forever if they heard that there was a mouse with a pet cat).George is at first sullen and somewhat disappointed and treats Stuart with contempt. He eventually snaps at a family gathering when they encourage him to play "catch" with Stuart. Stuart also earns Snowbell's wrath when his friend, Monty the Mouth (voiced by Steve Zahn) visits for food. As Snowbell tries to keep him from seeing Stuart, Stuart makes a scene trying to get a cereal box from a cupboard. When he sees him and discovers he is a member of the family, Monty cannot contain himself. Enraged, Snowbell tries to kill Stuart, who narrowly escapes by fleeing into the basement. Here, Stuart learns that George keeps a playroom and the two interact and eventually, George comes to accept Stuart as his brother. Stuart also finds that George keeps a toy car just his size. They decide to work together to finish George's homemade model boat, the Wasp, for the Central Park Boat Race the following week.Snowbell, however, isn't finished. He and Monty head to an alley that night to visit Smokey (voiced by Chazz Palminteri), a Mafia Don-like Russian Blue who is the leader of the alley cats. Since Snowbell doesn't want Stuart killed, he makes a plan with the alley cats to remove Stuart from the Little house. On the day of the 92nd annual Central Park boat race, the Wasp is finished, and they arrive at Central Park. But, George finds a problem when he discovers his nemesis, Anton is present at the race. At the same time, Stuart accidentally destroys George's remote control, rendering his boat inoperable. To make up for this, Stuart takes control of the boat himself. Anton, however, attempts to cheat by ramming his much larger boat into other boats and sinking them. When he attempts to do the same thing to Stuart's boat, Stuart manages to bite into the line of his sail, rendering Anton's boat inoperable. Stuart subsequently wins the race.The celebration is short lived however, as during the party that night, the Littles are visited by Reginald and Camille Stout (voiced by both Bruno Kirby and Jennifer Tilly), a mouse couple claiming to be Stuart's parents. After discussion, Stuart reluctantly leaves with his real parents, taking the small car with him as a goodbye present from George and they go to their home, a small toy castle on a golf course. Three days later, the Littles are visited by Mrs. Keeper, whom they had asked to do a little background research on Stuart. She tells them that, according to the records Stuart's parents died several years ago after a pile of canned food fell on them. The Little's realised that Stuart had been kidnapped and call the police.A terrified Snowbell rushes to the alley and warns Smokey and the others about the Littles' discovery. Smokey then decides that the only way to rectify things is to kill him. They call a meeting with Reginald and demand that he and Camille hand Stuart over. But the Stouts, having grown to care for Stuart, reveal the truth and Reginald orders him to escape before the cats find him. Stuart does so after saying goodbye to his "fake parents". Meanwhile, the Littles decide to place "missing" posters around the city to get help in finding Stuart. While going through Central Park, Stuart is ambushed by Smokey and a few cats. He manages to evade them by driving his car into the sewer, but at a cost: he loses the car and his luggage while escaping the storm drain. Eventually, Stuart finds his way home just as the Littles leave to hang the posters. The only one home is Snowbell, and he tells Stuart a lie about how the Littles are enjoying life without him, and shows him the family picture with Stuart's face cut out (the Littles had actually removed the picture to provide one for the Missing posters). Stuart leaves again. However, Snowbell sees the pain Stuart's absence has caused and realises his selfishness.Discovering Stuart's location from Monty and the other cats, who intend to eat Stuart, Snowbell heads to Central Park and finds him sitting alone in a bird's nest. Snowbell, however, turns on the other cats and escapes with Stuart, admitting his lie to him and that the family actually does love him, he is in fact the only one who hates him. The cats catch up with them and Snowbell attempts to convince Smokey to call off the hit on Stuart, but is refused. Instead, Smokey orders the cats to kill both Stuart and Snowbell. Stuart responds by taking off Snowbell's collar and using it to lure the cats.The cats give chase, and eventually corner Stuart hanging from a tree branch. The cats group together on a lower branch to catch Stuart, but Snowbell breaks it at the last minute and sends the cats into the water below. Smokey sneaks up behind Snowbell and is about to kill him when Stuart releases a thin branch that hits Smokey in the face and knocks him into the water. Enraged and humiliated, Smokey walks off, only to be killed by dogs upon turning a corner. Monty and the other cats also climb out of the water, whimpering and embarrassed. Snowbell and Stuart walk home and Stuart shares a warm reunion with his family, telling them that Snowbell helped him home. The Littles bring Stuart and Snowbell inside, and close the windows, ready for bed. | psychedelic, comedy | train | imdb | null |
tt0989757 | Dear John | Special Forces Army Sergeant John Tyree (Channing Tatum) is home on a two-week leave from Germany. He meets Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried) after he dives into the ocean to retrieve Savannah's purse that had fallen off the pier. John is smitten by Savannah and falls in love at first sight. Savannah is a college student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is on spring break and is helping build a house for Habitat for Humanity. John joins in with Savannah to help build the house. Along the way a budding romance occurs, and Savannah falls deeply in love with John. As she is about to go back to college, she promises to write John overseas during the next 12-months until he returns to her after completing his enlistment. Their love is put to the test when John reenlists after the 9/11 attack. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)The book review is below:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Setting:Wilmington, NC and Lenior, NC. Begins in 2000 and ends with epilogue in 2006.Dear John is a three part book that starts out with 23 year-old John Tyree, an army enlistee.The Prologue starts of with the ultimate question, "What does it mean to truly love another?" John Tyree watches as he relives every memory, emotion, and touch while falling in love with Savannah Lynn Curtis.Part I John as a little kid struggled with finding the balance between himself and his father. While on leave from the Army, he meets Savannah. She goes to UNC Chapel Hill in North Carolina and is in Wilmington, NC to work for Habitat for Humanity. They become quick friends after John dives into deep ocean water in order to retrieve her fallen purse. At a bonfire, with wild college students, John meets Savannah's friend Tim Wheddon. John quickly learns of how inviting and mature Savannah and Tim really are. After the initial meet, John and Savannah meet again at the beach where he teaches her to surf. They then quickly more than just friends. At the end of John's leave, Savannah meets with him at the pier. She mentions that she thinks John's distant father has Asperger's. Asperger's is a developmental disorder which would explain why John's dad is distant, has the same exact schedule and conversation everyday, and is fairly only interested in his gigantic coin collection. After having this conversation, John quickly gets mad and accidentally hits Tim right in the nose, breaking it himself. Savannah and Tim forgive John for what he did. Before he departs, he promises Savannah he'll marry her when he completes his deployment.Part II, John comes home on leave and him and Savannah spend a very close night together while at one of the empty project houses for Habit for Humanity. Savannah writes him a letter, beginning with Dear John, that promises her love to him. John is very excited to come home to Savannah; however, due to 9/11, John feels the duty to reenlist in the Army. After years away from each other, Savannah writes John another letter. It starts with Dear John and ends with good-bye.
Part III John's father dies after suffering from several heart attacks. He sees Savannah one day and finds out that she married Tim and has been living with Tim and his brother Alan, who suffers from Autism. Tim, while in his death bed, asks John to make Savannah happy and marry her when he passes away. John, making the decision of his life, sells his father's coin collection in order for Tim to find treatment for his Melanoma. John decides to do this after realizing that if a man is selfless enough to let the love of his love go to another man, than he is worth living. Tim was on his death bed but still cared for Savannah's safety and happiness. The treatment for Tim works and he is released from the hospital. John does not regret ever loving Savannah.The Epilogue ends while John is watching Savannah. He sees her staring at the full moon, proving her unending love for John. | romantic | train | imdb | null |
tt0036241 | The Outlaw | In 1880, in Lincoln, New Mexico, newly appointed sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) is pleased to see his old comrade Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) arriving on the stage coach.Doc Holliday has had his horse Red stolen and has a hunch the horse may be in Lincoln.In town, they get a lead that a horse fitting Doc's description is tied up by the dentist's office. As they head that way, Pat has to deal with a gun waving drunk at the saloon. Pat's technique is to smile and feign friendship with one hand and punch him with the other. This is a recurrent habit with Pat, throughout the rest of the film.The horse is in the possession of William Bonney, who says he bought it and is determined to keep it, despite Doc's claim that it was stolen. At the time William Bonney, known as Billy the Kid, was the most famous gunslinger of the southwest, wanted dead or alive. Billy was said to be charming, attractive and a favorite with girls.Billy (Jack Buetel) is both good looking and polite, Doc is experienced and careful, so a gunfight is avoided despite each being inflexible, as each admires the other's reputation.This does not sit well with sheriff Pat, who is unhappy that his youth is gone without having done anything notable. He was hoping to arrest Billy or take credit for having shot him dead. Frustrated, Pat orders both of them to leave Lincoln by afternoon the next day.Doc and Billy proceed together to the saloon, a classic establishment for drinking and gambling and confrontations.At the saloon, a young tough requests to talk with Billy privately, offering to help in setting a trap to assassinate Doc, but his intention is to kill Billy. Billy recognizes the deceit in the nick of time and shoots the young tough dead, in self defense.Billy and Doc calmly continue drinking and playing poker. Doc wins more money than the horse was worth, so he is even in that respect. In a surprising turnaround, Billy and Doc become friends.As Billy has practically no money left, Doc invites Billy to bunk with him for the night if he doesn't have a girl. Billy declines, choosing instead to bed down in the barn, in front of his horse.A few moments after Billy takes the gun belt off his waist, a shadow is seen at a dark corner of the barn, and shots are fired towards Billy. Billy takes off his spurs, throws them, drawing shots, makes other noises, drawing other shots, and after the sixth shot he jumps on the shadow and overpowers someone. Billy realizes that he has overpowered and subdued a female, and he warns "Quit struggling, lady or the rest of your dress will get ripped" as he has his way with her, in the dark shadow. When things have calmed down, we get a clear look at bosomy and sultry Rio McDonald (Jane Russell) in the hay. Billy asks why, she explains that Billy killed her brother in a gunfight. He talks back calmly to her, saying he is sorry it happened but he had not sought the quarrel, and then it was kill or die. Rio makes no fuss or comment about being subdued and getting her dress ripped.In the morning as Billy leaves the barn, he is surrounded by a group of boys fascinated by his reputation, and he shows off by shooting a hole lengthwise through a wooden stick.Back at the saloon, he is again with his new friend Doc when Pat and a squad of deputies arrive wanting to arrest Billy for the previous day's killing, even though it most likely was self defense, as the other man's gun was on the floor. Doc takes Billy's side against his old friend Pat. In a confrontation, Pat wounds Billy by a flesh wound on the thigh, but Doc arranges things so they both are able to escape on horseback leaving the deputies behind. Seeing that Doc and Billy have become comrades as Pat and Doc were in the past, a tremendous jealousy arises in sheriff Pat, and his former friendship with Doc is over.As Billy's wound needs tending, Doc takes him to hide in the isolated house where his putative girl friend Rio lives with her aunt. There, Doc asks Rio to take care of Billy, giving precise instructions as to how to care for the wound, while he continues running to throw Pat Garrett and his deputies off track.Very reluctantly, pouting, Rio agrees to hide Billy and tend to his wound. After seeing Billy weak and helpless, and in her power, the sultry Rio finds herself attracted by Billy's good looks. On multiple occasions the aunt wants to turn Billy in, but Rio nixes the idea or thwarts her plans.After having watched over Billy in bed for a time, Rio decides to kiss him. Slowly, she gets up from a chair, the camera takes the point of view of Billy's eyes, Rio approaches, flaunting her bosoms, the romantic music gets louder and louder, we see her face in slowly increasing magnification, finally mostly her lips, her lips parting in the throes of desire, just about to touch the mouth of the semi-delirious Billy [and half the men in the 1946 audience probably experience an orgasm]A man comes to the door who seems to be an old acquaintance of the aunt, and Rio energetically blocks his entrance to maintain Billy's whereabouts secret. The scene hints that the aunt might be in the habit of entertaining gentlemen for a fee.A few days later, Billy has the chills, and no amount of blankets will keep him warm. Rio has been warned that if this happens, he must be kept warm or he will likely die. She starts undressing, tells the aunt to leave the room and announces with assurance, "I'll warm him up." Her ministrations must be powerful, for his fever leaves him that night, and he regains consciousness the next day, plus his appetite.While Billy heals, Doc has been playing hide and seek with sheriff Garrett and deputies in the rock canyons, with many felled by rifle fire from heights. After weeks, Doc comes back to Rio's house, planning to flee the area together with Billy and escape Garrett's jurisdiction.New tensions develop as Doc realizes that Rio has become Billy's girl friend, and they argue again as to who owns the horse Red. Doc insists that Billy can't take both Rio and the horse from him, bringing up the old question of whether a man needs his horse more than his girl, or vice versa.Doc offers Rio to keep the horse, and Billy chooses the horse over Rio, so either man values Rio less than the horse. With that settled, Rio remains in the house, theoretically as Doc's girl, and both men leave on horseback. However, on the first night that they camp out, Doc sneaks out with his old horse Red, leaving Billy alone.Having thus been betrayed by Doc, Billy returns to the house to claim Rio. He finds Rio in the bedroom, glares at her, she looks back in some fear. Billy tells Rio he wants her this time to keep her eyes open and look at him in the eyes while he does it, and approaches her as the image fades to black.With Rio under his control, Billy retraces his steps intending to leave Rio with Doc and take back his horse, but Garrett has tracked both Doc and Billy while they were distracted by the horse versus Rio disputes, and by playing one against the other he surprises, disarms and handcuffs both of them, and starts to lead them back to town.At the first ridge, they see smoke signals indicating Indian war groups are active in any of the two directions they might take, and understand they will most likely be captured. To improve their chances, Garrett frees both men and rearms them. Warlike Indians in large numbers approach. Billy knows a trick that helps them escape: They lasso Joshua trees and drag them as they gallop, creating huge clouds of obscuring dust. During this galloping chase, we get to stare hard at Rio's bouncing cleavage for minutes, while in the background is a lot of dust, through which dozens of Indians can be glimpsed riding and hollering. In a narrow twisting canyon, when the Indian groups are totally blinded by the dust, the four manage to escape.The four make it to an isolated house where all the plot threads are resolved after complex confrontations resulting from the ways in which Doc, Billy, and Pat have all deceived and double crossed each other and continue their manipulative tricks to the end. Pat shrieks to Doc as he realizes the other two have shoved him into irrelevance, "You're not going with him! Everything was fine between us till he came along!"Doc Holliday feels old and sick and wants to die, but wants to die shot by Billy, whom he has sort of adopted as a worthy successor. Pat Garrett wants a bit of fame for having captured or killed Billy. Billy wants to live and be free.Billy and Rio get to smolder intensely in one more scene of towering sexuality, as Billy needs to calm down and Rio is overwhelmed by a desire to help him achieve total relaxation.Doc challenges Billy to a duel, expecting to lose, but Billy refuses to draw although Doc tries extreme measures to provoke him, grazing first his hand, then his ears, with bullets. In the end, Doc is shot by Pat. After Doc is buried, Pat suggests a deal to Billy, that he should take Doc's two guns in exchange for Billy's two guns, that way Pat could claim to have shot Billy, and Billy would be thought dead and could continue free
with no one looking for him. He assures Billy that the guns are loaded.Billy tries on Doc's gun belt, handles and twirls the guns, comparing them to his own, and agrees, but he senses a trick, and exchanges holsters only, not the guns. So when Pat tries to murder Billy, the gun in his hand does not fire, as the firing pins had been removed! Billy is in full control!They set up a tomb marker over Doc's grave, reading HERE LIES WILLIAM BONNEY, 13 July 1881.Finally, Billy starts to ride off, stops, then turns in his saddle to look back at Rio. She hesitates, unsure of what he means, then smiles and jumps on the back of Billy's horse and they ride away together. | revenge, murder | train | imdb | Vintage alone gives the film status.There's nothing wrong with anecdotal (vignette) - points-of-view movies, but in "The Outlaw", it was like watching one of those lumbering, exasperating silent films: where the actors stand across from each other, and each speaks their lines as if orchestrated by an off-stage conductor.
Best known as the film debut of a very bosomy Jane Russell, the movie actually describes a completely fictionalized friendship between Billy the Kid (Jack Beutel) and Doc Holliday (Walter Huston).
Walter Huston's Doc Holliday (or Halliday -- I've seen it spelled both ways in regard to this picture) is CLEARLY the stud, Billy is a petulant young hustler who piques his interest (despite his having stolen the older man's cherished horse!), and Thomas Mitchell's Pat Garrett (Doc's "oldestfriend") seethes with jealousy throughout until he degenerates into the very apotheosis of a passed over, frantic, shrieking old queen.
This western depicts the relationships between Billy the Kid(Jack Buetel),Doc Holliday(Walter Huston) and Sheriff Pat Garrett(Thomas Mitchell).
Mr. Hughes or someone took over direction and gave us the finished product which is a mess but a lot of fun just the same.The build-up of Jane Russell (no pun intended) was one of the great publicity moves in film history.
LOL.THE OUTLAW is no one's idea of a good movie, but it's worth checking out (even if you only see part of it)for Russell's auspicious, bodacious debut and moments, here and there, when the story actually works..
The only interest the other characters (none other than Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday) serve is watching how often their eyes stray to Russell's bust when they're in a scene with her.Unexpectedly comic moment: in a shootout, one man refuses to draw, so the other shoots a big hole in his hand and out of his ears and he doesn't even react, as if he didn't feel it.
And to think some people describe the likes of Jay-Lo or Abi Titmuss as the most beautiful woman who has ever lived Unfortunately Ms Russell is the only thing THE OUTLAW is remembered for , which is by no means a bad thing since this is an absolutely terrible movie .
Maybe that's why the musical score has a comedy soundtrack complete with a WAH WAH WAH WAH sound that belongs in a three stooges feature ?I would have happily given THE OUTLAW one out of ten but because of the presence of Russell we're treated to something of a movie landmark - We're treated to on screen sex .
I bought this film recently for my husband,as he is a big Jane Russell fan,i thought id give it a look.I must admit she was a very beautiful woman i can understand why men loved her,but in this film she is totally wasted,Howard Hughes has cast her like a real bimbo,unlike her later parts as the tough intelligent,wise talking,calamity Jane in the Bob hope films,for these roles she should be best remembered.The whole time i was watching this film i couldn't wait for it to end,it seemed to drag on not making any point at all,the story had a very weak plot and was really over dramatised,especially with the music,which would have been very suitable for a romantic silent film.Everything about this film was wrong,the acting ,the script,music score,you name it.The only reason I'm giving this film 2 out of 10 is because i feel very sorry for Jane to be starring in this very chauvinist mess..
Let's see, there's the triangle of a literally limp-wristed Doc (Hughes shows us this about five times to make sure everyone gets it), an sputtering old rejected Pat, and an energetic hot young buck (Billy) who also has time for Jane Russell.
Jane Russell nurses Jack Buetel back to health - but, that's not all.I've watched the film three times.
I loved the saloon - reading the visible graffiti on the walls, never knowing who was going to shoot who, when, why...When Mr. Buetel and Ms. Russell tumble in the hay, I recognized the scene from a dozen subsequent westerns; yet, it seemed suspenseful the way Mr. Hughes shot it here.
********** The Outlaw (2/5/43) Howard Hughes ~ Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Walter Huston, Thomas Mitchell.
This famous western deals about the most noted gunslinger of the southwest ,William Bonney, a juvenile tough, a teenager wanted dead or alive throughout the west.This is a fiction story of the strange teen-age desperado known to legend as Billy the Kid.Billy was said to be sympathetic,attractive and favourite with girls,particulars represented by the protagonist(Jack Buetel).He'll confront against Sheriff Pat Garret(Thomas Mitchell) and Doc Holliday(Walter Huston) and is enamored by a wonderful girl(Jane Russell).The film isn't based on real events,it's invented story by the screenwriter Jules Furthman with ironic dialogs and a plot with little sense.Thus isn't appeared Tunstall,Chisum ,nor others personages ,neither deeds (Lincoln county war or getaway from gaol)of the Billy Kid life.It's only notorious character Pat Garret who has an important role and Doc Holliday who didn't have none real relation with him.The picture is produced by RKO(Radio Pictures Inc) and Howard Hughes.Howard Hawks began the filming in 1941 and he shot scenes with the cameraman Lucien Ballard but had complications with Hughes and he took the direction contracting to excellent photographer Gregg Toland(Citizen Kane).However the censorship made him modify numerous takes shots.Finally at last,after a three years delay ,public saw a daring production exactly as it was filmed not a scene cut.The picture would obtain myth as erotic Western.Thus is by Jane Russell,she appears moody,mean, magnificent and terrific,too startling to describe,Russell was an authentic sensation for the epoch,she keeps her best attributes in the bosom.Today all the fuss seem totally wrongly.
The Outlaw tells the story of Billy the kid's supposed friendship (and arguments) with Doc Holliday, his battles with weaselly Pat Garrett, and his romantic entanglement with a big-chested girl who nurses him back to health after being gut-shot by the dastardly sheriff.A once scandalous adult western, this is decidedly less scandalous by today's standards.
It's notoriety simultaneously launched Jane Russell's career as a sex symbol and hurt her career as an actress.The overblown hype surrounding Jane's breasts, the film's reputation for being a vanity project for billionaire Howard Hughes, and the high expectations attached to anything directed by Howard Hawks weighs heavily on ones enjoyment of The Outlaw, but this is essentially just a long 1940's style B-western.When viewed through that prism it's fairly decent, if unspectacular entertainment with good performances by the stars.
Maybe what was most outrageous about this movie was Hughes' shameless promotion of Russell, because there was not even a token attempt at subtlety or discretion.If you're still reading to this point, you've no doubt noticed we've stopped talking about Billy the Kid.
this thing is all over the place.it's disjointed,and there doesn't seem to be a point to a lot of it.probably most largely remembered as Jane Russel's first movie role,even though she didn't have that big a part.anyway,this thing just goes on and on and on.there were times i was sure it was over,and it could have been,but it kept going.it also plays fast and loose with history,as far as i know.Doc Holiday,Pat Garret and Billy the Kid are all in this one.i don't just mean they're in the same movie.
In this fanciful tale, audiences are treated to a make believe story wherein we have two western legends 'Billy the Kid' aka, William Bonny (Jack Beutel) and 'Doc Holiday' aka, John Henry Holiday (Walter Huston) arriving in Lincoln, New Mexico and becoming fast friends.
You would think then that the movie would be centered around Russell, but no, Hughes apparently (and unfortunately) attempted a legit Western.The movie tells the story of Billy the Kid and his numerous encounters with Doc Holliday and Pat Garrett, as well as his romance with Russell.
The Outlaw runs a painfully long two hours and I don't remember much of the plot except that it had a lot to do with honor, a horse, and shooting or not shooting each other.Jack Buetel, as Billy the Kid, was an attractive male counterpart to Jane Russell but both were new actors and could barely do more than smoulder, though smoulder well they did.
It had a spectacular Jane Russel, sexy and beautiful, Jack Buetel was very well cast as Billy The Kid, and it had two great actors Walter Huston and Thomas Mitchell.
The character acting by Walter Huston, Thomas Mitchell, Jane Russell, and Jack Buetel may never have been equalled in any of their other endeavours, except perhaps Mr Huston (the 'Missionary's puritanical wife' being chillingly played by the indefatigable Beulah Bondi) in 1932's RAIN, with Joan Crawford in one of the best of debut[sic?] performances.
Hughes' passion for film making led him to make six pictures, including HELL'S ANGELS (1930) and SCARFACE (1932); and culminating with THE OUTLAW in 1938, an excptionally pivotal year -- the final watershed of an era which saw the old West become civilised, but before it had been forgotten in real-life experience and its denizens all passed away.
Thomas Mitchell , Jane Russell & Walter Houston must have been bored to death and probably complained to Hughes about a rather mixed up script.Billy the Kid played by Jack Buetel needed more acting guidance.
The film is damaged further by a musical score that is passable at best, intrusive and annoying at worst; the best example of this being the horrible comic effects during the scene where Doc and Billy debate the merits of Rio versus Doc's horse.The cast all fell second to Russell's breasts during production and marketing of the film and, with the impact of that double-act reduced with time, it just leaves them to at least be able to be watched without distraction.
A notorious sensation when it first opened in 1943 , reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes' western THE OUTLAW is noted today as the vehicle that launched the movie career of Jane Russell, whose sporadic film vocation was capped by modeling the "Cross Your Heart " bra on television and in print adds.
Naive Version of the Legend of Billy the Kid. In the Nineteenth Century, in the town of Lincoln, New Mexico, the sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) welcomes his old friend, Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), who has had his horse Red stolen by a stranger while coming to the town.
It's also a buddy movie with friendship and camaraderie: the central conflict comes about when Doc Holiday takes to Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett feels cast aside, and it's interesting to watch the changing dynamics and friendship and respect even among those trying to kill each other..
When notorious outlaw Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) arrives in town, he is greeted with open arms by local sheriff and best friend Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell).
Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) has a falling out with Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) after he sides with Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel).
Reliable Hollywood veterans Walter Huston, playing Doc Holliday, and Thomas Mitchell who plays Sheriff Pat Garrett come off better than Buetel and Russell.
When it comes to 1943's "The Outlaw" (produced and directed by Howard Hughes) - Would it be at all fair of me to say that (from a straight man's perspective) this film's only truly notable asset was, indeed, Jane Russell's "38D-24-36" measurements, and not her acting abilities?Yep. As shallow and sexist as that may sound, it's pretty much the truth.
'Cause as far as even coming close to being a marginally satisfying Western, "The Outlaw" just did not deliver the goods (regardless that its main character was the famed outlaw, Billy, the Kid).I mean, let's face it - "The Outlaw" was (and always will be) all about Jane's breasts.
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. The Outlaw was the second and the last film directed by legendary Hollywood producer and founder of RKO Pictures Howard Hughes.
The only other Western I can think of off the top of my head that paints a picture like that is High Noon (another absolute classic).Walter Huston (Doc Holliday) does carry this film, however.
Remembering that The Outlaw was a product of its time (the early 1940s) when the censor board (headlined by the vicious Will Hays) was as-tough-as-nails on any Hollywood, mainstream picture that dared to push the limits of violence and sexual content - It took director Howard Hughes nearly 2 years of wrangling with the likes of Hays to finally get The Outlaw released in American theaters.And, now, looking back at this film, 72 years later, one really does end up asking themselves what the heck all of the fuss was about.But, with that said - I know one thing for certain - All of the legal battling that Hughes got involved in over The Outlaw's release sure provided some great publicity for his picture.As I understand it, curious spectators (especially the guys) were lined up right around the block for this Western-dud whose only selling point was the accentuation of Jane Russell's 38D bust-line.
Another review mentions Walter Huston being far too old to play the character of Doc Holliday (historically speaking), but what about the 58-year-old actor's on-screen relationship with the 19-year-old Jane Russell (morally speaking)?
As you can tell from the movie, or the publicity photos, she didn't need any help.In case anyone's paying attention to the story, it's about Doc Holliday's relationship with Billy the Kid. It's ironic that Walter Huston was one of the go-to actors in old Hollywood to play a straight-laced, honorable character, when he gave wonderful performances in roles that allowed him to let his hair down.
In The Outlaw, Walter plays Doc Holliday, starting the movie off perturbed about his stolen horse and on the side of the local sheriff, Thomas Mitchell.
Tensions between Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and Doc Holliday reach boiling point as they vie for the affections of a voluptuous young woman in this western drama from Howard Hughes.
The film is best known for being banned upon initial release due to the size of Jane Russell's bust, and many have denigrated it over the years, citing its historical inaccuracy, the admittedly poor music choices and Jack Buetel's bland performance as the Kid. All things considered though, 'The Outlaw' is a surprisingly decent motion picture.
Some of the Stuff Works, but the Film's Entirety Suffers mightily from a Horrible Musical Soundtrack and the Pacing is Glacial.The Acting is Not Bad, from Veterans Walter Huston and Thomas Mitchell, and Tenderfoots Jack Buetel and Jane Russell.
The Movie's Strengths are Overwhelmed by its Weakness and Overall it is Recommended for its Place as a Misanthropic Misfire that is Quite a Sight.The Film's Reputation as a Sex-Western is Evident and Jane Russell's Cleavage does get a lot of Screen Time and Steamy Implications Abound.
2nd Jane Russell was totally amazing in this, just her sheer beauty alone is worth watching this film, Walter Huston gives a strong performance as Doc Holliday, as the movie starts Doc comes back to see his old friend Pat Garret, and all is well till Billy the Kid comes to town , eventually Doc and Pat stray .
The plot, by Furthman, a regular collaborator of Hawks, has Buetel as Billy the Kid and Huston as Doc Holliday, quarreling over Russell and being trailed by Mitchell's Pat Garrett.
This certainly seems pretty blatant considering the movie code at the time.In a later scene, Rio is apparently going to give herself to Billy willingly, but the camera angle used has her about to give oral to the camera lens, until the scene is interrupted by the arrival of her aunt.Now unless there are scenes missing from the version I have the famous poster shot of Russell with her dress ripped and off the shoulder, doesn't appear in the film.Anyway, the movie is not as bad as some folks make it out to be, although it would have been interesting if Howard Hawks had been given free hand, without interference (and eventual credit taken) by Howard Hughes.
The story concerns gunfighter Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), outlaw Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel), and lawman Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell).
You'll get the gist of this film from the storyline on the main page, but about half-way through this awful movie, Rio (Jane Russell) says "I just can't believe it!" referring to what she'd just heard from Billy (Jack Buetel).Well ...
Not only did this film offend so many historical facts about 19th century south- west, it portrayed a homo-erotic trio between Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) and Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) that was reduced to the worst kind of camp comedy: utterly boring.I won't waste your time by commenting on the plot, except to say it was simply ridiculous.
i recently seen the outlaw,I've heard all the hype and stuff about it, all i can say is they must've been crazy to ban this film,so what Jane Russell shows a little cleavage,anyway this is a good western although its a fictional account of billy the kid( played by young jack beutel,) doc holiday(Walter Huston)pat Garrett(Thomas Mitchell)and Rio(Jane Russell)a feisty young girl.the late great Howard Hugh's produced this classic but had trouble distributing it,so it was released independently by rko radio pictures who also distributed king Kong and citizen Kane.
In all, just a complete mess regarding history.What's not a mess is Jane Russell's film debut as Rio McDonald, Doc's girlfriend turned Billy's lover.
As for the film itself, it is quite unconventional, there are some funny moments, the love scenes between Russell and Buetel are quite good, and the unusual music by Victor Young is interesting, it is an alright western.
Thomas Mitchell has his moments, especially at the end of the film with his outburst.Even with her voluptuous bosom, Jane Russell is often churlish.The film might have been better had it went into further detail about the great friendship that Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid had. |
tt0808510 | Tooth Fairy | Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) is a minor league hockey player nicknamed the "Tooth Fairy" for hitting opposing players so hard that he knocks out their teeth. One night, Derek steals a dollar from his girlfriend Carly's (Ashley Judd) six-year-old daughter Tess (Destiny Whitlock) that had been left for her lost tooth and tells her that the tooth fairy doesn't exist. Then he receives a magical summons under his pillow. He grows wings and is transported to the realm of tooth fairies. He meets his case worker, Tracy (Stephen Merchant) and the head fairy, Lily (Julie Andrews). He has an adversarial relationship with them. Lily tells Derek that he is a "dream crusher," due to his unsympathetic dealings with children like Tess. He is sentenced to serve two weeks as a tooth fairy. Later, he meets Jerry (Billy Crystal), who gives him his tooth fairy supplies, which include "Shrinking Paste," "Invisible Spray," and "Amnesia Dust."
Carly's teenage son, Randy (Chase Ellison) dislikes Derek. Randy wants to grow up to be a heavy metal star. When Derek defends Randy against a bully he begins to win him over.
Derek visits several children and tries his best to be a good tooth fairy, but ends up causing more harm than good. Lily says that he is the worst tooth fairy ever and denies him more supplies for the remainder of his sentence. He buys black market supplies from another fairy named Ziggy (Seth MacFarlane), but they malfunction and he is seen by a child's mother and arrested. While behind bars, Tracy tells Derek that his duty is extended to three weeks. Carly bails Derek out.
Derek is frustrated after he can't score a goal at a hockey game and takes his anger out on Randy, telling him that he will never become a rock star. His dreams crushed, Randy smashes his guitar and Carly breaks up with Derek. Tracy comes to Derek's house and announces that he is a tooth fairy in training, but that Derek's cruel remarks hurt himself more than others. The next game, Derek gets back on the ice and sees Tracy. Tracy wants to teach Derek the importance of dreams, encouraging Derek to score a goal and to go get Tess' tooth. Derek scores the goal, gets into his tooth fairy costume, and flies away while Tracy spreads Amnesia Dust on the audience to cover up the event.
At Carly's, Tess sees Derek taking her tooth, but she promises to keep it a secret, and Derek uses his magic wand to grant Randy a new guitar. Downstairs, Carly sees him as a tooth fairy, but assumes that he rented a costume for Tess' sake, causing her to forgive him. He flies Randy to the talent show and throws Amnesia Dust on him when they arrive.
Derek heads back to the fairy realm to give Lily the tooth, and is told that he has been relieved of his fairy duties. Lily explains that he will never see the tooth fairies again and he will have Amnesia Dust thrown on him. Before departing, Derek makes amends with Tracy. Lily throws Amnesia Dust on Derek and transports him back to the talent show. There, Randy outperforms everyone and ends up forming a band. Derek proposes to Carly, and she accepts.
During the credits, Derek is shown playing left wing for the Los Angeles Kings, and when he sees Jerry in the crowd, he doesn't recognize him. His fairy friends secretly help him score a goal. | fantasy, entertaining | train | wikipedia | I don't know what the rest of these reviewers were watching but I took my 11-year-old to see this at the theater; and she used her hard-earned money to buy it on DVD as soon as it became available.It's a feel-good story of a jaded and cynical man who realizes that it's okay to dream; it's okay to believe in things you can't see and hope for a better tomorrow.
No, I don't think that this is a good date movie, or something that a bunch of adults would find entertaining, but when watching it with a group of kids, or just one 11-year-old little girl, it's a winner..
When i first looked at this movie i thought along the same lines as some of the previous reviews it couldn't mount to anything special, also wondering why the likes of billy crystal put his name to it.
But i decided that i would test it on my three girls its a great test as one is three, one seven, and one ten so depending on the movie we tend to lose them one by one starting with the youngest but to my surprise they all went the distance and my three year old asked for it again not twenty mins after it had finished so if you have a mixed age group wanting to watch it i hope this helps.The movie itself isn't all that bad it has enough momentum from start to finish to keep you interested from an adults point of view.!!.
He plays, Derek Thompson, a hockey player known as the Tooth Fairy because he knocks a lot of teeth out.
We watched this film with our three children aged from 9 to 16 and they and us enjoyed it very much, especially our 9 year old as he is one of the rare kids nowadays of his age that still believe in tooth fairy's.
maybe it's not the worst idea in the world.Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson plays Derek "the Tooth Fairy" Johnson, the beloved bruising left-winger on the local minor hockey team.
He's a cartoon pragmatist, dispensing hard truths about the impossibility of dreams coming true to young hockey players wanting to be just like him.As a result, he is summoned to Fairyland, and sentenced by head fairy Lily (Julie Andrews) to two weeks' duty as a Tooth Fairy, a real-deal winged creeper with a bat-belt full of spy gadgets and a lanky, awkward case worker with fairy aspirations of his own (Stephen Merchant, co-creator with Ricky Gervais of The Office).
Lessons are learned, a whole bunch of obvious groaner gags are hatched, and everything, eventually, from a guitarist kid's fear of failure to a single mom's love to a future hockey star's cockiness and on and on is resolved in a Really Pleasant Way.It's a kids movie, pure and simple, endlessly saccharine and full of pratfalls, Healthy Moral Lessons and magic fairy dust.
It's also incredibly dull, and a massive waste of what's actually a great cast - Merchant is consistently funny and Billy Crystal is in vintage form as Fairyland's gadgetmaster Q equivalent, and Johnson is as charming as ever.
Six year old kids will probably laugh their six year old heads off, but the dullness of the script, the predictability of the gags and the moral convenience and simplicity of the story is going to bore anybody not actually invested in the "ok wait is there actually a tooth fairy or not, dad" debate.You want this film to be better, just because it could have been.
It is a kids' movie and for what it strives to be it fully delivers.Dwayne Johnson plays a veteran hockey player, that was denied his chance with the pro's due to a shoulder injury.
The problems and lessons that occur from now on will make him rethink his way of life and put it in order.Great film for the kids, good film to watch if you are an adult.
I'll bet this movie would have a negative rating except the great majority of reviewers with more than two brain cells to rub together saw the ten line minimum and thought it wasn't worth the three minutes it would take to vamp so the truth could be posted.There is not one moment of inspiration here, not an iota of spontaneity, heart, or humor in this dog of a cliché-ridden stench bomb.
Dwayne Johnson did an exceptional job making a remarkable tale completely believable.I won't re-hash the plot; but, it was completely plausible, progressed quickly; and, provided many, many laughs, with no "cheap shots." The bonding between "Derek" and, the kids, made subsequent scenes both heart-breaking; and, sweet.Without a lot of back-story, we got to know all the characters.
During both screenings, there were very few hard laughs, a couple of chuckles and long silences from the audience of mostly kids.Dwayne Johnson did his best to add comedic timing to the material, but the script is the real weak point here.
Tooth Fairy is a not bad kids movie starring Dwayne Johnson, Julie Andrews, and Billy Crystal.
But when he nearly tells the daughter of a woman he's dating (Ashley Judd) what he thinks of that fairy tale, he gets summoned by a caseworker named Tracy (Stephen Merchant) to the head of Tooth Fairyland (Julie Andrews) for a two week penance of becoming one.
The only thing I didn't "dig" about this movie was the casting of Ashley Judd, yes she is pretty and A good actress but she didn't seem fit to play The Rock girlfriend (watch it and you will understand why), well maybe I am wrong or maybe it was the hair style and clothing she wore anyway that was the only casting I would change.
Nothing wrong with that.Now, from an adult's point of view, the story which revolves around hockey player Derek Thompson - played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - being sentenced to work as a tooth fairy for a couple of weeks as punishment for "disseminating disbelief" is pretty lame and the performances are generally forgettable.
9 seasons without a goal maybe, but this guy seemed to get enough ice time, at least as an enforcer and bodyguard for his team's better players, so somewhere along the lines he's going to pick up the odd rebound and get a shot.This is mildly humorous every now and then, and considering how silly it really is it has some surprisingly recognizable faces in the cast - including Julie Andrews and Billy Crystal.
The film is of course ridiculously bad with the exceptions of some small comedic performances from Stephen Merchant and Seth MacFarlane and a few somewhat touching inspirational moments, besides that everything feels forced, by the numbers and completely over the top.The most disappointing thing about the movie is the continuing decay of the once great action star Johnson, who used to make some rather good action films (like 'THE RUNDOWN' and 'WALKING TALL') now he just makes one bad 'sell-out' kids movie after another.
Tooth Fairy stars ex WWE man The Rock (aka Dwanye Johnson)who plays Derek Thompson a ice hockey player who goes as "The Tooth Fairy".
The head of the fairies world is of course played by Julie Andrews who looks fabulous here tells Derek that if he keeps telling kids that tooth fairies don't exist their world will be gone forever.The problem I had with this movie was that there wasn't enough of gags and I felt like watching The Mighty Ducks meets Toothless(you know the one with Kirstie Alley)over and over again.
Derek (Dwayne The Rock Johnson), aka "The Tooth Fairy", is a minor league hockey player who got his nickname by decking the opposing team during games.
The Tooth Fairy follows the story of Derek Thompson (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), a pro hockey player, nicknamed the Tooth Fairy for his ability to knock out other players' teeth, dashes the hopes of a young boy, he is ordered to one week's hard labor as the real Tooth Fairy.
The cast has some interesting names like Dwayne Johnson that with this role does the impossible to make people laugh, and to be honest the funniest thing he did was wearing that pink tutu.
In conclusion, Tooth Fairy is a entertaining movie, enjoy it with the family but you better wait for it on DVD..
It was a pleasure to watch him, Julie Andrews, and Billy Crystal bring their characters to life.This is a perfect film for date night or the whole family - it's nice that you can actually take your kids to see this non-animated movie that's enjoyable for you all!.
Here he portrays Derek Johnson a minor league hockey player known as "The Tooth Fairy" for his heavy hits.
As a result he is summoned to Fairyland and has to be remanded to being the REAL tooth fairy until he realizes what he has done.The humor is fun and the light hearted style of the film is brought to life by Johnson and his performance.
Andrews, as the Fairy Godmother (the boss of the Tooth service) is a nice touch.Johnson, in bright blue tutu, tights and wings looks ridiculous, of course and sends it up well.
Kids will find his miniaturisation and other grotesque special effects funny and engaging.I'm not usually in a habit of watching kid's films (I have none to share it with) but as it was on Sky Movies, thought I'd give it a try.
Which is likely the reason why we've never questioned the modus operandi of these enamel-admiring imps
until now.When a cocky minor league hockey player, Derek (Dwayne Johnson), pilfers a dollar from underneath his girlfriend's daughter's pillow, he is sentenced by the head fairy (Julie Andrews) to serve as a tooth-collector for two-weeks.Partnered with a dimwitted caseworker (Stephen Merchant), Derek not only learns the fairy trade, but also a lesson in humility and helping others.Though its covered in plaque-inducing predictability, Tooth Fairy has enough creativity, comedy and charisma to placate both kids and adults.
Also, no performances were truly amazing-besides that fact that Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson actually produced an exceptional performance.So, in the end, this film is by far nothing to go out of your way to go and see, but if you've got a spare moment, who knows.
The pairing of The Rock and Stephen Merchant was an unexpected and pleasent surprise!In brief, we all enjoyed this film, I laughed out lound in lots of places, yes, it's cheesy and predicatble but it re-inforces something for the children and reminds us adults to give things a go too.We did have a hairy moment a short way into the film where my husband and I looked at eachother in panic at the thought of Tooth Fairy magic being taken away but rest assured, the film only re-inforces the magic - it doesn't take it away!!The other half was quite reluctant at my selection too but when the ice hockey came in, he had a smile on his face and laughed at the jokes.Our girls (10 and 12) laughed and were really pleased we'd given it a go..
Feel Good Movie To Watch With Kids.
Nonetheless, I'm glad I did because 1) it is hilarious seeing the Rock in a tutu and 2) I love movies that showcase good prevailing over evil and also people changing their views based on personal experiences..
His name was Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) he thought that just because he has a bad "Wing" he can't try and make a shot.He thought that he was the amazing hockey player but when something goes wrong for him he thinks nobody shood try because he tried and failed.
I felt The Rock was the best actor in this particular movie he made it so I felt like the tooth fairy was giant muscular mean dood.
Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) is a minor league hockey goon known as 'The Tooth Fairy' for knocking out opponents' tooth.
Head fairy Lily (Julie Andrews) doubles the normal one week sentence.The good news is that The Rock is willing to look silly.
Johnson plays an aging minor league hockey player who ruins a lady's kid's fantasies of the tooth fairy and gets sentenced to a week's sentence as-you guessed it-a tooth fairy!
So were the scenes of him interacting with his "case worker." Julie Andrews was good as the "head tooth fairy," and I liked Billy Crystal in it.
Dwayne Johnson as an ice hockey player slash tooth fairy is quite a good comedian but he and his A list supporting cast can't help this dud.
Yeah it's very easy to pre judge this movie because of the concept, especially cause Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is a Tooth Fairy.
So this is the last chance to see Dwayne in a kids movie for a long time, and I am happy to see him move on to action again but this is a good movie and The Rock (Dwayne) is very funny in it.
From a childish story, Dwayne put the movie a little above the 5 year old mark with some quite funny acting, jokes, lines and this was the part that really started to grow on me.
Yes you can predict what is going to happen, yes you know it is about kids, yes it's target audience is bellow 18, but despite all that it was a nice and funny movie.
If you are looking for a really good family movie, watch toy story 3.
Tooth Fairy is actually an entertaining family film.
This had me genuinely laughing at times.The cast was better than I thought it would be too, with Billy Crystal, Stephen Merchant, Ashley Judd and Julie Andrews all playing their part very well.
Good thing is, when Johnson disseminates disbelieve amongst children he gets promoted to Tooth Fairy status which makes room for - amongst others - the wonderful Julie Andrews having fun as the fairiest of them all, the hilarious Stephen Merchant as a fairy in the making (no pun intended) and an unbilled Billy Crystal who is priceless as, essentially, a fairy version of James Bond's Q.
The Rock plays a washed up minor league defense-man who once played in the NHL but due to an injuries is stuck in minors where he has a bit of cult following because he is such a hard hitter that he often knocks the teeth out of the opposing players thus garnering him the nom de plume "Tooth Fairy." When he dashes a little boys dreams and tries to tell a little girl that Tooth Fairys don't exist he is sentenced by Julie Andrews to two weeks as a Tooth Fairy.
Despite a very likable cast (The Rock, Billy Crystal, Ashley Judd, Julie Andrews, etc.), this movie watched enough times could actually induce insanity.
The soundtrack also has a magical sensation to it, the film is cute and has some nice messaging and morals without feeling too forced or sugary sweet and the cast including Dwayne Johnson(surprisingly good), Ashley Judd and my favourite Julie Andrews give it their all.
So I like him as an actor and I hope he continues to make these kinds of family entertainers.Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) is a local Ice Hockey player who is quite a celebrity and is nicknamed 'The Toothfairy' for his defending prowess on the field.
Dwayne Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a minor league ice hockey player who has earned the nickname "The Tooth Fairy" because of his aggressive style of play that often leaves opposition players bleeding a missing a tooth.
It was surprising to see Seth Macfarlane in a real family movie, but he was quite funny and believable in his role.I really enjoy watching Judge Judy, so I giggled quite a bit as Julie Andrews take on her role was quite similar to Judge Judy.
I was glad that the movie itself did not spoil my children's belief in the Tooth Fairy, as they are still going to lose more teeth and I wouldn't want them to stop believing just yet.
Predictably, Derek winds up changing his ways and learning important lessons about life that he has shied away from, like taking the shot to score."The Tooth Fairy" is as consistently hilarious as it is inspirational.
Tooth Fairy (2010): Dir: Michael Lembeck / Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ashley Judd, Stephen Merchant, Julie Andrews, Billy Crystal: Moronic family film about a reality check, only its fantasy elements wayward that theme.
Dwayne Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a hockey player called the Tooth Fairy.
Not that I don't like Dwayne Johnson, but the whole concept of the movie seemed a little far fetched.
And Billy Crystal is a hoot as the Tooth Fairy organisation version of Q.This is a good family film - very appealing to children, but with a lot for parents to enjoy too..
I agree Johnson is not much of an actor, but he is indeed likable as the washed up ice hockey player who learns the error of his ways in a daft way, the supporting cast are all alright as well, especially Merchent in his first big film role, and Andrews, Judd and Crystal get their moments.
At first I was hesitant to see this movie, however my son is a huge WWE fan and of course wanted to see this film (because of Dwayne Johnson).Dwayne appeared with his shirt off a few times, making this a far more enjoyable movie than I had anticipated.There was a scene where Dwayne was in the head fairy's office and dressed in a tutu like costume with wings...
I liked the two kids in the movie, I thought they were quite good.
However this movie was just lazy and like I said, someone thought of the poster and how funny it looked and probably just wrote a script off that.Derek Thompson is a hockey player nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy", for hitting opposing players so hard that he knocks out their teeth. |
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